#alienation for that matter not without a very solid reason

[anauwhere]

Imagine writing black people/ lesbians/ women / Americans dni in your DNI but of course men/ white people/ cishet creepy women/ [insert nationality for fun lol yk which one are allowed to be mocked] is totally fine. Yes I can be bigoted and exclusionist bc they are Majorities bc they are not oppressed TM. Fuck off idiot read an history book open that damn mind a bit

[ecargmura]

Dandadan Episode 9 Review - Aliens And Nessie

TW: Nudity

I think ‘unhinged’ is the best word to describe Dandadan, especially with this episode. It’s a very wacky episode that involves a lot of Okarun butt shots, a cluster of enemies, and a lot of yellow and green filters (The green filter hurts my eyes). It’s crazy how we went from heartwrenching backstories to chaotic alien fights in a span of two episodes.

It was cool seeing what Aira can do now that she can transform using Acrobatic Silky’s powers. She’s flexible and agile. I love how she moves in battle and that she also uses her hair as a weapon in addition to her added flexibility. However, I do think that her biggest weakness is the fact that she lacks fighting experience. Okarun and Momo are able to fight easily as they’ve got so much experience, but this is Aira’s first fight against a paranormal creature, so she does get clobbered often. However, her debut fight is against multiple enemies rather than a singular one like before.

The fight with the enemies is very crazy. The Serpoians felt as if they got stronger. However, since they have a weakness in that they cannot fight when using their powers, that’s where their new hire, Mantis Shrimp (Is that his name?) comes in. I do like that the fights are a mix between serious and comedic without being too out of place and off-putting. The Mantis Shrimp alien is silly, but his punches are brutal. It was interesting that he also had a more grotesque form underneath, like the Serpoians. Though, can someone help me answer this question I have? During the part where Nessie arrived, did the Serpoian and Mantis Shrimp alien fuse with Nessie? If so, then Nessie was heavily underutilized as a villain as it got no character other than being a creature that fires green laser beams.

Now that the group is a trio, their dynamics became a lot more livelier and funnier. Momo and Aira have an antagonistic, vitriolic relationship with each other with the two getting on each other’s nerves. While Momo and Okarun bicker, they have a solid trust towards each other. I love how these two communicate in that Okarun wants to talk to Momo about the misunderstanding with Aira. These two trust each other to the point that Momo can use Okarun as some sort of jet ski. Okarun isn’t that tall, yet he can still have two girls around the same height on him.

I honestly love the animation for this fight, especially towards the end where the aliens fuse with Nessie. The way the camera angle rotates and spins was really good. I also liked the animation at the final bit where the gang return to the real world but naked. The way they ran is reminiscent of the floppy animated style from the first episode, which amps up the comedic aspect of it. Aira running like a Titan in Attack on Titan was hilarious (also hilarious given that her VA Ayane Sakura and Okarun’s VA Natsuki Hanae were in that show as Gaby and Falco)

Speaking of which, I remember that there was an outrage regarding the final scene because one Anituber posted a picture of the scene in the manga when the anime first aired with the intent of being anticipated for how people, fans and anime-only viewers, would few the scene, but it went viral for negative reasons, which led to the anituber getting doxxed. I didn’t think too much of that panel at the time since I’m already used to crude shounen humor, but doxxing someone over manga panels is never an okay thing to do. When I looked at this scene in the anime, I just thought “very shounen humor” and that was it. I think the outrage was mainly due to how sensitive people are towards media these days. All I can say on the matter is that I hope that humanity can change back into the days where people could differentiate fiction from reality.

Since there are twelve episodes, this means that there are three more episodes left. I wonder what’s left for the rest of the story. I think the red-haired boy has yet to show up, so I assume the last few episodes will revolve around him? I’m also curious about the event so fate next episode as a cow gets abducted by a UFO. What are your thoughts on the episode as a whole?

[ravagerrush]

hello my spooky gift recipient @just-illegal-art ! ����! i come bearing fic for @mcyt-halloween ! i present to you horror with flower crown stress and false ! 🕸️👻

entire fic, formatted n whatnot, under cut in case you'd rather have it here than on ao3!

When False woke up, she knew that something was terribly, horribly wrong. 

She lay on the floor, while distinctly remembering having gone to bed, tucking into the soft blankets to escape from the cool air of early spring. False was laid face down on the hard stone floor, and her hair must have come untied while she'd slept, as it now pooled around her head in a shallow golden tide.

Humid air made the room stuffy and almost solid with water, and spores floated through the air. 

And she was so itchy. Something at the top of her head scratched – not the itchiness of a mosquito bite, nor the uncomfortable flakiness of dried skin - it was much more like when one walked through brush - briars and thorns and slim branches would prick and pull at your skin, with no clear reason save the piercing pain and the blood flowing down your leg.

Sweat dripped like tears down her face, and her heart pulsed to some alien beat, an unsteady, echoing thumping that throbbed through her full body.

It took far too long for False to even roll over from where she lay on her back. She had to clench what felt like every muscle in her body to even feel solid enough to move. 

As soon as she'd sat up, she tried to False yanked herself up, hooking her arms on the top of her dresser. Leaning unsteadily on the wood, she looked into the mirror she'd only just gotten. False wiped the condensation off of the mirror. Her hand shook as the droplets slid down her arm, and she looked up, a jerky, harsh movement, tearing her eyes from the dressers' top to her face.

Flowers, ranging from delicate pale pink to baby's breath to a deep blue-purple wrapped around False's head like some sort of unholy crown. It wreathed False's face, and made her hair seem more bleached and her face even more pallid from the contrast to the vivid green plant matter.

False could feel the flower crown digging into the top of her head. She could feel it winding its roots through her skull, and into her very brain. It sapped nutrients from her, wrapping itself around every joint and ligament of her body, and made her limbs twitch in foreign and unfamiliar ways.

Without her input, her arm reached over and grabbed the half-empty jug of water. It lifted the jug up, and tried to pour the water into False's mouth. As the jug had been out all day, the water was warm, and somewhat gritty. The thing controlling her didn't seem to have great motor skills, and the water splashed all over False's face. 

It coughed, a wet, heaving thing, and hummed. The humming didn't sound like a conscious noise, or at least one made by a person, but more of the background noise, akin to a heartbeat or the thrum of a motor.

The thing cleared False's throat, and made a horrible, wet, gargling sound. 

"Wha'- I don'- what?"

Words were torn from False's mouth, robbing her of air. She felt her chest heave in confusion, air moving through lungs now thick with mucus and saliva.

"' 'm I in- in False? I- ah."

The thing in her just stood there for a while, shaky and weak. 

It (and False by extension) must have fallen asleep at some point, because she couldn't remember anything after those long, silent moments, with the thing controlling her staring, eyes wide into that mirror.

❁

It was only the next night that False regained any control of her body. 

False had sat through dozens of silent, one-way conversations. More Hermits had come to visit her in the one day the crown was controlling her than every day of the last week, combined. And the thing on her head had worked jerkily through every conversation. If anyone noticed anything off, none of them mentioned it. 

If False could have screamed, she would have.

Her body had woken up halfway through the night, still laid on her bed this time. The thing controlling her had sat up, put its hands onto her face, and cried. As powerless and isolated as False had felt all day, this was just strange. What does one say, in response to this foreign thing controlling you, sobbing? It certainly helped that she couldn't say anything.

Still, False felt a strange sort of need to comfort the crown. 

It wasn't quite on purpose, but it was clear as day that the movement was her own when she awkwardly patted her own hand in some strange form of sympathy for the thing controlling her.

False felt her eyes widen in surprise, though certainly not of her own accord, and heard her breath hitch.

And then it spoke. The thing spoke, to her at least, for the first time. It seemed as if it projected words directly into her brain, a resounding, mid pitched voice echoing and ricocheting around her head as she stood there. 

You're - here? I'm-- I'm sorry 'bout this, False, It said. I really didin' mean to, 'was a mistake. I 'um. Didn' realise you were... there.

And False recognized that voice-- it took a moment to really recognize it, as it was a bit more whispery and raspy, and pitched a bit differently, but the pronunciation, and enunciation was exactly the same as the person who'd pranked her with a new meeting room in a skull not a week before.

"Stress?" False asked, more loudly than she'd meant. She'd meant to whisper, as it was an almost instinctive in the early hours of the morning, or at least the late hours of the night. "Is that you?"

