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[whispering-kavka]

the struggles of today proved to me that i might indeed be a little mentally unwell

[stubz]

"CAPTAIN!" Calis bursted through the doors panting.

"Yes, Calis?"

"Ki- The humans...the human!" they panted.

"The humans?"

"Yes! I have...urgent news about them. Everyone, out."

The control goes quiet. All eyes on the captain and his second in command.

"Give the room to me and Commander Calis." When everyone leaves he sighs and takes a seat in his chair.

"Captain...the human has betrayed us. My scouts who follow General Morbius spotted Kim along with several other humans conversing with him. Numerous times have they seen them together...surely they have betrayed us."

The Captain looks at Calis and pulls out a drink. He sips it. "What I'm about to tell you does not leave this room." He motions for them to sit.

Calis sits and accepts the drink offered by their Captain. Strong yenx.

"When we discovered that Morbius was feeding classified information to enemy forces we had you follow him with your best scouts. And for a time that was sufficient...until recently." Calis nods.

They stopped the general from leaking information but they still have yet to gather enough evidence to charge him with treason. Not only that but he has gotten more cautious and rarely leaves his home when not at work.

"Well we went through the data base of the Coalition looking for clues or evidence to use when I stumbled upon Kim Greene's file. Here," he hands them the electronic document. "you'll see why Kim, along with some other humans, are conversing with the general so much."

Calis read over the document. At first glance it was nothing special. References, personal information, education, etc. normal things. Until they saw the green triangle next to one of the interview questions.

"...Why is she marked down for secret intelligence? In brackets, honorary...what is a honorary secret intelligence?"

"It's because she along with all the other humans you spotted have experience in befriending the enemy in order to report them to their superiors.

During her interview we asked about what was the toughest thing she had to do at her previous job.

The previous child centre she worked at had several people who were spreading false accusations against their fellow co-workers. One even falsely accused her mentor of illegal activity."

"At a child centre??"

"Yes, I can't believe it either. Carrying on, she was rather quiet at the time and always did her duty with a smile so the enemy ignored her. She used that to become a spy of sorts for her superiors who she respected very much.

Eventually she managed to gather enough information for them that they managed to fire and report the enemies to the proper authorities."

"Are the other humans like this?"

"In a way yes. Steven Smith one of our cafeteria chefs, worked at a restaurant as a waiter and has the patience of a god. He can be belittled, insulted, and be stuck in a never ending conversation that would rot your braincells without cracking."

"Something that would be perfect for the general."

"Indeed. Rebecca Cheng, worked at a cleaning service company and has mastered the art of being unseen whenever she wishes. She has caught several of her employers doing illegal acts or being unfaithful to their spouse simply because they forgot all about her.

And that's just the first few, we have at least a dozen of humans like them who are capable of hiding their presence while at the same time capable of 'befriending' the most unpleasant, foul, and infuriating beings."

"I shudder at the thought of going through the training they went through to achieve this."

The Captain regretfully shakes his head. "This wasn't no training Commander...this was them adapting so that they may survive."

[littledigits]

What is your take on the current animation industry and the way its heading for AI and job hiring? Ngl its looking a little bleak and I would love to hear your insight!

HOO. This is going to be a long one, but good question. Please keep in mind I am but one person with my one opinion.

I'm going to give you a little context to what was leading up to the job bust, the shit reality, and the hopeful conclusion.

Its always been a completive industry and unfortunately it will more-so for the next little while, even compared to when I graduated. The reality is, the animation industry GREW SO MUCH over the streaming services greenlighting projects to a point where I was like . WHERE ARE ALL THESE CARTOONS GOING. It felt like we went from nothing to a ton and was amazing that so much work was going around (looking back we see why it was too good to be true) A lot of schools and studios responded to this by growing as well. This means while it may recover, I dont see a way that it could reach the highs we had in the 2015-2021 period - because that wasn't representative of a sustainable model or a model they were planning on sticking with forever.

So the streaming bubble popped, and a lot of the reason why it popped was because streaming wasn't as lucrative when everyone joins in. This is the reality of working under the umbrella of Hollywood companies. Mergers happened, projects got pulled - and it probably wouldn't have seemed as big if we didn't have THE MOST JOBS EVER like, just a year before. It was a big rug pull. With the huge growth came a steep fall and all of it because of bad investments and choices of the people with the money. aka, we all wanted to chase someone elses idea thats making money for them and it didnt pay off - which leads me to AI.

While AI is scary and will do/is doing damage, it will not last forever. The industry only looks like its heading this way because the people who like AI are desperate to make it work, so they're pushing at it from all angles despite no AI company being profitable. ( once companies see that its not going to make them money they will drop it ) Its really nothing but a glorified pattern and predictive text machine that of course looks impressive when you feed it oodles of data. People who live on linked in and drink management courses like its water think that sort of shit is impressive, but they dont actually know how it works and just buy into the tech industry hype cycle . What we're seeing is them trying to make fetch happen, and it wont. (some useful bits will stay around but it doesnt 'think', a lot of this is just pure fakery)

You can trace a lot of things that lost jobs to bad investments from people higher up, who just jump around to different jobs when they make a mistake, or just simply get a bonus.

Its a symptom of the greater issue which is the monopoly of people in media and tech, which have been merging over the years with digital streaming. Lack of regulation in industries since the 80s has lead to a lot of the shit you see all around you, and it starts to be controlled by people who only want numbers goup. Overall , I think the animation industry in north America is entirely too controlled by the major studios and broadcasters, and that's going to be a tricky thing to navigate since they're very mask off about what their intentions are at this point. Its a growth-at-all-cost mindset that leads to things like AI, so while im confidant that what we see as 'ai' will die , we do have to realize as artists that as long as these people are in charge they will always try to find a way to cut the bottom line and not invest in the industry.

Its totally reasonable to feel bleak, but that's the intent. They want people to have to settle for less, and they want them to forget a time that it was better. Demoralization is part of the tactics, and 'starving' people out of jobs so they're easier to negotiate with is extremely common and pretty much what is happening right now. And this is exactly why you're seeing more union push from lots of industries because we're ALL being taken advantage of here. While it feels hopeless, this actually puts us much more in line with the artists and storytellers before us. They were up against the same people fighting the same fight, they were just called communists haha. Different words, same tactics, but the history of moments like this in the entertainment industry is more common then the shiny package we tend to grow up idolizing . ( its good to admire but we do often put these products up on a pedestal to our detriment )

The industry will survive, and it will change into something different which is GOOD. Because what it is right now, while workable and still full of things I enjoy - is NOT sustainable. And if we want to keep the skills of 2d animation, stop motion or any sort of creative trade to continue, we NEED sustainability. This is why collective action is so important, and so is diversity in the amounts of media we have! For example

YOUTUBE INDIE ANIMATION IS KICKING BROADCASTERS ASSES RIGHT NOW AND THEY NOTICE IT.

