#Caliban-8

[the-fruit-bandit]

Don't you think it's funny how almost always Titans just can't help themselves when it comes to Warlocks? (Saint and Osiris, Wei Ning and Eriana, Shaxx and Felwinter, ect)

Just always seem to be drawn to each other yk?

What do Hunters get you might ask? Well that's simple: They have each other! It goes:

• meet under unlikely circumstances

• develop lifelong bond

• get into a stupid mess

• one of them dies in (or as a consequence of) said stupid mess

• the one left alive gets super traumatized, has a huge change to their entire personality makes the death become their main driving force, and then waits until they meet a new hunter so they themselves can die in a stupid mess and continue the cycle!

[guardian-battle-bracket]

The Crown Bracket - Round 2

Character information. below the cut.

This is not to reflect any personal bias of us, it's just that everyone knows who Cayde is and information on Caliban is from ONE Hunter exotic.

Cayde-6 needs no introduction, but Caliban-8 may.

Caliban-8 was, to our knoweldge, the second Hunter Vanguard. Directly responsible for the death of Tallulah Fairwind thanks to a bad hand in a card game she played against an Ahamkara, that Caliban acted as dealer for. He took over Vanguard duties following this. He would then spend almost all his time in his office, throwing burning knives at the ceiling.

[sylenth-l]

I was scrolling through lore and saw the new Hunters exotic arms "Caliban's Hand" has Hunter Vanguard #2 lore 👀 Thought I'd share with ya

Yeah, I saw it! Really glad Caliban finally got his own lore entry and some more personality + extra glad it matches my own perception of him. Truly delightful 😭💙 But now I have to revisit my armor design for him to match these hands OTL

Lore in question if somebody didn't see it yet:

It makes me hope we might even learn what happened to him in the end...

[shalalalalaw]

Ahem.

*leans into the mic*

Tallulah/Tevis/Caliban.

i started writing this fic in 2019, dropped it when i dropped d2 and ive picked it back up in recent months, as i did d2

though playing d2 is much less a love of new lore lately, i have been..... very disappointed in the direction and execution of the story since Shadowkeep, both with the seasonal model, actual story and individual characters

anyway, that's a talk for another day, enjoy this snippet as i work on this monster of a fic + another oneshot for it all :)

[vexwerewolf]

Not the original asker, but how would you make NPC equivalents of PC mechs? Some stuff feels fairly intuitive, but there are some others that I'm less sure of/not sure how to do.

IPS-N

IPS-N mechs are probably the easiest, since there are many mechs that are close to being 1-to-1 NPC approximations of IPS-N mechs.

Blackbeard - One of the easiest, since the Berserker NPC is basically just a Blackbeard. It has the Chain Axe, it has the reckless speed and it has the inability to properly determine between friend and foe. It doesn't have the Blackbeard's enhanced Grapple shenanigans but those aren't really appropriate on an NPC mech anyway.

Caliban - Give an Assassin the Devil's Cough Shotgun and Explosive Knives.

Drake - Take the Bastion, increase its HP just a little, remove the Rotary Grenade Launcher and give it the Scourer's Thermal Lance, except make the Thermal Lance do Kinetic damage instead of Energy.

Lancaster - Another easy one. The Support NPC is just a slightly slower Lancaster. It has a Latch Drone, it has Restock Drones, it has Whitewash, it's got all the fun stuff.

Nelson - Yet another easy one. The Cataphract does pretty much exactly what the Nelson does, just with added trample.

Raleigh - This is much more difficult - so much so that for In Golden Flame, I created an entirely new NPC class, the Slinger, just to simulate it. If you don't have IGF, start with an Assault. Remove the Assault Rifle, Combat Knife and Hunker Down. Take the Drum Shotgun from the Goliath and call it a Hand Cannon. Give it the Archer's Impending Threat optional.

Tortuga - This one's fairly simple. Take a Sentinel, upscale it to Size 2, give it Punisher Ammunition and the Bombard's Siege Armor.

