magellanicclouds

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You ever wake up and just

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One of my entries for potluck2024. Got home today and wrote again. It's not a happy piece. Spartan Thorne, grief, and the long process of picking up pieces and looking for answers where there are none.

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No one talks about the mundane grief that comes with navigating estates after losing loved ones. Months or years after the person is gone, and you're still picking up the pieces. Still getting messages, reminders, memories, that come and go as if blown on the wind or personally delivered via Waypoint to let you know you owe someone money. There's no such thing as tying up loose ends when it comes to people's lives. There's always another thread to find, and Thorne has found they will find you and trip you up when you least expect it.

7 million people suffered a fate worse than death in New Phoenix, became the very things Thorne has had to fight, and now he was getting letters about a price hike on a storage unit thousands of miles away.

He had kept his grandmother's house. Grant had been right, it was amazing that he had a physical place to go back to, to remember them by. There had been a will and that saved him some headaches, but it wasn't updated. No one expected an attack on Earth, for the sky to open up and 7 million souls to vanish in the span of an hour. He hadn't expected to find the violin in the garden 6 months later when the city reopened.

He hadn't expected the house unchanged.

Nor had he expected the letters, knick knacks, family memories that weren't his own, and with no clear way forward. His own parents were dead and gone for decades now so the loss wasn't unique, but having to sift through generations of belongings without the full story hurt in a new way.

A storage unit on the outskirts of New Phoenix with artifacts of lives he never knew, barely got to touch, was a new kind of tomb. His grandmother's music, his parents' medals, pictures from his childhood, old toys and books for the grandchildren and their children. Clothes and jewelry and keepsakes and lives lived entirely without him. And dust.

What paper there was was yellowed. Old porcelain cracked and sharp. Dishes he'd never seen before and ones he ate off every holiday. Belongings of relatives long dead before he was born and those who passed when he was small and selfish and wrapped in his own grieving world.

Concrete floors and aluminum doors, passcodes and cheap carts to haul things to and from the transports. His grandmother's name greets him every time he keys the code in to use the elevator. Star 3367 the last four digits of the chatter number she refused to give up and then the pound sign. Welcome back, B. Thorne.

There's the painfully familiar and the horribly unfamiliar. People he doesn't know in pictures and letters, old fashioned print books made out to loved ones who are no longer around. Thorne is alone and there is no one to talk to about this. He was eight years old when his parents and Alluvion were glassed. He was nineteen when his grandfather passed and Gabriel came to the funeral. That was 5 years ago and the last time he saw his grandmother alive.

He can still picture her face, the earrings she wore and the sweaters with the cowled neck she preferred. He has her violin and some recordings. He has the house. It's more than most have. He should be grateful.

But staring up at the corrugated ceiling and the sprinkler system with his ass going numb from the cold concrete floor, Thorne can't find it in himself to keep a brave face. Maybe he should have let Grant tag along.

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*reads your URL*

Oh yeah. Path Kethona.

Which Magellanic Cloud?

The big one or the little one?

Full honesty - I wish I was so clever to have chosen this url as a deep lore Halo reference, considering the content of my blog. But it was actually just a happy accident. I had originally wanted to use a name I otherwise go by - Volantis (genitive form of the constellation Piscis Volans; represented by my icon: a celestial flying fish), but it was already taken. What got me to magellanicclouds though was a song. 'Large Magellanic Cloud' is the title of a gorgeous piece of music from a computer game I enjoyed for a long time called Starbound, and it began playing on a randomized winamp playlist while I was thinking of an alternative name to the ones I couldn't have. So to answer the question: the big one. ' v ' Greg Bear and I are high-fiving in another life.

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Quick sketch of my favourite Forgotten Realms character - current Lord of the Dead, Kelemvor Lyonsbane. When he was still mortal he was a werepanther. Such as it goes.

All the pain he suffered in life couldn't take away his love and compassion and I think that's very cash money of him.

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What the hell, it's my blog and I can post snippets since the brain is letting writing happen.

Roland's chapter of Morbid Curiosity is going to be very inspired by a certain bot and construct dynamic duo. Also vocab stolen from Gaia HFW

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"I'm not human. I'm made from mapping a human brain and using that neural imprint as a basis for my heuristic matrix. I think like a human only in that I can problem solve and create solutions from extrapolated data. I'm a fancy management system with access to all of recorded history available in various archives stored on this ship. I still need context."

Miller doesn't look convinced.

"I can read every word written in every language in the various sociology, psychology, and anthropology modules, but without human emotional context, without examples, I am observing and making informed estimations a million times a second."

