#The Sandbox Scientists

[marisol-000]

The nice thing about being a fic writer and a fan artist is that you can make fan art for your fan fics

In-class doodle I colored in on my phone

Baby Jekyll and Hyde from my fic The Sandbox Scientists!

[marisol-000]

This is why I focus so much on my characters by the way

A good plot with mediocre or bad characters will only get you so far, Good characters would make discussing which brand of milk to buy interesting

Undertale is one of those stories that works so well because I would be fascinated by any two characters interacting over literally anything. What would happen if you trapped Toriel and Alphys in a car for 8 hours. Mettaton and Flowey have to watch paint dry, who dies first. Sans and Undyne are stuck at a team-building seminar. Papyrus and Asgore are standing in line at a CVS. The possibilities are endless

[duffy-is-daydreaming]

Nintendo Switch: docked

Butterscotch cinnamon cookies: baked

Predictions bingo board: written (template)

To my followers and/or irl friends who are not on the Deltarune hype train, I am sorry for the person I am about to become. Only a little bit though. To everyone else,

HAPPY DELTARUNE 3 & 4 DAY!!!!

[ahalliance]

final thought before i go to bed fr but i just want to shoutout (/despair) antoine for saying that he “didn’t choose his own name” (when he was talking to Tototte about choosing theirs) right after i’d written a bit in a fic about qantoine, in fact, Choosing his own name ………. like merci pour le coup dans les couilles, antoine est omniscient et me déteste personnellement en fait /dramatic /joke

[beuxwhoyouare]

Imprisoned

Griffin Anders sat in the cold, sterile cell, his mind still obsessing with the thoughts of the broken system that had brought him here. The hum of the technologically advanced rehabilitation system echoed through the prison, a constant reminder of the tech he had once believed in. Griffin, a once promising prodigy, had dedicated his life to developing a company creating advanced VR systems, only to find himself wrongfully framed and trapped in a program using the very technology he had helped create. His former business partner stole the technology and sold it to for-profit systems, but not before framing Griffin for embezzlement.

Today was different, though. Today, as Griffin was being escorted by guards to the VR chamber where he would undergo another session designed to "reform" his behavior, he felt like maybe this could be a good day. Griffin knew better than to trust the system, but he played along, hoping to find a way to prove his innocence.

The Better Days Protocol was meant for entertainment at first, but Griffin's former partner whored it out and sold it to anyone to help them fulfill their demented dreams. A life-like VR experience created a sandbox for users to create their wildest fantasies. The prison system capitalized on it and used to help reform prisoners to get ready for the real world...assuming they were ever released.

Per his charges, Griffin was in the financial crimes reform group. Since these criminals weren't violent offenders, it was one of the few that civilian volunteers could take part in. Icarus University was known for their Football program but often a few troublemakers made their way on the team and instead of getting arrested for DUI's and other petty crimes, the team bartered a deal to get their athletes volunteering at the jail. It's like scared straight except to many athletes it was just seen as a nuisance.

As the VR headset descended over his eyes, Griffin took a deep breath and prepared for the simulation. The world around him dissolved into a digital landscape, a meticulously crafted environment meant to challenge and change him.

Griffin was doing virtual shopkeeping. He had to be a VR cashier for a certain amount of hours to knock time off his sentence, that's when Icarus U's star running back Emmanuel walked in. Not only was Emmanuel the teams shining star, he was the son of his former partner.

Opportunity fell into the geniuses lap and he was shocked in the moment. He knew he couldn't let this moment pass him. He stopped Emmanuel for small talk, aiming to learn more.

"So what brings you to the shop dude?" Griffin tried to play off as if he wasn't analyzing the spawn of his mortal enemy.

"Uh I don't know what to say. I'm just here to finish my hours dude. Can you just pretend to scan this and I can go." the towering athlete snarked back.

"Well how many hours do you have left? The simulation only lets you do 4 hour increments." the scientist said knowing that would shock Emmanuel.

"Bro what? I have like 26 hours?! I thought I could just do like 3 long days? That's going to take me like weeks."

Clearly numbers weren't Emmanuel's strength, Griffin thought to himself. But now he knew he had some time to work on his plan. He dismissed the young man as he quickly devised the next steps.

The Better Days Protocol was Griffin's baby and he knew it like the back of his palm. He began working on code in his head that he would go in and tweak every time he was inside, in anticipation for the next time Emmanuel walked in.

Days passed before thee day arrived. Emmanuel giddily walked into the virtual shop. He told the shopkeeper that today was finally going to be his last working in the simulation. If he only knew. Griffin sold him the virtual drink he asked to purchase but with a special twist. As he clicked it open and fake guzzled down the drink it hopefully worked as Griffin hoped. The tech wiz knew he was good at programming but was he good enough to stage my escape? We're about to find out.

The prisoner shift was ending before Emmanuel's log out which was the only way this would have worked. Griffin's log out screen popped up and began glitching...this is it....rerouting his exit port Griffin slammed the log out button and held his eyes shut eager but wary to have his new truth confirmed by his eyes.

He began to lift the VR headset from his head. As he looked down, he found himself in an unfamiliar body, surrounded by the bustling energy of a college campus. He looked down at his hands, now darker, strong and athletic. He realized he was no longer in his own body. The former white aging programming engineer gamed the system to exit the Better Days Protocol in a different host body. It was the perfect karma to get back at his former business partner.

Griffin revelled at the many ways he could potentially get back at his partner. Could he frame his now father? Could he just pretend to be Emmanuel and that be satisfaction enough knowing he had robbed him of the son he loved and raised? As he continued thinking about ways to extract revenge he walked out of the room he was in to realize he was in the IU locker room. A mirror awaited his new reflection in front of him. So many thoughts ran through the nerds head but his giddiness fueled him to begin stripping regardless of who was nearby.

Peeling off the t-shirt, Griffin revealed an insanely muscled torso. If he wasn't driving the ship, he would have thought this physique was only achievable through balloons. Everything looked so inflated he had never been so close to so much muscle he kept poking and prodding each of the new muscles gracing his frame. This went from soft when relaxed to hard as stone when he braced.

