#Bio-Well 2.0

[phoenixgrl1412]

Jazz is Damian's bio sibling, not Danny

I see tons of Demon Twin AUs, and I love them, but I started to wonder about what the universe would look like if Jazz was Damian's sister.

Not sure what her birth name in this AU would be (Yasmin? Yasmina? Something else) so I'm going to just refer to her as Jazz.

I'm thinking that Jazz was attempt #1 at getting the perfect heir, and for whatever reason, she was deemed to be inferior. Is there something actually wrong with her? No, but Ra's is an asshole. If you'd like to go a more sexist route, Jazz could be unworthy because she's female (in this AU, Ra's keeps Talia around to make an heir, not to be the heir).

Despite not being the perfect child they wanted, Talia and Ra's train Jazz until they are able to try again. She's taught as if she was the heir, even though everyone knows she isn't, because there isn't a better choice at the moment.

When Jazz is three, Damian is born. Damian is her little brother and she loves him as best she can, but Damian is raised to treat her as inferior, and it shows. Everyone looks down on her, especially Ra's, and that attitude is the example Damian follows.

Jazz is still trained, because if nothing else she could still be an assassin, but no one holds out much hope for her. She isn't as talented as Damian, even though she's older. She's not as strong or as stealthy or as cutthroat. She is more clever, but she is older than him, so it's brushed off. Besides, good assassin soldiers don't need to be clever, they just need to obey.

But where Damian excels in the physical arts, Jazz excels at the mind arts. Solving puzzles, recognizing patterns, psychoanalyzing her opponents to predict their moves - that's what she's good at. It's clearly inherited from Batman (no one can explain her red hair, though).

When Jazz is eight and Damien is five, Jazz flees the League. Why and how is your choice. Maybe Damian is supposed to kill her in a show of superiority. Maybe Talia helps her fake her death and escape as a final act of motherly love. Maybe Jazz flees on her own, wanting to be something else even if she doesn't know what.

Jazz makes it to America, and then to a little podunk town in the middle of nowhere, Illinois, called Amity Park. She meets the Fenton parents and their almost six-year-old son, Danny. And somehow, they take her in. And for a while, it's the family she wished she had, with loving parents and a little brother who didn't want to stab her.

Danny isn't Damian. He isn't a replacement. She knows that they aren't the same. They are radically different, even if they both make her want to cuddle and love them (at least Danny doesn't try to stab her for doing it). She can miss Damian and what could have been while embracing what she has found.

And for a while, she's happy.

Sure, she didn't expect her little brother (Danny is her Little Brother, Damian is her Baby Brother, there has been and will always be a difference to her) to die and come back, but she's seen weirder stuff when she was in the League.

She also didn't expect Danny to use his newfound powers to become a hero, but it's his choice, and she's going to support him. At least she has her League training to fall back on, even if she's a bit rusty.

And yeah, she was hoping that her adoptive parents would take Danny's halfa status a lot better than they did, but she'd always known it wasn't going to end well. She's always been good at recognizing behavioral patterns, and theirs said nothing good. But she'd hoped, for Danny's sake, that she would be wrong.

She never thought she would flee for her life for a second time, but here she is, driving a stolen car with her unconscious and bleeding brother in the backseat, heading towards the one place she swore she would never set foot in: Gotham.

[37-children-of-the-dreams]

Zenless Zone Zero Tier List Based On The Agent's Families

This is based on whether the current agents are orphans or if they're not orphans. Feel free to say there's a chance I'm wrong.

Tier 1 (Not Orphans): 1. Miyabi still has her father. 2 Lucy, Rina, and Zhu Yuan still have their parents (even if Lucy is estranged from her parents). 3. Seth is currently the only male with both parents.

Tier 2 (Orphan): 1. Soukaku may have been adopted by Yanagi, but only as her sister, not daughter, and her bio family died during the war. 2. Caesar's parents died when she was a child leaving her to be raised by Big Daddy. 3. Grace lost her parents in Hollow incidents. 4. Koleda's mom died when she was young and Khors got murdered (oof). 5. We saw Nekomata's adopted dad turn into an Ethereal, nuff said. 6. Nicole was an orphan but then got adopted, but then she ran away, which might mean she's back to being an orphan? IDK.

Tier 3 (Possibly an orphan): 1. Belle and WIse never say anything about their bio family, only their mother figure who is currently missing. 2. Harumasa was abandoned by his bio family with no idea what happened to them, and then he had to put down his adopted father (oof). 3. The devs kinda retcon giving Lighter a last name (it was originally Lorenz from the leaks) and I am scared to know why after knowing Lighter's backstory. 4. Lycaon's past only showed his ex and the place they used to live, and he doesn't say anything about his bio family. 5. Considering Anby was found by Nicole in a dangerous area with no idea of her past, and S11 often goes on dangerous missions, they're probably orphans (I think these two are also sisters, but like their parents have to be dead for them to go off on life or death missions).

Tier 4 (Where are the relatives?): 1. Piper, Corin, and Ellen have been mentioned as having family, so where are they? 2. Jane is a secret agent, so no info on her family, but we don't know if she's an orphan. 3. Burnice, Ben, and Anton haven't said anything about their families, but we can't count out that they possibly have family members. 4. I didn't know how to get a character between tiers (T4 and T3) because Yanagi probably has family other than Soukaku, but she's also a former soldier from possibly the Obsidian Division (S11's Division) so she might not have one.

Tier 5 (Can they have parents?): Since both Billy and Qingyi are Intelligent Constructs, can they even have parents? Do creators even count as parents? Qingyi possibly had a creator, but we don't know. Actually, Billy doesn't even remember his creators... (Damn, Billy might be an orphan).

Tier 6 (Upcoming Agents): Both Astra and Evelyn are upcoming agents, so we have no info on their families as of now.

I probably will create another one when 2.0 or 2.4 drops because then there will be new characters as well as updated family history.

[asktehkoopz]

HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY TO ME! 🥳

What a crazy decade it’s been, too! I’ve met a lot of good friends, people I still talk with daily and hang out with in person to this day! Despite things not being perfect in the Nintendask community (as I learned much later, haha, I kept in my lane), I still personally cherish the years I spent making art for this blog. It was my passion project for a while, but unfortunately it slowly drifted away from my grasp.

I can’t say if I’ll ever update with the tenacity that I once did. In fact, I can almost guarantee I won’t, but I like being able to come back here every once in a while to drop some new art sometimes. :]

I had a lot of big swings that I wanted to do in regards to the koopz’s arcs, some MUCH more fleshed out than others (namely Lemmy, Wendy, and Morton’s were lacking), and I’m almost positive I won’t be able to get to them in full.

So how about a big spoiler dump, huh? Every plot point, every plan, every character concept that was going to occur will be beneath the cut! If you wanna wait on me to maybe get to them over the course of another decade, please, by all means don’t read beyond!

If you’re hungry for what was cooking upstairs, then scroll on! And thank you guys for the outpouring of support I’ve constantly gotten with this blog! 💖 (Also for real, this read-more is mega long, so seriously prep yourself. Here’s the google docs version that might make it easier to read! If you have any questions about the plot stuff, uh. Maybe I'll answer them OOC?)

Also bonus comparison images! EW!!

TL;DR: The prophecy was a sort-of fake created by Kamek! It started out real, but after it officially stopped existing, it was perpetuated on accident/for emotionally selfish reasons! It didn’t start out that way when I planned the blog, but it eventually became that over the course of development discussion with BoomPom mun! Eventually the koopz were gonna give up their star child prophecy magic nonsent and live their lives how they wanted to. The end!

THE LONG VERSION

Version 1.0 of AskTehKoopz (then AskIggyAndTehKoopz):

The star children prophecy was loosely based on the Yoshi’s Island DS concept of “star children”. Each koopaling (and Bowser Junior) were imbued with an inherent, powerful magic when they were born to help them take over other kingdoms (as mentioned in their various bios). This changed both their ability to inherently harness magic as well as changing their species, explaining their strange features, specifically their pointed ears and wildly colored hair (the pointed ears admittedly did come later during the wedding arc).

The koopalings had always been planned to be unnatural magikoopas, but at the beginning of the blog’s inception, it was not concrete what exactly they each were. This will be covered below.

Version 2.0 of AskTehKoopz:

If you look in their bios, you will see that they are each noted as “Magikoopa(?) + (Where they were born)”. This, along with their last names, were a hint as to their original species. This was added circa 2017 when their bios/references were finally updated.

Originally they were the following:

Roy - Bullet Bill

Iggy - Toad

Morton -  Hammer Bro

Larry - Yoshi

Ludwig - Koopa Troopa

Wendy - Bombshell Koopa

Lemmy - I don’t knoooowwww

An additional twist had been introduced during this stage as well:

This set of koopalings (and Junior) were not the first set of prophesied star children.

Affectionately named “The Alpha Koopz”, these are what you might know as the DiC cartoon koopalings: Bully, Cheatsy, Kooky, Kootie Pie, Big Mouth, Hip, and Hop. These seven, along with a young!Bowz were the first set of star children. Back then, Bowz did not see them so much as kids he needed to take care of. Moreso they were “guys who he’s forced to do magic alongside”, despite Kamek’s pressure to be more attentive to them as the eldest. He was considerably more reckless back then with his power as well.

As aggressive and mean and selfish as the blog koopz are, they don’t surpass the sheer annoyance and danger the alpha koopz put themselves in, mainly due to Bowz’s negligence.

And because of this unfettered, reckless behavior, they managed to doom themselves to a “Game Over”, shattering the prophecy and allowing their set of star child powers (along with Bowz’s) to shoot off and embed itself into the next set of vessels. This is also why the blog koopz are “in the wrong order” with regards to their age.

In addition to gaining these star child powers, echoes of their memories and actions and dynamics exist in some of the koopz tendencies:

This is why Lemmy gravitates towards Iggy (Hip and Hop’s closeness). Cheatsy is why Larry is a kleptomaniac. Kooky is where Ludwig’s “crazy laugh” comes from. Kootie Pie is where Wendy pulled “Daddykins” from.

How did they game over? As of right now, it was a mundane and tragically, incredibly avoidable fate, one that echoes Bowser’s many in-game endings: Bully simply fell off the roof of the castle, plunging into the lava moat below. The alpha koopz had little restraint and they encouraged one another to constantly do dangerous things. Walking along the giant chains of the castle without his wand was one of these dangerous things.

If Kamek had had the power to*, if Bowz had desired to see them as more than nuisances and instead helped them learn restraint, if they had realized that despite their immense power, they weren’t invincible, they most likely would have been the koopz that were blogging.

Whomp whomp!

(*I don’t have a good place to stick this, but to put it shortly, the reason Kamek had to be hands off with the alpha koopz is because he used to have a place in what was basically a high magikoopa council. He was assigned to train Bowz to fulfill the prophecy when he was first born with his star child powers. Bowz was NOT a very good student and put himself and many others in danger as they searched for the other 7 star children. When the council hit their last straw, they nearly elected to execute Bowz, who was a child at the time, and start the process over. Kamek traded his spot in the council to spare him, as he had grown attached to Bowz. Bowz overheard this discussion and shaped up quickly. Kamek has never found out Bowz knew of this deal.)

Version 3.0 of AskTehKoopz:

All of the above in 2.0 still happened, however there is now an additional twist.

The prophecy’s a lie! Sort of!

This one was on BoomPom mun. I joked about an article referring to Kamek as a koopaling and unfortunately we came up with something tragic:

Kamek was ALSO part of a set of koopz BEFORE the alpha koopz! Whoa!

Back nearly 100 years ago, there was supposed to be a prophecy. It wasn’t Koopa Kingdom specific, just a general “Well whoever can harness these powers will be able to take over”, it just happened to be the Koopa Kingdom that found out about it first (they were a group of some mix of archeologists and scientists, I don’t remember fully*). It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. These powers would awaken and they HAD to find someone to use them. Kamek, along with these 7 other kids/teens, were given the opportunity of a lifetime to essentially be vessels for this crazy power to help bring this prophecy to life (literally signing their souls away. The powers NEEDED a soul to latch onto and a body to stabilize itself with).

(*I think that BoomPom mun and I vaguely discussed they might have been the same people who ALSO were the ones who created the cores for the splorches that eventually became Sol, Simon, and Scotty. Yet another experiment that went terribly wrong. These guys are on FIRE. 0-2!)

So Kamek and these 7 formed a really tight sibling bond pre- and post-power. But uhhhh you really shouldn’t be giving crazy raw magical prophecy power to children. Absolute bonkers idea.

Despite their extensive training, it didn’t end well. They genuinely worked so hard to try to be the ones to help bring empires to their knees, but they were only children. I didn’t have a specific incident, all I recall was that the power was WAY beyond their control, and all 8 of them died.

Except.

Through some fail-safe Kamek set up prior to their last hurrah to revive all 8 of them (he felt something might go wrong when they did what they did), Kamek was revived. Alone.

Left in the ruins of what their own powers did to them, Kamek had to live with the guilt that he lost the prophecy, but more importantly, he lost his family, too. Unless he did something about it.

So, despite what a terrible idea it was and how dangerous it might have been, knowing these powers were linked to his sibling’s souls, he decided “I know the prophecy was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But I’m gonna make it happen again somehow. I do not care.” And with the star child powers he still had, he tried to revive them again. Despite the blood, sweat, and tears poured into the ritual, it didn’t work.

Years passed, he’s on the magikoopa council and eventually, after finding kid!Bowz, he’s like “...Hey wait a minute, I weirdly recognize you.” (Magic vibes, general demeanor, etc.) He discovers wow! The prophecy is back on! I did it?! I DID IT?! Soon he recognizes slowly that each of the powers/souls got transferred to a random kid they need to find.

So they find the alpha koopz (i.e. cartoon koopalings) and uh. Yeah they’re all bratty asshole versions of his found family, but well. It does bring him a strange comfort knowing they’re slightly living on regardless. However Hip and Hop are weird. Like. Finishing each other’s sentences, acting in tandem, etc. It’s extremely bizarre. And he’s not really sure WHICH of his siblings Hop is?

Unsure how, but he finds out oops, after restarting the prophecy for a second time, his star child powers got sort of weird because KAMEK WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD. The other 7 star child powers traveled with the souls that stabilized them, however Kamek’s star power DIDN’T HAVE A SOUL TO TRAVEL WITH CAUSE… KAMEK IS ALIVE? So that raw star power was like “Ummm… Uhhhh…… Where do I go? I need a soul to latch onto, I am an insane amount of power…” Luckily Hip and Hop are twins, so naturally, it latched onto Hip’s soul and shares a soul between the two of them while also trying to make its own soul, but it can’t do it right. Super fine and no issues happen because of that at all. They aren’t offputting and weird, I promise.

