I saw a post recently talking about possibilities around soulmates as a horror plot, and many of the notes indicated that people have written/seen these kinds of fics. I can no longer find that post, and I haven't been able to find anything in this genre (and don't really wish to trudge through morasses of fluff to find something fucked up). Question for the readership: do you know of specific tags that soulmate horror fics tend to have? Failing that, does anyone have any recs?
Wow! Another sub-AU! @whenalltheeyesopen came up with the basis for this one, and wrote up the summary for it! It also features characters by @alexthebordercollie , @ranchsoda92 and @matcha-milkies
The Summary: Redistribution of Power
Overlap with main canon
In main canon, H finds D, stalks him for a while, falls in love with him, and lures him into a weekly DDnmD session. Dill tolerates it because it keeps his dog enriched enough to be less annoying and more fun. Hill tolerates it because he wants to stick it to Dill and because the game night crew is fully of such completely harmless little nobodies that he isn't threatened.
What we would call the DDnmD era lasts between two and three years. (What H calls the DDnmD era lasts about five years because he experiences time nonlinearly and includes landmarks like "when I first pretended kitten was talking to me and not a moth.") During that time:
1. D comes to love and depend on H absolutely.
2. Fruit comes to consider the DDnmD party her best friends and spends a lot of time with them between sessions.
3. JP goes through a period of intense rebellion against H which is too complicated to summarize here, but which ends with him voluntarily rolling over and submitting to H's authority and losing any particular will to fight.
In the main canon, this period ends after those two and a half years because D is kidnapped by the Eusophontarians, launching the chain of events that would become what we call Good Ending.
Instead... that. doesn't happen.
D Snaps
Before the Eus have a chance to yoink him, D somehow snaps. In a moment of intense emotion and raw magic power, he kills Dill and eats his corpse, which ends Weirdmageddon, collapses the Bubble, and supercharges his magic powers so that he's functionally a demigod.
H is thrilled. He hated Dill and he wants his kitten. In the aftermath of this event, D is pretty traumatized and delusional, not really understanding what he just did or what just happened. To take care of him, H purchases a huge estate in a relatively unpopulated* part of New York to keep D in, then sets up a trust fund and stipends so that Big Stan and Jean-Paul can dedicate themselves to taking care of him. Jean-Paul is pretty apathetic to what H has him do, and he's happy to help Phospho, so he moves in without complaint. Big Stan is terrified for his brother and doing everything he can to help him snap out of it and rejoin the land of the living.
Meanwhile, H is having a hell of a time negotiating with his husband. Hill was only ever okay with D because D was completely harmless and nonthreatening. Now that he fucking ate his Bill, that 'harmless' status is in question. To make matters worse, when D starts to come out of the suicidal depression that immediately followed Dill's death, it's as a violent mage who is happy to kill more Bills.
H annexes part of 04 as his own to protect it from other Bills laying claim, but he wants to use it as functionally a summer home. Hill has been wanting to jump ship from the crumbling, entropy-ridden 08 for years; if his husband insists on keeping this dumb backwater with a dangerous mage in it, he wants to actually use it.
This conflict between the 08 emperor and his consort goes on for a while - and then, in the middle of an argument between dimensions, Hill vanishes.
*04 North America is much more densely populated than canonical North America because a huge chunk of it was consumed by the Weirdness Bubble.
Life Without either Bill
H has no idea what just happened. He frantically looks for his husband to no avail. His rings are still drawing power from somewhere, but it's not clear where. He's almost certain he's still alive, but he has no idea if this was a time anomaly, a cosmic event, a targeted attack... all he knows is that Hill is gone and he doesn't know why.
For a while, he's doing his damndest to manage 08 and keep Hill's disappearance a secret. He also doesn't know when Hill will come back, so he needs to try and manage things the way Hill would want them managed. This looks a lot like his life before, but he doesn't have the emotional support that he relied on Hill for, he doesn't have the full power of a much mightier god to back him up, and he has the weight of this huge secret on his shoulders. He spends most of his time managing the 08 empire, but every free moment he has is spent in the 04 estate wrestling with the immense pressure he's under.
Hill's absence stretches for years. Slowly, H slowly begins to change his approach to ruling. He finally says fuck it to the things he hated about Hill's rule and begins to build hospitals and public infrastructure. He still feels like his husband could show up at any time, but he's more apathetic to it. He also decides to do something wild that he could never do under Hill's authority: He's been maintaining an affair with 13's Ford Cipher-Pines (the Married Life dimension) this entire time, and he's wanted to break him out of that relationship. So, he funds a proxy attack against Mill. This would be a direct violation of the treaty between Bills... but H isn't a Bill, he's a Ford, and his Bill is missing.
D got his power from eating his Bill, so H decides that he might as well give the same thing a shot: he mixes Mill's corpse into a cocktail and drinks up. He offers some to ML; ML is still in shock, so he drinks without much thought or complaint. He ascends to demigodhood himself. In addition to his new innate magic, he's given the ability to draw magic from the same source H uses. ML is installed as the new king of 13, which becomes a part of H's empire.
ML is now a powerful wizard king and the a lover of the emperor of not only 08, but portions of two other dimensions. He still has the brain modifications that his late husband gave him, so human flesh is delicious to him; also, H's blood is a powerful narcotic. Consensual cannibalism is a major part of their relationship. Over time, ML begins to lean into the imagery. H gives him vampire fangs and he develops the ability to not only consume human blood as food, but to absorb and process thoughts and memories through blood.
(His own blood is an aphrodesiac, but that's neither here nor there.)
Meanwhile, during this time, D is slowly stabilizing from the death of Dill. He spends a lot of time terrified of the world at large and refusing to leave his house. He's still one of the most hated people on Earth, since Dill did everything in his power to tank his reputation and pin Weirdmageddon on him.
Fruit has been spending most of her time on Earth out of concern for him. D's severe depression has her worried about him, and she wants to cheer him up. When humans mess with him, she defends him, and that oftentimes means straight-up eating the punks who decided to graffiti mean names on his house. D himself is unstable and extremely magical, so he's a destructive force in his own right. The estate develops a reputation as a dangerous, cursed house full of monsters and wizards; this reputation is correct.
One day, someone breaks into the mansion on a dare and meets D. Terrified, D does some sort of defensive magic to scare them off. It works extremely well.
That's when D realizes that people are scared of him. He realizes he has power over them. He can do whatever he wants and they can't stop him.
He likes this. 🙂
D slowly begins to venture outside the Estate more and more. the man behaves like a creepypasta character: you have no idea if you'll find him in an alley digging through the trash or at a science museum correcting the displays. He sometimes just straight-up mugs people for no reason. Irene moved to New York and is still his primary care physician, so he's been going through physical therapy and getting generally healthier over time; the first time he encounters antimage tech on a restaurant he wants to break into, he dedicates himself to getting stronger and becomes almost as swoll as he is in the GE timeline.
He is a weird evil cryptid that emerges from the woods to cause havoc and kill people, and he is absolutely thriving. He doesn't end up with GE's self-esteem or body image issues. He's busy being a fucking wizard.