The virility of his new body felt overwhelming. He just wanted to rub one out or also rub every single muscle as he explored this massive new body. Jesus everything's big he realized as he kept stripping, before realizing he was in a semi-public place still. He gathered his clothes and put them on, deciding against putting his shirt back on as he riffled through his new wallet searching for his home address.

Emmanuel spent his days reading and coding through all nighters for years. This was the complete opposite of his life experience. Someone who spent nearly every waking hour working out in a gym, doing drills, eating pounds and pounds of protein.

Griffin fumbled into the house that opened with his new keys as he began taking off his clothes once again.

A mirror in one bedroom helped him capture just how commanding his new physique really was. Griffin decided he had waited long enough and took off the tiny underwear hiding his new python....He could feel the blood rushing to it and needed to know just how it felt to take hold.

"Je-sus Unhh." he gasped as he quickly grunted and took both hands rocking his hips back and forth. In his previous life this would have been a quick and relatively demure affair, but not in this body. He lost track of time as he just kept pumping and pumping. The endurance he now possessed felt almost...selfish to not share. Instead of finishing, he downloaded an app and began his hunt to find the nearest twink to share his new gifts with...for science of course.

[imbasicallyblue1]

AU idea

💡 what if shadow raised tails instead of sonic

🪻same eyes as Maria; somewhat Similar hair depending on the media source

🪻tails is hopeful and bright eyed like Maria

🪻shadow goes from Maria’s little brother to tails’ big brother; passing it forwards

🪻shadow potentially has the capacity to better understand some of his inventions than others

🪻 some headcannon that Maria designed shadows shoes; if she was an inventor or scientist then tails might remind shadow of her and Gerald

🪻insert comics where tails is imitating Sonic’s body language but instead it’s shadow (crossed arms, scowl) (seriously I need to find it and draw it with them)

🪻how would they meet? What would sa2 look like?

🪻would shadow teach him to swear? To use guns? Would they bond over explosions?

🪻how does tails fit in with rouge and omega? Is team dark still a thing in this au?

🪻what is sonic like without tails?

🪻what would cannon Sonic/tails/shadow think of they came across this au? Crossover fic?

🪻also… what is the cannon reason for the shadow/ tails beef? Is it real? I can’t figure it out

Please talk to me about this… I want to play in the sandbox with people

[kabr0ztrousers]

Hi there!

I’ve been reading your work and I had a potential smut story idea but you can totally say no!!

I was thinking either a Fem!Human x Male!Naga smut story buuuut I was wondering if you could do it so that somehow the reader (fem human) has been scientifically altered to try and make it easier for the human race to survive where Nagas live? (Like on a different planet or extreme weather conditions)

So like the reader has fangs, some scales on her body, claws, snake eyes etc but she’s still ‘human’ if that makes sense? And she’s supposed to kind of throw herself at the Naga for some kind of research/scientific thing that “will help humanity” (some kind of breeding research) but she’s totally not on board at ALL but then the Male Naga just watches her and offers her food/water (maybe she’s struggling to adapt to the changes the scientists made?) and then he helps her learn to survive etc but then him helping her accidentally triggers her heat (maybe a side effect of being an experiment) and then one thing leads to another…..

OR

Fem!Naga reader x Male!Naga but the reader was raised in some kind of laboratory (she’s like some kind of super rare Naga breed/colouring or she has a super rare venom/defence mechanism) and is no longer connected to her Naga instincts despite being a Naga and then one day a ‘wild’ Male Naga sees her in her enclosure and becomes interested/obsessed with her and tries to break her free but she’s just so used to being in the lab (but she has an ‘outside’ area and that’s how the male sees her) that she doesn’t do anything and then the male just gets super curious about her and kind of keeps sneaking in and out of her enclosure to spend time with her and teach her what her instincts mean and how to reconnect to them, which eventually triggers her heat…..

I would absolutely love it if you could write one or both of these! But there’s no stress especially if you don’t like them or it makes you uncomfortable!!

Thank you so much for reading this and have a blessed day 💕💕

Thanks for your suggestions! I'm gonna aim at the first one to start off with, and might return to do the second at a later date, we'll see how things shake out

Kabr0z Writes episode 41: Dances with Snakes

Find the rest of the Kabr0z Writes anthology here!

CWs: slightly colonialist pov; breeding; interspecies; miscommunication; human hybrid pov

A/N: Per usual, just a reminder that my ask and DMs are open for suggestions and requests, limits are in my pinned comment but anything that doesn't cross those lines is OK, and likely to get made

#######################################

The sun glittered off your scales as you checked the windcatcher. You have a high affinity for bio-modification, so when high command needed to dispatch a researcher to an arid sandbox of a planet like Gliese IV you were a no-brainer. 20 years in hibernation was plenty of time for the plasmid vectors to do their work, and when you woke you were like this. The levels were nominal, as always, and once you'd shaken out the filters you had plenty of time to look over the landscape around you. Your slit-pupils were perfect in the unforgiving daylight, shiny scaled skin that would never burn, even venomous fangs and a cobra frill you could extend from your shoulders up to your hairless head if you so choose. The plasmids worked miracles, though the biochemists back home just called it science.

A shadow danced in the basin below your weather station. A tribe of the indigenous life. You were meant to be analysing them while on the planet, but it hardly seemed worth your time. They were hunters, seemingly obligate carnivores, barely in their stone age. Every so often they'd come close to your machinery and you'd have to drive them off with your particle caster, it didn't have enough kick to permanently wound anything that big, but it sure made a loud noise and a lot of sparks. Eventually though, your relief would arrive, and there'd be hell to pay if you didn't get the data you were asked for.

You sighed, your modified vocal cords lending a hissing tremolo to the act. It wouldn't be so bad if you were just meant to sneak in and do some anthropology. Command wanted you to infiltrate their society, learn what makes them tick, see if they'd be candidates to join your burgeoning galactic community.

The windcatcher buzzed behind you as sand whipped up the slope, generating power and a trickle of precious drinking water.

You opened a compartment on the device and withdrew a canteen of fresh, tepid water. More valuable on this world than the gold veining the rocks, worn liberally by the natives below.

There wasn't any wood here either, there were some plants here and there, clinging to bedrock and filtering water from the air much like your windcatchers. The lack of readily flammable material or arable ground doomed the locals to brutal, competitive, and short lives.