So Hop was essentially SUPPOSED to have Kamek’s soul pre-packaged with the power, but Kamek is still very much alive, so it’s sort of. Trying to make due. It’s both halfway between Kamek and Hop while ALSO soulless but ALSO trying to use Hip’s soul to ground itself while ALSO trying to artificially make a soul for itself. It’s a mess. Just understand Hop’s star child powers are a mess because Kamek is still alive.

Of course, like in 2.0, the alpha koopz’s Game Over happens, and the prophecy is broken again. Kamek assumes “Well. That’s the end of that. I don’t have enough magic power to try and restart it again, because half of it was in that freak child, so I definitely can’t do a second round of that.”

Everyone in the Koopa Kingdom, including Bowz, are like “Don’t worry, there’ll be another way we can fulfill this prophecy! They came back the first time! People were wrong that it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance!”

Kamek plays along with it, being like “Yep, that definitely happens naturally. Obviously we’re going to have another set of star children. There were no outside forces that made it happen a second time.” You know. Like a liar.

However, SURPRISE! ROY AND IGGY SHOW UP! AND ROY’S ACTING LIKE ONE OF HIS SIBS! OH GOD, I DON’T THINK THIS HOW ANY OF THIS IS SUPPOSED TO WORK. I LITERALLY DO NOT THINK THIS IS A PROPHECY THING ANYMORE. DID I ACCIDENTALLY TRAP MY SIBLING’S SOULS IN A NEVERENDING EXISTENCE LOOP CURSED TO LIVE VICARIOUSLY THROUGH OTHERS FOR ETERNITY? ALSO WHO THE HELL IS IN THAT ONE? (LOOKS AT IGGY)

(This is actually what this sketch on turtle-pen was about, with Kamek’s concern over them not being messed up, like how Hip and Hop were, haha)

So uh. Yeah, Kamek isn’t sure WHY the cycle is continuing, and he’s almost positive the prophecy’s not even really a thing anymore, but the star children stuff sure is! And the powers/souls are already super unstable by the time they get to blog koopz, and it only gets worse as time passes! (One of the earliest examples of that magical decay was Roy suddenly getting an impulse to shave his head to match Bully/pre-koopz “Roy”. Eventually this kind of thing would start happening later on down the line in higher frequency with the other koopz as well. This is actually what the third sketch on this post was alluding to. In fact, Iggy’s is actually the most unstable magic of them all, because ever since the fake-out death with Kamek, whoever got HIS star child powers was always going to be the weakest/most unstable magically. More about this will be covered in Roy’s section below)

The Koopz

What order did they all end up at Bowz’s?

I talked about how each of them got to the castle in their bios, however if you can’t piece it together, the  order is Roy/Iggy -> Ludwig -> Morton -> Wendy -> Larry -> Lemmy. Junior, I think, showed up between Wendy and Larry. Bowser just walked in with him one day. None of them know where he came from.

Why is Iggy a vegetarian? Also why are his eyes like that?

I’m gonna keep it buck: Iggy is a vegetarian purely because I wanted an excuse to make him monster-y sometimes. In 2.0 Koopz, I justified it by the star child power (being inherently a magikoopa power) not meshing well to him being a Toad, playing off the idea of Toads and Koopas being diametrically opposed.

There was a sliding scale of “how lizard” someone was based on how well their species reacted with magikoopa magic (I only remember Iggy being the most “lizard-y” and Larry being the 2nd most “lizard-y”, This is also why his eyes are like that and why he and Larry have split tongues) Eating meat weirdly triggered some primal urge in him due to the magikoopa thing, I guess?

In 3.0 Koopz, I genuinely have no reason why he can’t eat meat or has weird eyes since I got rid of the lizard-y scale, I was gonna figure it out later, haha. The 2nd pic is actually him after accidentally eating Pom’s burger when his veggie burger got swapped at a restaurant.

Who was that kid in the flashforward meme?

That’s Ozzy, Iggy and Pom’s kid! He melts! :) (cw for body horror and blood in that link) But it’s okay, he gets better!

To put it plainly, in 2.0, Pom accidentally gets some of her DNA in Iggy’s clone nonsense, and oops they have a kid now. He is NOT genetically stable. Drama ensues, and they have to figure out how to get him to not completely unravel.

At first, we thought that maybe Iggy should have him melt and clone him again without the memories of melting and present it as something he worked tirelessly on (and BoomPom mun drew an excellent comic about Pom’s reaction to it), but we couldn’t justify any way for her to forgive Iggy for basically replacing Ozzy, and Poggy was just too important to us to break up. We were stumped.

And long story short, the book Ludwig was reading when he was in se7en-sib’s world was one about DNA cloning. (But that’s spoiler stuff for se7en sib’s blog that I won’t get into, heh heh) And Ludwig, despite it being the perfect opportunity to have Iggy traumatize and disappoint Pom, tells them about it and that they should visit se7en-sib’s Kamek somehow to fix it. (He does fix it! By melting Ozzy and recreating him again. HOWEVER Ludwig and Iggy have to swear to secrecy about it. They take that shit to their graves.)

So he’s better now!

ROY:

Roy had started on the path of his biggest plot points being covered (him finally ending up with Boom and slowly showcasing his natural inclination to being a leader, despite NOT wanting to be), but I didn’t get his biggest two out of the way (one of which I’m glad I didn’t get to yet): Roy cheating and Roy almost dying.

Koopz 1.0 - Roy was going to be transphobic (specifically enbyphobic. This is actually one of the reasons he doesn’t like Larry all that much), but over time he’d learn that that’s a personal problem. He specifically had a lot to unlearn of his biases of what inherently makes someone a man/woman. Ludwig’s transition was fine with him, but Larry “switching” didn’t make sense to him. (His definition of a “man” was severely warped by his abusive father) This is actually still canon, but he learns better, of course.

Roy was also going to cheat on Boom via a night of drunken infidelity. The big twist was going to be that it was with a woman, and along with him, we find out that he’s bisexual. After some thinking it over, I ultimately decided, despite the drama that would ensue, I didn’t feel particularly comfortable perpetuating what I didn’t realize was a “cheating bisexual” stereotype. Morton’s bi as well, so maybe it would have been fine? But I was like “Uhhhh noooo I shouldn’t do that.” (I wish I could find the pic BoomPom mun drew in reference to when they got locked in a room together by Pom and Iggy to “talk it out”. Boom was punching the wall next to Roy and it was real dramatic. Oh well!) There was also a discussion about a compromise of him sleeping with other people, but letting Boom know about it beforehand? It was gonna be MESSY, haha!

Koopz 2.0/3.0 - Him coming out as bisexual changed to what was going to be a comic with Roy confronting the fact his hypermasculinity was exacerbated because he felt that not being solely attracted to men was a win for his shitty dad. (It makes sense in HIS head: being gay but also being hyper-masculine and liking pink was to piss off his dad. But if he’s actually also attracted to women, then his dad gets what he wants, right? For him to like women?) It was going to end in a sweet moment where Boom reassured him being bi didn’t mean his dad was right about him.

Now to Roy almost dying. Hoo boy. So as mentioned, the star child powers they all got were already quite unstable. As time went on, things started unraveling at a quicker pace. Roy started having weird flashbacks/visions in his dreams (only telling Iggy), which are of course visions of the alpha koopz. Soon enough all the present-day koopz would start to have moments where they physically re-enact something the previous star children did. This was especially prevalent when certain koopz interacted with one another (like if Lemmy and Iggy brushed by each other, suddenly they’re acting exactly like Hip and Hop again for a short while). These moments not only got more frequent, but longer as well.

And we’d build up to Roy, like Bully, on the roof, the rest of the koopz in their hazy, lucid states, encouraging him, like the alpha koopz did so long ago. None of them would be really in their right minds, it was all going to be very dramatic. There was gonna be rain and everything, building up to the inevitable of the cycle being broken again.

What’s the difference this time around? Roy’s dating Boom. And Boom solves this the only way he knows how: by clocking Roy in the face before he almost slips and falls. So Roy gets knocked out, which manages to knock ALL the other koopz out of their weird stupor.

This plotline gets resolved by the koopz having a heart-to-heart with each other, with Bowz, and with Kamek, who comes clean about the whole prophecy thing, which isn’t quite real anymore (due to the 3.0 change). Professing how he just missed his family and didn’t want any of this to happen nor did he know any of this was going to happen.

Ultimately they’d come to the conclusion that they need to let these weird soul/magic things go, to stop anchoring their souls and not allowing them to move on, and to let the koopz live how they were supposed to. Kamek can’t guarantee they’ll be able to even harness magic anymore, or honestly if this would even work, but they end up performing a VERY extensive, painful, and tiring ritual that allows Kamek closure, allows the blog koopz to meet the alpha koopz for a moment, and allows them to live their normal lives. (As koopa royalty, but you know.)

There was also a planned Nintendask event where Roy was going to raise his father from the dead to confront him about his shitty behavior. Chaos was going to ensue and there was going to be a small “Zombie apocalypse” event similar to the revolution arc that occurred.

IGGY:

The main things with Iggy had already pretty much occurred: Hooking up with Pom -> Love poisoning himself -> Confrontation with Ludwig about it -> ??? -> Profit. Honestly there truly only one plot point that didn’t get to be touched on, and that’s Marilyn! (Those who follow turtle-pen probably know Marilyn)

Koopz 1.0: Like I said, at first the star child powers were going to be specifically magikoopa and make Iggy super weirdly unstable magically. He at first would dye his hair blue/yellow/pink (Hop’s colors. This is pre-alpha koopz) to not stick out in Toad society. His parents were a LITTLE worried about his nonconformity. He was going to run away from home, because oops he ate meat and hurt his parents pretty bad. I THINK at one point this switched to him accidentally killing them, but we don’t talk about the Edgy Koopz Era. This was switched back to harming them pretty soon after.

Koopz 2.0: After the introduction of the Hop thing, it now became less “He dyed his hair to fit in” and “He dyed his hair because he Mysteriously Doesn’t Know Why.”

Truly the biggest change/introduction was the inception of Marilyn. HE IS… Once again a thinly-veiled excuse to shove some favorite tropes onto Iggy. BoomPom mun and I got super into the Jekyll and Hyde musical (specifically with Anthony Warlow), and we went “Iggy should get a Hyde thing going on”. So in combination with the weird “can’t eat meat lest you go sicko mode” thing, we decided to justify it by making it be Iggy try to get rid of his “lizardness”. (This was when the lizard scale still existed) It manifested as Marilyn, who REALLY hated Iggy and REALLY liked Pom. Shenanigans ensued.

Koopz 3.0: Once the lizard scale was taken out, we were like “Uhhhh Marilyn shouldn’t exist anymore”, however unfortunately I love him. So YOU REMEMBER THAT LOVE POTION ANTIDOTE THAT POM GAVE IGGY THAT MADE HIM SICK? Yeah Marilyn came from that now. That weird star child magic latched onto this manifestation of emotions that became his own being (you can see it in the last two pics here). Sue me, man.

You can read more about him on turtle-pen, but the end-game was that Marilyn was sent to Sol’s lab to work for him so he could be humbled and he fell for Bob. A huge nerd. He also became besties with Scotty. The end.

Outside of this, I really had no other big sweeping plot points for Iggy to cover, other than him and Boom learning to get along, potentially meeting Boom and Pom’s actually alive parents (This was only briefly discussed with BoomPom mun, and we didn’t plan much further than that other than AU discussions), and the introduction of Ozzy.

Oh and Iggy was also going to come to terms with IDing as agender during 1.0, but I ultimately never got around to confirming it.

MORTON:

I believe really the only big plot situation that was going to happen for Morton was developing further about his crush on Birdetta only for him to get turned down. I was juggling seven kids, man.

Other than this, I don’t think I ever fully explained how he lost his leg? It was implied in his flashback, but his father (a hardass) was the type to be like “Speak when spoken to” to a degree that was unhealthy. At the military base he was raised on, he managed to get a pretty bad cut on his leg, but, in fear of his father, he never spoke up about it. It developed sepsis and well you know how that goes.

LARRY:

Koopz 1.0: The biggest change was Larry getting hit with the Edgy Koopz Beam as well, similarly to Iggy. He was normal, then shifted to being more violent, back to being normal again.

Koopz 2.0: Even in 1.0, Larry was always planned to have been dealing with depression and anxiety via… self-medicating. However 2.0 is really what changed the cause from intrinsic to extrinsic. The main thing that exacerbated his smoking habit, depression, and anxiety was that he found out they weren’t the only set of kids Bowz had dealt with. I don’t know how, but he somehow managed to find out about the alpha koopz. He kept that secret to himself, but it not only made him feel replaceable/used, but it soured his opinion on Bowz as a whole.

Ultimately Larry was going to get therapy, discuss with the other koopz what he knew about the previous star children, and eventually ween away from his drug habit. I can’t find the post, but I did mention it when doing some ask meme about rating ships and someone sent in a Larry/Weed one and I went “0/5”, haha.

LUDWIG:

There’s honestly not much to say here. Truly most of Ludwig’s arcs have been concluded: his crush on Pom has been wrapped up, him coming out to the koopz as trans (officially) has happened, and he’s on track with his HRT.

The only current plan that had been in motion was to more properly have him and Iggy talk it out and Pom be a wingman for him in his further romantic endeavors.

I suppose that there were also potential plans for him and Scotty to end up together because. Um. They’re cute. (There was also a mild discussion of him and Trudy as well, but there was a lot more discussion between BoomPom mun and I about him and Scotty!)

WENDY:

Similarly to Morton, Wendy didn’t have much going on on her end in regards to big arching plot points either, other than ending up with Chuck eventually and also confronting her insecurities with feeling like she’s not very special!

LEMMY:

And like Morton and Wendy before him, uh. Lemmy didn’t have much! The only planned thing was the drama of his type 1 diabetes diagnosis and that’s IT. Maybe bring back his mom since that was touched on?

Endgame for the Koopz:

They were going to give up their star child powers and return to normalcy, as mentioned in Roy’s section. However they’re still royals so of course it’s still a weird and exciting life for them. I believe they all still end up with the ability to use magic, but it’s much more elbow grease then they’re used to working with.

Roy was going to have a kid with Boom! Unsure if biologically/magically or adopted. Somehow they get their little girl, Stevie, though! I think Roy would also get in touch with his estranged sister that I only just realized I haven’t brought up (4th pic here!).

Roy and Larry were going to end up as co-DJs together working at a nightclub.

Iggy and Pom were gonna have Ozzy, and honestly? Kinda just continue to get into crazy shenanigans. Iggy wanted to rule the Koopa Kingdom but somehow he manages to get convinced not to. (He would NOT be good at it) Iggy would also get in touch with his parents again. They really did miss him after all of these years.

