Complicated Set-ups for Mediocre Puns

Lily | agender | she/they | A non-exhaustive list of people who can go fuck themselves: Nazis, terfs, homophobes, biphobes, transphobes, acephobes, anti-choicers, anti-vaxxers, propserity gospel preachers, Republicans, anti-semites, white supremacists, people who don't use the Oxford comma, Immanuel Kant, deontologists in general, and linguistic prescriptivists.

[noandpickles]

Item: A Well-Trodden Step Rarity: ✦ Uncommon

What video game has the best replay value?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

I think the answer to that question has to be separated into "games with a plot and "games with no plot." Because the second category will generally be more replayable than the first. After all, games with a plot suffer a big disadvantage on a replay, in that the story loses novelty and you already know the ending.

Just based on what I can remember off the top of my head re: my play history, I guess I'd say Baldur's Gate 3 for games with a plot, and Crusader Kings 3 for games without plot.

[d-adpool]

not putting my whole pussy into it today lads. you're getting my left labia at best

[is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not]

[3000s]

when i was 18 i used to go to plant parenthood for my testosterone with my mom and the protesters outside would yell at me like i was there helping my mom get an abortion

[3000s]

imagining we both walk in but then my mom leaves alone

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Lae'zel's character and her entire situation at the beginning of the game becomes so much more funny when you find out she's 22. It makes so much sense. Imagine you're 22 and you're exposed to this dangerous toxin or chemical or something - but not to worry, you learnt that this can be easily fixed, you just need to dial 911 real quick. Common knowledge. Everyone knows that. You learnt that in kindergarten, it's up there with fire alarm drills.

But the people you're stuck with have no concept of modern medicine and when you say "let's go to the hospital" they will say shit like "i think they kill people at the hospital" and "we should ask this swamp lady" or "this guy over there told me about this homoeopathic healer kind of guy but he got abducted" or "this random bard wants to help" and "I'm not going to dial 911 because I don't want the government to know my home address" or "maybe we should consider a deal with Satan". And then a bunch of them KEEP consuming the chemical because it makes them "stronger". One guy might explode for unrelated reasons. You have a few days before this situation is getting critical and suddenly they're solving crime and doing general charity for the community.

And FOR SOME REASON you still try to help these idiots and you STILL want to help them get the cure even though they all keep insisting the "doctors" at the "hospital" might try to "kill them" and they don't have insurance. And you keep telling them to just. go. to. the. hospital. before the time runs out and you all die very horribly of a very treatable condition.

And also you're 22 in a foreign country and you're responsible for shepherding this gaggle of idiots who are all ranging anywhere from 24 to 240 years old.

[bardnuts]

and then you get to the hospital and the doctors try to kill you

[zeitghost]

kind of embarrassing to play a game that your friend recommended it’s like. ohh i’m pregnant with your game. i’m playing and it’s yours

[yurimartyr]

i don't think it's like that at all.

[ruinedchildhood]

[anendangeredspecies]

Can I be honest with y'all about something a little embarrassing. I actually fuck with jack-slash!daughter Taylor quite a bit. I know it's kind of au slop and hasn't ever been done that well, but I think it has some really fun possibilities and I could turn so many of her most entertaining traits up to eleven. Just a shame it's almost impossible to make work.

I touched on it in my last post but Taylor would dance the tightrope of self loathing and self justifying better than anyone else. Amy does the sad/evil routine pretty well but she's so passive. Taylor would be such an active menace in a way Amy just isn't.

All the things she hates about herself become proof something's wrong with her. Picking at her own reflection knowing every ugly part is a piece of him. The social isolation and bullying proves she doesn't belong around normal people, they can tell something's wrong with her. it's probably why Emma pushed her away as soon as she could. Every errand fantasy about revenge is a vile impulse (rather than the normal intrusive thoughts of an abuse victim).

Conversely all the shitty things she does aren't really her fault. Joining villains to take them down from the inside was the closest to heroics she could hope to achieve. Planning to betray her friends was just in her blood, and she didn't even do it in the end so clearly she's a good person. Even her pretty reasonable resentment towards authority shows she's naturally inclined to break the law.

Or maybe she throws herself as into heroics as hard as she possibly can, going out much sooner after she triggers and avoiding the undersiders altogether. Becoming a hero but still not joining the protectorate lest they do DNA tests and match her to her dad (also her issues with authority). If someone finds out who she really is before she proves herself a good person she'll never be trusted again. And for all she knows it's only a matter of time before Jack comes back to see her.

Taylor already has a tendency toward self destructive behavior with little regard for her own safety, the last thing she needs in a bud of the broadcast shard. Picking fights no matter the danger to herself. Often winning, but just as often finishing her night hiding in a back alley or waiting in a hospital bed for someone to wake Panacea up. Never able to be beaten in any way that might knock her out of her spiral. (Ok this one would be either "stop waking me up at 3am" to "damn maybe neither of us are evil" pillbug or "the fuck happened to you last night" to "damn you're pretty hardcore" shadowbug)

The real problem with this au is how would it even happen because Jack is not attracted to women. While most people, myself included, read him as gay, I don't think it's too much of a reach to characterise him as acespec. Even then, using sex as a way to hurt someone or exert power feels pretty out of character for him. I mean it's possible, but very unlikely.

Then there's Annette. Turning Annette into some kind of serial killer groupie is borderline insulting and definitely some kind of misogynistic. Whilst her getting pregnant from assault would not be too extreme for a slaughterhouse nine attack, it's an incredibly heavy topic and would be difficult to write without being disgustingly insensitive.

So yeah this au might have to exist only in my head...