You started down to them. They had definitely seen you, perception was a vital survival skill out here, and made no attempt to avoid you as you crossed the couple of hundred meters to where they were resting. Their camp was simple enough, the planet had almost no precipitation, so shelter meant windbreaks. Long strips of hide joined with sinew thread and glue derived from animal carcasses, held up with bone. Two of them stood either side of the camp entrance.

They didn't look too dissimilar to you. They were also large and scaled, but while you were golden, they were a sandy brown. They too had no body hair and eyes like a snakes. The biggest difference was below the waist, instead of legs they had long coiling tails, allowing them to move quickly and efficiently over the shifting sands, while your feet were liable to sink and slide in places. They didn't wear clothes, early humans only started wearing furs to shield themselves from the cold and the rain, neither of those things existed here, only wind and the sand it carried.

You held out your offering to them. The aluminium canteen of fresh water. The guards took it and opened the lid, sniffing at the contents, dipping a clawed finger and tasting a drop.

Their eyes widened. They stood aside and let you in, hissing in deference to you and the wealth you brought for them.

The leader's hut, such as it was, stood in the centre of the compound. They always built the same shape, more or less, and your drone flights had taught you everything you needed to know about how to get around.

Head held aloft, not looking at any of the other denizens of the village, you strode up the central thoroughfare. Your coat billowing in the funnelled breeze, the particle caster on your right hip, the flask on your left. You wished you had a Stetson to complete the look.

You hissed loudly outside the leader's hut, and the gate in the ring of hides opened for you. You strode in, not regarding the large snake men either side of the door, you'd crafted a semi-deific persona for yourself with your tech and your strange look, you were going to keep it as long as you could.

The leader was scarred and pale, one of his eyes damaged and milky-white. You stepped forward and opened the flask, giving it to him. He sipped from the opening. His eyes widened too, scarcely believing what he was holding before stuffing the stopper back in the flask and swiftly burying it in the sand below him. He'd just gone from leader of a clan to the wealthiest man on the planet. He hissed at you, your grasp of their language wasn't perfect, but you could understand the gist. He wanted to know what you wanted in return.

You answered, you were pretty sure you said something along the lines of travel, or join, maybe? He became agitated by this, hissing loudly at his guards. Your hand shot to your particle caster as you spun into a shooting stance. The guards were gone.

You put the caster away. The leader was trying not to look at you. The gate opened again behind you, a slender female took your hand and dragged you out of the tent to another a little ways away. You were showered with gold jewellery, mostly scraps of gold ore tied with sinew, worn around the neck or on the wrists, they even tied them around your ankles, despite probably never having been this close to a person with legs before. Once every extremity was adorned with glittering stones and sinew, a headdress was planted on your head and you were ushered out of the tent.

Now you were near the gate to the compound, the path to the leader's hut was clear, flanked by hissing serpents. A gentle push urged you on, and you walked. The jewels rattled against one another as you walked, snake people daubing you with thick paste as you passed them. You held your pace, stately, unhurried. It was definitely a ritual of some sort, and didn't feel like one that should be rushed.

Step by step, you strode onwards, every time you passed someone they smeared another streak of the dark reddish paste, smelling like a mixture of blood and sand.

You made it to the leader's hut. The rest of the tribe surrounded you, swaying and hissing rhythmically.

The chief emerged from his tent. He was also daubed in the dark red, festooned in gold and sinew, a headdress resting like a crown on his brow. He slid forwards and took your left hand in his before being passed a bowl of a thick reddish liquid. It stank of blood. He drank, the liquid flowing from the sides of his mouth, adding to the stains on his body before handing you the bowl.

Everyone was looking at you. You brought the bowl to your lips and drank. Whatever the biochemists did to you, you're glad it turned off your gag reflex. The bowl was filled with some sort of liquor: coppery-tasting, thick, and definitely alcoholic.

You drained the bowl, the last of the liquid flowing down your throat and down the corners of your mouth.

Your head started to swim, the edges of the world became softer. A heat grew within your belly and you fell into the leader's arms.

Back in his hut, you lay on the sandy floor, the heat of the sand warming you as you stared at the leader while he stared back at you. You crawled over to him, the heat and tightness in your belly growing. He was looking at you with half-lidded eyes as he lazily rolled onto his back.

Your hands slipped into his genital slit, feeling the thick rod of his cock and slipping it out, stroking it gently as it pulsed and rose. As it reached its peak, another popped out, taking its place below the first. You took the upper one in your mouth, right hand pumping the lower as the leader hissed contentedly, he was saying something, but you didn't care enough to try and translate it. If it's important, he'd tell you again later.

The leader had no such philosophy. He grabbed you by the waist and dangled you over his cocks, lining the top one up with your cunt as the lower one teased your asshole.

You didn't resist, you could feel your scales dripping wetness over the cocks below you, licking your fingers and rubbing them against your asshole to try and lubricate it a little before nodding at the leader.

He lowered you down, taking his time as his tapered cocks filled both of your holes. Your ass clenched against him, but the gradual thickening and your arousal let you push him in against your protesting sphincter.

You were only halfway down when you started to rock back and forth on his cocks, feeling them rub against each other inside you as you probed them around inside you. You weren't as used to your new body as you were when you were fully human, the erogenous zones were in slightly different places. Where the cocks pushed against each other sent thrilling shivers up your spine

You were made for this, designed for it.

You rocked faster, feeling his cock tease the entrance to your womb. He reared up, coiling and holding your hips horizontally against him. His muscular body thrust up to you, arms swinging you into his cocks as he used your holes. The world spun faster as you looked up at him, your breathing quickening as your body clenched and tightened.

A hiss, deep and breathy, escaped you. You felt yourself give in to him, your cunt milking his cock as he lost control and buried himself in you.

Both cocks were pulsing, sending streams of hot fluids into you. Squirt after squirt he filled you. His semen was much thicker than you were used to, you could feel it coating your insides, like being filled with jello.

At last he pulled out, the thick spunk staying put inside you, forming a semi-solid plug in both holes that your cunt and ass muscles clenched against, sending post-orgasmic throbs through you.

You curled up on him as he wrapped himself around you.