Ludwig and Wendy are going to be the ACTUAL co-rulers of the Koopa Kingdom. They were both so hard-headed and stubborn about it, fighting tooth and nail to make it to the top, Bowz just crowned them both. I think Ludwig also would get in touch with his bio-family as well.

I don’t remember in full what was going to happen with Morton and Lemmy as their end game? Lemmy might have become a circus performer and Morton the military general of the Koopa Army? I really don’t recall to be honest!

And that’s it! That’s all the plot I remember! If you made it this far, thank you for reading!

[liquidcrystalsky]

btw when windows 10 goes out of service, move to windows 11 or linux. by staying on an OS which doesn't get security updates, your computer is much more at risk for attacks.

also yes everyone hates windows updates it makes you restart ur computer or whatever but please do them for security reasons. it is also a good idea in general to restart your computer once every few days regardless.

Windows 11 is perfectly fine for me as long as you:

DO NOT link a microsoft account to it

Remove all the copilot and ai crap and revert a few things like the right click menu. you can do it registry tweaks but winaero tweaker is a much easier GUI option. it works for windows 10 as well i would recommend it

i cannot stress this enough (assuming those two things), other than some UI stuff it is literally the same exact operating system and i got used to the change almost instantly

The settings app is a lot better on windows 11, and the control panel is still there and still the same

It's not any better or worse performing for games or productivity.

Nothing that i previously used on windows 10 broke, and there wasnt any huge annoyances or issues that windows 10 didn't also have.

I AM AWARE of the TPM 2.0 chip requirement. TPM 2.0 has been standardized for 10 years now, if your computer's motherboard was made in that time, it very likely has it. Windows might say you dont have a tpm 2.0 chip, you probably do, it's just not enabled, mess around in your bios, look up guides and stuff.

if you actually don't as your computer is quite old, i would try out linux honestly it is much nicer towards older hardware and can run much better on it (basically any hardware actually).

[quitealotofsodapop]

The wukongs having mac as there mate/friend is definetly a canon event

Also what would nezha react to his own counterparts? Would he even meet them?

haha Canon Event goth mate/bestie XD

Nezha already has anough headaches dealing with multiple Sun Wukongs, now there's more of himself??

Nezha at the very least gets along well with his younger and girl counterparts from the different cartoon series. He's a little confused why the 2000s cartoon!Nezha/Nata is female, but he's not looking into it. They all bond over their respective Monkey King stories and fear of disappointing their bio dad. LMK!Nezha quickly finds himself being the babysitter to a lot of them.

But the gremlin from the Ne Zha (2019) film? LMK!Nezha is close to pulling his hair out. 2019!Nezha is like Red Boy 2.0 without Red's quiet moments; demonic, moody, on fire, and will def kick his older self in the groin when annoyed. Eventually LMK and 2019 Nezhas end up bonding after a rough fight over their respective feelings of being treated as weapons rather than kids. 2019!Nezha begrudingly admits that LMK!Nezha is kinda cool, for a celestial that is. LMK!Nezha later has a mental blue screen when he learns that 2019!Nezha and Ao Bing are both only three years old??? Is the dragon using a gotdang glamour?

Also apparently a version of Nezha appears in the Hero is Back video game. They sassy af towards Sun Wukong for kicking their butt at Flower Fruit Mountain, and has been trying for a rematch since - but HeroIsBack!SWK thinks Nezha's just a kid playing a game.

Heck might be the same gremlin Nezha we know from the 2019 film with a glamour on. Not sure about the canon of this one since 2019!Nezha and HeroIsBack!SWK have interacted in crossover adverts before.

HeroIsBack!SWK/"Dasheng", looking at 2019!Nezha: "Hey squirt, when did you get shrunk?" 2019!Nezha: >:( *starts biting*

Yunxiang is a different ballpark of emotions all together; cus he's already got beef with his previous incarnation for killing Ao Bing and making sh*t harder for him, and now all these versions of his past life are just hanging around? And most of them are kids??? And why is there so many monkeys!? He needs to lie down for a moment or he's gonna have to fight someone.

So yeah, the multi-dimensional Nezha gang aren't having a lot of fun, but luckily LMK!Nezha is a responsible teenager (?) who's used to handling toddlers on fire.

[blue-thief]

do you perhaps have some headcanons about mr. isagi? <3

OFC!! <3333

on top of having 2.0 vision (and well, metavision) his VVIQ score is a perfect 5

this helps him a lot with art and he's actually pretty good at it even though he's not as passionate about it as he is with football/soccer

he started drawing through doodling his favourite manga characters and he's able to recreate art styles almost perfectly

he's actually pretty careless when it comes to his schoolwork (esp for STEM) so sometimes he'll hand in incomplete work bc it looks like he's already filled in certain questions

like no. you doodled an eye instead of solving for "x"

he canonically hates science, but if he had to choose one branch as his favourite, it would be chemistry (not boring & derivative memorization like bio but not absolutely insane like physics)

something might contradict this in canon but i hc his handwriting is pretty shitty lmao

since so many sports anime characters look like him (nanase haruka, kageyama tobio, etc) i like to pretend they're all cousins and they meet up at family reunions to compete to see who's better at their respective sport

so yeah despite having no siblings he has a shit ton of cousins who he's really close to

he was conceived by accident 💀 his parents love and coddle him despite this

despite showing the exact opposite of the typical symptoms (great spacial awareness, scarily good empathy, etc) i still say he's got autism lmao. he just has a really unique type yk

his hobby is canonically walking, but i wanna expand on this a little bit

he somehow doesn't listen to music on his walks

(in fact, he doesn't listen to much music at all. that's why his fav song is from a commercial 💀)

furthermore, he rarely ever brings his phone out on walks at all. he likes being at one with his surroundings and he doesn't want his phone to distract him

which is understandable. unless we're talking about how he'll sometimes walk 2+ hours to go to a friends house AND HE DOESN'T HAVE IT?? NO GPS??? NO MAP NOTHING

he's just spent so much time walking around saitama he has a map of most of it installed in his mind

he really doesn't use his phone much at all. he has a few accounts in case he wants to check something out, but he doesn't post anything + barely follows anyone + even has a blank pfp on everything

he apparently received 0 valentine's chocolates in the previous year, but a few ppl from school had a crush on him

he's not popular or anything but some ppl over the years thought he was a genuinely sweet guy and quietly observed him from a distance

he's completely oblivious to this

his school friends all have way more romantic experience than him and they all tease him for this

he gets really frustrated about this and tries to convince himself he likes certain ppl in hopes of something sticking

when he genuinely likes someone he's oblivious to this too lmaoo

he's the type of guy to take dodgeball in PE wayyy too seriously

the first time he swore was when he was eight and got mad at his teammates for slacking off

he got in trouble for this and never swore in front of an adult ever again

(the lack of any physical adults in blue lock made him fall back on his foul mouth)

his fav class is PE in canon but i think i remember something about isagi hating baseball? that might have just been someone else's hc but yeah

he enjoys basketball and badminton, but he thinks volleyball is mid

the one time his school tried floor hockey he enjoyed it well enough

american football is just way too confusing for him

he had no backup plans in case football/soccer didn't work out, but he'd be fantastic in psychology and/or politics

[princess-of-the-corner]

BNHA AU Masterpost

I have one for the ML AUs so now a BNHA one!

Same format of the AU's name, a short summary, and relevant tags!

Chaos Children:

My main au! My personal headcanons, addition of plotlines, yadda yadda. This is Canon to me now.

A lot of this isn't tagged because it's my main thing so I just forget sometimes but this also encompasses both Todoroki tags (Todoroki Protection Program and Endeavor Fires His PR Team)

Tags: X X X

CC Next Gen

This is an eventual offshoot of Chaos Children and, as is obvious, is about the nextgen kiddos. Does already have a Masterpost for the kids' bios

Tags: X

Monster AU

Basically take Canon and replace Quirks with everyone being some kind of monsterous species! Jokingly called the 'Monster High AU' because the kids are going to monster high school.

Does have some funky character dynamics due to the lack of Quirks and Heroes and the system as a whole.

Tags: X

Amnesia!Dabi:

When Toya/Dabi wakes up in a sketchy clinic, he doesn't remember jack shit and runs for it. Thus fucking up all of AfO's plans. Even when Dabi does join the LoV (out of the assumption he must've been a villain before and wanting some ability to maybe discover who he was), he's not as useful because he doesn't remember any of his problems.

He starts remembering some things during the Forest Training Camp/Hideout Raid arc and after everything goes to shit he decides to grab Himiko(basically adopted her as a little sister) and book it once again, ending up turning them both over to the Heroes and finding out who he was.

Various shenanigans of Dabi reconnecting to a family he doesn't remember(thankfully in this au they're already in therapy) and also them leaving gets the rest of the LoV to fracture and further fuck up AfO's plans.

Tags: X

Vigilante au

Izuku turns down All Might's offer and becomes a vigilante instead. Intends to infiltrate the LoV to take it down from the inside, but finds out AfO is his dad and uh. Time to collect that inheritance! Jokes aside, Izuku kills AfO and takes over his criminal empire, but shuts everything down and gets the LoV running as a vigilante squad instead.

Also Himiko gets OfA because Izuku helps her get her life together and yeets her at All Might.

Tags: X

Villain?Izuku

Dad for One au! Technically all of these are DfO AUs. But in this one, AfO finds out about Izuku's existence. He plays a normal parent for a while but kidnaps Izuku when the boy is about 7-8.

Izuku is treated kinda like Yoichi 2.0. AfO takes care of him well, but he's not allowed to leave. He's not fully 'in the vault' yet as Izuku is still young enough to be relatively obedient, but he's getting older and more defiant.

Izuku and Katsuki never had a falling out because Izuku knows he inherited his father's Quirk. Thus she is devastated when he's kidnapped and actually went to therapy. Then ofc later (probs during the Shie Hassaikai arc), they run into each other and Katsuki kidnaps him back and refuses to let go.

Tags: X

Dark Comedy

tw: sexual assault

Due to *gestures to above tag*, Enji commits some very justified murder. But in getting an alibi for said murders, he ends up having to pretend he's been having an affair.

This au swings wildly between taking a dark subject seriously, and the comedic shenanigans of everyone trying not to get caught. This the name 'Dark Comedy'. It is very full of tonal whiplash. I am saying this as a warning because it is NOT for everyone but I do promise that the genuine dark stuff is taken seriously it's just the other stuff that gets wild.

Tags: X

LoV Babies

A handful of members of the LoV, and also Hawks because ofc he got dragged in, get hit with a Quirk that de-ages them. They de-aged both physically and mentally, now fully believing they're the age they were turned to. Only able to turn back once they confront the childhood trauma they're about to face.

Kurogiri is now a 17 year old Oboro. Dabi is now a 5 year old Toya, yapping nonstop about his dad. Tomura is now a young Tenko, wondering where his family is. Hawks is now an itty bitty Keigo, an absolute cryptid child. Himiko, the only one who doesn't have a name change of these fuckers, is very small and oh so nervous about fighting the instincts of her 'monsterous' Quirk.

Naturally Oboro yoinks the kindergartners away from the LoV and to UA which. Causes even more shenanigans.

Tags: X

Mistaken Spirit

Crossover/Isekai into ATLA.

Post-redemption-arc, Enji gets yeeted into the ATLA world during the first half of Book 3. The locals mistake him for a Spirit of Fire, and he's invited to the Fire Nation Palace as an honored guest of the Fire Lord.

Enji can't help but see similarities to his own family, even if Ozai is far more monstrous than even at his worst. So he decides to do something about it.

Tags: X

Halfa!Izuku

Crossover with Danny Phantom

Izuku gets Ghost Powers. Everyone thinks it's a Quirk. Naturally he's overpowered as FUCK.

Is a crossover so some DP characters appear but in the sense that the events of DP are pre-Quirk Era, so the Ghost cast is still around but the Humans are mostly gone. Also some background Ghost King!Danny.

Tags: X

Mystery Dungeon AU

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon! Everyone's a pokemon! Explorers = Pro Heroes, Guilds = Agencies, etc.

Tags: X

Pokemon AU

A more standard 'everyone gets a pokemon team' au. Except Izuku keeps finding Legendaries and not realizing it.

Tags: X

Cardcaptor Katsuki

bnha/cardcaptor crossover

Katsuki gets to be the next Cardcaptor after Sakura, finding and accidentally scattering the cards in the school library. The Cardcaptor arc happens during the last year of middle school, and the Master of the Clow arc happens during the first year at UA. Character development speedrun so Izuku can play the Tomoyo role. Featuring Mr. Compress as a friendly rival also after the cards.

Keroberos, Yue, Ruby Moon and Spinel Sun are the only CCS characters to appear, as everyone else would be dead as the events of the series happened Pre-Quirk Era.

Tags: X

[diana-berry]

DianaBerry Intro 2.0

It’s about time I make a new intro post!

🍓My name is Diana!

🍓Current age will be in my bio, but I’m in my 20s!

🍓I have POTS, narcolepsy, Autism, depression, anxiety, and social anxiety

🍓I’m a college dropout, not proud of it but it’s true— health reasons

My main fandoms

🍓South Park

🍓Miraculous Ladybug

🍓Vocal Synths

🍓SCP- I’m not really in the fandom but I am an author! Check me out— DianaBerry!

🍓Identity V

I’m into some other things but those are the main things you’ll see me post about.

🍓Feel free to send me asks about my SCPs, I created the GOI just girly things! But I’d love to hear about my other SCPs as well :)

My main comfort characters

🍓Luka Couffaine (Miraculous)

🍓Kasane Ted (Synth V/Utau)

🍓Kasane Teto (Synth V/Utau)

🍓Kyle Broflovski (South Park)

🍓Heidi Turner (South Park)

🍓Lily Barriere (IDV)

🍓Demi Bourbon (IDV)

🍓Mary (IDV)

🍓Galatea (IDV)

🍓Margaretha Zelle (IDV)

🍓Ageha Hijiri (Precure)

🍓Reika Aoki (Precure)

🍓Alix Kubdel (Miraculous)

🍓Gakupo Kamui (Vocaloid)

🍓Marinette Dupain-Cheng (Miraculous) (feelings complicated— I like her but I’m also very critical of her. Love her, but she needs better writing)

🍓Grace (FNF Soft mod)

I’m a writer and an artist! Recently I’ve picked back up fanfiction against my better judgment lmao. Check out #my art for my artwork, I believe that’s the tag I’ll use.

I do Synth V covers on my YouTube Diana Rose! 🎂

Basic DNI, pr0ship, homoph0bic, transph0bic, racist, bigoted, l0licon, etc

I block freely. Just be civil!