H, JP, Fruit, and D are therefore still the squad. ML joins them after a while as an extra member and as H's secondary partner after D. D will turn into a dragon, then he and Fruit will go cause chaos. H is extremely proud of him and will sometimes sic them on targets that need to be dealt with anyway.
ML is pretty morally horrified, but he has to rule his own territory now and is starting to understand the sort of situations that puts you in. He can't change the fucked up world he lives in, his life now is better than his life then, and, well... if you have power that you can use to improve the world, you might as well do it.
JP has been slowly getting more comfortable and happy. When he isn't actively fighting H, they actually have really good chemistry, and JP really respects the good work H is doing to improve 08. He becomes properly devoted and starts to consider himself a Kingsman. H initially refuses to Mark him and properly integrate him into the cult out of fear for what Hill will do when he comes back, but in all other ways JP is one of his priests. At one point H picks up on the fact that JP is feeling bored and isolated all alone in the estate, and deduces that it's because he misses making a positive impact on the world; H's response is to found a Kingsman temple to serve as a refuge for mentally ill people in the area and to put JP in charge of it. In addition, D decides that JP should be installed as the king of New York. At first this isn't really much more than a title, but he does figure out that he can use this power to install fair housing initiatives and break up monopolies, so he ends up getting a bit more into it than you'd expect.
It's not necessarily a healthy family. JP and ML have to become desensitized to the death and violence that are inherent to this lifestyle, since D and Fruit will come home covered in blood. But, relatively speaking... they're all happy.
Hill Returns
One day, Hill comes back.
Nobody is quite sure what happened to him, in no small part because what happened to him is impossible to describe in finite mortal terms. He was trapped in some sort of incomprehensible space which forced him to experience millions of timelines' worth of his own past and future over and over again in an order that even he couldn't really understand. He was being folded through spacetime like a sheet of origami paper run through the gears of an industrial factory. He comes back slightly depowered and psychologically destroyed.
H tries to take care of him, but with years of separation under his belt, he soon realizes just how shitty his husband really is. He hasn't had to deal with his abuse for a long time, and you know what? He doesn't have to now, either! Hill is no longer physically or psychologically capable of dominating H!
The two of them start to fight, and with Hill in this condition, H wins all of those fights. Spite for his husband and a determination to take control of his life sets him on the path to stop keeping up his quiet existence and start asserting himself in all of the ways that he kind of wished he could, but never thought were possible.
Things that he does immediately after fights with Hill:
- Establishes himself as full emperor and not just consort, nullifying a lot of Hill's policies
- Marries D formally, beginning his royal harem and installing D as the head of it
- Elevates D to the status of co-god of the Kingsmen; the two of them adopt Sun and Moon imagery, giving D a level of symbolic importance that Hill never had
- Formally marks JP as a Kingsman, changes the mark on his head from a triangle to the Lunatic Eye that D has adopted as his own symbol, and stops keeping the Kingsmen in general at an arm's length
and, crown achievement of this whole arc:
- kidnaps and mindwipes his Fiddleford.
08's Fiddleford has been the chief anti-Cipher arms dealer for as long as the Ciphers have ruled. H finds him, takes him, de-ages his body to remove all of the physical damage H did to him years ago, and wipes most of his memories.
It's kind of a rough adjustment for Fiddleford. The fact of the harem is now pretty firmly established, though. H's husbands are, in order of eminence:
1. D, the main Consort and co-god of the Kingsmen, H's favorite
2. Fiddleford, his first love, who's kind of confused about everything
3. ML, king of 13, who's slowly coming to terms with this weird lifestyle
4. JP; he isn't actually a husband, but he and H started an affair* a while ago and he's an honorary member
5. Hill, who's the scapegoat/punching bag of the whole family.
The family also includes Fruit, a small army of Kingsman servants who JP is in charge of training, and JP's kids (more on them later, I'm not going to go into them in this thread).
*in JP's human form
H has to work very hard to make it so that D won't actively try to kill Hill. He succeeds, and it overcorrects: D imprints on Hill and decides that he likes this pathetic little guy. Hill has learned that being a small, nonthreatening little creature is in his best interest, so he's functionally D's purse dog.
So is JP.
So is Fruit.
Basically, don't look in D's pockets. There are a lot of monsters in there.
JP tolerates Hill and they form a sort of cautious friendship. Fiddleford and ML, though, both actively despise Hill, avoiding him when they can. Fiddleford will bully him when he has an excuse. H is a better husband to Hill than Hill was to H, but that is a very low bar and H is still pretty shitty to him.
This family has a very clear pecking order. It's even more toxic than it was before, but H does still do his best to take care of all of his spouses. In particular, Fiddleford demands rules and structure, so things become more stable and eventually everything levels out.
Lunar Demigod D
D is a badass, terrifying creature with uncontested power. He wears a cloak that will melt your skin if you aren't one of his approved people, and sometimes just leaves it lying around in foreign countries (and planets). He never went to therapy for his binge eating disorder, so most restaurants have food on standby for him. He keeps monsters in his pockets and will sic them on you unprompted. He does not obey the laws of man, god, or physics. He fears nothing, is quick to anger, and feels entitled to the whole world. The only thing keeping him from being even more dangerous is that he knows that JP doesn't like it when he hurts people, so the citizens of Earth have all learned to breathe a sigh of relief when they see his high priest on his shoulder. That raccoon can mean the difference between the Lunatic God* mugging you or taking you out for ice cream.
*The Lunatic God is a self-adopted title. Moons and madness go together! 😄
All of his favorite restaurants have been blessed by H with infinitely refilling cabinets so that D and Fruit can visit them together without bankrupting them.
His favorite restaurants all have a system in place to send out a specific staff member to bring him whatever food he wants. He grows to strongly bond with these people and will bring them presents. These presents could mean anything from a dead deer to the Hope Diamond.
Anywyay, congratulations! This guy rules the world.
How's Big Stan doing?
Bad. Big Stan is doing bad.
In fact, he's actually the foremost smuggler of the anti-mage security tech that businesses in 04 use to keep D out.
Big Stan lived at the estate for a while, but as D kept getting more violent and unstable, he eventually left. He tried to take JP with him, because he knew JP was a kidnapping victim and saw the ways that this lifestyle was changing him, but it was too late: JP didn't want to leave anymore. In the DDnmD era, Big Stan and JP were good friends and allies as the two people who cared about D; now, Big Stan feels like he's lost another person the way he lost his brother.
D is allowed to visit Big Stan's new home whenever he wants - as long as he behaves. D will leave if his brother tells him to leave, even though there isn't technically a way of enforcing that. D has poor impulse control, but does his best.
Big Stan and JP half-heartedly stay in touch for a while, but that friendship breaks off pretty bitterly. On the other hand, he's gotten to be pretty good friends with JP's parents and siblings, who tried to keep in touch with their boy for a while before he drank the koolaid and become a high priest in a damn Madness Cult.
