#*VIOLENTLY THROWS THIS DOWN*

[enbymacaque]

*QUICKLT RUNS TO POST THIS*

I GOT PROCREATE AND MADE MY VERSION OF MACAQUE!!!

[cicada-candy]

post concert doodle sheet for the post concert depressies 🤘

close ups under the cut

[tomwambsgans]

1x9 / 2x4

[urproblematicfav-ao3]

Charlastor hanahaki disease fic except Charlie starts puking up flowers and her first reaction is "fuCK YEAH. I GOT A GARDEN IN MY LUNGS, THATS SO COOL" meanwhile Alastor is crying and throwing up on the floor at the horror that he caught feelings

[ex0rin]

The Boys S01E05: Good for the Soul

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 7 "3" thoughts

hmm. hmm. that is the sound if me pondering what i just watched.

(i understand that this episode was an analysis into mulder's self-destructive behaviors when faced with overwhelming grief, but. that does not mean i enjoyed vampire hookup time)

well. we shall start from the top!

i read that it was an episode about vampires which i thought was a weird narrative choice because. hello. scully still gone??? but then i remembered that i too ignored the main quest in skyrim to hunt some vampires and that i had no place to judge

(granted, my main quest wasn't finding scully though. might have given that a bit more priority than saving the whole world. because she IS my whole world)

we open with a guy that looks like joe biden meeting with an attractive young woman. they're making out in a hot tub and we just know someone is gonna get slurped upon. and woe, it be upon us! double vampire attack.

back in DC, mulder gets his old office back! it's covered in plastic. he takes some of it off. he adjusts his calendar from may to november, so we see how much time he and scully had been assigned to other tasks, which also has me wondering how she managed to get a new house that quick.

(also, this calendar is... scantily clad women posing next to tools such as hammers and saws. was this allowed? was this acceptable? was it normal? were the 90's a lawless wasteland and mulder an irreparable freak?)

well. scully is an x file now, and he puts her glasses and id into an evidence bag and closes the filing cabinet which was sooooo evil. but he can't bring himself to put her necklace away. oh man. oh he's gotta have it in case he finds her. he has to hold her close. i'm Fine this is Fine.

so. he goes out to california to deal with the joe biden looking fellow being murdered. and he is not wanted on the crime scene. we know this because someone greets him by saying "nobody called the bureau" and he says "well, they should have" and lifts up the tape to let himself in. because one thing about him is that he's gonna let himself into a place he isn't wanted.

he sees the writing of a bible verse in blood on the wall and says something about their grasp of biblical knowledge being "feeble and literal" and i was like okayyy need to have a theological discussion with him

he then scares the other guy who originally wanted to kick him out by reciting a LARGE amount of facts related to similar cases and it's very much giving photographic memory. got me thinking, have we ever seen this man forget something? (directions don't count. they're confusing. but everything else sticks in that man's brain)

he just needs one thing: a phone book. which he uses to call a blood bank and ask about a new guy. who must be the vampire who did this!

so he rolls up to the blood bank and i'm over here struggling because i do Not Do Blood, and i knew at this point this was gonna be a tough watch, but i didn't anticipate the non-blood related reasons why this would be true

anyway he's sniffing around the blood bank and he hears some slurping and wouldn't you know, this dude is tearing into a bag of the red stuff like it's a capri sun. somehow he gets him into custody, where the dude refuses to talk because the lights are on, and mulder comes in with a lamp he put a red filter over, because he was prepared for vampire interrogation.

the vampire is going on about how what he did isn't murder because it's not like animals hunting prey is murder which is. not the greatest approach in terms of legal defense. mulder tells the guard that the guy is delusional and it's best to play along, and he believed this to be true... until he, quite literally, burned to a crisp in the sunlight. and died.

he's talking to the coroner and rattling off a bunch of vampire facts and says he didn't believe in vampires which is so funny to me because like. why is that where you draw the line, my friend. not at bigfoot and definitely not at aliens. but man. vampires are just too out there for spooky mulder. until now!

the coroner has a very funny line: "you are really upsetting me... on several levels" which seems to be the general effect fox mulder has on people. and also because i felt the same way about his dumbass actions during this episode.

coroner finds a stamp on the dead body's hand, which seems to come from a nightclub. so naturally our fbi agent ends up there.

you often see posts saying that "(insert character here) should be at the club". i fear that this is not the case for fox mulder, but it's possible that it's his suit and tie that are throwing me off. he just doesn't seem like he belongs there. i ask myself, where should he be instead? perhaps some sort of star wars convention would suit him better. a book signing with some author he likes. idk, an interior decorating festival. not here.

i shall use my verbatim words to walk you through the next scene:

"pause. he's talking to a woman who was looking into a compact without a mirror. so. vampire suspect. and now why are they getting so close together. and getting a drink. okay now they're leaving to a new spot together? AFTER she admits to vampirism"

(here she did some stuff that required me to look away from my screen due to my Weak Constitution. but also it would have felt necessary to look away anyway because it was getting... charged)

she tries to get him to... suck on her finger... but he won't do it because aids. which is fair. i think that's a smart move, actually. it's just that getting flirty with a vampire he knows was involved with a ton of killings was such a stupid move, i don't know why it's now the braincells start to kick in.