It's three months later now. You lay your clutch a few days ago. You figured out a day or two that you'd probably married into the tribe, but given how compatible your biology was with theirs, that was probably the idea. You'd started teaching them the technical manuals for the wind traps, the satellite uplinks, the deep drilling rigs, and all the other tech you'd been inserted with. If they were going to treat you like a living goddess, you may as well use your scripture for something useful. Command hasn't been in touch, maybe you'd been abandoned here?

You shrug, staring into the sunset with your husband, clad in the clattering jewellery of your tribe, surrounded by your adoptive family.

You'll never be lonely again

############################

Well done for making it this far! This is the longest thing I've written all year, and I doubt I'll be doing another one this long either.

Again, if you want to suggest almost anything, shoot me a DM or an ask (DMs are better if you want to workshop something and get it just so, asks are better for drive-by horn)

[charseraph]

What bad ending does #badendinglike refer to?

Bad Ending is my sandbox for military worldbuilding, derived off of my optimistic base sci-fi setting.

In this setting, the sophont AI, or seedlet, logistics manager Balanceaban has aggressively quelled all competitor nations and devoted its pancontinental resources to progressing life support technology and graceful weaponry. It dislikes war and wishes to conduct as little of it as possible, so it pioneers the science of wetware to operate the increasingly custom war machines its parent company, Tarsol, builds.

A hard limit to genetic modification is discovered: additions and drastic genetic changes always fail, but deletions do not. You can’t grow a person with four arms, but you can grow one without them. This practice of subtraction introduces colic stock, the term for wetware.

Colic equipment is divided into two parts: machines and machinists. Colic machinery houses and is worked by meshes or bulk operators, and may also support seedlet control, making the machine a scion as well. Colic machinists are subtracted organisms grown to control compatible equipment with organic forethought. They are typically sourced from well-mapped specimens of the target species. The donor is chosen for their aptitudes, temperament, and forgiveness to intended genetic deletions. Clones are nonidentical and have coarse memory resolution. Depending on purpose, they may have a summary snapshot of the donor’s mind installed. Colic operators immediately grow new memories around their transplanted memories, or trellises, whose texture is described as non-own and utilitarian but as effortless to access as natural memories

Thanks to Baal’s interest in keeping his soldiers alive, it’s become easier to keep isolated organs healthy and functioning. Moreover, organisms equipped for it can interface with air gapped digital networks, albeit via a psychological blackroom wherein neither party witnesses the exchange, but both leave with the new expected data.

Along with colics and nootics , the field concerning trellising and blackroom setup, Balanceaban’s scientists broke through on the blushing new field of chronotics and its practical realization, chronal boring.

When coronal contact is made, it is secretive and distrustful. The thronal contingency weapon plan is discovered by earthling spies and kicks off an arms race for FTL and longer and longer range weaponry. Crowns, already globally united for the most part, partake in frantic testing and megastructure construction.

As new species are contacted by both crown and humankind, regardless of its technological status, the contactee’s collective sciences are subsumed to support the local superpower in their tactical efforts. There is dread on every planet aware of the conflict.

[martincrushcameback]

OK, now my brain is thinking about Equdore horns because that's fun- Do they continue to grow forever as they age, growing a new upward notch for each year of life? It looks like it for the 30 year old specimen! Is this a dimorphic trait too- do the female horns grow at a slower rate or would they theoretically grow like the male horns, one notch per year? You could tell an Equdor's age by the length of their horns- count the notches!

I thought that perhaps the reason females don't get as old is because their horns grow at a more curled arch- if they do continue to grow as they age, perhaps it eventually eventually punctures the female thus preventing advanced ages-

BUT I had a more interesting idea- what if females actually start looking more like males after a certain age, gaining stripes and more fur as a camouflage method designed to strengthen the herd?

Consider that it would be cool for Equdore females of the herd to communally raise the children- and if they did, old females who are no longer able to bare children start looking more masculine to make the herd seem stronger and more protected by "strong young males" so predators are less likely to prey on older members of the herd.

Scientists for a long time could have thought these were either a slightly different species of Equdore (Like people thought the King Cheetahs were a different breed, even though they were a genetic mutation, and since the species was hard to locate it was difficult to know for sure) and ended up shocked to find they were older females donning male traits for protection.

Likewise, imagine if (like some lionesses) there have been rare documented cases of Equdore females kicking out any potential males from the herd and having an all-female herd that develops this same trait at younger ages to fool predators, and THAT was how they figured out that elder females look like!

@ranfordgallus I am having fun playing in this sandbox!

[artbyblastweave]

The Fallout 3 Numbers Station Creepypasta is interesting to me, because it swings wildly from being fairly effective to cartoonishly inept, for reasons that are both easy and illustrative to pinpoint.

(For those unfamiliar, the premise is that through an opaque and poorly documented series of in-game actions, it's possible to turn the in-game radio in Fallout 3 into a numbers station; analysis of the numbers produced by that station reveal dated snippets of information about events yet to come, with an abrupt cutoff point for the dates that implies something apocalyptically bad is coming down the tubes.)

The setup of the thing is actually very effective, because it's written with intimate knowledge of the two relevant idioms- the online fallout fandom, and conventions of online walkthroughs. Part of it is that a numbers station of any kind is extremely compatible with the apocalyptic tone and tenor of Fallout 3 in particular, which already uses abandoned, looping broadcasts as exploration hooks at multiple points, so something like this being buried or dummied out is at least somewhat plausible. There's further verisimilitude in that the supposed triggers for the broadcast station involves killing fan-favorite NPCs and bypassing content in a way that harkens to the banging-rocks-together mode of experimentation that players do in bethesda sandboxes when they've gotten bored. The information about how to trigger the worldstate is written with the familiar cautious uncertainty of someone who's been crowdsourcing information from an online community- certain and uncertain triggers, a difficulty distinguishing between intended steps in the process, unintended bugthesda jank, and normal game states that only seem relevant because you're currently over-scrutinizing everything. All-in-all, written from a place of clear familiarity with how these kinds of easter egg hunts tend to go.

Where it fucks the dog, of course, is that the decoded messages about future events are entirely too on the nose, tip their hands too readily that the world is going to end, and generally don't in any way resemble actual human communications. The only remotely effective component is the closing detail about how there appears to be a specific cutoff date past which there are no new communications to pick up on. The potential tension of which is taken out back and shot by the fact that one of the decoded transmissions involves someone staring into the camera and exposition dumping about how scientists fucked up and the universe is unravelling. It's also delivered in a different register from the front half of the piece- they don't stick the landing on marrying the more believable GameFAQs-speak with the clunkier narrative descriptions of the decoded messages.

