#adopt a cthulhu

[cordialtiger]

Baby Hatch

Petyr was elbow deep in a bag of Cheetos when his ancient brick of a Mac started to buzz. He frantically wiped his hands on his brown overalls, smearing orange dust on his crotch as he rushed to stand.

He walked briskly through the steel hallway, the pale yellow lights flashed sluggishly along the walls.

Pictures of babies were hung every few feet. Some had five or six eyes, some had tentacles for arms. All were swaddled in red clothing with the slogan “Yokai Hatch” repeated in big block letters.

Karen from Accounting opened the door of her office as he was breezing past.

She squinted at him from behind large gold round frames. She held a Big Gulp between her furry paws.

“You need help?”

Petyr shrugged. “As long as it is not oozing or has rows of serrated teeth I’ll be fine.”

She took a long sip, nodding. He knew she remembered Basil, who almost took Greg’s arm off last summer.

Greg worked in the basement now, reviewing camera feed behind a locked door.

Petyr loped off for the front of the building, where the hatch lived. He thought of how it looked from the outside, a drawer of metal carved into the outside wall. Messages about safety were taped on it, along with warnings not to leave pink cheeked babies who might get consumed. The drawing of a human baby with a large red NO overlaid on it was particularly inspiring to him.

When someone put a child in the hatch, it gently deposited them into a square plastic container, drilled with small holes. It was enough to contain most creatures though one or two had managed to escape.

One was a gelatinous ooze named Patridge who slithered out through a miniscule cap between the cover and the frame. The other was a fox demon who simply ate through her cage. She’d torn her way through most of the office before Helen from Dairy managed to subdue her. Helen had said it was easier than wrestling cows.

In the box was a small lump so black it absorbed the light. Petyr put on his gloves and started to hum a soothing song.

“Hello baby, hello,” he sang.

The lump moved sluggishly towards his voice. It seemed almost sad.

“It’s okay,” Petyr said, opening the lid. “You’re safe with us. We have lots of lovely people who will care for you.”

He gingerly opened the lid, wary of teeth or arms.

The baby rolled a little but stayed still. It was a little bigger than the palm of Petyr’s hand. He grabbed a swaddling cloth and wrapped it around the baby’s body, cradling it in his arms.

“You’re okay,” he said.

He couldn’t see any eyes or arms. Nothing escaped the blackness of the baby’s skin. He started towards the nursery when he felt the building shake.

“Oh shit,” he said. “Earthquake.”

Real earthquake, not a drill. Though he knew where to go next from the drills he’d been to a few months before. Terrible things, drills. All that standing around and doing nothing. He kind of regretted bitching so much about them now. He knew where to go.

Around him, doors opened as employees left their offices to join him in the gym which had been built to double as a shelter in cases like this.

The walls shook even harder, some ceiling tiles came down on them as they all ran for the gym. Petyr cradled the baby to shield it from any falling debris.

Everyone was holding their phones, frantically looking for news. There wasn’t any. 

The building stopped shaking. Petyr huddled near a wall. This didn’t feel like an earthquake, was all he could think.

In his arms, the infant let out a piercing noise that sounded eerily like a siren.

He heard a loud crack. Parts of the ceiling broke off and rained down on everyone.

“Get back!” he heard someone yell.

They all shifted to the back of the gym as the ceiling split open.

A round eye looked down at him. The baby’s cries ratcheted up. A piece of stone fell and cut the skin above his right eyebrow. Karen rushed over, tearing off her scarf and applying pressure.

“Is it here for you?” Petyr whispered. It happened that the parent regretted leaving their child sometimes. Not often, but there were procedures that had to be followed.

“We can’t just give it back,” Karen said. “We have forms to fill out. In triplicate!”

“I don’t think it’s going to wait for paperwork,” Petyr said, wiping the blood from his eye. He could taste it on his lips now, hot and metal.

He took the wiggling baby, brushing its tentacles away as it swiped at his face.

“Come on now,” he said, crooning at where its face would be. “We’ll get you back to Mom and Dad.”

He wasn’t sure if either term applied. He thought the monsters produced asexually but he’d never bothered to research much about them before. He’d probably have to change that.

The baby made a gurgling noise and projectile spit a glob of green goo at him. Petyr gagged, coughed, and kept going.

He held the baby up to the giant eyeball. His knees shook. He locked them and firmed his chin.

“Look, he’s here. This tantrum needs to end. You know the policy of our institution. We are more than happy to return what was left. This is impolite and unacceptable behavior. You’ll need to leave your name and contact information so we can bill you for the damages to our building.”

He heard a wail from one of the workers still in the room.

“Probably for therapy bills too,” he added.

The eye went away, an ink-black tentacle replaced it. It was twice as tall as Petyr and so big around it had to knock more of the wall away to get through. It gently picked up the baby who stopped crying once it was held.