that kills the vibe, though, so she gets another guy to take his place and things escalate.

mulder pulls in at a restaurant called ra. nice! the sun god! and he is... through a window, witnessing some more slurping action. he seems to want to intervene and save this poor soul being feasted upon...

but the poor soul is no poor soul at all! he comes out and decks mulder, and delivers this line with stunning conviction: "i don't know who you are, freak, but we're two consenting adults" and with this, he is forced to flee.

and yeah. it made me laugh. my expectations for the genre were subverted. he signed up for that shit! what he did not sign up for, however, was the next part, where he was killed by the other vampires.

cut to investigating the crime scene. mulder has brought along a forensic dentist, which is a job i had no idea you could go into. he needs to see about those bites, which are very human.

next they go to vampire woman's house. it's a very nice place. mulder... opens her oven. and sees a loaf of bread in there. and i'm thinking, man, i hope this doesn't go where i think it's going. baked goods... ovens... i never want a vampire pregnancy arc. but he cracks open the loaf and something red spills out and somehow, this to him means that she is gone and isn't coming back. he can read the signs of the bread. so add that to his resume. what did the bread tell you, my liege?

he seems to have stayed in her house, however, because he's there when she's back, and says he knows she was using the bread as a charm to ward off evil. because apparently that's an eastern european thing, blood bread to warn off evil. sound off if any eastern europeans in the chat wanna confirm or deny.

anyway. he's IN this woman he thinks is a vampire's HOUSE? what the hell. mulder seriously i need you to stop and think. like you should have stopped and done some thinking a while ago. honestly i'm not mad i'm just disappointed. and he's like "i want to save you come with me before they kill you" ohhh big tough man needs to save her huh. make him feel good inside. huh. certainly no ulterior motive here...

she's monologing about her horrible childhood and how sweet blood tastes. um girl. don't lie to him like that. i have busted my lip open before that stuff does NOT taste sweet and dangerous. it's like a penny with rust that you found in a parking lot.

it seems her vampiric origin story, if to be believed, is that things simply got too kinky. which is a new take on the genre.

(it's also about being caught in an abusive relationship and the damage that inflicts, but it seems abusive boyfriend came into vampirism at his kinky parties and things escalated from there. which. well. it blew the eyebrows clean off my head, to be fair)

at this point we see that he is WEARING SCULLY'S NECKLACE? he says something like "it's from someone i lost" and she says that she "hopes he finds her"

i did not like the undertones here and certainly not the overtones. because i knew where this was going. he was shaving in her bathroom. and let me tell you something: there is only ever a shaving scene in media because the writer needs a way to get some blood out of someone's body and into the real world. and man. i knew it was coming.

but what i didn't see coming was her SHAVING HIM??? girl. i am uncomfy. and she does, of course, cut him, and then they kiss. aggressively. terribly aggressively. can anyone answer what was going on in a satisfactory manner?

but the gag is: the original vampire- who burnt to a crisp in the jail cell, and was the abusive ex she spoke of- HE'S WATCHING THEM THROUGH THE WINDOW!

he breaks in and taunts the vampire woman about how he had to "wait for her to finish" and i was like cool. thank you SO much for that mental image i'm super happy with it. i definitely don't feel like i need a shower. but then he's going on about how he can't be killed.

here, at the tail end of the episode, we learn the rules of vampirism in this world: a vampire cannot be killed by a non-vampire. and a non-vampire BECOMES a vampire by consuming the blood of a believer and also taking a life. it is only here we realize that this woman is not an actual vampire yet, she just appropriates their culture by drinking blood unnecessarily.

mulder's still sleeping in her bed and she's like "you need to leave" and she stabs the wall to make her evil ex think she's killing him. but when they go to break out, mulder ties him up quite handily and he gets in the car to escape with vampire woman. until ANOTHER vampire woman jumps on the hood of their car. and main vampire woman knocks her out for a bit by running into her with said car, which is super effective.

mulder's leaving the place in shambles, his shirt still unbuttoned, wandering down the side of the hill. back at the house, now that we know the vampire rules, main vampire woman says she can finally kill the evil vampire ex. and he's like how!! you haven't had the blood of a believer or taken a life. so. she licks the blood off her hands (unclear if it's hers or mulders tbh) and says she'll take her own life. and drops a match after pouring gasoline.

so. that brings that to an end. and shabby looking mulder sits on a hill as he learns all four in the house died.

the episode ends with him playing with scully's necklace. which i don't even sort of feel like unpacking right now but maybe another time.

probably not, though, because i just didn't like this episode. and yeah, a lot of it comes down to me not wanting to see mulder hook up with people who aren't scully. can you blame me? is it so wrong to have preferences in this world?

but also, narrative wise- do you honestly see the guy fucking off to cali while scully's still missing to deal with an unrelated problem instead of devoting every hour of his life to finding her, like we saw him do in the last episode? you expect me to think he just puts it off for a lil while? the guy who, just last episode, pulled his gun on the ski lift operator to get to the top where she might be a little faster, and then choked his one and only suspect out of fury? you're thinking this is the guy that's gonna go soak up some west coast rays?

and yeah, he was obviously not himself through the episode- very cold and analytical- but c'mon. we all want to bang a vampire. he's not special. i just personally wouldn't do that if my friend were gone. like how is that gonna help the situation. be so for real. time and place!

and also the whole only learning the rules of being a vampire about 5 minutes before they need it to be plot relevant. that annoyed me too.

overall, mulder, like i said, i'm not mad, just disappointed.

let me know what you thought on this episode- i try to not be a hater, but i also understand that hating in small doses can be good for the soul. if it's a widely beloathed episode i'll feel better in my judgement as i join a long tradition of haters who have come before me.

