#Binary plan calculator

[neomlmsoftwareindia]

A MLM binary plan calculator is defined as a compensation plan for each distributor that has two legs (left and right) or subtrees. Subtrees are used to construct a binary tree. New members are then divided into down lines or the next company level. This plan is the structure of binary MLM software. Binary Plan is the simplest and most popular among all other MLM plans. This plan was introduced in late 1980 and has become the most popular MLM plan.

[ludolka]

Pygmalion and Galatea - A Project Xelqua au fic

Word count: 2158

Description: Pygmalion in Greek mythology was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he has created, named Galatea. Null wants to kiss Joel, his main creator, who has to decide between acting based on his morals or his attraction

Written in third person, from Joel’s POV, who is kind of an unreliable narrator

Author’s note at the end

-

Joel let out a heavy sigh and eyed the cold cup of coffee on his desk. Was it his 5th or 6th coffee of the day? He wasn’t sure, he stopped counting his daily caffeine intake years ago. It wasn’t even that late yet, only around 5 pm, but he has been sitting at this computer since 8 am and he was nowhere near finished with what he planned on completing today

The computers and scattered around technology sang their electronic songs to him and he could swear his typing made the melody of some classical song he heard years ago. Or maybe he was going insane. But he found comfort in the noise, he has grown to get so used to it over the years and the countless hours he’s spent on this project in this laboratory that sometimes he couldn’t fall asleep at night due to the silence. This was his home now, he spent far more time in this building than at his actual home. He just went there to sleep

Right now he was working on trying to calculate and improve Null’s balance. Even after all these years of working on Null, his balance was still a bit off, leading him to trip or wobble whenever he had to be on his feet for an extended period of time. And for the life of him, Joel couldn’t figure out where the error was. His college and by now pseudo family member, Mumbo has also been trying to find the root cause of the wobbling in Null’s code, but has come to the conclusion that his code was working as intended and it was a mechanical issue rather than a programming one

He has been recalculating and overlooking everything for so long that he has forgotten Null was sitting not that far from him. That was until Null spoke up, breaking the lull of the orchestra of electronics

“You aren’t in a relationship, correct?”

Joel blinked a few times as he processed the question, his mind needing a few seconds to break away from only thinking in binary and machinery. He didn’t look up from his computer, but he was a bit grateful for the distraction and the break from his current thought process that seemed to be going nowhere

“Yep, I’m as single as one can be. I barely have time to sleep, let alone to date”

Null stayed quiet for a bit, Joel wasn’t sure if he went back to doing whatever he was doing before or if he was processing the answer and coming up with a response. He took a sip from his cold coffee and briefly thought about taking a smoke break, to move around a bit and get some fresh air, break the monotony

“But you have been in one before, correct?”

Joel raised an eyebrow, but still didn’t face Null even though he could feel those big eyes burning holes into him. Null always had interesting eyes, no matter how they modified them, he still had this intense stare that seemed to look straight into people’s souls. Some investors even found him creepy for his staring and refused to back up the project. They claimed he looked like he knew too much and that was uncanny for them. Joel has gotten used to it over the years

“Yes, I have. Why?”

Null was always curious, always asking millions of questions, ones that often made no sense to anyone but him. He has gotten into the habit of asking the team personal questions over the last few months and that was always a tricky area with how they were supposed to answer without overly influencing Null. Null was supposed to be this blank slate with no opinions on topics that could be classified as controversial, to make him as widely marketable as possible. This however didn’t stop him from asking the team’s personal ideologies and views. And Joel blamed Jimmy the most for slipping up, he spent the most time actually talking to Null and he seemed to sometimes forget Null wasn’t another person

“What does kissing feel like?”

Joel felt himself frown and he actually turned to look at Null at this question, deciding this conversation was more interesting than his calculations and was therefore worthy of his full attention. He found Null already staring at him like he expected. He also decided this must have been the fault of Lizzie or Mumbo, the two hopeless romantics of the team. Lizzie liked showing Null videos, movies and poems about love, claiming this was helping him understand humanity better

“Uh, I might not be the best person to ask that. I can’t give you some poetic description. Kiss the ball of your thumb or the inner part of your wrist, that comes pretty close to the feeling”

Joel was already well versed in answering questions and explaining mundane everyday things that he never would have thought he’d be asked about. Null learnt like this after all, no matter how silly his questions sounded. Null broke his intense stare from Joel and looked down at his slightly raised hand, the led circles in his eyes spinning before dropping it and turning his full attention back to Joel once again

“Why do people kiss each other?”

“Usually because they are attracted to each other or love each other. It’s also a form of affection”

Joel wasn’t sure why Null was asking him this, something he could easily look up online and get long well-written articles on the importance and history of kissing and the evolutionary reasoning for it, all of which he didn’t know. He has learnt that when Null asked simple questions, it was usually a lead up to a point he wanted to make or get to. Joel just had no idea what his end goal with this conversation was

“I want to kiss you. I want to know how it feels”

Joel swallowed and just stared at Null for a bit, who looked as nonchalant and casual as always. Like he was just talking about the weather or something mundane like that. He forced himself to say something when he felt his face heat up and saw Null’s leds start to spin, probably studying his reaction

“I uh- me? Why do you want to kiss me out of everyone?”

Joel has learnt that sometimes it was better to just let Null talk and explain himself, often leading to him being satisfied with the conclusions he himself came to. And also to better understand his thought process, which seemed impossible to follow sometimes

“Because I’m attracted to you. That’s why people kiss each other, no?”

Joel felt his face heat up more and his brain felt like it short circuited. Out of all possible answers, he never expected this. This was also new, Null hadn't expressed attraction of any kind towards anything or anyone before, Joel thought he was unable to feel that. Then something clicked in his mind and he relaxed back against his chair, looking a lot less shocked than before. Null was an ai who parroted what he heard. This couldn’t have been a genuine confession, no matter how that left a bitter aftertaste in Joel’s mouth

“Which of those fuckers talked about finding me attractive? Maybe they didn’t even realize you could hear them and here you are telling on them”

Joel’s tone and attitude changed to a more amused one and a slight smirk tugged on the corners of his lips, he would have found this whole conversation hilarious if it wasn’t for that dull ache in his chest. Null tilted his head to the side, like he was the confused one now, which Joel just found more amusing

“None of them. Mumbo was talking to Lizzie about how he found Scar attractive. You weren’t brought up”

Joel’s mind short circuited again, like he couldn’t understand what Null was telling him, no matter how simple his answer was. He felt himself tense up again and he closely studied Null’s expression, to see if he was making a joke or something like he sometimes did to fuck with Joel’s head. Lately he has been very much enjoying getting under Joel’s skin and flustering him for some reason

“Then why are you saying this?”

Joel’s voice was quieter and he just watched as Null got up from his seat near the window and walked closer to him. Joel wasn’t sure if he was frozen in his chair or if he didn’t want to move. Null stopped a foot away from him and leant down a bit, so they were at eye level

“Because I’m attracted to you and I want to kiss you”

Joel felt like his head was spinning and he was so close to throwing all logic and rationale out the window to act on impulse. He looked down at Null’s lips before he seemingly got a bit of sense back and instinctively looked over at the camera at corner of the room

“I shouldn’t”

He barely whispered, but he knew Null could hear him. Then there was a hand on his cheek, making him turn back to face Null, who hasn’t moved closer. Joel thought about the contrast between their expressions for a second, Null looked so calm and sure of himself, like this wasn’t affecting him in the slightest while he was a flustered stuttering mess

“I can turn the cameras off. No one would know. I know you want to kiss me too, I’ve seen how you look at me. You’re attracted to me”

Now Joel felt his face heat up with shame. He was well aware of his attraction, but he kept it so under control, never letting anyone, not even his closest friends know about it. And now here was the subject of his attraction, who he wanted to know about this the least, telling it to him so casually. He felt like a child being caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Like he was caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to do and he immediately felt like he had to repent for a sin he didn’t even commit. He never meant to act on an attraction that felt so incredibly wrong, he felt like just by having it he was betraying himself. And he had to remind himself that Null wasn’t a person who would be able to consent or reciprocate feelings, no matter how human he acted or how indistinguishable he was from a person at times in his mannerisms and behavior. Null was an ai powered machine, he was technology under the pretty face and pale skin, not flesh

He also had to remind himself that Null was an incredibly expensive piece of machinery and that he could easily be fired and sued if he somehow damaged or contaminated Null, even with just a kiss. He had no idea what even a simple kiss could do to Null, what kind of consequences that could have on his programming and how he viewed the world. Null was a blank canvas and he felt like he’d draw a line on it with a permanent sharpie if he gave in to his desires

“Null, no”

He knew he didn’t sound convincing in the slightest, knew that he’d give in if Null kept pushing and he prayed that Null took the hint and listened to his words rather than his tone or body language, absolving and saving him from falling into a hole he wasn’t sure he could get out of. He wasn’t sure he could go back once that line was crossed, no matter how much he felt pulled towards it, no matter how it was verbally already crossed

Null stayed still for a bit, studying Joel as his leds spun around. It felt like hours for Joel, but in the end Null simply nodded and drew his hand back before walking back to his seat, not glancing back at Joel, rather focusing his attention on the city skyline. He has been fixated on just watching the city from above through windows lately, sometimes not even paying attention to people talking to him, he seemed so lost in whatever he was watching

Joel let out a shaky breath he didn’t know he was holding. He stared at Null for a bit longer, unable to tear his eyes away from him and he could have sworn he saw Null’s expression slightly shift. Was he disappointed? Hurt? Was he even capable of feeling those things? Were the others right about Null becoming sentient? Joel’s head spun and despite barely being awake just a few minutes ago, he was now fully awake like someone poured ice cold water over him

He grabbed his pack of cigarettes off of the desk near him and forced himself to leave the room for a much needed smoke break, hoping it’d clear his mind

-

Author’s note: I love unreliable narrators so much, who see the world through their own biases and don’t know everything needed to fully understand the situation they are in, often misunderstanding it and drawing the wrong conclusion. Null’s more sentient than machine while Joel sees him the other way around. Null’s fully capable of feeling attraction and making decisions for himself, while Joel thinks he’s just copying something he saw or heard without truly understanding what he’s doing or saying

[verascrow]

「✰」 ━━ CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE CHARACTER FAMILY OUTLINES

RATING PG-13 - Parents strongly cautioned [ Content warnings : references to sex, references to breeding kinks, heavy fluff, children, both pregnancy and adoption scenarios, toxic family relationship dynamics, minimal cursing, brief mention of Ghost and Farah's traumas, brief mention of transphobia and homophobia ]

SYNOPSIS In my opinion, what having a family with an assortment of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare characters would look like, be it how many kids they would have, their reasonings for having kids, their relationships with their kids, et cetera.

WORD COUNT 6.8k

CAPTAIN JOHN PRICE

Three sons and one daughter - ages ten, seven, five, and one

I'm certain we're all more than aware of this man's painfully obvious and present breeding kink, so it's no surprise to anyone that he would want to have a lot of children to call his own. He won't just be satisfied with one or two children - he's always wanted to have a full, bustling home, and he'll be damned if he doesn't try to make that a reality.

Every child of his is planned, both in pregnancy and adoption scenarios. He meticulously calculates and works to space each child out a certain range and number of years apart from one another in an effort to give himself extended experience with each developmental stage - or so he claims.

He wanted kids of his own, he decided, the second he met you, and he just hopes and prays that you'll be open to the concept of having quite a number of them. And, in his favor, you do and indulge him in his little fantasies.

And, in the ingenious words of @ghostlywhiskey , "i said that man has SWIMMERS AND THOSE MFS ARE PRICE BOYS". So, there's a very obvious patten that begins to form as more and more members are added to his little family. But, of course, there's one token daughter added into the mix, who he loves all the same as he does his boys.

In my eyes, the ideal father figure. He's extremely open and honest with his children, listens and talks with them whenever they have an issue or question, is very understanding and accepting overall, and, more than anything, works tirelessly to be a present, positive figure in their lives.

Because of all of the experience that he has with his own children, this results in the members of Task Force 141 and associated parties going to him for help or to have him answer questions they may have around their own children.

He tries to be as present of a father as he can be, given the challenges and distance that comes with his line of work, but always makes an effort, at the very least, call his kids whenever he can to ask about how they're doing, what they're up to, et cetera.

Refuses to talk about his job or entertain his children in the very idea of joining the military - the horrors he's seen is not in the slightest something he wants his children to witness for themselves. He knows the job best, and he will not allow any of his children to join.

Raises his sons right - they're respectful, mind their manners, don't start fights (but finish them, should the need arise) and instills all the necessary core morals and values they'll need to be good people when they grow up. All the same, he teaches his daughter not to take shit from anyone.

LIEUTENANT SIMON "GHOST" RILEY

Three daughters and one child (non-binary) - ages ten, six, three, and nine

Originally, he had never even spent a moment in time thinking about or entertaining the possibility of him having children, much less actively putting effort into reaching that goal. Especially when considering his own history, he can't even begin to see himself as a father, fearing he'll end up like his own.

So, when you get pregnant for the first time on complete accident/enthusiastically bring up the idea to him of adopting a child seemingly out of nowhere to him, he's completely shell-shocked. This is something he's ever put considerable thought into, and now it's being dropped into his lap without a moment to process it or breathe.

So, when he lays eyes on his first little girl for the first time, he's terrified. He's a dad now, whether he wants to or is ready for it or not. And no, it's not like he didn't tell you to get an abortion/refuse to sign the papers, but he isn't fully ready for such a heavy responsibility yet. But when he has her in his arms for the first time, he's done for.

After the first, he's so open and willing - and, quite frankly, pushing for - trying for/adopting another child. Yes, he was scared for his life to become a dad at first, but now that he's one now, he can't help but want another - and best you believe that his children are his absolute world.

Curse of the military. That's it, that's the tweet. He had all girls, plus, of course, his one gender non-conforming, non-binary kid, and all of them have equal ownership over his heart.

He's the perfect girl-dad, letting them do whatever they want with him - their own personal dress-up doll, if you will. Painting his nails, putting make-up on him, styling his hair, making him attend tea-parties and playing make-pretend. Whatever they want him to do, he does it.

When his second-oldest comes out to him (they came to him first before they did you), his heart absolutely melts. To know that his kid trusts him so wholeheartedly and isn't scared to share such a private thing with him lets him know just how good of a dad he is.

He's quick to use the right pronouns, allocates a separate room for them, helps them go shopping for clothes and items they may want, tests out new names for them should they want to, et cetera.

He's not at all a strict parent, as much as one might believe. He's stoic, cold, and cruel, sure - but that's to everyone but his family. For them? He's the biggest pushover in the world. If his children want anything, best believe he's doing everything in his power to fulfill their wishes.

SERGEANT JOHN "SOAP" MACTAVISH

One son and one daughter - ages four and five

He's always wanted children, that mindset and dream having been set long before he ever even joined the military in the first place. He used to take care of and watch his nieces, nephews, and younger cousins a lot when he was younger, so it eventually evolved into him wanting little rascals of his own as time went on - to be able to nurture, care for, and have fun with.

So, when the opportunity arises to actually start a family of his own, something that he's always dreamed of, he's so giddy. In complete honesty, he's practically beaming and bouncing on the balls of his feet, so willing and ready to make this into a reality. He has his own fears and anxieties, yes, but his excitement far outweighs it.

Both of his children are planned, of course, wanting them to be close in age as he can get them, and he's ecstatic that he gets to have both a boy and a girl. He gets the best of both worlds that way! And, when he finally gets to hold each in his arms for the first time, his heart shatters, melts, and crumbles in the best ways possible.

He isn't just a solider, a boyfriend, or a husband anymore - he's a dad now.

He's such a fun dad in general, always joking around with his kids, letting them - safely - do things that they aren't supposed to do, messing with them, taking them out for desert and sweets, et cetera.

But, as much as he's the "fun dad", that doesn't mean that he's any less strict. If his kids mess up or do something bad, he's often the one responsible for determining punishment, telling them off, and teaching them not to make the same mistake again.

His work is demanding, yes, and that often takes him away from you, his partner, and his kids for long periods of time, but he always comes back, ready to be a dad again and put "Soap" on the backburner.

The perfect role model for his kids, in all honesty - the best combination between a best friend and a parental figure. His kids tell him everything and they aren't scared of him to keep secrets from him, always telling him the truth without shame or hesitation.

SERGEANT KYLE "GAZ" GARRICK

One son and one daughter - ages seven

Both of children are twins

Having children wasn't something he had ever planned for, in his mind. Not to say that he never entertained the idea of having children of his own, nor is it to say something that he's against, either. He simply hadn't ever thought about making it a reality before.