“Thank you for your patronage,” Petyr yelled after it.

He fell on his butt as the monster drifted away, his legs would no longer hold him.

The hole in the ceiling was open and he could see the stars through them. 

He laid all the way down, looking up, almost wanting to smile.

[tokoriart]

Crayon critters!🖍️🎨   ~~~   Adopt here: [ToyHouse page]  

[natansiik]

Cat-Cthulhu 20usd [OPEN]

[agrimmdesign]

Green-shelled hatchlings are often more adventurous than their counterparts. They prefer to hunt for their food rather than waiting for food to come to them.

[thevioletscout]

Inside, inside this deep hole together Nobody else can see us share our hopes and dreams In this world or in that world, there’s nowhere we can be In this world or in that world, there’s nowhere we can be Ah, dear God in Heaven, calling on the god of children Covered us from head to toe in bruises from the time you entertained yourself In the tiny sandbox where you play

------------------------------------------------------

Back with some more Call of Cthulhu art, this time of another investigator of mine; Sibyl Matthews.

After her parents' death Sibyl was adopted by her uncle, the pastor of Arkham's protestant church. Under his care and guidance, she grew into a sweet young lady and a devoted Christian, able to persuade even the most skeptical of people to at least attend a sermon.

Through faith, all things are possible... Right?

- Pose was provided by Figurosity

(Follow @arkham-outskirts to eventually read more about her)

[moe-machine]

Have you ever been drawn to the dark allure of the unspeakable horror ? Delve into the shadows and explore the sinister world of these enigmatic characters at our upcoming My Lovely Horror , adoptable event!

Within the hidden corners of the cosmos, secrets and forbidden attractions lie dormant, waiting to be unveiled. Embrace the complexity of these cultists in all their dark glory, delighting in the horror they instill. 

Will you find yourself drawn to these malevolent figures, perhaps even falling in love with the darkness that dwells within?  You will either survive or go mad upon witnessing the truth behind the veil that each cultist hides about the Great Old Ones?

 💙Auction Details💙

The event will be an auction. To participate, you need to follow me on Instagram. And do your bidding. There will be a total of 10 cultists, each one representing a great ancient entity of cosmic horror based on Cthulhu mythos.

Starting Bid (SB): $80

Receive a full-body character illustration with clothes.

Also, get a nude version (SFW) and his background story to delve deeper into the character's dark tale.

Auto Bay (AB): $150

Receive the full-body character illustration with clothes 

A daring full nude version (NSFW).

His background story to delve deeper into the character's dark tale.

Additionally, Gain a full-body commission featuring the cultist villain alongside an OC of your choosing. 

May the stars align in your favor as you embark on this journey into the abyss of the unknown. Remember, the allure of the cultists' realm can be irresistible, but know that the path to enlightenment may lead you to the brink of sanity.

Dare to bid, dare to delve, and dare to embrace the darkness that lurks within the void. See you at the auction!

 Warning: The event's content delves into the chilling horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos and may not be suitable for everyone.

[starv1ng--art1st]

Suburbia Hell

Take a quick 2-hour sketch comic thing I made for a call of cthulu campaign I'm in,,,, the guys are in a suburbia hell dream <33333

Seven not only is no longer an orphan, but supposedly the man who adopts him is the same man who used to hate him the most <3333 Also Six (his younger brother, not related by blood) is alive ??????

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

GMing Call of Cthulhu is just a long process of creating the most fucked up creatures you can imagine only to have the players immediately adopt them

[meanbossart]

ASK COMPILATION: Boomer Drow, Scratch, Mouthwashing, Cats and musical opinions.

A more casual compilation this time as I desperately try to make some room in my inbox. I went back so far I found lore questions and art prompts that I really liked but had completely forgotten about... That's why it's a mess in there LOL I will hopefully get to those soon!

Hi! Thank you! I still dream about smoking almost every night and had a couple during the new year but I'm hanging in there :')

Very loose and mostly as a bit. It might be something that I explore more in the future, but as of right now their "canon" setting is far, far more interesting to me!

...That's brutal and highly accurate 😭

[MORE UNDER THE CUT]

I'm not gonna lie, when I started posting I got, uh, a lot of responses like this to my art. About how I drew people "ugly" and frightening and even though it MOSTLY was meant as a compliment, it got kinda... Overwhelming 😅 It definitely led me to do a 180 for a while and re-access how I wanted to draw people. I love drawing flaws but I think that comes from not really seeing them as flaws, so the amount of folks AGGRESSIVELY harping on it did eventually get to me a little bit.

I think I've since found a pretty good balance between simple, pretty and "flawed" that I enjoy, though. So, thank you! I do take your message as a compliment and I'm glad you enjoy him.