[katsigian]

A bloody and violent montage of Valen fighting and he himself is beat up and there's someone's blood all over his mouth and down his neck and his knuckles are split but he's grinning as he's fighting in some dingy grungy bar

and it's all happening while What Doesn't Kill Me by Kacey Musgraves is playing over top at full volume

[moldy-flowers]

The interesting experience of being pro Sasuke, anti konoha, pro tobirama, anti Naruto ending, pro Sasusaku, anti Itachi, pro Sakura, anti SasuNaru, pro Tobirama×Izuna, anti Madara, pro karin, anti Orochimaru, pro Uchiha and anti Hashirama. And also as much as I hate the guy danzo was kind of hot when he was younger...

[vaguely-concerned]

finishing veilguard is so rough. every time I'm just like 'yeah that wrapped up a little abruptly after the final fight haha but I understand they had to rush it out the door after all that time, I'm sure they'll give us the closure we need in the dlc ala trespasser or the citadel dlc! ...guys? guys??!?.........................guys?'

[irllilyevans]

i love that enzo is not an agressive guy but when he decides to beat someone's ass there's not a thing in this world that could stop him(excpet lila)

[yudrein-aile]

I love examining how different my kid OCs are by putting them in a jar and seeing who’d come out on top

[mosstrades]

im someone who stuggles not to let his curiosity and drive sometimes (often) cross over into an overwhelming and maladaptive need for answers, for explanation, for certainty. someone who, historically, sees making art as a primarily intellectual exercise. this is not inherently a bad thing, we all have our temperaments and this kind of attention can be a strength. but, you know that artist who makes a painting, and then only wants to show it while explaining it to you? thats me, sometimes, more often than i like. every story i used to write had another hundred page document behind it, explicating every single choice -- often i would simply read that, instead of ever actually write the story itself. the explanation precedes everything. the answers alone are the experience.

david lynch's work and philosphy has been and is a vital foothold in my efforts to learn to love the questions as our breath. learn to appreciate intuition and dreams, trust them instead of fear them. learn to see that the world has so much confusing, uncertain, strange beauty, that can be terrifying but turns sublime when you cease rejecting it from fear. when you embrace the unknown and dont try to immediately & anxiously explicate it all away, a whole new world opens up to you. that you need the darkness in order to dream, and you need dreams in order to live fully immersed in what the world has to offer. a foothold in learning to be okay with abstraction, with imperfect subjectivity, with uncertainty. to know it is not anthitetical to truth and meaning. know that to skillfully make ideas come alive into a work *is* to rationally pin them down, but that you cannot lose sight of the intuition they were born as.

his artistic intuition reminds me of what i need to have -- the trust and humility for experiencing the inexplicable and understanding that to be enough. a devotion to ideas and their realisation. a balancing force, for my endless inquiry -- to not forget to live the question in my the search for an answer. to allow some thing to go without clear or universal explanation, allow for some things to remain unresolved, allow for others to have that be their resolution. it's why his work equal parts captivates me and disturbs me -- i am very bad at this. but feel in my heart a need to get better at it. to be a better artist, a better thinker, a better searcher, a better person. you need to feel it, intuitively, quiet your endless noisy need for an answer and simply let it fill you up, let it resonate intuitively, and find in that how life makes sense to you and you alone. mediation, mindfulness, humility to sit with abstraction without trying to pin it down. more and more i try to understand this. some things don't need to make perfect sense. some things dont need answers, or their answers are not the point. some things dont need anything but to be experienced as they enter you -- like dreams do. that can lead you to the answer, and that can also be enough in itself. that can be just an intrinsic value in being alive to experience it. and so often, it is all in conversation with the search for joy. it's why he feels so captivating, so unique, so tremendously alive. why people use the word "visionary" when talking about him. because he knew how to use his medium in all the potential he could see, so that it let you live in the strangeness and questions. he understood them as sublime, he understood them as enough, he understood them as a joy. he understood them as beautiful. and his memory will remind me to do the same; always to seek the space to dream.

[msommers]

i just simply think it's a horrifying but effective way to radicalize the formerly sheltered and spoiled noble lady and get her to immediately understand the desire for vigilante justice when the party member she was just trying to give grace to decides to betray the party and its result is the entire sequence of the fall of val foret

[quibble-auk]

@thebrokenmechanicalpencil

I finally did it. All of the boys get to be together again. Isn’t that wonderful? Aren’t we so happy about that?