False can taste the crown's (Stress's?) hesitance in her mouth.

...Yes, says the crown, finally. Yeah, it is. 

False's mouth was dry as she asked how this had happened. "I- I saw you yesterday, Stress, or the day before, or- or whenever you showed me Susan. I don't- I don't understand." She said the last sentence desperately, searching for an easy answer in every word she said.

Stress squirmed in a way that no plant should be able to move. Her roots dug into False's hair and skin with discomfort. False hoped that it was unintentional, and more akin to wringing or flapping one's hands than trying to hurt False.

'm a parasite, or something like it, I 'fink.

And okay, that gave something for False to work with. "Okay," she said, slowly. "And why are you on my head." It wasn't exactly a question, but Stress's admission didn't really mean much.

False and Stress were pretty good friends, False thought. False had joined Hermitcraft long before Stress had, but Stress had been friendly, and less of a headache for False to interact with than other Hermits. 

It's not that other Hermits were rude, but most of them expected a bit more in response to what they shared than False was able to give, most of the time. Stress, for all of her high energy and excitement, was quite willing for False to just sit and nod in response to her words.

It wasn't on purpose said Stress. I 'fink it was 'cause you were close. Most hosts didn't, well, er.

False's right arm twitched up, hard, and jerkily maneuvered over to her other hand, and laid down as gently as it could. There were flashing orange bits in the corner of her retina, reminiscent of worms, or perhaps some sort of fly. 

The movement felt wrong down to False's core. She wasn't the one sending the signals down her arm to move it as such, and her body seemed to know it. It moved less smoothly under Stress's command, going against her every wish. 

It was more comfortable, though, now that False knew it was Stress, someone she'd more or less trusted, rather than some sort of other creature.

Most hosts didn't remain conscious, admitted Stress, guiltily.

False could almost see how Stress would have looked at her in that moment, if she'd had a body from which to see. Stress would blink, her large, dark eyes reflecting False's face, thick lashes blinking with tears. The sentence is delivered with the guilt that one might have if they were someone telling a parent that their child had died on their watch.

And False bit down her fear. "Well, I am conscious, I think. Don't know how long that's going to last, but it's something, I suppose."

Yeah, said Stress. 

They sit in silence for a good, long while. 

"It's not as distressing, I think, to have you, well, in me, now that I know who you are. It's almost comforting?"

I've always been alone, in everyone I've been in. 

"Why did you have to leave your last body?" asked False, almost dreading the answer. 

'Twas all rotten, yaknow. Bits came off, and it was all decayed.

False hummes in response. Rot wasn't too bad, and they'd be able to talk to Cleo if needed. 

She relayed as much to Stress.

I can try to, er, de-attach me 'ead. It's probably proper difficult, but I can try. Stress offered, but didn't sound all too inclined to try. 

All said, False wasn't too keen either, but surely they had to try?

And so it was with a vague sense of foreboding, though with significantly less emptiness around her, that False got up, and began to search through her small starter base for anything that they could possibly use for getting out Stress in a safe and timely manner.

❁

The extraction was long and painful.

They had decided to figure it out on their own, as neither felt comfortable enough to go to anyone except maybe Xisuma to do it, and this was something that felt intimate and personal, besides. They could do it on their own.

False had sat on a small mangrove stool by the dresser with tweezers. A small, woven bucket that she'd brought with flowers from Pearl's starter shop sat on a nearby table -- the location for Stress to stay in while they figured out something more comfortable.

First, False's hair had to be cut. She didn't particularly want to, but there was no getting around it -- the base of Stress's crown wouldn't be able to be removed with all of her hair in the way. It was a shame to remove it all, but it had to be done. Stress helped best as she could, but False knew her body better than Stress's two-day nervous system, and soon enough False had a buzzcut, each section of hair cut away individually.

Each root had to be pulled out individually. A single root often stretched on for what had to be an entire meter, despite being thin, strangly little things, and False had to cut small lines crisscrossing her forehead to be able to tug on them with tweezers gently enough to avoid any real damage.

Stress tried as well as she could to not fire any neurons or twitch at all, but False was still cut more than she'd have liked to be.

It wasn't as if it was too technically difficult, as False had done field medicine on herself far too often, and had experience braiding her own hair besides, but it was tedious and hurt all the while.

Stress was unfortunately unable to pull out her tangled roots from False's head as they had gone in. They had grown in almost instinctively, reaching for nerves and tendons as if they were water and light.

's quite difficult y'know, to sit still like this. Stress laughed nervously, the sound tinny and echoing in False's head. Tryin' not to twitch when it all feels somewhat like your own's. Strange to say the least.

False let herself laugh in response, careful to not open wounds any more than she had too.

Eventually, the sun started to peek over the horizon, a beautiful gradient of oranges and purples, and False's hand started to shake. She had been working tirelessly for hours, and her skills started to falter.

Stress's tendril-like roots took over from then on. Enough of her had been pulled from False's scalp that she was really and truly separate from False, and she'd crudely scrawled with one of her vines that she could fix the rest back up while False rested.

False made sure that Stress knew where the silk thread was, so as to better avoid infections afterwards, and fell asleep in what felt like a matter of moments, still upright in her chair. She felt safe and comfortable knowing that Stress was there with her.

[rei-ismyname]

CABLE RELOADED - Highlights

So, the dread DORMAMMU has invaded the galaxy/universe, wearing Ego the Living Planet's shell like the skin of a snake. He's conquered five planets of magical significance to perform a ritual to Dark Dimension-ify this one. Super bad news. Fortunately, The Guardians of the Galaxy are on top of it with new recruit Doctor DOOM. Rocket Raccoon and DOOM's plan? Shoot him in the head with a really big gun. Who do we know that knows guns?

He really is adorable.

This motherfucker, who's really just happy to be working with Rocket. He sends Cable to Breakworld and, because of the heavy security, he chooses to drop in from orbit, destroying him arm in the process...

... fortunately, Cable has a backup. He needs even more though, so he plants a Krakoan gate seed and brings in some specialists.

Wiz-Kid IS a rockstar

Not The Five, but the five he needs. Big fan of all of them (except for Groomer Cheney.) Breakworld's inhabitants are not. They're bozos who are justifiably not down with these strange people up in their shit. Then again, they once shot a massive bullet at Earth, so fuck em?

Solid callback to Astonishing X-Men there. DORMAMMU caught everyone with their pants down, so the team was hastily assembled. Team itself is a dirty word on Arakko, and obviously Khora wasn't briefed. Still, it's better than working with Fabian Cortez and she is much better in a fight.

Wiz-Kid's flavour of Technopathy is pretty wild, and I love my disabled brethren. The aliens don't, but it doesn't matter what they think anymore.

They need to make it to the objective, the whole reason they're here, and Nate takes the time to explain on the way there. He does work with Khora again btw, in X-Men Red. It's excellent.

She's so cool. She boosts Boom Boom to make a big ass bomb and Cannonball's job is to dunk it in security's face.

It works. Then Khora boosts Wiz-Kid. Result - REALLY BIG GUN - as mentioned. Mission nearly accomplished. Lila Cheney just needs to teleport them and the RBG back to base. Also, what goes in a really big gun?

If you guessed 'REALLY BIG BULLET' you'd be correct. Engineered by Rocket out of Mysterium (which Dormammu, a magical being, cannot withstand) provided by SWORD. Breakworld would be jealous, Kitty Pryde would almost certainly not. Anyway, BLAM.

Book is excellent, and very readable without knowledge of the greater Last Annihilation event. Definitely recommend.

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

I know that the word "biology" has gotten a bad rep in trans spaces for being used as a shitty excuse for bad thinking and bad policy... But like... 'Biology' is not a bad or dirty word.

Just like real world biology is a scientific study that would actually back up sex and gender as not being binary or fixed... People in fandom spaces just using the word biology in reference to how nature functions unadulterated by conscious choices, aren't inherently coming up with bad -or exclusionary- explanations or ideas because they want to explore how something naturally evolved or could evolve in the absence of interference, theoretically, even in universes where there are forces at work other than 'natural' evolution.

Sometimes discussing biology in fandom spaces is fun and kind of adjacent to the whole point of what you are doing, aka "Vulcan biology, the biology of Vulcans..." And hand waving things away as not needing to be explained or specified is kind of missing the point no matter how easy it is to do...