And while there are ups and downs regardless if you work in a small studio or a large one, I am hopeful that the conversations I've been seeing will spark change. Because as sucky as it is , compared to the rest of my time in the industry ( i think im on like 16 or 17 years now ) , I've never seen so much engagement or even discussion on the topic which says a lot. I think as artists we are always up for putting a lot of hard work into our skills, I think if enough of us point that passion into our community and collective action, we can start building an industry that does not have such a power imbalance, and that starts with community, education and engagement ! ( learning about the history of unions/animation/hollywood/workers rights,and then sharing that stuff! just through convo like this !) I hope this gives you some perspective, its something we're going to have to work at, but not something that is impossible. A lot of how the animation industry functions is not great, but what matters is that we work to make it better and the people who HAVE been doing that work are the ones that you want to find. They are the people with the proactive solutions to show you how to take power back. It helps fight the bleak feeling <3 tldr :

the solution is that as much as it sucks we try to make it better for those who come after us - and you can be involved in that job or not ! even just by supporting or being aware. This isnt animation is all careers, we're all effected by the same thing.

never forget.

[the-64th-gamer]

I feel like the last year has been a great push for me to slowly detach myself from giant companies and ensure what I do is in my control and ownership

Finally switched over to linux permanently

switched to firefox

enabled adblocker, sponsor blockers, and tracker removers

disabled autoplay and the recommendations sidebar on YouTube (highly highly encourage, though I still keep the homepage open so I can choose when to browse new suggested content rather than it pestering me)

downloaded all my tumblr posts and now host them parallel on my website (stuck here until we find some decentralized way of doing social media right)

cleared out 99% of my online storage to now be on multiple hard-drive backups

downloaded locally all my music

removed myself from basically every data tracking social media platform except this and YouTube

And now currently I'm trying to consolidate all my feeds into just an RSS reader.

It takes a long time and a lot of planning, but its very rewarding to take control over what you want to see, how you see it, how its formatted, ect. I find these are my steps to an easy transition off a certain service:

Download all your data and back it up. Now your account can be deleted at any time with no remorse.

Find browser extensions that enhance and modify the experience to what you might need. Use that to tangibly guide your preferences. Go ahead and remove the app on your phone if its there.

Research every alternative service and try them out. Begin moving certain activity exclusively to the alternative. Take time getting used to it and see if its better to try more alternatives.

Completely jump ship, delete the account, move all feeds or settings over.

Its an ongoing process but there's still probably a few more years of this to go through. Future plans are:

Completely remove all prior emails and self host a new one

Get off Discord entirely except for running the wiki server. It sucks that Discord is so prevalent. Probably move to various forums. Maybe look into some sort of forum management software such as how RSS feeds tame articles and videos into one place.

Setup adblockers directly into my router so ads won't even appear on phones.

Setup my phone to just straight up also run linux. There's a few mobile-designed linux platforms to look into until I decide.

[boombox-fuckboy]

Hey, @t0tally-n0t-3m0, figured this might be easier to read as a post. Here's 24 pods with nonbinary lead characters to get you started. There's more out there, so if anyone wants to add on, go for it.

Additional Postage Required: (Sci-Fi) Adventures of an interstellar courier who starts to get glimpses of the past from their packages.

Anamnesis (on the Tin Can Audio feed): (Mystery, Weird Fiction) Someone wakes in a temple in an empty town with no memory. Short, really nice sound design.

Badlands Cola: (Mystery, Supernatural & Horror elements) big city PI Sunny is hired to find information on a rural cult leader, and is drawn into a world of strange radio, horse enthusiasts, and dinosaur bones.

The Dead Letter Office of Somewhere, Ohio (one of two leads, you'll meet them halfway in): (Supernatural, Weird) Two workers for an Ohio dead letter office read the strange confiscated mail their organisation collects, and do some follow up investigation.

either: (Weird Fiction, Sci-Fi, Romance) An explosion at a duck factory sends a pet robot to another reality, connecting two very different (but both lonely) people.

Hello From The Hallowoods: (Supernatural Horror) A dramatic entity beyond your comprehension visits your nightmares to tell stories of the people (in varying degrees of human and alive) that inhabit the strange, deadly, and beautiful Hallowoods.

Inn Between: (Fantasy, Adventure) Ever wondered what the party gets up to at the tavern between D&D sessions? (Not a tabletop).

Jar of Rebuke: (Supernatural, Horror elements) An unkillable amnesiac scientist (they die, just have a hard time staying dead) investigates weird entities, makes friends, and eats a lot of tasty food in the strange town he lives in.

Khôra Podcast: (Sci-Fi, Adventure) Somewhere between inspired by and adapted from greek mythology, a space adventure following four mythological figures on their search for the golden fleece.

Less is Morgue: (Comedy, Horror elements) A ghoul and a ghost host a podcast about whatever they please in the ghoul's mom's basement, and manage to get off topic anyway.

Light Hearts: (Slice-of-Life, Supernatural elements) Three friends run a lightly haunted queer café. Upbeat and wholesome.

The Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Mortality: (Weird Fiction, Supernatural, Horror elements) A friendly AI tour guide leads you on a tour of the Mistholme Museum, explaining the strange and often alternatural story behind each item. (To be clear, the nb lead is an AI with no concept of gender, but the creator is NB also and it is far from the only nb character.)

Monstrous Agonies: (Advice, Supernatural) An interpersonal advice show for supernatural entities and other people living liminally in the modern world.

ROGUEMAKER: (Sci-fi, Whodunnit) A commercial space flight explodes and passengers are left isolated in the escape pods, only connected for minutes at a time and unsure what happened, or why.

Second Star to the Left: (Sci-Fi) Audio logs of a colonist sent to a new world and her communications with the minder in charge of keeping her alive.

Sidequesting: (Fantasy) A wholesome podcast following Rion, an adventurer with a difference: they only do sidequests.

SINKHOLE: (Sci-fi, Weird Fiction) Forum posts from a data restoration community in a near future where the human brain is its own computer and one city hosts a massive void.

Skyjacks: Courier's Call: (Tabletop, Fantasy) Three young postal workers aboard a skyship go on various adventures. Kid-friendly but enjoyable for all ages.

The Starport Inn: (Supernatural, Mystery) An FBI agent sent to a rural town to solve a disappearance finds they've walked into something much stranger.

The Supernatural Protection Agency: (Supernatural) Call logs for a helpline that aims to solve the supernatural problems plaguing your life.

Tell No Tales: (Supernatural, Horror elements) Leo Quinn, secretary to the man in charge of the world's leading ghost removal service, interviews various ghosts in an attempt to create a device capable of actually recording them, in the hopes of taking down the company they work for.

Trial and Error: (Sci-Fi) Interviews with various AI as a scientist attempts to make sense of spontaneous machine sentience.

Under the Electric Stars: (Sci-Fi) A courier's failed heist to help their AI friend/navigator pulls them into a world of crime organisations and unethical science.

The Weird: (Tabletop, Supernatural, Comedy, Horror elements) The two staff members at The Department of the Weird travel America in their shitty Ford Fiesta to investigate various strange happenings

[queen-breha-organa]

I wanted to briefly come back online and discuss the WGA and, in turn, the current writer's strike.

