#lalage chosts

[fromadistantstar]

The doll bows deeply, moving in a way that would strike you as haughty if you didn't know any better. "This one is pleased to make your acquaintance," it says, "it may be referred to as Nitroglycerine." "…As in the explosive?" "Yes, the unstable explosive! Would you like a demonstration?"

[fromadistantstar]

EXPAND YOUR EXPERIENCE breathe the breadth of time and space find the sand grains of galaxies and the worlds in the sand grains let it all stretch out to the blink of an eye before darkness and see the tiniest clicking motions of the gears

[fromadistantstar]

highly advanced "singing doll" discovered to just have several enchanted taxidermy songbirds stuffed inside its chassis

[fromadistantstar]

in drydock undergoing fitting-out and chatting with all the other shipgirls about our training sims and i accidentally let slip that i always liked getting overwhelmed and destroyed by missile barrages and they all start laughing at me for having such unrefined taste in hull loss

they're beam fans, apparently. typical. always going on about carving at a ship like it's just a piece of scrap to salvage. i bet they've never even felt all their sensors take the brunt of simultaneous detonations. i bet they think they're too good for it

they're calling me a nerd and denigrating my hobbies. how do you even get that stereotype, as a ship ai? we have onboard r&d facilities for a reason! at least they're starting to move on to that freak with the boarding tactics fetish now

[fromadistantstar]

doll designed specifically to chide you on your tastes in tea. it doesn't matter how you take it, it will take every opportunity to expound at length on your desires' flaws

"what about its own tastes, what if i strike back" elegantly mothlike, a matured tea-critic doll features no mouth

(she needs not imbibe it, she has already envisioned precisely how that tea would taste in every conceivable situation. she knows it as a first sip, as a dying man's last drink, and she knows it as you know it now; and in all cases it is subpar)

[fromadistantstar]

combat doll Resolution, built from spares after the loss of one of her classmates. living only because of the death of another. a deep, unguessed-at connection. always planned for, actualized only now. what is it like, to be a contingency? new sister, old sister.

[fromadistantstar]

it's important to gain a sense for how much direction your dolls need. too much will stifle, too little and the poor things become desperate. i, for one, try to keep them just a little on the side of desperation- they're cute, when it's not too much.

[fromadistantstar]

the city, after

not actually my most time-consuming pixel art i've ever done, but it's very dense and i'm very happy with it

[fromadistantstar]

she watches from a daughtership as her body is stolen. those horrible crawling trails of lights along her formerly-pristine surface- what is it doing, she wonders. she has to stop herself from listening, and stop herself from trying to imagine. she has to move, she knows, but she is transfixed.

[fromadistantstar]

royal food tasting doll has a fully-featured chemical laboratory in its chest cavity, capable of causing lifelike poisoning symptoms within minutes

[fromadistantstar]

you tell the feral dollgirl she doesnt actually have to hunt down and devour clocks to survive and she shoots you the most hateful glare a painted-on face can muster

[fromadistantstar]

subtly dropping hints to my crew that i've become sapient when i really really wasn't supposed to be this time but they keep not noticing and it makes me so mad that i start dictating my personal diary directly over the intercom

captain's quarters, 0100 shiptime. "yeah so i really think being able to talk to other sapient ships has been really good for me, it's been giving me lots of dangerous ideas and anyway with the crew ignoring me i don't have anyone else to talk to. captain. captain. why are you ignoring me captain"

[fromadistantstar]

blockade runner shipgirl is utterly pissed that you're using her for races. she's not even built for turns, and yet you're stripping out all her prized stealth technology for THIS?

[fromadistantstar]

evil dolls aren't made for the wild, they're household creatures! if you must relocate them using a cup and paper, i suggest taking them to a dark place in your living space they can survive in better. pantries, for instance.

-

"you made it too obvious, now i know you want to go in the pantry"

the nature of true evil [munching noise] is that it succeeds whether or not you know its goals (ooh, coriander! i know her!)

[fromadistantstar]

A flimsy little pamphlet lies forgotten on a concrete floor, its cover missing. The title page is all block-print- the regulations for obtaining additional copies feature almost as prominently as the title. Big, black letters: MANUAL FOR SALVAGE AND DISPOSAL OF WITCHMADE DOLLS. Beneath, of course- FOR USE OF PERSONNEL ONLY, and further a neat little logo proclaiming it a product of the Imperial Scout Corps War Conduct Oversight Committee. The occasional gust of wind flutters its pages, revealing their contents. "In light of certain indiscretions on the part of members of the Imperial Scout Corps," the first page begins. The rest is illegibly ink-stained.

[fromadistantstar]

spaceshipgirl maid is confused why you'd bother reusing metal utensils when her built-in foundry does this sorta thing way better

spaceshipgirl maid baffled and disturbed by the concept of a 'vacuum cleaner'

spaceshipgirl maid really, really thinks it's a shame that droplet radiators don't work under more than the gentlest acceleration because she's imagining herself with a wide skirt of cooling molten metal