And I'm trying my best, Roland doesn't add.

"So you're guessing?" Miller looks.... Roland doesn't know. He's got his brow furrowed and he said the words both like a dig at Roland and a realization. His vitals are still elevated and he keeps chewing his lip.

Miller fidgets. That's something Roland has observed. But this Miller, here and now, is self-destructive and unpredictable. This Miller has new human behaviors not exhibited in front of Roland before. Not aimed at Roland before. He's stuck making guesses when he is on the other end of the conflict. Miller is both his enemy and ally in this. They are each other's confidants.

"Guessing is reductive, but sure. I'm making highly complex guesses based on all the variables available to me."

"So when you-" Miller takes forever to choose his words.

Roland already has a good guess of what he's taking about. There's only one thing it could be.

"-when you grabbed them. You were guessing."

It hurts.

The way he says it. The memory it brings back to the forefront of Roland's processor, the one he'd been trying to quash down and run from. The ache in his very being at the reminder of the harm he'd done. The exchange he made. One dying Spartan for another.

He bears the brunt of Miller's accusation for five whole seconds. It burns. Perhaps Miller isn't the only self-destructive party.

"I made a choice. I took a calculated risk and now we're here."

He gestures with his avatar, one hand motioning out from his chest to Miller's.

Miller who turns and paces. His hand goes to his pocket again.

Roland knows there's a lighter in there, old fashioned make of metal and accelerant. Along with contraband cigarettes that Miller has been smoking at an alarming rate.

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"Miller can't sleep and Roland doesn't need to."

Really loved working on this moody piece of local chew toy, Jared Miller, and his new roommate Roland, commissioned by @poisonheadcrabsalesman ' v '

Thank you so much again, Stumpy!

(Quote is from Morbid Curiosity, written by Stumpy)

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Sketch commission headshot icon completed for @kogo-dogo of their Morrowind character, Dasrazel.

Thank you so much! ' v '

My Ko-Fi

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@fablepatron is our next potluck spotlight! They're an awesome artist who bravely toils in the mines of realism and sci-fi armor. Not the DeMarco guy and potentially Orange-Yellow colorblind, they will commit to a bit harder than anyone else. Check them out on tumblr and ko-fi!

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@thehushedcasket is our next spotlight! He's the awesome guy behind @siofra-river and @haloreferences and more! A versatile artist, Niles is always experimenting and pushing the boundaries and changing up his style. Check him out here on tumblr!

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@magellanicclouds is an absolute gem! Starting off our spotlight series strong with a master of anatomy and one of the sweetest people I've had the luck to meet! You can find her here on tumblr as well as her ko-fi.

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At the End of the Game

A short writing contribution for Potluck 2024!

I'm kind of obsessed with the fucked up, sibling-adjacent relationship that John, Cortana, and Miranda share. I got the impression, too, that they knew each other before the awards ceremony in Halo 2, so this explores some of that.

Halsey is not the Spartans' mom, but she sacrificed her daughter to give them the care and attention she was not giving her. Cortana is not flesh-and-blood, but she came from Halsey, so what does that make her? Her sister, her daughter, her clone? Miranda should be the easiest to define, but her relationship with her mother tests the tension between biological truth, and when neglect negates any claim to parenthood. In Halsey's efforts to spare them, to keep them close and preserve them, she failed them all.

John stepped through the hall, aware of how his footsteps shook the delicate equipment even out of armor. In the bowels of the lab, he would find Halsey’s office. Typically, she could be found around a table, deep in thought, working through something with Déjà. Her office was typically reserved for briefings or bad news or both, and John readied himself for anything. As he turned the corner, he stopped short. 

A girl. She was short, with a brown bob and brown eyes to match, deep and severe for a child. To John, she seemed impossibly young to be in a place like this, but he could also not recall the last time he interacted with a child. John did not have a typical childhood, nor a typical adolescence. His frame of reference was skewed by his own experience as a young, augmented teen with shatter-proof bones and a body that did not match the roundness of his face. Certainly, she was too young to be military. His jaw tightened. Halsey swore that the SPARTAN-II recruiting process was a last resort. If something about that changed, he wanted to know. 

"Who are you?" the girl asked, before he could ask her the same. 

"I'm John." 

Out of habit, he nearly rattled off his rank and superlatives that the people who wanted something from him were always looking for, but she was someone different. 

"You're waiting for Halsey?" 

"Yes." You didn't tell me your name. 

"Well, wait your turn."