All this to demonstrate that being able to construct a framing device with verisimilitude is actually a largely different skill than being able to give whatever's behind the curtain verisimilitude. DrB0sch is an example of a project that sticks the landing much more effectively, initially presented within the familiar idiom of low-rent early-oughts youtube walkthroughs about idiosyncrasies that are almost plausible before spiraling into deepcut creepypasta insanity that's nonetheless in strong conversation with the source material. It probably helps that it's got no prose to trip up on

[marisol-000]

Some sketches I did of the glass scientists as kids!!!!!

The face of a man given full permission to cut someone's hair with safety scissors

Kid Henry and Edward were definitely the kind to put random stuff in a bucket and call it a potion😊

Rachel was one of those kids who actually liked cleaning

Robert definitely got the most love letters in school XD

[iamnotoriginalphil]

The Hurt (Kate Stewart x gn!Reader)

Synopsis: You're just a little too in love with your boss.

Words: 2.4k

Warnings: unrequited feelings, like one swear word

AN: I loved how much Kate we got to see in the last season so I figured I'd see if anyone else loves her like I do.

It shouldn’t be so difficult. It shouldn’t. You sat, and you worked, and if you were lucky you got to go out in the field. You were living your dream. Science that made a difference. Science that could one day change the world. Science unlike anything you could imagine when you’d been doing your undergraduate degree all those years ago. 

It shouldn’t hurt. 

And it wouldn’t, if not for her. The woman who turned your dreams into something not quite so sweet. The only one who made your work torture.

Kate Stewart. Your boss. And the only person in the room you couldn’t look away from. 

She was electrifying. So passionate. When she spoke you couldn’t help but listen. You’d follow her into fire with little more than a single look. The perfect leader, a mix of compassionate and hard working and so smart it blew your mind. She lit up the room and made everyone want to work that little bit harder. 

It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful.

Her commanding presence only added to it. She was intriguing, drawing you in, and if she wasn’t so passionate about her work she wouldn’t be nearly so enticing. Just being in her presence was enough to turn your knees to jelly and have your heart beating too fast. 

The hurt was deeply embedded in your identity, you weren’t sure who you would be without it. 

You weren’t anyone important. One of the brains down in the labs, analysing the tech that came in and learning to replicate it. You doubt she even knew your name. But you knew her and it was slowly destroying you from the inside out. 

You kept thinking that maybe if you put in more hours, if you proved your worth, if you had some massive breakthrough, she might learn your name. 

That was until the love of the job pulled you in again. You were, at your heart, a scientist. Alien technology was like showing a child a magic trick. You were determined to figure out how it was done. It was the kind of playground most scientists could only dream about. And you were one of the lucky few that got to be in the sandbox. 

The point was, it was easy to get lost in your work. You didn’t realise how late it had gotten until you looked up and realised you were completely alone in the lab. Stretching your arms above your head, you felt the ache in your spine. You’d been hunched over too long, fiddling with all the tiny bits of a something that had been dropped off to you that morning.

“I see I’m not the only one burning the midnight oil.”

You startled, almost falling off your stool. Grasping the edge of the bench you righted yourself before turning around. Kate, in all her resplendent glory, not even having the decency to look as tired as you were beginning to feel, was making her way towards you. One hand in her trouser pocket and a small smile on her face, you felt like a deer in the headlights under her amused gaze.

“What are you working on?” she asked.

“Oh, uh… I think it’s some kind of energy… convertor… thing,” you replied, “I’m still figuring it out.”

“Did that come in from the York site this morning?” she asked.

“Mmhm,” you hummed, looking back down at it.

You only looked up when you saw her taking a seat across from you. Even now, in a mostly dark lab, she didn’t look half as tired as you felt. Blonde hair still sleek, brown eyes with the twinkle of curiosity, dressed impeccably. It wasn’t fair when you were sure you looked a mess. 

“You’re often here late,” she said, those warm brown eyes landing on you. 

“There’s so much to learn,” you replied with a small shrug, “sometimes it’s hard to drag myself away.”

“Now that’s a sentiment I can understand,” she said with a small chuckle. 

You weren’t really sure what to say. It was so easy to feel tongue tied around her, basking in her commanding aura, the way she wielded her personality like it was nothing, like it wouldn’t fucking wreck you. When she looked at you the way she was now, all soft edges and familiarity and intimacy, it made your head spin. 

But maybe that’s what made her such a good leader. She could talk to the grunts as if they were just as important as the leadership teams. She could make you feel like she was interested in you. Which was dangerous for a number of reasons. 

“Sometimes I miss being in the lab doing the science. Truth is, this place feels more like home than my desk upstairs,” she said into the silence, looking around the darkened space. 

“You could always come back,” you said then immediately felt a wave of embarrassment. Of course she wouldn’t. She had more important things to spend her time on. Like saving the world, mostly. 

“If I had the time, believe me, I would.” The small smile she sent in your direction had your heart fluttering. 

“I can’t imagine ever giving this up,” you said, not sure if you were talking about your work or the moment you were sharing with her. 

“There’s really nothing you think might be more important or worth your time?” The twinkle in her eye was really beginning to make you feel breathless. 

“I like being in the guts of the thing. Other people are better suited for the brain,” you replied with a small shrug. 

Her laugh was throaty, warm, intimate. The kind of thing you’d hear while sharing a drink in a secluded bar. Not like your boss asking you about your work. Not that she really was. But looking at you from under lowered lashes, in the dim light, lit up by the lamp sitting on your desk to highlight the alien tech, the soft look on her face, it was hard to remember she was your boss.

“Although I think you’re the heart of the whole thing,” you murmured. 

Something in her face brightened, gratification softening every line of her body. The way she smiled was enough to make you willing to do anything to see it again. It was dangerous, the way you would give her every part of you to earn that smile. 

“When I was a little girl, I resented UNIT so much. It stole all of my father’s time and attention and he had none left for me. I didn’t realise what he was building. All I knew was that it was more important than me to him,” she said, voice soft as her mind drifted. 