Maybe sometimes when you are writing smut, as a random non-specific example, you want a solid theory on what kinds of pleasure a character is capable of experiencing that is laid out in a way that doesn't ignore or alienate cannon.

So maybe picking apart how a character race ended up the way they are is weird and needless nitpicking to -you- that should be hand waved away or isn't worth bringing up and exploring, but to someone who is -for example- going to use it for plot reasons or is going to be horny about it, the nuance of how things got to be how they are is kind of important.

To put it very bluntly, for anyone still missing the point, the reason why a person might want a very specific explanation of these things is that maybe it's hard to write about having a character -as a lover or otherwise- when how they function or experience pleasure on a fundamental level isn't written in the original text in a way that makes sense. Even if you are going to come up with your own answers, you might still really enjoy working it into something that doesn't argue with the accepted cannon, because that's how you get your kicks, or because that raises the likelihood that other fans can also enjoy a story without being irked by it being "incorrect" constantly.

Maybe -you- don't feel the need to explore it because you aren't horny on main about it.

[kariachi]

Some Devin Lives AU fic.

Woe be the Tennysons and Billings, Devin is retiring.

~~

“Mendevin!”

Max felt he could be excused for the full name. Kind of full name. Acknowledging the titles and the clan would have taken away from the betrayal he was dealing with in the moment. Not that Devin seemed to care, from the frown and lowered chin he sent his way. The sort of look that requested he remember that, for as young as Devin looked, he still had over a decade on him.

“Max. Phil.” But he’d never been the type to sink to other people’s level. “What is it?” In theory, Max could have presented their case as a matter of hurt, and change his old friend’s mind. In theory. Functionally, Devin was the member of their team with the real social skills. Max wasn’t bad at them, but he tended to be more than a little too certain he was in the right and to grate it against people like sandpaper, while Phil… Phil’d managed a wife once, and people still claimed shock.

So of course he opened his big mouth.

“Labrid says you’re abandoning us.” The tone was accusatory, and drew a half-hearted warning rumble from Devin’s throat.

“It’s not like I didn’t tell you I was retiring,” he said, and it was true. After the, incident, with Ragnarok (and god, for all Max couldn’t blame Phil for not being there, his youngest had been getting married, he still could help but wonder if they’d have come so close to losing Devin if it hadn’t been just the two of them) Devin had said he intended to retire. It was just that, they hadn’t expected him to actually do it. Everybody said they were going to retire after injuries like that, but they never did. At least not the aliens among them, who were even odds at having lovers and families on the planet and wouldn’t risk being sent away.

A brief thought that, as the local Packhead, the Plumbers couldn’t deport him flitted across the back of Max’s mind.

“You’re too young to be retiring,” Phil continued. “Max and I, we’re old men, we get to retire.”

“I’m nine years older than you.”

“And functionally in your twenties, you’ve got centuries of work in left in you.”

“Exactly,” Devin said, flashing his teeth in a smirk, “and I intend to spend them taking care of my Pack and my children.”

“It’s just,” Max cut in, “we’re really going to miss your help. You’re part of the team.” For nearly twenty-six years he’d been part of the team. Yes, they’d already gotten a taste of what working without him again was like when his youngest had come along, but it had been awful. He and Phil were a good team, but they got into a lot less trouble with Devin around. Fuck, he’d kept violence from breaking out with the Lenopan at least twice when the two of them had been ready for a fight, and the number of times he’d smoothed over their own poor words was uncountable. Even if that hadn’t been the case, he was genuinely a nice person to be around, with a solid sense of humor and bright, friendly nature that just seemed to make everything that little bit better with his presence.

“A team that’s going to be dissolving anyway in a few more years.” Devin’s head tilted to the side, humor in his eyes. “Or were you hoping I’d hold off until you guys did the abandoning?” Max had to shrug.

“It would be nice.”

“Besides,” Phil added, “who’s going to keep Eva in line without you here?” Turning specifically to Phil, Devin flashed his teeth a little more than he needed to as he spoke.

“Eva doesn’t need to be kept in line, you just need to stop antagonizing her. Hopefully without me here to save you, you will.” Max thought that incredibly unlikely. The entire reason they’d gotten Devin in the first place was that Phil had run off the last member of their team, and much as he was a very close friend Max had to admit it was unlikely, at this point, that the leopard would change his spots. After all he only treated Devin so much better. If anything he and Eva would conflict less because there’d be one less person she could hear him telling rude jokes about.

“There has to be something we can do,” Max said, and Devin grinned brightly at him.

“Retirement party’d be nice.” Raising a brow, Max tried to frown at him. It was hard when he smiled like sunshine.

“Devin.”

“Max. Phil.” Devin clapped a hand on each of their shoulders. “I’ve done what my gods needed of me, and they were good enough to change their minds on the dying portion.” He shook them as gently as he could. “You could not pay me to stick around any longer. I’m leading my people, building a temple, tending my kids, that’s it. Any further issues you can bring up with Eva.”

Sharing a look with Phil, Max just barely didn’t sigh. If he was sending them to Eva that really meant his mind was made up. Even if they could have changed his mind, there was no way they were turning her off the idea of his retirement. Not when she’d already yelled at him on his hospital bed about nearly leaving her and her husband to raise their kid. Phil’s shoulders slumped, glowering at Devin. The alien beamed at his victory.

“If we die,” Phil said, “it’s your fault.” Devin just laughed, patting their shoulders before returning to clearing out his desk.

“Do I get a medal each, or just the one?”

[moonshine-nightlight]

Snapped - Part 2

Mech’s not sure why the aftermath of this mission is hitting him so hard, but he’s doing his best to calm down when Gwen’s presence shatters his control. Now it’s a count down to see if he can figure out how to put a stop to the instincts and hormones that are running wild inside him—before he does something they’ll both regret.

Science fiction, alien romance, male alien x female human

Story Status: COMPLETE

AO3: Snapped Chapter 2

[Part 1] Part 2 [Part 3] [Part 4 - NSFW]

Gwen always knows when he’s acting gruff because that’s his default attitude and when he actually needs the space, needs the quiet. She follows him silently, casually messing with her screen to make sure he doesn’t feel any pressure to talk, but he can feel her attention on him regardless.

Part of him is pleased by that, in the way he always is when he has her attention, but the growing part is more thrilled than usual, is already planning how best to prove he deserves her regard, how to convince her to keep her attention on him, only him. He presses his lips together to keep everything he wants to say trapped in his head where they belong.

Mech resists the urge to quicken his pace, determined that these ridiculous hormones not make him rush, not betray how tenuous his control feels at the moment. Usually, his grip on displaying emotions and not giving into them—no longer regulated for his people, but large displays of emotion in public is still generally considered vulgar—is solid. 

What many consider a graviel’s typical lack of emotions is merely habit and politeness these days, as they’d never managed to breed or medicate those emotions out, no matter how much the coalition had strived to. With the coalition overturned, there were plenty of graviels who choose to show their distaste for past norms by letting every stray thought show on their face, but most still played things very close to the vest when compared with the other species out here in space.

Between the common demeanor which most read as stern, the counterculture berserkers, and the intimidating vibrant red, orange, and yellow colorings most had, rumors about graviels spread far and wide from their corner of the galaxy. Sometimes it was useful—common knowledge of his unique biochemistry is what granted him the private, personal medbay that they are now heading towards. Socially though, it was often a detriment. People tended to be either intimidated or determined not to be intimidated with false shows of bravado—all of which grew tiring very quickly.

Gwen was one of the few who had been neither. Mech had been suspicious at first, expecting her casual facade to fade over time and betray which camp she belonged to. Yet it never had. Instead, one day, she’d called him out on his own attitude and how he’d been looking for fault in her reactions which she explained, in clear concise detail, were only the consequences of his, admittedly poor and suspicious, attitude. They’d both backed off that day and slowly, tentatively, come to a new understanding which had blossomed into one of the richest, most rewarding relationships he’d ever had.

And now it’s all in danger because some stupid primitive hormonal shift out of his control. Mech tries to focus on his frustration with the idea that something so stupid could mess up this precious connection instead of all the reasons to push the edges of their relationship like his instincts are whispering in his ear to do. 