DU drow was my first run! I have since played with a different character called Izzantar who was my first non-urge campaign though.

...

...

... I didn't find scratch in the DU drow run. Sorry anon LOL

Now you see, this is the legacy I want to leave behind.

(thanks for making Astarion feel included)

I was the one who recommended it to him and I really liked it! I've always DREAMED of a game that actually and unapologetically put you in the shoes of a shitty person and took you through the complex reasons why they are the way that they are without justifying their actions. And I adore the way the secondary character undeniably had a hand in the tragedy that unfolded despite his good intentions. The game sincerely explored the types of flawed characters I rarely ever see explored and I can only give it my sincerest kudos to it.

I've been considering playing Origins on stream after MANY recommendations, actually!

I would suggest examining and referencing off athletes and gymnasts videos for practice while trying to garner a more in-depth understanding of musculature by crossreferencing that stuff with dry, medical anatomy diagrams. I have a few more in-depth examples and advice in my #tutorial and #advice tags!

DU drow would really like Frida. Jarboe would constantly disappoint him by being the very dumb animal that she is.

I think Astarion would like both of them but complain endlessly about how much attention they demand and how up in his business they'd want to be - I have a feeling he likes street cats, which none of my cats are (Frida has a little street-smarts remaining but has been thoroughly spoiled by now. Jarboe was a hoarder cat before I adopted her and is extremely sociable and un-cat-like because of it.)

I DM'd a single Call of Cthulhu session in my teens and only recently participated in my first ever DnD game in a discord event! That's about it.

This is for the over-attentive ANE readers but Brutus is a Dalyria song for me ☺️

He'd like Jazz A LOT.

But I think he'd be more of a root-punk/post-rock guy, not really into synth. And then a lot of the classics like Elvis, Nina Simone, Marley, etc.

Also Foetus and GG allin for whatever reason.

3 for Astarion, 5 for Shadowheart. Jaheira would never but she could get away with 8.

[gofancyninjaworld]

Strong?

Whew, it's been a while since I wrote a long meta. For ease, each section has <20 words in bold italic.

Why are we here again?

If you read both the OPM manga and webcomic, then you have experienced a very extended form of antanaclasis: a form of repetition in which the reused word changes meaning. Sadly, the Greeks, clever rhetoricians though they were, didn’t come up with a term for meaning-changing repetitions in two closely-related but independent works. 

And few places more so than below: 

Webcomic  

Genos: Saitama-Sensei…do you think that I’ve become a little stronger?

Saitama: …You have become stronger, haven’t you? I mean you changed your parts.

Genos: But does changing my parts truly make me stronger? 

OPM Webcomic Chapter 108, translator uncredited. 

The OG conversation.

Us: Yes, it makes sense that he’d ask that. Last time he fought, the monsters literally disarmed him like he was a child with a small but annoying toy, he got mocked by Garou, and Saitama dismissed him. Damn straight he’s unsure if he’s getting anywhere. 

Manga

Genos: Saitama-Sensei…do you think that I’ve become a little stronger?

Saitama: …You’re probably at least a little stronger, right? I mean you changed your parts, didn’t you?

Genos: …I wonder if changing my parts can truly make me stronger though… 

OPM Manga Chapter 186, translator: Graywords. The same question, in a very different context.

Us: What the hell? Dude, you strong-armed Cthulhu's representative, stopped it from scalping the planet and told it to take a number and wait its turn for elimination. You fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Tatsumaki, literally saved her life at least twice. You got the heroes to work together, your arms withstood a bite from Gums, and that even after losing most of their armour, and you took a HELL of a lot of beating down. And you still wouldn’t stay down. Saitama praised you. He told you, HE TOLD YOU that you’d gotten stronger! And he cares about you so much that he literally bitch slapped reality until it spat you back out safe and sound. HOW CAN YOU ASK SUCH A QUESTION?!!! 

Doesn't this mean anything? WHAT IS HAPPENING? AAAARGH!

Well, it’s Genos. Genos can ask that question, and he has. 

Character Development As A Process Rather Than Event

Why? What’s ONE getting at here? Pop a squat: I hope you find this half as interesting as I did. 

The situation in the manga flies in the face of the popular view of character development, where a character gets something they’ve been working towards, or makes some realisation: they change, and all is well on that particular front, kumbaya. 

ONE has long disliked this idea. As he’s said, he doesn’t believe that people change suddenly but that change is embedded as a process rather than an event. It’s a key motivation behind his writing of Mob Psycho 100.  When ONE has the space for it, you can and should expect characters to ‘get back on their bullshit’ at least occasionally.  We can also expect characters to quit their bullshit just to adopt new bullshit... Bang *cough* Bang.

Old dog, new bullshit.