Don’t you just love killing off characters so you can feel some semblance of closure for the story. Like yes, it’s finally done. But it’s not, I’ve still not written or explained half of it.

But I know how it ends. :D

Yeah, I didn’t proofread it, sorry for any errors. And I’m praying that the pacing is alright and everything makes sense.

—

Warnings!!!

Real shocker there’s death.

—

The small office Jeopardy sat in was dark. Any light the moon might have offered through the narrow window was shunned by the closed blinds, casting the room in a heavy gloom. The only illumination came from a dim desk lamp and the sterile glow of a bright monitor. Music lulled in through transported speakers, faint and delicate.

It wasn’t Jeopardy's usual workspace. He had been relocated to the north wing of the hospital when the mysterious plague first broke out—a wing hastily converted into a quarantine zone, where the sick and the dying were kept away from the rest of the population like forgotten ghosts.

Jeopardy was among the first medical officers exposed to the new virus, something that at first seemed like a minor anomaly—some strange mechanical hiccup, degenerating and corroding plating and accompanied by faulty joints. He had been mid-operation, performing a complex joint transplant on what became Patient Zero, when the mech had suddenly offlined. No warning, no instability in the vitals—just silence and a blinking red error across the interface.

At the time, he and his colleagues had chalked it up to a hardware failure due to negligence. But within hours, more patients began to fail in similar ways. Not just malfunctions—systems were shutting down without traceable causes. There was no identifiable strain, not one that they could recognize anyway. They weren’t equipped to identify viruses like this, plagues had been eradicated long before the war began.

But entire wards had been locked down within days.

Now reassigned to the infected wing, Jeopardy found himself behind containment barriers, technically quarantined though not incapacitated. They had no choice—he had already been exposed, and though mostly asymptomatic, no one could say for certain what that meant anymore. The virus wasn’t behaving predictably. It didn’t spread like a pathogen or function like a software bug. It was something in between, and that made it all the more terrifying.

Though Jeopardy’s field had nothing to do with virology or infectious disease—he was a reconstructive mech-surgeon by training—they couldn’t risk transferring him back to his old post. It wasn’t just about protecting others. It was also because, deep down, the hospital administration understood they needed every capable mind available in the isolation zone.

And it wasn’t like Jeopardy was unfamiliar with this kind of medical work, the old mech had been around long enough that he knew how to work in other fields. He had dabbled in all kinds of medical work during the war, and even after it. Not to mention he had treated plenty of diseases and viruses for his organic companions, the descendants of his old friend Cometeater, a Pretender. This knowledge of infectious diseases did give him an advantage over his colleagues.

Jeopardy supposed that was why he was spending so many sleepless nights pouring himself into his work. His time was running short, the plating on his chest already starting to discolor—it meant he was entering into the third stage of infection—he needed to find a cure.

He hadn’t told anyone about the discoloration.

Not yet.

The pallid corrosion spreading across his chestplate was easy enough to cover up with some paint and the occasional joint stiffness he passed off as old age. It wasn't a total lie—Jeopardy was old. His frame was an outdated model, patched and upgraded over the decades, more scrap and memory than anything off a modern assembly line. But the creeping disintegration along his core systems wasn’t age. It was the virus, carving through him like rust with purpose.

Jeopardy watched the simulation run a few more times, let the computer analyze and run tests on the samples he had collected. He clicked the reanalyze button and leaned back, absently tapping along to the beat of the song that played faintly in the room. He sucked in a breath, holding it as the results slowly loaded onto the screen in front of him. He would need to do more personal verification but he had run the machine and gotten a green “cured” result three times now.

He stared at the blinking green word—CURED—his optics narrowing as if willing it to stay true. Three times now. Three separate samples. Three different infection stages.

But he didn’t let himself hope. Not yet.

Jeopardy leaned back in his chair, the joints in his shoulders groaning with the motion. He’d run enough simulations during the war to know how easily false positives could slip through. Especially when the virus in question didn’t behave like anything catalogued before. Still, the samples were stabilizing. Corrosion halted. Regeneration markers returning to baseline. It wasn’t just a patch—it was reversal.

A cure.

He let the breath out slowly, his chassis vibrating faintly with the motion. His plating quivered despite himself. It was a fragile victory, not yet real. Not until he could reproduce it in a physical subject.

The medic let himself smile regardless, it was still progress and the closest thing they had. He plugged in a data chip, quickly downloading the data before continuing with his tests—Jeopardy has had his data accidentally wiped due to a crash too many times to let something like this go unsaved on a personal file. He hummed along to the music as he began to write more diagnostics. He scooted his chair across the long desk and fiddled with some machinery as he prepared for more in depth tests.

A flicker of movement in the reflection of a dim screen caught his eye.

Almost instinctively his medical scanners flared to life. While it wasn’t their technical purpose, Dropmix had taught him ages ago that he could use his integrated scanners for identifying other mechs—similar to how a guardian frame’s scanners worked—and it had become a habit. He reached out, searching for spark signatures around the room absently. It was late, but possible for a nurse to have slipped in to check on his progress or converse.

There was no spark signal, however, nor heat signature.

