The last thing Dusty remembers is... well, he'd rather not remember.
Now he's in hospital, with only one question on his mind:
Where's Brad?
===
The sixth installment of my pre-flash fic about Dusty Armstrong's rotten little life. If you're new, you can read from the start here.
Thank you to @basofy for eating with this chapter art. You were one of the first LISA artists I knew about when I first got into LISA, so it feels very full circle having you draw for my fic :3
Also it's been like, a bit over two years since I last updated. So I've included a recap of parts 1 through 5 under the cut:
Dusty is a foster child who has been moved to Olathe Colorado in the year 1992. One day, he sees an outdoor class at a karate dojo run by Brad. Brad noticed Dusty spying over multiple days and lets him take free karate classes.
After training for some months at the dojo, Brad decides to adopt Dusty. Their relationship is great at first. They bond over karate and watching movies on VHS together.
Dusty discovers pro wrestling on the TV while living in Brad’s home. He grows a specific fixation on the rugged and handsome wrestler Prince Paine; his wife/sidekick Princess Pound’ Em; and his rival Drake Dragoon, a hulking, unattractive bad guy wrestler.
Over time, Brad begins to grow distant from Dusty. He rarely leaves his room, and is taking more of his “migraine pills”. Dusty becomes especially familiar with how the weight of Brad’s bottle affects his mood, and the “bottle man” (ie Sticky) that supplies Brad with his “medicine.”
Meanwhile, there are two step brothers in Dusty’s karate class named August and Reece. Reece is very extroverted and excitable, while August is a quiet bookworm.
Dusty gradually becomes friends with the brothers in karate class and at their school, but their relationship grows strained as Brad becomes more strict during lessons as an extension of his sudden irritability and deterioration at home
As Brad’s condition worsens, Bernard starts acting more tense in class, until one day he suddenly attacks Reese and brutally breaks his arm. Bernard runs away.
A few days later, while Brad is at an all time low, he asks Dusty to go to the dojo to get Brad some of his “medicine”. As dusty approaches the dojo, he hears disco music playing from inside. Bernard is trashing the place while listening to an ABBA album on a record player. He sees Dusty and attacks him.
Dusty sits in the dojo alone and mutilated before Brad walks in. The scene plays out like in the final secret cutscene Painful, including Brad leaving him inside. The update ends with Dusty fainting as he’s driven to hospital.
LISA the Joyful is so profoundly ass that the fandom spent years making rewrites of it and then SF came along and said "let's do our own rewrite but make it even more ass lmao"
Reblogs are off for this post but yeah no the new Buddy plush has its issues. It feels like we're going back to that on Definitive Edition artwork that has Buddy's face caked in makeup and she has a sassy smirk or whatever. I'm not sure if I'll buy the plush myself I think I'm still just sad it wasn't a Lisa plush. Will they ever make a Lisa plush or are they too scared to even slightly address the character who represents the troubling themes in the game? Easier to pretend Buddy wasn't a troubled tortured victim too I suppose
idrc what i post on tumblr atp so throwing my hat in the ring about sf and advertizing; when they first started making Buddy a poster girl(?) i genuinely started sweating thinking who are u guys trying to advertise to. I dont like assuming the worst and i prefer to believe sf is made of good people trying their best *for the most part but it looks like they keep picking up games that let them use "super cutesy girl" sloganing and think they can apply it across the board. Ohhh yeah ddlc slay the princess, subvert your expectations! Look at how cute they are! Play our scary game.... and its so funny because lisa has always been "play our pervert rpg we will make you laugh & cry". It doesnt wear every tragedy on its shoulder, idk what the early days of the kickstarter looked like (i was like 8), but i think its a real misunderstanding on what drew people to the game.
'Nobody has to die..." in your teaser trailer like LMFAO why are you LYING we can see the dead bodies strung-out on the steam page! "Can you help them?" no bro anyone revisiting the series knows this 😭 it might mess with your company trend but u gotta bring back that bluntness
whenever one of my posts is tagged #fave or whatever i like to take a look around in there, check the curation and all that, see how prestigious the club i've been inducted into is
really funny to me that people on xitter are going nuts over the new buddy plush. Were it 2022 I would be right there with them, but I am older and employed now so don't really have time for all that.