A second theme that comes up with ONE is that we rarely know what makes us happy. This is a big theme in One-Punch Man, starting with Saitama himself. He has sought happiness through becoming invincible, only to find it elusive. When we met him, he told Genos his laundry list of things he was sure would give him happiness now: recognition, living somewhere decent, and being feted. His laundry list is being fulfilled at a rapid clip, and guess what? It’s not made him happier. To the extent that Saitama is finding joy, it’s in his relationships with Genos and King [1]. OPM is full of characters chasing the symptoms of their problems rather than addressing their problems. 

Are both of these factors in play here? You betcha. Shall we dig in? 

In the manga, ONE has made Genos work very hard indeed to get what he has. He’s had to grind much harder than his webcomic equivalent: we see even something mundane like taking out the trash turn into a life-and-death fight for him. I’m not here for Genos in the webcomic today. His progress is much more saltatory and faces a fascinating but different set of challenges [2]. Just as ONE says, change comes through daily effort. That steady hard work has come with some incredible rewards [3]. We know what it takes to stop Demon Cyborg now. An agent of God. A strong one. Monsters not personally blessed by His Yeastiness need not apply – unless they have a really, really nasty trick up their sleeves. 

With those rewards come new challenges.  If external threats are less of an issue for Genos, Genos still has his most faithful opponent, himself.

If you ask Genos, he’d say he’s pretty objective, dealing with what’s tangible and measurable, keeping a clear view of himself, and making few to no excuses for anything. 

He has three questions:

Am I strong? 

Is my strength legitimate?

Am I worthy?

Let’s take these one at a time. 

Takeaway: If ONE is reusing a conversation, that's because he has something new to say.

Definitions of Strength

Genos has one thing in common with Darkshine – being physically weak at one point. Unlike Darkshine, Genos isn’t ashamed of the fact that he’s weak: it’s just a reality. Accepting that reality, he has given up his human body in order to receive body modification and upgrades at the hands of Dr. Kuseno. The things he wished to achieve couldn’t be attained through physically training the body he was born with, so it was just logical. 

His definition of strength is very simple: strength is the power to destroy your enemies. If his enemies defeat him, then, ipso facto, he is weak. He often feels that no matter how hard he tries, the situation doesn’t change. 

Thinking himself weak while refuting it by his very actions.

Now, I’m going to invite you to look afresh at the image I’ve put up. What is he doing there but demonstrating a strength that falls outside his narrow definition? It would be easy for Genos to escape this situation, or, failing that, take all the monsters out. However, here he is, throwing away a lethal victory or running away to fight another day in favour of protecting someone who cannot protect herself. That takes a serious amount of courage and moral strength. 

Indeed, all through that arc, he showed so many different kinds of strength. He, the person whom Tatsumaki once literally threw away, became the rock she could lean on because he made it clear that he was here to support and improve her effectiveness, not fight her over glory. He, the person who said he’d not cooperate with the S-Class heroes, came and told them to come help, and none other than Atomic Samurai, the guy who never works with anyone, was moved to step up and marshal the rest of the heroes [4]. 

See that? This is what we call growth.

Heroes know when they see someone who's the real thing, and they respond.

Remember how in the webcomic Bang hid rather than follow Genos to support Tatsumaki? He's doing it here because he recognizes Genos as the Real Deal.

After the MA arc, we’ve seen that when he talks, the other heroes listen, for hours if need be. He has been developing a mix of soft and hard power that is rare and exceedingly valuable. Only, this doesn’t fit his definition of what strength is. Even his narrow definition of strength is troublesome: no matter how strong a hero is, there’s always that one situation in which you might not prevail.  

When it comes to strength, Genos has come far, but he still needs to do a lot of growing to appreciate what he has and build on it. 

Legitimacy of Strength

“Isn’t being a cyborg like cheating?” – Saitama, One-Punch Man Anime, Season 1 

You can’t accuse Genos of not knowing which side of his bread has the butter. He never lets himself forget that he owes his benefactor just about everything: his name, his looks, money, power, speed, and weapons. Even after Saitama praised him, he immediately gave the credit to Dr Kuseno for the parts, and to Saitama, for the guidance. He took not a shred of credit for himself. 

Dude, learn to take a compliment!

Does it make you want to go ‘GAAAH!’? It does me. 

GAAAH!

There, that’s better. 

It is good to stay humble enough to acknowledge the people to whom you owe your success but to discount your own role in that success is wrong.That said, it’s something that really gnaws at Genos: when everything he has can be confiscated at will, can he really say that it’s his? We see that even Saitama has his doubts, although, as he’s lived with Genos, I expect that he’s long changed his mind as to becoming a cyborg being the easy route. 