(oh also Taylor deserves ice blue eyes, she'd fucking rock them)

[al3xand3r245]

I think there’s a reason that a lot of fics make him Taylor’s uncle when they’re doing a thing with it, rather than straight up father. Spacebattlers may be homophobic, but even they can catch that ‘hey. That guy likes men. If he likes anyone at all’

I think the closest you can get to keeping Jack and Annette in tact as characters, and making the parentage work, would be a p bored and annoyed Jack who does not really realise he likes just men/no one yet, getting with a woman ‘just to see’, and being lowkey about. Ex, not flagrantly advertising who he is. Annette being the (un)lucky woman who saw a sort of brooding man at a bar and went ‘why the hell not’, and only realising a bit later who He Was, when she’s pregnant and trying to get in contact with father. It’s something she’s honest with Danny and Taylor about, but doesn’t like. Advertise. Danny is the #dadwhosteppedup here.

It works out, because Jack would be 20 or so when Taylor is conceived, with far less infamy and recognisability, and more easier to slip under the radar for a one night stand. Hell, could even place it during his first visit to the bay.

Oh yeah on a Jack side: I think he’d be mildly intrigued if he found out he had a (biological) kid, but honestly p adverse to like. Actually interacting with them. Guy who had Normal Experiences with His Parents. But tbf he doesn’t even need to Be Around for Taylor’s plot to work. Instead dude just haunts the narrative. Dude probably doesn’t even know lol.

[anendangeredspecies]

[al3xand3r245]

Listen. He has more important things to do than chase down some lady he had unsafe sex with like a decade and half ago just in case she might have had a kid. Like doing mass murders and pining after The Number Man.

[anendangeredspecies]

It's a shame jack would probably have no real interest in seeing Taylor (tho it is much funnier) bc I've got a trigger event for her stuck in my head.

Maybe Jack got his ego stroked a bit from having a kid and turned up once or twice to stare at her when he was nearby (a terrified Annette nodding along out of fear). Only when it was convenient for him and just until the novelty wore off, eventually realising Taylor is an ordinary boring child.

I keep imagining her looking through her mum's old belongings in the basement a week or two before she triggers in canon, probably trying to clean out some clutter before new year, and finding an old picture or photo from when she was four or five. The kind of thing Annette would only keep out of fear Jack would want her too, and that she might accompany with a note in case Taylor found it later.

She doesn't believe it at first, obviously. It's a tasteless joke, or her mum making up a story. Until she sees the picture. Maybe it's a shitty finger painting or an old Polaroid of the three of them, Annette doing her best to smile along. And she remembers him. Her mother said he was a family friend or even a distant relative. She hadn't thought about him in years, pretty much forgot he existed. But now she has a name to go with the face she half remembered, it's obviously Jack. And she triggers.

It would explain why she was able to believe Jack was her dad from second hand evidence, she still had the memories they just needed a poke. It even reinforces her fear that Jack is actually interested in her and will come back one day, he clearly knows she exists and had an interest at one point.

The real question would be what kind of power she'd get from this. Either a mover/shaker for the ambient threat of him returning, changer from having her insecurities given real weight and seeing herself as a freak, or stranger from fear that others will see her as one.

[thedubiousdallon]

Dammit you've got me extremely invested in this idea, and I have a riff on how the parentage happens for your consideration.

Imagine Jack, young, still only a rising star in the field of mass murder and torture - not quite a household name yet, but getting there. He's just finished off a brand new atrocity and decided to do a Bit about going to the bar after a hard day's work. The bartender knows who he is (because Jack told him) but is going about like nothing's wrong (because Jack threatened him). The vibes in the bar are absolutely rancid, it's obvious something is Terribly Wrong to everyone, but it hasn't boiled over yet because Jack is still having fun with this bit of social torture.

Imagine Annette, young, on her seventy-first consecutive hour awake, having just finished an important project for her master's degree and in desperate need of some relaxation. She's too out of it to pick up on how wrong the vibes are at her go to dive bar, walks right up to the counter, sits down next to the pretty boy (he looks kinda familiar, did they have a class together?) and orders "a double of whatever he's having. He's buying".

Now Jack is doing a new bit. This is novel. He plays along, lets little things slip to see if Annette picks up on it, but she's just too tired and too intent on getting blackout drunk and fucked into next week - don't try this at home kids! In the end they go all the way, Jack discovers that sex with women isn't really his bag, but ultimately decides that it's more entertaining to leave her alive, and so is gone before she wakes up. He leaves a clipping of a newspaper with his face and a headline on it and scrawls a cheesy note about having a great time, telling her to call, and signs it "Jack xoxoxo".

Annette swears off both drinking and hookups

[al3xand3r245]

Exactly! Legit thats the stupid social torment he would do for a laugh. The fucking newspaper clipping and the note.

[atompalace-official]

wash him he smely

[atompalace-official]

here’s how the other Eeveelutions react to bathtime 🛁🫧

[badasserywomen]

Witcher Ciri

[sabertoothwalrus]

age gap yuri

[bunnilily]

[‼️slight spoiler warning‼️]

post-movie sappy comic of huntrix adapting to rumi’s new form 💖💖💖✨

[dailydccomics]

Absolute Wonder Woman by Hayden Sherman

[garak-pussy-indulgence]

A trans Trill and a gay Cardassian walk into a Starbase....

[mathenjoyer]

inspired by this reddit post and the decor from my friend's childhood home

[transhuman-priestess]

I know that the UK censorship laws are evils and fucked up on the face of them but I feel like we kinda blew past the part where it uses a phrenology machine to check your age.

[transhuman-priestess]

“Yeah also the phrenology machine doesn’t work.” Yeah that’s already covered in the part about it being a phrenology machine.

[safe-haven-safe-place]