Some final notes
Each of the members of the harem has a celestial body symbolically assigned to them by H. Obviously H is the sun and D is the moon; the rest of them are:
- ML: Mars
- Fiddleford: Saturn
- Hill: Venus
- JP: Pluto
Canonical JP is a paranoid little creature - as in, he literally has a mental health disorder that gives him paranoid delusions. This version of JP has a god managing that for him, so he's a lot calmer overall. He's also had the chance to deal with a lot of his fears by exposure therapy, including things that a normal person would never be able to be "exposed" to. At one point in the years before Hill came back, he literally asked H to help him deal with is fear of death... by, y'know. Dying a bunch. He's actually a really hard bugger to kill permanently.
In the Good Ending, D spends most of his time in the Compound, only venturing out when he's particularly bold. On the other hand, redistribution of Power D is more likely to stay home when he's feeling happy and content. When his anxiety begins to act up, he soothes it by going out to terrorize people.
Hill develops a strong unrequited crush on D because he's a big, cool, badass, confident wizard.
Fruit is a Scene Kid. She looks adorable.
D has a massive menagerie of anomalous animals. He breeds his own mutated species!
Wow! Another sub-AU! @whenalltheeyesopen came up with the basis for this one, and wrote up the summary for it! It also features characters by @alexthebordercollie , @ranchsoda92 and @matcha-milkies
The Summary: Redistribution of Power
Overlap with main canon
In main canon, H finds D, stalks him for a while, falls in love with him, and lures him into a weekly DDnmD session. Dill tolerates it because it keeps his dog enriched enough to be less annoying and more fun. Hill tolerates it because he wants to stick it to Dill and because the game night crew is fully of such completely harmless little nobodies that he isn't threatened.
What we would call the DDnmD era lasts between two and three years. (What H calls the DDnmD era lasts about five years because he experiences time nonlinearly and includes landmarks like "when I first pretended kitten was talking to me and not a moth.") During that time:
1. D comes to love and depend on H absolutely.
2. Fruit comes to consider the DDnmD party her best friends and spends a lot of time with them between sessions.
3. JP goes through a period of intense rebellion against H which is too complicated to summarize here, but which ends with him voluntarily rolling over and submitting to H's authority and losing any particular will to fight.
In the main canon, this period ends after those two and a half years because D is kidnapped by the Eusophontarians, launching the chain of events that would become what we call Good Ending.
Instead... that. doesn't happen.
D Snaps
Before the Eus have a chance to yoink him, D somehow snaps. In a moment of intense emotion and raw magic power, he kills Dill and eats his corpse, which ends Weirdmageddon, collapses the Bubble, and supercharges his magic powers so that he's functionally a demigod.
H is thrilled. He hated Dill and he wants his kitten. In the aftermath of this event, D is pretty traumatized and delusional, not really understanding what he just did or what just happened. To take care of him, H purchases a huge estate in a relatively unpopulated* part of New York to keep D in, then sets up a trust fund and stipends so that Big Stan and Jean-Paul can dedicate themselves to taking care of him. Jean-Paul is pretty apathetic to what H has him do, and he's happy to help Phospho, so he moves in without complaint. Big Stan is terrified for his brother and doing everything he can to help him snap out of it and rejoin the land of the living.
Meanwhile, H is having a hell of a time negotiating with his husband. Hill was only ever okay with D because D was completely harmless and nonthreatening. Now that he fucking ate his Bill, that 'harmless' status is in question. To make matters worse, when D starts to come out of the suicidal depression that immediately followed Dill's death, it's as a violent mage who is happy to kill more Bills.
H annexes part of 04 as his own to protect it from other Bills laying claim, but he wants to use it as functionally a summer home. Hill has been wanting to jump ship from the crumbling, entropy-ridden 08 for years; if his husband insists on keeping this dumb backwater with a dangerous mage in it, he wants to actually use it.
This conflict between the 08 emperor and his consort goes on for a while - and then, in the middle of an argument between dimensions, Hill vanishes.
*04 North America is much more densely populated than canonical North America because a huge chunk of it was consumed by the Weirdness Bubble.
Life Without either Bill
H has no idea what just happened. He frantically looks for his husband to no avail. His rings are still drawing power from somewhere, but it's not clear where. He's almost certain he's still alive, but he has no idea if this was a time anomaly, a cosmic event, a targeted attack... all he knows is that Hill is gone and he doesn't know why.
For a while, he's doing his damndest to manage 08 and keep Hill's disappearance a secret. He also doesn't know when Hill will come back, so he needs to try and manage things the way Hill would want them managed. This looks a lot like his life before, but he doesn't have the emotional support that he relied on Hill for, he doesn't have the full power of a much mightier god to back him up, and he has the weight of this huge secret on his shoulders. He spends most of his time managing the 08 empire, but every free moment he has is spent in the 04 estate wrestling with the immense pressure he's under.
Hill's absence stretches for years. Slowly, H slowly begins to change his approach to ruling. He finally says fuck it to the things he hated about Hill's rule and begins to build hospitals and public infrastructure. He still feels like his husband could show up at any time, but he's more apathetic to it. He also decides to do something wild that he could never do under Hill's authority: He's been maintaining an affair with 13's Ford Cipher-Pines (the Married Life dimension) this entire time, and he's wanted to break him out of that relationship. So, he funds a proxy attack against Mill. This would be a direct violation of the treaty between Bills... but H isn't a Bill, he's a Ford, and his Bill is missing.
D got his power from eating his Bill, so H decides that he might as well give the same thing a shot: he mixes Mill's corpse into a cocktail and drinks up. He offers some to ML; ML is still in shock, so he drinks without much thought or complaint. He ascends to demigodhood himself. In addition to his new innate magic, he's given the ability to draw magic from the same source H uses. ML is installed as the new king of 13, which becomes a part of H's empire.
ML is now a powerful wizard king and the a lover of the emperor of not only 08, but portions of two other dimensions. He still has the brain modifications that his late husband gave him, so human flesh is delicious to him; also, H's blood is a powerful narcotic. Consensual cannibalism is a major part of their relationship. Over time, ML begins to lean into the imagery. H gives him vampire fangs and he develops the ability to not only consume human blood as food, but to absorb and process thoughts and memories through blood.
(His own blood is an aphrodesiac, but that's neither here nor there.)
Meanwhile, during this time, D is slowly stabilizing from the death of Dill. He spends a lot of time terrified of the world at large and refusing to leave his house. He's still one of the most hated people on Earth, since Dill did everything in his power to tank his reputation and pin Weirdmageddon on him.
Fruit has been spending most of her time on Earth out of concern for him. D's severe depression has her worried about him, and she wants to cheer him up. When humans mess with him, she defends him, and that oftentimes means straight-up eating the punks who decided to graffiti mean names on his house. D himself is unstable and extremely magical, so he's a destructive force in his own right. The estate develops a reputation as a dangerous, cursed house full of monsters and wizards; this reputation is correct.
One day, someone breaks into the mansion on a dare and meets D. Terrified, D does some sort of defensive magic to scare them off. It works extremely well.