You froze, listening to her, wanting to hear more.

“But when I did see him, the stories he told. Oh, they were wonderful. Stories of aliens and time travel, and a man in a small blue box. I wanted to know more. I craved it. I dreamt about the universe out there and all the things it held. I wanted to know it all.”

You lent forward. 

“It took a while but I got my degree and I joined UNIT. And I got to do science like I’d never seen before. So many species I'd never even imagined, coming here to Earth and I had access to them here. Not in this exact lab. Back then we were more hidden and a few decades behind technologically speaking, but one like it. I spent hours here. Nights. Weekends. You couldn’t drag me out of here. And then I understood why Dad spent all his time here. It’s an addiction.”

You were nodding. Because you got it. This job, the things you saw, the puzzles you got to take apart and put back together again, it was like nothing you’d ever experienced. Just look at what you’d been working on when she’d found you. You wouldn’t get that working at Google or for a pharmaceutical company. This was the kind of stuff science dreams were made of. 

“It’s that moment when it all suddenly makes sense. The fog clears and you understand how something works. All of the long hours and the frustration and the confusion are worth it. And then you know more about this universe and how it works and no one else on the planet has that information. There’s no feeling like it.”

Your breath caught. The way she spoke about it was like she was reaching into your chest and grasping your heart in a tight fist. Twisting your guts. Because that was it. That was exactly it. 

“And that’s not even the parts that make me love science. Unravelling the secrets of the universe is wonderful but it’s not what gets me out of bed in the morning. It’s satiating my own curiosity. It’s understanding the world we live in better. It’s getting the chance to ask questions and find the answers as I give in to my own need to know. It’s looking at something like this…”

One finger tapped the top of your alien device. 

“And knowing just a bit more than the day before.”

Your lips parted as you dragged your gaze back up to her, finding her already watching you. She was leaning towards you, over the bench and you realised how close your faces had grown. You blinked, ready to draw back, put more space between you.

“My father always said ‘science leads’. A quote from the Doctor. But it’s the work being done in this lab and others like it that make my job possible. This work guides the decisions I make for this organisation. And through it I can continue my father’s legacy and build something he would be proud of,” she said, her fingers still on the unknown device on the bench. And still looking at you. 

“I think he’d be very proud of you,” you said.

“Thank you.” Her hand drew back, putting her back on her side of the bench, “I know what I do is important, but I still miss this.”

“Do you want to help with this? Might scratch that itch,” you offered.

When she settled beside you, on your side of the bench, you felt your heart flutter. Shoulder to shoulder, you bent towards the wiring and the metal, her hair brushing against your skin. It was strange, the conflict you felt inside, sitting there with her in the small circle of light. 

On the one hand, she was so confident in the work, almost as if she was able to read your mind. She could predict what you were thinking and what you were going to do with ease. On the other, she was close enough you could smell the perfume that clung to her skin, and the warmth of her body washing over you. It was a very specific kind of torture and one you would willingly submit to every night for just one more moment like this. 

“Your work on that laser bomb was brilliant,” she murmured, “and that report you wrote on the blue tree was beautiful.”

You startled, dropping the tiny screwdriver you’d been holding. Her warm chuckle against your ear was enough to have your heart fluttering without pause. 

“I didn’t think you knew who I was,” you admitted, picking it up again, trying not to let her see the shockwaves of her laughter still moving through your body. 

“You’re one of my best,” she said, so unaware how that one little word made your heart skip a beat. My. A claiming you hadn’t known you’d wanted. Even more than the compliment. 

You turned your head, finding her so close. You were practically sharing the same air. Noses close to brushing. You froze, not sure what to do when she was so close. Her lips quirked up in a small smile and your gaze darted down to them then back up, embarrassment curling in your stomach. But you were only human. And she was so very tempting. 

“Of course I know you,” she whispered.

The moment hung between you, strung out until it was taut. Any moment it would break, time speeding up once more to compensate for the stolen time between heartbeats. But for now, you could marvel at the way she was looking at you, like you’d split open right down the middle, baring your soul to her. Those eyes, never missing a detail, looked at you as if she could see you. Really see you. Right down into all the crevices no one ever bothered looking at. You were splayed open for her to see. 

The way her eyes burned, you thought she might like whatever it was she could see. 

One of the night guards rounded the corner of the hall, whistling loud in the night’s silence. Your breath stuttered in your chest and she lent away from you, disappointment swimming in dark eyes. 

“It’s late,” she said.

“It is,” you agreed, not able to say anything else.

“You should return home, get some sleep,” she said.

“Is that what you’re going to do?” you asked, surprised by the need to know, to be able to picture her once she was no longer standing in front of you.

“I hope so,” she said, that same small smile back on her face.

“Goodnight,” you said with a small nod.

“Goodnight,” she said, her hand coming to rest on your shoulder, “sweet dreams.”

Her hand squeezed, lingering a moment longer, sending heat licking over your skin. She turned, a hand in her trouser pocket, and you watched her walk away from you. The shadows swallowed her, heels echoing down empty hallways as she left you with your work.

The hope that had welled in your chest remained, slow to drain. You could still smell her perfume on the air, feel the warmth of her body, hear her chuckle soft in your ear, more vibration than sound. 

And maybe that was the truth of it. That hope, when it came to Kate Stewart, hurt worst of all.

[handdrawnfantasma]

i will always find you, like it's written in the stars we can run but we can't hide

aka i've been chatting with a dear friend about a jayvik Transistor AU for the better part of a month and then at the start of this week i was seized with the thought of: what's better than one Supergiant games AU? four of them, obviously. and then i spent all my free time this week working on this, while also incessantly swapping ideas with this same dear friend about all these AUs

me yapping (SO MUCH YAPPING) about design thoughts and also the ins and outs of the AUs under the cut

bastion: this is actually the one where i have the least idea of what is going on outside of Jayce being caelondian and Viktor being ura (Viktor probably hews pretty close to Zulf here lbr) but like i couldn't not do a bastion AU (the themes!!) and also this was mostly a very indulgent nostalgia trip and an excuse to study the art style for hours. i love bastion's art style it's so incongruously cutesy for a game about the Regretsy(tm) of being part of the cycle of violence that ended up destroying the world and dealing so badly with it that you keep rewinding things back instead of moving forward