But, when the opportunity to have/adopt children comes up into his life, it's welcomed, allowing himself to go with the flow of things and let them play out as is. He thinks about it a lot more now, daydreaming about what his child's personality will be like, what they'll look like, who they'll like more...

And then boom! Twins!

He's starstruck when he first gets the news that he'll be having/adopting twins. It's like a two-for-one deal, or so he says, genuinely shocked and excited at the same time. The way he sees it, his kids will always have a best friend (or, a partner-in-crime) and he's all for it.

Twins are a lot, he knows, but that doesn't mean he isn't up for the challenge. If anything, it only spurs him on to push to be the best dad he could ever possibly be.

For better or for worse, his kids adopt his sarcastic nature as their own and increase it by tenfold. It's his fault, given that whenever his kids are around, he's talking to them as if they'd understand his points and smart comments. They don't, most of the time, but they know their dad's tone, and they're quick to match it.

Takes the most time off out of anyone else in Task Force 141 to spend with his family if and when he can allocate it. He wants to be as present of a dad as possible, and if that means taking work home when he could easily finish it on base and then come home, maybe a day or two later, he's doing it.

Very adamant on having days out with his kids, be it for the purpose of a mental health day or just for fun. Takes them out to get breakfast and lunch, plus going to do another activity. Maybe the park, the playground, watch a movie at the cinema, go to the zoo/aquarium, et cetera.

He's not a super strict parent but that doesn't mean he isn't going to disciple his children if they misbehave or do something wrong. His punishments are lax, focused more towards talking out the issue that giving harsh lessons.

STATION CHIEF KATE LASWELL

One son - aged sixteen

She and her wife decided that they really wanted to have a kid of their own a few years into their marriage and, especially given that neither of them aren't getting any younger and didn't necessarily have the energy, time, or willingness to take on the challenge of pregnancy for themselves, they choose the more sensible option available and adopt.

It's a long, deliberate process that they have to go through in order to be so much as be approved for being able to adopt, but, once that hurdle is overcome, the two of them waste no time and immediately begin their search for the newest member of their own little family, allocating time to meticulously decide who they'll, inevitably, choose.

Their hearts end up settling on a little boy whose four years old, somehow resembling the both of them in different ways - be it personality wise or by appearance.

The two of them decide that they want to be able to escape and skip the issues that come packaged with newborns and toddlers, but also have a hand in the development process of their son, thus explaining the age they chose to adopt him at. This accomplishes both of these "goals" they have in mind, and it works out beautifully in their favor.

No matter their son's ethnic background, the two of them make a conscious effort to try and introduce practices, traditions, holidays, ideals, et cetera from their son's culture into their own as a means to keep him connected with his own past and history.

Although her job is connected with the military and does, to an extent, seperate her from her families for periods of time, that doesn't diminish the relationship she has with her son. He's fascinated with his mom's career, allowing for lengthy, in-depth discussion about what her job actually entails with him.

She and her wife are such good moms in general - always supporting him in everything he wants to do and encouraging him a thousand times over. There isn't a second in his life where he isn't being supported or loved, but it by his moms or the numerous different adult figures in his life.

Laswell gets in a fair bit of trouble with her wife for not disciplining her son in any way, shape, or form. She may have no issue with doing so with the military individuals she works with - she can be scary and intimidating when she wants to be - but with her son? She's absolutely a pushover.

Quits smoking the second she and her wife make plans towards actually adopting. It's a harsh line she draws, and one she abides by without hesitation or question.

VALERIA GARZA

None

Now, this isn't because I want to exclude her from this concept for any reasoning whatsoever, but rather because I can't really see her having or wanting any children in the first place. She's "El Sin Nombre", after all. And, in her defense, the cartel isn't necessarily the best enviroment for a child to grow up or develop in - surprising nobody.

She knows this fact better than anyone, and, having sworn her life to her role in Las Almas and the cartel, she chooses to not have any children. Additionally, she isn't going to be irresponsible and make herself vulnerable like that where, to have someone to love and care fore, only for the possibility of them being used as leverage against her later on hanging over her head, putting them in danger.

And, in any case, she has a breeding kink to make up for it, eh?

But, in all seriousness, as wonderful as I think she could possibly be with children in general, I doubt she plans on having or adopting children of her own unless she actually makes the move to leave the business of the cartel altogether - which, lets face it, with who she is and the role that she plays, is highly unlikely.

To make up for this, let's talk about her relationship with kids in general - be it the children of Las Almas and nieces and nephews that she has and interacts with.

She fits the "cool aunt" persona to a tee, always bringing gifts and/or cash to her younger family members, getting them whichever they desire, playing games with them, talking shit about people and listening to them vent, et cetera.

If the children have a problem with someone and, if aren't family, she has no issue doing something about it, be it using a scare tactic on them or completely removing the other person from the equation in more serious scenarios.

All the kids love her, no matter if they're family or if they know her or not. If she isn't busy and one of her men have a child of their own that they need to tend to while they're on the clock, she'll let the kid stay around in her office, so long as they don't disturb the peace.

VLADIMIR MAKAROV

One son and one daughter - ages eleven and five

Now, as cold, cruel, stoic, and heartless of a character that Makarov is, I personally believe that there would be select factors that would influence him to actually want children. Technical, albeit, and not for the sake of having someone to nurture and care for - at least, in the beginning - but I do believe that, for his own reasons, he would still want children as he progresses on later in his career and plans.

The only reason I could ever see for him to so much as bring up the concept of having children, in a way that makes sense when considering his character, would be due to the result of a close encounter that has him just barely scraping out of whatever altercation with his life to spare and hold onto.

He decides then and there that he wants to have a child - a son, specifically - who will be able to take his place and lead the groups that he controls and reigns over when he, inevitably, passes because, like he stated: "even I'm replaceable". It's a morbid phrase, yes, but it makes sense for him to have this be his reasoning.

He wants his replacement to be his own, too, and not for one of men to simply be promoted after he passes. After all, their ideologies, morals, and values could change over time and alter from his own, and he can't have that. However, if he were to have a child, he could foster and tailor their beliefs to match his own.

And besides, there's a certain charm that comes with saying his son is going to be the next in line. So, to his favor, he gets a first-born son, just as he had wished. His daughter, however, is completely accidental and unplanned/an abrupt decision when she is born/adopted. (In the context of pregnancy, though, its entirely his fault that she's conceived out of nowhere - wear protection, folks.)

For the longest time, his relationship with his son is, for lack of better wording, toxic - but this does change! If only with your intervention. All he wants in the beginning is for his son to be able to take over for him in the future - that being his sole purpose. And, unfortunately, he makes that a known fact.

Brings his son in with him to work on base often, working to teach and show to him the empire that he'll be taking over once his dad is gone. He gets a front-row view to the horrors his father is behind and in control of, be it the planning process for strategized and organized attacks, his cruel methods for dealing with traitors, and otherwise.

As much as he might, at heart, want to be a boy-dad, his relationship with his son is so strained and, frankly, falling apart, even if he refuses to acknowledge it, and so toxic in nature that it's only natural he becomes a girl-dad when his daughter is finally born. It's unfair, yes, but it's the truth of the matter.

He keeps his daughter far away from his work, shielding her completely from the badness of the world - the badness that he himself helps to create. She's his his pride and joy, and she's such a daddy's girl, leaving his son to fall to you, his other parental figure, for comfort and support - that of which his dad fails to provide.

COLONEL KÖNIG

Four daughters - ages two, three, seven, and fourteen

Interestingly enough, he's actually always quietly desired and yearned for a family of his own, though, he's never had any open discussions about it until it came to you. It's almost funny, the way that he's so awkward and tends to shy away from others any chance he's allowed to, and yet, he wants nothing more than a sizeable family for himself.

To have someone to fight for, to come back home to... it's all a soldier ever wants - himself included. And, for him, that includes a family that doesn't just consist of him and you (as content and happy as he is with it for now). The mere prospect of coming home to children of his own who can greet him and adore him is all he could ever ask for.

Though, even given this, he's especially nervous to actually become a father. He overthinks it a lot, wondering if his kids will even like him, going over the multitude of different ways that he could mess up even when he has no reason to. Because after his first, that fear melts away into enthusiasm.

Four children, especially when they're all girls, is a lot, yes, but he handles it with ease. He doesn't let the stress of it get to him, simply taking everything in stride and dealing with it rationally. He wants to preserve the positive relationship he has with his daughters, and approaching things from a logical standpoint is just the way to do it.

The true curse of the military - all girls, and so many of them, too. His younger children are all girly to an extent, too, so he's no stranger at a tea party and getting his make-up and nails done messily by his daughters. His oldest, although she may not be as girly, still has her moments, be it certain musicians maybe that she's forced her dad to listen to the entire discography of.

His girls love use him as a prop and character in their bouts of playing "make pretend". He's played a tree, standing still for them to climb all over, a dragon, protecting them from all of the bugs and critters that threatens to offend the, and even a race car, holding onto one or two of them as tight as he can and breaking into a sprint. It's strange and exhausting, sure, but he loves it.

Teaches his daughters to stick up for themselves - it's one of the first lessons he ever teaches them. Whether it be in terms of don't let people see you as a pushover, don't let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do, or stick up for yourself by any means necessary, he instills those ideals into his kids. Teaches his eldest how to fight, too - per her request - as another measure and precaution.

Although being apart of KorTac and being a colonel in general keep him busy and occupied and away from his family, that doesn't stop him from trying his hardest to be with them. He sends each and every one of his daughters, with the inclusion of yourself, gifts he picks up while he's away that reminds him of you all, just as a means to remind you all that he's here and he loves you.

COMMANDER PHILLIP GRAVES

Two daughters and two children (transgender) - ages seventeen, six, and thirteen

Both of his trans children, female-to-male, are twins

In his daydreams, he's always imagined himself with a family of his own. A nuclear family, the American ideal - married with two and a half kids, a dog, a big house with a white-picket fence, a stable job. The whole lot. That's all he's ever had in mind for himself and he yearns to make it a reality.

So, when the topic of children come up after the married, dog, house, and job things are already figured out, he's eager to speak his mind and give his input on the matter. He's got the biggest, most lopsided grin spread out across his face when he lays eyes on his eldest daughter for the first time, and that only solidifies his dreams.

Though, ironically enough, he always had in his mind that he'd have more boys than girls. He loves his daughters wholeheartedly and without shame, mind you, but... still, the sentiment remains. He always imagined himself with one, maybe two or three boys - someone he could play catch or watch sports with.

He doesn't get that, until he does, and his twins come out to him (albeit, at separate ages) as trans ftm. Of course, the whole "trans" thing is new to him, and while he may be a little clueless, seeing how happy it makes the two of his kids is more than enough to convince him him to put in effort and be the most supportive dad he can be.

I don't want anyone coming to me saying "oh, he's transphobic" because no he's not. He may fit that all-American persona of his to a tee, but I refuse to say that he would go as far to be transphobic or homophobic, especially with his own children. (Also, I'm petty, so you get two of them).

He fights and works hard to be present in his children's lives. He may be the Commander and CEO of Shadow Company, but that doesn't mean his men can't function without him from time to time. His family means everything to him, all of his time off being spent towards treating them.

Not the parent who pushes for his children to each be involved in a million after-school activities, but encourages them to take up something. His oldest plays volleyball, his second-oldest plays baseball, his second-youngest plays the drums, and his youngest dances. Takes them all to practice and helps them however he can.

Genuinely just copy and paste Jeff Sadecki from Yellowjackets and that's him as a parent. Except... with less of the drama. He's dedicated to being involved in his children's lives, making memories and having fun with them, telling horrible dad jokes from time to time, and whatever else.

SERGEANT MAJOR RODOLFO "RUDY" PARRA

One child (agender) - aged sixteen

He never actually planned on or anticipated becoming a father in the first place, more focused on dedicating his efforts towards his career and not spending more than a passing thought on creating a family. Not to say that he doesn't want one, it's just a concept he hasn't spent too much time thinking about or worrying over.

So, this means that you have to be the one to bring it up to him. And, granted, it somewhat catches him off guard - you want to try for a baby/consider adoption with him? Since when? It throws him off, to be honest, and he genuinely has to take some time to reflect and decide if this is actually something that he wants.

And, in your favor, it is.

He's somewhat nonchalant about the whole thing, not really realizing how big of an event it is until you're close to the due date/you're approved for adoption. And then it hits him full force that, yeah - sooner than later, he's actually going to become a dad and deal with the responsibilities of one and have a child of his own.

It's humbling, funnily enough, and he revaluates his priorities when it comes to his career, you, and child-to-be.

Even though he never anticipated or saw himself as someone who could accurately fill the role of a father, he's a good one. More akin to a close friend at times whereas others he can more accurately be described as a mentor, but it's important for fathers to share both of those factors, in a way. Which he absolutely does.

His child comes out to him before they reach double-digits, and its another moment that he has to pause for. Of course he's going to love them unconditionally, no matter if they identify as something else or go by different pronouns or want to use a different name, it's simply something he hadn't expected.

Doesn't really at all punish his child if they do something wrong. He'll have a conversation with them, sure, but it never truly extends to anything beyond that. Simply a "hey, don't do that again, okay?" and moving on with life. All that matters is that they understand and acknowledge their faults, in his eyes.

Involves himself in whatever his child is interested in and tries to understand it as best he can. They have a sport they're really into? He's buying them merch and watching matches or games with them. They're really into a certain video game? Start up a new save file, he'd love to play. Genuinely super supportive.

Does not at all plan on having another child. He's content with the one and, quite frankly, even one can be a lot at times. He can't count how many times he's had to go to those parent support groups just to ensure he's being as good of a dad as he can be.

COLONEL ALEJANDRO VARGAS

Four sons and one daughter - ages twelve, eleven, nine, and eight

His oldest sons are twins

The absolute definition of a family man. He, somewhat akin to Price, always imagined himself with a family of his own later down the line in his life - a large, lively one, too. He grew up in a larger household himself with a number of brothers and sisters, both younger and older, and he always imagined the same for his future family.

He's so enthusiastic about it, too. He isn't scared or worried at all, confident in his own abilities to take care of children, given his own extended experience, so he has little to no fear in what he'll be like as a parent or his own capabilities. He knows what he'll need to do, how to do it, what to buy, what to say, et cetera, so he's confident.

He doesn't really have a plan for what their ages will be, more so allowing everything to flow naturally, but he can't deny the fact that he has his own picture in mind for what he wants his family to look like. Ironically, he always imagined himself with more girls than boys, but it seems like life had... a different plan for him.

He loves it, though. He's extremely good with newborns and toddlers especially, and when he laid eyes on his twins for the first time, holding both of them to him, it was over. Plain and simple. With the first step taken, he can now fully immerse himself in being a father and cultivating the lives of his children, and that's all he could ask for.

His boys are rowdy. Especially his oldest twins and his youngest son, his eleven-year-old acting much tamer and calmer in comparison, but still has his moments. They roughhouse with one another, mess with each other, talk shit - the whole lot. Typical sibling behavior, yes, but they had so much energy.

Takes a lot of time off to be with his family when he can spare it. If he isn't physically out for an operation and instead is at the Los Vaqueros base, he sometimes will bring one or two of his children to stay in his office while he works. That is, if he doesn't up and leave to go home the second the opportunity arises.

Defiantly the one responsible for disciplining his children and dishing out punishment. It's not to say that he's cruel or mean in any sense, but he can be strict. If they do something wrong, he's quick to decide on a punishment that appropriate and relevant, dedicated to correcting that behavior as swiftly as possible.

He's an absolute pushover with his daughter, though. Not to say that he doesn't love his boys, because he does, but he'd do anything for her. Tea parties? Dress up? Make believe? You name it, no matter how embarrassing or emasculating it may be, and he's doing it if his little girl asks.

Messes around with his boys a lot. He has a positive relationship with all of them, one that's open and honest, which leaves room for him to be able to roughhouse and taunt and poke fun at them from time to time. They might have to be smart with their own words and responses, but he's making smartass, cheeky remarks whenever he can with a grin.

OPERATION OFFICER ALEX KEELER

One daughter - aged eleven

He's thought about having children before, yes, but never in a realistic context. For him, in the past, it's always been more of a "let me imagine a scenario of how myself and a future family would look" but never actively taking strides or realistically think about how he would achieve that.

So, when you bring the topic up to him, he kind of stills and... actually thinks about it. There's a difference between putting yourself in a scenario and imagining it, and actually taking steps to make it into a reality. He sort of panics, too, because... would he actually make a good dad?

He's the most apprehensive and anxious person out of anyone when it comes to considering the path of parenthood. Of course, he agrees, more than willing to try for a baby/go through the adoption process with you, but he's endlessly terrified of messing things up.

Even when he actually gets to meet and hold his daughter for the first time - he's a man who has no shame in crying, because he absolutely does when he sees her - that paranoia remains. But even so, it solidifies his goal to become the best father he can be for his little girl.