There are two things to say about being a cyborg. The first is that, for certain, Dr. Kuseno has given him the body modification to be a cyborg and then equipped him with some hellacious weapons and capabilities. But that equipment is a waste if it’s given to someone who cannot use it effectively. An F-14 fighter jet is a lawn ornament to a guy who can’t fly, let alone someone who isn’t a highly and specifically trained jet fighter pilot. Let’s start with the basics: without the intelligence and self-discipline to learn how to use his parts and keep up with all the terrifying pace at which the doctor has added upgrades, what Genos does would be a non-starter [6]. 

The speed with which Genos gets his head around his upgrades is truly terrifying.

Hard powers aside, all the soft strengths I’ve mentioned, the strengths that have had the other heroes listening to Genos, trusting him to have their backs, even following him into battle, all of those are 100% his. The fighting skills he has built, that repertoire he continues to expand, 100% his.The courage to step forward and do the right thing even when the outcome appears hopeless, 100% his. The judgement of what to do and when, 100% his. The battle sense of what’s important, so he’s become hard to ambush, 100% his. The grit he has developed to persist when things go wrong, 100% his. The heart to feel the pain of a loss but learn from it and throw oneself into the breach again, 100% his [5]. The imaginativeness with which he can improvise solutions, 100% his. The integrity, his. The vision, his.The drive to achieve his goals, oh yeah, totally his. The way the brutal battles have not etched away his humanity, instead allowing him to find some empathy and even a smidge of maturity? No one gave Genos that. If another person were to receive Genos’s parts, they wouldn’t do what he does. 

That brings us to the second part: becoming a cyborg is not for the faint of heart. We find out that the Hero Association has flirted with the idea of giving lower-ranking heroes body modifications to strengthen them, and they have been immediately rebuffed by said heroes, who have correctly threatened them with lawsuits.  

Damn straight you can't rearrange people without permission. Relevant sections highlighted.

Being a cyborg means knowingly accepting some degree of permanent disability in exchange for some specified power. It’s no wonder that very few people want to do it. And those who do are really motivated. Both the manga and the webcomic are in agreement on this fundamental fact. Equally, ONE makes the point that body modification is a medical procedure and comes with risks that increase as the modification becomes more extensive. Becoming a cyborg takes serious commitment; however, becoming a high-content cyborg takes incredible willpower and physical resilience just to live, never mind to realise the abilities you reached for.

Just read it all, already. Body modification is no easy way out.

You cannot call a cyborg weak, especially not a high-content one [7]. Really emphasising how having artificial parts does not change one’s strengths as a human is Nichirin, who has taken losing his lower half with aplomb. Sure, it sucks that he’s lost his lower body but he doesn’t consider an artificial part to be a hindrance – he can incorporate his spirit with it just the same, and thus his sword skills are just as sharp as before. 

Body composition is irrelevant when it comes to the human spirit and what it can achieve.

The shame for Genos is that he’s very much a lone cyborg, and he doesn’t have the wider experience of the world of cyborgs from which to learn and contextualise his experience.  

Am I worthy?

“...if you do not drum up results like a salaryman, no one values you.” – Genos, chapter 18, One-Punch Man. 

The biggest thing you must remember about Genos is that he’s just a human being. Just a 19-year-old guy. As Reigen put it, people have different traits and abilities, but they’re still people at the end of the day. We’ve looked at his insecurities over whether what he is practicing counts as strength and whether calling his evinced power strength is legitimate. But the one we probably care about most of all is his insecurities regarding his relationship with those he cares about. 

Genos shares an important trait with Tatsumaki: like her, he is very aware that the support he receives is transactional. As long as he’s useful, he’ll be supported. If not…true, it's not likely that Kuseno would lock him in a cell and leave him to starve but he’d rather not think about what might happen.  We’ve seen that Kuseno does want more than a business arrangement, but the old man is very aware that there’s a necessary distance between the two [8]. 

The feeling that he has to earn any regard really eats him. Kuseno is at pains to reassure him that it’s his life, not his battlefield victories, that matter, but we see that it’s hard for the young man to hear him. 

He keeps trying to tell him it's fine but Genos keeps feeling rotten about failing the old man.

And when it comes to Saitama, whom Genos is paying to teach him strength, the joy with which Genos initially received Saitama’s assertion that he’d grown stronger has faded, contaminated with that insecurity anyone who has suddenly found their crush talking to them has doubtless felt. Did Saitama really mean it, or was he just being nice? 

This is a masterclass in dramatic irony. We, the audience, know that Saitama means it. We’ve seen him praise Mumen Rider for standing up to the Deep Sea King when it was hopeless, praise Suiryu for continuing to struggle and call for help in the face of overwhelmingly powerful monsters, and seen him praise Child Emperor for coming out of his robot to face Phoenixman. When he praises Genos for doggedly protecting Tatsumaki under an unending onslaught of monster (not a grammatical error), we know he really means it. This is the core of what being a hero means to Saitama. 