I know my opinion matters very little, and I don’t consider myself an expert or a valuable voice in this matter. However, since I talk about Star Wars a lot, I wanted to discuss the strike because these things go hand in hand. I think it’s unfair to ignore the real-world circumstances that shape the media you enjoy. Knowing the context of something is important. And beyond that, this situation has just been on my mind, and I wanted to express my thoughts somewhere. 

Firstly, all workers should be paid living wages. All workers deserve to be treated fairly and compensated fairly. All workers deserve safe, productive, and fair working environments—end of story.

I’ve been seeing a lot of jokes along the lines of “I didn’t even know media had writers these days,” and while I understand the joke and the potential humor in it, I feel like it’s important to realize that this is entirely why the WGA is striking in the first place.

The writer’s rooms are shrinking. Writers are being overworked. Writers are being underpaid. Writers are being dismissed and undercut. These factors lead to poorly written and poorly managed shows because the individuals who write the bones of the shows are exhausted and burdened by corporate interference, unreasonable deadlines (especially in animation), unfair wages, and stale corporate agendas.

Additionally, these writers often aren’t given the opportunity to oversee or manage their writing while it’s being filmed. Instead, companies are acting as if the writing process ends before the filming process so that they can shorten the writer's contracts and pay them less. However, in actuality, the writing process is often most valuable during the filming process. 

Some things work on paper but don’t work on the day. Maybe the joke doesn’t land, or an actor can’t deliver the line as intended. Writers are needed on set to rework and revise these lines, so the process can run smoother without sacrificing story and believability. Now some actors are incredible at improvising and can make these things work. However, overall, without writers on set, you usually end up with awkward/stiff dialogue or scenes that make no sense. Writing doesn’t stop in the writers' room.

Another massive force driving this strike is the evolution of streaming services. 

With “traditional” tv reruns, the network airing the media has to purchase the viewing rights of the episode or the show. This money is then extended to the people who worked on the show in the form of residuals. It makes sense. Something you worked on makes money, so in turn, you get money. 

However, streaming services have broken this mold by allowing consumers to watch whatever media whenever they want. Streaming services claim that it is no longer possible to pay residuals for these shows since they don’t know how often or when the shows are being watched. This is a lie.

Companies will brag privately in shareholder's meetings and publicly in articles about streaming shows that have done well. We’ll read headlines like “Stranger Things’ Was Most-Streamed TV Show in 2022” or “‘Star Wars’ vs. Marvel: Which Disney+ Shows Are Most-Viewed.” These articles and the data within them prove it is possible to know how frequently shows/movies are being watched on streaming services. Still, companies are only willing to shell out this information for bragging rights and not for fair payments.

In 2021, Disney CEO Bob Chapk earned $32 million. In contrast, the WGA website states, “Median weekly writer-producer pay has declined 4% over the last decade. Adjusting for inflation, the decline is 23%.” These writers are merely asking for 3%, while CEOs are given the moon.

This is unacceptable.

If you’re reading this post, if you’re on Tumblr and engaging with fandoms enough to have this post written by me, a Star Wars blog, circulate on your feed, media writing has affected your life. Writers have impacted you and your daily routine and hobbies. 

You should care about this strike. You should be supporting this strike. 

We all want our favorite shows to come back, we all want to reunite with our favorite characters, and we all want to see their stories, their triumphs, and their struggles. 

But the real people behind these stories and behind these characters are far more important than any fictional narrative. 

These writers have crafted the worlds and stories we love, and by supporting them, we can return the favor and craft a better world for them too.

[pillowfort-social]

Site Update - 11/27/2023

Hi Pillowfolks, 

We hope you are safe and healthy.  Our Developers released a small site update today which addresses recent bugs that appeared after our Drafts update. Thank you for your patience while our team patched these bugs. Please let us know if you are still experiencing issues. 

Also, we wanted to take another moment to thank our community for your support during our End of Year Fundraiser. Can you believe we’re at 67% of our goal with over a month remaining? You have made it very clear you believe our Platform deserves to exist and we will continue to work hard to keep our platform online. 

We will be revealing fundraiser rewards very soon! 

New Features / Improvements

Premium Frames Update - Add a little color to your avatar with three new premium frames inspired by synthwave, vaporwave, and citypop. These frames were designed by our Customer Service Manager, Midnight!

Fundraiser Pop Up - We’ve added a notification banner for our End of Year Fundraiser. (Psst: There is still time left to help us meet our goal!) 

Bug Fixes

Infinite Posts in Communities -  Fixed a bug where the last post in a Community repeated infinitely. 

Drafts Tagging - Fixed a bug where posts that were published from Drafts wouldn’t show up in the tag search results despite being tagged. This change will also retroactively fix posts that were affected by this bug since the release of the Drafts feature, though it may take some time for these changes to populate. Please wait a few hours before checking if your published posts that were not previously showing up in tags have been fixed.

Gaps in Home Feed - Fixed a bug causing temporal gaps in the home feed when loading more posts. This also fixes an issue where some posts would display twice in the home feed.

Dark Mode Drafts Improvements - Fixed a bug that caused the site’s dark theme to fail to display properly when viewing the Drafts index page.

Community Index Fixes - We improved the efficiency of Community browsing, so searching for communities via the Community index should now be faster. We also altered the search so that it no longer sends a data request if no search term has been entered and the search sorting method is set to “Relevance”.

[bomberqueen17]

realizations

this is just me having medical realizations and again wishing I had someone to help me coordinate my medical care. I hear rumors some people use primary care physicians for this but mine doesn't do that kind of thing, so I'm writing things out here instead.

physical therapy:

shit got so busy last week that i fell off the wagon for the first time. I've only ever missed a single day of the thrice-weekly physical therapy exercises since I was first prescribed them in January; on two occasions I think I've wound up doing them only twice in a week. But last Tuesday, I woke up and did a few of them and then ran out of time, and then worked three twelve-hour days in a row, and a fourth day I worked six hours and then drove four more. And then I was visiting friends and had horrible menstrual cramps. So I just didn't climb back onto the wagon.

I haven't had bad sciatic nerve pain at any point during any of that. Sure, toward the end of the long days on my feet I was taking any opportunity to sit, and I was doing some of the pt stretches, and it's not that the sciatic nerve didn't hurt at all. But it didn't keep me up. And I now am back to a normal level of physical activity, and I slept in a bad position last night and am experiencing no consequences today.

I'll go back to them-- need to figure out today if I have an appointment tomorrow or Thursday first-- and I'm sure not saying the exercises caused the sciatic nerve pain-- but it sure is a fucking data point isn't it.

ADHD meds:

I have managed to take two doses of Ritalin about four times in the last two weeks. It used to be that I would at least really notice the first dose, but I've been faithful enough with it that at this point my body doesn't seem to react to it at all. I can't tell whether I've taken it, most days, and that means I don't notice it wearing off and I don't think to take the second one. I know it shouldn't work like that but it definitely doesn't. There have been days I've forgotten both doses, though, and there's no real difference in those days. And that time I tried to sew those bike shorts was one of my most obvious two-dose days.