Vlad - Take a Berserker, give it the Nail Gun optional, and then give it the Bastion's Near-Threat Denial System.

Zheng - Take a Berserker, give it Juggernaut and Retribution, remove Aggression, remove the Chain Axe and replace it with the Demolisher's Demolition Hammer.

SSC

SSC mechs also have a lot of parallels, so it's pretty easy to model them.

Black Witch - Probably the hardest mech to model with existing NPCs. I created another whole new class, the Lodestone, just to simulate these guys.

Death's Head - Take a Sniper, cut the damage on its Anti-Material Rifle to 6/8/10, strip the Loading trait and permanently give it the effect of Deadmetal Rounds (shots become Line 20 instead of Range 25).

Dusk Wing - Literally just a Hornet.

Metalmark - Take an Assault and give it the Operator's Fade Generator.

Monarch - Depending on the exact flavour of Monarch you want, you can do two things. Either take a Rainmaker, scale it up to Size 2 and give it Atlas Missiles the Ace's Missile Swarm, or take an Ace, scale it up to Size 2 and give it Missile Swarm.

Mourning Cloak - Literally just a Specter.

Swallowtail - Literally just a Scout.

HORUS

HORUS mechs are where we need to get a little bit more inventive. This shit ain't natural boys.

Balor - Take a Hive, give it Electro-Nanite Cloud and the Berserker's Harpoon Cannon, then give it the Exotic template and choose Regenerator. Or, if you have No Room For A Wallflower, just use the Lurker NPC.

Goblin - It's a Witch.

Gorgon - Take a Sentinel, scale it up to Size 2 and give it the Archer's Impending Threat and Suppress reactions.

Hydra - There's not really an NPC that simulates a mech deploying 800 drones and honestly that's probably for the best.

Manticore - Give a Berserker the Superhot optional, the Cataphract's Capacitor Discharge, the Sentinel's Combat Shotgun and the Operator's Self-Erasure.

Pegasus - Do not attempt to simulate me, ha ha.

Harrison Armory

Home stretch here.

Barbarossa - Take a Goliath, give it the Ultra's Short-Cycle Lance or the Bombard's Bombard Cannon.

Genghis - Literally just a Pyro.

Iskander - This is just a Seeder.

Napoleon - Why does this mech exist

Saladin - Scale up an Aegis to Size 2.

Sherman - Take a Scourer and give it Emergency Vent.

Tokugawa - Take a Berserker and give it Superhot. Make its Chain Axe do Energy instead of Kinetic, and instead of Shredding on crit, make it do a couple of Burn damage.

[wolfstargazer]

Feb 8 - Arrow - @wolfstarmicrofic - word count: 405

Remus was a little surprised to be learning about Shakespeare in History of Magic. But Professor Binns was floating languorously around the classroom, intoning:

"It is important to not only appreciate the significance of William Shakespeare to Muggles, but to contextualise this within the wizarding world. Indeed, many witches and wizards do not know that Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathway, was a witch.

In many of Shakespeare's plays we see his knowledge of the wizarding world and references to significant events to wizarding history. Caliban, for example, is a reference to..."

A rattling snore, a sharp bang, and the sound of sniggering behind him caused Remus to lose his concentration. He turned to see the cause. James was rubbing his nose. Sirius was beside him, laughing. Remus suspected James had dozed off, slipped off the hand he was propped on, and banged his face on the desk.

"Finally!" Sirius declared when the lesson ended, pushing his way out of the classroom with the other students that were spilling out into the corridor.

"I thought that was interesting!" Peter said, clutching his books and trying to keep up.

"But hardly useful," James replied. "I don't understand what some dead Muggle from hundreds of years ago has to do with anything we need to know today."

"Some things are worth learning for other reasons," Remus said a little quietly. He wasn't sure if the others had heard him.

That night in the common room, long after the others had gone to bed, Sirius found Remus sitting by the fire and flopped down on the sofa beside him. Remus noticed his thoughtful expression. Finally, Sirius said, "You really love all that Shakespeare stuff, don't you?"