So clueless at first at how to even approach fatherhood, purchasing so many parents books and listening to an abundance of podcasts and going to classes and everything of the like. He's confident in most aspects, sure, but parenthood is something he's never dealt with in the past - it's no surprise he wants to do everything in his power to be the best dad he can be.

As anxious as he is, though, he, in my opinion, is probably the best father he could possibly ever dream to be. He's attentive to his daughter's wants and needs, can gauge her emotions correctly and acts accordingly, is responsible in terms of taking precautions to keep her safe, and he's present as much as he can be.

Number one cheerleader in everything she does. Whether it be getting a passing grade or an outstanding one on a test, he's hyping her up. If she joins and becomes a part of a particular activity of interest, he's taking her out to a celebratory dinner. All words of encouragement and praise from him.

Is a very active an present parent, too. Takes her out on little father-daughter days whenever he can to wherever she wants to go. The mall to look at the one obscure candle store? Sure, he's down. The zoo to go make up conversations between the animals. Absolutely. He loves hanging out with her, and seeing the way she lights up whenever he offers to take her out is all he could ever dream of.

COMMANDER FARAH AHMED KARIM

Two sons and one daughter - ages seven, four, and eight months

In the beginning, actually, she was very opposed to the concept of having/adopting children. Given her involvement with the ULF and that the current climate in Urzikstan was far from safe to raise any child in, she had no reason to even entertain the thought. Especially considering her own past, she was against it.

For a while, most conversations of having or starting a family were shut down by her - she yearned for it in the back of her mind, sure, but it wasn't a realistic goal. That was until she and Samara had a conversation about the topic, Samara telling her that while, yes, there were dangers to it, there's nothing more fulfilling than family.

So, after long deliberations, she began to consider it more heavily, leading to discussions where she finally agreed. She has her own reservations, fears, and anxieties about it, yes, but considering all the work she's done, she's allowed to have this. To have a child or children, to make her own family that loves her unconditionally.

She keeps her family completely separate and distanced from her work. As much as she's passionate about what she does, there's that lingering fear in the back of her mind that, one day, her family could get hurt or even possibly used against her as leverage if they're discovered. So, there's a clean separation between the two.

But it's all worth it when she meets her first born son for the first time. She's playing such important roles in her life - the Commander of the ULF, a resistance fighter, someone associated with Task Force 141, and one of the few key figures tasked with liberating her country in its entirety. But, now, she's more than that. She's a mom.

Even though she's never had children of her own before, she handles motherhood like a seasoned professional. Even before her other two children, she never got too overwhelmed with the work and responsibilities that come with being a parent, handling everything with a level head and a calm voice, turning out in her favor.

Though, she's somewhat a bit stricter with her children - not in the sense of being overbearing and not trusting them, or even that she has high expectations and standards for them. Rather, she wants to ensure the safety of her children and that their childhoods never turn out like her own, so she takes extra precautions.

She doesn't actually send her children to school, rather taking time to teach them herself - with your aid, of course. It's partially for those same reasons of fear and wanting to protect her children, but she's actually really good at it. She's taught her children how to write, how to read, how to speak two different languages... it's a way that shows how invested she is in her family.

As serious as she can be with her work, she's much more laid back and relaxed when it comes to her family - just another perk and upside, she supposes. With all the stresses she deals with, being able to come home to her sons and daughter, being overwhelmed with love - it's rewarding in a way she's never experienced before.

NIKOLAI

Two daughters - ages eight and three

He's always imagined himself with children, in complete honesty, even when he was younger - to have maybe one to three of his own. To your luck, he's open about it too, so he's actually the one to bring up the idea to you in the beginning, having no shame whatsoever in his willingness to try for/adopt a child... or two or three.

He isn't scared to become a parent, per se, nor does he have many anxieties or worries about becoming one, but there is still that subtle worry in the back of his mind that he won't be the most fit parent.

Everyone jokes about how he can be reckless and unethical, and he enjoys the banter, but it does make him self-conscious and second guess his own ability to be an adequate father.

He doesn't really consider or worry about what ages his children are, simply allowing things to fall into place naturally, as they should. He may have imagined himself with children in his own daydreams, sure, but there was never any clear specifics for age or gender he had in mind.

But once he actually gets to meet his daughters for the first time, those worries fade away partially - they still linger, yes, but for the most part he lets them simmer on the backburner, not allowing them to interfere with him as he directs his focus away from worrying and more towards becoming the father his girls deserve.

His daughters are just as much of a menace as he is. Maybe not in the "I deal with sketchy people on a daily basis and have done some questionable things" kind of way, but they have their own mischievous streaks like their father. Be it orchestrating pranks or smaller acts of the like, sometimes they even outshine the father.

He's playful by nature, yes, and he is with his girls, but you'll also never meet a more protective parent than him. He may be sly and smug and appear all cool and collected outwardly, but when it comes to his daughters, he's doing everything in his power to protect them from anything, be it people... or ants.

Likes to be his daughters' own personal jungle gym, letting the two of them hold onto him and climb all over him without a care in the world. Additionally, that means he makes for the perfect mode of transport for them, too - having them cling onto him as he walks around, moving them from one place to the other.

He can act like a child in his own right, but he's still a good father nonetheless. In line with that protective nature, he does everything he can to both foster a positive relationship and set rules and boundaries. Bed times, chores, punishments, et cetera - he's in charge of those things, and, while he isn't strict, he's responsible.

[dronebiscuitbat]

Oil is Thicker Then Blood: Polarity- Chapter 3: A Long Day

https://archiveofourown.org/works/64077811/chapters/167453419

A sheet of paper full of equations is placed in front of her, after a lecture about the order of operations and how to access the computing portion of their processors to make this trivial, they were super advanced computers after all.

And yet…

Tera stared down at the paper with a pencil in her hand, reading the first question over and over and over again, it was easy, or should have been. Simple long devision as a warm up before the harder questions. All she had to do was… compute.

Her brain-her processors attempted to calculate the numbers, only to freeze halfway through like an ancient machine running on the worlds shittiest hard drive. The numbers seemed to change the longer she looked at them, 5’s becoming 3’s and 6’s becoming 9’s. A nervous sweat started to appear on her visor, instead now trying to solve the problem organically, writing down the equation on paper and working to solve it that way. That didn’t work either, the numbers floated off the page to become unintelligible runes.

She may as well have been trying to decipher hieroglyphs.

She groaned and threw her head back.

An hour later, the paper was slammed back down on her desk with a big fat red 45% etched in huge letters on the corner. She wasn't sure if getting a 0 would be better, or worse, then at least she could claim she was just stupid. But getting something right using the incorrect formula just confused her further.

She grumbled, and stuffed it in her bag with a growl.

Rad took a single look her and chortled. “I think teach just likes to bleed all over your papers dude. I know you can't be that bad.”

It was intended to cheer her up, but it really didn't, she was a robot! A computer! Her building blocks were in fucking binary! What computer couldn't do the thing they were named after- compute?!

So she just sighed. “Just shut up man…”

Rad pouted for a moment, before his eyes lit up, if it was any more obvious he'd gotten an idea, a big green light bulb would have popped up over his head. “Bet I can beat you in a race to biology.”

Tera's tail perked up as she gathered her things, a smirk replaced a frown. “Not a chance man, I'm way faster!”

“Prove it Lucky Bat!” And with that, he raced down the hall as fast as his hydrolic powered legs could carry him.

He knew he wasn't going to win.

And when he felt the wind of Tera sprinting ahead rush past him, all he could do was laugh as the purple blur rushed inside the next class, startling several other students who gave the solver drone a nasty look as she blasted past them.

“Hah! Fuck ye-SHIT!”

Kiara was at her desk, supposedly waiting for her, her eyelights go hollow as Tera barrels towards her and the worker braces for impact with her best freind.

Tera pumps the breaks hard and fast, she can feel herself skidding across the polished stone floor, she holds her hands out to try and salvage the situation and-

She stops a hairs breath from her, panting as her arms brush against Kiara's arms, the plan being to grab her and then stop them both to avoid hurting her.

Now though it's just a slightly awkward half-hug.

Tera gulps and her visor flushes a neon flavored purple.

“Y-you okay?” She asked through her throat near closing in embarrassment, she probably needed to back up, or at least let go before asking… but she wouldn't be a Doorman if she wasn't painfully awkward.

Kiara blinked, still processing the fact she wasn't melted slag stuck to the floor before she looks up with a smile. “I'm fine! Little bit of a close one there yeah?”

Tera grinned sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head as she stepped back. “Sorry, Rad challenged me to a race and…”

“…you can't say no to a challenge?” The worker giggled. “I figured. Looks like you won though.” Her eyes flicker to the doorway.

Rad came in panting, smiling, but panting. “Oh man… have you gotten even faster? It's like you teleported!” His vents kick up to max trying to cool him off, and he rests his hands on his knees. “Dang.”

Tera smirked. “You're just a slowpoke.”

Kiara brought her attention back with a featherlight touch to her arm, Tera tried to ignore the shock that passed up through her sensors.

“I need your help.” She spoke quietly. “Mrs. Finley gave us homework about Nightstalkers and I completely forgot about it!” Kiara pouted, looking a little ashamed of herself.

“You? Forgetting homework? How scandalous.” Tera quipped back, laughing when Kiara pouted even more.

“I… had a rough night.” The worker replied softly, rubbing her shoulder and looking away, Tera felt like she just swallowed acid.

“Yeah. I can help. Mrs.Finley gives us 15 minutes to look over it before asking for it anyway. Pull up your chair.” Tera replied, smiling down. “No copying though, that would be unethical.” She parrots her best freinds words and the worker smacks her lightly. “You!”

“Thank you…”

Tera turns back to look at Rad. “You forget yours too?”

He blinked stupidly. “Forget what?”

Tera sighed. “Pull up a chair String Bean.”

They both pull up thier chairs on either side of Tera's desk, which was luckily large enough to uncomfortably fit them all.

Rad dug out a crumpled paper from his bag, laughing warily when Kiara eyed him like he'd committed murder, Tera pulled out her completed work, along with a little leather bound journal.

“Rad you can just copy. You're not going to read it anyway.” Tera says deadpan, and the young man grins and begins copying the answers down in barely legible chicken scratch.

Then she turns to Kiara. “Alright, first question…”

How large to Nightstalkers get?

She opens her journal to a page of notes, accompanied by a rough sketch of a nightstalker.

“So they average around 20 feet in height fully grown, not counting the horns or you'd add another 2, I don't think Mrs. Finley counts them, or just would prefer the easier to remember number for us.” Tera points to where she'd jotted down their heights.

“I've never seen one that big…” Kiara writes it down, but looks up at Tera to explain.

“Their deeper in the jungle… plus that's what we have hunting parties for, V doesn't really let one that big stick around if it does wander towards us.”

When are Nightstalkers at their most deadly?

“I know that one! They get really hormonal and angry when they become teenagers… soo.” The worker taps a pen on her cheek. “What age is that?”

“2 and a half usually.” Tera answers.

The fat on the top of a Nightstalkers back is both armor and heat regulation, it is called what?

“Blubber.”

Kiara laughs. “That's not a real word.”

“I promise it is, and it's right.” Tera replies. “You haven't tried to drive a blade through that, it may as well be steel.”

They continue, Kiara asking questions, trying to actually learn the material while Tera answers with either a note from her hunting journal or a quick anecdote. All with the background noise of Rad furiously scribbling.

They finish just in time for Mrs. Finley to walk in, 15 minutes after the bell rang.

“Alright everyone. Hand me your homework and we'll get started, the next species we'll be focusing on is the Deersheep…”

Kiara and Rad scooted thier chairs back to where they should've been- to the desks either side of her.

Text flickered up on Kiara's visor. [THANK YOU!]

Rad chuckled. “Cheers Dude.”

Tera leaned back and smiled, handing up her paper to the teacher now doing laps around the classroom to collect the work, she pauses at Rads. “Mr. Hayes.”

“Yes'm?”

“Why have you written down Miss Doorman’s name in place of your own?

Tera facepalmed. Kiara rolled her eyes. Rad smiled like a dead man. “Ahah…”

Mrs.Finley's bright blue eyelights trailed over to Tera. “Did you know about this?”

Tera wracked her brain quickly. “We did a study group together, he must have done it as a joke when we were talking about how he often forgets to write his name.”

The blue eyelights narrowed, she brushed a hand though her tightly spun and frazzled brown hair, and she sighed.

“If I didn't have multiple nameless papers from you. Mr. Hayes, I wouldn't believe her. Don't do it again.”

After she walks away towards her desk, Rad untested. “Woo… saved my life there…” He said quietly.

“I can't belive you wrote my name! You dumbass!” Tera gave an incredulous and amused smile. “You could've gotten me in trouble too!” She whisper-yelled.

The rest of the day was long, tedious, and sufficiently boring enough to put her on autopilot, sure she was present for her freinds but… anywhere else. Mind off somewhere in the jungle and outwardly expressing that classic Doorman brand resting bitch face.

At lunch, they were let out into the cafeteria and served deep fried copper nuggets, bolts, and a side of batteries. Which Tera inhaled like a starving animal before her two freinds even had a chance to touch thiers.

“Dude.”

“Slow down your gonna choke!”

Her two respective freinds called out, but she didn't listen, licking her lips in satisfaction. “Ahhh~”

To finish it off, she reached into her pocket to pull out a dented and well worn silver canteen, gulping down sweet and tangy oil like it was drops of heaven.

She pulled off it when it was half empty, wiping her mouth of the excess.

In all honesty… she was still hungry.

Though she was always hungry nowadays.

���Vampire.” Rad coughed.

“It comes from the ground. I'm not a fucking vampire!” Tera immediately protested. “You eat the soup at the food court! It's the same thing!”

Kiara giggled, Rad teased poor Tera about that every chance he got. She had to be sick of it by now…

She hummed to herself as she finished out a sketch of a lion, as realistic as one could without never seeing one outside of pictures and ancient documentaries, she began to shade it so the fur looked black, letting Tera and Rads bickering become white noise.

More classes, more work; right after lunch she still had Rad and Kiara in an advanced English class, where the focus was more on the history of linguistics and the written word then reading comprehension- when your whole student body can take screenshots with thier eyes; you stop worrying about retaining information organically.

But afterwards, she was alone in an architectural engineering class that was more numbers and measurements then actually building things and she was back to slamming her head against the wall in frustration, doubled because now… the math was applied.

She did well in the practical projects like build a bridge out of sticks, or make a model pully that works under a specific weight threshold. She could trial and error that, and she was really good at eyeballing measurements even if she was shit at exact numbers- but the second she had to figure out exactly what degrees a triangle needed to be to support X amount of weight she wanted to eat the damn paper.

“Ugh…”

She crossed her arms, and tuned out of the lecture, instead spacing out while looking vaguely forward to give the illusion that she was still paying attention.

Maybe you have so much trouble because you refuse to actually pay attention.

A monotone and robotic mockery of her own voice whispered, she'd have winced at the suddenness of it if it wasn't wholly expected at this point. She ignored it.

Or maybe you're just an idiot.

That's okay though… smarts would be wasted on a killing machine.

She growled, tightening her fist but giving the entity that lived in her head no response.

At least until she blinked, and suddenly she was standing at the front of the classroom, drones screaming in fear as they tried to get out of the door in a panic. She blinked in confusion for a moment before her eyelights went hollow.

Hanging limp in her now, fleshy, bladed claws was Mr. Riker, Oil bathing her arm and pooling all over the floor, the smell was intoxicating, ever present, and assaulted her olfactory receptors like a persistent tagalong.

She jumped, the movement making the lifeless corpse slide off her bladed fingers and into a heap on the floor, she began to hyperventilate. The word “no” repeating from her lips like a mantra as she backs herself into a corner trembling like a leaf.

“No no- I didn't, I don’t know- I'm sorry!”

“Miss Doorman!”

Slam!

She's startled awake by Mr. Riker slamming a book on her desk, making her yelp in fear, a yellow solver symbol dissappearing from her eyelight. She pants, taking in the students staring at her, some snickering, before her eyelights flickered back up to the drone she just skewered.

“I know buttresses are boring, but please refrain from falling asleep in my class.”

A chorus of giggles passed through the classroom lile a wave.

The teacher rolled their eyes and left her be, which was good, because once all the eyes were off her again she let out a shaky breath and looked down at her hands, normal, even with the animal-like pads on her hands given by the solver.

She squeezed them into fists and sighed, burying her head in her hands and wanting to scream.

Instead she went back to staring at the front, stress lines under her eyes as her mind returns to silence.

She comes out of the classroom hunched over and emotionally drained, tail limp and half dragging across the floor like a zombie. She takes her canteen and drinks the rest of the oil to try and relax her… anything.

