ugly maths.
i hate maths, right. i don't usually like numbers, and if i do like numbers it's gotta be an 8 or a 48 and nothing else.
thing is, i've recently caught myself doing maths again. ugly maths. the kind of maths that, really, i've been trying to avoid as much as possible because, well, it's ugly!
you... wanna see?
okay, fine... but don't say i didn't warn you!
ugly, see? look at all those numbers! not a 48 in sight!
huh? what's that? you don't see what i'm on about? oh... oh! hang on, lemme just—
better? yes? no? no? okay, what if i—
mmh, yes. ugly numbers. see it now? can you see why they're ugly?
here, i can make it worse.
these numbers are ugly. the maths they make me do is ugly.
now i'll level with you: the worst ones by far are the yellow numbers. the maths they make me do it the ugliest.
why ugly?
because it makes me ugly.
those numbers turn me into not only a suddenly number-obsessed fool, but a fool who also cannot understand these numbers and what they mean and why i feel like they reflect on me and my ability.
87, 75.
the thoughts are as follows:
• the orange numbers are big, so why are you being ugly about the yellow ones? you should be happy with what you have. so many nice big numbers! not everyone receives that.
• is it that there are two different audiences for these two different fics? perhaps. they are quite different works, with different appeals, and different themes. maybe you are reading too much into it.
• why are you obsessing over numbers anyway? you don't like maths! you left maths behind when you were 16, put it down!
okay, okay, fine! i'll put the maths down. right here, in fact!:
that 87 was an 83 at the start of the year. the 6161 it is attached to was a 5453.
4, 708.
ugly maths.
the 75 is a nice number. in fact, compared to 87, it is beautiful, radiant, enchanting. at the start of the year, 75 was 48. wow. now that is one sexy number!
27.
mmmm.
6161, 1061.
5100.
87, 75.
12.
mmmm.
you know, my most favourite comment left recently on a fic of mine was 2 characters long: :(
it made me :)
well, actually, it made me >:) because it was left in response, presumably, to one of the key scenes in a new chapter which left the exact impression on someone that i hoped it would.
they must be the only one who reacted like that, though.
1.
have i mentioned that that 87 and 75 include author responses?
i won't try to do more maths, there. it might not end well for me. the maths is making me tired enough as it is, and i have an early start tomorrow.
oh! but, that being said, i have another set of ugly numbers to show you, so keep 87 and 75 in mind.
ready?
838, 245.
(want a hint? the green numbers!)
838, 87. 245, 75.
9.6, 3.3.
ugly maths. it's ugly again, see? i don't like it. i'm seeing numbers within numbers within numbers, and i can't seem to stop!
the numbers make me ask new questions:
• why is it not good enough?
• people seem to engage more with one fic over the other, so shouldn't you prioritise?
• is all this maths this really good for you?
no, it isn't.
i want to avoid ugly maths. ugly maths makes me want to tear my hair out. it makes me want to start from scratch. it makes me want to grab someone and scream. it makes me want to cry and press a button that has tempted me many times before when the numbers become too ugly to bear.
ugly maths turn me into an ugly person.
ugly maths make me obsessive, paranoid, anxious, regretful, vindictive, spiteful, alone.
i hate maths. i hate numbers, just like, it feels, the numbers hate me.
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literally it's 3am where i live and i'm on mobile but FUCK IT i haven't posted any actual writing in like a YEAR on this blog whose description include the words "I WRITE" and i can't tell if i'm even going anywhere with this so fuck it under the cut is the prospective absolute mess of the first chapter of the flipo family time loop fic. (for clarity, flipo family as in slime, mariana, and juanaflippa) this covers loop 0, aka the relevant parts of canon. words: 1630
parts of it i popped off with and other parts i hate; up to you to identify them. also the italics and other formatting got erased when i copy pasted and i'm re-adding all of it by hand so if i missed a spot, no i didn't. if i missed an accent on a letter in spanish that was a typo, if i missed a ¡ or ¿ that may have been on purpose.
oh and for obvious reasons, content warning for mentions and mild descriptions of child death and child murder. no blood, and most of it is a three word mention; i'd say the brief paragraph beginning "Tilín didn't scream" is most of the reason this warning exists.
Charlie Slimecicle stepped off the train.
He’d been hoping for a bright, sunny day to start their vacation, but was sorely disappointed. The portal had apparently taken them pretty far, since they’d gone from noon to night time. Talk about jetlag. They hadn’t even been on a plane.
“What happened to the other guys?” he wondered aloud as he stepped onto the platform.
“Yeah no clue,” Phil said, scanning the empty station. “Thought they’d meet us here.”
“Guys!” one of the Spanish speakers--Vegetta, he’d said, when they’d all met up at the first station--called, from a lectern at the wall. “There is a book!”
They crowded around as he read the instructions aloud--something about pressure plates, Slime wasn’t paying that close of attention. He was a little more preoccupied with making sure it only felt like his brain was dripping out of his ears. That would be kind of embarrassing.
Which was not to say that he wasn’t enjoying the constant onslaught of people talking over each other using words he may or may not understand. In fact, it was the opposite; he was frankly thriving in the absolute chaos that kicked back up around him as a timer appeared in the wrist communicators they’d been provided along with their tickets.
“Como se dice ‘we are going to die now’?” He giggled, chasing Phil and Fit to one end of the station.
“¡Vamos a morir!” shouted Spiderman, echoed seconds later by the black bear in the collared shirt.
Giddy over the high of attempting to use his high school foreign language for the first time maybe ever, Slime absolutely didn’t contribute much to solving the puzzle, and before long the sound of the timer ticking down was accompanied by a loud buzzing alarm.
“It’s been an honor!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs. “It’s been an honor!”
The bear ran past them again, shouting, “I’m going to die!” in English this time.
“Adiós amigos!” Slime yelled.
The countdown ended.
And then his communicator buzzed, and there was a video playing on the screen, showing a cartoonish yellow duck in front of a blurry beach stock photo. He skimmed it absently--some generic welcoming message and another side quest for them--distracted by Maximus audibly losing his shit laughing across the station.
“Come on, I’m trying to take a vacation, I gotta work now?” Fit complained. “This is ridiculous.”
Slime wanted to jump on that bit, but the message cut off with coordinates marred by static and the noise of the emergency weather alert system and he lost his train of thought completely.
“I got the English book!” Spreen called, holding it with two fingers like it had personally offended him.
“English leader,” Vegetta said, seeming to find that amusing.
“English leader.” Spreen laughed and flicked the book away. Slime stepped back but somehow it still nailed him in the chest.
“Guess I’m reading then,” he said cheerfully.
“In Spanish?” Maximus said.
“Um.”
Vegetta called something, backing across the plaza with the book open in his hands. Phil backed up to the wall.
“Here,” Phil instructed, “we’ll read it here.”
“Okay okay.” He flicked it open. “So we have to get water wheel planks--”
Their peace lasted a grand total of thirty seconds as voices suddenly began shouting, overlapping in chaotic chorus.
“What is that?” Fit demanded.
“Is that coming from the other side?” Phil stared up at the top of the wall.
“This is the thinnest thick wall I’ve ever seen,” Slime said, giddy laughter bubbling out of him again. “Is this thing made out of pencil shavings? If I sneeze on it, is there gonna be a hole?”
“Nevermind, we’ll read it over here.” Phil dragged them away again, but the Spanish speakers were dispersing into the trees.
“Forget the book,” Fit said, “follow them!”
(In the end it was explosives that took the wall down, which in hindsight was a precursor to how a not insignificant portion of time on the island was spent. The first day, however, it was just funny, much like everything else.)
(That was to say, the first first day.)
The communicator had indicated that today there was something special planned, so he made an extra effort to wake up.
“Morning Jaiden!” he called to his upstairs neighbor.
“Hi Charlie!” He could hear her farming through the wall. “Glad you woke up on time!”
“Well you know, you know, El Backflipo couldn’t miss it,” he joked, sifting through his backpack. “Got any spare food? I’ll trade you uno backflipo.”
“I have so much toast, come here and get some, free of charge.”
With a quick backflip and some toast to start the day, he popped open the map.
“There’s a lot of people down the wall,” he noted, their green dots so clustered they formed one. “Wanna check it out?”
“Yeah sure.” Jaiden tossed some seeds into a chest. “Do you know what this event’s gonna be?”
“I have no idea,” he admitted cheerfully.
She laughed. “Yeah, me neither. I guess there’s an egg involved, but that’s all I know.”
He dug around in his backpack for a paraglider, nodding along. “Yeah, yeah, un huevo, I get you.” Shuffling the landmine from Vegetta to one side, he yanked out his glider and threw himself out her window. “Let’s go!”
(nothing like getting struck by lightning to wake a guy up in the morning)
Slime fiddled with the communicator as he waited for the line of people to get through the ticket machine; he already had his own, a nice B for Backflipo. The new live translations still boggled his mind. He had to fight the urge to chant weird shit under his breath, just to see what the bubbles would say.
He paid a little extra attention when Mariana walked up to the machine. That guy seemed cool. They’d done that pequeño dormir together on day one, and he had a good sense of humor. Egg parenting would probably be funny.
He was thrilled to see the B for Backflipo on the ticket Mariana stepped away with, even if Mariana was decidedly less so. This was gonna be good.
(it was, and it wasn’t)
So, Mariana wasn’t exactly the coparent of dreams. Then again, Slime was pretty sure Mariana could say the same about him. In fact he was pretty sure Mariana had said the same, but in Spanish, when he wasn’t checking the translation.
It was great. They thought they’d killed a child immediately and then decided to fake their own child’s death to get away with it, and then confessed their sins to a bilingual angel and built a farm and then he buried himself beneath an improvised cross and went into a coma until his sins were forgiven, or something, except his sins weren’t forgiven in time to save his own child’s life.
And then Juanaflippa was dead. Dead at Mariana’s hand.
His bitch wife killed their daughter.
(Everything went faster, after that.)
Slime wanted to kill him.
Slime wanted to kill him for killing their fucking daughter, but of course, Mariana couldn’t even be bothered to be around to take care of her alive, never mind to pay for his crimes when she died by his hand!
(in a better world, his rage started and ended there. in a better world, the anger fizzled out with the lack of a target.
this was not that world)
There couldn’t be an Egg Event with no eggs.
If he killed them all, it would bring her back.
(in a worse world, he succeeded. in a worse world, the Egg Event ended there.
this was not that world)
They held a trial.
If he won, it would bring her back.
(in another world, he didn’t convince them. in another world, they left his daughter in Hell.
this was not that world)
Tilín was still before she hit the ground.
Tilín didn’t scream. Maybe they didn’t have time. It happened so fast. He was sure it happened fast. Almost too fast. But everything went so fast, now, even though Flippa was back. Yet, time slowed down for this, like a rubberneck driving past a highway accident, watching him desperately trying to shock their heart back into motion.
“YOU KILL MY BEST FRIENDS,” Flippa wrote. He begged her to understand. She wrote, “i can’t believe it.”
She wrote, “I HATE YOU.”
(in a better world, the error would have been caught in April instead of July.
this was not that world)
His daughter fell to his bitch wife’s sword. The same way. The next day.
They’d only just gotten her back. And Mariana killed her again.
He only left eggxile for the funeral. She wouldn’t stay dead, but he had to be there.
Time went even faster after that. He was Gegg, or maybe Gegg was him, or maybe Gegg was Gegg, or maybe. . . ?
He went back to eggxile.
He wasn’t leaving without them. Tilín. Juanaflippa. He would do whatever was necessary. He would pray to any higher power. Lil J still owed him a goddamn favor, but the guy wouldn’t pick up his calls. Maybe if he put more shit in the shrine; angels liked shiny shit, didn’t they? He went back to the mine, where the gasses swirled in his head. He built the shrine. He mined. He built the shrine.
He went back to the mine.
He went back to the mine.
He went back to the mine.
“This is where I sit, this is where my bitch wife sits, and this is where my daughter sits, if I had one!”
He’d said that before. No he hadn’t. Yes he had.
No, he just needed to clear his head.
Charlie Slimecicle went back to the mine.
Charlie Slimecicle stepped off the train.
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