Remus felt himself flush a little. He gave a shrug.

"Sometimes I'll hear...or read something he wrote...and it's like he's reaching out across time...and sharing a secret just with me."

Remus felt a little silly and cleared his throat. Sirius' eyes were on his face.

Sirius gave a little nod, stared into the fire, and began to recite with feeling, "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?"

Sirius turned to face Remus and gave a secret smile, just for him.

Remus stomach flipped.

"Like that you mean?" Sirius asked.

Remus nodded, unable to fight the smile that was infectious.

"Yes, just like that."

[curiouscreationss]

ASOUE characters: How popular are they on Ao3?✨📚😎😮🫢

No.of fics with each character in them

Baudelaires:

Beatrice: 417

Bertrand: 257

🔧Violet: 977 🏆

📚Klaus: 822

🍳 Sunny: 662

👶 Beatrice II: 192

Quagmires:

Mrs Quagmire: 34

Mr Quagmire: 28

🖋️Isadora: 369 🏆

🗞️ Duncan: 367

🗺️ Quigley: 332 (Surprising tbh, I thought he’d win out of the triplets at least)

Widdershins:

⚓️Captain Widdershins: 40

🍄 Fiona: 114

🪝 Fernald: 166 🏆

Olaf+his troupe:

🎭 Count Olaf: 722 🏆

🍸 Esmé Squalor: 379

Woman with hair but no beard: 30

Man with beard but no hair: 25

👓 Georgina Orwell: 143

Henchperson of indeterminate gender: 84

Bald man: 57

White-faced women: 56 (just mildly less popular than the bald man yet there’s TWO of them- that’s gotta blow 😔-)

🎪[The Freaks] 🎪

Kevin: 14 🏅

Hugo: 13

Collette: 12

Denouements:

Frank: 76

Ernest: 92

🦄: 102 🏆

Snickets: (Take this with a grain of salt bc they have a whole other series -ATWQ- going for them)

Jaques: 347

Kit: 410

Lemony: 536 🏆

Guardians+the likes:

🏦 Mr Poe: 104

🗞️ Eleanora Poe: 14

📰 Polly Poe: 1

🐑 Edgar Poe: 10

💰 Albert Poe: 6 (Why is Edgar more popular??)

🐍Uncle Monty: 114

🐍 Ink/The Incredibly Deadly Viper: 8

🪟 Aunt Josephine: 72

Ike Anwhistle: 26

[🚬 Sir: 30

Charles: 54

👓 Georgina Orwell: 143 🏅

😃 Phil: 10 ]

[🎻Vice Principal Nero: 37 (That’s less than the bald man who has maybe 3 lines total, take that!)

Mrs Bass: 4 (Damn.)

Ms. Tench: 2 (Double damn)

Mr Remora: 3

📚 Olivia Caliban: 237 🏅]

🍸 Jerome Squalor: 104

(✨Esmé Squalor: 379 but I put her in the Olaf’s troupe section. This is just for quick comparison to Jerome. Poor guy. Ish. I don’t actually feel that bad for him tbh.)

🦅 The Council of Elders: 4

🎈 Hector: 48

Hal: 8

Babs: 9

Phil: 10

[🍎 Ishmael: 17

🐟 Miranda Caliban: 8

🕶️ Friday Caliban: 26 🏅

🚢 Thursday: 5 ]

Miscellaneous VFD members:

😎 Jacquelyn Scieszka: 172 🏆

🎥 Gustav Sebald: 78

🐟 Larry Your-Waiter: 85

👑 Duchess R of Winnipeg: 61 or 64 (3 are under ‘Duchess R’

Uncategorised:

Ben: 4

🚲 The Paperboy: 3

💃 Carmelita Spats: 149

Top 3:

1~ Violet Baudelaire! 🔧💜 (977 fics on Ao3 are tagged ‘Violet Baudelaire’! 🎉)

2~Klaus Baudelaire!!📚💙(822 fics!)