I don't need help focusing my attention, which seems to be what the stimulants do. My manifestation of ADHD is not distraction. I have always been able to focus on a task. What I cannot do is initiate a task, change a task, or perform a sequence of tasks that depend on one another, beyond a very simple list structure. Last night I had to entirely admit defeat because coordinating a sequence of tasks was beyond me. It was an embarrassingly simple sequence of tasks: I had to drop my car off for service, and get dinner, and the hardest part was that I had to coordinate a person accompanying me in a second vehicle so I could get a ride home. And there was a time constraint, and I could not do any of it because I could not initiate the task of looking up which takeout restaurants were nearby. "Solve one thing at a time," Dude said, and proceeded to help me, but I said "i can't solve one thing at a time, because if I solve one thing I will not then be able to initiate the solving of the second thing, and then the second problem will derail the rest of my night."

On my own I would not have been able to feed myself dinner, I think. I would have had to abandon that very simple task as unsolvable. I simply could not hold two things in my mind long enough to consider it. It was absolutely stupid.

Relatedly I was trying to figure out how to calculate the sale price of an item, and it was 60% off the listed price, and I know to get 60% of something you multiply it by .6, so I was trying to do that and then subtract the number I got from the original number, and I tried it literally nine times without being able to remember the .6 result long enough to then type it back into the calculator. Yes, I know you can just times it by .4 instead now, and I also know that at any moment I could have gotten up and gotten a piece of paper, or gotten a second calculator, or taken a screenshot, but all of those solutions were so cumbersome and involved me abandoning my initial task that I could not figure out how to use them. I finally asked someone else and they told me the answer and also how to use the times .4 method, which I had considered but wasn't confident enough in.

All of this is related, I think, to me having basically no working memory. I cannot hold a thing in my mind while I contemplate a second thing. And I don't know if any ADHD medication would ever help with that. That is the root of almost all of my problems: I know, from long experience, that I have to continually maintain the single thing I am focused on in my mind, and if I try to think of any second thing, I either can't, or if I succeed, will lose the first thing irrevocably. So i can't use most of the problem-solving skills I know fine well how to use. I can't get fucking anything done. (I give amazing advice, always have, because I've spent a ton of time figuring out how to solve problems and then discovering that I can't actually use any of those methods successfully.) And, I can pretty conclusively state after these several months of experimentation: ADHD stimulant meds have zero effect on this problem.

I don't know if any meds have any effect on this problem. It may well be that there is nothing to be done for my condition, medication-wise. I guess I'm glad I was able to try medication, since it is such a miracle for so many people. I guess I'm just sad it wasn't a miracle for me. But it hasn't addressed any of my problems so I don't see a point in continuing it.

Possibly what I need is some other kind of therapy, some kind of like behavioral therapy or life coaching or something, I don't know. It would help me enormously, I think, to have a lifestyle with a predictable routine and very little dislocation, but that's not possible for me with my current job and life situation. And I don't know how to discover what kind of therapies even exist, and I know the psych provider I've been seeing will not be able to recommend anything in the three minutes we get per meeting. So I might just be out of options, now. But I guess I'm glad at least I tried.

I really wish I had some kind of doctor overseeing all of my medical care I could consult about this, but I don't, I only have the individual specialists. So I'm on my own and I'm just trying to work around my severe memory problems by writing things out, I guess.

Currently I am just going to have to accept that there's literally no way I'm going to be able to figure out how to get to Rochester and back this week, so I'm going to give up on retrieving my critical personal electronics and just wait until I head back to the farm to get them on my way through. Which sucks and I am sad about but I just don't know how to coordinate the logistics and incorporate that into my life, so I'm going to stop worrying about it. This is how I get through things: I just let almost everything go, and live with whatever I can pick up in the aftermath. C'est la vie!

Oh huh you can't add more tags onto posts once you've stopped adding them huh. Fascinating choice, Tumblr.

[freckled-words]

TaserTricks Misadventures

Just to get some rust off the wheels, I wrote a little intro to act as the base for where *most* of the stories will be connected to. Some will be stand-alone but still part of the whole, ya know?

If you prefer to read on AO3, here's a handy link for you CLICK ME

Let me know if you catch any spelling mistakes.

Darcy Lewis sometimes had to play “Connect The Dots” with the events in her life in order to make sense of just how she found herself in her current position.

The position of ‘Unofficial Avengers CareTaker’ that is.

Which just so happened to include Loki, God of Mischief, King of Assholes, and a condemned prisoner currently working off his crimes through community service.

Originally Darcy had come to the tower with her pre-established job parameters of keeping Jane healthy and functional, while also helping her with the data entry and machine lugging. Jane’s lab was neighbor’s with Tony and Bruce, and thanks to a connecting doorway, it was easy enough to include the Science Bros in the daily feedings and watering. (Bruce was pretty good at managing himself, but he never turned down Darcy’s cinnamon raisin cookies when she slipped them within reach.)

One trip to scary Ol’ England to fight space Elves later, and Erik came back to the Tower with them. Like Bruce he was pretty low maintenance, he just needed a gentle reminder to put his pants back on two to three times a day.

The real shift in her ‘caretaking’ parameters came when Natasha and Clint started coming by more often.

One night Darcy had been up late in the common room, the TV was on with the volume down low, an overly fuzzy blanket was wrapped around her body, and was doing her damndest to melt the nightmares out of her skull with the vibrancy of the cartoon dancing across the screen.

She swore she’d simply blinked (a super slow blink that lasted around a minute) and suddenly found Clint sitting on the couch next to her, the edge of her blanket draped across his lap and his head tipped back into the cushions with his eyes closed. As far as Darcy could tell, the infamous sniper was fast asleep.

Too tired to have much reaction (or give it much thought) Darcy shifted her blanket so it was covering both of them. She wouldn’t know if it was the presence of someone she knew to be super lethal, or just the sense of having another body around in general, but she managed to drop off into a heavy sleep pretty quick.

She got to know Clint a lot better over breakfast the next morning, and it became a friendly routine for them to crash on the couch on nights when one or the other was feeling rough. (There’d been a couple nights where Tony would stumble up from the lab and crash on whichever space was large enough, and on even rarer occasions, Steve would collapse into the recliner and do his best to sneak away before everyone else woke up the next morning.)

Natasha didn’t need caring for, so much as she opted to spend some of her free time with Darcy. 

Sometimes Darcy was suddenly dragged out of the lab for self defense training (she never made it back to the labs on those days.) But more often Natasha would pop up wherever Darcy was, and inquire into everyone’s wellbeing. It took Darcy a bit of time to put two and two together, and realize that Natasha would have these pop-up chats when she got back from her missions. (Darcy does her best not to think too deeply on this, as it puts a certain degree of weight on Darcy’s casual care-taking.)

At first Steve wasn’t really taken into consideration, as he had his own place to go home too, and when he wasn’t there or the tower, he was out looking for Bucky. (The shitshow of SHIELDRA had been a nightmare and a half that left both Darcy and Jane a little twitchy for a solid two months after.)

So of course that changed when he came home one morning, bruised, battered and bleeding, with Bucky in tow.

Darcy had been in the kitchen getting her first cup of coffee when the two soldiers stumbled in. Steve gave her a nod and a, “Morning Ms. Lewis” then promptly dropped Bucky and himself into a couple of chairs.