Jeopardy went back to his work, imputing some data before letting the machine whir to life. It hummed as it began running scanning for more detailed results. The medic continued his quiet humming as he pushed himself back to his monitor, pulling up a blank report to start filling out with his findings.

The cursor blinked on the blank report, waiting for his input, but Jeopardy didn’t start typing. Not right away. He had heard a small tapping noise, slightly off beat from the music, he looked down at his still fingers. He wasn’t attempting to tap along with the rhythm, someone else had to be—but the noise was padded, it didn’t belong to a metal hand of a mech.

He let his heat sensors surge out again, seeking the darkness for any sign of organic life while he kept his attention on the screen before him. There were no hot spots that would indicate another presence in the room—not of a traditional organic anyway. Jeopardy pulled his plating tight against himself for a moment, sucking in a breath as he narrowed his eyes.

In a single fluent motion he spun the chair around slowly, optics moving over the dark room in search of anything out of place. The shadows in the room didn’t move, didn’t shift. Jeopardy frowned, hand moving slowly to pull the data chip out of the computer's port and stash it in the small toolbox of his wrist.

He stood.

Jeopardy’s hand rested on his side, over where his pistol sat—Dropmix’s pistol, one that he had found stashed away that was disguised as a medical tool. It was a bit large but it got the job done. He looked around the room again, scanners seeking for something.

The medic knew that tension was high between Cybertronians and other species in the galactic council, they always had been, but recently there had been news of a potential threat. Jeopardy along with a few of his colleagues had begun to suspect that the current virus they were dealing with could have been synthesized by this other race. If Jeopardy was getting close to a cure there was reason to believe that he could be targeted.

The other race was reptilian by nature, cold blooded. They wouldn’t show up as hot spots on heat sensors, they wouldn’t show up at all, their body temperature would match their surroundings. They would be undetectable to all of his medical scanners.

Jeopardy pulled his pistol out, keeping the disguised weapon held downwards in case someone walked in—his scanners informed him there was currently no one close to the office. There was no one to interrupt. Jeopardy took a hesitant step forward, plating flaring defensively as he looked around the room again. Organics were typically small and easy to look over and there were plenty of places to hide in the office.

He scanned the room one more time, this time not with tech, but with instinct. He had learned over the years that no amount of calibration or sensor strength could replace the simple feeling of being watched. And right now, that feeling crept over his frame like nanomites.

The weapon in his hand warmed slightly, ready to power up at a moment's notice. The desk, the cabinets, even the ventilation shaft above the sealed maintenance closet—all places someone could hide, especially if they were trained. Or worse, if they were patient. The medic flinched as the equipment next to him dinged softly, the results were done.

Jeopardy should know better than to turn his back on a device that would give a small organic cover. He blinked, plates pressing tightly against him and cold dread washed over him, he lifted the pistol up, clicking the safety off with a practiced ease. His spark thrummed in his chest and his finger absently tapped out an old lullaby on the side of his gun. He didn’t have time to panic or let his anxiety get the best of him.

It was too soon for the results to be done.

Someone had stopped it from scanning.

The medic twisted around, raising his pistol to the level of the device and firing at the dark figure that stood next to it on the desk. The loud ring of gunfire echoed in the room, rattling his plates and making a small tremor run through his hands. He flinched, Jeopardy had never liked to fight, he never wanted to hurt others. But he needed to protect what he had discovered or more mechs would die.

The dark figure crumbled, the scent of burning flesh sat thickly in the back of Jeopardy’s throat and he fought the urge to gag. He let out a shaken breath, tapping the lullaby and humming to himself as he tried to calm himself. His hands shook as he stared at the small organic now laying still on the desk.

His vents hitched as his plates shivered. Jeopardy swallowed thickly, forcing himself to take a step towards the broken body. Guilt was already eating away at his spark, a strained whine escaping his throat as he looked at the still form.

He had killed them.

Jeopardy felt sick, his chest aching as his fingers numbed. The medic lowered his pistol, flicking the safety back on and let his frame shake with stressed, silent cries. He had killed before but it never became easier. He still hated it. His medical programs surged to life, already infringing him of the damage he had caused.

He didn’t have time to mourn the loss any further.

A whisper of air moved behind him.

Too soft for servos. Too measured for machinery. It came not from the vents or his overworked systems but from the subtle shift of weight on metal flooring—bare flesh against steel.

Jeopardy’s optics widened. He turned—

—but not fast enough.

A sharp crack! rang out, impossibly loud in the cramped, silent room.

The old mech yelped as pain lanced through his side, right under his auxiliary plating. The weapon was small, silent, and surgical in its intention. Not designed to destroy—designed to incapacitate. Disable.

Electricity surged through his systems, his plates flared out as his vents hitch painfully. Heat and discomfort raced over his lines and he staggered, gasping out and reaching to brace his faltering body on the desk. He tried to flick the safety of his gun off again, but his fingers weren’t responding correctly, they shook and kept locking up. Panic sprang through him, making his spark skip and thrum even louder in his constricting chest. The medic grit his teeth and looked at the source of the weapon.

The hooded figure fired another round, this time it landed on Jeopardy’s chest, right next to where a red “x” had been painted on to show that he had been exposed. Jeopardy cried out again, pain rippling through his systems. His joints locked mid-motion as the round burrowed deep, its contents flooding through his internal systems like acid through old pipes.

