Important Scientific Inquiry What’s Your Most Deranged Opinion On Cereal

sometimes you need dialogue tags and don't want to use the same four

Dear Sirs.

SCP-682's powers are metatextual. He's unkillable because the story says he is nearly unkillable and no solution would be satisfying. His nickname is 'the very hard to destroy reptile' for rigour's sake. You don't have to be Grant Morrison to put this together.

The solution is to alter the narrative so that there is a means of killing him that is satisfying. Unfortunately, only full-on apocalypse scenarios or the use of SCP-682 as a jobber for an even worse threat would fill that criteria.

So unless you want to unleash something even more tiresome, like the Black Moon or the Scarlet King or the Yellow Submarine or whatever other color-coded doomsday monster you have on tap, you're just wasting jumpsuit filling doing anything at all.

The easy alternative is to simply stop trying to kill him.

Just focus on holding him in the most boring, routine ways possible, rendering him increasingly less interesting and thus reducing the time between stories focused on him and thus, the resulting breaches and disasters.

Or you can do what we did. If you aren't chicken.

Ours wasn't a rotted lizard. It was a sort of mummified horse the size of a 1996 Volkswagen Harlequin, and it was a she, but otherwise same deal. Regeneration. Vat of acid. Mass casualties. Violent opposition to the use of breath mints. Endemic to all life. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

We figured out the how it worked, and we speed-ran the whole concept, hurling that vile beast through a veritable plinko-fall of thousands of extermination tests and controlled rampages until there was literally nothing left to do with the 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse'.

And we trust the populace enough to not lie to them for 'their own good'. Because its funny? Sure. Profitable? Absolutely (don't worry, shareholders!)! But never for 'their own good.'

So we turned those experiments into a 17 season reality television program hosted by Greg Kinnear and force-fed them to a sludge-hungry populace.

There were 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' calendars, coffee mugs, t-shirts, two different animated spin-offs running at the same time for some reason, four movies starring Chris Pratt as the voice of the horse, an ongoing sketch on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' "acid bath" sour candy flavored yogurt in a tube, a series of increasingly inadequately playtested gameboy cartridges, a 27-issue limited series from Image comics, and adorable plush mummified murder-horse plushes with little suction cups on their red-felt hooves so they can stare balefully out the back of your station wagon at that ASSHOLE Kevin in his souped up Trans AM who does not understand the concept of a safe following distance, and you JUST want to run him off the road with the magno-lifters and recreate the scene from Lost Highway with Robert Loggia, but "you can't use the magno-lifters for revenge" because it's "against OSHA regulations" and "technically assault!"

And once the first shipment of 'More-Than-One-Way-to-Fail-to-Kill-a Horse' Funko Pops hit store shelves, the creature's cultural cache cratered so hard that it became a parody of itself so predictable it's "containment" is now a Universal Studios attraction with two failed executions and a containment breach each night, with double shows on Saturdays.

Now, it was a rocky ride getting there, especially for Utah (projections say you'll get those House seats back in two, maybe three, generations at most, don't you worry!) but we've proven that even if it isn't killable, you can, in fact, beat a dead horse.

Hope this helps.

Humbert, Outreach Liaison Melinoë Laboratories "Hoc non veniet ad nos mordax"

does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver

No, I’m not normal about anything, ever

Vintage Handbags modified with crochet “mold” by Elin Thomas

I love you rainbow hair I love you red eyes I love you heterochromia I love you eye scars I love you demon/angel hybrids I love you “cringey” OC’s I love you Mary Sues I love you self-inserts I love you wings and tails and horns and sharp teeth I love you people who just want to create and make stuff that makes them happy

Compiled some basic information I know about drawing fat characters for beginners since I've been seeing more talk about absence of really basic traits in a lot of art lately.

Morpho Fat and Skin Folds on Archive.org (for free!)

remember kids

Artist 🎨: @vhsdogs

how fitting is it that i went stargazing right after this

The Devil's Wheel

The Devil’s Wheel

“If you say yes,” said the Devil, “a single man, somewhere in the world, will be killed on the spot. But three million dollars is nothing to sneeze at, missus.”

“What’s the catch?” You squint at him suspiciously over the red-and-black striped carnival booth. You’re smarter than he thinks you are– a devil deal always has a catch, and you’re determined to catch him before he catches you. 

“Well, the catch is that you’ll know you did it. And I’ll know, too. And the big man upstairs’ll know, I ‘spose. But what’s the chariot of salvation without a little sin to grease the wheels? You can repent from your mansion balcony, looking out at your waterfront views, sipping a bellini in your eighties. But hey, it’s up to you– take my deal or leave it.”

The Devil lights a cigar without a match, taking an inhale, and blowing out a cloud of deep, sweet-smelling tobacco laced faintly with something that reminds you of rotten eggs. If he does have horns, they’re hidden under his lemon yellow carnival barker hat. He wears a clean pinstripe suit and a red bowtie. No cloven hooves, no big pointy fork, but you know he’s the Devil without having to be told. Though he did introduce himself.

He’s been perfectly polite. 