The impulses are getting stronger and he knows he hasn’t hidden his relief at finally reaching the medbay from Gwen well enough judging by the way she looks at him with mounting concern. The door swishes open at his touch and for once he goes in first, instead of ushering her ahead of him. He knows he couldn’t handle her so close to him as she would need to be in order to walk by him.

Without looking back at her, he can sense her second of hesitation, her notice of this change to their normal, but he steadfastly refuses to look back. He walks over to the monitor and instantly begins calling up the diagnostic software.

Mech wishes the small medbay next to his quarters was bigger, wishes her scent wasn’t already flooding it. Humans, always giving off so many pheromones and scents, spilling their chaos everywhere. 

He loves it most of the time. He hates it right now. 

“So, now can you tell me?” Gwen asks and honestly it's a good show of her restraint that she waited until they were in private to push again. Gwen’s always been the curious sort and he doubts this is any different.

He just grunts in reply though, not sure where to even begin to explain. The noise in his head is a cacophony of sexual impulses and desires he can only ignore by single-mindedly focusing on putting together something to shut them up, even temporarily, so he can think and find a more permanent solution. He needs to create the largest hormonal dampener—without actually knocking himself out or putting his mind into a loopy haze—that he can.

He hates having to do so, hates going back to that past history of his species, but the sad truth is that many such concoctions do exist, he just needs to pick the one with the most tolerable side-effects. 

Methodically, he begins going through the cabinets as soon as he sets the database running through possibilities for treatment. He’s never been so glad he has his own medbay and that everything is in his native language so she can’t read it. He doesn’t want her to know about this weakness of his, this lapse in control. It’s too shameful, too revealing. 

“Seriously, Mech?” Gwen says, insistent and annoyed. He chances a glance in a mirrored jar to catch a glimpse her glorious form and has to swallow the venom pooling in his mouth at the sight. Her hands are on her hips—never a good sign and yet, he’s always had a soft spot for the heat of her anger. Well, perhaps soft spot is the wrong turn of phrase for what a feisty Gwen does to him. 

“What’s going on?” her tone is no-nonsense and supportive at the same time and he wants to let it all just spill out.

Every second that goes by makes it that much harder to war against his instincts. Instincts that have suddenly decided he needs to claim his mate before she is taken away, by death or rivals—by anything. The fact that she isn’t actually his mate doesn’t matter to the primal beast within. Only that he wants her to be, desperately. Only that she hasn’t rejected him, since he’s never bothered to ask when he knows the answer. Only that she cares about him enough to fool his hormones into thinking she’d be receptive. 

“Told you,” he replies, pulling down bottles and ignoring the extra layer to his voice—a deeper, throatier tone that betrays what he’s fighting so hard to control. “Personal problem.”

“Yeah, well, that’s useless,” Gwen replies, throwing her hands up. She’s not wrong—that’s sort of the point of giving an answer like that. Half the time Gwen is good at taking the hint, but if she’s actually worried then— “And I don’t see what it has to do with me. So if you’re just gonna ignore me, then I might as well go—”

“No!” He’s suddenly in front of the door out, his typically black eyes wild—glowing with orange light strong enough he can see it on her face. She freezes, finally eyeing him like the beast he’s turning into. His claws lengthening, starting to drip with venom that isn’t harmful to humans, not exactly, but still instinctive given his need to keep her here. He tries to calm down, tries to breathe, but her scent is everywhere—all of his senses heightened and trained on her. He tries another tactic, reminding himself that she’s here—she’s just worried about him, she’s not going to leave.  

“I. Apologize,” Mech grits out. “I will try to explain. Just please.” He knows she can hear the desperate edge to his voice but he can’t bring himself to reign it in, “Take it back.”

Only now Gwen isn’t showing any fear, like a sane person would at even the hint of an out-of-control graviel. It looks like she was just startled. She only looks worried—for him. “I’m sorry, Mech. You just…” she trails off and he feels himself lose some tension as she continues to stay where she is, as she makes no move to disappear. But he stays where he is and she seems to realize that. She frowns, but figures out what he’s waiting for before he has to clarify. “I’m not going anywhere,” she says clearly, meeting his eyes sincerely. “Promise.”

He feels the spines along his back and arms slowly relax—he hadn’t even realized they were up. He closes his eyes, breathes in another lungful of Gwen tinted air. His eyes are back to normal as carefully he moves back towards the bench. “I don’t mean to—” he cuts off the excuse before he can finish it. “It’s very hard to think right now. I… need…” He shakes his head, finding words to say to her that aren’t just a list of what he wants to do with her—carnally—fails. 

“Take your time,” Gwen soothes. She hops up on the med table. “Just… let me know what I can do to help.”

He pushes down the image of her spread out across the table, skirts up around her waist as he— Mech staggers to the workbench, combines the last few compounds. It spins together while he continues to work on his control. It's not working, every second that passes he can feel the strain growing. “Talk.” It takes him a second to realize he was the one who spoke, his voice still far too full of gravel. He nearly doesn’t recognize it. His eyes flick to her face and away. “Could you…just talk about something? Anything?”

Gwen picks up on his need for distraction easily. After they got over the first hurdle of their initial misunderstanding of each other, she’s been more in sync with him than anyone else he’s ever met. “Sure. Staci knows some people here—it's why we’re parked for free.”

She chatters on about their crewmates for a few minutes while the sedative mixes and he holds completely still—a rigid statue in all but substance. His thoughts try to hold onto what she’s saying, but he’s focusing on the way her voice sounds more than anything. How she would sound as he carefully coaxed her to ecstasy. 

His thoughts narrow down to, wait, wait, wait. One more moment. Just need to wait for—a small ding sounds and he can’t help but lunge for it. He doesn’t bother drinking it, taking the vial, fitting it into a syringe and plunging it into his thigh. Luckily, his aim is true and he hits the vein, even aiming through his clothes.

She gives a small yelp of surprise at the abrupt motion, the desperate way he acts. 

It doesn’t matter because he can feel it helping—cool numbness spreading slowly through his system, dampening the fever and the need to take her. The hormonal haze dissipates to something that can coexist with rational thought.

Mech breathes in and her scent no longer makes his fingers twitch with the urge to feel her. Well, no more than usual. He’s long perfected the art of ignoring those urges and he’s finally able to do so again. He feels his grip on himself tighten mentally and he slumps in relief. 

He won’t make a terrible mistake, he won’t ruin their friendship—he won’t expose himself and have her reject him, tainting their relationship irreparably. 

“What was that?” Gwen’s voice shakes as she asks and he realizes just how much effort she must have been putting into making it seem like everything was fine. Because she’s not anymore. Her honey brown eyes are wide with worry and concern. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I will be,” Mech’s voice is still rather rough, but he sounds more like himself. “I’m sorry for worrying you. I…” He reaches up to run his fingers through his thick hair. “I seem to be suffering under the effects of some abrupt and intense internal chemistry problems.”

She seems relieved to see him acting more like himself, that he’s speaking in full sentences with more of his usual precision, but her eyes narrow as she considers him. “Something happened back there, didn’t it?” Gwen asks shrewdly.

“Yes,” he admits, not bothering to ask when she mean—there’s no point in trying to deny that. “No idea why, but it did. Let’s just say after generations of my people controlling themselves chemically, that it’s left us with an unpredictable element to our biology. Even though we’ve stopped and are trying to recover from that sort of…repression, it’s not an exact science. Flare ups happen.”

“Right,” Gwen says slowly. He knows she’s always paying attention to what he reveals about himself—there’s a certain intent look she gets in her eyes. Not to mention what research she might have done beyond what he lets slip. Hopefully she knows enough not to press too much. That he can say just enough to weather this storm without her finding out the exact nature of the ‘flare up’. “And that’s what that was?”

“What it is,” he corrected because it's important she not completely let her guard down. “I only slowed the reaction down with that shot.” He grunts as he pulls out a heavy metal case—it contains all the rarer substances from his home planet. “Now that I can think, I need to figure out how to stop it and flush out my system.”

“What does this all have to do with me?”

He freezes for a second before he goes back to cataloging what he has at his disposal. Leave it to his clever human to ask the right question. “My instincts are in turmoil right now,” he settles on. “Having you here—it helps.”