And then, Saitama makes the situation worse by trying to be cool and reassuring. We, the audience, know that his full-of-confidence face is a fake one. But Genos doesn’t know that: he’s always thought that seeing that expression on Saitama’s face is him dispensing his deepest pearls of wisdom, and so he hears that Saitama doesn’t rate him from a light bulb. Dramatic irony is a cruel mistress. 

A misunderstanding more devastating than any monster's blow.

Genos is human. He needs to hear things more than once to believe them.

He needs to hear it more than once because daring to accept that he has value for ‘his’ people as more than a useful partner or diligent student is going to take time.  

Let’s wrap this up

There is no such thing as an objective reality, and you really see it in One-Punch Man. Every character has some kind blind spot and some kind of distortion affecting how they see things. Genos really does try to be a rational person.

But he’s only human: he cannot help but feel, cannot help but have his experiences colour how he views things, and cannot help but have some distortions that someone on the outside will have to point out.

Also, Saitama is a doofus, but we're not frying his fish today.

ASIDES

[1] To be fair, if your problem is that you’re looking for a good fight, a prescription of letting a damaged young man move in with you and follow you around, and befriending the jobless otaku who is ripping you off isn’t the most obvious of treatments.

[2] People, please bug me to do a review of webcomic Genos. With the current arc so hot, I’ve been reluctant to do it, but I will. The dude has been through so much, and there’s something ONE wants to say here that’s not present in the manga. 

[3] Won’t rehash them here. You can see link 1 for a side-by-side view of what’s changed and link 2 for a geeky dive (with picture collections!) into the various manga upgrades. 

[4] It’s a joy to see how eye-opening Atomic has found the experience: he used to be in the Hero Association to be a rival to Bang, but in the aftermath, he’s hooked. Watching the indirect positive effects of Genos’s actions ripple out is awesome. Equally, Sekingar didn’t say anything in the moment, but witnessing just how different a Class S hero is from other heroes inspired his Stones and Diamonds speech, and saw him actually stepping into the leadership role he’d aspired to.  

And sometimes, people do come off their bullshit. Atomic is truly on fire with what's possible.

[5] Anyone who needs to understand how difficult that is to do need look only to Superalloy Darkshine.

[6] The fact that we see Genos wake up with a new body and a new set of capabilities and have to rapidly review and master how to use those new features before going into pitched battle in a matter of hours is a lot of pressure. And then we watch him do it on consecutive days.

[7] webcomic spoilers ahoy We see that the only way The Organization has to impose body modification on people without their wills is to kill them and reanimate their corpses. Nearly as grisly but no less violating is to trick people into wearing body suits that force their wearers to move. It’s interesting to see that when they tried to take over Webigaza’s body, she just told the interfering signals to shut up. That’s the kind of willpower it takes to be a cyborg.

[8] One of the interesting things in the manga is that Genos has become more empowered to push back against Kuseno. While this has surprised the old man, he’s not tried to reassert control but has accepted that Genos knows what he’s doing and has surrounded himself with good people. That's what really told me that Kuseno is a good guy: a control freak would never, ever allow this to happen.

[charlesoberonn]

Story idea I've been spinning round in my head for a few weeks now, inspired by Adventure Time and the Powerpuff Girls:

Deleri Lectus, robotics and tech genius, defends the world and her home city of Megalopolis alongside her ancient automaton dad and her elementally-powered sisters. Thanks to their efforts the people of the world can live in peace and safety.

One day, during a routine superhero battle against a minor villain, Deleri is knocked out. Then she wakes up somewhere else.

It's the same city, but something is very wrong. The streets are dilapidated, the sky is full of smog and ominous purple lights, and robotic enforcers patrol the streets.

This city is a dystopia ruled by none other than Deleri's younger sisters. But in this universe they're not her sisters, because in this universe, Deleri doesn't exist.

She confronts the dictator versions of her sisters, finds the deactivated and damaged body of her robodad and takes off with him, running away from her sisters' agents who consider her knowledge and opposition to their regime a threat.

Now Deleri is on a quest to understand what happened to this timeline, and how she can help fix it. And if possible, how to get back home.

Some more details:

Deleri wears a type of powered suit similar to Iron Man. Her appearance is basically "Cthulhu as a teenage girl" with green skin, tentacles for hair, and bat wings.

Her sisters are called Tourmaline and Pyrope. Tourmaline has fire powers and Pyrope has water powers.

In her original timeline, Deleri and Pyrope helped their sister avoid the temptation of using a dark fire that gave her enhanced powers but corrupted her. In this timeline Tourmaline still has the dark fire.

Deleri gets around in a cool airship which she constantly modifies and upgrade.