You know you need the money. He knows it too, or he wouldn’t have brought you here, to this strange dark room, whisking you away from your new house in the suburbs as fast as a wish. Now you’re in some sort of warehouse, where all the windows seem to be blacked out– or, maybe, they simply look out into pitch darkness, though it is the middle of the day. A single white spotlight shines down on the two of you. 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” you say. “I bet the man is someone I know, right? My husband?”

“Could be,” the Devil says with a pointed grin. “That’s for the wheel to decide.”

He steps back and raises his black-gloved hand as the tarp flies off of the large veiled object behind him. The light of the carnival wheel nearly blinds you. Blinking lights line the sides. Jingling music blares over speakers you can’t see. The flickering sign above it reads:

THE DEVIL’S WHEEL

“Step right up and claim your fortune,” the Devil barks. “Spin the wheel and pay the price! Or leave now, and a man keeps his life.”

You examine the wheel. 

The gambling addict

The doting boyfriend

The escaped convict

The dog dad

The secretive sadist

“These are all the possible men I can kill?” You ask, thumbing the side of the wheel. It rolls smoothly in your hand. Then you quickly stop, realizing that this might constitute a spin under the Devil’s rules. He flashes a smile at you, watching you halt its motion. 

“Addicts, convicts, murderers– plenty of terrible options for you to land on, missus!”

“Serial wife murderer?”

“Now who would miss a fellow like that? I can guarantee that the whole world would be better off without him in it, and that’s a fact.”

The hard worker

The compulsive liar

The animal torturer

The widower

The desperate businessman

The failed musician

The beloved son

“My husband is on here too,” you say. 

“Your husband Dave, yes. The wheel has to be fair, otherwise there’s simply no stakes.”

“I know what’s gonna happen,” you say, crossing your arms. “This wheel is rigged. I’m gonna spin it around, and it’ll go through all the killers and stuff, and then it’s gonna land on my husband no matter what.”

“Why, I would never disgrace the wheel that way,” the Devil says, wounded. “I swear on my own mother’s grave– may she never escape it. In fact, take one free spin, just to test it out! This one’s on me, no death, no dollars.”

You cautiously reach up to the top of the wheel and feel its heaviness in your hand. The weight of hundreds of lives. But also, millions of dollars. You pull the wheel down and let it go.

Clackity-clackity-clackity-clackity

Round and round it goes. 

The college graduate

The hockey fan

The Eagle Scout

The cold older brother

The charming younger brother

The two-faced middle child

The perfectionist

The slob 

Your husband Dave

Clackity-clackity-clackity.

Finally, the wheel lands on a name. A title, really.

The photographer

“Hmm, tough, missus, but that’s the way of the wheel. But hey, look! Your husband is allllll the way over here,” he points with his cane to the very bottom of the wheel, all the way on the other side from where the arrow landed. “As you can see, it’s not rigged. The wheel truly is random.”

“So… there really isn’t another catch?” You ask. 

“Isn’t it enough for you to end a man’s life? You need a steeper price? If you’re really such a glutton for punishment, I’ll gladly re-negotiate the terms.”

“No, no… wait.” You examine the wheel, glancing between it and the Devil.

You really could use that three million dollars. Newly married, new house, you and your husband’s combined debt– those student loans really follow you around. He’s quite a bit older than you, and even he hasn’t paid them off yet, to the point where the whole time you were dating you watched him stress out about money. You had to have a small, budget wedding, and a small, budget honeymoon. Three million dollars could be big for the two of you. You could re-do your honeymoon and go somewhere nice, like Hawaii, instead of just taking two weeks in Atlantic City. You deserve it. 

Even so, do you really want to kill an innocent photographer? Or an innocent seasonal allergy sufferer? Or an innocent blogger? Just because you don’t know or love these people doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t. 

The cancer survivor

The bereaved

The applicant

Some of these were so vague. They could be anyone, honestly. Your neighbors, your father, your friends…

The newlywed

The ex-gifted kid

The uncle

The Badgers fan

“My husband is a Badgers fan,” you say.

“How lovely,” the Devil says. 

Then it hits you.

Of course.

The weightlifter.

The careful driver.

The manager.

The claustrophobe.

Your husband Dave lifts weights at the gym twice a month. You wouldn’t call him a pro, but he does it. He also drives like he’s got a bowl of hot soup in his lap all the time, because he’s afraid of being pulled over. He just got promoted to management at his company, and he takes the stairs to his seventh-story office because he hates how small and cramped the elevator is.

“I get your game,” you announce. “You thought you could get me, but I figured you out, jackass!” “Oh really? What is my game, pray tell?” The Devil responds, leaning against his cane.

“All these different titles– they’re all just different ways to describe the same guy. My husband isn’t one notch on the wheel, he’s every notch. No matter what I land on, Dave dies. I’m wise to your tricks!” 

The Devil cackles. 

“You’re a clever one, that’s for sure. I thought you’d never figure it out.”

“Thanks but no thanks, man,” you say with a triumphant smirk. “I’m no rube. No deal. Take me back home.”

“As you wish, missus,” the Devil says. He snaps his fingers, and you’re gone, back to your brand-new house with your new husband. “Don’t say I never tried to help anyone.”