3~ Count Olaf! 👁️ 😈 (722 fics!)

Loser:

Polly Poe (with a disappointing 1 fic!😱)

[tournament-of-x]

The Hole

Announcement!

Welcome to the Hole Bracket! From the beginning, the Tournament of X has been a double-elimination tournament, so now that the primary bracket has concluded, it's on to our unfortunate losers' second chance. Whosoever wins the Hole Bracket will escape the Hole and be granted a shot at winning the entire Tournament of X!

With that said, the First Half of Round One will begin in five days on Saturday, September 2nd, at 8AM EST! The First Half of Round One will consist of 32 matches, and each matchup will be open to voting for one week.

The lineup for the First Half of Round One is as follows:

Match 1: Fenris vs. Christian Frost

Match 2: Lactuca the Knower vs. Ora Serrata

Match 3: Lost vs. Caliban

Match 4: Abigail Brand vs. Malice

Match 5: Nameless, the Shape-Shifter Queen vs. Mondo

Match 6: Burke vs. Amass

Match 7: Wagnerine vs. Fabian Cortez

Match 8: Crule vs. Spike

Match 9: Cam Long vs. Sprite

Match 10: Doorman vs. Darkstar

Match 11: Icarus vs. Broo

Match 12: Cipher vs. Mimic

Match 13: DJ vs. Silver Samurai

Match 14: Orphan-Maker vs. Asp

Match 15: Mesmero vs. Solem

Match 16: Oya vs. Dragoness

Match 17: Sevyr Blackmore vs. Wither

Match 18: Syzya of the Smoke vs. Tarn the Uncaring

Match 19: Cosmar vs. Genesis

Match 20: Typhoid Mary vs. Mentallo

Match 21: Whirlwind vs. Summoner

Match 22: Arclight vs. Blink

Match 23: Professor X vs. Maggie Braddock

Match 24: Candra vs. Havok

Match 25: Snot vs. Mad Jim Jaspers

Match 26: Jumbo Carnation vs. Big Bertha

Match 27: Redroot the Forest vs. Pestilence

Match 28: Rasputin IV vs. Empath

Match 29: Jersey Devil vs. Toad

Match 30: Alchemist vs. Proteus

Match 31: Fever Pitch vs. Neal Shaara

Match 32: Mr. Immortal vs. Wallflower

Remember, this tournament is a contest of popularity, not a contest of abilities. As always, asks and propaganda are both welcomed and encouraged.

Contestants Index

[fishcemetery]

Hey girl check this out *fonts your Capps*

It all started with:

and escalated from there, and fast forward a couple of hours, we had a font assigned to every relevant and semi-relevant Capp.

Ariel - she started it

Hal - he continued it

3. Consort - dry and official, serifs everywhere, you'll get tired of seeing him

4. Contessa - almost like Consort, but at least I can look at her without squinting

5. Tybalt - DON'T scream at me young man. you don't even have your grandpa's humongous serifs for that kind of attitude

6. Hermia - you try and tell me that if the Rockwell font was a chick, she wouldn't wear laced tops and motor boots

7. Juliette - ohhh girl that's a fancy name, are you italic???

8. Kent - treated like a joke

9. Caliban - plain ass dead bitch

10. Cordelia - plain ass dead bitch but with a little more style

11. Regan - looks like a total nerd

12. Cornwall - nerd's husband with stupid little moustache. look at that Q. the hell is that thing

13. Goneril - why are you so narrow.

14. Albany - W H Y A R E Y O U S O W I D E

15. Miranda - also a rebel, but Haettenschweiler and Lucida said no to laced tops and motor boots

16. Desdemona - she's 10. she can have those fairy wings if she wants to

17. Cleopatra, Calpurnia, and their entire in-game female progeny - ladies THE HELL AM I LOOKING AT

[the end, thanks for your attention]

[the-fruit-bandit]

Did you guys know that hunters are my favorite class in Destiny?