The new plush does suck tho. Serenity Forge's ownership of the LISA brand is fascinating in that, like, I don't think it's the role of merchandise to be beholden to the aesthetic of the media property, let alone be like, treated as political praxis in any direction.
However it is very funny seeing SF try to make such a miserable and sad game into this super cutesey marketable thing. They want this shit to be poppy's playtime sooooo bad. It's been there in the beginning right when the key art for Definitive Edition was initially released.
And none of this cognitive dissonance is better exemplified than making a smiling, blushing, mascara'd, Painful-era Buddy. Of course she was happy. It's easier to imagine she was happy. Don't worry about what this character says about hating her existence at this point of her life. Never mind she's described as an ugly girl. We can't sell ugly girls! So she's a cute girl now, see?
I've found it kind of nostalgic seeing people on xitter going nuts over the new buddy plush. Were it 2022 I would be right there with them, but I am older and employed now so don't really have time for all that.
They're right saying that the new plush sucks tho. Serenity Forge's ownership of the LISA brand is fascinating in that, like, I don't think it's the role of merchandise to be beholden to the aesthetic of the media property, let alone be like, treated as political praxis in any direction.
However it is very funny seeing SF try to make such a miserable and sad game into this super cutesey marketable thing. They want this shit to be poppy's playtime sooooo bad. It's been there in the beginning right when the key art for Definitive Edition was initially released.
And none of this cognitive dissonance is better exemplified than making a smiling, blushing, mascara'd, Painful-era Buddy. Of course she was happy. It's easier to imagine she was happy. Don't worry about what this character says about hating her existence at this point of her life. Never mind she's described as an ugly girl. We can't sell ugly girls! So she's a cute girl now, see?
if you are a child or teen on this platform you may get valuable information from heeding these words:
avoid the big fish in this pond. do not seek to become one. avoid the fandom aunts, the "big name fans", the One Discord Server.
consider that how someone treats the people they despise and whether you're brave enough to disagree with them, should they turn that conduct on you. and if it requires a significant amount of bravery to think about telling them they've been a bastard, you may want to reconsider being in that relationship.
there will be people on here who will suicide bait you for being happy. they are very sad people and it is not your job nor your responsibility to engage with them. it's up to them to decide to do differently.
try to decouple your sense of self-worth from metrics. the number can never go up enough. i have a project that's >90% positive feedback and over 200,000 downloads and that does nothing for me on my day to day. it's nice if other people like the thing, but it's worth examining why you're creating and sharing in the first place and figuring out what you actually want.
do not treat the dsm like a holy text that must never be questioned
do not go in on sexual or gender identity based taxonomics
do not be cruel to people you deem lesser than you
remember that you can practice and improve pretty much any skill, and there's no such thing as unskilled labour
went to a craft meet up today to meet with a friend and do a little activity and ooooomg I have now learned there is no sin more mortal than coming to the craft meet up to flirt with a girl. BRO WASN'T EVEN DOING A CRAFT! Had to listen to this guy's self-aggrandizing monologuing for over an hour trying to flirt with this girl he half knew.
It was really funny cause this girl at the start of the meet saw my bookmark hole punching project and she showed me a reel she had edited showing her painting a bookmark herself in watercolour (it was lovely!). And then later when the guy was asking her "do you do social media I get that vibe you're on tiktok or instagram" she said "no :)"
I accidentally did a Wikipedia binge about 1st wave feminism and fashion and stumbled upon the 1890s bicycle suit. Do people know about this? Why didn't anyone tell me about this? This is dope as hell.
Wikipedia talks about the bloomers and the leg-o-mutton sleeves, but I'm also noticing a lot of these outfits have absolute supervillain lapels, which I also like a lot.
"here's my original character, Man Who Sucks But Loves His Daughter Very Much" and it's a guy who worships at the altar of patriarchal violence and the woman he uses as an excuse and an effigy to absolve him
To clarify for those who don't know, "free the nipple" isn't about going braless, it's about going topless
No shirt, no bra, completely bare torso, just like cis men are allowed to
It's about desexualizing breasts and "female presenting nipples" and not being criminalized for our bodies if we want to go topless because it's a million damn degrees out. This was a popular growing movement that was still widely known a decade ago!
And the fact that not wearing a bra is so discouraged and stigmatized that people think the movement was about being able to go braless under your shirt in public rather than about being able to not wear a shirt at all says a lot about how far we've backslid in the past decade