Jeopardy staggered forward, his hand loosening on the pistol as his knees hit the ground with a brutal clang. His optics flickered violently, vision narrowing to a red-tinged tunnel. His systems screamed at him—an internal alarm louder than the gunshot itself—but his limbs wouldn’t respond. Warnings flared across his hud, his vents wheezing with stress.

He crumpled to the ground, hissing in pain as he looked around for his aggressor. His spark was impossibly loud, his plates quivering violently as panic settled within his chest.

Another splintering crack rang out and this time Jeopardy’s computer was the target. Any information on it was lost as it burst into an electrical flame, systems overheating and failing. It sparked as metal and plastic alloys warped to the heat.

There was only one copy of the cure left.

Jeopardy’s optics tried to focus through the error haze, HUD alerts crowding his vision with red and white symbols. Critical system failure imminent. Neuro-signal degradation at 37%. He ignored them, forcing his servos to twitch. He still had the failsafe under the desk. The gunshots must have been heard elsewhere in the hospital. He could still—

The assassin crouched beside him.

They didn’t say anything, their slitted eyes quickly examined Jeopardy’s seizing frame. He groaned weakly, attempting to pull away from the attacker but his limbs remained useless and unresponsive. The medic could feel his energon hit and slick below him, painting his chest and the ground a sickly magenta.

The organic reached out, two fingers delicately brushing against the slot on Jeopardy’s wrist. It knew where the data chip was—a total wave of fear washed over Jeopardy as he struggled to pull his wrist away. His movement was too slow, too sluggish and weak to get it out of the other’s grasp. He whined, vocalizer clicking and chirping uselessly as he failed to form words.

The assassin's fingers slid over the edge of Jeopardy's wrist compartment with a precision that made his plating crawl. A soft click. A hiss of depressurization. The compartment opened—too easily.

The chip was exposed.

No—no, no, no.

Jeopardy’s entire body screamed with effort as he forced his good arm to twist, to clamp down over the slot, protect it—anything. But his servos only jittered uselessly. His fingers twitched like dying organics.

The organic was going to take it—Jeopardy was going to lose his one chance to save people.

The assassin didn’t hesitate.

Their hand darted in, prying the chip loose from Jeopardy’s wrist with an efficiency born of practice. They held it up to the low lamplight, narrow eyes glinting as they turned it between their fingers. The soft hum of the hospital’s power grid and the faint music still bleeding through the speakers were the only sounds filling the silence.

Jeopardy gurgled, trying to rise. His frame jerked once—twice—then failed, sagging with a heavy creak as sparks danced along his spine. His processor lagged, struggling to maintain control over basic systems. More clicks escaped him, another pained whine joined the abstract noises. He had lost, they had the cure.

More mechs would die—his mechs, the ones he had trained and cared for, his colleagues and peers, possibly even the Pretenders he had spent his lifetime watching over.

He couldn’t let them destroy that chip.

Not while he still had a functioning spark.

With a final desperate act, Jeopardy accessed the hardwired emergency override in his core—an ancient, wartime backup system buried beneath years of upgrades and adjustments. It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t fast. But it was brutal.

A harsh grinding whir erupted deep inside his chest as a jolt of raw energy surged through his failing frame, overriding safeties, bypassing locked systems. His HUD flickered violently, momentarily blanking to black. When it returned, the alerts were still there—but dimmer, distant. He had seconds, maybe less.

With a rasping groan, Jeopardy's arm moved—not much, but enough. He twisted his arm, plates spasming as he moved, the assassin didn’t expect him to move. They didn’t react fast enough. They yelped as his hand crashed into their side, pressing them into the ground brutally. A pained scream escaped their scaly lips as Jeopardy forced himself to move, shifting his weight to his arm, to the hand that was pressed flat against the smaller creature’s chest.

The mech cut off his optics, reworking the power to his movement. He could hear something pop and crack beneath his hand, the organics pained wheezing breaths as its chest was compressed under the weight of his hand. Jeopardy tried not to think about it as another scream split the air. The medic choked on nothing, his spark skipping at the sound. Grief seized his chest and guilt swamped his panicking mind.

He ignored it.

Just a little more.

The assassin clawed at his wrist, trying to twist away, but Jeopardy's arm locked like a vice. His own pain was blinding—his circuits burning, his memory caches fragmenting—but he didn’t let go. Couldn’t. He was running on pure instinct now, muscle memory from a war long past and a promise he had once made to never stand by while others suffered.

The data chip was still in the assassin’s hand.

Jeopardy’s optics flickered open again, staticky and dim. His HUD was barely functioning now, warning banners sluggishly sliding across his vision. The world was a blur of dim lamplight and the ugly, rapid pulse of the intruder’s heartbeat. He could see it in the soft flesh of their throat. Could hear it. Could feel it.

With the last of Jeopardy’s strength he grunted and pressed down even more. The organic screamed again—louder this time—as a sick crunching noise rattled through Jeopardy’s frame. The mech whimpered at the noise, eyes closed tightly as he let himself fall limp. Guilt ate at his core, he could feel the organic’s blood stick to his plating, thick and foul smelling. Jeopardy shuddered, a pained cry escaping him.