That's when D realizes that people are scared of him. He realizes he has power over them. He can do whatever he wants and they can't stop him.
He likes this. 🙂
D slowly begins to venture outside the Estate more and more. the man behaves like a creepypasta character: you have no idea if you'll find him in an alley digging through the trash or at a science museum correcting the displays. He sometimes just straight-up mugs people for no reason. Irene moved to New York and is still his primary care physician, so he's been going through physical therapy and getting generally healthier over time; the first time he encounters antimage tech on a restaurant he wants to break into, he dedicates himself to getting stronger and becomes almost as swoll as he is in the GE timeline.
He is a weird evil cryptid that emerges from the woods to cause havoc and kill people, and he is absolutely thriving. He doesn't end up with GE's self-esteem or body image issues. He's busy being a fucking wizard.
H, JP, Fruit, and D are therefore still the squad. ML joins them after a while as an extra member and as H's secondary partner after D. D will turn into a dragon, then he and Fruit will go cause chaos. H is extremely proud of him and will sometimes sic them on targets that need to be dealt with anyway.
ML is pretty morally horrified, but he has to rule his own territory now and is starting to understand the sort of situations that puts you in. He can't change the fucked up world he lives in, his life now is better than his life then, and, well... if you have power that you can use to improve the world, you might as well do it.
JP has been slowly getting more comfortable and happy. When he isn't actively fighting H, they actually have really good chemistry, and JP really respects the good work H is doing to improve 08. He becomes properly devoted and starts to consider himself a Kingsman. H initially refuses to Mark him and properly integrate him into the cult out of fear for what Hill will do when he comes back, but in all other ways JP is one of his priests. At one point H picks up on the fact that JP is feeling bored and isolated all alone in the estate, and deduces that it's because he misses making a positive impact on the world; H's response is to found a Kingsman temple to serve as a refuge for mentally ill people in the area and to put JP in charge of it. In addition, D decides that JP should be installed as the king of New York. At first this isn't really much more than a title, but he does figure out that he can use this power to install fair housing initiatives and break up monopolies, so he ends up getting a bit more into it than you'd expect.
It's not necessarily a healthy family. JP and ML have to become desensitized to the death and violence that are inherent to this lifestyle, since D and Fruit will come home covered in blood. But, relatively speaking... they're all happy.
Hill Returns
One day, Hill comes back.
Nobody is quite sure what happened to him, in no small part because what happened to him is impossible to describe in finite mortal terms. He was trapped in some sort of incomprehensible space which forced him to experience millions of timelines' worth of his own past and future over and over again in an order that even he couldn't really understand. He was being folded through spacetime like a sheet of origami paper run through the gears of an industrial factory. He comes back slightly depowered and psychologically destroyed.
H tries to take care of him, but with years of separation under his belt, he soon realizes just how shitty his husband really is. He hasn't had to deal with his abuse for a long time, and you know what? He doesn't have to now, either! Hill is no longer physically or psychologically capable of dominating H!
The two of them start to fight, and with Hill in this condition, H wins all of those fights. Spite for his husband and a determination to take control of his life sets him on the path to stop keeping up his quiet existence and start asserting himself in all of the ways that he kind of wished he could, but never thought were possible.
Things that he does immediately after fights with Hill:
- Establishes himself as full emperor and not just consort, nullifying a lot of Hill's policies
- Marries D formally, beginning his royal harem and installing D as the head of it
- Elevates D to the status of co-god of the Kingsmen; the two of them adopt Sun and Moon imagery, giving D a level of symbolic importance that Hill never had
- Formally marks JP as a Kingsman, changes the mark on his head from a triangle to the Lunatic Eye that D has adopted as his own symbol, and stops keeping the Kingsmen in general at an arm's length
and, crown achievement of this whole arc:
- kidnaps and mindwipes his Fiddleford.
08's Fiddleford has been the chief anti-Cipher arms dealer for as long as the Ciphers have ruled. H finds him, takes him, de-ages his body to remove all of the physical damage H did to him years ago, and wipes most of his memories.
It's kind of a rough adjustment for Fiddleford. The fact of the harem is now pretty firmly established, though. H's husbands are, in order of eminence:
1. D, the main Consort and co-god of the Kingsmen, H's favorite
2. Fiddleford, his first love, who's kind of confused about everything
3. ML, king of 13, who's slowly coming to terms with this weird lifestyle
4. JP; he isn't actually a husband, but he and H started an affair* a while ago and he's an honorary member
5. Hill, who's the scapegoat/punching bag of the whole family.
The family also includes Fruit, a small army of Kingsman servants who JP is in charge of training, and JP's kids (more on them later, I'm not going to go into them in this thread).
*in JP's human form
H has to work very hard to make it so that D won't actively try to kill Hill. He succeeds, and it overcorrects: D imprints on Hill and decides that he likes this pathetic little guy. Hill has learned that being a small, nonthreatening little creature is in his best interest, so he's functionally D's purse dog.
So is JP.
So is Fruit.
Basically, don't look in D's pockets. There are a lot of monsters in there.
JP tolerates Hill and they form a sort of cautious friendship. Fiddleford and ML, though, both actively despise Hill, avoiding him when they can. Fiddleford will bully him when he has an excuse. H is a better husband to Hill than Hill was to H, but that is a very low bar and H is still pretty shitty to him.
This family has a very clear pecking order. It's even more toxic than it was before, but H does still do his best to take care of all of his spouses. In particular, Fiddleford demands rules and structure, so things become more stable and eventually everything levels out.
Lunar Demigod D
D is a badass, terrifying creature with uncontested power. He wears a cloak that will melt your skin if you aren't one of his approved people, and sometimes just leaves it lying around in foreign countries (and planets). He never went to therapy for his binge eating disorder, so most restaurants have food on standby for him. He keeps monsters in his pockets and will sic them on you unprompted. He does not obey the laws of man, god, or physics. He fears nothing, is quick to anger, and feels entitled to the whole world. The only thing keeping him from being even more dangerous is that he knows that JP doesn't like it when he hurts people, so the citizens of Earth have all learned to breathe a sigh of relief when they see his high priest on his shoulder. That raccoon can mean the difference between the Lunatic God* mugging you or taking you out for ice cream.
*The Lunatic God is a self-adopted title. Moons and madness go together! 😄
All of his favorite restaurants have been blessed by H with infinitely refilling cabinets so that D and Fruit can visit them together without bankrupting them.
His favorite restaurants all have a system in place to send out a specific staff member to bring him whatever food he wants. He grows to strongly bond with these people and will bring them presents. These presents could mean anything from a dead deer to the Hope Diamond.
Anywyay, congratulations! This guy rules the world.
How's Big Stan doing?
Bad. Big Stan is doing bad.
In fact, he's actually the foremost smuggler of the anti-mage security tech that businesses in 04 use to keep D out.
Big Stan lived at the estate for a while, but as D kept getting more violent and unstable, he eventually left. He tried to take JP with him, because he knew JP was a kidnapping victim and saw the ways that this lifestyle was changing him, but it was too late: JP didn't want to leave anymore. In the DDnmD era, Big Stan and JP were good friends and allies as the two people who cared about D; now, Big Stan feels like he's lost another person the way he lost his brother.