Here's a few of my favorites:

(From right to left)

Iron Lord Gheleon, Tevis Larsen, Andal Brask, Cayde-6, Caliban-8, Tallulah Fairwind, Jaren Ward and Crow

[veliseraptor]

twenty questions for fic writers

tagged by @feralkwe - thank you! I feel like I've done this before but if I have it's been a minute so

1. How many works do you have on AO3? across pseuds I have 1,010 works. with my "current" one I'm at 607. that is more or less my entire oeuvre, though there's a fair number of short fics on tumblr I haven't gotten around to crossposting though I'd ostensibly like to at some point. eventually. maybe.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 4,873,723. aYIKES. but hey closing in on 5 million! wonder when I'll hit that. I bet I would if I posted my unfinished wips for the mcu tbh

3. What fandoms do you write for? ever or currently? the list of fandoms I have written at least one fic for (not counting ones where the one fic was a crossover) is [deep breath] the mcu, the untamed/mdzs, supernatural, the silmarillion, a song of ice and fire, black jewels trilogy, wheel of time, doctrine of labyrinths, death note, the caliban leandros series, avatar the last airbender, kinnporsche, doctor who, buffy the vampire slayer/angel, gentleman bastard sequence, marvel comics, harry potter, temeraire, good omens, code geass, realm of the elderlings, greek mythology, dragon age, sandman, dexter, lymond chronicles, the firekeeper saga, lucifer (the tv series), crimson peak, kushiel's legacy, the x men movies, chronicles of narnia, twilight, and a couple other small book fandoms.

i used to be a lot more multifandom than i am now in terms of what i wrote for, and have been writing fic for which is how this happened.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? Not my favorite fics, for the most part. They are:

Life in Reverse (MCU)

With Absolute Splendor (The Untamed)

some good mistakes (The Untamed)

half a league onward (MCU)

The Villain Wrangler (MCU)

5. Do you respond to comments? I do not. I feel bad about it, but (a) I don't know what to say, (b) I feel unbearably self-conscious/self-important trying and (c) I already have too much I'm trying to do in my limited time/too many obligations I have placed upon myself to add another one that will just stress me out. Again, I have all kinds of guilt about this, though, which probably kind of defeats the (c) purpose of not doing it.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Almost certainly Mercy, though it's possible I could dig up others; that's the literal murder-suicide one, though, and I'm pretty sure I've only written one of those. I've written a lot where one character dies but another survives and has to live with the grief, which is arguably worse? but I still think Mercy wins. once there was a way to get back home might give it a run for its money, though.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I've actually written a fair amount of fic with happy endings! just mostly they have to suffer to get there. but trying to think of fic with a straight happy ending...I feel like I wrote some fairly fluffy fic in Black Jewels Trilogy fandom that I don't want to link to because I don't think it's very good. Maybe Life in Reverse, honestly? That's a fic where I tied up most things and resolved them in a pretty happy way.

Oh, or actually With Absolute Splendor might qualify.

8. Do you get hate on fics? I have in the past! Not a lot, but it happens every so often. Usually I just delete it, tbh; it doesn't feel worth leaving it there and I'm certainly not going to respond to it.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Sure do, primarily for pairings that are dysfunctional in one way or another, and for the most part I want the sex to say something about the inner life/psychology of the characters I'm writing. truly plotless smut does happen but I find it weirdly difficult. I have to do so much pre-justification work for my smut, at least in my head if not on page.

a lot of what I write at least has a little bit of kink or D/s flavor to it even if it's not explicitly written as such (and a lot of it is at least a little explicitly written as such). I also like to write about power dynamics (in sex) and sex that's sublimating some other emotion or desire, if that latter makes sense.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I used to, but not anymore, and I probably won't; I don't know why, but I'm just generally not a crossover fan these days. But I did write a Lord of the Rings/Cthulhu Mythos Morgoth/Cthulhu fic back in the day. No, I'm not going to link it, you can find it if you really want.