The assassin didn’t move again.

The room fell into silence, save for the fading echo of the scream, the soft, rattling vents of the medic’s own failing systems, and the gentle lulling of music, deceptively calm.

Jeopardy stayed like that, slumped over the still form, the crackling hiss of damaged circuitry rising from his joints. His body trembled from the strain, from the residual current still arcing through his limbs. The override had bought him a few seconds—nothing more—and now the backlash was arriving in waves. His chest plating was blistering from the heat, inner coolant lines ruptured and leaking. Smoke curled from one of his side vents.

But the chip was still in the room.

When a nurse came in to check on him they would find it, the cure was still theirs. There was still hope.

Jeopardy hadn’t failed.

His vision dimmed further, and though his limbs were dead weight, his spark—weak and sputtering—still pulsed steady. Faint, but not extinguished. The data chip, slick with organic blood and smudged with soot, had slipped from the assassin’s hand in their final moments. It now rested just beneath Jeopardy’s outstretched arm, the glint of its casing catching the flickering desk lamp like a beacon.

He should have been afraid of the ever creeping darkness in the back of his mind, he had been for so long—the idea of dying had terrified him, there was still too much to do. But he was older now, more tired, dare he admit it, Jeopardy was ready. He hadn’t failed, he had earned his rest. Just like Dropmix had, and Coo and Cometeater, the twins, like all of the mech’s old friends had.

Jeopardy weakly smiled to himself, his vision finally fizzling out into darkness as his optics failed. The music was nice and slow, gently whispering to him, keeping him company. He didn’t have the energy to hum along, or tap. For a moment he could have sworn he could hear a different melody being tapped into his plates—which had gone strangely numb—an old lullaby Jeopardy knew too well.

He could hear Dropmix humming softly, feel his heavy hand on his shoulder, fingers tapping gently on his plating. Just like he had done countless times before, slowly lulling Jeopardy off to sleep.

And so, Jeopardy slept.

[racke7]

Two decades of World-building

Over two decades ago, as a prepubescent child, I invented a setting for OCs (a word I didn't even know at the time).

(Continuation under the cut, because... trying to summarize 2+ decades of lore isn't super-easy.)

The basics of it amounted to "super-powered family", where I'd mess around with one generation, get bored, and then say "and then they had kids", leaving me with an entire new generation to mess around with.

As a result of this, "being orphans" became such a hallmark of the setting that I had to invent lore for it. Not helped by the fact that "power-scaling" had gone completely haywire along the way.

I also ended up developing a lot of world-lore for the setting as a whole, because of a wide range of events. But one of the things that always amused me was that the family had a single ironclad law.

"Anything for love"

Which sounds great until you realize that this is a translation of a few kind of deranged concepts. Which implies that this is more of an "open-ended Deal with the Devil", than a cute declaration of queer-rights.

(Their language also equates "sunlight" / "death" / "love" as the same (good) concept, and "madness" / "rot" / "boredom" as the same (bad) concept. Which means that their law can also translate to "I'll do anything you want, so please kill me". Which is... in-character.)

Going back to explain the orphan-lore, it does actually make sense. Kind of. See, they were never human, for all that they sometimes had kids with them. And since they're not from the same species, this doesn't make any kind of biological sense (not even including the ones who had children with demons, angels, cats, The Concept Of The End Of All Existence, and undead).

So, rather than relying on biology, they "resonate" the songs of their souls. A process which basically shakes them apart until they're a shadow of their former selves, but causes a new life to rise from the ashes.

(Having kids is actually considered something of a dick-move, culturally. On behalf of forcing the child to be alive without a clear path to their own death. But it's basically at "no ethical consumption under capitalism"-levels.)

Now, as you might expect from the constant "death = good". They're immortal.

Specifically, they're the kind of immortals who will get bored and more bored, and then even more bored. To the point where they often describe it as "being eaten alive by maggots" until they're driven insane (turning into something unrecognizable to themselves, as the maggots take them away, piece by piece).

This is why they're so desperate for death (an end before they turn into something horrific), and in turn so desperate for love (the easiest path to death, as trying to resonate with someone you don't love is pretty much impossible).

(With some of the power-disparities that have popped up in the generations, it's also common for there to be "sworn deaths", where someone basically vows to murder the other if they start to lose themselves. But again, because of those power-disparities, this is usually very one-sided and as such kind of dick-move to spring on someone.)

Now as for the world that they live in?

First there was the Ocean Of Nothingness, eternal and unchanging and Nothing. Then there was the World of Chaos, a primordial kind of world filled with existences constantly fighting each other (heat and cold, etc).

Some of those existences grew weary of the constant battle and created the World of Life, and in turn the World of Death formed as well. The two worlds battled until they were both hollowed-out shadows of themselves, at which point a group came together and created a world where everyone could live without fighting their opposite.

The World of Dimensions, where existences and worlds are separated into neat little pockets of reality, allowing people to live their lives without having to constantly battle others.

