This Should Not Have Gagged Me As Hard As It Did

the house i grew up in was a little bit of a fixer upper. for the first 19 years, my dad just sort of slowly fixed it, but pretty early on in college, he came into a large amount of cash and decided to just do the whole thing at once. so he rented a different house for like, 2 months that was just a block down from us, and then got a bunch of contractors to fix original house ASAP. it was kind of crazy, but it compressed many years of work into like, three months.

the sitting in a new house for three months was actually pretty fun. and i shouldnt really complain at all (staying at home while in college is a sweet deal)

but.

but. my parents are fairly hard of hearing, and their bedroom in the old house was in the furthest possible annex from everyone else. wheras in the rental it was just in the middle of the house. so without going into details, i was extremely aware that my parents were having sex like, eight times a day. my dad had just retired and i guess they were celebrating, which is great i guess, having parents that really like each other is way better than the alternative, but also, it did make me envy their deafness. i kept headphones on for so long that year i got literal ear calluses.

at the same time, the house my buddy from the shoe incident grew up in flooded. turbo flooded. they burst like, two pipes at once and the damage was so severe they had to redo all the flooring and all the drywall. his family actually had homeowners insurance, which is either incredible or suspicious for a family that used the drained pool in their backyard to store rusty scrap metal. so insurance was handling the work, but in the meantime, they were crammed into a very small hotel room space. we did the math on it then, it averaged about 80 square feet a person.

so one day i got home, and i was chilling, and then six rolled around, and apparently six o'clock was sex o'clock because my parents decided to flex their cardio. i grabbed my headphones and prayed that god would do for me what he did for beethoven, but that failed to work, and then seven rolled around and my parents were still at it, which again, very impressive, but was pushing me to swap out judas for mozart in those prayers. there's a definitive point where you stop praying to be deaf and instead pray that god could take you to a nice field and pop you like a gore-balloon.

i was about five minutes away from that point when my friend called me and basically said i have been stuck in a 500 square foot space with 6 people and i didn't have many marbles to start but what few i had are gone. please. if we are friends, if we were ever friends, take me out of here just for a moment.

and i was still pretty mad at him, but i had pity on the poor guy. also helped that i was desperate to leave the house. so i drove the chickenshitmobile to the hotel and i picked him up, and then we did our normal hangout activity, which was go to food city and buy produce. his normal house was, on a good day, nasty, and his backyard was, as i stated before, mostly used to store mosquito larvae and rusty metal, so what we'd always done before was just walk to the grocery store a half block away and leer at vegetables.

so we did that and it was like old times again. they had some radishes that were expired, so i could buy like, literally an entire grocery bag of them for about $5. so i did. i really like radishes. he got a coconut because he liked fruit and beating things with hammers.

which probably would've been great except we didn't have a hammer, so instead we spent about 30 minutes stomping itike it owed us money. when it finally cracked we cheered like we just got the winning touchball at the superdome and then he ate some of the flesh, and i ate some of the radishes, and we admired the black, starless sky of the city before i took him back to his hotel room.

and then we got pulled over.

i forgot to turn my lights on because the street all around the food city was ludicrously well lit. so it went from being pretty bright, to pretty bright and flashy, then i pulled into a parking lot and a cop came to ask us for IDs which is where everything went to shit:

i’d forgotten my license at home. 

the cop was was actually kind of chill about it - he said he could get by with just an address. except i did not know my address. i hadn't memorized the new one yet. so i told the cop, my house is getting remodeled, i don't know my address right now. and then he went to my friend, and my friend said the exact same thing. house getting remodeled, staying somewhere else, no address, sowwwwwwy.

now the cop genuinely didn't know what to do. he went back to his car, and i was stressed that i was about to get into HUGE trouble so i started eating the radishes and my buddy started eating more of his coconut, and we actually managed to eat like a quarter of both before the cop came back. we ate enough produce that he could smell something weird in the air, and he asked what the smell was, and i said radishes, and my buddy said coconut, and the cop said which, and then we produced a large bag of droopy radishes and an absolutely brutalized coconut, and the cop was just like

so my buddy tried explaining how he was sharing a 500 square foot apartment with 6 people and wanted a fruit he could fight with power tools, and i tried explaining how i'd actually tried buying my parents like, board games and puzzles and stuff but nothing worked - the only thing my parents seemed to like doing right now was each other, and we both went on long enough and pathetically enough that the cop eventually went:

ok. stop.

