Distinct Flavor @distinctflavor - Tumblr Blog

Also Joshua and Mona, Distinct Flavour (from whatever point in time you prefer???)

I’m gonna go with “before the events of the story” because anything else would be hella spoilery so:

Full names: Joshua Dian and Mona Paracelsus

Best friends: Each other! xoxoxo (They met on the internet and don’t get out much. Joshua considers his blog commenters his friends and Mona’s friendly with the lady who runs the crystal healing shop downtown.)

Sexualities: a pair of straights! that’s. that’s not actually how poker works, guys

Favorite colors: Glow-in-the-dark green and orange, respectively.

Relationship status: oh i don’t know i haven’t thought about it they’re probably both extremely single

Ideal mates: “Each other” again. Both of them wanted someone who would take their new-agey supernatural ideas seriously instead of ignoring or demeaning them, and then Mona started commenting on his blog and then they realized they lived like two towns away and started dating!

Turn-ons:

Favorite foods: Mona is a health food nut who tries new fad diets all the time out of sheer boredom with eating things she’s already eaten before, and Joshua more or less puts up with that while going out for hot wings like, all the time. (”It’s because the hot wings place is haunted! I’m on the verge of a breakthrough!!!”)

Favorite music: Joshua likes really old-fashioned swing, Mona’s into indie folk, both of them like horror movie soundtracks and weird trance music.

Biggest fears: Joshua’s is that he’ll die without having exposed the secrets of the paranormal to a broader audience, and Mona’s is that the government of Nazareth will outlaw alternative medicine and force her to cut off her connection to the spiritual world.

Biggest fantasies: PROVING THE DOUBTERS WRONG ONCE AND FOR ALL, and ascending to a higher plane of existence, respectively.

Bad habits: I mean, breaking into restricted sites where a toppled fascist regime committed unethical human experimentation is probably a bad habit. Distinct Flavor is just the first time they’ve actually found anything before getting arrested. oh yeah additional bad habit: going to jail for a couple weeks every few months

Biggest regrets: With Joshua it’s one time he fed the trolls and started a flamewar in his comments section that drove away three of his favorite commenters, and with Mona it’s when she accidentally shattered a soul-attuned quartz crystal and permanently broke her fifth chakra. Can she ever recover from such a mistake???

Best kept secrets: Joshua is philosophically opposed to the idea of secrets, and Mona is keeping the fifth chakra thing secret out of sheer embarrassment. Who wants to be with a girl with no fifth chakra???

Last thoughts: [SPOILERS] and [REDACTED]

Worst romantic experiences: Joshua’s never had anyone before Mona, but she had a highschool BF who ridiculed her for her interests a while ago and that was a pretty awful situation for her.

Biggest insecurities: For both of them, it’s the lingering doubts that their areas of interest are a bunch of fake lies, but they keep that covered up pretty well. Mona’s also worried Joshua only likes her for her body and Joshua’s worried that she thinks that he only likes her for her body, but those are problems that kind of inevitably resolve themselves.

Weapons of choice: Joshua purchased an extremely authentic folded katana from the Nihon and now wears it everywhere no matter how heavy it is/how not allowed he is to carry a weapon in public, and Mona’s weapon is her spiritual attunement with the voice of Gaia.

Role Models: So, DF takes place in a sort of ersatz alternate history where the general shape of society and history mirrors modern Earth pretty well, but the political specifics are all jumbled up (such that Sonic the Hedgehog is a video game franchise, but also there’s large countries called New Galilee and Nazareth which fought a historically signficant war.) Joshua’s role model is that world’s equivalent of Bob Woodward, and Mona’s is probably that world’s equivalent of the Dalai Lama.

WAIT, FUCK, "DISTINCT FLAVOR" IS A PUN ISNT KR

honestly what was anybody expecting

#the ending is that the flavors become indistinct #:3c #cerulean-vulpine

(The cast, in chronological order.)

An End

That’s it for Distinct Flavor. Thank you for reading! If you have any questions, the ask box is still open. Asks and submissions will now be posted publicly unless otherwise requested.

(did i blow your mind? huh??? this messed with your head, right? didja see the thing where time travel isn’t real coming? she told you! oh snap, she told you! if only you’d listened to that knowledgeable science expert! OHHHHHHH)

(but seriously thanks for following along! also credit to drazelic for basically handing me the twist that sparked the plot here. i didn’t mention that earlier because just saying there was one Big Twist woulda wasted some of the timey-wimey misdirection, but “everyone’s secretly the same shapeshifter” was his idea!)

your broken cradle. you think you'll be glad to leave it behind.

an orange light above a door to fanciful dreams.

a red light above a door to creation.

a broken light, formerly purple, above a door to hidden truths.

a blue light above a door to an older life.

a green light above a door to those who came before.

a bright yellow light above a door to a place of coming and going.

a white light, and a million smaller, dancing lights, above a door to the future.

#distinct flavor

--- The perspective changes. ---

you wake up. you're a new person. you know... so many things. everything is different.

it's a bin full of bodies. they don't look like your body. you don't know what your body looks like. it's new.

that feel when you understand what this is just by looking. sulfur-32! decayed from radioactive phosphorus-32! so cool!

a hazmat suit full of spiders. no part of you is tempted to put this thing on.

a hallway that still reeks of smoke. you remember making some irresponsible decisions about fire!

a room full of beds. you remember sleeping here, burning things here, fleeing here, and dying here. it's an important room.

a mirror. you... don't know if you're a boy or a girl, or a woman, or a man, or... it doesn't matter, does it? you look great.

the mirror. you're still looking. it's pretty fantastic... but if you get tired of it, you can always change it.

a room still on fire. you're immune to fire, it looks like! that is SO RAD. the smoke bothers your nose, though. you kinda hate it.

a room that used to be yours. you burnt everything in it, so it's time to leave it behind.

a burning room. someone you used to hate is dead in there. you let yourself feel sad about it.

another burning room. you never knew caroline carolina that well. you hope she made it out okay, back during your rampage.

a bare flagpole. some part of this feels right, and some part of it feels sad... like a lot of things now, you suppose.

a lamp, glowing ultraviolet amidst licking flames. you can really SEE ultraviolet now, and that's PROBABLY the coolest thing ever.

the room where you worked hard on creating yourself. you remember dying here- but you didn't really die here.

a hole you dug, trying to escape from yourself. an evil, important, heroic, irrelevant, sad flag lies at the bottom.

a room full of dreams that never came true. maybe things would have gone differently if they'd had any success at all.

the room where you were born. for the... second time, by your count. you died here a couple times, too.

a skeleton, of someone you killed but didn't eat. you... don't feel so hungry anymore. maybe you'll just eat on special occasions.

#distinct flavor

You see the minds drift towards the different options.

Option 1. Ingalls and your hungry mind are clinging to this one.

Option 2. Joshua and Mona, predictably, favor being in control.

Option 3. Katie, Al, and Dingo all pick this one. Should you count the kids as one? Should you count the dog at all?

It looks like Bradley has abstained from decision-making.

You look at the first option again. Should you obey your superior- not to mention what is, technically, yourself?

The second option. You could return these two to something like their normal lives, to make up for what you've done.

Again, the third option. How do you count the votes here? They might outnumber you.

Oh, Selmont's making a decision. It looks like he's... trying to pick between 2 and 3. If you add him as half a vote to each...

...It looks like 3 is the way to go, if you count everyone as one person.

Minds inside your mind. You touch them, and connect them to one another, tying together memories and personalities.

A growing, unraveling mass of connections, all of them swallowing each other. It reaches out to you...

#distinct flavor