“Ter!” Kiara calls from the front door of the school, the day for the upperclassmen being over to go to their field training. Her eyelights looked up, tail perking up a little.

“I'm heading to the clinic for my last two hours, but…I was wondering if you saw my messages?”

Oh crap!

“I did! I can take you and Rad out past the walls this weekend if you want! It's just been a… weird day. Sorry.”

Kiara's eyes lit up. “Really! Awesome! Thank you, Thank you!” She pushed forward to wrap the solver drone in a tight hug. She found herself smiling, despite it all.

“Yeah yeah… keep quiet about it, you know I'm not supposed to…”

Kiara nodded, releasing her and fluttering out the door with a wave. Tera sighed as she leaned against the doorway to outside. Watching her leave.

…and off to the barracks for her field training.

[bambamramfan]

HIVLI

I've seen in the rationalistsphere a lot of dividing people into binary personality models, that are useful and different from the more popular stereotypes (though obviously as simplistic as any binary model.) High decouplers vs low decouplers is a really big one, though also high agency vs low agency. (These descriptions are usually "high x vs low x" with implicit emphasis that the "high" group is better.)

I'm going to add one binary that I think has not gotten nearly enough attention, though you can decide whether I favor the high or low half.

High Impulsiveness

We are used to impulsiveness as just a straight up bad word, like someone who lacks the discipline to resist temptation. Really it's not even about people, but more about moods we can fall into and should be avoided.

I think that's bollocks - not only are some people more impulsive, but it's not even an entirely *bad* thing and has some real positive contributions.

An impulsive person acts on an idea without thinking about it a lot. It could be the decision to throw the first punch in a fight, it could be kissing someone without worrying if it will be reciprocated, it might be deciding to throw a giant party just because, it might be buying a cool new jacket from the leather store, it might be pivoting your business into an entirely new sector, and it very very often is tweeting something on the spur of the moment.

And let's be honest - we love some of the impulsive people in our life. We love how they drop everything for us in a moment of need, we love how they surprise us with a spontaneous gift, we love how they are the first to say I love you. This impulsiveness is hella charismatic because all of their actions feel genuine and powerful and they just do a lot more actions showing their affection than people who think about it too much.

A high impulse person never lies because they believe what they are saying at the time. It might contradict what they said in the past, or what they will follow through on in the future, or even what the state of the world actually is, but they could sure as hell pass a lie detector test saying it right now.

Elon Musk is famous as a high impulse person, boldly creating new companies and leading industries because he decided HE CAN DO IT and doesn't waste any time thinking about the reasons it's not feasible.

On a whim, he bought a $1 million sports car and this is what happened to it:

FWIW, this was on the way to signing a major deal with Thiel.

My contention is that it is no coincidence that the man who reinvented the electric car industry and private space travel, completely wrecked his uninsured million dollar car trying to impress another billionaire. These are two sides of the same coin.

Low Impulsiveness

I think of the epitome of High Impulse vs Low Impulse is Trump vs Clinton in 2016. If you ask a LI person something, they will want to pause and consider the answer - is it true, does it accord with the rest of the world, will it upset anyone, are there any necessary qualifications on this?

To the media viewer, this looks like a calculating liar who is choosing what truth you should get to hear. The more "honest" person was the one "shooting from the gut" and answering immediately and unambiguously. Which answer actually turned out to be "true" is something that would be lost until the question was long forgotten.

A low impulse person wants to plan out what they are doing, what are the risks, how to mitigate them, even if they succeed one time will they be able to consistently stick to replicating this. (Hillary and Obama have been married one time each, even as we both have seen the tribulations of those marriages. Trump and Musk have been married, what, 8 times total?)

Some people reading this will just say this is a new label on high agency vs low agency people. And there is *some* correlation - a lot of high impulse people (again like Trump or Musk) are very high agency, and many low impulse people can be depressed, defeatist and think nothing is worth doing (usually myself.)

But I don't think that's accurate, these traits aren't the same thing. You can be high impulse / low agency - that's usually a depressive that lashes out at everything around them. And low impulse / agency is the stereotype of the master planner who has figured out exactly how everything will go.

You might say that high impulse people have higher VARIANCE than low impulse people, and the effect we're actually measuring is variance. I don't think that's what's going on at the personal level, so it's not useful for describing the people involved and why they do things and causality.

But the point about high variance is that high impulse people fuck up a lot. They lead to ALL SORTS OF MISTAKES and costs that the low impulse people justifyingly grumble about. Which is why our prisons are mostly full of high impulse people (but then so are our performing stages.)

For a long time, what it took to get ahead at the highest levels of power, was iterated successes, and that weeded out a lot of high-impulse people. HI people would fuck up eventually, and they'd go to jail or lose all the money or piss off the wrong people or lose their reputation and they'd stop advancing. Which is how we got a stereotype of national leaders as wishy washy grey emotionless blobs - those were the only ones who could survive a gauntlet of potential mistakes in the press or gossipy political games.

We've clearly entered a new era where downsides are limited, and enough success can overcome any failure. If, as a business leader, you can get 10% of the people to LOVE you, they can buy your stock and buoy you, even as 90% of people hate every decision you make.

We're seeing its effects the most in politics - Trump can't do anything to lose the confidence of his people so long as the other people hate him, so "shooting from the hip" every second of every day works wonders for him, even as it leads to meaningless policy and complete denial of reality.

But we see its growth in the media with independent substacks and other influencer platforms. So long as you can never be truly knocked out, the strategy of "gamble everything, keep trying to get attention" beats out most of the planners and low impulsiveness.

I think this is a bad thing, but it's not because I exclusively prefer Low Impulse behavior. HI people are super fun. But our leadership needs some combination of people with "emotional spontaneity" and people doing "thoughtful engagement with reality", and drifting too much in the former direction has fairly obvious disastrous consequences.

[sabotsen]

Fragment - 21 - T1004

Pairing: Lee x Commandant/Reader

Notes: Set during Ch21 Spiral of Chronos & contains spoilers. Cross posted to ao3 bc I hate the paragraph formatting here. Word Count 3.6k.

Warnings: Subtle Jealousy and possessiveness. Brief mention of character death and panic attack.

This is a secret Santa gift for @yandere-yearnings. I love you Dar!!! Happy holidays. I hope this knife stabs you lovingly.

Emotions cannot be compressed into numbers, not in a way that does them justice.

The depth, the weight, the agony of them cannot be expressed in binary. There is simply too much — too little — to account for them in calculations. 

He knows this. 

Honestly, he would like to think himself rational enough to follow through his calculations without the influence of emotions altering the numbers. In most situations, that assessment would be correct. His measurements, calculations, predictions are all precision sharpened to a lethal bullet aimed with perfect trajectory. He is a machine, built for war and numbers. He is a soldier, eliminating obstacles for the best calculated result. 

But Gray Raven is not a factor that can be compressed into simple numbers and figures. You, in all your stubbornness and kindness, are not measurable no matter what calculations and equations he uses. 

Your smile makes him happy — flustered, even — and your laughter rings in his head for days, leaving no room for even the shortest string of binary. Your touch is a warmth, a fire, that burns away every equation he knew by breath. Your voice is a melody that drowns out every calculated plan on the tip of his tongue. Your mere presence — the steady guiding light of your M.I.N.D. beacon — pieces him together so gently, more human than machine. 

It’s a terrifying thing — to be stitched together so lovingly, to feel the weight of emotions more than the unchanging shape of numbers. It’s a foolish thing — to think of himself as a person and not a machine, a tool, a number in the data string. 

He loves you for it. He fears you for it. 

Because you make him more. Because you make him undefined. 

But he does not change. Because it’s him.

So here he remains. Trapped in a Möbius loop. Because it’s you. 

Lee is rational. 

He is not one to be swept into fleeting emotions. Reacting on impulse often leads to more messes and headaches. There is a logical explanation for everything. 

He knows this. He knows this. 

But there’s something about the sight before him that makes his jaw clench until metal grinds against metal. 

Maybe it’s the way your frame seems even smaller than usual as you kneel with one knee pressed against the floor, a sniper rifle that is not your own within your hands. Maybe it’s the way Wanshi curves against you, the white of his hair and outfit a stark contrast to the soft grays of your Gray Raven uniform as he embraces you like sea foam does the ocean waters. Maybe it’s the way you tilt your head just slightly towards him, his voice soft as he speaks. Maybe it’s the sharp glint in Wanshi’s golden gaze flitting over your shoulder as he notices Lee in the doorway.  Maybe it’s the smile upon Wanshi’s lips, the silent glee of a hawk with prized prey, as he bows his head and nearly brushes his lips against your ear.  Maybe it’s the way his hands drift over yours, adjusting your hold, then drift to ghost over your hips and shoulders, lingering just a little too long to merely correct your posture.

Maybe it’s all of them at once. 

It’s an ugly thing that flares to life in the metal confines of his chest, writhing and clawing at the cage of his ribs. It’s an ugly thing that spurs him into the shooting range, jaw clenched and fingers digging into his palms firmly enough to scrape metal against metal. 

He knows the name of it.

But Lee isn’t one to act on emotions. He has to be rational. He has to be level-headed. Someone has to be in order to keep Gray Raven out of trouble. 

But even so. 

It’s an ugly thing that rattles in his chest and claws up his throat. He tastes it on the back of his tongue as he steps up behind you.

“Commandant.”

He feels it burn like acid against his skin when golden eyes lock with his over your shoulder and Wanshi’s fingertips brush against the nape of your neck. 

He feels it oozing, seeping like blood at his feet, lapping at the edges of your clothes as you kneel upon the ground and finally, finally turn your attention up to him. 

Your smile is soft, gentle and welcoming as always. “Lee. Are you here to hide from Asimov for a while?” 

Lee frowns slightly, his brow furrowed. “Please don’t lump me in with you, Commandant.” 

You have no idea, do you? 

You laugh — a beautiful sound that soothes the ache in his chest only as you lean back, posture relaxing and Wanshi naturally shifting just a breath away. It’s still too close, in Lee’s opinion. There’s a burning in his fingertips, a twist in his wires that urges him to pry you free from the hawk’s talons. If it’s shooting advice you need, isn’t he enough? Do you doubt his skills? Or is he not close enough to you for you to ask such a thing of him? Has he done something, said something, or missed some sort of subtle hint that forced you to go to Wanshi instead? 

It’s an ugly thing that burns in his chest and drips like acid from his tongue. But he swallows it back. He is made of metal and numbers. 

Lee sighs, his voice steady as it always is — he forces it to be. “Did you forget?” 

You blink, head tilted slightly to the side and your silence is his answer. 

He tries to ignore the way Wanshi tilts his head ever so subtly in the same direction and the way the hawk’s hands still linger on your shoulders. 

“You’re going to be late to the meeting. Celica asked me to be sure you didn’t forget or run off to hide again.” 

“Ah.” The color momentarily drains from your face, lips twisting in a blanch. The butt of the rifle drifts down, away from the cradle of your shoulder as you set it down and look every bit the image of a cat grabbed by the scruff. “It wasn’t on purpose,” you mutter, “I really did forget.” 

If it weren’t for the hawk still pressed against your side, perhaps Lee would have smiled that small, subtle one you know him for. The one that vanishes if you pay it too much attention, fading like light refraction shifting rainbow hues to common daylight — a lasting secret only if you cradle it just right. 

But he does not smile as he shakes his head in exasperation and gently places his hand on your elbow. “Let’s go, unless you really want to be in trouble.” 

His movements are gentle as his hand on your arm guides you up, but his gaze is sharp and pointed on the hawk whose touch lingers too long as you move away to stand. 

That golden gaze only softens when you turn your head to Wanshi, that familiar somewhat sleepy expression splayed across his features as if it had always been there. As if a sleepy owl is all he has ever been and ever will be. 

“Sorry to run, Wanshi. Thanks for your time,” your voice is friendly as always, unaware, as you hand the rifle back to the Strike Hawk. 

Wanshi merely smiles softly and waves his free hand. “Take care, Commandant.” Golden eyes shift, just for a moment to glance over your shoulder at Lee before lazily gliding back to your face. His smile sharpens in the corners, too soft and subtle perhaps for you to notice — but Lee does. “You know where to find me.” 

Lee scowls, his hand on your elbow shifting and anchoring onto your shoulder. It is pure restraint that keeps him from digging his fingers into the folds of your clothes, and you merely take his gesture as a silent hint to keep moving — something innocent and friendly. So you let him coax you away by the shoulders as you offer a small farewell and final thanks to Wanshi and leave the room. He should be grateful you see his actions in such a light rather than for what they truly are. But that ugly feeling in his chest wails and mourns that you do not see through his act. 

Just before the door slides shut, Lee casts one last look over your shoulder to the construct who remained sitting where you left him. That sleepy expression is gone, replaced by something too patient and cold, too sharp and predatory as it follows your back. Wanshi smiles, the shape of it upon his lips every bit the silent threat — the promise — of a hawk’s shadow brushing over a rabbit. The cold metal of the door slides shut, separating you from the Hawk perched and waiting. 

It is only after he has guided you down the empty hallway far enough away from the shooting range for his nerves to settle that he realizes the weight of your gaze on him. You’re burning a hole through the side of his face and by the press of your lips he can tell you’re thinking something — worrying about something. His arm across your back slips away, his touch drifting down to your elbow in a soft brush — easily avoided. But you don’t. You allow the soft, ghost’s touch of his fingers against you. 

“What.” He’s frowning. He knows he is. 

You’ve known him long enough by now not to be deterred by his blunt speech or soured expression. If anything, perhaps you find comfort in it — familiarity in the easy banter you’ve developed with him and his dry humor. But there is thoughtful caution as you watch him now and he traces even the smallest movements in your gaze as you observe him. 

“I don’t have a meeting with Celica today.” 

There’s a note in your voice, subtle and easily missed. Light and almost airy — it’s the soft smile hidden in your voice that doesn’t play upon your lips. 

That tone is the only reason his reply is as blunt and dry as any other common conversation, “Gray Raven is truly in dire straits if our Commandant is suffering memory loss so early in age.” 

You laugh, a hand rising to hide the bright smile he adores. You have a bad habit of doing that — tucking smiles and laughter behind your hands as if they are stolen burdens not meant to trouble others. Perhaps the war has done that to you, or maybe it was something else — the cruel words of others. He never did narrow down the origin, as you’ve had that habit since the day he met you. 

You should smile more, he thinks, as your hand falls away from your lips and the small hint of a smile remains. It’s the same one that plays upon your lips whenever he brushes off his flustered expression as his cooling system failing. But just like those moments, you do not call him on his bluff. 

Instead, your hand shifts and taps his that still lingered on your elbow. “How are you holding up?” The worry in your voice is evident despite the light cheer you try to hide it behind. “We haven’t seen you lately. I know you like to keep busy but you’re not allowed to pick up Asimov’s workaholic tendencies.” 

Lee tilts his head to the side, his frown softening a fraction but his brow furrows even more. “Do you not read the reports I send?” 

“I read them, but that’s not what I asked.” Your hand on his shifts, interlacing your fingers together and if he were still made of flesh and bone perhaps you would have felt the way his heart would have stumbled, the way his fingers would have trembled. But he is made of metal and numbers, and he is still as the warmth of your hand sinks into his. “Are you alright, Lee?” 

That ugly ache in his chest finally settles, soothed by your touch, but his thoughts tumble over each other in a silent maelstrom. His gaze falls to your hand in his, the way the softness of your touch contrasts so cruelly with the hard metal of him. What is there to say in this situation? Progress is being made on the specialized frame, everything necessary to know is logged within the reports you receive daily. So why are you asking? Why are you worried? 

He won’t fail you or Gray Raven. Never. 

The only thing stopping him from fully syncing with the frame is just those— 

“Lee?” 

Your voice pulls him from his thoughts and he feels the way your hand squeezes his gently. He hears the concern in your tone, feels it brush against him like the warmth of a blanket —  cozy in its familiarity, even if it is foolish. Carefully, he returns the gesture, ever mindful of his strength. But as he lifts his gaze up to your face, his breath catches in the metal of his lungs. 

Red.

The hallway engulfed in red and black — scorched and burning. Smoke curls and spills from the warped, gaping doorways on the right, billowing up and crawling through the broken ceiling above. On his left is an opening in the wall that frames a hellscape beyond — the earth molten and burning, shimmering in the blazing heat as the roar of flames nearly drowns out the screams and wails, human and metal alike. The sky above, once blue and freckled with stars, is now shrouded by the gray billows of smoke and ash. 

Grounded. Ruined. Burning. 

When did they fall? How could Babylonia, the cradle of humanity, have fallen? 

His hands shake.

Something’s wrong.

Information pours into him, drowning him — the swell of the ocean crashing into a man lost and dehydrated in the desert. 