John’s eyebrows perked at her curt response. She was either not as young as she looked, or sharp beyond her years. She was toying with him, looking for answers that she herself wouldn't share. She knew more than him, or, at least, wanted him to think she did.  He didn't understand why she was playing mind games, but he understood them. 

"Okay," John said impassively. He was an unwilling player, but he liked to win. 

"Why are you here?" 

"Same as you," he said, nodding to the door. 

"But why? What is she to you?”

“You don’t know?” The ghost of a smirk tugged the side of his mouth. 

She frowned. She got down here somewhere, knew more than a civilian would. But she didn’t know everything.

"What makes you so special?" 

John half swallowed. He knew the response he was supposed to give, been trained to give. If she were military, he would tell her it was classified and move on. But she was not military, not quite a civilian. She was something else that he couldn’t place, and until he recognized the theater he was in, a typical answer wouldn’t work. 

"I'm not sure what you mean,” he replied, still probing. 

"Why you? Over me?" 

His brows notched. This was getting stranger. "Who are you?" 

The words came out before he could stop them. She opened her mouth to speak, but the door to Halsey’s office slid open. If it weren’t for his augmentations, John wouldn’t have noticed how Dr. Catherine Halsey stiffened in the doorway. Her lab coat seemed to swallow her more every time he saw her, despite her larger-than-life reputation. 

"Miranda." Dr. Halsey blanched. "John."

The girl—Miranda—unceremoniously handed over a data pad. Haltingly, Dr. Halsey took it from her. 

"Permission slip. I need you to sign before I go back home."

Halsey read over the data pad. 

"Harmony? For two weeks?" 

"It's camp. Lots of people do it."

"And your father?"

"He won't be home when I get back."

Halsey's gaze shifted up and to the left, remembering. Then she shook her head. "Harmony is too far. There was a Covenant freighter detected in that system two years ago. It's not safe."

"Because of one ship, two years ago?"

"One ship that we know of."

"You’re making excuses. You just like telling me no.” Miranda’s cheeks began to redden. Her lips curled over her teeth. 

Halsey's eyes flickered to John. "Why don't you come inside? We can talk—."

"What difference does it make to you?" Miranda interrupted. "If I'm gone on Harmony or I'm gone with dad, I'm still gone. If you wanted to control me, you shouldn’t have given me away."

The doctor flinched like she'd been stricken. The girl crossed her arms, and John noticed something strikingly familiar about the challenge in her eyes.

"That's different,”  Halsey murmured. “At least I know you're safe with your father." 

John remembered. It was Jorge who noticed first, though he was never one for gossip. He’d kept it to himself until the tension and paranoia in the lead up to their augmentations began to eclipse reason–as the date drew nearer,  the trainees had begun to murmur about Halsey’s absence. Some attributed it to shame, that she knew the augs would fail, and that she could not face them. But Jorge was one of the oldest Spartans. He had—or used to have—a younger sister, and he remembered the way his mother looked, in those days. 

"Are you signing?" 

John had seen Dr. Halsey stand up to men twice her size, to ONI, to admirals with chips on their shoulders. She never hesitated to bite back at her rivals, or to defend her position. But her hands trembled as she signed her name on the dotted line. The moment she handed the data pad back, Miranda turned to leave. 

She regarded John for a moment. “Being her favorite isn’t what you think it is.” 

Before John could respond, she was on her way. 

"Miranda," Halsey called, "I want to keep discussing this. When do you go back?" 

"You don't know?" She rounded the corner, and disappeared. 

John and Halsey were left in silence. He swallowed. He wasn’t equipped for this. He should have excused himself the moment they started speaking, but something kept him there. Halsey seemed more vulnerable here than in a war zone. 

"I apologize, John. I...I didn't think that would go that way." Halsey’s mouth pulled into a tight line, regaining her composure. "Come in."

The room was too small, but it was all they could spare, given the circumstances. Johnson came up with some excuse. A quick briefing, and then back to the aftermath of Halo’s destruction. The briefing before the briefing, really, which Lord Hood pretended he was unaware of. The truth before she was given ONI’s version, a version she would see right through, John was sure. His shirt collar pinched the sides of his neck, his dress uniform too starch-stiff to tug loose. It was uncomfortable. It was the least he could do.

John let Cortana do the talking. She knew the most, and besides, she was always better with words. Miranda Keyes stared into Cortana’s avatar. The blue light reflected off her face, revealing shadows beneath her eyes. She hadn't said anything while the artificial intelligence recounted what happened on the Halo ring. What happened to Captain Keyes. What happened to her father. Instead, her erudite gaze passed between Cortana and John.

"Your father was a hero. Is a hero," Cortana concluded.