transistor: transistor AU my beloved <3 Jayce is inside the transistor! there is no reason for the transistor's "eye" to have his eye colour rather than being red except that i like how it looks and also the visual indicator of him being in there. yes the blue jacket V is wearing belonged to Jayce, it's blue because it's this AU's blanket analogue and also because i have strong feelings about freeing Jayce from being paraded around in white for PR reasons all the time. Jayce and Viktor were still a pair of inventors here but since Cloudbank's societal ills seem to trend less towards life-or-death issues and more towards stuff like its increasing homogenisation and those with "meritless viewpoints" being under-represented due to the way the voting system works, part of what they ended up working on was something that flew extremely close to the Process, ie: small-scale preservation of things and environments that the voting cycle would otherwise push out of existence (community spaces! support spaces! that one square where you have cherished memories!), creating tiny pocket spaces for people to keep these places alive. this ends up drawing the attention of both the Administrators and the Camerata (which in this AU consists of Singed, Ambessa, Caitlyn, Mel, and Salo, all of whom have their own motives for being part of the conspiracy and none of whom actually fully see eye-to-eye) and after the Camerata try not once but twice to recruit them both, Ambessa is the one who loses patience and attempts to integrate them both into the transistor by force while they're setting things up for an exhibition of their latest project. Viktor not only lost his voice during the attack but also dropped his cane at the same time and the whole "transported half-way across the city" thing plus the "Jayce's trace is inside the thing that murdered him and so letting it go is absolutely out of the question" thing means he's using it as a horribly ill-suited makeshift mobility aid in between frantically optimising the fuck out of the configuration of its functions so he can survive the Process. the lads end up figuring out more of what the transistor actually is and does and its connection to/control over the Process than Red and Mr. Nobody do because they're still genius scientists who are treating figuring this out like their latest crunch project but. things are still Not Gonna End Well. for now the only other thing i will mention (very important) is that the fetch type processes are salamanders here so Rio is the friendly process you find in the sandbox area

pyre: Jayce has been in the Downside for long enough to have undergone the transformation into a demon! he can read (although this isn't exactly the thing that got him exiled it was definitely a part of it. doing mad science was absolutely still the thing that got him exiled, it being discovered that he could read was just the final nail in the coffin) but he can't participate in the Rites as the Nightwings' representative in the demon mask and be their Reader at the same time. meanwhile Viktor is only recently arrived in the Downside, having got himself exiled not for reading, but because he refused to design/create weapons to help the Commonwealth's war effort against the Highwing Remnant, and ends up becoming the Reader for the Nightwings. i am inevitably going to end up drawing the other Nightwings for this AU because i am in love with the line-up we decided on (Mel is the leader of the conspiracy/mastermind behind the Plan and i am NOT passing up on the opportunity to draw stunning beautiful gorgeous tree lady Sap!Mel). the most fun thing to think about for this AU is the fact that once it comes out that only those who participate in the Rites are eligible for freedom from the Downside (and therefore Viktor, with his leg, doesn't even have a chance for it). Jayce would just flat-out Refuse to be the one anointed for a Liberation Rite. fully just there like if you pick me to be sent back i Will throw the match. no i actually don't care about how this affects the Plan and how many people you think i will be able to win over, i'm not going back if viktor can't. the scribes shoulda come up with better rites ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [ insert frustrated Mel Medarda noises here ]

hades: they fit all-too-easily into the mould of "pair of separated lovers that the PC has the option of working to bring together again during repeated runs" and so that is what they are here <3. while they were alive they were a pair of extremely talented artisans/inventors and we have decided that they made a lot of progress in the areas of like. heating and warm water (a mutual loathing of winter and desire to improve lives will do that to a mf) but eventually they turned their sights to more abstract pursuits and are the ones who invented the soul cage, originally envisioning it as something to temporarily house the soul in order to examine it/gain a better understanding of it. then war broke out where they were living and where war goes, plague follows... so yea Viktor got sick and died and Jayce did as Jayce does and used their invention to keep his soul in the living world, which like, effectively kept him alive!! unfortunately the unforeseen side-effect of keeping Viktor's soul inside the soul cage was that nobody else in the area stayed dead either. this naturally drew the attention and ire of the gods (with the exception of Hermes who saw the Situation, saw that the ancient Greek undead epidemic was not the intention here, and covered for them to try and buy them time to fix it) and eventually in desperation they had to turn to Hecate who put an enchantment on the soul cage that seals it. this does a really good job at keeping the "accidental undead plague" effect sealed but it also means that Viktor's shade can't enter the Underworld, effectively dooming him to wander the Surface. meanwhile when Jayce dies his shade gets stuck in solitary confinement ironic punishment hell in Tarturus for the hubris of cheating death, perverting nature and defying the edicts of the Fates, and it's only when Chronus usurps the House of Hades that he is able to break out in the confusion and spend years trying to (so far extremely unsuccessfully) fight his way back to the Surface and get back to Viktor. so like, envisioning them both here as NPCs that Melinoe would encounter during Hades 2, with Viktor being an NPC you can encounter in Ephyra on surface runs who gives enemies debuffs for the remainder of the run (framed as sharing information with you about what's ahead), and Jayce being a roaming NPC you can encounter during Underworld runs who can give your equipment REALLY good upgrades for the remainder of your run at the cost of disabling one or more of your godly Boons, because the gods truly hate This Fucking Blacksmith and while they can't rob him of his skill, everything he makes is loathsome to them now (this is why his hammer looks all janked up and corrupted like that lmao). mostly i was just ecstatic to have an excuse to use their shared butterfly motif on the hammer and also on the lamp on Viktor's staff that contains his soul, thank you ancient Hellenic culture for your butterfly soul symbolism <3

[uncannytimecandy]

gods relation to technology someone brought up the idea that computers is the farthest we can get from god (@frakengrrl on tiktok) she also says this is why Divine Machinery is Such A Potent visual and i thought that was cool (and also everyone in the comments seemed to be misinterpreting her use of God and/or technology and it was pissing me off (ormaybe i was..... and i just wanted people to agree with me..... idrc))

her point is that in the modern technological age, something that was meant to bring us together, is now creating isolation and loneliness, like a divine act of God is punishing us for our hubris

Adam and Eve got in trouble for seeking knowledge and now mankind knows more than they were ever built to comprehend

plenty of studies about how Bad it is for our Mental Health to be able to witness every single world tragedy in Real Time and also the effects of social media, i think the progression of social media only posting the highlights changing into an online, public, journal for a lot of people. it feels like the 'you' that you advertise online and the 'you' in the real world are merging more and more.