He sees the figures of soldiers — constructs — fighting off in the distance. But it is not the corrupted they turn their guns upon. In the smoke and flames, he sees humans. He hears their screams, despite the distance — despite the fire roaring around him. He sees the constructs fall upon each other when the fire and wounds claim the humans. He sees them burn and melt in the heat, sees the way they tear their own limbs from their bodies and the arc of sparks that sparkle in the smoke like mournful stars. 

Something in his hand pulls upon him— too soft, too gentle, too delicate for this hell. 

“Lee!” 

Your voice cuts through the smoke and ash to pull his attention back. 

His gaze snaps from the sprawling burning battlefield to your hands on his then up to your face. But the sight of you crushes the metal ribs in his chest. Blood. Blood trails from your nose and dots the corners of your eyes like ruby tears. A dried trail of blood lingers in the corner of your mouth, lips too pale despite the crimson that stains them. Your vitals aren’t showing in the corner of his vision and panic spikes in his chest. 

The virus. 

It’s the virus. 

You’re ill. 

You’re hurt. 

His hands fly to your face to wipe the corners of your eyes, to your neck to find your pulse. 

It’s fine. It’ll be fine. 

Liv. Where is Liv? 

He has to get you to her. 

Serums. 

You need serums. 

Lee doesn’t hear the way you call his name as his hands fly to his chest, patting down his pockets. Where are the serums? He always carried some on him for you. Where…. Where are they?

Did he drop them in the crash? 

Did they shatter? 

Your hands follow in the wake of his, trying to grasp and still him, but he doesn’t notice. 

You need help. 

You can’t stay here. 

He has to —-

“Lee!” 

Your hands cradle his face, holding him in place and forcing his gaze back on you. 

Immediately, he feels the weight of your connection, the steadying link of your beacon sheltering him. A piercing headache cuts through him, pierces him like a lance straight through his head. Crippling. Agonizing. It blinds his vision and nearly brings him to his knees as a shrill sound shatters his audio modular — the dying wails of a beast, a warning call drowning out the roar of the flames. 

Your hands, the warmth of your touch, and your voice calling his name are the only things that keep him on his feet. He blinks, vision clearing as your worried expression comes into view — he feels the way your concern bleeds from you through the connection, a hint of fear rippling in the undercurrents. 

“Lee?” Your thumbs brush against his cheeks. “What happened? Are you ok?” 

Lee swallows, fingers finding purchase in the folds of your shirt. “Yeah,” he steadies himself, forces the trembling in his fingers to cease as he begins to count. Numbers, strings, data — anything to calm himself. “Just a headache.” 

“A headache?” Your tone is incredulous, a scowl on your lips as you pull his face closer to yours. 

“It happens,” is all he says. His gaze lingers in the corners of your eyes and trails down to your lips. No blood. He pries one hand from the folds of your clothes and gently wraps it around your wrist, fingers pressing lightly against your pulse. Steady, normal. Your numbers match the vitals in the corner of his vision.

You’re ok. 

You’re safe.

“Lee,” his name is a short, clipped thing. 

Slowly, reluctantly, he pulls away from your grasp and you let him, fingers lingering against his cheeks before he is out of reach. Your gaze is a heavy thing upon him as he glances to his left. The metal wall remains intact and from the narrow window outside he can see the vast  black starry expanse of space. 

There is no fire.

There is no smoke. 

“I’m fine, Commandant.” Lee takes a breath, his attention returning to you as his expression returns to the neutral calm you know him for. “They happen, now and then. It’s fine.” 

Doubt needles against the back of his mind through your connection, nibbling on the edges of him like a mouse. You don’t believe him. He doesn’t blame you. 

Lee doesn’t like the expression on your face, the way your lips turn down in a frown weighted by worry or the slight shimmer in your eyes. Your hands find his again, warm and gentle. He does not pull away as you gently tug on his arm. 

“Let’s go back to the lounge.” 

Lee does not argue. Quietly, he follows you, his hand in yours as you lead the way down the hall. 

It feels natural — 

It feels like home — 

If you lead the way, your hands on him to guide, he would follow you anywhere. Even into —

>>Memory playback paused.

>> Data corŗ̶̥̮̣̦͈̗̣̤̚ū̵͙̦̦͙̠͓̝͖̦̒̔̈̄̒p̴̢̎̈̄̂t̵͎̩͓̮͚̹̹͔̄͌̏͋͒̿̓́̄̎̓̀̆̈́̊͝i̶̧̛͙̥͖̫̹̘̤̳͎͈̜̍̒̏̔͒͐ͅơ̶̢̧̛̰̹̫̻͕͖̤̺͈͉̲͑͂̈́̃̂̅̀̿͗̅͗̃͘̕ṉ̷̢̡̛͙̙̹͚̠̲̦̞̖̤̱͗̈́̀͂͗̔̿̈́̈́̌̓͂̓͘͜͝͠ ̸̡̞͍̯̫͉̘̭̗̝̭̪͎̥̺͔̈́̄͑̐̆̾̅́͘̚f̸̧̱͎͈̣̲̣͓̖̟͎̆̏̚ơ̸̢̧̢̠̙̞̯͍̫͖̪̩̰̪̯͚̫̓͂͗̽̐̋̆̈́̒͊̊͋́͠͝u̷̝͇͍̰̜̥̣͊̍͆̈̌ņ̴̧̨̡͚͕̞̟̥͚̱̠͍̳̪́̽́͒̂͛͛̿̑̑͊͋͝͠͠ͅd̶̨͕̤̱̞̯̃̍̍̈͆̀́̽̇̿̏̽̍͛̚͠͠

>> Terminating playback. 

Thunder is the first thing he hears. 

Like the last wail of a dying man, it rumbles across the cold desolate landscape. A whale song unanswered. 

He knows it is not truly thunder, but rather the chaotic storm of information continuously flowing and merging into the center of this space, swallowed and devoured. It is the last sound made by those who came before and a warning to those who will come after. It is the sound of a body falling from the heavens, another stone constructing the Tower of Babel. 

Lee listens to it reverberate as he lingers on the last memory that flowed through him. 

How long has it been since he felt warmth — your warmth? 

Hard to say. Harder still to remember where ‘he’ originated from. Too many memories have been swallowed and merged into him, too much data compiled and stored for him to know which were originally ‘his’ and which came from ‘others’. 

What happened to you — to that version of you? 

Was it the fire that claimed you? Was it sickness? Was it age? Was it a bullet he failed to shield you from? Was it the corrupted he didn’t spot in time? Was it the Red Tide that swelled too quickly to stop?

Lee quiets.

Around him, data converges into ill begotten shapes only to crumble and shatter into streams of numbers. He feels it — in the not too distant future, in the not too far gone past — a ripple in “time”. Another version of ‘him’ who failed is falling from the Tower of Babel. 

He’s lost count of the bodies he has devoured. He’s lost count of the memories he has stored, stolen and kept. He’s lost count of the times he has failed.

The bodies pile up like stones. Brick by brick. One day he will reach the heavens. One day he will reach the top of the tower. 

He has to.He has to.

There is no other option.

Because there must be a world where you survive. There must be a future where you still exist.

Someone falls into this pitiful M.I.N.D., tucked into a corner of space and time long forgotten and overlooked. 

Another body. Another failure.

Lee sees ‘himself’ bloodied and wounded crumbled in a heap upon a shape made of data.

Thunder rumbles in the distance. A mournful wail. A warning.

Lee resigns himself once more and pulls ‘himself’ closer into the center of the storm.

He has to know what happened in that world of ‘his’. He has to learn. 

He only hopes he will see you again.

Even if only for a moment.

Even if it is only a fragment of a memory.

He misses you. 

>> Uploading dá̸̦͎̩̪̞̗̞̯̖̬̽́̏̋͝t̸̙̟͈̮̦̬͈̬̰͍͉̩͕̞͕͗͐̉̎̽̋̄̂͒͑͝a̷͉͕̘̍̀͛̇͋…̵̛̦̼̦̫̺̠͍̗͑́̎̏̽͐̐̆̎͠͝͝͝.̶̛̲͓͓̩͚̞̠͇͔̮͖̾͐̋̽̐͌̌̑͆̓̾̕ ̷̣̦͖̫̟͙̏̃̑͑̾1̴̧̛̥̱̰͚̽͒̐̀̍̀̇̄͛̾̇̎̕ͅ%̴̧̡͖̮̝̰̖̦̠̝̤̎̅̎̈́̊̌͂͜͝͝ͅ…̴̛̳͉̙̝͙͂̎͌̅ ̶̢̨̡̢̛͚̩͈̠̼̝͔̭͍3̶̛̺̖͎̂̋̈́̉̀̌̉͒͂̏̚͘̕͝%̵̨͈͉̭̟̣̟̾͑̀̓̎͛̋̀͋̀̒̎̂̽̒͋̈́.̵̡̨̗̩̱̣̯͉͓͖̹̗͐͗̌̐̄͌̈́́̋̈́̓͘.̸̢͚͈̗͍̘̂̄̀̊ ̵̧̨̜̯̗̖̱̬̭̫̬̬̳̞̤͆̏͒́̊̌͌̐̾̈̇̀̕ͅͅ

[sonicthetarot]

SONIC THE TAROT Card Previews #2

Today's previews are for the Major Arcana's Emperor, Hierophant, Lovers, and Chariot! See their guidebook entries below, and check out our website for more and our storefront to preorder a copy!

4 - The Emperor (Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik)

Calculated control is craved by Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik, The Emperor. A master of mechanics, Eggman can be depended upon to hatch a new (and grander) plan after every defeat, always at the command of his seemingly endless army of Badniks. Oddly, Eggman seems to crave a paternal relationship despite his obsessive rigidity, as evidenced by his growing relationship with his “daughter” Sage.

However, Eggman’s obsession with world domination outweighs his positives in The Emperor reversed. He refuses to see reason when it violates his plans, and his stubbornness causes issues when working with Sonic against a greater evil such as the Deadly Six. Eggman also usually treats his creations poorly, abusing or disregarding them if they don’t adhere to his standards, like Orbot and Cubot or (more notably given the existence of Sage) Belle.

The Emperor’s authority can lead to both success and abuse toward those around him.

Upright Keywords: authority, dependability, structure, parental aspirations

Reversed Keywords: over-control, stubbornness, rigidity, abuse

5 -The Hierophant (Espio the Chameleon)

Knowledgeable in the art of ninjutsu, Espio the Chameleon is nothing if not dedicated to his cause. This traditionalism of The Hierophant tempers the rambunctiousness of Team Chaotix and allows them to achieve their (usually monetary) goals. Espio also values morality and strives to overcome those with ill intentions, seen in his consistent distaste for Eggman’s presence and employment.

Despite these traits, Espio can fall victim to egotistical vices when The Hierophant is reversed. His unconventional company leads to a sense of superiority and he is not above such dishonor like abusing naivety, seen during the Mirage Express incident. Furthermore, his binary interpretation of honor may cause him to be overly harsh against others regardless of external circumstances, such as against Mr. Tinker.

The Hierophant’s dedication to principles is highly admirable, yet he must be careful to stay open-minded towards others.

Upright Keywords: knowledge, dedication, traditionalism, morality

Reversed Keywords: ego, superiority, dishonor, ignorance

6 - The Lovers (Vanilla the Rabbit and Vector the Crocodile)

The Lovers, Vector the Crocodile and Vanilla the Rabbit, are “opposites attract” incarnate. They aren’t as different as they may seem, however: both are dedicated to protecting whom they love and helping others. Vector’s high-energy career allows Vanilla some excitement in her life, while her calm reason grounds his lofty ideals.

Yet The Lovers’ differences may still cause imbalance when reversed. Vector's temper and monetary motives can drive others away, and Vanilla rarely sugar-coats what she disapproves of. Their personalities may pit Vector and Vanilla against each other in certain topics, such as how to respectively “parent” Charmy and Cream.

The Lovers can face anything so long as they openly communicate.

Upright Keywords: love, kindredness, dedication, alignment

Reversed Keywords: differences, imbalance, conflict of interests, disconnect

7 - The Chariot (E-123 Omega)

E-123 Omega strives to overcome his status as an Eggman robot. As The Chariot, he wills defeat onto his creator and “siblings” to prove himself as the superior victor. Though his mind is artificial, Omega is determined to protect his friends despite his goals, including rescuing the Resistance during the Phantom Ruby incident.

Once The Chariot is reversed, Omega’s focus manifests poorly. His brazen disregard for safety precautions has him go into situations with guns blazing, even ones that require different strategies. This can lead to him becoming incapacitated—like during the Metal Virus outbreak—forcing him to rely on others for repairs.

The Chariot possesses much ambition but needs to control his aggression to work effectively.

Upright Keywords: overcoming adversity, victory, ambition, determination

Reversed Keywords: unfocused, poor self-control, aggressiveness, incapacitation

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[thiefbird]

platonic renown trio, “but I know being reckless and young is not how the damage gets done” from your list?

Ooooooooohhh this is so good

(also might be a little bit more pre-slash than purely platonic because Bush has complex feelings about Hornblower just. canonically) have some William Bush character study my friend; i listened to Damage Gets Done on repeat almost the entire time i wrote this, other than the bits where i rewatched Mutiny and Retribution for Research Purposes

(under a cut bc it got long - and possibly not entirely connected to its prompt; Bush decided to instead just dwell on his junior lieutenants a bunch in general)

Should I write a sequel to this? Maybe touching on how Horatio's mood might effect the infamous Kingston Debauch in a Dead Kennedy universe? I have Thoughts but this ended up near to 4k words and I needed to end it.

damage gets done (on ao3)

Stepping on board the Renown for the first time, Lieutenant William Bush had had no idea that he would be a different person by the time he reached Jamaica. He had been the same person, more or less, for the entire thirty-five years of his life so far; expecting to continue as he had was only reasonable.

But that was before he had met Hornblower: being dashed to the deck by a total stranger had not seemed like a likely catalyst for personal change at the time, unless caused by a knock on the head; looking back now, he felt he ought to have known, ought to have guessed. But instead he had been ruffled by Hornblower's oddities, peevish towards Mr Kennedy's facetiousness, and fully cemented himself into the role of outsider he so resented those first months.

They were an unlikely pair on the outside, Hornblower and Kennedy. Hornblower was an awkward, serious sort of man, private and reserved to a fault - and Bush had indeed seen it as a fault - where Kennedy was quite the opposite; Bush didn't think he heard a single earnest word from the fourth lieutenant's lips before he'd been on the Renown a month, unless the captain was present. And yet in practice they were as well together as any two men Bush had served with - he was unsurprised to learn they had been mids together at the start of the war, and shared most of their postings since.

He had been obscurely envious of such a friendship - coming up before the mast as he had created a gap between him and the other officers, one that he'd done his best to hide in his years as lieutenant, but one that he felt sorely - and had resolved to look down on the younger officers. Lieutenant Buckland made for poor company, too harassed by his rank, and Bush had resigned himself to a dull, lonely assignment within a week of coming aboard Renown.

Even now, many months later, he almost regretted that he had been wrong. But Captain Sawyer had proven to be a shell of himself, and he had somehow found himself in the unenviable position of plotting mutiny alongside an incompetent premier and the reckless youth of lieutenants Hornblower and Kennedy.

Reckless was perhaps putting it a little strong; Kennedy, certainly, was impetuous and excitable, a gleam in his eyes that drew Captain Sawyer's ire with a consistency unmatched by the finest timepiece, but Hornblower was anything but. Calculating, conniving, manipulative even, especially in his handling of Lieutenant Buckland; too clever by half, even half dead from keeping continual watch.

He had made a pitiful sight, gaunt and hollow-cheeked, bruises deep under his piercing brown eyes making them appear preternaturally large from under the brown curls of his queue. Compared to Kennedy Bush had thought he looked near corpse-like by the time their plot succeeded, and yet the spark of genius had never burnt low.

Samaná had been the true turning point, where he had gone from outside observer to- perhaps not an equal member, but a close orbiting body of the binary star that made up Hornblower and Kennedy. He had been mistaken, to take Buckland's side against Hornblower's plan, he had seen that almost immediately, and admitting the fault had done much to repair his fellow lieutentants' opinion of him; the desertion of some thirty-odd men had been the perfect opportunity for Hornblower's expert machinations, and Buckland had folded like so many decks of cards in Hornblower's hands.

Kennedy's lascivious grin, the puff of his breath as he laughed at the Spanish solider's importunity, Hornblower's poorly suppressed answering smile - all were the badges of friendship earned, and he had treasured them as he received them lying near prone on a hilltop. They had felt the same pang of hopes dashed as some damned folly aboard Renown - Buckland had never been clear when he explained the mishap - ruined their chance of surprise, and he had felt a similar pang alone when Hornblower and Kennedy had run clear away without explanation: once again he was on the outside of their insular attachment, and he had felt a queer turn at it, one that he could hardly name.