Still dressed in her Hulk pj pants, and Black Widow tank top, Darcy muttered a quiet “Fuckin’ Mondays.” And got to work making a mountain of pancakes, bacon, and eggs for the two to devour while their wounds healed. (There were a couple feeble attempts to help, and she’d just slapped them both away with her spatula.)

Given that Tower was a reinforced fortress in the sky, it only made sense for Bucky to hide out there, and Steve couldn’t even fathom leaving Bucky there on his own, so after some strategic room shuffling, Bucky moved into a room that was situated between Bruce and Steve.

Taking care of Steve was easy, and a lot of fun for Darcy. She helped him to work through his ever growing list of things to learn and catch up on, while also getting him to give her art lessons. (They did Bob Ross paintings every once in a while, and it was always hilarious, since Steve would try and make adjustments to outdo Bob.)

Bucky on the other hand was a bit more complicated. He had enough of his memories back to know who he was, and who Steve was, but he still had some brainwashing to work through. Like Bruce, he needed a calm, no sudden surprises environment. He’d stick to Steve most of the time, and other times he’d stay in his room. When Darcy started to notice how little he would eat, and how much weight he was losing, Darcy took matters into her own hands with a gamble.

Steve was in the living room working on a field report from their last mission, and Bucky had tagged along to sit on the couch and fiddle with his phone. It was just about time for lunch, and Darcy figured sandwiches would be fine, “Yo Barnes, mind giving me a hand with this? You slice and spread, I’ll assemble?”

For a brief second Darcy thought Bucky was going to refuse, as she’d called out to him so suddenly, his shoulders had gone back and his hands had frozen mid-fidget. Steve looked up from his papers and raised a brow at Darcy, trying to figure out what she was angling for. Bucky took in slow breath, and seemed to resettle before getting up. He had a confused, yet slightly amused expression when he joined her in the little kitchen space, “What did I do to warrant sandwich duty?”

“You looked bored, that’s what.” She chided back, and pushed a tomato into his prosthetic hand and a tiny kitchen knife into the other. 

He let out a huffed laugh, and settled into the task of prepping. 

While they worked to make a variety of sandwiches, Bucky would grab nibbles as he went. When the sandwiches were ready for distribution, Bucky took five of them for himself. 

Pleased her theory had been right, Darcy made sure Bucky helped her with at least one of the meals each day, and for the rest she had Jarvis send live video feeds to Bucky’s phone of the food being prepared. 

Natasha and Steve gave her private thanks for catching the problem and finding the solution. Bucky’s thanks came in the form of brutal game nights, where they’d square off with board games and video games. Some nights it was everyone in the tower playing (Pepper was banned from playing Monopoly), and others it was just the two of them (“I saw that Barnes! If you throw that blueshell I swear to Thor I will put ghost peppers in your soup tomorrow!”)

Three months after Bucky and Steve moved into the tower, Thor returned, and he didn’t come alone.

They’d all had a heads up that this might be a possibility, but no one had thought it would actually happen.

Loki, Destroyer of New York, God of Trickery and Chaos, was back on Earth…to finish his community service.

[leapfeed1]

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PLEASE REPORT ANY SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY. IF THIS INDIVIDUAL IS SEEN, CONTACT THE AUTHORITIES, HE IS CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS. BASIC INFORMATION IS AS FOLLOWS:

Date of Birth: Summer solstice, 2133

Birthplace: Tanta-Tai-Taiga, Diluvia (Taetrus)

Armament: Combat Knife, Emergency shield battery, Charger SMG, Brass-plated Left Prosthetic Arm

He is missing an arm, his fringe, parts of his mandibles. Heavy cracking, scarring, occasional tarnishing of plates. Most notable facial scarring is the crack to browplate (left) and a large partially exposed section on his beak from middle to cheekbone ridge (right), in addition to a horizontal knife scar on neck. Eyes are orange, plates are a tan-grey color as with skin.

Tbh maybe I should do the full write up on him... Big long fic...

Okay my boy Oberon, as of 2190 he's 57, and has spent most of that time poorly in various ways. Lovebird doctor turned soldier turned researcher and agent turned insurgent in cooperation with multiple separatist cells on Taetrus. Views himself as the having a duty towards a healthy ecosystem, looking at the political landscape as a forest that needs a protector. Definitely not arrogant.

(these pictures by noedenart on twitter, him with the twink but that's another story)

His life turned upside down during mandatory service on Shanxi that culminated in a seven days of torture and starvation by his human captors. He was eventually discovered by command and taken to a neutral field hospital that could treat him. Scarred mentally and physically, he managed to return home and found his husband had him declared dead to advance a political career. In exchange for his money, full custody, and a home far away from him, he left with his lab-grown son to Earth as the embassy's doctor- though, due to the heavy redaction on his data, the hierarchy viewed him as a potential asset. After a couple decades of cooperation, and plenty of extreme paranoia, he escapes with a ton of data after years of feeding information to separatist cells.

Now works to undo what he's done, with renewed belief that the Hierarchy must be pushed off Taetrus and eventually destroyed.

Also, his arm is a grenade, he's installed invasive life support systems in his body that allow him to temporarily kill himself (passing biometrics safely and seeming dead, allowing him to escape after the enemy lowered their guard) and his shield detonation (a la Andromeda turian soldier, me3 havoc trooper) allows him to break falls.

The full rundown hidden in here to save your a little bit of scrolling.

Oberon Gallus recounting events near the end of the Relay 314 Incident, 2157

Sleep was rough in the flying metal nest, but that's normal. Even after finishing his education, there was a lot of stress, especially considering he was now a ship doctor until a more qualified one can be allocated to the crew. Adjusting his armor one more time, he is interrupted by the ship comms. "Oberon Gallus, please report to the deployment deck."

The mission was simple, a squad taking out a dock so that the enemies can not drop supplies from orbit. They had demolitions, marines, infantry, and the ship doctor was brought as an emergency measure. The pack of turians is chipper, even if they were still their usual regimented selves. The mood was contagious, and Oberon wasn't in the least bit anxious even as he checked on his Predator pistol.

It wasn't until they were on the ground that the troubles began. The team had destroyed the docking area, preventing more reinforcements from arriving safely unless by land, a week's drive for them and a significant loss. Things weren't ideal still, there was a substantial retaliatory force closing in on the squad. There were not yet deaths on either side, and extraction was close.

The small ship was ready to leave, the crew clambering on to make it back to the safety of the frigate. Outnumbered, outgunned, it was their only hope for survival. Gallus was barely out of training, a researcher more than a soldier, with only a few distant years of military training patched up by rusty instincts. His broken nerve reflected just how inexperienced he was, mind racing faster than his feet.

I need to live, I need to do more, I need to see more, I need to help, thought the desperate soldier as he darted towards his way home. He broke the treeline, relieved, but they were not letting up, the enemy forces were still closing in. In these moments he felt small, his world felt small, to him the world was only the route to the shuttle.

He couldn't have expected the abrupt arrival of a stray bullet in his leg, likely a gun fired by accident- they couldn't even see him after all. It might have even been from one of the crew.