Have fun browsing my blog!

Also— ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMissHeidi

https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMissHeidi

Creator and co author of Team UP Miraculous on ao3! Check the tag #team up miraculous for au content! Fic linked below!

[twisted-kratts]

Hey to the twisted kratts, what would their opinions on my WK Villain OC's be?

Amelia Cutter - a geneticist and military contractor who forcefully mutates animals into bio-golems, either keeping them around as her personal soldiers or selling them off to various militaries around the world; also an ex-lover of Barrick von Grimshaw.

Daryl Pharmax - a crooked pharmaceutics mogul and rumored narcotics kingpin who specializes in incorporating animals, plants, and fungi into his own homemade medicines and rumored drugs and is escorted constantly by his Pharmacrons; similar in mentality to Zach but greedier, more cowardly, and a bit more childish.

Barrick von Grimshaw - a mentally unhinged big game hunter with a penchant for seeking the most dangerous animals and hunting them for sport, accompanied always by his loyal robot dinosaurs; also an ex-lover of Amelia Cutter.

Starting with Amelia Abigal: "Oh she's interesting, I'm curious if I should start doing that. . .nah" Kita: "Ex-lover to someone you say now that's juicy is she jaded about it? or she fine, I want to know" Charles: ". . .And people wonder why I hate humans" Mateo: ". . .I think she's probably worse here actually" JT: "You'd think she'd be caught but no I guess she's protected by "Law" in this case" Thoughts on Daryl Abigal: "Granted I also feed my team substances without telling them what they did, though I'm not that bad" Kita: "Standard coruppt business man" Charles: "I'm gonna tear this Zach 2.0 in half if I see him" Mateo: "Oh yeah I don't like this guy" JT: "I would understand the plants and fungi part but animals just screams "being cruel for the sake of being cruel"" Thoughts on Barrick Abigal: "No opinion on him but robot dinosaurs you say that is rather unique, I wonder if time travel is worth looking into to make dino power discs" Kita: "Now I want to know what his side of the breakup was like" Charles: "He can try to hunt me if he wants, just know he'll lose his face when he does" Mateo: "I'm sure he won't mind me taking a bite out of him" JT: "You know what I find the most intriguing about him is the dinosaurs as well, too bad that unless it flies I'm not at all excited about it"

Overall thoughts Abigal: "I want to study them in a controlled environment" Kita: "I just want to know the juicy relationship drama" Charles: "I hate all of them, unsurprising really" Mateo: "How're they worse than the villains our counterparts face!" JT: "Just another lot of crazies"

[spotsupstuff]

Bad Things Happen Bingo: Rage against the reflection - Boreas and Orion Words: 10 613 (woops) Warnings: war and horrors of it, murder, Boreas being shit at healthy sibling relationships

-

Boreas’ Blessing was supposed to be a correction of the mistake that was the true first Iterator of the Eo group, Abet Zephyr. Named after the strongest wind god, begging him to bless and reach through this Iterator in kindness. A great bio-machine that was a gift to both the world and a divinity.

Physically he was made larger than any other. Stronger, more durable, with the ability to fix any damage to him in record time by giving him the ability to command and produce the fixing microbes usually used in buildings beneath the clouds. That required him to be aware of every last piece of his facility grounds- anything that the Anemons would want to last. And so he is aware of every footstep that falls on the streets of his city, Desaevio. He knows what animals crawl through the pipes in the lowest reaches of his pillars, what feeds in his farm arrays, what his Houses say even in the tallest building. Omnipresent… Once his facilities are entered, he sees you.

Capable of rearranging molecules as he sees fit, the industrial miracle that he already was became an industrial hub. Almost any complex material anyone in the Eo group receives is basically conjured out of thin air by him.

Even in the weaving of his genes an exception was made within his taboos. As a determined capital city of the group, the Aeolus Council decided to grant him a little more freedom for the benefit of public safety. Or their own, the more cynical ones say.

Personality-wise he was programmed to be especially protective, of both himself and his citizens and with the taboo exception of being able to attack and kill an invader he’s well able to follow this personality urge. It is said that there are still leftovers of other strings of code that dictated him to be loving and kind, soft and considerate, patient, understanding. All that one would want from a protector.

But programming an Iterator personality is… a kind of a minute thing. Personalities (especially theirs) are able to develop and change as an individual learns about the world in order to adapt to it. And what is a bigger incentive for a need of adaptation than traumatization.

Orion’s Pathway still remembers his elder brother before the change.

Because things started changing once Orion’s construction was announced to the public and things *really* changed when he was finished being built, Abet Zephyr explained to him one day.

She continued clearing up his confusion by disclosing that Orion pretty much carries the same core aspects of personality like Boreas originally did. Basically the same is the case with the physical build of Orion’s superstructure.

Boreas just worked out for the engineers of the Eo group, so they took the success and copied it at a smaller scale without so many revolutionary technologies and built it all some distance away in the northeast, at the edge of Root Aeolus’ range.

For all purposes and reasons, Orion is just a humbler Boreas 2.0 with a different name, city and puppet.

“A brother!” She said, clumsily trying to sound comforting through the ever present static and glitches in her voice. “A… reflection of what he could have been, now. Perhaps what he *should* have been.” She continued, sadder than usual but still holding on to her characteristical solemnity.

“Why isn’t he that reflection himself, then? Find himself a reflective surface, stare at it, cut it at that. He scoffs at me now, levels me with glares and contempt. I know he’s been hurt, but I do not know how. He didn’t look at me that day, I didn’t call out for him.” Oh how frustrated Orion has been with this.

At first he did feel that brotherhood with Boreas’ Blessing. He felt close to the other and the other guided him as he caught his bearings. Suddenly existing, being alive, wielding such a giant and mighty body through multitudes of smaller bodies is no easy task. He was forever thankful when his Mechanics reported for duty and, wonderfully, Boreas reached out to him through a broadcast.

Who better to walk him through the art of gentleness than someone who politely closed doors behind his citizens, carefully played and joked with children thousands of times smaller than him, softly turned on each streetlamp as the sun slowly set in the west.

Though Orion has no such control over the city of Terminus, Boreas holding his hand through the familiarization process was… well, a blessing. Boreas was truly a blessing. But now…

“It isn’t my fault he got hurt.” He says to senior Abet Zephyr, frowning, pouting the best the limited face of his puppet can. “I refuse to take responsibility for it as he seems to wish for me to do or weather this treatment. I don’t want it. Let him stew in it and shrivel up.” He crosses his arms, letting the simple childish anger at it pool right out through his words.

“I do not blame nor fault you for that, Orion. But watch your tone.” She hisses, immediately righting a wrong he doesn’t see yet. It’s a bit too sharp for the barely one year old him and he flinches away. To that, she immediately softens. Gives him an apologetic nod of her head that makes her spine creak terribly.

He forgives- she already fretted, uncomfortable and worried about interacting with him, about how little experience she has with being gentle. Everything of her is sharp edges and rabid agony. She’s trying to learn despite *all that* and never means to cut either of her little brothers. That is all Orion really needs to know.

“Watch your tone, watch your tone…” shushed, she reiterates. “Not for Boreas’ s-sake, but yours. Arrogance and disinterest are a poison. Do your best to keep yourself clean of them as long as possible. As much as this damn world allows. Balance of loving yourself and lack of expansion over other’s presence is important, child.  You do not have the right to spit and look down upon someone else, wish them wrong.” 

Sigh. “We all are riddled with faults and only one that is without mistakes would have a right to do that. None exists- such as that.”

“Ah.” He nods, understanding. He files the lesson away to a different front of his mind to ponder it after the call. “I know my worth. And that value doesn’t agree with this treatment.”

“Mm. I agree-e with your evaluation.”

“What am I to do, then?”

Abet Zephyr considers. Maybe how much should she point him towards answers, after all he needs to learn. Including such a thing as thinking for himself. Or maybe she’s trying to parse how to navigate through the relationships. Between him and Boreas, but also herself and him.

…they’ve only had each other for so long. Each time Boreas spoke about her to him, before this conundrum, his face took on the softest expression. He has seen how much joy their banter brings the both of them. Orion wouldn’t blame her if she wouldn’t be able to give him a harsh option.

“You could completely cut him off.”

Blink blink. So maybe he’s wrong! “I could What???” In terrible confusion, he shrugs at her. “I thought you two are extremely close??”

Completely unfazed, Abet Zephyr waves a hand as if trying to sweep away the stupid question. “That we are, yes. Of course.” “Then? Isn’t that a bit cruel?”

“You are not me, child. Your situation-tion with him is very different from mine in many facets. He would never dare to dismiss *me* as a mirror or some spectre representing the potential of his past self, yet to be twisted. That is a serious thing, you need to act appropriately.”

“Mh…”

“But yes, that is sort of the… worst case scenario solution,” she admits, squinting. Her bad eye flickers and the next words come hard, through a wall of white noise. “I would… recommend attemptin…g.. to talk about it. Warn twice, cut once- s-ssee how he will r…”

With a shudder, her puppet slumps forward against its knees. The speakers crackle into quiet and the few internal pieces of her still functioning whine behind the walls.

That is his cue to leave.

To the unresponsive empty puppet, to the trapped suffering Hivemind consciousness of his older sister, Orion gives a respectful bow and whispers a gentle thank you, tinted with mourning. He wishes her that this episode won’t stretch for too long.

The Overseer rejoins with the rest of Orion’s Pathway Hivemind safely. The Individuality marvels at the reconnection, the members drink in the little eye’s sensation of travel. The feeling washes over them- it’s like a breath of fresh air.

Riding the high of it, everyone comes together and they call Boreas, positive that it’s going to get better and they’ll have their brother Hivemind back again as it used to be.

…it doesn’t get better.

The moment Boreas sees him, hears Orion’s voice, his face twists into an ugly thing. He pretends to listen for a second and then tells him to go away without a single attempt to engage with the topic. Orion gets angry and puts a bit too much of an uncompromising tone for Boreas’ taste into his next sentence.

That apparently justifies growling, screaming, threats… he pulls out of the conversation scared.

And when the Mechanics ask him why the readings are telling them the whole Hivemind is having a panic attack, he refuses to disclose it. Only asks them to help him calm down artificially.

Things with Boreas get some worse each time Orion tries to reach out and talk (it's been more than twice. why isn't he cutting, why is he still taking this-) until they finally plateau at Shitty.

Orion’s Pathway learns how to work all by himself in record time, baffling the exchange Mechanics from the Wellspring continent. They say that it’s usual and healthy for Iterators to interact and bounce ideas and theories off of each other, even if loneliness may be a good tool within the spirituality. The Anemons can’t really keep up with them, day and night, so they need each other especially while they are still maturing. They whisper behind his back that they are worried he will be broken. He hears them by accident and they are sorry.

Still he doesn’t say that he’s unwilling to interact with the only Iterator whom’s existence they acknowledge in this group, because he is a terrifying and mean one- they know that anyway. And they don’t care that they are maintaining that rabid dog. Maybe if he told them, they would’ve tried connecting him to an Iterator from a different group, but well… he chooses the polite silence.

As for his only other choice, senior Abet Zephyr… she tries to be there for him. She teaches him the lessons that she can, mostly about morality and philosophy they are supposed to dedicate their function to. But she can’t do much more. Her own hardware is mangled beyond recognition. She doesn’t have any pointers or tips on how to wield the lab equipment reasonably. Even then, she’s often too tired to speak or is just left straight up unresponsive.

So the Iterator adorned with a star for a blazon clenches his metaphorical jaw and forces himself through the learning process. It feels like the entirety of him starts adopting some of the cold of the northern hemisphere directly into his chest. Too weak to handle loneliness by himself.

Then a new Iterator came online.

Inconvenient Sporadic Change has strange eyes. They are white and wide, with emotive pupils, usually filled with nervousness and panic. The Anemons say one of her main purposes will be researching medicine and other hospital-related things. Her city, Chlora, was even built in such a way so she could interact with the Anemons more directly. Even with the fragile infants!

And… She stays without help longer than he did.

Orion counted on Boreas making the first step, what with it being his job as the available senior. Calling her, explaining to her who and what they all are, how to work her comms and so on. But he didn’t.

When he realizes that this poor new person has been left alone far too long because of his (correct) assumptions, he reaches out immediately. He stays with her for three days and nights, showing her things, answering all questions she had… getting to know her.

Spore’s laughter is a shy pretty thing, her smile something to stay warm for. She often falls into the state without Individuality, says they find it comfortable to just exist with each other much to his intrigued surprise. She was given a mushroom cap hat for her puppet and they all love it! Pulled at the sides of it, framing her face, making him grin. She said, ‘I adore taking care of everyone, they are like miracles to us- wondrous just by living.’ and suddenly there was magic in the world, brought to him by her.

They grow close extremely quickly, upgrade to nicknames basically immediately even though the Anemon customs usually go against that, out of respect for strangers. But she’s his little sister Spore and he will protect and accompany her till the end of their lives. He’s her big brother Ori and she will make him smile, be his companion. They are each other’s, holding hands through radio waves.

And they will be alright.

The next Iterator created is Aftertaste of Disdain. She is a very strange one. She cuts without an issue, unlike him.

He waited for Boreas to make the first step again for a day, but of course he disappointed on that front. So he reached out to her. And what did Aftertaste of Disdain do???

She Declined The Damn Call.

Who the hell declines their first call. Who the hell knows HOW to decline their first call. One usually fumbles around trying to answer it before it automatically goes through. What is this.

She writes him a message (a message!!! he didn’t figure those out until they were shown to him!!) about five hours later.

AoD: Pardon me, I was negotiating with a ghost. What did you seek to converse about, sir?

Again. What the hell is this.

OP: You were What? AoD: Negotiating with a ghost. OP: Negotiating with a *ghost???* AoD: Yes, sir. OP: They are actually real? Wait- and- How. You are barely two cycles old. AoD: Well, the bloke sort of infiltrated my facilities out of nowhere while I was going through the list of my functions for orientation purposes. He was a bit upset about my existence I’ve gathered, something about throwing shade at his chosen place of haunting? And then he started spitting hard to discern rubbish. AoD: I tried to reason with the fellow at first, but he was so bloody mad he refused to listen. I concluded he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic and upon his next outburst- which happened approximately 2.451 seconds after my conclusion- I began to throw hands. OP: With a Ghost??? AoD: With a ghost. AoD: It was a battle of wits and mind! I’ve even managed to chaff him a tad here and there, too! Bloody radical. The mind more so as in he was only capable of mental attacks so I turned to my nature as a Hivemind and committed to ensnaring the fellow by the encircling method. Like predatory animals. AoD: You understand. To make another attempt at communication. Unlike predatory animals.

Oh he’s hooked now.