The Scarlet Pimpernel/Black Jewels Trilogy might be objectively weirder but it was because of an RP and therefore feels more reasonable to me.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? I had forgotten about it until just now, but yes, actually. Including one that actually got reposted on AO3, which takes a particular kind of guts that's not the same as reposting on Wattpad or the like, imo. (I've also had fic scraped off AO3 and reposted on other sites.) The person took it down when I called them out on it.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I have been fortunate enough to have a number of fics translated into a few languages! I was curious which ones so I went and looked, and it looks like I've had fic translated into Russian, Chinese, and Japanese.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I've started co-writing a fic but never finished one.

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship? Might have to give this one to xuexiao, though there's a lot of room in my heart for many ships! that's just one that hit an incredible number of my favorite things squarely on the head several times, leaving me concussed and helpless. It's so much, you guys.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? There's a number of my MCU wips that I look at and am like "yeah what I have of this is good actually, too bad I'll almost certainly never finish it", among which is Dead Superheroes Walking, the fic about everyone who died in Infinity War being trapped inside the Soul Stone and having to work together to fix the ensnappening from the inside. I have about 3/4 of it written if not more and the remaining quarter will probably remain unfinished. It was Wanda POV and a lot about Wanda and Loki bonding.

another one is the one where Hela decides instead of fighting Odin to strategically back down and plan to overthrow him later, and therefore is around while Loki and Thor are growing up. I really liked what I had of this one, and really enjoyed writing Hela's POV, but again. don't think I'm going to end up finishing it.

I have a whole folder called "MCU Salvage" that's basically my MCU wips that I parsed out because I was like "these are pretty good actually, maybe someday I'll have the motivation to return to them", which is probably delusional but, well. one never knows.

16. What are your writing strengths? I think I'm pretty good at dialogue - I love to write characters having conversations, probably to a fault - and, when it comes to fanfiction, characterization.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Worldbuilding for sure is one. I hate it, I don't think I'm very good at it. also description - I feel like I lean heavily on dialogue in fic and tend to go light on descriptive language. this is probably partly because I'm not a very imagery-focused reader, so I don't think a lot about creating a "visual" with my writing, but also because I just don't like doing it as much as I like writing about internal thought processes and interpersonal verbal exchanges.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I almost certainly would not do it, as someone who is monolingual and has zero confidence in my ability to do it right in a way that wouldn't read absolutely awfully. The one exception to this is in Lymond fic, and that's because the canon did it first, so it is fully justifiable for me to have this guy spout off in five languages in one fic. Otherwise...not since I tried writing a fake Phantom of the Opera fic mocking bad Phantom of the Opera fics.

19. First fandom you wrote for? I always say Wheel of Time because that's the first fandom of my heart but technically I wrote a crack Harry Potter fic before I wrote for Wheel of Time. But in my heart it was Wheel of Time. That was certainly my first fandom in any meaningful sense of the word.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written? This question is my nemesis. My favorite fic I've ever written changes at least once a month. I have a series for this on AO3 that I'm going to link to as a lazy answer to this question even though that's sort of 50 of my favorite fics, so sue me, I've written a lot of things over the years and I actually do like a fair number of them, even if you have to make me say so.

tagging uhhhh @highladyluck, @curiosity-killed, @ameliarating, @gloriousmonsters, i'm not sure how many people i'm supposed to tag for this but if you want to do it, go ahead?