The lithe leg crumples, no longer able to support itself with the gaping hole in it. He tries to run but can't, he calls out for help but his squadmates keep running.

One looks him in the eyes, with either regret or indifference as the ship door closes. Oberon is still screaming for help, desperately calling to the departing ship.

The footsteps get closer, but more threateningly get slower. He hears the guttural yells of his assailants, and turns slowly. While before his fear was more generalized, it is now very much the opposite. He knows exactly what to be afraid of now.

They all stand around the young turian, and he is unsure of what to do. The creatures are still, in place for Gallus to examine them, and can only see in their eyes satisfaction at something to finally direct their own anger at.

The week is a haze, but he remembers acutely the fearful anticipation of being dragged back to their camp, the time he is questioned.

They grunt, they yell, they hold pictures and expect him to explain- the young turian is clueless, what little he can tell they ask despite the language barrier, he doesn't know.

When they still think he's holding out, they begin asking in the only way soldiers know to ask. The violence of it reminds him of turian culture.

His fringe is ripped out, cores and all during one questioning, though the leadup to the final break was a three minute affair. They elect to be less rough when they hear the unearthly screeching of a turian in agony, the ripping of connective tissue as the bony material uproots. One complains that his ears were ringing while Oberon goes into a state of semi-consciousness, his blood pooling in his cowl.

They give him water and food, but the food seems to impart no effect- his body is unable to process whatever he is being fed.

By the end of the next two days, his arm, untreated from an earlier session, was changing in color. The left was losing functionality at first from the breaking of segments of cuticle in addition to a partial fracture in his forearm, now it is festering. The infection is more than noticeable.

Each rotation becomes more of a stupor, tied down, tormented in the day, vision swimming. He begins to hallucinate after five days, seeing the wild beasts from his youth circling him, tents becoming trees, Orthrus diving to peck out his eyes. The captors reported they weren't able to get closer easily because he would claw at the site with his feet, flail wildly, moving his head to dodge nothing. Various animal calls could be heard quietly when they began, slowly rising in volume. The hallucinations heightened until all he could hear was the deafening shrieks of a forest.

After a 7th rotation, he saw three figures manifest. Two bleached turian skeletons with pale rotted flesh barely clinging to them. Between them, a mass covered from head to toe in moss and leaves, a shape like a person but all wrong. As they approach he feels time slow down, struggling against his bonds. Recognition flickers in that ancient part of his mind as kin, his late family whose deaths he witnessed.

"No, no no no! I'm sorry, I abandoned it all, I-"

They quickly interrupt, speaking in unison, the center figure with a voice of howling wind and creaking wood. "Abandoned? You have abandoned nothing, only placed yourself in that you would in the past oversee."

"But I lived far from nature, and now it comes to collect," Oberon protests, "I take but do not give."

"You live in nature as everyone else, only different in scope. A turian in a city is no more than a scurrying ant, what hubris lets you claim anything more? Do you stand on towers of mined metal and stone, then think yourself tall?"

He had no rebuttal for it. Again, they spoke.

"You never abandoned a post, only found a new ecosystem. This is your final reminder."

Now, only the middle one speaks, he struggles against his bonds, wildly kicking as the white figures flanking him restrain him.

"T h e n e x t t i m e I s e e y o u , l i t t l e

O B E R O N ,

y o u a r e r e l i e v e d o f y o u r p o s t a m o n g t h e l i v i n g ."

With that, his vision and mind went black.

He wakes up later in a white room, dimly lit, clean. He's got bandages on that he did not apply, in a strange room he's never seen. Panic sets in as both human and bareface turian nurses move in to restrain him. In his state of fear as they inject something into the softer base of his neck, he tries to punch one of them with his left hand, realizing no one is holding it down. Nothing happens.

Later he would find out that at the height of his delirium, a high ranking human in green came to inspect the site with some doctors robed in white, all of whom did not expect to find a tortured soldier. They came equipped to help their own, but found a POW in dire need of help instead.

The doctors brought him back to a facility where there were barefaced turians, doctors unaffiliated with the hierarchy that came to talk to the newly emerged humans, and to help them take care of any prisoners taken. Oberon's was not the most extensive healing needed, and by no means was he the only prisoner. He realized quickly that he had lost his left arm and his fringe, heavily wounded and scarred in both mind and body.

The next two months would be spent in the facility- contact had ended, and humans were recognized as newcomers to the milky way political arena, but he was still recovering. He talked to the doctors that helped him, old men and women that lost confidence in the Hierarchy, he spoke to humans now able to share information regardless of language with the updated translators. They would have to wear hoods or face away when they came into his makeshift room, to avoid sending him into a panic. He tried to understand why his crew would leave him, some of them soldiers he trained with and worked with in the years of bootcamp. None of it could be reconciled, but he was alive, and that was all that mattered at the time. It was not until he was able to get a ride back to Palaven that he learned, officially, he was dead.

\\

Oberon spent much of the previous period trying to contact his family and his superior officers, many of the bareface doctors that helped him did the same. However, his omnitool was damaged and destroyed in the operation, the bareface transmissions blacklisted by Hierarchy command as 'separatist dissidents.' Eventually they had to call it quits, giving Oberon some credits, clothes, and a cheap prosthetic before sending him off. He finally made it back home after hitchhiking his way to the Citadel on human cargo ships, making direct contact with turian military personnel working in General Oraka's entourage. Finally back in contact, a military shuttle took the one-armed turian back to Taetrus and a new omnitool issued to him. Several attempts at contact failed, it took him getting to the house he once lived to find out that things were not going to go back to normal.

Upon his arrival, he learned a horrible truth. Glasfann successfully launched a political career from the 'death' of a young, beautiful turian, a doctor, one killed by the violent newcomers to the galaxy. Missing assumed dead, rising in ranks on the back of that.

Demanding recompense if not answers, the now-assistant to the Primarch explained simply to Oberon that he was more useful dead than alive right now in a climate where many want to impose restrictions on humans, and requested he leave.

Remembering his hallucinations, he sees not the love of his life, but an apex predator viciously climbing to the top of his ecosystem. No, a scavenger, chasing away the proud beast that hunted its prey. Not invasive, in fact a normal facet of it. He leaves as requested, wondering if it's even his place to care that something acted in its nature.

Lost, betrayed, unsure of what to do next, he made a discreet call for one final favor. One that was given. Oberon gained custody of Robyn and a stable job in his field, those would be the price of his silence. In a disgusting show of ambition, he got both.

Going first to retrieve Robyn from the medical lab he once worked in, he on the way stopped by a place that redid markings. He had his sanded off before he went in, to his former colleagues it was a suspicious addition to his now frightening visage. To him, it was the turning of a new page. To the runt that he called his son, eyes still not opened, it was nothing and would only be his father.

