Everything and Anything @butgot - Tumblr Blog

Robert is woken up at ass-o’clock in the morning by a call from Flambae's phone. When he picks it up, it’s an emotionally exhausted bartender telling Robert to come pick Flambae up before he causes any more trouble. And Robert’s confused, because what the fuck is his contact name in Flambae’s phone that the bartender chose to call him??

But still, Flambae’s part of his team and Robert’s responsible for him, so he drags himself out of bed, throws on some ratty clothes and makes his way to the bar, where he finds Flambae slumped over the bar with far too many empty glasses in front of him.

Robert’s never seen him this drunk—messy and red-faced, not quite able to stay upright on his own. He takes his latest drink away from him, sliding it back toward the bartender, and tells Flambae he’s had enough. Flambae, stumbling over his words a little, tells Robert to fuck off. And then, uncharacteristically sheepish, he mutters something about how he’s not usually such a messy drunk.

“Hey, I’m not in any place to judge,” Robert tells him. “I have my own track record with—”

“I already know about your Mezcal breakup,” Flambae interrupts, casually waving his hand.

Robert dodges the uncoordinated limb. “You do?”

“Phenona…Phenom…anan…Phenonanan—Phen told everybody,” Flambae says, giving up on using the hero’s full name. “Fucking gossip girl.”

“I guess I’m not surprised,” Robert says dryly. “He’s got a weird sense of bounda—”

“Did you actually fuck him?” Flambae asks before Robert’s even gotten his whole sentence out.

Robert sighs heavily. “No, we didn’t ‘make love,’ if that’s what he’s been saying. There’s been some confusion on his part about what that phrase mea—”

“So you didn’t kiss him?” Flambae insists, weirdly dogged for how hazy his eyes are. “He was lying?”

“Okay, technically, he kissed me,” Robert defends himself. “And he only did it because he was worried that—well it’s kind of convoluted, but there were no feelings involved.”

And then Flambae, Mr. You’re Not My Type, who’s basically Robert’s frenemy at this point, asks for a kiss of his own.

Robert, completely thrown by the sudden pivot in Flambae’s attitude toward him—and understandably assuming it’s alcohol-inspired—says no.

And then Flambae puts his arms down on the sticky bar top, rests his face in them, and actually starts to cry.

Loudly. Like, embarrassingly loudly.

“Okay,” Robert says frantically, tossing an apologetic grimace at both the bartender and anyone close enough to see and hear the spectacle Flambae’s making. “Let’s not—”

But it’s too late. Apparently the reason Flambae never gets wasted around the team—besides the fact that it takes more alcohol to get him there than a regular person—is because he’s a weepy drunk.

Robert manages to talk him down from his tears, acutely feeling the judgmental stare of the bartender the whole time, but Flambae’s still stubbornly arguing for that kiss.

“You kissed Phenomanan,” he protests, almost but still not quite getting the hero’s name right.

“Okay, again, I didn’t kiss him,” Robert says, exasperated. “He kissed me. And it didn’t mean anything.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything if we kiss,” Flambae wheedles, and it would be cute if he wasn’t half a foot taller and a good deal heavier than Robert. And a thirty-six-year-old man. “We can just do it once and then you can forget about it!”

Yeah right, Robert mentally scoffs. It would take one hell of a whack to the head for him to forget a kiss with Flambae.

He declines, and Flambae actually starts sulking.

“Nobody wants me,” he says pitifully. Which is fucking ridiculous, because Robert knows damn well there are at least fifteen people in this room who would have him in a heartbeat if he offered.

“Oh come on, that’s not true,” Robert tells him flatly. “What about that British guy you made out with the other night? You talked about it all morning shift.”

“I lied,” Flambae sniffles. “We didn’t make out. He wanted to but I didn’t.”

“Why not?” Robert asks quizzically. “You love British guys.”

“Not any—more,” Flambae hiccups. “Now I like stupid skinny bitches with brown hair and deep voices.”

“Well—” Robert hedges, but Flambae cuts him off.