and we stopped.

and he said do you know why i pulled you over?

and i said, because of my headlights, and my friend (who is hispanic) and the cop both looked at me like like i was the dumbest person in the entire world. and then the cop said no. that's why i'm allowed to pull you over. i checked your car because this neighborhood has a terrible sex trafficking problem, and i pull over every car i can to make sure no one is buying or selling sex. and you two are obviously doing neither. now i could give you, like, four tickets right now, but that would do nothing to make this area safer, so just turn your lights on, go home, drive safe, and try to be less stupid in the future.

and i said okay but i was thinking, you know, damn, this is just how i live man, i don't have a hidden third gear i can shift into. people can't just get smarter because it would be convenient. it's always convenient to be smart. i am literally trying my best.

but i didn't say anything because i was, slowly, learning how to filter what i said. instead i nodded and the cop left then i dropped my buddy off, and the last thing he said was said he owed me for responding to his SOS. I said he owed me for a lot of things, and he agreed that was true. then i drove home with my lights on, 5 under the speed limit, and arrived to a peaceful quiet home. I could’ve wept with relief but instead I went to bed.

the relief was short lived. i was woken up at 6 am by my parents. i swore, and then i prayed, and when i did not explode, i swore again. then i got up to make breakfast before my first class.

ccwau Lizzies vamp outfits are so much fun. I love her aaaaaaahhh. Bampires needed a bit of a redo even tho it was just a month.

Might open commisions soon if I have time.

Okay so @gtwscratch I’m definitely not hyperfixated on your project X au, and I definitely didn’t spend all of last night coming up with preppy headcannons for your au. <3

anyway here are some of my favourites!

[AGES]

Grian - 20

Scar - 20

BigB - 19

Joel - 19

Lizzie - 18

Ren - 18

Mumbo - 17

Martyn - 16

Scott - 16

Impulse - 16

Pearl - 15

Gem - 15

Etho - 15

Cleo - 13

Jimmy - 12

Tango - 12

Skizz - 11

Bdubs - 10

[SPECIES/SIDE EFFECTS]

Grian - He’s avian/watcher, looks mostly the same.

Scar - Part Iron Golem for his strength! The veins in his arms are silver and are very visible. He walks using a cane :D

Joel - Raccoon

Lizzie - Looks mostly normal, but she doesn’t have any pupils or iris’

Ren - If he transforms to long, attributes of the person he transforms into burns into his skin, so he has attributes of some of his friends!

Martyn - Looks mostly the same, but the tips of his ears are red and his hairs pretty messy

Scott - Little chicken wings sprouting from his back, ankles or head :D

Impulse - His veins glow purple from teleporting to much, as well as his scalera (white part of the eyes) turned black.

Cleo - She looks pretty normal for a zombie, js always stressed.

Jimmy - He forgets how to reappear sometimes, and sometimes different parts of him don’t fully go to full transparency

Tango - Blaze rods are extinguished due to the frost walker, and his hands and feet are covered in blue shards of ice.

Bdubs - Mostly the same, has a comfort blanket djakdhajjsjs, eyebags from nightmares (MY POOR BABY)

Big B - eyes on his arms, cheeks, forehead, back, legs etc. All glow yellow.

[HEADCANNONS <333]

Due to Scar getting iron pumped into his arms, and not his legs his legs forget how to work due to his brain having to concentrate on his arms so much, so the lab gave him a cane to walk, and set up a command to make him lighter and easier to carry (his friends can carry him around too!)

The other seasons are all just silly bedtime stories Mumbo wrote before he died :( Every time a younger member gets sad, they read one! (Imagine there’s way less angst and it’s just sillies instead)

Scar never joked around after the mumbo incident, but when Bdubs started calling Etho and Cleo his parents, Scar pretended they were his parents to, to cheer up Bdubs. That’s how the family started!

Tango and Jimmy have little teenage crushes on each other, Grian and Scar say they’re soulmates and Joel promised to marry Lizzie once they escaped!

When Cleo tries to get Mumbo and Skizz to act normal again, she gets Mumbo to write and Skizz to play with Bdubs (It was caused a few accidents, and Cleo always fixes it, hence why Bdubs views Cleo as his Mum/Mom!)