Long silence stretched between them. Despite what she'd just been told, her expression remained cool and unblinking. After tense seconds, Miranda leaned over the table, fingers clasped.

"Another one of my mother's pawns, aren’t you?" she breathed, nodding at Cortana.

Cortana's hologram flickered. When she reappeared, she stood straighter. The binary code that made up her image rushed down in rivulets.

"Ma'am?"

"That's okay," Miranda said, regarding them both. "I am, too."

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Morbid Curiosity

The invasion of the Infinity by Prometheans and M’dama’s troops left its scars on all of the crew, but two members are hiding under the weight of secrets and it’s eating away at them both. 

Warnings for descriptions of the aftermath of AI possession on bodies, minor character death, description of a character having a panic attack, mentions of blood and injuries.

Technically a followup to Boarding Action and Spray n Pray. Part 3ish of our Brain Bleed verse

Keep reading

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Hey there! It's the second annual potluck! We're going for two weeks this time! It's the same as last year and open to everyone.

Are you interested in participating in those cool events people organize, but struggle to fit them in your schedule? Check this out!

What is it?

It's an open event that's low stakes, low effort, and lets everyone bring something to the table. Instead of doing a gift exchange or limiting the topic to one fandom, we've decided to throw a potluck!

Make something new, bring something old back, or comment and reblog. It's about having fun and uplifting each other. We're going to use the #potluck2024 to have people show off.

Who can participate?

It's open to everyone: Artists, Gif Makers, Editors, Writers, and Lurkers.

What do I bring?

Whatever you want! Make something for yourself, bring something to attack others with, comment on that art/fic you love revisiting, make recs, gifs, art, words, edits, you name it! WIPs welcome!

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if you're feeling powerless right now—and god knows I am—here's a reminder you can donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, the Trans Law Center, Gaza Soup Kitchen, the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, and hundreds of other charities that will work to mitigate the damage that has been and will continue to be inflicted

life continues. we still have the capacity to do good, important work. that matters

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Name: Kellath (Kellathriel Stillnight) Wood Elf, Doomguide Paladin

Oath: Oath of Vengeance

Deity/Order/etc: Kelemvor, Lord of the Dead - The Great Guide

Additional: Born a child of Silvanus in a Druid Circle in the Misty Forest. He was the only survivor of a raid that ended in his Circle slaughtered. He sought answers from Silvanus, but received silence. Taking pity on him, a Fae creature led him to the steps of an isolated Temple of Kelemvor to seek guidance. After years of study, he underwent the divine rites of a Doomguide, and is powerfully devoted to Kelemvor. He is good natured and calm, often smiling, occasionally flirtatious, but extremely dedicated to his god, tenants, and faith. He underwent an Oath of Vengeance to aid the ignored, lost, and forgotten, and commits to every pursuit, showing no mercy. The tattoo from his lip down his chin is a mark of his Kelemvorite rites, and is made with ink he ground and poured himself - it contains ashes from his deceased family's bones.

Loves: Though often strict and serious, he is multitudes - He appreciates good drink, a good laugh, and quiet reading. Orange sunlight at the end of the day. Rain and snow. Stargazing and bathing in waterfalls. Meaningful, but casual, intimacy.

Hates: Dishonesty and lack of conviction. Uncharitable behaviour. Practitioners of Necromancy. And though he doesn't 'hate' them, he has no appreciation for large cities, finery or excess.

BG3 PALADIN ROUNDUP!

Look, I love me a paladin. I love my paladin, I love other people’s paladins. If you have a paladin Tav (or Durge!) share them with me?

I’ll start!

Name: Demagh (Dem) Tav

(Bronze) Dragonblooded sorcerer/Paladin, 1/2 drow and the other half is orc/elf/dragon/human. Yeah.

Oath: Ancients

Deity/Order/etc: Serves the Order of the Silver Dark, followers of the syncretic Eilistraee/Vhaeraun “Masked Lady”

Additional: romanced Halsin, will never lecture you about mushroom based necromancy, ex-husband was a bhaalspawn. Terrible with money and tendency to give away most of his stuff to people he thinks need it more. Makes some breathtakingly terrible decisions with his dick. Not actually religious, but his god believes in HIM, so that’s Good enough.

Loves: his brothers, animals of all sorts.

Hates: the zhentarim, the cult of bhaal, anyone who abuses power

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You will be my watchful gaze. My guiding step. My quiet fury. My blooded knuckles.

Your pursuits - endless. Your judgements - final. Your promises - ironclad.

And when you grow weary, ward, listen for my voice, whisper thin on your last breath as I welcome you home.