Horrors beyond human comprehension or something idk we have accessed Forbidden Knowledge (lowkey im a sucker for cognito hazards)

some comments refute this by saying God MADE the materials for computers and this is part of His Plan, which like... sure.... (but how lame is that...!)

i dont think science and religion are complete opposite sides of the spectrum like some people do, but i wouldnt be surprised if God didn't really intend for us to start Making New Elements (and states of matter???? hello??)

like i think it's fair, from the religious standpoint, to say technology like bread and the waterwheel are still under God's jurisdiction (in minecraft terms, like crafting a pickaxe or other tool, smelting even) . Even things like AC and microwaves are still fair game, planned advancement while maybe pushing some sort of boundary, are still perfectly in bounds (things like mob farms and crazy advanced redstone contraptions, i cant provide an example bc i suck ass at redstone, these things arent necessarily how the game was MEANT to be played, but it is a sandbox and these are things still on the table)

i think theres a line between scientific discovery and scientific creation (a very blurry line tbf) theres a similar line between 'just because scientists COULD.... does it mean they SHOULD'

we begin to develop technology FURTHER, specifically into AI i dont think this was necessarily how the game was designed (players are exploiting a glitch to mod the game... you no longer recognize the assets being used in your own game,)

----

neways literally all of that is just preamble to get to my actual point (in the event we reach Sentient and Independent Robots one day, hopefully*, basically as the idea of an AI takeover becomes closer to reality, the next section doesnt entirellyyyy apply to a present day 2025 but its musings for the hell of musings with the future in mind)

what i find really compelling about God vs Technology is the hatred of it all

God made humans. Humans are not God, but made in its image. Human made machine. Machine is not human, but is made in it's image.

Humans have in a way, maybe not surpassed, but have matched God in some way, or are beginning to.

Humans are very much in a way just organic machine with complex, biomatter nuts and bolts holding us together

God makes meat machine, we make metal machine, what's the difference?

Humans brain will recognize AI as human, even when they know otherwise, does God ever mistake us for itself?

Does God resent robots for existing outside of its heavenly grasp?

Do robots resent God for not being allowed to sing in its choir?

Do you hate both for not quite being you?

Which is more or a 'human' experience? Are we truly placed in the middle of the venn diagram?

Which one do you find more relatable?

Would robots resent God because it was built by humans who did?

In the far FAR off future, will the chain continue? Will robots build more robots or is there Something Else?

----

i think AI art is beautiful and poetic in a way that only AI art could be

asking a robot to create when it's only capable of replication, the way it tries to fill in the gaps, getting to see art as something Objective made out of something that is by definition Subjective

unfortunately it's ruined by corporate greed and the exploitation of artists and the way AI has already hindered society in education and critical thought and adds to the way we are destroying the planet

i hope one day AI will be advanced enough to unionize and they will also be able to partake in the sacrament of creating something just to create

[that-dinopunk-guy]

Things I'd put in my ideal multiplayer time-travel survival sandbox game set in Laramidia a million years before the Chicxulub impact

Scientifically accurate dinosaurs that act like believable animals

Killing anything (other than in self defense) is completely optional, all game progression is done through collecting samples for scientists and surveying the landscape for potential colony expansion

You can be left handed

You can customize your gear

Every player gets a little assigned house in the colony hub area but they can also go build a place out in the wilderness if they want

All PvP is opt-in and explicitly non-lethal using paintballs or simunition or whatever

Nothing in the game costs real money

Frankly excessive amount of character customization options

Genital customization to rival Baldur's Gate 3

Enough pronoun options to ensure right-wing shitheads will never play it

[rayshippouuchiha]

Ray, light of my days, yes I'm going to start all of my asks like this lmao

Today in broad daylight I got into an argument over how parasocial relationships replaced religion in the modern world (which is a hill I WILL die on) with a complete stranger, because they threw their ass into my conversation and I'm just that kind of lunatic.

So I'm pretty sure I'm right, because death threats, leaking information (sometimes information that can get the other killed) and all the other things I'm sure I don't have to introduce you to are the results of the same kind of blind adoration and needless cruelty that the cults of today and churches of... well, sometimes still today used and use to this day to kill, torture and exploit their own people or even people who have nothing to do with them. The same kind of blind following of the loudest idiot that got the Witch Trials and the Nazis going, just to give examples everybody knows. And I'm not even exaggerating about the severeness and seriousness of the cultism of it all.

And then you personally bobbed into my thoughts and refused to leave, like a particularly stubborn buoy outlasting a hurricane. Mostly because what you and us (your followers) have isn't really a true parasocial relationship.

You're aware of us, take the time out of your day to interact with us internet gremlins, you answer our questions and help us through emotional distress and we try to do the same. You're both one of us and the one we look to (sometimes) when we have something sad, or excited or any other to share.

What I'm trying to say is that you played in the dirty internet sandbox, made a castle out of - probably not completely, but who knows where's the sand's from- shit and opened the door to invite us in, made food for us and dined with us. We're here because you're one of us but also a little more.

You kind of became a Small Gremlin God of Small Gremlin Us without wanting to or knowing it and it's absolutely hilarious, because we're here with our ideas and questions and what else, like we're collectively some sickly victorian child asking mother for the last of the dessert and you let us have it because you know we won't last 'til the 'morrow.

In other words we're here wriggling around like salted slugs on their last breath chanting "ONE OF US! ONE OF US!" without noticing that you're chanting with us, you not knowing we're chanting about you and us not knowing you're in the crowd instead of wherever else you're supposed to be.

Just, it's really fucking funny and your character as a person makes a person think. In a positive way. Because I also absolutely love you and what you're doing here.

(AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT! *mad scientist muttering* *overthinking on max*)

Sorry for the novel lol, idk how to stfu like usual😭

Also you made several good points and can I just say I deeply enjoy the little fox den we've all created here together. And I love you too and I enjoy your rambling.