D is allowed to visit Big Stan's new home whenever he wants - as long as he behaves. D will leave if his brother tells him to leave, even though there isn't technically a way of enforcing that. D has poor impulse control, but does his best.
Big Stan and JP half-heartedly stay in touch for a while, but that friendship breaks off pretty bitterly. On the other hand, he's gotten to be pretty good friends with JP's parents and siblings, who tried to keep in touch with their boy for a while before he drank the koolaid and become a high priest in a damn Madness Cult.
Some final notes
Each of the members of the harem has a celestial body symbolically assigned to them by H. Obviously H is the sun and D is the moon; the rest of them are:
- ML: Mars
- Fiddleford: Saturn
- Hill: Venus
- JP: Pluto
Canonical JP is a paranoid little creature - as in, he literally has a mental health disorder that gives him paranoid delusions. This version of JP has a god managing that for him, so he's a lot calmer overall. He's also had the chance to deal with a lot of his fears by exposure therapy, including things that a normal person would never be able to be "exposed" to. At one point in the years before Hill came back, he literally asked H to help him deal with is fear of death... by, y'know. Dying a bunch. He's actually a really hard bugger to kill permanently.
In the Good Ending, D spends most of his time in the Compound, only venturing out when he's particularly bold. On the other hand, redistribution of Power D is more likely to stay home when he's feeling happy and content. When his anxiety begins to act up, he soothes it by going out to terrorize people.
Hill develops a strong unrequited crush on D because he's a big, cool, badass, confident wizard.
Fruit is a Scene Kid. She looks adorable.
D has a massive menagerie of anomalous animals. He breeds his own mutated species!
Another AU within an AU! I got a question a while back asking about what the worst ending for D is. It's this AU! It came about from a conversation between @alexthebordercollie , @whenalltheeyesopen , @ranchsoda92 and I. Thanks to @whenalltheeyesopen for this summary!
Okay, so time to summarize
Mad King D!!!!
How It Happens
The entire premise of Good Ending applies here up until the end of Project Deicide. The two Bill Ciphers die, the world is saved.
The difference comes right afterwards.
In the Good Ending canon, D lives on the Compound for years after Deicide, because the Eusophontarians feel protective of him. For a few months after Deicide, D is still devoted to the now-dead Bill Cipher; after a few months, he suddenly becomes disillusioned and his healing journey begins. H, meanwhile, has just killed his husband and lost a big chunk of everything he owns, so he's hiding from shame and suicide on the Compound as well. They live there for a decade and a half. Jean-Paul was coerced into joining Project Deicide and is kept on the Compound against his will for a short while, but eventually establishes his own life and is perfectly content; Oleander, LS, the Eus, and eventually D go out of their way to keep him from being coerced or abused again. Little Stan and Scalene live with them as a family. Big Stan comes and goes, managing his business but spending time with the others regularly.
In Mad King D, H moves back to 08 immediately. D goes with him, because he can't possibly be without H. Jean-Paul comes, too - he does not get a choice in this, because if D wants him, D gets to keep him, and axolotl save anyone who tries to stop H from making D happy. (D is still too delusional and out of it to fully register or care that this is unconsenting.) LittleStan and Scalene stay on the compound for a while and eventually go to 04.
At first:
H wants D safe and happy, so essentially D ends up in a perfect gilded cage. In Good Ending, the process of teaching D how to be an autonomous person is long and painful; in this version of events, though, H is much more interested in D being comfortable than in D getting better. Jean-Paul still occasionally tries to advocate for D, but for the most part, D is just living his life in a world of cushions, snacks, and little luxuries, exactly as delusional and unstable as he is in Main Canon.
Big Stan is trying to take care of D, too. He wants to take him away from H, but he physically can't; H is powerful and D doesn't want to leave. JP hates Big Stan in most of the post-Deicide Good Ending timeline; in this version, though, Big Stan is the only person left who's on JP's side.
H, meanwhile, throws himself headfirst into his old lifestyle of drugs, parties, and loose sex. However, H used to be an invincible god; now, he's an old man with poor body sense and blood pressure issues.
H dies within months, possibly weeks or days.
H's death:
Bill loyalist Ciphertologists get H drunk and then get him to overdose. Using necromancy, they make sure his soul can't escape to the afterlife and force him to be present while they torture and abuse his corpse in every conceivable way. H's soul is bound to a ratty, dirty doll. It isn't set in stone what kind of doll it is, but we're leaning an extremely girly puppet of some sort - puppet in particular because having a nice easy way to stick things inside it serves their purposes for what they want to do with it.
While the cultists are still abusing H's corpse, D walks in on them and instantly destroys them. The doll was on H's body, so he takes it; since it's the last thing that touched H, he can't bear to part with it. At this point he doesn't know that H's soul is bound in there.
The Early Days
In 08, whoever is the biggest gun is in charge. D is extremely fucking powerful, because his magical specialty is channeling Bill Cipher's weirdness magic, and that stuff leaked everywhere in 08 when Hill died. D is ruling ("ruling") 08 as a figurehead: he doesn't care at all about politics or leadership, but nobody can unseat him from this place where H lived before he died. He keeps Jean-Paul and the doll with him. The doll is sometimes perched on H's old throne.
Jean-Paul is miserable, and he still blames H for his misery. (I'd say it's not unreasonable - that guy kidnapped and enslaved him, leaving him to be inherited by an insane wizard.) Every now and then, when D isn't around, he'll kick the H doll.
One time, D caught him doing this. He immediately set JP on fire in a dissociative haze. A moment later, he comes to, and douses the flames in horror at what's happening to his friend. He does not remember that he did it or why he would have done such a thing.
JP doesn't risk that action again.
The Visit to McGucket
Jean-Paul eventually starts to figure out that the doll is H. When this happens, he's no longer willing to use that thing as a punching bag, because that's H, there is a person in it, we need to get him out!!! JP may hate the guy, but this is horrible!!!
He manages to get D to realize that it's H, and D is absolutely ecstatic. He is so happy! He thought his friend was dead, but he's not! Everything is good now. 🙂
JP: But we need to help him
D: Why? 🙂
JP: We need to get him out!
D: Why? 🙂
JP: Or- or at least get him the ability to move and communicate!
D: I don't understand. 😦
JP: ...He'd probably be happier if he could?
D: Oh! 🙂 Okay. 🙂
So, the doll gets taken to Fiddleford McGucket of 08, famed antimage.
Fiddleford is able to give the doll the ability to speak. Immediately, the doll starts sobbing uncontrollably.
D panics, and almost immediately that doll is no longer able to speak.
D: Oh. 😦 It can't speak. 😦 There's no way of ever making it speak. 😦 That's a shame. 😦 Oh well. 🙂
D cannot be convinced that what just happened happened, and he's too powerful a mage to be contained, so he takes his friends and goes home.
Fruit to the rescue!....?