OP: Uh-huh, I do. AoD: At first I was a little worried. As you have pointed out, I happen to be barely two measly cycles old. The nerve! He tried to possess us! OP: Oh no- AoD: I had gone majorly unpossessed however. Worry not, good sir. OP: Oh, thank the void! AoD: Indeed. AoD: At some point we’ve collectively realized the ghost is more a nuisance than a serious threat. You see, we were too plentiful for him to effectively overtake, especially while divided, out of our state as an Individual.

Saints dammit, this literal baby has a better grip on her identity than him. She already weaponized it, someone has to be pulling his leg.

AoD: He jumped from multiple neuron flies, Inspectors, spider starfish, streak antiseptics, rest docks and, most notably, he somehow managed to possess the same Attendant five times. It was Attendant #3546. We dubbed it the unluckiest bloke present within our internal facilities. OP: That’s tough. AoD: Yes. It is currently sending in a very minor despondency. We are performing soothing procedures as we speak. AoD: Either way, with our acknowledgement that he is unable to seriously harm us, we’ve changed our approach to the situation to a more reckless one. AoD: It had proved to be an alright call. We ensnared the fellow within twenty minutes afterwards. The negotiating took up the largest amount of time.  AoD: Turns out ghosts are susceptible to emotional outbursts they cannot control as a result of their manic clinging to the physical world (which is of emotional nature too) rather than passing onto the next incarnation. Maybe this is already a known fact, but given the circumstances, I did not have the chance to read up on them yet.

It is… not a known fact. Not as far as he can see in the entry on ghosts and spectres he absentmindedly looked up. These things aren’t researched too much. Ghosts are like the exact opposite of what Iterators are searching for- how to stop being a slave to the Great Cycle en masse. There *are* the Echoes which are actually the reason for the existence of the Iterators, but those can allegedly occur only when the Void Fluid is involved.

OP: That is very much understandable. You’ve handled the situation very well! AoD: Thank you, sir. This whole tale ultimately culminates in the fact that I now have a new Hivemind-mate. OP: You didn’t exorcise it-??! AoD: Sir, with all due respect, that is my buddy now.  AoD: So. What did you wish to speak about?

Aftertaste of Disdain, to say the least, ends up being a great addition to their slowly growing group. At this point in time they are able to reach out to Iterators in other groups without much trouble, but having their own team grow is… nice. Especially considering the first two members are generally unavailable. Most of the time it’s just him, Spore and Disdain in all of their work-related discussions.

Spore and Abet Zephyr get along well, in retrospect. With how sensitive Spore is, Zephyr visibly acts like she’s walking on broken glass around her, but it’s endearing more than demeaning. Spore appreciates it. It’s all kind of adorable. Which is weird to call senior Abet Zephyr, but it sure is happening.

With Disdain it was another whiplash.

He was sort of worried at first. Both of them don’t like beating around the bush much. He found out Disdain’s story about her wrestling match with a ghost was so long only because he kept prompting it- she was ready to drop the topic first sentence in, in favor of getting to the point of him initially calling her.

This was either going to end in an argument or-

The two ended up getting along swimmingly.

They greeted each other (very shortly and directly), they locked lenses for a while… and then proceeded to have a conversation with the least amount of fucks given he’s ever attended. Compared to the rigidly polite culture of the higher circle of Anemons he is used to- it was just plain obscene. Almost had a heart attack. At the end, Zephyr said that Disdain might be her favorite. He was too flabbergasted to react in any other way than nod.

Introducing the girls to Boreas was… Horrible.

Orion already went in with spite boiling in him. They should already know him. He should’ve been the first to meet them, with Abet Zephyr’s inability to do so. *He* should be introducing them to Orion right now.

With Spore it was worse. Of course.

They group called and barely managed to get a greeting out and he was already glaring. With Boreas being new to Spore, alongside being glared at with such passion, she flinched away from the screen real bad. He took a note of this and worsened that glare to something so intimidating that poor Spore squawked, apologized profusely for intruding while trembling like a leaf and left.

That was the first time the Orion Hivemind felt hate bubbling in their consciousness.

But as they looked from the place Spore’s screen was a moment ago to Boreas to confront him, the hate fizzled out unceremoniously. The expression now fixated on him. His eyes were sharper than the fangs of red lizards, more terrifying than the pittering steps of an unseen giant spider.

For a second, he tries to stand his ground. Tries to frown back and get them on an equal ground, make the reflection match. But he gives up, too afraid of his senior. He turns his head away in submission, breaks the line of sight with his winged antenna and finally, retreats.

The reflection is inherent, yet he can’t seem to make it at least match. He can’t take the stare.

When it comes to Disdain’s turn, he thinks he will do better. He ends up doing worse.

Mainly because instead of focusing on the newbie like last time, Boreas immediately levels Orion.

Disdain doesn’t let that slide and starts a fight. She calls their placeholder senior names, matches his vile glare without an issue, stubbornly doesn’t back away until the introductions are over. Orion isn’t sure if this is just how she is or if her alleged ghost roommate is backing her up and so she isn’t terrifyingly alone in this like he is, but… he thinks his- as of right now- youngest sister might be his hero.

He better tell her, one day. The thank you he left her with that day didn’t feel like enough.

This has become the norm. A new Iterator is built, Orion’s Pathway reaches out to them first and guides and teaches them as much as they need. Then he introduces them to Boreas’ Blessing which is always terrifying and sometimes Abet Zephyr, if the newbie is considerate and kind enough and she’s able to handle introductions.

Orion knows everyone so well. He knows something went wrong with Gem in an Eye’s sympathy modules and he’s trying to figure out how to help her- or he considers her state of being from a philosophical angle. He admires Ideas of Scales’ sense of justice, he hums songs with the mellow Of Forgotten Hiraeth and asks her about Zephyr, since she’s built oh so close and visits her often. He knows that despite his best attempts at indifference, it bothers Purpose of Time that the plating of his puppet is matte translucent and that it lacks legs. Or that Fish Inside a Birdcage might exclaim all the time he’s in no way a part of any Iterator group, but gets all giddy whenever Orion calls to share some of his recent iterations with him.

He shares stories with Reclusive Reed about the darkness of night and what it does to swamps, what fireflies up north look like once they dig themselves out of soil in summer. With Torched Beacon, they spin tall tales in free time about the seas that wash against their structures’ legs, make up fairies and gods to explain the waves rather than to turn to logic. Blunt End of an Arrowhead tells him all about wildlife and the hunting of it, her voice strong with authority that reminds him of seniors all across the globe, even though she is a Generation 2. And he admires her for that. Even though he is the Third, he doesn’t believe he’d make a good senior.

At this point, he’s been sort of forced into working with Boreas’ Blessing a few times. He still dodges eye contact, keeps the interactions as short as he can. But he doesn’t fear him like death itself anymore. The terror became old, familiar (and isn’t that even scarier). For the minutes of extreme discomfort born of direct long interaction when he has to introduce the newbies to Boreas because of protocol, he is willing to pay.

Because in these new people he found home and purpose, identity beyond being a scared reflection, trapped in a mirror not of his own making nor choice. These fellow communities of creatures, his family, expanded his world beyond the bounds of his superstructure, beyond his relationship with Boreas.

They *freed* him. Without them even knowing about it.

But everything comes apart at some point during the middle ages of the Generation 2 era.

There hasn’t been an actual war in the world in ages. With everyone focusing on the soft aspects of the world- the feelings, emotions, morality, mind, heart, predominantly the matters of the soul- nobody was exactly eager to start something that would end with mass bloodshed. It’d go right with the very first sin, the most basic one to get over. Wars were things of the past. Before the Void Fluid was found and the Global Religion blessedly took strong hold over the whole planet.

Anemons are people of introspection. Not of ammunition and blades.

Yet here one came. With him damn near right in the middle of it, unable to run away, being rooted in the earth as he is. There was no other choice than to become a military base. To iterate war tactics, to let his retaining walls be rebuilt into impossibly tall borders. To kill his identity as a holy, pure object- murder himself as a manmade god in favor of turning into a scout.

Well, first the reason for it-

One day, the group above the Children of Eo, called Frost’s Promise, just declared war on them. Later he would learn that their reason for it was a collapse of one of their own Iterators. It was a city bearer… So many lives lost in such a horrible way, so many left without work, shelter and safety.

The Iterator, Inner Compass, allegedly collapsed by purposeful bombing. Frost’s Promise blamed Children of Eo, considering they are the closest and some past political skirmishes.

*Purposeful bombing,* Void below. Orion doesn’t believe it. They are definitely lying. It had to be an inside job- bloody self-sabotage for the sake of a reason to go to war with the better developed and cultivated Eo.

Apparently there were explosives strapped to Compass’ legs, nestled within as well, and then someone pushed the button. If the bombs were only outside, he’s sure an Iterator would’ve survived it, even though reports on Compass say he was a very precarious mix of Generation 1 and 2. The real destruction was brought down by the explosives from within. 

From attempts at reconstruction of the attack or at least finding a logical explanation, it was determined those damn things were nestled right next to his powerlines. So there was a chain reaction in enough of the legs that he started tipping over. There was nothing Compass, his admin or anyone else in the entire universe could’ve done to prevent the crash.

He went up in flames, taking a good length of the train tracks connecting him with other Iterators down, permanently killing all children and elderly housed in his facilities- the tragedy of it left in the world for the adults coming back the next morning to grieve over. Void Fluid spilled out from his gravity generators and hearts, making the whole place of crash beyond dangerous. The citizens couldn’t even stick around to search the ruins for anything that might’ve been left of their old lives. Unless they wanted to risk involuntary Ascension and potential fates as trapped Echoes, that is.

Inner Compass is still technically alive. Around and around it goes, but also the virtual immortality of Iterators. He survived all thanks to one singular Streak Antiseptic miraculously making it out. Last Orion heard, the little guy is ferried around in the chest pocket of his Admin. That one is going through immense guilt and trying hard to figure out what to do with Compass (and himself) next.

Orion himself isn’t so sure what would be kinder: give Compass another shot at existing even though he’ll have to start with everything (except traits of consciousness) from zero, or just finish the job and let the last soul of the Hivemind move on to the next incarnation as something else. Or a piece of a different Iterator.

And at the time, he couldn’t have given less of shit.

The war began and beneath him the Eo army gathered before they marched on northwards. His Houses voted and changed his wardrobe to be more fitting, inspiring, patriotic- this included searing a war helmet to his puppet’s head. Evidently without the consultation with a Mechanic or consent of his Admin- oh, Five Innovations behind Cedar Doors first had a heart attack about it and then verbally kicked the Houses’ asses. Or so she told him through a call after she came back, crossed arms and pouting like a child.

He attempted to comfort her, after all the two of them are close enough to fall on nicknames, damn right he’s going to try and help, but well… Orion himself was at his wit’s end with it.

Almost three thousand years alive. Three thousand years of the same thing. And even though the puppet often disappointed him with its limits in expression making, having it changed now feels… wrong. He feels different. He doesn’t look *too* bad with it, even Ceda reluctantly agreed through her pissery he’s at least absolutely rocking it, but this was a permanent change.

This helmet is a scar, sealing his head shut when it should not be. And it had yet to show what pain it would carry.

The soldiers hated him for wearing the mark of their torment.

In this world, wars cannot be fought with the idea of killing at forefront. That will not stop the waves, no. Only delay them ‘till the morning.

These people went out there to the battlefield to specifically get crippled. To be taken hostage. And if the enemy was as worried about losing as the comparably smaller Frost’s Promise army, they wouldn’t hesitate much to torture. Anemons can regenerate limbs, fix broken chitin bones incredibly fast. But the mind? The mind can be destroyed beyond repair and there will be nothing to save them from the nightmares, from the shaking hands and manic episodes, being permanently broken.

‘And there he is!’ They used to say, ‘Somewhere safe south from us, giant and untouchable by the suffering, yet still wearing our uniform as if he is one of us and dealing with the same pain.’

The guilt he felt from that managed to rival anything from his long long life. He admitted to Ceda, that he didn’t know how to bear those bitter hateful looks the poor troops shot his Overseers each time he came to the camps for the sake of battle tactic exchanges and new information regarding positioning of the enemy.

Ceda told him, her words heavy as they fell from behind her beak: “Don’t look towards them, then. None of this is your fault. You didn’t don the armor… Someone else shoved you into it, just like someone shoved them into a war.”

“I cannot accept that.” With disbelief he replied, distress within the Hivemind making her watch ping. “I can’t just *leave* it at that.”

“I’m sorry, Ori.” She said weakly, as if the entire war was her fault in the first place. So much pain, even in the relative safety far away from the fights, above the clouds, in his care.

How can one handle this…

Senior Abet Zephyr is of no help when he asks for it. She is angry at all of the Anemons, unjustly- her face pulls into a hateful scowl as she growls out “Good. Let them beat each other to insanity.” through her broken speakers. He feels sick, knowing that someone he looks up to and loves so much could ever say that.

Spore is in this mess with him. She’s more appreciated by the soldiers though, much more. She is their head medic. Her Overseers zip through the medical tents, anxiously taking notes of the supplies on-site and if those things will allow her to save another life, spare it any more suffering. Often, she stretches those things as thin as possible to help everyone. The soldiers know. They don’t fault her for it, when mournfully she says anyone badly injured and with a safe place to wake up in will have to be killed to rather treat the ones capable of faster recovery.

Killing her own patients, when she cares so deeply for each little life… He cannot imagine it.

Asking Disdain is off the table right away. Alongside most of the older Eo Iterators, all that stand in the north. They are too busy with balancing their own issues- shortages of food and resources in particular. The rich demand that their normal life is maintained, the soldiers need the support, prisoners of war are transported to their facilities and they have to be kept alive as well- the working class of the lower circles as a result suffers from exhaustion and famine.

Disdain told him how hellish that is. She wants to lower the resource tax on the lower circle so they could be stronger, able, not be tormented as much, but the high circle refuses to lose its comfort and lower its demand. Or the religious persuasion of the Great Problem. Without the okay from her one lone House, she cannot help them.

“It is like hacking away at my own legs. Incisus needs them to keep standing. I need them to keep functioning to my fullest potential. But my hands are tied, my mouth taped shut.”

Not to mention that apparently her ghost friend has gotten worse with the emotional outbursts because of the overall stress. It’s near constant screaming of rage and plain raw agony, from deep inside of her as if it was her own. Orion wishes there could be anything for him to do to help.

The last drop for him is when one of his Overseers comes back from a routine patrol of Terminus full of grief.

It reconnects with the Hivemind, sharing with all of him what it has seen. Little girl with shaking hands, handling a pearl with a message to a letter carrier, asking to please please make sure to deliver it. She hasn’t heard from dad in too long. She is worried sick he had been taken and won’t ever come back the same.