"If you live to see Mr Hornblower-" he'd told Stiles, though he knew not what he had meant to convey before those bitter words had slipped out; "tell him he'll hang from the yardarm," had not been his intention when he started to speak.

The fort had fallen, the Spaniards offered a deal - and predictable as clockwork, Hornblower had seen through it and conceived a counter before the words had left their commander's mouth. And now-

"Alright, are you, Horatio?"

Hornblower's expression was a strange blend of terror and derision when he turned back, Kennedy's mouth fighting to remain bland. "Yes, thank you, Archie." He turned back to the block and tackle hanging over the cliff, and Bush could see how tight his jaw was set from behind.

"I remember when you used to be scared of heights, Mr Hornblower!" Kennedy pronounced, as if an actor in one of the plays he would read aloud in the ward room, despite constant protest. He glanced aside to Bush, laughter clear in his eyes, and Bush felt a smile form despite himself.

Hornblower, too, was smiling regardless of his fear when he turned back once more. "Nothing has changed, Mr Kennedy," he admitted, playing along with his friend's formality. Bush caught his eye and felt a surge of affection for the young man - for he and Kennedy were so very young, if not in years (for Bush had less than ten years on them), then in spirit, a playful exuberance that he could only account to their friendship.

That affection, that long-held desire to be admitted into their intimacy, must have been what sparked his playing along. As Hornblower grasped the hawser and prepared to rappel down to young Wellard's rescue, Bush nudged Kennedy's shoulder with his own and called out. "They say one should always do what one dislikes!" he advised.

"Oh yes?" was the only response Hornblower deigned to give.

Kennedy's grin was in full force now, delighted to have a compatriot in his torment of Hornblower, and Bush knew his was not far behind as he was swept off his feet by his contagious high spirits; he deliberately did not allow his gaze to land on either Hornblower or Kennedy as he spoke. "As a boy, I had to eat turnips."

Hornblower warily began to lower himself down. "Eat them now, do you?" he asked, his voice resigned - but the anxious pitch of it was gone, and some strange tension Bush had not noted in Kennedy before suddenly faded as Hornblower disappeared below the edge of the cliff, replaced by some sort of exhaustion.

"Never touch 'em," Bush said, his voice too low to carry further than Kennedy's ears. Kennedy looked back to him, his face strangely inscrutable until Bush gave up his attempt at controlling his smile; then Kennedy clapped his shoulder, the apparent fatigue entirely absent once more. Bush felt as if he'd passed some obscure test in that moment, and he directed the reassembly of the gun in its carriage with a lighter heart than he'd felt since Captain Sawyer had stepped on board Renown.

The Dons struck, the rebellion attacked, and the fort was to be abandoned the moment it was clear - and Hornblower, the proud, reckless creature, volunteered to set the charges to send the fort to kingdom come. Bush saw Kennedy's face as his friend - their friend? - said the words, and knew his own face echoed that same dawning realization. Kennedy's throwing himself in with Hornblower was instinctive, automatic, and Bush's hardly less so. But Buckland preferred, if preferred was the word to use for so damning a mission and that cold look in their premier's eyes, Hornblower, and Bush felt a shade of Kennedy's palpable terror at the parting; the boy's voice trembled as they shook hands, and not for the first time Bush wondered just how deep their friendship went.

There was a strange moment, as Hornblower turned back to the fort, where Bush felt some strange, foreign urge to touch him, to reassure himself of Hornblower's reality - an urge so strong and strange that he could not resist it: his hand came up of its own volition and brushed the younger man's narrow shoulder as he passed, and he stared dumbly after Hornblower's retreating form until Buckland cleared his throat, giving both him and Kennedy a queer, questioning look. "Well, we had better get this whole... this whole mess cleared away. Bush, Kennedy - you know your duties."

Back on board Renown, they threw themselves into the organising of prisoners with as much appearance of zeal as they could muster, setting men to clear sections of the hold for the carpenter's crew to erect bulkheads. Bush had to reprimand both himself and Kennedy on multiple occasions within those first minutes for near criminal distraction, and he knew they had both caught the cold, hateful look in Buckland's eyes as he shook Hornblower's hand. Finally, in a lull, Kennedy grasped his arm in a desperately tight grip.

"What is it, Mr Kennedy?" Bush asked, and then, feeling his tone had been a little harsh, added with more kindness, "Tell me your mind."

"The men know their work, sir - we would only be in the way, were we to stay below." Kennedy's fingers were still tight around his upper arm.

"You may have a point there. You there! Keep to your tasks, men!" he ordered, and allowed Kennedy to pull him to the companion and then further, into the wardroom. "Now, Kennedy, no more of this - you will tell me what is the matter," he said in a low voice, his ear turned towards the door.

"You know as well as I Buckland will leave him on the island if we give him half a chance. I don't know who has his ear - if the damned fool has been listening to Sawyer or just to that lush of a doctor - but-"

"That is a harsh accusation to make, Mr Kennedy," Bush said, not in reproach, but in warning. Kennedy's mouth opened, the confiding expression wiped away and replaced with a hot, reckless anger, but Bush raised his voice as loud as he dared and continued over his protestations. "But I will concede the point that our acting captain may have his hands too full to spare men to row back. And as we find ourselves at loose ends-"

The tension holding Kennedy in a rigid, spiteful posture dissolved as if strings cut away, and he drooped against the bulkhead. "Thank you, sir," he said quietly, staring down at his hands; they shook like leaves in a gale as they stood in silence for the space of a few dozen breaths. Finally they stilled, and Kennedy looked up, his eyes flashing with that same reckless enthusiasm Bush had once condemned. "Well, what are you waiting for? There's not a moment to lose, if we don't want our acting captain to catch on!"

They walked out as if they were on an important mission, using the natural deference of the hands to have the smallest skiff lowered down the shoreward side of the ship. "That'll be all, Norris, thank you," Bush said dismissively as he climbed over the railing and dropped into the flimsy craft, Kennedy following after and fending them off of Renown's side. Bush took the oars himself, wordlessly indicating for Kennedy to man the tiller, and watched as the great mass of their ship steadily shrank away from them.

"Mr Bush, sir, I wanted to-"

"Do not thank me, Mr Kennedy; I saw that same look. And I think-" Here he hesitated: he worked hard to maintain his rank, had nearly eradicated all traces of his broad accent; to offer such liberties to a junior - and a junior as irreverent as Kennedy, no less - was a risk to all that work. And yet... "I think, while we are risking our necks together a second time, Mr Kennedy, that you may call me William."

Kennedy looked surprised, astonished, at being offered such, and he took a moment to gather himself. Then, with a touch of colour on his cheeks, he inclined his head. "In that case, Will, you-"

"I am warning you, Mr Kennedy-" Bush growled; Kennedy took no notice.

"You may call me Archie," he said, that bright smile firmly in place. "No one calls me Archibald, and if you may use a short form it is only fair I may, too. No need for entire names while we row towards our deaths, now, is there?"

Bush feigned a sigh of disapproval, though he was certain Kennedy- was certain Archie knew better than to be fooled by his attempts by now. "Very well. Archie."

The Renown was only a short distance from the fort's docks, and Archie leaped across to tie the skiff up what felt like mere moments later, offering Bush a hand up as he beamed down. "Sir," he said in a mockery of the white-gloved sideboys as Bush fought with the desire to pull Archie down into the boat in retribution.

"The cheek on you," he muttered as he batted away the offered hand and stepped onto the dock unassisted. "As you said, Archie - no time to lose; we must find Mr Hornblower and lend him our expertise."

"Expertise, Will? I only meant to offer him a boatride," Archie said over his shoulder as he took the stairs towards the fort two at a time.

"Archie! Are you out of your mind?" Bush heard Hornblower shout as he followed Archie up the stairs to where he could hear the fizzling of slow match.

"Very possibly, but we thought you could use the company!" Archie agreed in his play-reading voice. Bush quickly took in the room: barrels of powder stacked, lengths of match trailing from them, and on the other side of the barrels, as Hornblower began lighting another length- He aimed, fired; the revolutionary fell, and he fumbled with his kit to reload.

"Well you've clearly lost your wits, the both of you," Hornblower said brusquely; Archie fired into the smoke and another man fell, barely visible through the acrid cloud.

"I suggest we make our move, gentlemen; it's getting rather warm down here." Bush slipped his reloaded pistol into his gunbelt and gripped Hornblower's elbow momentarily to encourage him to follow.

Together, they ran through the fort and down into the connecting tunnels. The first breath Bush drew of fresh air as Archie helped him climb onto the grass was heaven-sent, and as soon as he gained his feet he was reaching into the smoke-scented pit to grab at Hornblower and heave him out into the sun, just in time for the first rounds to go off. The earth bucked and heaved under their feet with each following explosion, and they ran to the edge of the cliff to hail Renown, eager to escape before they were found and shot.

"She's sailing away!" Hornblower cried, the first to reach the summit.

Bush slowed his sprint as he came up, wary of the cliff's edge, and watched the four ships turn away for the open ocean. "Well..." he began, glancing back at Archie. "Looks like that's it, gentlemen."

He did not regret it, now that the end was in sight. Not the mutiny, not his encouraging of Hornblower's manipulation of Buckland. Certainly not this second mutiny that seemed now to promise their death; he cursed Buckland for a jealous fool, but he was happy to face his death alongside these two brave, bright men. They may not have saved Hornblower, but he at least would not die alone.

"No it isn't, Mr Bush," Hornblower said, his hands on his knees as he gasped against the effects of his run. Then he straightened up, a rare smile, the twin to Archie's near constant smirk, firmly in place. Bush had a momentary feeling of apprehension as he spoke. "Archie?"

Archie's smile was consistently amused; now it looked incredibly fond, as well, as he looked at Hornblower. "I am afraid I think you're right," he said with a disbelieving chuckle, his gaze flickering between Hornblower's face and Bush's own.

"What?" Bush demanded as his apprehension grew into a queer, queasy terror.

Hornblower's dark eyes flashed with excitement as he looked at Bush. "We're gonna jump." His voice was as gleeful as a skylarking midshipman, and Bush wondered at it, that he could not imagine a worse plan, and yet Hornblower had never seemed more alive - more pleased to be alive.

He and Archie jogged a few fathoms away from the cliff's face as Bush mastered himself and peered over the sickening drop to the churning sea below. "Well now who's out of his mind?!"

When he turned back, the other two were stripping down to their shirtsleeves, tossing aside their swords and guns. "See for yourself, Will!" Archie called over the dull roar of the ocean beneath them. "It's only water, you won't break anything!"

"Really..." He turned to join them, hoping to convince them of literally any other mad scheme to escape than this certain death by drowning.

Hornblower beckoned him closer encouragingly. "Come, easier than eating turnips," he said as Bush approached. And then: "Mr Kennedy?"

Before Bush could protest, Archie had him in his arms, spinning him bodily around until Hornblower could grab him by the other elbow, flashing a maniacally beautiful grin. Bush twisted fruitlessly between them, unable to escape. "No, no, gentlemen, I'm sorry, but-"

"On the count of three!" Hornblower said to Archie over Bush's head, ignoring his protests.

"One!"

"No, we're not going to jump-"

Archie continued his count, tensing to start the run up. "Two!"

His grip on Bush's forearm was firm and solid, but Hornblower seemed to think better of his hold, releasing Bush's arm and instead gripping Bush's thick, work-worn hand in his own, long and strangely delicate fingers wrapping around Bush's calloused ones, and effectively extinguishing all Bush's escape attempts out of sheer shock: he did not think his hand had been held since he went to sea - no, Nora had held it when she was small, but that hardly counted. Hornblower gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.

Despite his bewildered reaction to the almost affectionate hold, he still was capable of putting up some level of protest. "We will not jump, and that's my final word!" he demanded, just as Archie shouted "And three-"

Another charge exploded behind them. " And jump!" Hornblower and Archie said in unison, and charged forwards, dragging Bush between them as they cheered wordlessly.

They cleared the cliff edge and released him to plummet alone, and he felt the loss keenly. "I can't swim!" he yelled, all attempts at dignity gone in the rush of terror as the water rose up to meet him.

Hitting the water shocked him almost insensible, not from the impact but from the strangeness of it; he sank thoughtlessly for a moment before the panic set in and he thrashed ineffectually for the surface. Then two sets of strong arms were around him, supporting him, and he broke the surface gasping. "I can't swim," he repeated as Hornblower and Archie laughed giddily, keeping him afloat as easily as they did themselves - Bush was certain if they did not feel themselves responsible for him they should be playing like mids, splashing and dunking each other in between hails to the ship.

A boat was rowed out to them, and Archie lifted himself in, leaving Hornblower to support Bush on his own while he and the men situated themselves to make more space. "I wanted to say," he started in a strange voice, his arm warm around Bush's waist in the surprising cool of the Caribbean waters. "I wanted to say, sir - thank you. It was good of you to- to keep Mr Kennedy from making an ass of himself."

"Nonsense, Mr Hornblower; Ar-" he cut himself off; the implicit limitations of his granting Mr Kennedy the liberty of his name had ended with their return to the ship - or at least the ship's boat - and he would not do Mr Kennedy the disservice of using such intimate address when he had not extended the offer. "Mr Kennedy only prompted me to do what was right. You should not have been left alone in such circumstances."

Hornblower seemed surprised by Bush's words, and not for the first time Bush felt a pang of regret at his initial behaviour towards the junior lieutenants of Renown; had he been more personable, less concerned with propriety and rank, could he have had these friendships sooner? But before Hornblower could seem to make his mind up to speak, Mr Kennedy was leaning out of the boat and grinning at them. "Pass me Will, would you, Horatio?"

Hornblower blinked at the casual address, but pushed Bush forward until Archie - for if he would not respect the time limits of their intimacy, neither would Bush - could grip him under the armpits and heave him aboard. Bush, still grappling with the remnants of the terror of their plunge, did not allow himself to lie gasping in the bottom of the boat as his instincts demanded; the moment he felt stable he turned to assist Archie in lifting Hornblower's light frame into the narrow gig.

Once they were underway, dripping uncomfortably in the sternsheets, Hornblower turned towards Archie, high spirits still playing about his face and making him look far younger than his twenty-seven years. "'Will', is it? I did not know you and our second lieutenant were such intimates, Archie."

Bush was uncertain how to respond to such a strange manner of address: Hornblower's eyes were fixed firmly upon his face as he spoke, despite ostensibly directing his words to Mr Kennedy. A glance towards Archie, at his left, showed him in a remarkable mimicry of Hornblower's posture, leaning so against the cutter's hull that they were both twisted back and looking at him with an intense humour. "Oh, yes - he granted me the privilege while he rowed me back to save your sorrow soul, 'ratio."

"Hmm." Hornblower did his best to look serious, contemplative, but strong and sincere amusement was such a rare expression on him that Bush caught it at once, and could not believe him. "Well then, Mr Bush; it seems only fair to grant you my own given name - though I beg you will not shorten it so." He threw Archie a glare that seemed only partly in jest.

"Oh, I am sorry, sir - should you prefer 'Horry'?" Archie asked archly, and Hornblower twitched as if he should like to throw himself over Bush to swat at him in retaliation.

Bush felt his lips curling into a small, secret smile of fulfilled desire to be admitted into such confidences - a week ago Horatio would never have let his guard down enough for even so small a betrayal of self, were he in the room. "I would be honoured for you to call me William, then, both of you," he said, adding, "At least when we are not in company, of course; discipline must be maintained amongst the men," in a perfectly bland tone.

Archie huffed, seemingly put out before he caught the sardonic note, and then chuckled. As the boat pulled alongside Renown, he looked more somber. "Well, gentlemen, it is time to face the music."

Buckland's persecution of Hornblower continued from there; he was set to captain all three of the Spanish ships alone, and Bush intervened his apology to their acting captain; as the superior officer, the fault for disobeying orders lay with him - Hornblower had not, in fact, disobeyed any at all.

"It was true to form, if nothing else," Buckland said, his voice strange and frail. "You three: you are so full of yourselves, and of each other... You think me a fool."

It was true, and more true perhaps of Horatio than of any of them, from his position of genius; Bush pitied him, Archie looked down on him, but Horatio? Bush did not think Horatio thought of him at all, except to maneuver around him in order to stay on course, as if he were an inconveniently placed bit of shoal. Buckland was as dangerous, too, as sudden shallows were to the safety of the ship - though not so dangerous as Sawyer's erratic moods had been, like an malignant squall; whatever damage had been done to Renown, to her crew's morale, was not the sin of youthful recklessness, but of frail and unfit officers.

"No one pretends command is easy, sir," Bush said after a pause - damning Buckland by faint praise; he knew Buckland felt the insult keenly, but could not bring himself to any further show of comradery after his treatment of Hornblower.