Fruit shows up! 😄
What exactly happens to Fruit in the Deicide and immediately post-Deicide portions of the story is a little wobbly, but usually we have her in jail during Deicide. (She ate a political summit of about five hundred heads of state.) Regardless, she gets out of jail and comes to find her friends.
She finds Little Man and is really excited!! 😄 😄 😄
BUUUuuut he's acting kinda weird. 😦 😦 😦
.....
.......Okay really weird
..........And he's kinda scaring FuzzButt
Fruit and D hang out for a while, but Fruit needs to go feed her cats and D doesn't want her to leave. Fruit is insistent; she tries to take Jean-Paul and leave. D is not okay with this. D uses his godlike magic powers to restrain her and try and convince her to stay. When he can't do it, and when she keeps trying to get away - Ouroboroi are notoriously hard to contain - he makes sure she can't leave by turning her into a jade statue.
Before he does that, though, he chops off a big chunk of her tail. He needs that! Ouroboros meat is the secret to immortality, and he never wants to be separated from his friends. 🙂
Just Before the Wandering God Days
D is insane, needless to say. Jean-Paul is enslaved and spends most of his days trying to make H-Doll's life a little bit less of a living hell by reading to him, cleaning him, helping him keep up with the news, and showing him things he thinks he'd like to see. H-Doll desperately, desperately wants to die. Jade-Fruit, if she can think at all, is internally screaming with rage nonstop.
Oh, also, remember that Fruit meat? D is eating it, D is forcing Jean-Paul to eat it, and D is lovingly feeding it to H.
"But Eyes," you say, "H is a doll. How does he eat?"
Seamripper.
One day, D just wanders off into wilderness.
Wandering God Days
D begins to wander the countryside. This guy becomes the kind of thing you see in folktales: he'll show up at random houses and demand food and shelter. If you refuse, there's a fifty percent chance you and everything you own is destroyed and a fifty percent chance he sadly wanders off into the night.
D is easy to mistake for H, if you don't know what happened. He only wears H's clothes out of mourning. He ends up with only one eye after Jean-Paul's third escape attempt*. He has godlike power. Regardless of who you think he is, though, he's a creature of horrible portent: because he hates rain, he will drive droughts; he will murder people on a whim; when he "helps," he'll often make things worse. His "rule" is making 08, which was already a bit of a shithole, fall apart completely.
Jean-Paul's three escape attempts
JP is miserable, needless to say. He also doesn't have access to his medications or any mental health support, so he's... not okay. (This has only been referenced in veiled terms in the meta, but Jean-Paul has a psychotic disorder that was debilitating when he was young.) The only thing keeping him sane is taking care of H. This is no small task: in order to get the rotting meat out of H, he needs to convince D to let him take the doll out of his sight for a bit. He does this by convincing him that he needs to help H clean up, since he finds it hard to do now that he's physically disabled. (This isn't a lie or anything. Being a doll is a pretty big disability.)
The first time Jean-Paul tries to run away, D frantically searches for him, finds him, and begs him not to do that again. You can't run away, PG, he says. I can't be without you, PG. I feel like I'll do something horrible if you leave.
Jean-Paul is too scared to run again for a little while, but eventually, he does.
This time, out of terror that he'll lose his friend again, D hugs JP very hard to his chest, and magically fuses him there. For a while, JP just has to live as an appendage of D. He's eventually able to convince D that he's unhappy that way, but the trauma makes him so afraid of running away that he panics if D is even a little further away than usual or out of his sight.
(This is good news for D! He gets to keep his friend closer than before! 😊)
The third time Jean-Paul tries to run away, D tells him that he's going to do a ritual. D is scared of losing him again, and wants to do a spell so they can share sight. Jean-Paul doesn't protest because he can't.
Then, after setting up the ritual and preparing Jean-Paul, he scoops his own eye out.
This is freaky and upsetting to watch, of course, but nowhere near as upsetting as when D comes at him and JP realizes that he's next. He panics, and D has to hold him down - which is very strange of him! D did tell him he was going to do a ritual, why is he being so uncooperative now? 😦
Anyway, JP is still bleeding and in pain while he watches D eat his eye. Then, D takes his own eye and holds it out to JP.
JP tries to bolt away. D grabs and restrains him again.
D puts the eye in JP's mouth, but he spits it out. D ends up having to shove it down JP's throat, which is very difficult and unpleasant! 😦
To make matters worse, JP throws up!! D has to hold his mouth shut to keep the eye from falling out!
JP is convulsing and wretching, vomit leaking from the corners of his mouth, while D holds him still with a distressed look on his face, not sure why JP is so upset. Eventually, JP calms down enough to figure out that he has to swallow back his own bile or D is not going to let him go. He manages to swallow and keep it down with great difficulty.
Soon, the spell settles in. JP can see himself through D's eye in double vision with his own sight. It's very uncomfortable and dizzying.
What happens to the others?
Oleander is pretty fine. She's not happy about what happened to her patients, but what's she going to do? She keeps doing her job.
D is looking for Scalene, since he loves her and she's a connection to H. Oleander and the Eus are able to keep him out of the Compound, but regardless, Little Stan flees with Scalene to Earth; Big Stan helps him.
Big Stan will still occasionally visit D, but every time he does, he's afraid D will kill him or do something else horrible to him. It's not an irrational fear.
------
------
That's the main body of this AU. There are several potential endings.
They all get a turn! Current Canon D is too miserable for an evil laugh, but Good Ending has one! It's really just him saying the word "ha" several times in a row. It's pretty creepy
Pet Guy (or Jean-Paul) is @is-it-cute-gf-au-edition
paddle fans taste like the hands that have touched them on the bamboo portion slightly salty and faint woody undertones.
The fan part doesn't have the acidity of paper but the slight bitterness like a nintendo switch cartridge or envelope glue comes up.
not much flavor overall
5/10
With the help from Thomas Nook and our Island Representative @jellyskink over on the Domesticated Ford Au server, we present our 5 star island, Dreamscape Island! Our Operations Department was hard at work, decorating, cleaning up, filling out the museum, and inventory management in preparations for all our new visitors. achieve a beautiful island getaway for all our new guests.
Thanks to all our ground team for finding the islands new inhabitants: @totallynotabug @dicerolliball @exoplanet-blues @iamanactualmeme @jellyskink @lostinflorentine @twinstarsbillcipher @is-it-cute-gf-au-edition @ranchsoda92
And on Bluesky NovaDoesArts.
Also, special thanks to @alexthebordercollie and @matcha-milkies for the use of their Fords in villager form.
An unseasonable heat put an early end to D and Jean-Paul's walk. Summer had descended upon the northern hemisphere of 04’\ Earth, and it was hotter than it seemed like it should be. D supposed he had very little sense for such things anymore, though. Weather in the weirdness bubble had been unreliable at best, and the compound was climate controlled. Jean-Paul was riding atop his shoulders, his gloves pulled down to release as much body heat as he could.
“I got a call from the pharmacy this morning,” Jean-Paul said. “Your medication finally came in. Wanna swing by on our way back to the house?”