…what an absolute failure Orion is.

He doesn’t know the child personally. Never probably will. But she is his responsibility, in his care. He is her protector and he’s just standing there, hiding her behind his back as if that is going to keep her safe from fear. He’s a guardian and he isn’t doing *shit* to fulfill that role.

He can’t take it. So he decides to change it.

Without telling Ceda, he sends an Overseer on the journey back to the military camps. He can’t tell her, even though he adores the young small one- her orders are pleas that he cannot deny. He cannot afford her forbidding him from speaking his mind even though she'd meant well.

The general of the Eo army, named A Dagger, Sharpened by a Hook who's tinted with grey thanks to age already, isn’t too happy to see him at first. The soldiers try to chase him away.

But he *begs* them. Tells them he saw the grief, found a worried child’s ID in his files, identified her father as a scout. Orion has sired so many of his own kind- too many to ignore her sad eyes. She was too similar to his own small ones. And scouting is such a dangerous thing to do- please please let him replace the scouts or at least assist. He needs to help. He can’t take it anymore. He is incapable.

The soldiers step away in shock, the general hums in surprised intrigue. His eyes narrow in healthy suspicion- after all, he is the guardian of this army just as much as Orion is the guardian of Terminus. He asks Orion if he’s willing to follow his lead, listen. If such a holy endless thing like an Iterator will submit to one lone fool commanding sin.

And Orion’s Pathway says yes. Promises it on all of his hearts.

The whole Hivemind comes together in unanimous agreement to kneel before the mortal little lone creature, exclaiming that they are willing to be massacred in the name of becoming a single sinning man for this cause. That as the angel that they are seen as, they’d cut their wings for it, tear out their feathers for them to stuff their pillowcases with. They’ll snap their halo, cannibalize their identity until they are reborn more useful.

If it will be needed. If it will be required. Ordered. And not because of code and woven genes, but honest loyalty, every single piece will listen.

From a shell obtaining the potential of a little god to a simple soldier standing in a deathrow. They would fall for the army.

Some step away even further back, horrified at the length his promises reach. He doesn’t blame them- those are dreadful, reckless things he’s said and generally he wouldn’t speak such. Someone of his importance should be too high to be able to fall like this. Someone of his age should know better- and that he does! And yet…

The general takes on a pensive look. Something incredibly serious and blessedly free of a joke or a power trip that an organic could reasonably experience; having a biomechanical divinity bowing at his feet all for a chance at its own suffering. Orion knows some of the soldiers that stood still wouldn’t be quite as honourable. He recognizes the glints in their eyes.

With a nod of his head, the general accepts him. “With your Overseers you shall substitute our scouts. But remember that though you hold this venerable title, it does not carry the respect with it for you. You will have to earn that, strange thing.”

“I understand. Thank you.” A bow and the deal is sealed. He’s one of them now. He’ll earn the respect and the right to wear this damned armor.

In the morning, Orion hails Ceda to his chamber with urgency. She comes in stumbling, hardly fully awake, unused to the antigravity unlike a Mechanic would be. She complains that he didn’t even let her fix herself a morning cup of tea. With a little smile, he apologizes and to make up for the early waking call, he gets to fixing her bed hair.

Ceda lets him, grumbling all along, leaning into his hands far too sleepy to put effort into standing straight.

Orion doesn’t like pulling the “relationship” card- relationships are binding things, no matter their nature. It’s all chains. They carry terms, obligations, expectations when the requested goodness should come naturally- he iterates these things often and came to the conclusion he’d rather purge himself of that. But he does acknowledge the phenomenon of two people simply… harmonizing together. Getting along without the need of the choking idea of a relation, society’s definitions. Letting both participants breathe- just *be.*

Some days Ceda is a friend, some days a pupil. Some days *he’s* the pupil, looking up to her for help. Sometimes she throws an arm over his puppet’s shoulders, as if he was a brother- he replies by pulling her down into a noogie. Sometimes when she visits, she hides into his side like a daughter would with her father and each time he accepts it, sliding into the role seamlessly and holding her gently. He rocked her through her hard times, shushed her softly, let her fall asleep in his arms- no one will ever be too old for the ancient him to ask for these things, he told Ceda when she woke up with her cheek squished against his chassis, embarrassed.

They harmonize well. Which is why he refuses to be dishonest with her.

He shows her all that transpired during the night, explains that he isn’t willing to break this loyalty. That he did this as a person with power over his own life and choices. Don’t take this autonomy away from him.

Ceda stares at the projection of his memory conflicted. “But I’m… responsible for you. This is dangerous- if not physically then definitely for your mental wellbeing!”

“I came to the conclusion that leaving it would not be doing me much good either.” He says, matter of fact, arms hidden behind his back. He looks all business, a sign between them that he’s in the process of outfoxing rules set in by the Houses, the society or even his own blueprints. He tops it all off with the best cheeky expression he can give her. “As my Admin, you certainly have to find this foresight beneficial to your role! This, combined with the idea agreed upon by multiple Iterators that cites Stagnation is just another means of perpetuating a form of the cycle, results in the most obvious conclusion that this is the best case scenario we could have followed.”

She stares at him astounded.

“Don’t worry, shrimp.” He adds with a wink, reverting back to a more fitting tone of voice for who they are with each other. Deeper, with a slight rasp and most importantly: comforting and warm. “I’m not letting anyone take you away from me except if you decided it yourself. I made sure I could get you out of my decision unscathed.”

She breathes a sigh of relief, but worry doesn’t completely leave her face. “I still don’t like this. You’re in danger.”

“There is no path out of this that wouldn’t be dangerous. Either I’d stay passive and hurting, or I’d choose to be active about this in the least. I’d rather take the latter option, Ceda. I am not a particular fan of the concept of getting beaten while comatose.”

“I guess that’s a good point… Just be careful with what you take on out there? I don't know how many heart attacks I can take, man…”

“Says the one with a red lizard for a pet. I’ll try, but I’m no coward!”

And he proves himself as such. Overseers are fast little things, pesky too if their Hivemind tells them to be. With his already dark coloration they even manage to be stealthy and not glow that much.

Ceda joins in with him, too- bypassing his taboos with high importance orders that they discussed together, stuff to let him actually do damage to the enemy Anemons. Another thing she did was upgrading a few of his Overseers specifically for the scouting job. She worked to give them bigger data storage, tendrils that could pierce skin and administer potentially crippling shocks. The low blue light of his eyes became a guiding star for the Eo soldiers if they ever got lost.

Soon enough, his allies found appreciation for him too. Soon enough, Frost’s Promise took note of an Iterator's involvement and persuaded their own Iterators to come into the fights as well. Orion has zapped so many foreign Overseers to an offline state… Racing against his own kind felt different than dodging bullets of an Anemon soldier.

And soon enough, he was forced to face the ugliness of war.

He saw such brutality. So much blood, so many prolonged deaths, heard so many cries for mercy in the shape of a blade. The torture of not knowing if people were going to make it back from a battle. Sometimes, before he explained it, his own begged him to just short circuit their brains to escape the suffering. But he couldn’t. His taboos forbade him from harming his own. He could only watch.

At some point EMP weapons came into the mix. Losing an Overseer in the field kind of hurt because of how much presence he put into them, but it was manageable, not to mention how rare he made the losses. But the gods damned EMPs- one of the biggest attacks with them happened when an enemy snuck into the camp in the night and planted the things around, detonating them all at once.

One moment he’s conversing with his closest comrades by a bonfire, the other he’s fully forced back into his chamber screaming. He was *blinded.* He still could see through Overseers within Terminus, through his puppet, but the panic at being blinded out of nowhere in such a large capacity clouded those other visions.

He’s not even entirely sure when Ceda barged into his software and started artificially calming the Hivemind down. She soothes them, tells him that her watch pinged and then the lights in the city started flickering, some even blew up. His hearts raced, put out too much energy.

Orion apologizes for getting hurt. She rolls her eyes at him and starts giving him shit for it in her native tongue. Her idle salty chatter finally brings him his peace fully and naturally back.

When he gets back to the camp it’s all burned and torn apart. Spore is already there, frantically searching the ruins for anyone still alive or returning from death. He helps her look.

They accumulate quite a few confused souls that were mauled during the whole thing. It was a sneak attack, they told them, some saw the enemy specifically stealing their Overseer eyes along with taking prisoners where they could.

That… didn’t bode well at all. The both of them knew just about everything in the plans of the Eo army, had a lot of it stored in the banks of the Overseers that hadn't managed to return back home to empty them yet. With the enemy having Iterators who ought to be pissed enough at this rate to go against the moral code and do autopsies on their eyes, Frost’s Promise might as well already have large chunks of the plans too.

Spore and Orion share a nervous glance. The Anemons with them indulge themselves in worried silence and fear. Some kick the ground in guilt, muttering something about how they should’ve been awake and done anything to help out.

Who knows what difficulties will await them now?

After an hour, general Dagger marches to the ruins along with still a good sized chunk of the army following behind him. ‘Ordered out a strategic retreat,’ he was saying to an Anemon they sent out to be a look out as he was making his way to them, ‘collected the survivors before coming back to pick up the returnees.’

“General!” “Sir!!!! SIR!!!!!!” Orion and Spore call out, racing to him.

Orion tries to project his puppet in a call as always and report, but Spore beats him to it. “SIR!” Her voice is shrill in panic, eyes unbelievably wide, face pressed against the camera. “Sir they took our eeeeeeeeeEYES…….!!! They carried SENSITIVE information, they know everything, their Iterators have to be prying into us as we SPEAK, I’m so sorryyyyyhhhhhh… we didn't mean to betray youuuuhuhuhhhhh….” If she had tears, he does not doubt at all they’d be streaming down her cheeks in rivulets.

The general considers her, then firmly says: “Hey.”

It snaps Spore out of her fit. She pulls away from the camera into a more proper distance and looks at the general from beneath the brim of her hat. It’s as if she’s expecting to be scolded.

“Calm down, doctor. We will be alright yet.” Recognizing the firm tone was there out of determination and not offense, Spore relaxes, breathes a heavy sigh of both relief and stress. “Things aren’t completely lost, but they will be harder. We will prevail, we will fight on.”

There is not a single tremble in his voice. Orion’s eyes twinkle as he recognizes this steadfastness- finding it so similar to what he knows of Abet Zephyr.

The strength that lies behind the fight for the sake of better days. The fight backed up by truth. Lacking any selfish gains, just seeking the safety of tomorrow. He didn’t really… think Anemons had that in them.

Seeking an escape route by effortlessness. The jellyfish in a net analogy, the Iterators' very existence and all. Their lives are like candles- they burn bright and then run out of wax, having not moved anywhere “in the name of spiritual "progress"”. He considers, if he has just been looking at the wrong group all this time and not the whole. If maybe the jellyfish leaves things too much up to chance, if maybe a skilled little minnow that fights and finds a hole in the net is not safer.

The Anemons are small, finite. Yet seeing the soldiers gather around the general, hands clenched in tight fists, jaws set, unspeakable will to *try* inherent to fully organic things flickering even in the scared eyes… it moves him. It makes him understand. Develop a connection, comprehend their strength.

It fills him with *trust.* And casting a glance to her, the same it does for Spore.

The two of them list things they think their Overseers held when they were taken, general Dagger thanks them as if the plans weren’t leaked because of their mechanical natures in the first place. He works with them to develop new plans, takes suggestions from officers and soldiers alike.

They’ll get through this.

The next few months are a mix of ridiculously hard operations and suspiciously easy ones. Then the enemy somehow managed to get into the Eo group, directly into Spore’s facilities. Apparently a lot of prisoners they caught were sent there to be held. Which is… kind of strange, considering Spore’s place is infested with dangerous mushroom overgrowth that even caused her to be eventually rid of her title as a city bearer. But the strangeness of that didn’t register in anyone’s mind, even his own. They were too preoccupied with readying themselves for stronger waves of attacks. With so many prisoners freed, they would be feeling it on the battlefield.

But nothing came… For almost a month, complete silence.

And then…

The Siege and Capture of Orion’s Pathway takes up a whole chapter in history books all across the Eo group, all the way until the Anemons kept treasuring history. It is written about as a great tragedy, as it should be. Shows passages from diaries of Terminus’ citizens during it to communicate the dread they’ve felt as they were enslaved and hunted.

To Orion himself, the event is a marker. It is when he lost a dearness of his.

He never quite fully understood it before, why Abet Zephyr couldn’t just *be* gentle. Factually he may have, but with his spirits he couldn’t grasp it. Isn’t it easy? Isn’t it natural?

He started understanding when his systems seized in the middle of the night. The hardware mechanics of him simply wouldn’t listen to his will. Someone had to get past his firewalls, he immediately concluded, trying to find the intruder and purge them out. His software came to a halting stop next- it was like being frozen alive.

Still he could somewhat think, through the organic pieces of him. The Hivemind held together strong as an Individuality. They couldn’t move, couldn’t really do much, but they were still whole. They still could’ve alerted Ceda through her watch monitoring their biological functions. …then the hacker decided they won’t allow the Orion’s Pathway Hivemind even that.

Whoever it was knew how to turn an Iterator’s own hardware against it. The tubes, metal, speakers and all, the horrible frequency that came out of them tore all of them apart for the first time in centuries. Just like that, Orion simply couldn’t exist anymore.

The days of the Siege and Capture are all saved within his memory arrays only as muffled matted short videos taken by the lesser eyes of the Hivemind members that succumbed to more animalistic behaviours without the ability to come weave together a superior Individuality. From reports he knows his hearts still beated, but his antigravity generators were out. That meant neuron flies couldn’t do their job at all. Without them, they had no chance to come back together. His flesh started rotting, while his machinery ticked on to someone else’s whim.

They remember a vague sensation of someone prying at their puppet’s chassis, popping it open with brute force. All they knew was the pain of it, of someone sticking dirty hands right in between their organs-

It takes five weeks for a change to happen. So he finds out from outside sources later.

In the fog that is his nonexistence, a Polaris comes alight. It calls out to his components, urges them to come together, gives them a Somewhere they’ll be able to unify. The antigravity came on at some point they couldn’t have noticed.

“Please. Hurry.” The guiding star calls out to them. “Help-,” it begs.

They stitch themselves together with gurgling rage. Reach the light, clumsily take the control they’ve lost from her.

With a start, the consciousness returns into a sore and open puppet. Orion doesn’t have time to really process even that he exists again, much less that he’s apparently airing out his innards and his lenses are covered in fingerprints. There’s sounds of gunshots and sharp blades colliding. In his chamber.

Instinctively he yanks the puppet away from the ground, makes everything in here *stop*.