"I never expected it to be easy." Buckland's voice was mournful, and Bush gave him a shallow bow and excused himself to see to the transfer of stores to the Spanish prizes; Hornblower would have enough on his plate.

[thoughtportal]

There is by now a vibrant and contentious literature on the relationship between political change and mental illness. Does despair breed compliance, or can you fight back harder the less you have to lose? Could a shared cause of psychological suffering become a cause, rallying and even sustaining the sufferers? Must a mind unhinge itself from the social and economic order it inhabits to fully analyze, let alone try to interrupt, the mechanism? When attempting to lead a revolutionary movement, does it help to be a little crazy? Will the attempt drive you that way? How can we calculate the psychological toll of political defeat? Can the long-term, repetitive, one-step-forward-three-back efforts required for political organizing or for psychological well-being ever feel sufficient to the urgent crises they address? Will emotional healing inevitably tend toward adjustment to an unjust status quo, or can it serve revolt? Is solidarity the best cure for individual misery, or should safeguarding one’s own mental health be recognized as a prerequisite for collective action? 

If some false binaries lurk here, they are those that inevitably waylay readers of the late radical feminist pioneer Shulamith Firestone, who in her early twenties cofounded several key second-wave groups and publications with the likes of Carol Hanisch (“the personal is political”), Robin Morgan (editor of Sisterhood is Powerful), and the formidable Ellen Willis. Having helped theorize the women’s liberation movement and make it impossible to ignore, Firestone was thrown out by her cohort and eventually spent decades mired in illness, poverty, and neglect. She remains best known for the first of only two published books, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, her incandescent, fundamentally flawed (essentialist, racist), and still evocative 1970 manifesto. Twenty-eight years of silence followed; what was to have been the next project, a sprawling work on women’s art, never appeared. Her second book, Airless Spaces, from 1998, is a set of autobiographical yet insistently alienated vignettes that draw on her repeated hospitalizations for psychosis from 1987 onward: she observes herself, the staff and inmates of the wards, and other “Losers” and “Suicides I Have Known.” Firestone’s books and fate seem to continually invite and resist the inadequate questions with which I began. 

These questions are palpable in Susan Faludi’s account of Firestone’s two postmortem services in her quite beautiful 2013 New Yorker article, which serves as the afterword in Semiotext(e)’s rerelease of Airless Spaces. At a memorial service at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Firestone’s second-wave comrade Kate Millett explicitly linked her personal tragedy to a political, collective one. After reading from “Emotional Paralysis,” a piece from Airless Spaces about a woman who leaves a mental institution reduced to wreckage with “no salvage plan,” unable to read, write, act, decide, feel elation or desire, Millett said, “I think we should remember Shulie, because we are in the same place now.” Faludi reports that at the smaller Orthodox Jewish family funeral (to which the feminists were not invited), Firestone’s sister Tirzah found in her political legacy an image of redemption and renewal: “She had children—she influenced thousands of women to have new thoughts, to lead new lives. I am who I am, and a lot of women are who they are, because of Shulie.”

Thousands of feminist offspring, an image affecting in its many painful ironies. Tirzah was pushing back, at the funeral, on their brother Ezra’s sexist characterization of Firestone’s life as tragic because it lacked the steadying consolations of the nuclear family—the love of a husband and children. It seems clear that Firestone’s experience in their family of origin forged both her to-the-death spirit and the specific critique she developed in The Dialectic of Sex. (Along with her mother and five siblings, Firestone was under the thumb of a domineering, zealous father who, during a physical struggle in Firestone’s teens, threatened to kill her, to which she replied, “I’ll kill you first!”) Surely the most literally radical of radical feminist texts—taking on Marx, Engels, and Freud along the way—Dialectic locates the roots of all oppression, of all the ills of human nature, culture, and society (from racism to capitalist exploitation to the death drive to child abuse), in sexual difference and the fundamental oppression of women and children within the biological family. Whereas the nuclear family has often been accused of enabling larger forms of exploitation by softening or sweetening them with the unremunerated labors of love and care, Firestone insisted that it was rotten at the core. The family was the very place where injustice begins and is reproduced, forever, until revolution. 

Firestone’s strengths and weaknesses as a political thinker are strikingly linked. Without this totalizing insistence on her own vantage point, through which she claimed to reconfigure world history, Dialectic would not have its existential fury, its still-provocative grandeur and ambition, or its prescience in emphasizing children’s liberation (as Simone de Beauvoir noted not long after its publication) and the urgent need to harness technology for progressive ends. Nor its painful failures to learn from the Black intellectual and political traditions around Firestone. My copy of Dialectic, an edition from 2003, begins with a statement that could be read as a disclaimer, an indictment of the contemporary state of things, or a defiant self-portrait: “The author would like to note that this book remains unabridged and unrevised since its original publication in 1970.” 

There is an understandable temptation to read Airless Spaces as a symptomatic depiction of genius brought low, of Firestone’s exhaustion and retreat, and with it that of a whole generation, a whole society. The utopian ferment and action of the ’60s and ’70s, when it seemed possible to transform the world together, had given way to the rapacity and despairing individualism of the post-Reagan era. On the surface, Airless Spaces does seem a painful descent from The Dialectic of Sex: bleakness where there was buoyancy, stasis and recursion where there was urgency and thrust, and loneliness where there was collective work. Self-loathing has replaced overweening confidence and in place of an all-encompassing scheme, fragmentation. 

Yet Airless Spaces is a remarkable book, the work of an artist who had continued to analyze and critique the conditions in which she was surviving, to observe in and around them larger struggles and injustices. This time, she came to interrogate herself as well. She found a way to record and politicize the fracturing of her own mind and life. The book shares with Dialectic a bold, absurdist sensibility, and an extremity, a willingness to push a subject—and a reader—further than she may ever have wanted to go. It is unlike most memoirs of mental illness, refusing to dignify or shape or wring meaning from suffering. Written in disciplined parables that build their own formal logic within a tiny space, and that emphasize, both thematically and formally, disconnection and repetition, the book recounts the long-drawn-out undoing of its various “losers,” including many seeming alter egos and fellow-travelers, whether within the walls of institutions or on the outside. They suffer the same things together, frequently exacerbate their own suffering in similar ways, each alone. They endure the hospital routines, the pacing to pass time, the wars for the thermostat, the “brutal merriment” of cops called in to hold them down, the “loveless insomnia,” “the glaring lights-on orderlies with their trays, hunting through the rows of comatose bodies” every morning to take blood, all the ludicrous “activities” one must comply with to gain release. 

Firestone constructs a precise kind of tragicomedy in which humiliation, loss, and destruction feel inevitable—and yet are always capable of fresh insult and surprise. Readers encounter the expected disappointment, then some new kind, then more of the old from another quarter, then the recognition that a character’s paltry effort to free or protect herself has boomeranged. The relief of numbness or resignation never arrives. There is tragedy without the sense of individual distinction, comedy without the communal reconciliation. Our dignity and sanity, inextricably connected, rely on small, banal gifts—not least connection to others, which psychosis and institutional life mercilessly attack. You adapt to your appalling circumstances and the adaptation dooms you. Compliance and assertiveness kill in equal measure. “She always made a point of going in as involuntary. . . just for honor’s sake.”

One narrator shares crucial institutional knowledge with a handsome male new fellow inmate but can’t bring herself to ask a small essential favor in return when he benefits from her advice and makes it out before her. Meanwhile she watches him at night, “large and heavy, a husband figure. I could just imagine waking up to that sleeping bulk day after day.” One of many trompe l’oeil images of escape that contain captivity. Another woman wakes up at home “one spring morning filled with light and peace” and life force. She writes a letter to an old friend she hopes to visit, a painter in rural Maine. On the next page the impulse ends with the realization she will never see this friend again, or know where he ended up. In an earlier “fit of madness” that in some way resembles that morning burst of optimism, she has inadvertently cut off this source of air and hope: “I had thrown out not just my pills but my papers and even my Rolodex files and address books in an effort to make a clean start.”

The book’s least successful pieces are those that allow Firestone’s earlier activities into view, featuring recognizable public figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Valerie Solanas, and Diane Arbus. Here the discipline that illuminates the portrayal of hospital and post-hospital life grows slack. A notable exception, in the last section, “Suicides I Have Known,” is a portrait of her eldest brother Danny, in which she considers the connections between their fates, whether his death caused her disintegration and vice versa, whether “it had been my own political limelight”—a rare mention—“that had brought the heat down on him as a warning to me.”

Airless Spaces begins with two wry, cunningly structured pieces, each less than a page. The first is narrated by someone who dreams she is seeking refuge in the basement of a sinking cruise liner. As the other passengers manically party and gorge themselves above deck, she entombs herself in an old refrigerator, to keep breathing in its bubble till the vessel is found (the piece suggests it never will be). Firestone sets up a spiraling, irreducible ambiguity as to what is a rebellious gesture or a suicidal one, a move to reach out to others and a viable future or a permanent cutting off. In the next story, told in the third person, a depleted woman emerges from a mental hospital yearning, after her long stretch shakily wrestling plastic wrappers at every meal, for fresh produce and silverware, “especially knives.” On her first night of freedom, an attempt to unwrap a cauliflower results in the accidental castration of her pinkie finger; found incompetent to feed herself, she is enrolled in meals-on-wheels. The logic of the hospital, its surveillance, repetition, fake food, and relentless succession of plastics, invades her home as well. In trying to choose life, eros, healthy aggression and appetite, the character finds herself not merely flung back into confinement—instead the institution itself is what bursts its bounds, making it out into the world, and back inside her.

At one point in Hannah Proctor’s 2024 book Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat—which seeks an approach to struggle that makes room for the intense and ongoing toll it takes—she notes the airless, all-or-nothing perfectionism of Dialectic and movingly makes the case that one might reread it and Airless Spaces with and against one another to create some generative “friction,” opening “a space of ambivalence and strained solidarity among the disappointed,” in which the “seemingly incommensurable scales of the political and the depressive” can be brought closer together.

Both books are arresting, thought-provoking, flawed, valuable, cannily made objects that preserve a sensitive and turbulent mind’s response to crazy-making circumstance. Both appear to expand and collapse time (the claustrophobic exclusion of world events from Airless Spaces is in productive tension with its precise observation of Firestone’s physical and social surroundings—public services, technologies—which date the action even as its universal, endlessly recurring elements are emphasized). And both have qualities allowing them to live and snag and warp and morph in a reader’s mind, to be argued with and mocked and made use of across days and years.

In that, they have something in common with the kind of street-theater protest Firestone and her comrades were so adept at: the invasion of Albany’s legislative hearings on abortion; the burial for traditional “weeping womanhood” at Arlington National Cemetery; the 1969 Counter-Inaugural Coalition March in D.C. (WOMEN: LET’S GIVE THEM BACK THEIR VOTE); the notorious Atlantic City demonstration against the 1968 Miss America pageant, inaccurately immortalized in the term “bra-burning.” The effectiveness of such actions—including the risk of misinterpretation and backlash and co-optation—can be endlessly debated, but protest nonetheless can in mere moments alter consciousness, expand the field of possibility, show you how many thousand others share a sense of what is wrong, how many of those are already working and risking to fight what is elsewhere treated as unalterable. 

Airless Spaces may be paradoxically the more ambitious of Firestone’s two books—in that it seems, formally and otherwise, to admit and probe its own limitations. And despite its merciless emphasis on despair and loneliness, Firestone notably chose to dedicate it to Lourdes Cintron. She was, we learn from Faludi, a caseworker at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York who successfully lobbied her employers to take Firestone on despite her lack of health insurance, and she became the lynchpin of a shifting group of women that for years met weekly to offer Firestone practical care, intellectual fellowship, solidarity. Without the support and encouragement of those women, she could not have written Airless Spaces—indeed, once the group disbanded, she began to fall apart again and did not recover. The women considered themselves Firestone’s family in the sense her sister Tirzah meant, not least Cintron, who years before had taken courage from The Dialectic of Sex in her activism for Puerto Rican independence. We know, of course, that political change is never made in isolation. We too easily forget the same is true of most writing that lasts. 

Lidija Haas is a writer, editor, and candidate at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in New York City.

[immobiliter]

i'd like to thank jace for helping me formulate my thoughts on this topic but i want to delve into what it actually means to draw on the direct power of the erudition/nous, and how it is certainly seems akin to taking a supercomputer into your head. because what is the real danger of leaving such immense processing power unchecked and uncontrolled? overheating. and there is this really interesting tidbit in the SU:

( this is going under a cut as it's a looong ramble lmao )

when it comes to the erudition, the tb's brain temperature has to be deliberately lowered as if it's a computer overheating ( and a brain is sort of a biological computer ), and this is only on a relatively small scale. as an emanator, we know that herta can directly draw on nous' power and, while we don't really know for sure in the lore what exactly qualifies or enables emanators to do this safely ( i would assume they are made something more than human, at least in herta's case, in order to be able to withstand this ), the fact is that herta can do this on a much bigger scale if she so chose.

she also tells us in 3.0 that summoning or hailing nous and directing THEIR gaze to herta space station would quite literally vaporise everyone on board. this is why she had the station evacuated at the end of 2.7 and abandons her plans when she realises that welt and sunday are on board.

likewise, the energy core that powers herta space station is purposely kept in ultra-low temperatures.

we don't know for sure if this is specifically connected to the erudition or if herta draws on her power to keep the space station running, but considering that she did capture and seal a stellaron safely ( which, again, would require very deliberate, carefully controlled conditions to achieve ), this all goes to show that she is very well-versed in managing nous' power safely.

so if nous can vaporise anything in THEIR path, it stands to reason in my mind that herta could technically do the same. so how does she control and regulate her own powers? it's interesting that we really haven't seen her flex her emanator-hood yet and i think this is an indication that herta will not unleash that unless there is a very good reason to. but i also think that this is where her mirrors come in.

mirrors can be used to reflect, direct and focus light, and i like to think that herta uses her entourage of ( seemingly sentient? ) mirrors to dilute her own power and allow her to focus it effectively. mirrors are how she "transforms" into her true form at the end of 2.7. they are also all over her character trailer and she seems to use them to distract and combat her puppet-rebellion with an ease that verges on boredom lmao.

it's very interesting to me that she seems to utilise and almost interpret nous' power, which is the amoral, binary power of a supercomputer's endless and objective calculations, with such creative flair, and i do think this speaks to her humanity and how she still manages to preserve this element of herself in the face of the callous objectivity that accompanies the erudition in its most primal form. i do find this particular moment at the end of her myriad celestia trailer interesting too as a representation of that:

here we have herta's "magic" almost infecting or infiltrating nous' computational power. i also think the comparison of these two shots is worth noting too, considering that we see the red glow from nous at the very start of the trailer and then, when herta breaks the fourth wall at the very end of her myriad celestia, we see the same sort of glow from herta's own gaze.

a stylistic way of indicating that herta does represent nous' will as one of THEIR emanators? most likely. but i still think it's neat and links back to everything i said above.

[twopigeonsfucking]

InZOI and The LGBTQIA+ Community

Disclaimer: This is not an attack on anyone involved here, and I really hope nobody else attacks them. Madi was nothing but helpful, and I’m sure the creators of inZOI aren’t being deliberate here. A summary of this article is at the bottom of it.

Background

Sims 4 and Expression

The Sims 4 may not be the favourite game in a long-running franchise, but it’s clearly got one thing right; Gender Expression and Sexuality. Although the game was originally built on a binary system, you could marry same-sex couples, and now with a recent patch, you can express a diverse gender range. They are actively working on being inclusive, and that’s great!

The Competition

A long list of coming-up competitors to the Sims features Paralives, Life by You, and now inZOI. It jumped up very recently, yet it is planned to release in late 2024, although it seems near finished now. It looks, and I don’t say this lightly, amazing. The graphics are stunning. The gameplay seems fun. It is one of the best competitors in a long time. But, in their own trailers, one thing seemed missing.

LGBTQIA+ People and inZOI

The inZOI marketing campaign is HEAVY. It’s almost unavoidable. One user now has access to an early copy, acottonsock is their username on YouTube. Madi’s been making videos for 3 years, something surprisingly impressive. They are a unique breed of Sims YouTuber now, as they do not appear to make ANY Sims 4 content, instead focusing on 2 and 3. Sims 2 and 3 do allow same sex relationships, however they do not allow any diverse gender options. 

This is a bit of an odd choice in terms of inZOI’s marketing team as, although Madi is honestly a great creator, and I do actually plan on watching some of her non-inZOI content, they’re not the most popular Sims YouTuber. There are an expansive number, but I am being honest when I say that inZOI could’ve reached a much greater audience by catering to someone like Plumbella, Vixella, or lilsimsie, who definitely would’ve been down to do it. 