“Certainly,” D replied. “Um, that’s…”
“Just keep heading home the usual way,” Jean-Paul supplied. D nodded, letting out a small breath. Somehow, urban areas were far more perplexing to him than the forests of Gravity Falls had been; their layout more difficult to recall than the wasteland inside the weirdness bubble. The intersecting squares of hard, gray paths simply refused to map onto his brain. He didn't think this was a problem he'd always had. It could be a bit hard to remember how things used to be, before the demon, but D thought this was another in the long list of things his brain had become incompatible with.
That was okay. Jean-Paul was there. Just like he was there to remind D to take his medication, brush his teeth, comb his hair… D had little doubt that he was only as presentable as he was on behalf of his friend’s persistent efforts. His, and H's.
At a certain point on their usual path back to Stanley's house (as D had bought it for him, his brother insisted he stay there whenever he wanted to visit Earth,) Jean-Paul directed D down a sidewalk he normally didn’t take. A brief flutter of anxiety brushed his chest. The path between the park and Stanley’s house was the only one he could remember. Jean-Paul was here, though, his weight on D’s shoulders, tail brushing against his upper arm. He would know where they were going.
D recognized the block the pharmacy was on, even if he would have been unlikely to find it himself. It squatted on the corner beside an intersection; a sturdy, plain affair of white brick with a slanting green roof above the storefront. D refilled his medications here wherever he visited Earth for an extended period, usually with H. Stanley had recommended the place, and Jean-Paul had supplied them with the requisite documents. D really was very lucky to have them both in his life. A pair of house sparrows chittered at each other as he passed a trash can. Two females. One was perched on the black metal of its rim, the other pecking at crumbs on the ground.
D stopped and smiled at the birds. They were common creatures, and utterly plain, but they were still quite cute. He shoved his hand in his pocket, pulling out and scattering golden, flaky crumbs. The birds were on them in an instant.
“So that’s where the croissant went,” he observed.
“No, I ate it,” D corrected. “I just carried it in my pocket for a while. It was pretty flaky.” To demonstrate, he tossed out another, smaller shower of crumbs.
“Remind me to clean out your pockets before I wash your clothes,” Jean-Paul said.
Both of them knew D was never going to do that.
The chilled air inside the pharmacy was a balm, sweeping pleasantly across the skin on D’s neck and arms. The way his sweat suddenly turned cool against his too-hot skin reminded him of sucking on a mint. He paused to let Jean-Paul clamber to the floor, winding down his arm and briefly clinging to his pant leg before dropping onto the tile. He straightened his shirt, smoothing a crease out of the fabric. D fell into step behind him as he led the way to the large, curved desk that formed a barricade between the public and a wall of plastic, orange bottles.
“For Stanford Pines,” D said to the woman who smiled expectantly at him from behind a blocky monitor. He was sure he didn’t really need to say his name, but it was procedure. The woman clearly recognized him. Her reaction upon first hearing his name, during his first visit while she was working, proved that she didn’t have the most favorable opinion of him. That still stung. It did more these days, now that D had been freed from the shackles of his own protective delusions. The knowledge of just how hated he still was chafed against his mind, tempting him to wrap it in the thick, choking cotton of a false reality. He was able to do that at will now; un-learn things he simply didn’t want to know. He tried to avoid poking his brain into various shapes too much, though. He didn’t want to lose it to the fog again.
D felt Jean-Paul’s paw brush his leg. He let out a long, slow breath. The woman was being perfectly professional. She had even smiled at him, even if it looked forced. Just as she made to step away from the counter, though, another voice (harder, louder) made him jump.
“You can’t bring pets in here, sir.”
D turned to face the speaker. A man, maybe in his fifties, with a similar build to D himself, though lacking the muscle H had helped him build. A line of fluorescent lighting reflected off his shaved head. He was wearing a white coat over a plain cotton shirt, his name embroidered over his heart. He seemed to be the manager. D smiled and clasped his hands over his chest.
“I, ah… pet?” he echoed.
“I think he means me, Phospho,” Jean-Paul said. The polymorph levered himself onto the counter. D tensed.
“No, no, he’s-” D began, only to be cut off.
“It can’t be on the counter,” he said. The receptionist scurried off to fill D's order.
D’s brow pinched as he stared at the other man. He ran a thumb over his necklace, skin sliding over the shallow grooves that formed the blinded eye.
“Y-you don’t understand. He’s a human,” D said.
“A sophont,” Jean-Paul added, pointing to the pin on his chest that said as much.
“I’m sorry, sir, but it’s still an animal,” the manager said. He narrowed his eyes at D. The old scientist fidgeted, frustration mounting.
“I… no, no, he’s not, he just looks like one.” D stared at the floor. “Please, I’m just here to pick up my medication.”
“Of course, Mr. Pines, but you have to follow the same rules as everyone else.” The man’s voice was dripping with bitterness. “You and that emperor friend of yours.”
“I… I am… f-following the rules…” D mumbled. His fists closed around his necklace.
“Hey, I have a right to be here,” Jean-Paul said, taking a step forward. His voice was firm. “This is discrimination. There are laws against refusing business to polymorphed sophonts. Do you need me to recite them?”
“That’s enough,” the manager said brusquely. He reached forward and plucked Jean-Paul up by the scruff, earning a yelp from the raccoon. “Out you go.”
D slapped his hand atop the man’s shoulder, locking him in place.
”L-let him go!” He snapped. His voice wavered. He could feel his heart dancing in his chest. His hands were shaking in a desperate effort to keep nails from digging into flesh. Get Jean-Paul back. Just get him back. Don’t start a fight, you’ll get in trouble, just get Jean-Paul back.
“Get your hands off me!” the other man hissed. He yanked Jean-Paul away, earning a wince from the scruffed polymorph. “Demon dog-!!”
Fist cracked against jaw, and the man was on the floor. D’s breaths were heaving, too big for his lungs, as he glared down at the downed man. Someone was saying something, yelling something, and there were hands on his arm, pulling him away. Gentle but guiding; back into the heat. D couldn’t tell if he couldn’t tell if he felt too cold or too hot. The world was ringing too loud. Jean-Paul was next to him, a human, guiding D through the malformed crowd of an early weekday afternoon. In a blink, he was a raccoon again, walking slightly in front of D, his tail brushing against his leg.
The two were back on the path to Stanley’s home before D’s nerves steadied enough for him to speak again.
“... I don’t want to go back there,” he said at length.
“You don’t have to,” Jean-Paul assured him. “I’ll find a different pharmacy. One that’s run by less of a dick.” D replied with a soft hum of assent, arms crossed over his chest. Once their destination was in sight, Jean-Paul hopped up on a bench that sat on a strip of well-maintained grass. A sprinkler jutted from the earth like a stalagmite a couple meters away. D looked between the house and his friend, uncertain. Jean-Paul patted the bench, so D sat beside him. The worst of the day’s heat was neutered by the shade.