(This is where hell-dimensions and high-school and wizard-wars and anything else you can imagine exists. And obviously also where the inevitable crossovers happen.)

Everyone was pretty happy with this arrangement, but there were a lot of bickering between the different dimensions, which resulted in the Council of Balance being established. A kind of "UN" with... about as much actual ability to do things.

(The Council very much dislike the family, because of a number of reasons and even more actual events. But considering how things have turned out when they tried to pick a fight with them, the Council is also not stupid enough to make contact unless first provoked.)

Still, this weird kind of "tower" of Worlds inside of the Ocean Of Nothingness, has lead to a kind of... in-between. A soap-bubble border between Nothingness and reality where both kind of leak into each other. Don't go there. It's not a good time.

(Sometimes, things escape from that place, that "Abyss". And those things are usually the kind of things that eat worlds. So people are pretty keen on killing them when they pop up.)

Anyway, this was all well and good until a member of the family managed to break out of the World of Chaos, dragging that world onto the "surface" of the Ocean Of Nothingness, and discovering "infinite islands" just like their own.

(If you wondered about the guy who had a kid with the Concept Of The End Of All Existence, it wasn't this guy, but it was a guy who came after and who very much fucked the Ocean Of Nothingness. Don't worry about it.)

(As a side-note, being descendants of the Ocean Of Nothingness is the generally accepted reasoning for why the family bleeds black. And why their blood is considered the spiritual equivalent of anti-matter.)

Needless to say about the fantastic power-scaling I was working with at this point, the family created the Throne Before The Ocean. And in order to sit upon it you basically had to defeat all of the monsters of those other islands too.

Which worked out to a new name grabbing the Throne every now and then, but rarely keeping it for long, until someone too insanely strong grabbed the Throne and got bored with the lack of challenge. Upon which they decided to crack the sky open like an egg.

(They go down under the title of "Horizon Breaker" and are considered to be the closest thing anyone has come to literally ending all of Existence. Their comment on the matter was "oops". The cracks on the sky remain there until this day.)

There are literally hundreds of stories here, told over the span of most of my life. Some of them are "cringe", some funny, some sad, some heartwarming, and some disturbing.

But I believe that that's a topic for a different time.

[sincerelykarai]

Wake up!

Authors Note: This is another Oneshot of Rocket ^^ btw this was inspired by that one scene in helluva boss Ghostf*ckers so kinda spoilers for that? Just read at your own risk ig 🤷‍♀️ Also its angst with a side of hurt/comfort!

Trigger warnings: Gore, Violent depictions,swearing and other stuff like that

He doesn't even remember how this happened. One minute he was in the Milano safe and sound in his quarters, the next he was small and fragile, running around the lab. It seemed like eerie, endless hallways with dim, flickering lights and rusted cages. He could hear other animals whining, howling, but it was all muffled compared to his paws hitting the metal ground beneath him and the sound of his heart pumping blood which was rushing through his ears.

"You can't outrun me, 89P13!" Rocket heard the High Evolutionary shout, and he felt his heart as if it was in his throat, choking out any air. He continued running, hallway after hallway without stopping. He stopped once his legs gave out with a tremble, panting as he caught his breath even if he heard the scientists coming after him. It wasn't long before he started running again, turning through hallway after hallway before he felt something shove him, and he tumbled into the ground.

"What the..?-" He mumbled, before noticing the similar white rabbit above him, with the multiple thin metal legs. "Floor? What are you-"

"HOW COULD YOU?!" Floor screeched, her voice sounding more metallic and her body coated in warm, red blood. "Rocket got floor killed! Rocket got floor killed!" She repeated over and over again in the high pitched, screeching voice.

"What?! No, it was an accident I swear!-" Rocket exclaimed but Floor tried to swipe him, digging one of her sharp legs into his arm, hot, stinging blood dripping down his arm. Rocket took off running again, this time limping slightly and leaving a trail of blood behind him.

"No, no no no no-" He chanted in his head. "Just a dream just a dream just a stupid fucking dream-" He continued running, hallway after hallway, he felt like a rat stuck in a maze.

"Rocket?" Lylla called out, and he froze in place.

"Lylla!" Rocket almost broke into a sob, running into her arms, even if they were cold and made of metal, he could still feel the love and warmth in them.

"Lylla, I- I was having the worst dream-" He practically cried, as Lylla quietly shushed him, running a metal paw through his fur.cHe finally felt safe....

Until he felt something dripping down his fur.

He glanced up, only to see Lylla's face mauled, covered in blood and flesh and bone. "Why'd you do it?" Is all the face said, but the odd sweetness in her tone sent chills down his spine. Soon her whole body was falling apart, blood coating his paws.

"Wait wait wait- Lylla please! I'm sorry please don't go!" Rocket sobbed, trying to grab onto her but there was nothing to grab apart from the raw feeling of bone. "LYLLA DON'T GO!-" He screamed, before everything faded to black.

"Rocket, wake up!" Quill shouted, shaking Rocket awake.

Rocket woke up with a gasp, his chest heaving and his fur damp with cold sweat. "I- where-"

"Dude, you're fine. It's me, Quill." *He reassured him, holding his shoulders.

"But.. Who's Lylla?"