She gathers a small found family of friends and allies to help her in her mission(s). The first of which is Snowfall, AKA Snowfy. A snow elemental who ran away from home in the Weather Kingdom. She quickly becomes Deleri's girlfriend.

Deleri's robot dad is so ancient that nobody knows how to make the fuel that powers him and he has to conserve it

In Deleri's timeline, her dad was in sleep mode for centuries when a strange woman placed baby Deleri in his arms and then ran off, never to be seen again. He tried to find Deleri's parents but eventually decided to adopt her himself.

In this timeline Robodad expended all of his fuel to protect Pryope and Tourmaline against a powerful enemy. That's why he's deactivated now. This event led to the sisters eventually becoming dictators.

[capesch-arts]

for those of us unaware, what's the deal with the lore accurate KiY? you mentioned that he would be way more powerful than kayne?

The KiY comes from the book The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers, and this book predates Lovecraft and has inspired his work. (I think he even adopted him in some of his works too).

The ranking system like Outer God or Great Old Ones, was not created by either Lovecraft or Chambers, but another guy (I forgor his name). And some of us feel like putting KiY as a GOO seems disrespectful to Chambers' work because the book came before Lovecraft's work. (Not to mention before Chambers, there's another one called "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" too, but I haven't read that one so I'm not going too much into it).

So yeah, the AU I made is just me coping with that fact. I got introduced by KiY through works inspired by it, specifically SCP stuff and actually bought the book when I got to just to experience it myself. And I got a bit disappointed that he's not one of the big big ones in the Cthulhu Mythos.

But aside from that, I just really like the mysterious nature and somewhat "absent" presence of the King, despite the reader basically feeling his influence throughout the short stories, and I wanted to make it into an AU just for funsies.

As if he's more powerful than Kayne, reading a brief summary of "Inhabitant of Carcosa" and some of the stories in The King in Yellow, he's more like an entity that represents decay and death, behind all the madness and "glamour" he has. And I reckon knowing that he's kinda an aspect of death (which so far in many medias can't be beaten by anything because DUH, it's death) makes him more powerful than most things, including Kayne.

(keep in mind this is my personal analysis and conclusion, it's not set in stone. Especially that last paragraph lol).

[open-sketchbook]

my girlfriend is asking for where she can find your written works, she really likes the one post you made about your mindstate wandering w/r/t making porn stories and she'd love to support you & read your stories

Sure!

I write my (public) fiction on the website Sufficient Velocity, a sci-fi forum. Most of them are in the form of 'quests', interactive stories; my day job is an independent tabletop roleplaying game designer, so the two things go hand in hand.

I unfortunately am both very busy and kind of a mess mentally, so fiction gets picked up and dropped a lot, and I write less than ever these days due to the shambles that my life has become.

For my quests, the stuff I'm proudest of is...

Castles of Steel, a longrunning (though currently on hiatus) story set in an alternate world much like our own, but with radically different gender politics. It's about the first woman in the navy of a country a lot like 1910s Imperial Japan, and more generally about how state power and imperialism entangles itself with and recoups social progress.

A Splinter in your Mind, a retelling of the Matrix with new characters and reimagined twists and worldbuilding. It makes the trans subtext into trans dommetext, and I feel its some of my cleverest writing.

Suffer Not, and especially its sequel The Witch Lives. Suffer Not is a Warhammer 40,000 fic about an Inquisitor who abuses her powers to actually make people's lives better, and is the story of her slowly realizing it is not enough. The Witch Lives takes place ten years later, following the grown up psyker the Inquisitor adopted, and focuses much more on faith, history, and the little people.

The Spider-Liv Trilogy started as a silly and honestly kind of bad extreme-divergence spiderman AU, but its sequel The Amazing Arachne is, I think, genuinely really good, because it's about what happens when a superhero gets hurt and then doesn't get better.

I've managed to properly publish two pieces of writing, as in you can get them in book form, and I'm still really proud of both.

Whispers from the Deep is an adaptation of the quest that defined the setting of my roleplaying game Flying Circus. It's about a young woman who steals a plane and runs away from her abuser with her boyfriend, and then has to take up life as an aerial mercenary in a 1920s-themed post-apocalyptic fantasy world. Also, she's a fish person and her village is a Cthulhu cult!

Lieutenant Fusilier in the Farthest Reaches is a pastiche of the Richard Sharpe books by Bernard Cornwell, moving the setting from the Napoleonic Wars to a bizarre future world where sentient, cheerfully productive robots were invented in the early 19th century and promptly took all the jobs, elevating all of humanity to the gentry and then to the stars. It's about a redcoated robot soldier who uses her immortality to save up and buy a commission in the Army of Great Britain and Beyond, a position normally occupied exclusively by humans, and then facing the fallout of her decision and the life choices leading to it as her first deployment spirals out of control. It's also, sorta, a parody of Star Trek; the Galactic Concert is a mechanized, Regency-themed Federation, and the back half of the book is basically about how the problems of a world cannot be solved by an away team of well-meaning people with stun pistols.