He traps everyone that is within the room in his grasp, while he attempts to collect his bearings.

There’s silence, a while. He’s sliding between being whole and breaking apart out of stress. It’s giving him a killer headache. His systems ping him that there’s fighting elsewhere in his structure as well, but he can’t give it any piece of his broken mind.

Then there’s the sound of futile struggling. They, he, force their eyes to focus and take in the scene through the fingerprints.

The whole chamber is a mess. It looks like a hastily put together camp with blood stains and damage here and there. Some of the panels are pried off of the walls- he can see his components thrown about, some in the middle of being recycled into different objects. He was being taken apart while still alive, that's- There’s… far too many people in here. Who- Five of them aren’t trying to fight against him, that means- ugh…

“Hey, Ori…” The one unarmored not-struggling one gently calls, waving to him. He feels like he should know her. She’s familiar and registers as crucially important in his systems, but- he can’t comprehend her disheveled hair, bleeding and dirty face. It’s far too complicated. His memory arrays aren’t responding properly- He can’t-

“Kid.” A male, gruff voice speaks up instead. Orion doesn’t have the will to look towards it, blankly staring at a hand that waved to him. “Kid, you did good. Just calm down. Take a moment to gather yourself.”

He’s *trying,* but this damn noise- his speakers spit out too many words at once as he’s unable to collect his mind. It’s even louder than the breathing, sharper and more offensive than clincking of armor. A broken hiss comes out next, he grips his head in agony.

*“Silence!”* The gruff voice snarls out quietly into the room. Some of the struggling ones listen to him and cease, the other three that weren’t putting up a fight against him hum quiet encouragement. He knows those voices, but where from-

And one growls back in challenge loudly. “Why should I, you old hag.”

“Sir, maybe you should- listen- You don’t want a dazed enemy Iterator on your case!”

“You lot have a ton of nerve to speak now.” The first gentle voice speaks again, but shaking terribly this time. Orion doesn’t know who she is, but she is the only confirmed vulnerable thing here. That means she is safe. And if she’s afraid of something, he should be taking note of it.

He barely manages to spot her, as she makes her accusation, glaring at a particularly well clothed one: “You are the one who did this to him. Bastard!”

It’s like flipping a switch…

His head snaps towards this offender, the chamber turns impossibly dark worryingly quickly, as the Hivemind all spills into the puppet in a rush. They bubble with rage and horrible hatred, and now they know who to point it all at.

The halo comes back online, it grows large in intimidation, arcs of electricity bouncing from it to the walls. His hold on all of them tightens.

“Ugh- Admin, what-!”

“Hush! The taboos won’t let him seriously harm us, just be quiet!”

The offender is brought closer. To him, the Iterator only treats him to an ugly hateful glare. But he doesn’t know what goes on inside. The Hivemind simply… can’t decide what to do with him.

‘Let’s skin him,’ some parts say. ‘Make his veins explode, so he may drown his organs with his own blood,’ suggests another.

‘Shove him out of the chamber,’ another purrs. ‘We will take him deep inside of us. Let him get lost within our wires, trap him in our tissues, starve, so he’ll remember how much of a vermin he is compared to us once he awakens again.’

‘Parasite. Parasite!’ ‘Let us all tear him apart… Like vultures…’ ‘What about eating him from the inside?’ ‘Push his face under acid, we say! Make sure he’ll live through it.’ ‘We should digest him. As slowly as we can make it be. He chose to belong to our body the moment he stepped inside.’

“So are you going to do anything or just gawk at me, toaster?” The villain attempts to kick Orion in his open chassis, but thankfully doesn’t manage to reach.

Oh, but the audacity. It angers them enough to stop their ponderings.

With bare hands Orion grabs that man’s head. With the most disgusting twist he can come up with in the moment, he snaps the bastard’s neck. With the crack, a sensation of tension lifts off his shoulders. The head falls limp at an unnatural angle and he feels lost.

“Orion’s Pathway.” The Admin’s voice rings in the silence left after the murder a beat later. “Cease.”

His grip loosens on them and all fall. Nobody starts another ruckus, the enemies left in here surrender and go quietly when the allies bind their hands.

She walks up to him with a visible limp. “Bring your puppet down to me.” He does so, and gladly. The orders feel like a breath of air as he’s fighting against drowning in his own Hivemind, still painfully restless.

Gently she closes their aching chassis. “I’ll treat you after the coast is clear. And…” She looks into his unfocused eyes. “And you’ll be more mentally stable.”

“Will he be alright?” The gruff voice asks. Heavy hand settles on his puppet’s shoulder. He manages to recognize the squeeze as comforting.

“Yes, he should be- it’s just. Going to take a while. I’ll have to call Mechanics to help out, but with the current state of Terminus…” sigh. “It will take a bit until they’ll be able to arrive.”

“Mm. You look after him good ‘till then, in that case.”

“...of course…” her voice is tight.

“I’ll go help out the rest out there. Take the body with me, too.”

“Thank you, General. May the Winds be kind to you.”

“...of course. May they be kind to you as well.”

The general leaves his chamber with a farewell and the body thrown over his shoulder like a bag of fish. The Admin waits for a second, then she pulls him into a hug.

It takes them a few minutes to remember what a hug is and that these are generally reciprocated. Shaking three fingered hands settle on the small of her back and he buries his face into her shoulder as he mourns the death of his hateless life. She embraces him dearly tighter.

Like a son and his mother would.

…

It takes two months for Orion to be able to access all of his functions again, including his Overseers. Though, he still feels… crippled. Something isn’t right with him. There’s poison somewhere within and he can’t rid himself of it.

Ceda loses hours of sleep looking for anything amiss with him that she could fix to make things better. Sometimes she tells him that all that’s left is probably only the emotional trauma of the whole experience, changing him. She even admits he feels colder now. More detached even from her. That makes him feel… not exactly guilty, but definitely like shit. He doesn’t want to be those things.

So she brings into his chamber her blue pet lizard, Procyon, in retaliation against those feelings every time she visits. Even before the war Orion adored the little goof. Getting to hold and caress it now calms him. Procyon was always supposed to be a service lizard, but its trainers most likely never expected that it would one day be supporting the emotional state of a whole ancient Iterator.

The thought makes him let out a little desperate chuckle.

Though he can use his Overseers again and the war is still raging in the north, general Dagger refuses to take him back into the scout service for now.

At least he was allowed to say hi to the soldiers and let them know that yes, he’s still alive and no, he wasn’t completely wiped like an old computer. Don’t worry people, it’s a little more complicated to do that with a whole Iterator than with the desktop back in your home.

His favorite reaction to spotting one of his Overseers up and about came from the group he hung out with the most before the Siege. The same group of three that were in his chamber that day, he found out. They all pointed at him and yelled, one started full on bawling before he booked it to the Overseer waving his arms and screaming at the top of his lungs: “NYURHG VOID BELOW!!! You laggy son of a fridge, you are alive!!!! You looked like a fucking corpse, brother!!”

In retrospect, it’s kind of funny that it is his favorite. Calling upon the Void for naught, being insulted like three times, the explicit implication of a relationship, being praised for being alive even though his primary function is finding a way to inflict permanent mass death upon the whole world. All goes against what he was made to be. The war really did change him, with scars and trust and he can’t deny it.

And when he next calls Boreas’ Blessing to request more weaponry and armor be made for his organic brothers-in-arms, he doesn’t back away from the angry eyes and threatening voice. He’s over it now. Over fear. Doesn’t have time nor patience for it.

Boreas rages against his reflection. And the reflection finally matches him with an equal rabid glare of its own.

[beevean]

Curious, what are your thoughts/opinions on Soma Cruz? I just finished Aria of Sorrow for maybe the third time and... man, it's so good. I just love Soma's story and the themes of light/darkness and good/evil in Aria and Dawn.

The Sorrow games are not games I think of much in terms of story, sadly 😅 I wasn't very impressed with the plot the first time I played them, although I always thought that Soma was... food for thought, I can say? Like, you can't help but wonder how much his past as Dracula influeces him, his thoughts, his memories, even his body (is he a complete human? does he have human traits?). He's said to be hard to approach in his bios, can we see that as glimpse of his past personality? His anachronistic fur coat is obviously meant to echo Mathias' clothes, how far does the influence stretch? But is it good to see Soma as Dracula 2.0 when he obviously wants to be Soma Cruz and no one else?

Sometimes I think about comparing the three "good Draculas" (Alucard, Soma, Hector) to see how they rejected Dracula as a status, as a mentality. But first I'd need to recheck the Sorrow games lol. maybe even check aos in japanese because something about the english script feels off to me

And one thing I remember about my first DoS playthrough was feeling bad for Soma who yes, he found many new friends, but they were also on edge about him because at any moment he could lose himself and become the Dark Lord. They trust him, but... well, you never know, you know? And the ending where he becomes the Dark Lord and he willingly gives up... :(

But yeah, speaking of light/darkness, AoS's cover is still my absolute favorite in the series:

The stark white in direct juxtaposition with the black parts are striking. Soma looks like an angel even while surrounded by demons. I also noticed that the white dragon has bird wings... so it's Soma who looks like he has devil and angel wings. And in case I hadn't made it clear, the devil/angel wings contrast hits my brain like a sledgehammer <3

[chaifootsteps]

Hi!! Same anon with a foot in the fandom and the shipping servers of hazbin here! (The one who told you about how everyone of the creative side that ISN'T always blowing steam up Dani's ass, HATES HER GUTS). Literally, SO MANY active people in the fandom have her quietly muted. Another fun fact, Husker//dust is actually one of THE MOST DEVISIVE ships in the fandom. Hazbin fandom is sort of broken up into ships. Husker//dust is the loudest but NOT the biggest: just look at AO3: Radio//dust fics: 2,024 Husker//dust fics:  809 

Val//vox: 583 Radio//husk: 504 It's not overwhelmingly more popular than any other ship.

Here is the issue, for as many people that ADORE Husker//dust, it is as many people's ALL TIME NOTP. I can't tell you how many creators i know who have had both the word and tag blocked for years (and have been PISSED the last year how the husker//dust people stopped tagging their ship because they were "sure it was cannon so everyone just has to deal with it."

It isn't just a petty ship war reason, most hazbin fans are very pro multiship. It's the fact that the spindle crew's love of husker//dust lead to all of the fandom's number 1 bullies and bootlickers to hop on that bandwagon. The husker//dust fandom is UNBEARABLE to interact with because it has captured all of the cloutchasers, Viv ass blowers, fandom police and 13 year olds in the greater hazbin fandom and put them in one place. It is single handedly the most toxic section of the Hazbin fandom. By having it blocked people like dani just DISAPPEAR out of your feed. (unless you also follow sto//litz) A lot of creators have had very personal negative interactions with the Husker//dust fandom and it soured the ship for them (even if they were once into it). They used to regularly hop onto other ships' fan art and say "do husker//dust next!" there was an OVERWHELMING wave of fandom harassment in 2020-2021 lead by people with husker//dust bios explaining why all other ships that weren't cha//ggie and husker//dust were problematic and bad (and they did this by harassing some of the BIGGEST artists and writers from other ships. Constantly. In call outs, in the comments of their works, using their ship tags, etc) Tiktok was FULL of videos making fun of all ships but Husker//dust while literally stealing fanart of creators to make fun of their ships. (examples of videos: a HUGE radio//duster's gorgeous ship art over a soundtrack of barfing noises or with cartoon edits of characters like sponge bob pointing at the art and freaking out about how hideous it is)

I see a lot of people upset with the art style of the new show, a lot of people upset about the voice actors, a lot of people upset about the direction of the plot but you'd be surprise how many people are okay with all of that but their ONE straw for dropping the series was 'if husker//dust became cannon or teased and I can't avoid it's fandom anymore on twitter' So tl:dr: promoting one ship after letting the fandom go unchecked and wild for 4 years wasn't the great show promotion they thought it was either. I think they thought it was THE favourite ship of the fandom simply because they are the loudest and most drama prone and because Viv only follows the accounts that idolize her and therefore ship Husker//dust because it was the 'most likely ship to be cannon compliant and GOD FORBID you ship something that isn't cannon or part of Vivzie's grand vison)

Well...shit! Looks like we're about to get Stolitz 2.0

Everyone cross their fingers and pray that the comparison ends exactly there, because if one of these characters extorts sex out of the other, I don't know what we're all going to do.

[megupedia]

hello! welcome to megupedia, a webpage dedicated to sharing and preserving all things kawaii pet megu! below you can find a taglist to navigate the blogs images and info, a list of information/skills we are looking for to help expand the archive, resources, and a small bio about the blog runner.

Please take a moment: Arab.org Daily Clicks - Vetted Organizations Providing Gaza with Food, Water, Shelter, and Medical Care - Vetted Gaza Evacuation Fundraiser List

would you like to help preserve and revive kawaii pet megu? i am looking for other people who are fans of megu, and/or interested in media preservation. there currently is not a dedicated server or forum, but if there is enough interest, i would really like to facilitate communication in the community! please let me know if you are someone who would join!

have a megutastic day!

taglist: Image - Video - GIF - Artwork - Asset - Graphic - Promotional - Gameplay - Development - Screenshot - Resource - Merchandise - Music - Sound - Fan Art - KPM 2.0 (Game Port Project) - Megu Room - (Will update as blog develops!) bio: hi, my name is fang :^) i was an original player of kawaii pet megu when the servers were still up. as an avid fan of virtual pet games, to this day, megu is still my favorite. unfortunately, the game is not only long shut down, it was very obscure and definitely not well documented- Especially in the english language. i am hoping to at least partially change that by attempting to preserve game information, promotional imagery, and overall history of the app. currently the only page i run is this tumblr, but i am hoping to host a website to better display and preserve information about megu!

things i'm seeking: -.apk of the game. as far as i've found, an actual functional .apk is currently lost. (functional as in is even real/will load in any capacity/has the game data uncorrupted. im aware of how much of the game was server-side and will either be fully lost or in great need of reconstruction) -someone knowledgeable enough about .apk files, app emulation, and app development to hopefully aid in my goal of reconstructing the game in some fashion -footage that accurately displays the different mechanics of the gameplay (english especially) -information on the origin of the stroll bgm (did seiya iwagama make it? if so was it released on any albums? through loopcube or another alias?) -anybody who knows more japanese than me . i know a little but not enough to always be helpful, and definitely not enough to directly translate dev blog posts or tweets. -detailed photos/information regarding the plush keychains/official megu plush. and if you'll sell them to me (especially the large ones) please hit me up -ANY of your personal photos/videos/screenshots/art/accounts. if you have screenies or video of your megu from 2010-2013, i would be thrilled to see. i would also love to compile the stories and experiences we all shared with our megu :^)

[babayagakiller467]

Fairy Tail Second Gen kids: Dragneel Family

Yo! So Hi everyone, this is gonna be my for time posting something on Tumblr.