Oberon and Robyn would spend a time next with his parents, now in a retirement community known for exceptional therapies, while he waited for the job. It was a three month period, Robyn himself only a few weeks out of the lab when it happened. Oberon didn't know it, but Robyn recognized Oberon's voice the moment he heard it, the one that spoke to him through the glass to him before he even emerged from the artificial womb. It wouldn't take long as the scarred father found for him to recognize him by sight, smell, feel as well. Oberon kept him in his cowl for many therapy sessions to his delight, his parents wishing they could see the son and grandson more often but not minding what they saw as a bond that could heal him far better than any doctor could.

The therapies physical and psychological helped substantially, and he was fitted for a prosthetic arm while he was there. He was worried what the future held, especially for Robyn. In the midst of this was a wandering mind, pondering the implications of those hallucinations. If the city is an ecosystem and turians only a part of it, what does that mean? If all are but wild creatures, why did the bareface turians help him? What is its logical extreme?

Whether it was calculated or simply the most available position, Oberon was given his new work, medical research is how it was described, but heavily classified. As a cover job, he was placed on earth as the on-staff doctor for their embassy. Not in any position to turn it down, he accepted. He didn't mind too much, as he found the position came with quite a bit of flexibility. His real work classified, it came with them wanting to keep Oberon out of the limelight. They preferred he didn't wander outside the embassy, he didn't want to go into a crowded human city. They wanted him to avoid populated areas, he wanted to visit nature and explore the exotic locale with his boy.

It wasn't until Robyn began going to preschool that he received his first assignment. He was given a small lab in the underground of the embassy that he could work on, and his project was a small thing, something that was going to be getting joint approval from both Hierarchy and Systems Alliance. To begin with, his duty was the creation of a ration that could be consumed by both turian and human, something that could be consumed regardless of chirality and have the energy to make up for the lack of proteins. Simple enough idea, difficult execution.

After the year it took during Robyn's time at school, a place he was unable to visit for the most part, he was given another assignment, this time more sinister, again with joint approval. Assistance with a bioweapon to be deployed against the nigh unkillable Vor'cha. He demanded an explanation from his commanding officers, and was given the simple explanation that it doesn't matter. The Hierarchy wants to create precedent for future cooperation between humans and turians, and a weapon is the perfect way for this moment where the Vor'cha set eyes on more planets.

Oberon is disgusted by the explanation before finally he realizes that the Hierarchy is no different from anything else, the very concept of a government is also a creature struggling for survival. Deciding to settle with this new forest as his prowling ground, Oberon finally agrees, willing to do whatever it takes to maintain these woods. If his place in nature is as a tool, then a tool he will be.

His role as a tool for the Hierarchy would see him again using a gun, as begrudgingly as it was. It saw his cowardice becoming his greatest ally as he fled various operations successful and unsuccessful. It saw adaptations that pushed the boundaries of what should exist in the first place.

The things he did began to sit wrong with him. Robyn, now five, wouldn't quite understand what it was Oberon drank when he thought Robyn was asleep. Oberon needed it for his nerves, he needed it to lower his guard so he could sleep.

It was eventually that he was moved out of the lab, given two to three trips once a month with the rest done remotely, even going abroad for up to eleven days. Often working with a small team as the 'lab director.' He still spent most of his time as an on-site doctor, but he began to do things he would regret. Things that saying no could get him or others hurt. Things that Robyn could never know. The joy of seeing Robyn grow up kept him going, somehow. It kept him hoping for a better future. He sent Robyn on camping trips with humans, taught him about survival in an effort to give him what he was given.

In this time he started a habit of outfitting his prosthetic with a grenade, a habit that would save his life many times over- few, after all, would be dumb enough to have one built in and powering their arm, so few as a result would suspect it to be used. The increasingly classified work saw his paranoia rise, heavily modifying his body in secret for threats that may never come. Halfhazard life support systems, heavily invasive tech that could even intravenously add blood to his organs and arteries alike. These were quite often shoved into his body by his own hand from behind cover, his body practically held together by zipties and duct tape. He even modded one so that it could temporarily shut off function of his brain and heart, an attempt to play dead that had the most terrifying field test of his life. The precautions he made, the things he did were off the books, fearing someone else knowing when they came to assassinate him. He knew he was a tool of something in a state of nature, and therefore that anything could end up being used against him.

During one project, he was able to make contact with a separatist group. Sent to infiltrate and sabotage their medical tech, Oberon's guard was lowered by the trust they ended up placing in him. He learned with heavy heart about how the FTL ship ramming that killed so many on his home planet of Taetrus was very likely a false flag, and how much harm the projects he was working on caused in a much more personal sense.

He was being given a map that described Hierarchy borders and influence, seeing a side of it he hadn't before. The image he was showed was comparable not just to a beast, but an invasive one only held back by similarly invasive creatures. They grew far past their starting place, nipping young cultural buds to feed their hunger and grease the wheels of industry with blood. Oberon saw the Orthrus that killed a herd's young, and realized suddenly that he was one of its talons.

A confession to the separatists paired with his decision to begin seeding information to them, feeding research data and operative movements to them as he continued working for the Hierarchy. Even before Robyn moved out to get higher education, he found that Hierarchy operatives were onto him. He ramped it up, believing he had little time, had to make sure that if they caught him it was while Robyn was abroad. He had the great misfortune, however, that they would attempt to attack after that time, on his son's wedding day while he was in grad school.

The gunshot is what woke him up. He was used to being shot, but not in his bedroom. The door is usually locked, he figured it out as soon as he saw the copy of his ID badge on the other's hip as he recoiled at the pain. A turian operative stood over him, face concealed as he fired two more into his target. All three went into the left side of his chest, coming out in his bed, blue blood splattering across the suit he was going to wear to Robyn's wedding. The turian's organs were already repairing as he set off one of the stimulant grenades he embedded in himself, a cocktail of combat drugs and hormones flooding his body. The turian agent wouldn't see anything after that, the blood-soaked blanket was thrown into his face, he reached for his knife only to find it wasn't on his hip. The silenced carnifex kicks back as its owner fires another shot, it would be the last. The assassin's warbling squawk of pain reports the moment his knife is returned to him, sinking into his stomach with Oberon's hand twisting in his gut.

Oberon had prepared for this day, he was quick to strip as he went down into his lab, an airtight basement in which he activated a protocol to evacuate all the air. No time was wasted, blood was intravenously added into his bloodstream as medigel worked quickly to plug the holes in his body (only moments before before his organs could be sucked out of it into the vacuum). Thinking fast and acting faster he shattered a few vials in the vents of the airless environment to ensure anyone that brought air back in would find themselves struck down by one of the many bioweapons he was made to engineer. It was a short trip to the other side of the room, where he entered the next airlocked room, a freezer. The hole in the floor linked up with a sewer, his bag of supplies that he had slowly smuggled in the contents of was inside. He was out of the city within hours riding a stolen boat, soon stowing away on (and collapsing in the cargo hold of) an amphibious barge on its way into orbit. The operatives that were sent to subdue him failed to find out he had an escape planned in time, they had assumed he was planning on barricading in the room and fighting them off. They lost two men trying to enter the room before they found the hole he escaped through.