“Why?” she asks, tilting her head to the side. A cheeky grin spreads across her face as her legs swing lightly against the table, as Gwen starts to relax the longer he acts like himself again. “Because I’m your favorite?”

Mech barks a laugh at the echo of his thought from earlier on her lips. “Exactly.” Then the mirth slides from his face. “The idea of letting you out of my sight, where something might happen to you is… Unbearable. Even more than usual.”

Gwen’s face softens and her hand twitches as if to reach out to him. It settles back in her lap, evidently she remembers what he had done earlier to avoid said touch. “Mech, I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine now.”

“I know,” Mech says gruffly, feeling like a child after a nightmare, upset even though he knows it's over and unable to believe in current safety despite every evidence that it is. “I know. Just, indulge me.”

“Of course,” Gwen says graciously—obviously not completely understanding the nuts and bolts of the situation, but seeing enough. As always. “Anything more helpful I can do though? You know me, I hate to sit around on my hands.”

That sends a spike of heat through him. He can think of a number of ways she could help him out, no hands required. His eyes flare and he tries to breathe through the sudden impulse. 

This sedative isn’t gonna buy him nearly as much time as he thought.

“Mech…” She notices his reaction, no matter how quickly he’d clamped down on it, because of course she does. Sliding down from the table, she reaches out to him—obviously having decided it's worth the risk. Normally her touch calms him, but he knows it won’t right now so he ducks out of the way, putting a cart between them. 

“Sorry,” he says, a pang of guilt at her hurt expression. “It's complicated. You can’t touch me. Would make it worse.”

Her face screws up in confusion. “Why?”

“Just will. Need to balance all the, the factors,” Mech turns back to the computer and feeds it a drop of blood, the brief stick of pain helping. “Territorial instincts can be contradictory. Need you close, but not too close or other…” The computer beeps and his heart sinks as he reads the report. A rare condition, with minimal case studies and all reports of this happening have been with mated couples, not unmated ones. Well, there’d been one who’s mate had died a month prior. He did not survive the imbalance.

Mech slams his fist into the desk in frustration. A flask on the counter jolts wildly in reaction and starts to tip over. Mech reaches out a hand to stop its fall at the same time Gwen does. Her hand lands on the back of his. His hand instantly flexed at the feel of her soft skin against his own, as the nerve endings zip with pleasure at the touch of the one he desires.

The flask gives a short whining creak before it shatters under the pressure he’s exerting on it. Cursing again, Mech pulls Gwen back, his tail looping around her elbow to tug her away from the glass as he lunges for a towel. 

He ignores her squawk of protest at his actions and focuses on the fact that glass could hurt her so as to ignore the feel of her under his tail. 

It’s only when he’s cleaned it all up in record time that her voice finally breaks through. “Mech! You’re bleeding. Let go of me,” she gives a short tug to where his tails is looped around her arm, “and let me help. I know how to act around a little broken glass.”

He blinks down at the towel he’d been using to see some streaks of dark blue staining it. With a grunt, he drops it down the disposal shoot and grabs a roll of bandages. As he sprays the shallow cut across his palm with disinfectant, he tries with the rest of his focus to convince his own tail to unwrap from Gwen’s arm. Even after he’s secured a neat bandage to the cut he still can’t even feel, he’s not made any progress in releasing her.

“Mech?” Gwen’s voice has a tremble he hates in it. “Will you say something? You’re…just look at me, please?”

He’s never been able to refuse her before, not really, and there’s no chance of him doing so like this. He sets down the roll of linen and turns to look at her.

Her eyes widen at the glow in his own, the shame in his eyes must be obvious at how he’s lost control of this reaction too, just like his thrice cursed disobedient tail. “Mech, I thought… This still seems pretty bad,” she settles on. “And, I’ve gotta be real, you’re confusing the hell out of me. First you don’t want me to leave, but then you don’t want me too close. Now you won’t let me go.”

Mech’s hand shakes for a second before he grips the edge of the counter so the tremor is disguised. He knows he’s being a contradictory bastard. “I—Am I hurting you?”

“What? Of course not,” Gwen replies, sincere confusion in her face helps some of the shame at his brazen actions, but it also encourages him. His tail’s hold loosens but the amount of skin it’s covering grows as the tail lengthens. Gwen twitches a little at the move, before she ignores it to keep her gaze fixed on him. “But I don’t get it and I can’t help if you keep being so vague. Please, just drop the pride for a minute and talk to me. We can pretend it never happened, but you know you work better with someone to talk at. I don’t even care if you go over my head with the terminology. But stop trying to pretend this isn’t happening and that you have to solve it on your own.”

Mech closes his eyes because she’s so right, damn it all. He often can’t make sense of his own thoughts unless he talks aloud. Gwen’s his best sounding board and she asks just the right questions that let him make the necessary connections needed to solve problems. This isn’t any different, but it has to be, because he can’t tell her. He’ll lose her for good if she finds out what he wants. And, for all its his hormones dialing everything so far beyond usual, he does want her. More than anything he’s ever craved in his life.

But what choice does he have? How closely can he walk that line with his body turned against him like this?

“Alright, alright,” he gives in. “I’ll try to explain.” 

[Part 3]

[decepti-thots]

Okay before I go to bed, my reactions to Void Rivals #1.

I don't want to approach this as A Transformers Comic, really, because that seems unfair. Kirkman is writing a new property that works WITH Transformers, is my read on this, and I want to try and approach this on its own terms. So with that in mind...

...this issue is paced in such a way it is staggeringly obvious it exists as a vehicle for the twist that Transformers is happening. I am not familiar with Kirkman's comics, so can't speak to if this pacing is common for him. But it's a slow start, if an occasionally atmospheric one. (Art's great. That title splash? Gorgeous.) The in media res approach is a solid choice, but it quickly becomes a matter of narrative redundancy; we re-establish that our two new leads are mistrustful due to their longstanding war and cultural norms surrounding it but have to cooperate and know it it a good, oooh, three or so times, which feels very odd on first read. Rather than simply slow the pace down so it only happens once toward the climax of the issue, going for more of a decompressed pacing, we spin our wheels stretching out the beat in a way that feels kind of weird, seemingly to fill the pages.

For a comic with only two people in a dead wasteland setting, it lacks both narrative efficiency (you could fit twice the amount of building-a-dynamic work in here) and a sense of sparse, lingering atmosphere build up (a slower pace with less talking could sell more isolation, paranoia and tension).

Why? Because the climax doesn't have space for the culmination to be 'and now they realise they have to work together', so it has to be sorted towards the start. But then there's nothing much to do in the middle, so it all gets stretched.

And the reason that can't be the climax is of course that the discovery of Jetfire is that. It's a great setup for this kind of twist conceptually- so obvious I predicted it without needing more than a solicit and his promo art. That's because it fits! But then he unexpectedly leaves, and I realised the setup probably wasn't to integrate him into this comic as an entrance into what role the crossover has here. It's to set up his story, I think, in the Transformers ongoing in October. That he's missed the war while out cold on this planet. (It is a fun use of the G1 cartoon story in a new context.) Which makes the end of this comic feel less... anything? If Jetfire was staying as the surprise third character, a fish out of water they needed to persuade to help them, that would have helped justify the prior meandering, I think. But he leaves, and the sense is that the comic only goes the way it does to set up another comic. Our actual protagonists then continue basically unaffected, so really, what does it matter, and was it worth meandering?

(Sidenote: imagine, a Cybertronian audience surrogate with humanoid alien protagonists! I want it. Maybe one way or another we'll fet it down the line. A nice twist.)

Maybe I'll be wrong and Jetfire will be back next issue- but if so, this comic failed to set up narrative expectations well.

It sounds like I hate it. I don't! It's got some interesting ideas, though exposition is slightly forced and dialogue is a bit clunky IMO. I like the basic concept. The ending where they take off their helmets is... we'll see where he's going with this I guess. But it feels like an 'issue zero', a possible prequel to two comics in one? Frankly, doing this AS a one-off prequel might have been wise, idk. A before-the-launch thirty page special or something. As the first issue of Void Rivals, it feels hijacked and unfocused; as the set up for Transformers, it feels a bit tortured, as much as I do still like the whole idea of starting it off in a non-TF book if you are going to do a crossover universe. (Really dig into the idea the universe continues around their war!)