“Real asshole types who cut off my fingers and knock out my fucking teeth and shit,” he continues, as if to really make sure Robert can’t possibly mistake Flambae’s type for anyone but him.

Robert feels the bartender’s assessing stare travel up and down his body and cringes, trying to quiet Flambae before he gives away any other damning information. “Okay, please don’t say it like that.”

Flambae gives him the stink eye. “That’s how it fucking happened, Rob. You fucked up my fingers and my teeth, and now you're fucking up my dick.”

“I promise it’s not what it sounds like,” Robert tries to tell the bartender, who’s now casually holding the bar phone like she’s prepared to have to call the cops.

“It’s actually worse,” Flambae says unhelpfully. “He’s also my boss.”

"I'm technically in charge of him, but I'm definitely not his boss," Robert tries to explain, but even he has to admit that the whole thing sounds fucked, and he's extremely annoyed with Flambae for choosing to air all of this out in a noisy bar at four am when Robert's head is already pounding from exhaustion.

By the time he manages to ease the bartender’s suspicion, Flambae’s crashing, and Robert practically has to drag him out of the building. He helps him fold his ridiculously big body into the passenger side of the repaired Firebird parked outside, and then he slides into the driver’s side, adjusts the seat, and drives Flambae home.

He tweaks his back half-carrying Flambae into his apartment, but he's able to get him settled him into his bed, and does his best to take care of him. He gets him out of his suit and into some pajamas (by Flambae’s request), finds and helps him into some fuzzy socks (again, by Flambae’s request), and makes him drink some water (definitely not by Flambae's request, as demonstrated by the fight he puts up).

“Okay,” he huffs, propping his hands on his hips. “You’ve got your socks and your pajamas, and I put some more water and painkillers on the bedside table for later. Is there anything else you need before I go?”

“A kiss.”

“Flambae—”

“No no, look, I’m completely sober, I swear,” Chad says, hauling himself up out of the bed—presumably to show Robert how coordinated he is. He trips over his own (fuzzy socked) foot instead, and Robert has to catch his entire weight with a strained grunt. Fuck, his back is going to be useless tomorrow.

Finally, he manages to wrestle Flambae back into his bed, the hero whining and complaining the whole time about how unfair it is that Robert will kiss some team members and not others, and how he’s actually creating like, a super toxic workplace environment if you think about it.

Robert sighs, looking down at him. Despite the bitching and complaining being very on-brand, he seems a lot more vulnerable than he usually is, and it pulls on Robert’s heartstrings a little.

“Tell you what,” he says finally. “If you still want a kiss from me when you wake up tomorrow—and if you can manage to ask me in a polite, non-insulting way—I’ll kiss you. Okay?”

“Promise,” Flambae demands, flinging his hand at Robert.

Robert huffs, manually separating Flambae’s pinky from the rest of his fingers and wrapping his own pinky around it. “There, I promise. Now go to sleep.”

“Tuck me in.”

“Flambae—”

“Yeah no that was weird,” Flambae mutters sleepily, turning over and pulling his pillow closer. “Nevermind.”

Robert snorts.

He stays for a few minutes to make sure Flambae falls asleep safely, and then he lets himself out and orders a ride home.

He’s not really thinking much about the promise he just made—mostly he’s just exhausted and in pain and more than ready to be back in bed. Besides, he's sure Flambae won’t remember a single moment of this.

#dispatch

raphalorem

giving simon wormhole-opening powers so grace can send an instant probe once they're on erid and inflict more psychic damage on the og petrova task force

#project hail mary

bakedbananners

dolorem ipsum / "pain itself"

#deltarune

tiredpinkpanda

Old men in ch5 be like-

Or what I think would happen

tiredpinkpanda

It hurts.

#deltarune

butterflyscribbles

Used to it…

#deltarune

twilightofthesandwiches

If there’s one very important throughline of Lore in this Chapter is blurring the seemingly clear-cut binary line separating Lightners and Darkners.

Well, on some level that started already in Chapter 4, with the Hammer of Justice introducing the idea of Lightners being reborn in Dark Works as Darkners under very specific circumstances.