In the leadup to 2185, Oberon was moving system to system trying to take down various outfits he once worked for, all the while hounded by bounty hunters and assassins. He was pronounced a war criminal and separatist, regarded on all his postings as 'highly dangerous,' many referred to him as a terrorist. Despite the title though, he killed very few in this time. He was a defector with little more than his gun, and, to put it lightly several truckloads of compact explosives supplied by other defectors. The occasional bounty hunter would die, of course. He'd warn them the building was about to explode, they'd go in anyway hoping to catch him. One slipped on a banana peel and hit his head on the corner of a coffee table. He feels guilty for laughing at that one. One time a guard shot a friend by accident. All the while, Oberon did what he did best, he ran. He runs in, sets explosives he got from a drop point, he runs out. Detonates when everyone's gone home, destroying the essential functions of the facility. Whenever someone decides to chase the bounty of Oberon, he ran.

He got incredibly proficient at the theatrics of faking his own death, learning just the right time to detonate his shields and break his fall, just the right time to disable his organ functions. He became a career killer for assassins because of his tendency to be alive the day after his death. One particular assassin was bragging on a video call only for him to walk behind the man in a grocery store wearing a bathrobe while he looked for vodka and half and half.

Recordings on file, now redacted. Segments of recordings pulled from nearby Omnitools and listening devices.

"Mom, that was so mean! Making me walk all the way back in the snow with that Orthrus. Can you help me clean it for the grill? Spirits mom, you don't have to save all the feathers, I know it's my first hunt on my own but-heh, thanks mommy."

“That’s the thirteenth example of abiogenesis, in just a few systems, one of them even on a gas planet and failed star. That being the case, why is the galaxy so empty? This field data combined with other datasets paints the picture of a much more lively galaxy. I can’t help but wonder why there isn’t more.”

"Waitwaitwait don't go! Don't, don't leave me here, please! I- oh. Oh no. Hello, uh, humans? This translator on, or...?"

"There he is! My little goblin! Come on, arms up, you're going into my cowl! Yeah, mom, we're heading to earth now. I'm… not sure how to feel about it. But it's steady work. Robyn might be the first kid to go there. He'll be fine, he's a curious kid. Real kind. It's me I'm worried about."

"Do you see that Robyn? That is a boar. They're wild, frenzied. You must not disturb them, especially in these cold months. Unless you plan on killing it, and if we do we can clean it and prepare it for the meal. No, we can't eat it, earth meat will hurt us. We're making this for your friends at school."

“Fuck, stop for a second- Oh, hey hey boss man, what’s going on? What did you need a vidcall for? What do you mean, of course everything is going fine, I’m just, uh, visiting someone while I have the spare time. What, what are you talking about, Lorik and I were just, uh, sparring. Yeah, uh. Thought we didn’t need shirts. And, uh, his pants must have, uh, fallen off. Listen, we’re getting off-subject, Julius. My cultures won’t be ready until about two more days in your time, so can you call me then? Spirits, get off my case. I’ll be off Noveria in a week, tops.”

“I don’t want to work in this anymore. I’m, I’m afraid, this isn’t research anymore, this is wrong. Yes, Robyn did just get his driver's license, I'm very proud of him, why do you… oh, you son of a- Here, I’ll, I’ll stay. I’m sorry, it won’t come up again.”

“--all of the data, lost, gone. I’m in pursuit, they’re not getting far until they make it to their ship-- FUCK there goes my spur-- oh god, this one’s barely an adult, they gave him a gun before even a turian would-- remaining arm losing blood fast. Had to use prosthesis to disengage. Requesting extraction, medical team, and a new prosthetic.

"Of course this isn't good. It doesn't matter. The Hierarchy and humans both ripped part of me away, and gave me back nothing in return. Still, what am I to them? An ant at best? If they chose to discard me as a tool, I accept it. If they choose to use me, I accept that too. It isn't fate, it is the way of things."

“Cerberus was here today. I never feel as guilty taking them out, but I should. That bothers me. They were after our data, we were close to the implementation stage. Would have increased the stress and heat limitations of muscles in turians, allowing greater levels of exertion. ‘Humanity first,’ I guess. What a bunch of assholes."

"Robyn, it's your first day at university, I can't tell what's crazier, that you grew up so fast or that you barely grew! Ow, ow, okay, sorry! I had to make the joke. Get out there y'little goblin, show this world what a scientist looks like. Or just show me. Or no one. Just, don't forget, the important thing is that you're happy."

“Fringe regrowth, they wanted help implementing but I thought I’d volunteer for trials. Of course it didn’t work, or I’d be on a vid all, and I'd be fucking happy. Yeah, apparently the reason it’s classified is the fact we had started developing some fancy AI to do it, but really long as you keep ‘em in check and shut them down before they display sentience it should be fine. What, what do you mean you’re on an open channel, fuck-”

“Hey, Obey Ron Kenobi here, just giving you an update. Okay, stop laughing, it’s not that funny. Yeah, anyway, the chemical is working fine. If put in water supply at the correct dilution, it increases the brittleness and reduces hardness of calcium-based biomineralized structures. Yes, it works on humans, we’ve been testing on rats for months now and it works. Why won't it work on humans. Yeah, yeah, I need to go, there’s a few tweaks in the report to make. You’re, you’re not recording this right?”

"Winter solstice, Noveria. 2178. Whole facility was ready to put up a fight, I gave one back. I was told to just get the research they had there, given a lot more firepower than usual. There were a lot of Krogan researchers there, I didn't know why. It wasn't until I reached the end that I found out what they were working on. Genophage research. They weren't that close, but they were making visible progress. Weren't even trying to destroy the genophage, just mitigate it. If they succeeded, Krogan would lose the stillbirths and sterility without gaining back old clutches. More of a workaround than a cure, really, I understood then why they didn’t tell me what it was. When I brought back the research, they just destroyed it personally. I… I struggle to see what we had to gain from that."

"I said before if I was only a tool, I didn't mind, but… that was wrong. They took almost everything from me, and though they will kill me I have decided I will no longer be used by them. If I'm a tool at their disposal, let's see just how easily they can dispose of me."

"Oberon to Enyojo, facility disabled. I was able to destroy its foundations and the data enough it will be too expensive to continue, they are in pursuit however. Send a shuttle, I- what do you mean when? I need it now! Okay, I can try and hide for a few days, fucker."

[armoredisopod]

Pretty fun event, i think i understood what happened in the story but since i don't usually pre-write these posts i kinda forgot like half of the things that happened in the event story since i read the event story in the first week this time xd

The stages are pretty fun, the difficulty solely depends on how good you are at managing the blight and the particularly tricky stages like HS-8, EX-1, EX-3 and S-2 really drives that point home

Due to the event scheduling i haven't even had the time to play RA2 at all, barely touched IS4 after the expansion update and literally only played the first stage in TFN4 so i'm glad to get this off my plate

I got jumpscared by Ling on the literal second daily pull so now i have 3 out of 4 Sui operators needed to activate Shu's SP feeding talent so that's nice

Perfect clears for the Rim Zone Security Service locations, after the hell that was Southern Security Service with that fuckass ice cream truck and The Thirsterrrrr i'm actually glad these were piss easy, especially since there's still no actual reason to farm SSS because they're still making tier 1 module data blocks artificially scarce for no reason