Also, it truly just expects you to know who Jetfire is. Like, not just what Transformers is. Who he is. I'm surprised by that. As a way to hook non-TF readers, an overt reference to a single episode of the G1 cartoon most non-fans likely don't remember even if they saw it? Seems kinda deep cut. The whole thing revolves around knowing that this is him being someone who has missed the war. Hmmm.

Anyway. I'm interested to see how this pans out. Especially since the announced writer for the TF ongoing suggests this is definitely gonna be a war story.

[starlightshore]

I know I’m real late but since ectoplasm is so harmful to humans, can Tucker and Sam be in the ghost zone without protection? Also, does possession still work, since ghosts are made of ectoplasm?

(continuation of this post)

not late at all! i'm really chatty rn so i'm happy to keep talking lol

so first i wanna rephrase and elaborate with what i meant by ectoplasm being harmful... i meant exposed and pure ectoplasm, so like, Danny's "blood" (internal ectoplasm) is reactive. In a more "pure" form, it's like an acid to organic material.

ectoplasm in different states would have different effects, like breathing it in? probably not good. but it's more "diluted" with the air. when it's not "pure" ectoplasm, it's harmless. i mentioned it's dark matter- that stuff is EVERYWHERE and iirc it's only known property is it's weight. but yeah like, drinking it? NOT GOOD. if it's compact enough to be a liquid then it's more "pure" and it'd be like drinking a high level acid.

the reason ectoplasm is so corrosive, as i like for it to be symbolically the "opposite" of life. they're incompatible. it react explosively makes sense to me, and ya know, traveling through a different dimension full of ghosts just sounds super dangerous to me lmao

(image description is within the image)

Sorry for the incredibly generic hazmat suit design. i'd have to do some research (i know there's different kinds and I'd also like to make this more astronaut like) it'd be very intensely important to wear one.

actually, thinking on it, imagine it's like this. you know how deep sea fish are built to a specific pressure within the deep water where gravity pushes harder? the fish there have a specific amount of water/and pressure that fills them to keep their equilibrium. that means they reduce their tissue density and have lighter bones. they're more jelly like -the same thing is true for ghosts!

ghosts are like, fully ectoplasm but ectoplasm itself is very varied -both in state of matter and also properties. the pure fluid ectoplasm inside is contained by a thing "membrane."

For a human* to come into the ghost zone, it'd be like an ocean of pure* ectoplasm. Thus, the suit. You'd expect the human to sink -being so much heavier than the ectoplasm but no, ectoplasm isn't water! it's a substance that's alien to the physics of earth.

and remember, Danny being a halfa, is paradoxically immune to ectoplasm reactions because he's a time/reality anomaly.

2) not literally pure. just like how our atmosphere isn't pure air, this ectoplasm is varied by a whole bunch of "elements" within it.

as illustrated here, ectoplasm is repelled by humans (assuming they have a protective layer, so really, any non-organic barrier) The repelled ectoplasm leaves a "gap" creating a darkness around the subject. Humans can move around as if they were in space (as there's no gravity) and can become tangible/invisible just as ghosts can in our dimension.

Likewise, ghosts don't glow and are "solid" and can't pass through. (i really loved this aspect in the original show!) Danny, being only 80% organic, isn't as repelling as other humans/ghosts, but it's not to a noticeable degree. (in this illustration it's exaggerated to make my point here) This, again, is a factor of his weird biology and paradox status. Ectoplasm and earth matter are confused -great going danny your existence breaks the rules of the universe!

(also minor aspect I like: light behaves differently here, so lights are more neon/darker.)

also important: because danny is the first human (aside from vlad lmao) to go into the ghost zone, Danny gets the wrong impression that the ghost zone is safe to humans. Thankfully before Tucker and Sam go in Danny's parents on day 2 are like:

(notably, Danny has more than one hazmat suit. this isn't the original)

anywayyyys as for your second question!

first i'm going to add a read-more cause this is getting long LOL

Also, does possession still work, since ghosts are made of ectoplasm?

Yep! Still works, even tho ghosts themselves are made of corrosive pure ectoplasm. Let me explain how this works: Ghosts are ectoplasm that has been given consciousness -remember, ghost zone is a layer onto earth it's not thousands of miles away. it's a different dimension. the natural ectoplasm (which is the zone, to be clear) that's around the earth atmosphere will accept the consciousness of someone who's died. (moving from the body to the ectoplasm) Also, it doesn't have to be humans, it could be an alien (from a distant planet or time period) or an animal or plant. or, like, something bizarrely confusing, like whatever Liminal Gates and Clockwork are. (and native ghost zone life, which are beings that developed from ectoplasm without an original consciousness from earth)

anyway, i bring this up because ghosts are a consciousness that uses ectoplasm as a body. The consciousness itself isn't necessarily connected. (Core anchor them to their body, however.)

So like, think of this way? Think of this extra dimension as a fourth x/y/z axis. Like how time is a different dimension that we can only experience linearly, ghosts are able to travel on this fourth axis. The ectoplasmisc body is "intangible" as in, existing on this different plane of existence. In the same way you can stand on the same x axis and a different y, the ghost can do so on the fourth plane. To our perspective, Danny is within Sam's body. But to Danny's body, it's on a different position just how we know something behind you is not literally in/over the thing behind it.

I hope that makes sense, dimensional stuff can be hard to talk about because we're only limited to 3 dimensions. Ghosts are 4D.

Anyway, while the body is outside our realm of (x,y,z), his consciousness overtakes Sam's when they're positioned in the same "spot" (again, technically not in the same spot, remember the x,y comparison to z) Ghosts are their own consciousness that doesn't have to use ectoplasm as it's body, though it needs it's core to sustain itself. (thus why Danny still needs to "connect" his body using gaseous ectoplasm when separating his body parts)

alright sorry this is such a long answer i love the HELL out of this kinda stuff. i sincerely hope this is comprehensible and accurate! its been a hot minute since i researched this kinda thing, but i'm pretty certain i got it right. (granted this is all pseudoscience! just like, loosely based on real theories that i can understand at a highschool level)

[gamesception]

Nice summary. Important to note that while some of the 2d games are "remakes" of others (zero mission a remake of Metroid 1, Samus Returns and AM2R remakes of Metroid 2) - those remakes don't displace the original the way the HD remaster of Metroid Prime on the switch can basically replace the gamecube original. The Metroid games, especially the 2d Metroid games, have stories and lore, but the games really aren't about that, they're about atmosphere and exploration and tone and mechanics. In every way that matters Metroid Zero Mission and Samus Returns are stand alone addition to the franchise, not replacements for Metroids 1 & 2. Re: Metroid 1, while "gameplay: unplayable" is fair, the main problem is that you start again with like 30 health and no missiles regardless of what your maximums are whenever you die or load a save file/password, which leads to intolerable grinding in the mid to late game to get back to the point where you can make another attempt at whatever part killed you. If you abuse save states to never die or use a romhack to that fixes this problem, the gameplay becomes a playable 4/10. Still old and jank, but worth experiencing to appreciate the origins and evolution of the series. I disagree on the Metroid 2 gameplay note. IMO the map is not so big that you can't get a mental handle on it even in without color, and Metroid 2 introduced energy & missle recharge stations to solve Metroid 1's fatal flaw. Not great gameplay, still very jank, but not unplayable, and again worth experiencing imo. Especially since 'atmosphere: good' doesn't do Metroid 2 justice. Solid 9/10, on par with some of the best in the series. There's something about the small cramped, claustrophobic gameboy screen that fits games exploration of narrow caves and dark caverns, or the relative lack of ambient music in most areas, with gameboy bleeps and bloops evoking the sounds of alien life, or the panicked battles with metroids that you just can't keep off of you - they're bad gameplay absolutely but there's this feeling to them that gets lost in the more fun but also more obviously gamey metroid fights in AM2R and Samus Returns. Oh, and I have played Samus Returns. I'd say gameplay 7/10 (mostly decent and mercury steam had interesting ideas with the free aim and melee counter, but both lock Samus in place which makes moment to moment gameply slow and jerky as every enemy makes you stop to either aim or counter, very cool to see them fix these features instead of abandoning them in dread to reach the best gameplay in the series) Atmosphere 7/10 (step down from the amazing atmosphere of the gameboy original, but still solid throughout most of the game, only really falling apart at the end) Exploration: 7/10. Again, solid, if unremarkable. Adds reasons to return and re-explore zones not present in the more linear structure of the original, but to the detriment of the overall pacing and atmosphere, so it's give & take. story/lore: 5/10 start from 2's minimal but solid foundations and piles on changes that are mostly bad, drawing from the comic lore which itself is mostly bad. Again though, metroid games aren't about story, so bad story/lore doesn't really detract. Samus Returns is the hardest to effectively play given that it's not on current systems and emulation doesn't really capture the experience of the 3ds's bottom touch screen and stereoscopic 3d top screen. It's not the most essential game in the franchise, so you can skip it, but if you can get your hands on a 3ds then it's worth playing to see just how much of Metroid Dread's best-in-franchise gameplay comes down to refining ideas first seen here. Going from Samus Returns to Metroid Dread is a really compelling example of how the best part of a great game can come from fixing, rather than just cutting, the worst aspects of a merely decent one.