But the Flowers really put that point front and center. They are living things that receive some sort of Wish-Fulfillment in the Dark World, much like how our Lightner characters receive cool outfits and powers… but the main Wish being fulfilled for them is having a higher form of consciousness and a more anthropomorphic form, like how Darkners come to life in the Dark World. Flowery’s portrait is Black-and-White, much like the Lightner characters, because he is a kind of Lightner as far as the metaphysical mechanics of Light and Dark function… except he also has colorful Darkner-like Golden eyes.

And so much of the conflict of this Chapter is based on their unique liminality. They’re Lightner enough that being reduced back to their Light World ‘inanimate’ form feels much more like a death to them then it feels to a regular Darkner (who can find contentment as inanimate objects, as they are ‘alive’ from the Dreams the Lightners associate with them)… but also Lightner enough that they can’t actually survive for long in the Dark World, their physical bodies still have their regular physical needs, but unlike Susie, they also can’t exactly pull out of the Dark World, grab a snack for nourishment and then pull back in.

And then the Secret Boss is another kind of Liminal being, a more traditional Darkner (in the sense of a truly inanimate object come to life) that’s also being brought to life due to being possessed by a Lightner ghost. Another sort of unique being who is not quite as Ontologically Doomed as the Flowers, but struggles with figuring out what her identity is in her own way. She feels more at home with other Liminal Beings like the Flowers, despite being technically a different kind of being.

All of this feels like build up to exploring the nature of Ralsei, the so-called ‘impossibility’, who already has some of their own ‘Liminal’ elements - they look much more ‘like a Monster’ than any other non-Gerson Darkner, they can appear and survive in every Dark World, and from a meta-narrative perspective, their role as a Darkner Playable Party Member seems to clash with the game’s meta-commentary making Darkners to be like a whole species defined as Video Game NPCs on some level.

They don’t quite seem to match any of the ‘Rules’ of the Liminal Beings we know of so far. Resurrected Lightners like Gerson are specifically mentioned to only appear in very specific Dark Worlds, so this is like the opposite of Ralsei’s situation, and even with their white fur, their portrait seems considerably less monochromatic to me than Flowery’s. But I think this is still a thematic build-up being done to explore different kinds of liminality between Light and Dark and how they affect the relevant characters, before we get into the particular kind of liminality that Ralsei represents.

It’s also likely to be relevant to the Roaring Knight. We still don’t quite know what’s up with them, but it is a pretty decent guess considering their behavior, that they are also their own kind of Liminal Being - they are Lightner enough to open Dark Fountains and operate in the Light World sometimes, but clearly prefer to only ‘show their face’ in the Dark Worlds. So this could also be thematic build-up to establishing what the hell is up with the Knight as well...

#deltarune

bagel-bird-ainsor

I have played chapter 5 and all this art exploded out of me as soon as I was done. I clearly have favorites

#deltarune

caroodraws

Once Upon A Witchligh comic adaption, beginning of Episode 26.

Aka, one of the very few times in the series Torbek has an ok time lol

Guess what I was working on for all of January. And part of February. And some of March. This was a ton of work and you will find me crumpled under a rock somewhere for a while because of it

There was something about this scene that was very visually vibrant to me, and I really enjoyed the way the information was revealed and played out, which is why I chose to adapt it! I started this purely as a way to practice thumbnailing and start my comics year of with something self indulgent and fun. However, I experienced so much genuine joy in the process (plus my discord friends dared me to finish it), it turned into an exploration of what a potential "publishing style" comic process might look like for me... I learned a ton from making this and will approach comics in a far better way in the future🤣 Like. I did this in the most complicated and time consuming way fr

Thank you very much for reading. I hope you enjoyed it ❤️

BONUS: (I decided to omit this moment even tho it's iconic because I didn't like the way it interrupted the flow 😭A pittance for thee)

jube-art

first | prev

"Hey, Stratt, I know that we've got a lot riding on this but can we have the secret talks with my hallucination on the down low? Sure, why not, lets have them in my private quarters before we go to bed. This will cause no rumors whatsoever because we're both so professional about it."

#project hail mary