[cantseemtohide]

What I read in 2023, pretty good going 👍 (apologies for long non sims post)

1. Middlemarch by George Eliot

2. Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century: Through the Prism of Value by Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts

3. The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue

4. The Book of Tokyo: A City in Short Fiction edited by Michael Emmerich, Jim Hinks & Masashi Matsuie

5. Clipped Coins, Abused Words, and Civil Government: John Locke's Philosophy of Money by George Caffentzis

6. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze

7. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

8. Civilizing Money: Hume, his Monetary Project and the Scottish Enlightenment by George Caffentzis

9. An Untouched House by Willem Frederik Hermans

10. Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata

11. Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris

12. Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard

13. Exiles from European Revolutions: Refugees in Mid-Victorian England edited by Sabina Freitag

14. The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P by Rieko Matsuura

15. A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance by Claudio Pavone

16. Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

17. Dracula by Bram Stoker

18. The Silent Dead by Tetsuya Honda

19. Lady Susan by Jane Austen

20. Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century by Giovanni Arrighi

21. This Should be Written in the Present Tense by Helle Helle

22. The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette de Bodard

23. The Invention of Art: A Cultural History by Larry Shiner

24. Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

25. The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould

26. Ninety-Three by Victor Hugo

27. Carol by Patricia Highsmith

28. Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question edited by Nicola Diane Thompson

29. Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural & Political by James Kelman

30. Mem by Bethany C. Morrow

31. Russia Under Yeltsin and Putin by Boris Kagarlitsky

32. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

33. The History of the British Film 1918-1929 by Rachael Low

34. The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System by Henryk Grossman

35. Mayhem & Death by Helen McClory

36. White by Marie Darrieussecq

37. Dream Houses by Genevieve Valentine

38. The Vanishers' Palace by Aliette de Bodard

39. Maigret Takes a Room by Georges Simenon

40. The Lodger, That Summer by Levi Huxton

41. Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner

42. Grundrisse by Karl Marx

43. A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

44. Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

[shalalalalaw]

*leans close to the mic*

Caliban-8 bottomed for Tallulah Fairwind. That man got pegged on the regular and you cannot tell me otherwise.

[vexwerewolf]

Can you build the one punchiban?

It's 5:40 AM but here you go.

-- IPS-N CALIBAN @ LL6 -- [ LICENSES ] IPS-N ZHENG 3, IPS-N CALIBAN 2, SSC Black Witch 1 [ CORE BONUSES ] Superheavy Mounting, Overpower Caliber [ TALENTS ] Executioner 3, Nuclear Cavalier 3, PANKRATI 2, Vanguard 1 [ STATS ] HULL:4 AGI:2 SYS:0 ENGI:2 STRUCTURE:4 HP:19 ARMOR:2 STRESS:4 HEATCAP:7 REPAIR:7 TECH ATK:-2 LIMITED:+1 SPD:4 EVA:10 EDEF:8 SENSE:3 SAVE:14 [ WEAPONS ] Integrated: HHS-075 “Flayer” Shotgun SUPERHEAVY MOUNT: D/D 288 (SUPERMASSIVE MOD) // Overpower Caliber HEAVY MOUNT: SUPERHEAVY WEAPON BRACING [ SYSTEMS ] Personalizations, Armament Redundancy, Ferrous Lash, SPIKE CHARGES x3, TOTAL STRENGTH SUITE I

I call this one That Doesn't Seem Physically Possible.

So fun fact: Ferrous Lash doesn't require that your target be in sensors. It has a flat range. That flat range happens to be 8, and you can punch someone 9 spaces away with a charged D/D 288 because we put Supermassive on it.

What this means is that you can prime your D/D 288 and use your other action to Ferrous Lash an enemy straight into your mech, where they will fall prone. The next turn, you can punch them so hard they see the face of god, knock them 9 spaces in the direction you punched them, all of which you travel with them due to the Caliban's Pursue Prey trait.

Your charged D/D 288 does a minimum of 13 damage (14 if you're in the Danger Zone) with a potential maximum of 38 damage (44 if you're in the Danger Zone), but I think that might actually be the least interesting thing about this build.