[indignantlemur]

⭐

Yay! I have so many feelings about the latest chapter that it's probably the best place to begin, but I try to pack little world-building and character-development details into as many chapters as I can. For the newest chapter, Connection, there are some parts that I am really very fond of for a variety of reasons. There are lines in this chapter that have been living rent-free in my head since the inception of this fic.

It was also so, so important to me that this chapter was about catharsis over spicy content, because spice is nice but I've been building up to this for 36 chapters and nearly 12 years. There has to be more pay off than a quick scene and a fade to black - it has to matter. To me, to you, to Dagmar, to Shral - it has to mean more, because she's horribly alone in a strange new world and he is breaking every social norm and custom to try to bridge an impossible gap, and that's... that's the stuff I started writing for.

How strange, he thought. How strange, to reach instead of being reached for.

The slide of her warm palm, of slim fingers slipping between his own, inexplicably soothed some of his restlessness.

“I do not.” Shral spoke a moment later, and Dagmar marvelled at how always, always , his steady manner eased something twisted up with anxiety inside her.

The theme of reaching and being reached for, time and time again, is so central to Dagmar and Shral, along side themes of 'calm' and 'soft-still-quiet' and the simple phrasing of 'slowly, gently, relentlessly'.

Excitement and nerves are a wonderful part of any relationship, but they're not the things that last. Dagmar and Shral needed, in my mind, to have a bedrock-solid foundation beyond 'sexy alien' and 'pretty girl' and that means that they both need to find something in each other that they can't find elsewhere. Love is wild. Love is electricity along your nerves and fire in your blood. It's butterflies in your tummy and sleepless nights - but you know what else it is? It's the calm, quiet feeling of something very gently slotting into place inside your soul, something you might have gone a lifetime without realizing was askew. It settles you, makes the sharp edges of the world softer, kinder, and it brings peace in the same way that snow makes the world quiet.

So slowly, gently, relentlessly I will bring them together and I will make of them something that will not break.

Shral offered a razor-thin smile, and his eyes seemed to grow softer for a moment as he set down his katheka and almost indulgently entangled their fingers. Sitting across the table as they were, drinking the Andorian equivalent of coffee, the gesture felt even more like Human hand-holding – felt, for that matter, more intimate. It raised goose-bumps down the length of her arms, a frisson like a tiny electric current.  “ Phiithza .” He pronounced the word slowly, carefully, letting her hear the precise sounds needed for each syllable. For emphasis, he squeezed her hand gently and reiterated, “This is phiithza .” Trust-symbol , Dagmar immediately translated, her mind already leaping to root words and variations in the different dialects she knew. An occupational hazard, she supposed wryly.

This is something I was planning to do for a while, but it never quite fit with the flow of the other chapters. The invitation to use phiithza was a huge part of how Dagmar really started to fit in properly with her Andorian friends and colleagues - both because it displayed that she was a trusted individual and because it was a public, affectionate acknowledgement of her as a friend, as a person. Every time she has greeted an Andorian using phiithza Dagmar has shown that she's not just a Human existing on Andoria but a Human actively learning and integrating with the local culture.

And then we get to this part:

“You cannot add to the security I provide for myself.” The Andorian stated after some consideration, slow and careful as his thumb brushed gently over the curve of the side of her hand and bumped over a knuckle. He seemed ponderous, considering, as his eyes flicked up to meet hers once more. “I am the stronger of us by far, and the better trained – but I find a calmness in you that I rarely find in myself. I concern myself with your affairs more than the customs of my people dictate that I should, and yet I often find I can pursue no other course. I have come to believe that there is a degree of… compatibility between us.”

This is Shral's Mr. Darcy speech - his strange, stilted proposal to reach across that gap that he can finally, after a very long year, see narrowing. There is almost a kind of rote ritual quality to his words, as if he's following some guideline or has thought them over many times before. Unlike Mr. Darcy, however, Shral manages to avoid insulting Dagmar and it goes over rather well, all things considered.

And Dagmar! Oh, bless her, she's doing her best but she's very Human and not always the swiftest to put the pieces together. She hears this speech and something in her brain finally ticks over, and all her brilliant, ridiculous mind can come up with is: "Oh."

Because Dagmar is as Human as I can make her, and that means sometimes she says something stupid, or she can't find the words, or the words she can find aren't quite the right ones. She is full of self-doubt and grief and loneliness, but she tries so hard. Sometimes she wins, and sometimes she loses, but she never stops trying.

After that, we have this line - one of the rent-free tenants in my brain for years now- and I don't have words to express how gratifying it was to put the words down properly.

Still, she needed to be sure. Dagmar couldn’t afford to be irresponsible about this - not with a coworker, not with Shral.  “Are you sure this is something you want? With me? We’re very different. I would understand if-” “Yes.” He cut her off, fierce in a way that made her shift in her seat, torn between the conflicting impulses to flee from the intensity of his gaze and the desire to draw closer yet. The starburst of warmth and light at the back of her mind was a near-burning thing, now, incandescent and radiating. “I know the sound of your heartbeat, the scent of your pheromones, the precise steps in your gait; I could find you in a crowd of thousands. If not you, then no one.” Spirits, she thought faintly as she stared up at him, momentarily overwhelmed. He was making it very hard to be responsible about this. 

Shral is largely a mystery to both Dagmar and my readers, and that is very deliberate because it leaves you -I hope- feeling just as stunned as Dagmar when he turns around and says something like this after so much build up. For all that he is reserved and difficult to read, he is still Andorian and what he feels, he feels with great intensity.

After these, of course, we get to Andorian kissing versus Human kissing. As much as I wanted emotional release to be central to this chapter I felt it equally important to find ways to emphasize how truly different Andorians and Humans are. As far as Shral was concerned, he started snogging around this point:

To his credit, the Andorian seemed to pick up on something of her thoughts and he eased her forward until their brows were touching, stopping at just the lightest of presses. She could feel his antennae trailing, feather-light, over her hair; the sensation sent tiny little shivers down her spine and she inadvertently pressed closer.

Dagmar registers something intimate about the gesture, but she has no idea what it actually means. It feels weird, mostly, and she's dimly aware that his antennae are doing something but she has no idea what that's about. It doesn't line up with her expectations or her instincts. In fact, Dagmar doesn't really start to clue in that something more important than proximity is involved until this line:

His brow had never left hers, pressing hard against her with the same fervency that a Human might have kissed her, and his antennae writhed. 

Even then, she doesn't know and then when she finally demonstrates how Humans do things, it's strange. In fact, it's awkward, and it's not for lack of trying on anybody's part but Andorians just don't have the same kind of fine facial musculature that Humans have. Shral is literally not capable of reciprocating in way a Human might, and it's not until Dagmar consciously modifies her approach to account for that that things start to become easy between them.

There are so many differences to account for, though, and one make-out session doesn't magically make them go away. The chapter comes to a close with Shral is cautiously optimistic, while Dagmar has trouble seeing past the things she lacks but tries to, the way she always tries.

... Alright, I think I've rambled enough. I hope this is more or less what you were hoping for!

[absolutepokemontrash]

The Brothers and Side Characters Play the Sims

I don’t know what possessed me to make this but WHATEVER. I’ve been playing the Sims since I was a wee little girl, and I’ve seen my fair share of weird Sims stuff that I feel would fit these bozos perfectly.