Ren gives Martyn tips on how to block out background sound, due to being part dog, he always had that struggle when he was younger.

Pearl likes Gem a lot because she can tell Pearl about the sky while astral projecting!

Anyways, that’s it, hope you like them!! :D

EXACTLY!!!!!!

@tsippi

Third life if everyone had only one life

Grian didn't mean to kill Scar, he just meant to scare him so the prank happens and Scar is immediately out of the game.

As Skizz's death had nothing to do with Scar his death remains, Skizz is the second one out.

BdoubleO still falls to his death while building his base, he's the third one out.

Joel and Jimmy don't die yet because even they know better then to risk their only life in Dare to Flare...a game which probably isn't even ever a thing in an hardcore server.

As Jimmy is still alive he does set off Grians trap killing himself and Ren, they are the fourth and fifth players out.

Without Ren and to a smaller extent Skizz Red Winter™ never comes and a grieving Scott is left to seek revenge with Grian as his main target... The timeline splits severely.

Without Scar and Monopoly mountain Grian likely stays with BigB.

Martyn trying to get revenge for Ren probably teams with Scott in trying to get Grian.

That arrow game where Tango AND Etho die realistically doesn't happen with only one life.

Joel maybe still gets in a fight with Cleo and dies though probably in a different way but let's assume he doesn't.

Without Scar or Jimmy and with Grian and Scott in opposite teams Etho doesn't get shot.

Cleo still dies when trying to get Martyn, I'm almost sure of it. They are the sixth player out.

Monopoly Mountain vs Dogwarts never happens... Instead It's Grian and BigB vs Scott and Martyn with some other players on each side...based on characterisation I'm going to say Joel goes with Grian and Impulse with Martyn... I am unsure about Etho...

It's impossible that nobody dies, considering everyones pvp ability BigB is probably the seventh player out.

Tango is probably killed soon after much like in the og timeline though in a different way considering Ren is not here to kill him... Making him either eight or ninth out. Why? Because Martyn still dies to the skeleton which means it only depends on who dies first.

Impulse is never killed by Scar since he's out, however he still dies as Grian would still plan a surprise attack making him the tenth one out.

Joel being so unhinged means that even without Ren he still dies in the fight, possibly soon after Impulse, he's the eleventh out.

Grian (and possibly Etho depending on which side he took) are likely unable to kill Scott, so he lives.

Etho still dies around this time like in the og timeline as well, likely trying to kill Scott if on Grians side. He's the Twelfth player out of the game putting him in third place.

Scott and Grian are the only ones lefts, Scott likely wants a fair fight, so does Grian. Neither of them trows the game, It's a 1 v 1... And between the two of them Scott is the best equipped to win.

The first winner is The Star.

(Last Life)

Seems like it.

Food for thought

I would love love love to see the Traffic Life Trivia as Um Actually questions. I know it wouldn’t have worked given the nature of Um Actually, but I can imagine a bonus episode where they just answer Triaffic Life trivia questions in the Um Actually format, where three players are called to compete against each other to answer questions in rounds and the winners then compete against each other in a tournament style. Cherrifire hosts it. Martyn yells “GET IN THE COMMENTS” every time he isn’t given points for his answers. The players who are not actively answering questions are behind the camera reacting to answers. Every time the answer to a really hard question is revealed, you can hear everyone else in the background going “OH COME ON” “HOW WOULD WE HAVE KNOWN THAT”. Sometimes the players behind the camera try to pantomime the answers. Without remorse, Cleo, who watches Dropout, keeps stealing answers from players who keep forgetting to say “Um Actually”.

“So let me get this straight. We’re here to rescue a princess.”

“That’s right.”

“At the request of a princess.”

“Right again.”

“And you, who will be leading the expedition, are also a princess.”

“You’re very perceptive.”

“How big is your royal family, again?“

“We don’t have one.”

“But–“

“We overthrew our monarchy centuries ago, but we kept most of the titles around. The rank of ‘princess’ is held by the directors in charge of various civil service branches.“

“Huh. And the princess we’re rescuing today is in charge of…?”

“Public sanitation.”

“The Lord of Death’s Dominion kidnapped your public sanitation director?”

“We think he’s a little confused.”