Jean-Paul handed D a small sketch pad and pencil without needing to be asked. He took them with a small, wordless smile. He began to sketch H, soft and sharp shapes twirling together to form his dearest friend. They were apart for the week, and D missed him terribly. He drew H smiling at the viewer; subdued and dignified, but with a warmth D could practically feel in his fingers. Beside him, Jean-Paul had pulled out his phone. Glancing aside, D noticed the familiar layout and colors of the website they had first met on, years ago.
“What’re you doing?” D asked idly. Light hatching shaded H’s skin, etching the lines of age and expensive fabric onto the paper.
“Just scrolling,” Jean-Paul answered. D looked over again. Pictures of businesses and paragraphs peppered with all-caps sentences rolled across the screen. An amused smile tugged at D’s lips.
“Sharing your frustrations with the world?” he asked. Jean-Paul sighed.
“You got me,” he said. “Thought I might reblog some people’s similar experiences. Add a bit of something about my own.” He twirled his wrist in a searching gesture. “But, you know, coming at it from the side. Keeping myself anonymous by going through them.” D detailed the delicate wisps of H’s hair.
“Anonymous?” he echoed. The word was loaded with a friendly sort of doubt; hundreds of prodding questions wrapped up in one word.
“Yes, I’m aware that my experiences as a sophont raccoon on the internet do make me stand out,” Jean-Paul admitted. “I’m just insisting on anonymity for my own amusement, at this point. That, and so I don’t have another reason to be paranoid about getting hunted down and murdered by strangers.” After a pause, in which concern flickered through D, Jean-Paul added, “that was a joke. I’m doing fine.”
A shrill bark made Jean-Paul jump. D’s nerves were settled enough that he remained in place, but he glared at the errant line the noise had caused him to draw. He rubbed it out with a kneaded eraser (also carried in Jean-Paul’s bag!) as a woman with an Akita Inu trotted over. With the mistake taken care of, D grinned at the dog and retrieved a treat from his non-crumb pocket. He liked to carry treats with him; he never knew when he would be presented with the opportunity to pamper an animal! He knew this one well; his owner walked him around the neighborhood twice a day. D usually caught them at least once, and always gave Peach (that was the dog’s name) a treat.
“Hot out today, huh?” the woman (D had forgotten her name) asked.
“Mmhmm,” D hummed, holding out a treat for Peach. He lapped it up eagerly. The woman leaned over, taking a peek at D’s sketchbook.
“What ya drawin’ today?” she asked. D beamed and held up the sketch for her to see.
“My friend,” he replied.
“Yes,” Jean-Paul added in a deadpan. “They are very good friends. Historically good, even.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen ‘em together when you guys visit Stan,” the woman chuckled. “I wouldn’t call that just friendly, myself.”
“Ah, well, there are other terms,” D said with a shy grin, pulling the sketch pad back toward himself. “I just don’t use them.” Jean-Paul eyed the woman, looking like he was about to say something, when she laughed again. It made something in D squirm, but the sound seemed warm, her expression lacking malice. Peach licked the back of D’s hand.
“Sorry, sorry, you can use whatever labels you want!” she said. “It’s just, you guys are cute. It’s sweet. And you draw him really well!” D felt a blush heating his cheeks; he fiddled with his pencil. There were some people who didn’t seem to find their relationship strange. There were also people who were nice enough not to let their opinion color their interactions with him if they did.
“Ah… thank you,” he said. For multiple things. He ran his fingers over the soft fuzz atop Peach’s round, caramel head.
I needed a cute, nerdy music joke for the next chapter of Tourist Traps, and instead of just describing it like a normal person, I had to make an actual score. Thanks to RobertLovesPi for calculating Pi in Duodecimal so that I didn't have to!
The 26th measure is where Fiddleford walks in, and he immediately knows that.
People of the audience, meet Dolly. Dolly is a species who is most well-known as an Anglerfishes. They are massive (30-50ft) monsters who are sapient and technically live in a society, but which are by nature nonsocial; they interact and speak with other intelligent beings, but have no particular social impulse outside of the desire to mate. Those eyes in dolly's tentacles are her harem.
You are unlikely to ever meet the Dolly shown above. That Dolly, the true Dolly, lives in isolation; if you get close to her, she will eat you. Instead, she is telekinetic, and interacts with the world through a doll or "lure" that she molds to look like whatever she thinks her next mark will want to talk to. Fruit happens to be friends with several Stanford Pineses from different dimensions, so her current doll looks like Ford. This doll is still referred to as Mizz Dolly and uses she/her pronouns, but she doesn't care if you get that right or not, because she could not care less about gender conventions in other species.
Dolly's Doll met @ranchsoda92's Ouroboros character Fruit, took a liking to her, and invited her home to meet the true Dolly, who promptly tried to eat her. This soured the relationship for a while, but Dolly thinks Fruit is great fun, and kept trying to be friends. As a result, Fruit came to visit Dolly four more times before figuring out that she wasn't going to stop. Now, Fruit and Mizz Dolly are still good friends, but Fruit doesn't accept her invitations to come have tea.
Dolly sees no particular distinction between "friend" and "food." She is currently in a maximum-security prison for species that are uniquely difficult to contain, transferred there after a run of internments at successive lower-security prisons. She's in for tax fraud.
Did you know? One of the possible timelines for Domesticated Ford is actually GOOD! Have a look at Good Ending D!Ford! Him getting here involves him being kidnapped to an alien compound and receiving years of mental and physical therapy, supported by Dr. Oleander, Stan and, later on, Pet Guy. And H!Ford, but he’s in his own separate category of fucked up, and needs his own mountain of support. Features of good ending D include:
- Free from Bill! Bill is dead. D helped kill him
- Good health! Through extensive PT (and some alien medicine,) D rarely experiences the sort of constant aches/pains he did before. They still flare up occasionally, but it’s worlds better. He also has some muscle tone now!
- Delusions are gone! This HAS made room for depression, and he has bad days, but he’s able to see the world (and people) clearly now
- Dramatic reduction in symptoms of anxiety, self-loathing and food insecurity! All are still present in one way or another, but again, it’s night and day
- Increased instances of aggressive behavior! This one’s less good, but now that he’s not so disassociated and/or terrified all the time, it sometimes shines through just how desensitized to violence he is. At least the random, uncontrolled breaking of objects is gone! For the most part
- Bill tattoo on his back is blacked out! The black made a coverup too difficult to attempt, so he got the shapes of the tattoos added to and changed. Most of them are moth motifs, and he has a large moth silhouette on his chest, surrounded by smaller ones. He got similar designs on his wrists and ankles, to cover his scars
- Clothes he actually likes! He still has a hard time picking out outfits he likes, or that look good, but with H’s help, he’s put together a wardrobe he’s quite fond of
- Increased executive function skills! They’re still pretty bad, but he’s been working on them, and they’re better than before
- Increased grooming/self care! These are still areas he needs help with, mostly in the form of reminders from Pet Guy, but it’s A LOT better
Anyone who read "Nobody Escapes the All-Seeing Eye," that might start updating again soon. @jellyskink and @alexthebordercollie are letting me play with their toys!
prguitarman
ellievsbear
vaporwave
pixelskylines