[elsiebrayisgay]

I saw your post about Ahamkara; what's your favorite Ahamkara lore (if you don't mind me asking)?

formal request to go on at length about a special interest let's gooooo (it is always okay)

i am going to choose to answer this in two parts, first my favorite ahamkara story and then my favorite ahamkara tidbit.

i mentioned tallulah fairwind in the post because she's the guardian i always think of first for having been killed by ahamkara. if you are not aware, tallulah was the founding (kinda) hunter vanguard, alongside saint and osiris. she had to be kind of cajoled into it by the speaker at the time, and this is the origin of the vanguard dare. when the speaker told her that it would certainly be very difficult to wrangle all the hunters and fit meetings into her busy schedule of missions, she had to prove him wrong.

i had previously thought for some reason that her death happened during the great hunt, but in rechecking sources to write this, i didn't actually find a specific time when her death took place. i had thought that the events leading up to her death were part of the great hunt, but perhaps her death was a catalyst.

in any case, at some point, she was playing cards with some guy and her friend, caliban-8, was dealing. during the game, the two guardians realized that this rando was in fact a wish-dragon, and the stakes got significantly more dire. eventually, back against a wall, tallulah bet her life against the dragon, and caliban dealt her a losing hand. this was another moment where the tradition of the vanguard dare was perpetuated: in the moments before her death, tallulah gave caliban her weapon and as he pleaded with her not to leave him her post, she said, "a dare's a dare, man." it is implied at this point that she was literally just eaten in a single bite by this dragon. i really enjoy this story because i think it characterizes some old hunters very well and i think the archetypal hunter bravado and joviality plays EXTREMELY well when they're stuck in tragedy partially of their own making but from which they cannot escape. if i remember correctly caliban also had a silly poker visor on because the card game was conjured up by wish-magic. i just love the touches that ahamkara put on things that show that they know how humans operate but at the same time display flagrant disregard for human feeling or sensibility.

my favorite ahamkara factoid is that the keep of voices is built from all of those huge amethyst geodes because amethyst, for whatever reason, will always reflect an ahamkara's true reflection (as a dragon) rather than whatever shape they have taken by magic. the keep of voices was built this way specifically to keep riven in so that anyone approaching could see her for what she was. i think the implication here is also that amethyst is extremely distasteful to ahamkara for this reason, i can imagine an ahamkara seeing their reflection and hissing and looking away.

i'm really interested in this because to my knowledge, the entirety of the dreaming city, terraforming and all, was created by riven through wish magic. i wonder whether queen mara had to wish for all of the amethyst, too, and what it was like for riven to grant that wish, if she did. i also just love reciting this fact when i'm teaching LW and bringing folks up to kalli & the wish wall.

(as a disclaimer, at least 50% of what i know about ahamkara, if not more, was learned watching cameron lauder on talking simulator and all i did to write this post was check a couple of sources on the wiki to ensure i wasn't entirely wrong.)

[harrison-armory-incorporated]

i got bored so heres my tokugawa specs when i was a lancer and not a social media manager

-- HA Tokugawa @ LL12 -- [ LICENSES ] HA Tokugawa 3, HA Iskander 2, IPS-N Zheng 3, IPS-N Caliban 2, IPS-N Nelson 2

[ CORE BONUSES ] Stasis Shielding, Briareos Frame, Overpower Caliber, Auto-Stabilizing Hardpoints

[ TALENTS ] Ace 3, Combined Arms 3, Juggernaut 3, Duelist 3, Gunslinger 2, Brutal 1

[ STATS ] HULL:2 AGI:6 SYS:6 ENGI:0 STRUCTURE:4 HP:18 ARMOR:1 STRESS:4 HEATCAP:8 REPAIR:5 TECH ATK:+5 LIMITED:+0 SPD:7 EVA:14 EDEF:12 SENSE:10 SAVE:17

[ WEAPONS ] FLEX MOUNT: Tiger-Hunter Combat Sheathe (Molten Wreathe) MAIN MOUNT: Tiger-Hunter Combat Sheathe (Molten Wreathe) MAIN MOUNT: Stub Cannon (Supermassive Mod) // Overpower Caliber, Auto-Stabilizing Hardpoints

[ SYSTEMS ] Type-I Flight System, LUCIFER-Class NHP, Total Strength Suite I, Plasma Gauntlet, Bulwark Mods