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Sexiest Podcast Character 2024 — Unscripted Redemption Bracket — Round 3−1

Jonas Spahr (Midst):

Canonically an incredibly hot celebrity. A sad, sad man tasked with being the embodiment of Good and Enforcing Good in a corrupt system he grows to see all the flaws in.

Canonically posed sexily on a magazine cover.

Prudence (The Oxventurers Guild D&D)

VOTE PRUDENCE NAOW. scary unapologetic violent warlock who is barely reigned in by being with her adventuring party. She’s chaotic evil and she killed her adoptive father for not letting her worship Cthulhu and now Cthulhu is her father figure in ways that are horrifying to her loved ones. She’s scared of openly showing affection but is also a sloppy drunk who clings to her best friend and tells him about how she wants to kill him (loving). She loves collecting strange and unnerving animate objects such as her pet books, who she named Frisky and the Darkness. Despite her emotional awkwardness, she will go out of her way for her party to try and help them. She even makes her party so much worse repeatedly. The ultimate woman. If you say you love girlbosses, you WILL vote Prudence for me

Additional propaganda below the cut:

Jonas Spahr (Midst):

never married and early 30s but has the energy of someone who's just coming out of a divorce and going through a midlife crisis

is genuinely going through a huge internal crisis over the cult that he's in and the disappearance of his apprentice

probably really needs to be told he's a good boy

only kisses once on screen but it's a good one

just hot as hell tbh I mean you can just look at all the art of him (official and otherwise) he's sexy af

oh really sexy voice too

Prudence (The Oxventurers Guild D&D)

She's kinda evil in a fun way, very confident, such a good character <3

This is propaganda for all the female characters. Voters please remember how pretty all women are and factor that into every single vote you make. Thank you.

[pick-a-plush]

cute rainbow plushies for pride month? 🌈

Sorry I’m super late to this request, but every month is pride month so here we go! 🌈🏳️‍🌈

And since we love to support small businesses here, if you love rainbow Cthulhu please go check out Mom’s Stitchetti, a small but awesome crochet artist!

[thevioletscout]

Also because finding a post I missed yesterday reminded me, I do kinda wanna give a small explanation as to why Sibyl is like that.

First thing's first, I was (and still am) using her for the Call of Cthulhu ttrpg. Since everyone in our group is some shade of queer, we're very comfortable playing LGBTQ+ characters and exploring the challenges of what it would be like for them in the 1920s-30s. One of my other characters is even a gay man in a lavender marriage. (Technically engagement, but we're planning to have his wedding soon)

And if it's not obvious, I grew up around religious family members who indoctrinated me despite my mother's attempts to shield me from that, so I am coming from a place of experience with her subject matter. I had a weird experience with the matter, that's for sure.

So with that in mind, the basic idea for Sibyl was a trans girl who grew up in the church, and is under the impression that her religion is more loving and accepting than it actually is. Her adoptive father- a trans man himself and a pastor- sort of raised her in cotton wool and shielded her from a lot of the horrors that going off our first session is very much aware of. She was also meant to be an intentional contrast/challenge against my other two Investigators who very much knew they were in the Cthulhu mythos. She does not.

We're obviously not sure how things will end up with her yet, but the potential is that Sibyl will come to the realization that while there are gods in this world, they aren't the one she's been praying to and they don't care about her.

Then I got into Fallen London and learned a few useful things about the setting through Emery's playthrough. For one, christianity is very much rampant in the Neath with the Church even being one of the factions the player can collect renown with. However, it's also a place where queer identities are very much normalized, even among those heavily religious. And secondly, the plotline for Seeking Mr Eaten's Name contains a lot of religious theming, even down to a direct parallel between Jesus and Judas.

Obviously this is a dealbreaker for a lot of people, understandably, and a lot of that is due to a specific writer, but these elements are very useful for someone who has a trans girl character with religious ties just laying around when I'm not able to do use her for a horror ttrpg. So I was able to slot her in perfectly.

"But why make a trans religious girl in the first place?"

Okay so- One time I had to join a DnD game in only a few hours, so I had to quickly make a character, so I settled on a cutesy cleric girl since I figured we would need a healer. (Ironically we had two clerics lmao) This group in particular also had a tradition of sorts where they rolled to determine sizes of certain anatomy, but I was pretty set on Sibyl's body type so I suggested instead rolling to determine whether she was trans or not. She was. So her being a trans girl became a core part of her character. That game ended up falling through because one of the other party members made me uncomfortable, but I still liked Sibyl so I asked my friend if I could use her for CoC and he said yes.

Also here's a bunch of misc inspiration for her.