I must admit, I’m glad they didn’t choose one of them. InZOI has made a deliberate move here, and it has calculated risks and benefits. One of the benefits of choosing Madi is the mutual benefit. Madi gains more followers, and inZOI gets to showcase their game. 

I posed 2 questions in my email to Madi, “Can ZOIs engage in same-sex relationships, or any LGBTQIA+ relationships?” and “Can ZOIs be anything other than Cisgender Male and Females?”

Madi responded openly and willingly, and I must admit that not watching the four hour livestream was partial bad journalism, but I didn’t have the time to do anything but a skim. This is wonderful, as Same-Sex Relationships appear to be receiving love in inZOI, but I fear that the gender expression beyond a binary system is sorely lacking, and unless they add it soon I don’t think they will ever be featured in inZOI.

Summary

InZOI is a notable competitor the Sims franchise, and it does feature same-sex relationships, but unfortunately the ability to have beyond the binary system of Gender is sorely lacking. I really hope that something can be done to combat this, before the games release in late 2024. I fear that if it's not, it will be too late.

[exonerin]

Gaming Modern AU (Why We Lose), pls what is this again? 👀❤️

Thank you for the question! This is the only modern AU I have written in the SW fandom so far! It's also the only fic I've written so far that's exclusively from Obi-Wan's perspective! So, this is quite a rare fic, all things considered.

These days, he felt so disconnected, though. Disillusioned, perhaps. A game that used to bring him joy only served to make him feel estranged. Even now, surrounded by friends, he could only listen silently. "Sign with us, Vader did not," Yoda said. "Who did he sign with?" Fisto asked. Vader was, essentially, a solo-player in a multi-player game. Obi-Wan could make a calculated guess. "Team Sith," Windu answered, "He didn't respond to our offer. Given his playing style, I don't think anyone is surprised." "I would hate to face him in the championships," Allie said. "He's brutal." "All members of Sith are," Obi-Wan argued mildly. "It's why the public loves them. Besides the fact that they've been trashing us."

synopsis for Why We Lose: Most people would be familiar with the MMORPG Star Wars at least in passing. Some would know it from the countless pop-culture references on the internet. Others would know about the championships, citing the ridiculous amount of money that were involved in an industry that existed only in binary.

For Obi-Wan, Star Wars has been his life -- one he plans to leave behind until a new player unceremoniously makes himself Obi-Wan's business. They may be on opposing teams, but Obi-Wan gets along quite well with this Vader.

Snippet under the cut:

Empires were built over years of grinding, sacrifices, and eye strain. Some called is passion or discipline. Ultimately, it was obsession.

However, Obi-Wan wasn't sure whether an obsession had carried him here. In retrospect, it seemed like an inevitability. He would never have made it alone, but here they were; isolated from their team. Team Jedi was inside the hall, celebrating their victory on a large podium, broadcast to the world.

Maybe, this was destined to happen.

"I wanted to tell you first," Qui-Gon said, his voice carrying in the dingy alley behind the venue. Obi-Wan's shaky exhale fogged up the air. Snow was heavy in the air, and the cold a sharp sting on his skin and in his lungs.

"I see," he said because he couldn't claim to understand.

The muted din of a roaring audience filled the uneasy silence stretching between them. Obi-Wan was already twenty-five. He should be able to take Qui-Gon's resignation with more grace.

He could protest that they had been instrumental in their victory; Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon had taken down Maul from Team Sith. They only won the championship because of their teamwork.

"This was my last battle," Qui-Gon said, his voice contemplative. Obi-Wan watched him stuff his hands in his pockets, his gaze on the large hall. Obi-Wan turned to look at the gray concrete box, too. "You did well, Obi-Wan."

"I trust that you will guide the guild right."

Startled, Obi-Wan turned back to Qui-Gon. He knew his bewilderment was visible in his expression. Empires were built over long years of hard work, frustration, tears, and sweet victories. Yet, winning the tournament was so bittersweet with the knowledge empires toppled in seconds.

Obi-Wan swallowed the admission that Qui-Gon was his father figure. He didn't complain about this unfair responsibility placed on his shoulders. Qui-Gon would quit but not allow Obi-Wan to do the same.

"I promise," he responded, his voice dull and lifeless.

"Then, the future of Team Jedi is bright," Qui-Gon said.

Snow began to fall lightly, individual flakes dancing in the air.

Inside, where it was warm and the crowd cheered, Team Jedi still celebrated. Obi-Wan watched Qui-Gon leave, abandoning a lifetime of servitude to the guild. Qui-Gon's hands were stuffed in his pockets, and he never turned around to wave goodbye.

Obi-Wan let him go because this was, ultimately, just a game.

Empires weren't built to last. He understood that now. However, he had already promised to stay in those ruins.

[seth-shitposts]

264 my beloved for the writer's game 🙏

[Pologies for the wait-]

Let's see..... something I haven't blabbered about to you yet-

I'm currently working on the third chapter to post soon.

I'm trying to use the third chapter to solidify 264’s character. Showcase his range. He's a unique droid, though his recollection doesn't stretch further back than when the empire originally recommissioned him. He ranges from being deeply empathetic to almost concerningly destructive. He himself is still figuring out the boundaries of his own 'mis'programming. Kallus encourages him to explore that, where the empire previously controlled him to stay in the strict lines of their programming.

Here's a [n unrelated] snippet:

He tries to instead focus on evaluating Kallus’s abilities that he's recorded so far. As well as try and plan out details for their next mission.

However, it doesn't take long for his statics and calculations to wander from the program and right back to the recordings he has saved to a secure file of Kallus. All of his imperative records are backed to a storage and data bank that he asked the fulcrum agent to program into his software. Any footprints to it are erased, effectively isolating the files, securing them.

When 264 doesn't gave a task to occupy his attention one way or another, he frequently finds himself drifting back to Kallus’s file. More than anything, he loves collecting and organizing data. And not a single binary digit of Kallus’s notes has been purged. Not even the ones that seemingly have no real significance. Beloved records and simulated possibilities, each of them.

I'll be back later with more of something. Whether it's to actually drop the 3rd chapter of Ro264 or give another snippet, we'll see. Heart.

-264 is so fun to work with and explore. I'm having a ball exploring his character at will. >:]

[sundove88]

Despicable Me (Sundove88’s Version Casting)

You can find the original Here.

A man who delights in all things wicked, supervillain Guzma hatches a plan to steal the moon. Surrounded by an army of little green bug types and his impenetrable arsenal of weapons and war machines, Guzma makes ready to vanquish all who stand in his way. But nothing in his calculations and groundwork has prepared him for his greatest challenge: three adorable orphan girls who want to make him their dad.

Now that Guzma has forsaken a life of crime to raise Nezuko, Eri, and Lillie, he's trying to figure out how to provide for his new family. As he struggles with his responsibilities as a father, the Anti-Villain League, an organization dedicated to fighting evil, comes calling. The AVL sends Guzma on a mission to capture the perpetrator of a spectacular heist, for who would be better than the world's greatest ex-villain to capture the individual who seeks to usurp his power.

The mischievous bug types hope that Guzma will return to a life of crime after the new boss of the Anti-Villain League fires him. Instead, Guzma decides to remain retired and travel to Freedonia to meet his long-lost twin brother for the first time. The reunited siblings soon find themselves in an uneasy alliance to take down the elusive Binary Bard, a former Astro Knights inventor who seeks revenge against the world.

Evolving from single-celled multicolored organisms at the dawn of time, bug types live to serve, but find themselves working for a continual series of unsuccessful masters, from T. Rex to Napoleon. Without a master to grovel for, the Bug Types fall into a deep depression. But one bug type, Golisopod, has a plan; accompanied by his pals Accelgor and Escavalier, Golisopod sets forth to find a new evil boss for his brethren to follow. Their search leads them to Maleficent, the world's first-ever super-villainess.

In the 1970s, young Guzma tries to join a group of supervillains called the Vicious 6 after they oust their leader -- the legendary fighter Jiraiya. When the interview turns disastrous, Guzma and his Bug Types go on the run with the Vicious 6 hot on their tails. Luckily, he finds an unlikely source for guidance -- Jiraiya himself -- and soon discovers that even bad guys need a little help from their friends.

Guzma as Felonius Gru (Pokemon)

Beedrill as Bob (Pokemon)

Centiskorch as Carl (Pokemon)

Golisopod as Kevin (Pokemon)

Escavalier as Stuart (Kirby)

Accelgor as Jerry (Kirby)

Dustox as Mel (Kirby)

Butterfree as Dave (Kirby)

Ledian as Tim (Kirby)

Yanmega as Otto (Pokemon)

Ribombee as Themselves/Gru’s Emotional Support (Pokemon)

Eri as Agnes (My Hero Academia)

Nezuko as Margo (Demon Slayer)

Lillie as Edith (Pokemon)

Awoofy as Kyle (Kirby)

Agatha as Marlena Gru (Pokemon)

Professor Turo as Dr. Nefario (Pokemon)

Ghetsis as Robert Gru (Pokemon)

Kai Chisaki as Vector (My Hero Academia)

Scar as Mr. Perkins (The Lion King)

Zira as Herself/Mrs. Perkins (The Lion King)

Dolores Umbridge as Miss Hattie (Harry Potter)

Raiden Shogun as Lucy Wilde (Genshin Impact)

Asgore as Silas Ramsbottom

(Undertale)

Ruto as Jillian (The Legend of Zelda)

Magda as Shannon (The Legend of Zelda)

Vaati as Antonio Perez (The Legend of Zelda)

Ganondorf as Eduardo Perez/El Macho (The Legend of Zelda)

Lady Maud as Herself/El Macho’s Wife (The Legend of Zelda)

Maleficent as Scarlet Overkill (Sleeping Beauty)

Hades as Herb Overkill (Hercules)

Mal as herself/Scarlet's Daughter

(Descendants)

Felix as Walter Nelson (Encanto)

Pepa as Madge Nelson (Encanto)

Dolores as Tina Nelson (Encanto)

Camilo as Walter Nelson Jr. (Encanto)

Antonio as Binky Nelson (Encanto)

Various Villains as the Villain Con

Attendees

N Harmonia as Dru Gru (Pokemon)

Youngster Joey as Himself/Dru's Adoptive Son (Pokemon)

Binary Bard as Balthazar Bratt (Poptropica)

Holmes as Clive (Poptropica)

Monster Kid as Niko (Undertale)

Gogoat as Lucky (Pokemon)

Jiraiya as Wild Knuckles (Naruto)

Magica De Spell as Belle Bottom (Ducktales)

Haxorous as Dragon!Belle Bottom (Pokemon)

The Ghoulfather as Jean Clawed (Yo-Kai Watch)

Annihilape as Monkey!Jean Clawed (Pokemon)

Gaston as Stronghold (Beauty and The Beast)

Tauros as Ox!Stronghold (Pokemon)

Queen Grimhilde as Nunchuck (Snow White and The 7 Dwarves)

Arbok as Snake!Nunchuck (Pokemon)

Jafar as Svengeance (Aladdin)

Incineroar as Tiger!Svengance (Pokemon)

Korina as Master Chow (Pokemon)

Duke Caboom as The Biker (Toy Story)

Here’s your hint to the next Crossover Casting (It’s Don Bluth):

👸🇷🇺🎶

[dappersautismcreature]

yall im totally going down a rabbit hole (researching wayyy past what i need to for the 4maxhalo cowboy AU im planning) but qsmpblr... did yall know binary code has existed since like, the 1500's? not quite as a code, from what i can tell (help me im literally reading some musty old pdf from 1981) but for math, in fact there is speculation it may have existed earlier. (help me i am reading an old math website from 2006 that obviously hasnt graced a screen in over a decade -__-) basically i thiink it was is that in egypt they used a shorthand (instead of modern day calculators lmao) to multiply larger numbers, for example 60X70, by dividing one number by two a bunch of times and doubling the other number the same amount of times.

so binary in computers comes from halving, mathematical roots.

there is another instance of direct language to a sort of binary substitution cipher, but instead of 1's and 0's it is A's and B's and random instead of following a pattern. this was first seen in the 1600's.

then the modern day understanding of binary code to numbers started, in the 1920's and 30's with a number represented in 1's and 0's based on halving, like this:

^^ if you look at this chart you'll see that they halve 125, but instead of using decimals, they have a remainder, and that remainder decides whether it is a 1 or a 0. isnt that interesting? this was being created in the early days of computing when basic calculations took a lot of design and thought.

so calculators, when doing big multiplications and such, will go through a series of simpler dividing and multiplying in twos, based off of the binary code assigned to the inputted factors.

like these examples

so unfortunately this means that in the wild west (im going for 1870's-90's) they sadly would not know what binary code is :((

still,, isnt this fascinating?? O____O

*holding gun up* isnnt is-isnt this fascinating O____O?

heres the sources btw: https://www.cs.cas.cz/portal/AlgoMath/NumberTheory/Arithmetics/NumeralSystems/PositionalNumeralSystems/BinarySystem.htm#:~:text=The%20modern%20binary%20number%20system,used%20symbols%200%20and%201.

[3] �Glaser, A. (1981). History of binary and other nondecimal numeration (Rev. ed.). Los Angeles: Tomash Publishers.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Hera burns towards Mars

ESA's Hera mission has completed the first critical maneuver on its journey to the Didymos binary asteroid system since launch on 7 October.

On 23 October, Hera fired its three orbital control thrusters for 100 minutes, kicking off its first deep-space maneuver and changing its velocity by approximately 146 m/s. A second burn on 6 November lasted 13 minutes with the aim of providing an additional boost of around 20 m/s.

Together, these burns have put Hera on a trajectory that will enable a gravity assist at Mars in March 2025.

"Deep-space maneuvers are often split into parts," explains Sylvain Lodiot, Hera Spacecraft Operations Manager. "The first, larger burn does most of the work. Then, after precisely measuring the spacecraft's trajectory, we use the second, smaller burn to correct any inaccuracy and provide the rest of the required boost."

The maneuver followed three successful test burns performed in the weeks after launch by Hera's control team at ESA's European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Germany.

The team used the Agency's deep space radio dishes in Spain, Argentina and Australia to track Hera during the maneuver and to precisely measure its velocity before and after each burn.

"We are now analyzing Hera's new trajectory following the second burn," says Francesco Castellini from ESOC's Flight Dynamics team, the mathematical experts that keep ESA missions across the solar system on track.

"It appears to have gone very well. We will execute a much smaller correction maneuver of a few tens of cm/s on 21 November to fine-tune the trajectory for the upcoming Mars flyby."

Mars lends a hand

Hera is on a two-year journey to the Didymos binary asteroid system, where it will analyze the results of humankind's first asteroid deflection experiment.

The recent deep-space maneuver was carefully calculated to line Hera up for a gravity assist in March 2025 that will shorten the travel time to Didymos.

"We are very fortunate that Mars is in the right place at the right time to lend a hand to Hera," says Pablo Muñoz from ESOC's Mission Analysis team, who planned Hera's journey.

"This enabled us to design a trajectory that uses the gravity of Mars to accelerate Hera towards Didymos, offering substantial fuel savings to the mission and allowing Hera to arrive at the asteroids months earlier than would otherwise be possible."

Hera will also use the Mars flyby for some opportunistic science. The ESA teams have designed a trajectory that will see the spacecraft fly past Deimos at a distance of just 300 km before passing Mars itself, offering a rare chance to study this small and mysterious martian moon.

Hera will then carry out a second deep space maneuver in February 2026 before a sequence of rendezvous maneuvers from October to December 2026 brings it into proximity of the asteroids.

At Didymos, Hera will begin its mission to answer questions such as: How and why do binary asteroid systems form? When NASA's DART mission impacted Didymos's moonlet Dimorphos in 2022, did it leave a crater, or did it reshape the entire asteroid? What is Dimorphos's internal structure?

Asteroid community gathers at ESOC

It's a busy time for ESA's asteroid teams. October saw the launch of the Agency's first asteroid mission, Hera, and the start of work on its second asteroid mission, the proposed Ramses mission to asteroid Apophis.

Meanwhile, ESA's Near-Earth Object Coordination Center has continued discovering, tracking and analyzing new asteroids from the ground and recently helped to identify the tenth asteroid ever discovered prior to Earth impact.

Next week, a team from the Agency's Planetary Defense Office will meet with experts from around Europe and beyond at ESOC in Germany to discuss how to more accurately measure the size of potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids.

TOP IMAGE: Hera's Propulsion Module incorporates its propellant tanks—housed within a central titanium cylinder, the 'backbone' of the spacecraft—along with piping and thrusters, which will have the job of hauling the mission across deep space for more than two years, then to maneuver around Dimorphos and Didymos. This module was mated with Hera's Core Module at OHB Bremen to complete the spacecraft structure. Credit: OHB

LOWER IMAGE: Lutetia at closest approach. Credit: ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA