Your Local Condiment Expert

Hey, what's up people? It's me, Banana Bread, your favorite Queer Jewish Schizophrenic Fictive screaming into the wind. Feel free to join along for the ride. Follows from collecting-clovers. This is NOT a roleplay blog. This is natural, organic, free range Beyond Birthday. I go by B, Beyond, and Rue.

[the-indigo-symphony]

One of my more minor gripes about the "serial killer alter" trope is that I think there is opportunity for genuine, well-made stories about a system that kills. You could potentially write some really interesting stories involving internal conflict over murder in a system – for instance, if a system killed once in self-defense, and one of the headmates is keeping that memory from the rest of them. Or if an alter came back from dormancy to find out the world's gone to shit and everyone knows "them" as the one willing to kill to protect their group of survivors. Hell, fuck it, have some kind of "no, I'm being literal when I say the version of me that you knew isn't present anymore, this isn't some metaphor for how I've become ~evil~" conflict! So long as it's done in a way that gives the system in question nuance and reason for their actions, I'd be willing to see where the story is going with this!

But nooooooo, it's all stock-standard "this one alter kills others for no good reason" shit with a dash of "don't look too long into the implications that this plural superhero/anti-hero just killed a bunch of people, just accept that they do this" hand-waving that makes people think we're going to stab them if they look away for too long. It's always "this imposter is pretending to be our loved one for nefarious reasons" angst and never "oh shit we treated this alter like shit for just being different than the host" angst. There's not even any originality smh smh. We've already gotten a thousand of these horror plots that use plurality as a one-size-fits-all villain cap; I'm sure horror, whump, and angst writers can do better if they really want to write about a system that kills others

[the0peratingsystem]

This reminds me:

I've had this story idea for a bit about a plural gentleman thief, like stereotypical "robbing expensive jewelry from museum" kind of guy, except they're a system. And none of the "Oh, some of the system members don't know the others are criminals!", none of that. They're all in on it like a one-body crime family and all have different skills useful to their "occupation". The drama would come from stuff like "Oh no! The guy who knows how to pick locks hates flashing lights, so he won't front unless we turn off the alarm!"

Okay, maybe there's one guy with severe dissociative amnesia who's (new) purpose is that he genuinely doesn't know what he was doing if they get questioned by the police. But he's also in on it, he just constantly forgets. So they have to figure out how to let him know without leaving very obvious "Hey, don't forget we're a top tier robber :)" stickers around the house.

And the police can never string together their crimes because they all have different mannerisms, writing styles, ways of speaking and modus operandi. It must be a group of thieves! How are they so well organized?! But the trick is they all share one body. They're not even like stereotypical bad guy personas. Guy who picks locks is like a pokemon introject or something

[in-a-trenchcoat]

HI I DID SENSITITY READING FOR A TTRPGG PODCAST SPECIAL EPISODE WUTH A NPC WITH THIS EXACT SHTICK. Down to the investigators assuming it must be a Normal Gang Of Thieves situation. That's so wild. Their system name was the Packback Bandits. Really fun characters.

[lilyflxwers]

ok i absolutely need to know what accents u all have pls reblog and tell me or comment or whatever I must know

[bipolar-barbecue]

My sysmate, AJ, describes my voice/accent as "if Ben Kowalewicz of Billy Talent was a Faggot from SoCal". I can't argue with it. But since we live in Southern New England and everyone talks like Family Guy, some of that creeps in.

[alexanderwales]

Here's a legal PSA:

If you've committed a crime and a detective gathers everyone involved in the room, especially if he's not actually a detective and is instead a novelist, puzzle-setter, psychic, fake psychic, dog, chess grandmaster, etc. ...

YOU SHOULD NOT CONFESS.

Every year, hundreds of people are put away by non-traditional "detectives" who have either inserted themselves into the case or are working with the police in a dubiously legal capacity as advisor. In 99% of these cases, the murderer gives a full confession even though the evidence against them is circumstantial at best and often requires a long just-so story which can only guess at motive.

If this happens to you, stay quiet, do not attempt to defend yourself or talk your way out of it, only say "I want a lawyer".

Now if you find yourself being investigated by a boy genius, magician's assistant, anthropologist, classics scholar, or philosopher, it's likely that refusing to talk to the police (or investigator with no legal authority) is merely the end of the second act, and by the end of the third act they will have you dead to rights.

YOU SHOULD STILL NOT CONFESS.

Make them take it to court. Force the eccentric detective and his straight-laced police partner to take the stand and explain their methods to a jury of your peers. Have your lawyer look at the chain of custody on the evidence, especially if you believe it to have been handled by someone who has only bumbled into detective work through their natural charm and/or unique set of skills and outsider perspective that come in handy more often than they should.

Know your rights. Don't let eccentric detectives put you away.

[applestorms]

the restoration of greatness to rome

Beyond Birthday is an exceptionally average man with an exceptionally weird name. 

Except, no. That isn’t quite the case either. It’s a bit of a misnomer to claim that Beyond was in any way average, at least when looking to any degree below the surface. 

That surface-level mask was, however, nearly flawless. Bland and uninteresting, sweetly endearing in a way that added up to nothing, the type of boy you’d take home to your parents and they wouldn’t be able to remember the face of afterwards. It had almost turned Naomi away at the start, flicking through dating app photographs so generic they could’ve been repurposed stock images. It was everything she wasn’t looking for after Raye, after the complete and utter destruction of her fairytale daydreams about living a normal and peaceful married life. As a little girl playing with dolls she had never considered the possibility that she might be the one leaving her fiance hanging at the altar. But what is life if not a continuous train of terrible surprises? Where you find out that, more than anyone else, you are not the person you thought you were? 

Beyond Birthday had plain black hair which he kept plainly and neatly cut, a plain face with a small nose and boring jawline, and a sweater vest so milquetoast and typical she only remembered he was wearing it while in the process of looking at it. He had a job so asinine and lifeless she’d forgotten it nearly the second the words came out of his mouth, and lived in an apartment complex so lacking in notability that she had lingered around the doorway for five minutes trying to find the right building before realizing she was already outside of it, thereby rendering herself a full three minutes late to their date, as Beyond himself was quick to point out. 

Frankly, the fact that she had ended up on the date at all was a stroke of luck, the stars and planets perfectly aligning to allow her cat to dig his claws into her leg at the exact instant that she happened to be scrolling past his profile. Certainly, ghosting probably would’ve been easier. An accidental superlike is an annoyance, perhaps a particularly awkward one, but not the end of the world. But, still… 

There was something else under the surface. 

“Are you going to finish that?” 

She shoves the plate of jam tarts across the table without a second thought, blinking out of her stupor. 

Beyond Birthday was a stranger. They had exactly one conversation through text and two conversations through calls, all of which culminated in this exact meeting on this exact date. She knows that his name is the real one written on his birth certificate, that he was born somewhere in England but lived in “alternative circumstances,” that caused him to never develop the accent outside of rare instances of words like, “chthonic” or “eschatological,” and that he claims to have a bit of a sweet tooth but subtly gags every time he tastes anything even slightly sugary. This final point is confirmed shortly after she pushes said plate of tarts across the table, sharp eyes catching the way his jaw clenches and throat rushes to swallow as soon as the food enters his mouth. 

She can’t understand why he would bother to lie about such a thing. But then again, she never was all that good of an FBI agent. 

She finds Beyond much more pleasant to deal with in bed, with his face down in the pillows and his back arched into the mattress, ass up in the air. His moans are very high and endearing, honest in a way that he isn’t otherwise, and very, very different from Raye, a highly appreciated change of pace. She kisses the back of his ear and quietly praises him when he squirms, and then holds him in her arms and brushes the hair back from his face when they’re done and he falls asleep long before she would ever be able to. 

She doesn’t quite know why she accepts a second date. Usually, fucking on the first was a good sign that the relationship simply had no room to last. She shows up at his apartment at the usual time regardless, this time half an hour early to make up for her previous mistakes. He scolds her for intruding on his private time. Their date begins with a trip to a jewelry store where she sits, silently fuming, in the white leather chair they keep at the back of the store for tired old husbands and over-enthusiastic holiday shoppers, waiting impatiently as he picks out the single most expensive silver watch in the store and then gets on his knees to clasp if around her wrist himself. 

She doesn’t know much more about him by the second date, and doesn’t gain much knowledge either. But, luckily, what information she does have becomes very relevant when it comes to enacting her own revenge by teasing and edging the pleasure out of every square inch of his body, holding him down until he whines so loud she has to stuff her own t-shirt in his mouth to keep from waking the neighbors. 

The next morning she offers him breakfast as an apology. He accepts, tersely, and then fucks her in the bathroom in front of the mirror, hiding his face in her hair while he pins her up against the counter. 

At some point, she simply stops leaving. 

It’s everything she ever wanted with Raye, but three steps to the left. Twisted, unusual, perverse. This isn’t the way that things are supposed to happen, and this isn’t the type of man she’s supposed to fall for. He’s perfect and average and she likes him for all the wrong reasons, for the lies and the temper and the borderline psychopathic ease with which he describes the process of how he would theoretically enact a series of murders, betraying his own underlying anxieties and weakness in the process but staring at her like he’s trying to see if she notices. Below the surface is something convoluted and tangled and jagged, and she delighted all too much in the fact that she had found what she had sought, a mutual, greater evil to drown out the call of her own insecurities. 

Naomi Misora never liked herself all that much. 

But perhaps, in this, she can find something she wants more than to keep hating herself.

[kiyomitakada]

How do you think nisioisin could have made LABB weirder?

i have not actually read other nisioisin works so i don't know if this is in line with his repertoire but if you are asking Me i think the puzzles should have been harder. and gorier. and i wish there was more about beyond's weirdo shinigami vibes in general. and most of all: mello's narration should have been significantly more unreliable i think that'd be awesome.

[hollow-toy]

mutuals can always dm me but be warned i talk like your coworker who is trying too hard to get to know you and my response times are akin to the response times you might get if we were communicating by letter

[sawed-on-shotgun]

oftentimes the appeal of a character is that they are a loser who sucks and their soul and their essence is that of a greasy stoner and then you check the fanart and theyre being drawn like pop stars and its just not right. it just aint right

[j3ffr3y-da-killer]

Outfit for going Jeff the killing

[wemadehell]

[thecryptkeeper]

i know the way people talk about their pets now is probably how we’ve been doing it for all of history. a cat owner in ancient rome saw their cat lounging on the dining pillows and commented “he thinks himself to be the senator claudius 🤣”

[library-seraph]

The first attested cat in Japan was given to a young 9th century emperor and his diary about it includes such gems as 'I affixed a bow about its neck, but it did not remain for long.", "The color of the fur is peerless. None could find the words to describe it, although one said it was reminiscent of the deepest ink.", "When it lies down, it curls in a circle like a coin. You cannot see its feet. It’s as if it were circular Bi disk." and "I am convinced it is superior to all other cats.” Basically posting about how his void is the best little void and so good at getting really round

[saintmelangell]

[black-quadrant]

ADHD affects how I experience time, not how I experience attachment. I love you. I miss you. I just don't realize how long it’s been since I last said that, let alone messaged.

I understand that most normal functioning brains need regular engagement to maintain a bond. Absence doesn’t diminish my affection. My silence isn’t neglect or disinterest. It’s time blindness and object impermanence. The contact gap is purely neurological, not emotional. Thank you for being patient with my inconsistency and holding a seat in your heart for me.

[insecuregodcomplex]

[the-real-list-of-ominous-threats]

This email has already found you. You had better hope I don’t find you next.

[amygdalae]

Being like. Post-suicidal is so strange. Like hiiiii everybody im new I spent a good chunk of my life languishing and have like 3 or 4 lived experiences. But now I'm ready to fuck and party or whatever. Can we be friends. Im so happy to be here. Can we be friends

[dumnslut]

[ham-sandwich-consumer-offical]

I would fuckin ROCK a maid dress

[ham-sandwich-consumer-offical]

10000 notes and I post a pic of me wearing a maid dress

[gus-offical]

@tagging-officals-offical

[ham-sandwich-consumer-offical]

I swear to god if I wake up tomorrow to 10000 comments