Recently I just back into Fairy Tail, with the release of the 100 years quest. It was one of the first anime I ever watched and I enjoyed it, despite all the hate it got, I liked it.

So I wanted to start posting about my second gen AU for the series. Now I know a lot of people have done this, but I wanted to show my take on it.

Now I won't be doing every single family in one post, so this one is dedicated to the Dragneel Family.

First off we have: August Dragneel

Bio Parents: Zeref Dragneel and Mavis Vermillion

Adopted Parents: Natsu and Lucy Dragneel

Siblings: Igneel Dragneel, Luke Dragneel and Jude Dragneel.

Age: 23

Sex: Male

Race: Human

Magic: Copy Magic

Love interest: Asuka Connell

Looks: August has a head of short messy blonde hair and he has dark eyes. He usually wears a black leather jacket, which covers a plain white T-shirt and he wears a pair of long blue jeans. Around his neck he has a locket which contains a photo of both of fathers when they were kids, along with his grandparents (Basically the locket Zeref had in the anime)

History: Yes, this is the same August from the Alvarez war. He was given another chance at life, reborn as a baby with no memory of his previous experience on the planet. He was found by Natsu, who decided to take August back to the guild and raise him with Lucy. August retained his ability to use copy magic, though he primarily uses fire spells and the various magic from his mothers Celestial Spirits. August made history when he became an S-Class wizard at the age of ten, becoming the youngest S-Class mage in the guild's history. At the age of 16 August ended up getting the memories of his past life back and as you can imagine, that lead to a screaming match with him and his parents, well mostly with Natsu for lying to him these past few years. After a heartfelt talk between him and his dad August learnt to live with himself and separate the person he is now, from the person he was in the past.

Personality: August has a mix of both of his father's personalities. Most of the time, he is optimistic, lively and like Natsu, always looking for a challenge, though much more subdued. August does swear like a sailor (Natsu's fault). However, if you harm anyone he cares about, he'll start acting like Zeref really quick. Making sure to focus his magic to cause the one who wronged him the most pain imaginable. Also like Zeref, he tends to brood alone, whenever he's sad. He does like reading books, similar to Lucy, even admitting that his mom has the best stories.

Next up we have the first biological son: Igneel Dragneel!

Parents: Natsu and Lucy Dragneel

Age: 18

Siblings: August, Luke and Jude Dragneel

Sex: Male

Race: Dragon, Demon and Human

Magic: Fire Dragon Slayer Magic

Love interest: Rosemary Fernandes

Looks: When he was younger, Igneel looked like a miniature version of his father, inheriting both his pink hair and slitted green eyes. Even got his dad's short spiky pink hair. However as he got older, Igneel grew out his spiky hair so much to the point where it covered his entire back. Igneel wears a red, short sleeve jacket which covers a plain dark blue T-shirt. He wearing bandages around his arm, going from his hands all the way to his elbow. Lastly he wears a pair of plain blue jeans. Sometimes Igneel well tie his long hair into a small little bun.

Personality: Igneel is literally just a Natsu 2.0. He has the same, wildness, recklessness and determination like his father did back in the day. He even formed a team with a couple of his friends and named it 'Team Igneel'. Igneel does care deeply for his guild mates, but is absolutely dense when it comes to anything romantic. This has lead him to be made fun of by his best friend/rival, Storm Fullbuster.

Fun Fact: When Igneel was a baby, he had nearly every female in the guild smitten with his cuteness, especially his mother. He had Lucy wrapped around his little finger, as well as all her female spirits, yes even Aquarius was transfixed by the boy's cuteness. This lead to Natsu having to step up and be the responsible one most of the time (But this was mostly because he was jealous his son took his wife from him).

Next up we have: Luke or Lucas Dragneel.

Parents: Natsu and Lucy Dragneel

Age: 6

Siblings: Igneel, August and Jude Dragneel

Sex: Male

Race: Dragon, Demon and Human

Magic: Fire Make Magic

Love Interest: Girls are icky!

Looks: Luke has a head of short spiky hair, though instead of being pink, he has his mother's blonde. He also inherited Lucy's brown eyes. Luke has a brown scarf made from his father's dragon scales. It was a made by his mother. Luke also wears an orange t-shirt with a dragon in the middle and a pair of short, brown Khaki pants.

Personality: Luke is legitimately like Ike from South Park. He is a whirlwind of terror, that just so happens to be wrapped up in an adorable little bundle. Luke once to live up to the Dragneel name, so he always steals an S-Class mission to try and complete it. This usually ends with either his father or older brothers having to save him. Rarely does Lucy ever go, which is a blessing because after she manages to get him away from danger.....the poor kid is gonna be nursing a sore bottom for awhile. The kid also swears a lot (Once again, his dad's fault)

Lastly we have: Jude Dragneel

Parents: Natsu and Lucy Dragneel

Age: 2

Siblings: August, Igneel and Luke Dragneel

Race: Dragon, Demon and Human

Magic: Hasn't appeared yet.

Love interest: Doesn't have any.

Looks: Jude actually has a head of short, messy black hair, very much like his uncle and grandma (from his father's side). Jude also has two different eye colors, his left one being brown and his right one being green. Jude mostly wears a plain white onesie, which sometimes will be covered by a pair of blue overalls.

Personality: Jude is actually rather quiet, which literally made Lucy cry tears of joy. She loves her boys, but they could be a handful, so she was thankful her fourth child was peaceful. Jude is mostly content to either sit down and play with toys or watch TV. Though he does try to copy his brothers and his father, he isn't as wild as them.

Yeah, so that's it. Now I know that it's only boys and no Nashi. That's because when I made this, I had no idea about Nashi and 100 years quest didn't come out at the time, so there was no Nasha. That and this was sort of based off my real family, in the fact that it's only me and my brothers, no girls.

If someone wants to draw them, or could draw them, you can. I've been wanting to see how they'd look in real time for a while

[falling-turtle]

University of Illyria - a university subhood for Veronaville

For centuries, the famed university of Illyria has been heralded as one of the biggest centers of literature and culture. What will it offer to new generations of Sims? As I promised, here it finally is! A university subhood for Veronaville with Sims inspired by Shakespeare's plays so you can enjoy more Shakespeare in your neighborhood!

Features: 5 households with 8 students in total, based on Shakespeare's plays Twelfth Night and All's Well That Ends Well, all complete with relationships, memories, skills, bios and hobby enthusiasm. 3 dorms, 7 residential lots and 8 community lots. Community lots are fully furnished while with residential lots I left lots of opportunities for you to clutter them with your own cc.

The neighborhood name when you download it is UILL so make sure you don't have another university by that name already. The neighborhood is built on the Three Lakes Template so you shouldn't need a camera mod to see all the lots. Because of the way subhoods work in Sims 2, the names of professors, dormies and other NPCs will be randomized when you add the university to your neighborhood. I included a folder with more Shakespeare-sounding names for your NPCs if you want them for more "Shakespeare immersion" but don't want to come up with them yourself. You can use SimPe to change the names.

Mods that you WILL need: 50 new lifetime wants by Lamare Fix subhood selection by Mootilda Lifestyle Build Bundle (the second link in the top post; extracted from Lifestyle Stories by Argon) Bespoke Build Set by Honeywell Sweetening Fruit Nectar Bar Recolors (ALWoodColours only) and pcsims_smb Seasons Kiosk and More MM Recolours (recolors only) by Michelle

Recommended mods:

Veronaville 2.0 by Delijume is what I prefer to play instead of the original Veronaville, so if you want even more Shakespeare than what the original Veronaville + my university gives you, I recommend you check it out! Veronaville 2.0 also includes a university, in the "English" style so I modeled my university more after the "Italian" style so it'd complement Delijume's. I also created the playables so that they wouldn't "clash" with any of those from Veronaville 2.0

Little Stratford by me, a shopping district also created for Veronaville for even more Shakespeare!

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Meet the students at the University of Illyria!

Orsino is trying to win the heart of his beloved Olivia, but maybe there is somebody else close by whose heart he already won?

While at university, Olivia is trying to focus on her studies and leave the partying and dating to others. But will Orsino's new roommate change those plans?

Sebastian hasn't talked to his sister Viola in a long time. Will there be a joyful reunion once the siblings see each other again?

After being dumped by her boyfriend, Helen followed him to the university he's enrolled at with one goal: get him back! Her best friend Diana is fully on board with the plan. Will they be successful?

Bertram and Parolles intend to enjoy their college life to the fullest. Will they also manage to mantain their good grades? And is Parolles truly a bad influence on Bertram?

Thank you for checking this out! Side note: I ran into some bugs while testing the neighborhood. I'm pretty sure they are ironed out now and the university is working exactly as intended but please let me know if anything seems amiss.

[anchoraweigh]

oh-kayyyy, haha, i'm officially cooled down from spending like 8 hours straight playing wuwa today, hahaha. here's my thoughts on brant's quest! for the convenience of those who haven't played yet i'll be putting it under the cut because it contains spoilers.

people who know me will know i've been really anticipating aldric. he may be some random guy who showed up for the first time in brant's quest to YOU, but to me he's sort of been ghosting the narrative of rinascita's nautical lore since 2.0. as a big fan of pirates, i was heavily anticipating his arrival, because i figured specific character mentions would probably mean he had some sort of story role to play later.

and ... well.

i enjoyed him in this quest, but i'm still a little bitter hahaha. i think they actually sort of whiffed it with this one. he was funny, but this was really the first time i played a quest in wuwa and thought something like "wow... they really had a chance to tell a better story than they did, huh?" but i'm also coming from a place of bias since i had placed a lot of stakes on the name 'aldric' in my own mind. i just think it would have been more impactful to have taken his character seriously, but i get what they were going for all the same.

anyway, that's sort of just the prelude to my actual thoughts. brant is obviously the star of the show both in this blog and in this quest, so i'm going to try and address my thoughts on what it revealed about him in a somewhat orderly manner, but please forgive me if i get a little all over the place and excessively long-winded.

point 1!

the quest helpfully cleared up the timeline of brant's escapades with the troupe in a way that was left pretty unclear based on his trailer. it seems like the jailbreaks and bounties were from a time long before the present when brant was newly captain of the troupe. based on his bio information, i'd be willing to bet these also took place before the troupe came into contact with lario! i was wondering just HOW far in the past that trailer was set, and it turns out the answer is "very far".

to be honest, i like that.

it paints a very clear picture of growth and development in brant. the younger, newly-titled captain brant was someone who grew up on tales of grand adventures; he was every bit as good-hearted as he is now, but he was more of a risk-taker who saw his art, performance, and civil disobedience as the best thing he could do for the wellbeing of rinascita. in the present, he's been placed into a position where he really understands how best to move rinascita forward and away from the religious authoritarianism the order pushes, and the actions of the troupe have changed accordingly. brant's a surprisingly mature guy in that way!

point 2!

this quest really did everything possible to emphasize that brant really is the people's captain. in terms of his interactions with the troupe and the citizens of rinascita, i actually really adored the way his character was handled.

the bet he and battier make between eachother speaks to a very close, personal relationship between brant and his crew, especially the older members! it was very clear to me that the dynamic between them is closer to a group of really good friends in times of peace - they respect brant's orders, but they're very comfortable and happy teasing him and making little harmless bets with stakes like "you have to be a regular crewmate for a day". i really enjoyed that.

this sort of ties back into point 1, but i enjoyed his interactions with belle and margherita as well. there was a part of my little order-hating heart that was somewhat dissatisfied with the way the thief was thrown to the order's judgement, but i had to keep in mind that the order has officially discontinued the pilgrim's sail as a punishment, and that brant is currently trying to pursue (mostly) legal ways to secure rinascita's freedom - it wouldn't really help his reputation or position if he were to do something like let a thief get off scot-free.

his crowd-work and interactions with aldric's crew were great too, and i loved all the silly lines between him and the rover a lot. in general, this quest really emphasized how down-to-earth brant really is.

point 3!

this one speaks mostly to my personal preference, but i was very happy to see that brant seems to have a strong affinity for history and a desire to learn about it. the troupe themselves are destitute, but brant respects the history and unwritten laws of a place and group of people far too much to bid at getting himself a fortune. faced with drake's treasure, he sacrifices a single coin - something that held a very high value to him, as the seeker of a legend - and received in turn another item that held almost no value for anyone else, but was priceless to him.

in general, it was nice to have him say something like "i don't really care about getting the treasure, i'd just like to know more about drake", wasn't it? well, for me, i like characters like that most of all. storytellers and those interested in learning about other people's stories... that's always sort of been my favorite thing.

as much as i thought aldric could be better, i thought kuro did a very good job at setting up the two of them as thematic parallels. i'll admit i would have liked to see them interact more - a lot of the way brant spoke about aldric implied they had a history beyond sharing a pilgrim's sail together, and some of aldric's pirates even outright confirm they've fought in the past. i think it would have helped the story a lot if brant's feelings towards aldric had been made more clear.

well - this is leaning more into another topic, though.

point 4!

i'll admit, i was actually very scared to go into this quest because i was worried there wouldn't be much nuance to brant's portrayal, but i was pleasantly surprised.

when brant talks about aldric, there's a sort of forlorn sense of having lost someone, even before aldric dies. that was the way i read it, anyway. he doesn't completely take aldric seriously and he treats him very sternly, but he's actually very kind to aldric all things considered, yeah? not only does he do his very best NOT to actually resort to violence against him, but he also goes out of his way to demonstrate the exchange of values to aldric out loud, and tries his best to save him from the "curse".

there was a long, long moment of silence after aldric died that really stuck with me when i was playing the quest itself. after that, brant says something like "i didn't think he'd really choose riches over his life" and he sounds VERY heartbroken there, like he's just lost a friend instead of a cowardly, greedy enemy. it speaks a lot to brant's feelings on the other exiles from rinascita. also, he fended aldric's crew off more than once, but he never did turn them in to the authorities. hahaha, well, it actually makes me sad to think that aldric was one of the people on that boat telling brant stories in his worst times.

complaints aside, i also think they did a very good job at setting up the thematic parallels between brant and aldric. by creating a selfish character who wanted to reap the rewards of a hunt he hardly earned, it makes brant seem like a pretty noble person in comparison - and i really enjoy that. it plays further into the ongoing thought i've had that the troupe in general are just much better people than the order, despite the way the order tries to paint the exiles as bad.

anyway ...

well, i'm sure i actually forgot a lot of things in this post, but it's already pretty long. hahaha. overall, despite thinking there was an opportunity to make a better and more engaging quest, i did have a fun time playing it. and no matter what i was very happy just to see him.