My Sims have a Functional Family Life Because I Don’t (Lucifer)

God dammit Levi’s obsessed with another game... ugh.

Spends 5 minutes in Create-a-Sim and hops into a starter home.

Lucifer’s the type to start with all the average stuff and then build their stuff up as his sim gets promotions.

It’s just... so peaceful...

...he’s adopting a dog.

Look at his new little virtual family... his sim-kids are self sufficient and getting A’s in school, his Sim spouse MC or Diavolo take your pick loves his Sim-self, his sim-dog-

WAIT NO- THE DOG’S AN ELDER?!

AAAAAAAAAAAAA-

...

He’s fine. It was just a virtual dog. *sniffle*

He’s now spending his free time drinking Demonus and playing the Sims.

What’s a mod? Levi why does your sim have gun?

Behold, My Gorgeous Home... It’s a Box (Mammon)

Mammon, like the rest of the HOL, is mooching off of Levi’s Origin account.

“AW SHIT! This house looks awesome! I’m gonna build it for Sim-me to live in!”

Mammon proceeds to build a box with rooms. Yay...

He just picks the funnest sounding job if he picks any job at all for his Sim. That’s how he ended up making 9 dollars an hour in the criminal career.

Didn’t stop Mammon from buying that solid gold bathroom set from Get Famous... a box with solid gold bathrooms.

His Sim is broke send help-

“Leviiiiiii my sim needs money... the people my sim kidnapped and is forcing to paint aren’t making enough money...” “Ugh... press control shift C and type ‘motherlode’.”

...Levi made a mistake.

“FUCK YEAH! MOTHERLODE!”

His sim’s life is so chaotic, he has a piranha pool that his sim has almost died in twice, the sim is carrying on several torrid love affairs, his sim got struck by lightning, his sim has nearly died in a grilled cheese making accident twice... in the same day.

At least once Sim-Mammon and Sim-MC get married things calm down a little.

Mammon finds out what custom content is and proceeds to download EVERYTHING HE CAN FIND.

And now he’s asking Levi why his computer is running so slow.

Expansion Pack King (Leviathan)

He got into it back when the Sims 2 was new, he’s a veteran fan.

“Bro remember when Agnes Crumplebottom would show up and whack the shit out of your sims if they were flirting?”

“Remember when that witch would show up randomly on the lot you were on if you had Makin’ Magic?”

“Remember when Bella Goth was abducted by aliens and we just... didn’t question it?”

He whines about the Sims4 and how crappy it is but still buys every expansion pack, game pack, and stuff pack.

This boy watches like 40 hours of built tutorials and ends up sobbing over his weird roofs.

“WHY DOESN’T IT LOOK AS NICE AS THE ONE I’M LOOKING AT?! THIS ISN’T FAIR!”

The mod folder is so full istg-

Levi gets custom content for the sole purpose of making his favourite fictional characters.

This is why Henry and the Lord of Shadows are married and Ruri-chan and Sim-Levi are roommates.

Oh my god they were roommates-

Levi also added his brothers to the world and uh... Sim-Mammon died in a tragic pool accident F.

Levi then proceeded to befriend the Grim Reaper.

He’s anxiously awaiting the release of Paralives.

Wait Gameplay? In This Build Simulator? (Satan)

Satan’s here to build and leave. Gameplay who?

Our favourite bundle of rage is a master architect and the amount of followers on the Gallery he has shows it.

He takes up those build shell challenges and always ends up making them look positively perfect.

Asmo’s always using his houses, and Satan often takes requests when he gets bored.

No Mammon, he reserves the right to refuse to build a golden castle for you- YOUR SIM HAS 40 SIMOLEONS-

No mods, no CC, he’s building with what EA gave him.

...and EA gave him debug objects, and he’s not going to explain how to get them.

The one time he did actually play with a family... it was one sim and seven cats.

He tries to play without cheats... and ends up getting frustrated and turns on cheats.

All hail the Pets Expansion Pack.

Custom Content Soap Opera (Asmodeus)

Asmo spends 5 hours in Create a Sim then just... clicks out of the game.

That’s how it goes most of the time, buuuuuut when he gets super invested in a family he’s made, boy howdy is he INVESTED.

Sim A is carrying on an affair with Sim C who’s in love with Sim B who’s married to Sim A but Sim D wants to kill Sim A and C even though they’re the illegitimate child of Sim C-

When Asmo realizes that in the Sims 4 he needs to manufacture all the drama himself and he can’t just sit back with a glass of wine and watch the fireworks, he switches to the Sims 2 and 3.

“...why is this old lady beating up my Sim..?”

He immediately recoils in horror upon seeing how ugly the Sims are pre Sims4.

HE NEEDS TO FIX THIS-

Ah, there we go, perfect. Custom Content to the rescue!

He ends up remaking the entire world just so he doesn’t have to look at weird looking Sims.

Asmo is the only one to have finished a proper Legacy Challenge, but it gets crazy chaotic after gen 3.

“My sim just got abducted by aliens and now he’s pregnant- WHAT?!”

He has about 40 saves and only two he actually plays.

Just a Big Ol’ Happy Family (Beelzebub)

Beel found the game, proceeded to make everyone in create-a-sim to the best of his abilities, and made everyone get along.

That’s why Sim-Lucifer and Sim-Belphie are on a swing set together, they’re friends :D

“Hey Luke do you think you can make this?” “I-is that a cake shaped like a hamburger?” “Yes. Please make.”

He took one look at the cooking options and decided to max out his Sim’s cooking skill to unlock all the options.

Beel proceeded to drool all over his keyboard. Gross...

Boy howdy did he have some crazy dinner suggestions!

Overall, very wholesome Sim-life, except for the time Sim-Levi died because the toilet caught fire, don’t worry, Sim-Beel knows how to make ambrosia.

All is good in the Sim save...

...until Sim-Beel ate pufferfish nigiri and fuckin died-

Wait Did I Not Pause- (Belphie)

Huh, this game looks fine... I’ll play for a little- *SNORE*

Belphie makes some sims, plops them into a starter home, plays for an hour, then falls asleep.

He wakes up five hours later to absolute carnage.

Three sims have died because someone decided to make Mac and Cheese and the oven caught fire, the kids were taken away by social services, and the dog ran away.

“...heheh, holy shit everyone look.”

He doesn’t play often, but when he does, death occurs. He has found out every death method for every game from Sims 2 to 4.

And that INCLUDES the Sims Medieval! You guys remember that game?

Sometimes it’s not intentional, but Belphie got bored with the totally normal life his sims were living and decided to spice it up.

“Why are the ghosts breaking my showers..?”

Help There’s a Bug- (Diavolo)

The Crown Prince started playing when he noticed Lucifer was playing it.

He was immediately obsessed.

Dia mostly plays the Sims Medieval because he likes the feeling of achievement after completing a quest!

“Barbatos... why isn’t my Sim completing their task? The icon won’t show up.” “My lord it appears the game is bugged.” “:(“

No one thought to tell Diavolo that EA doesn’t plan on offering bug support to a game made in like... 2009

This doesn’t matter! Look at how great his kingdom is doing- oh no his hero has the plague-

He plays through the Pirates and Nobles expansion and manages to get the peaceful ending, he’s so proud of himself.

“MC! Look! My Monarch’s sword is permanently on fire and I’m fighting an evil wizard!”

When he does play the other Sims games he’s pretty basic, though, he does a great job at furnishing!

Dia gets crazy sad when his Sims die... he turns off aging.

Builder no. 2 (Barbatos)

Barbie doesn’t have time for this... but when he does, he builds.

No create a sim.

No playing the game as intended.

Just builds.

It’s relaxing, okay? A nice little suburban house he’s never going to play in, maybe a treehouse, maybe a big Hollywood Mansion...

The only time he actually plays the game outside of build mode is when someone needs his help to fix something in-game.

He does download custom content build items if he feels bored by the current selection.

Oh Crap What Am I Doing?! (Simeon)

Help him. Please.

He’s so confused.

“Luke, why is my sim upset?” “He’s hungry, Simeon.” “Oh, how do I fix that?” “...Simeon-”

There’s a toilet in the middle of the living room.

The fridge is facing the wall.

There’s no bathtub or shower.

The house is on fire- there is no god- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

Okay, once he gets the hang of it he’s sitting pretty. His sims have good jobs, the kids are getting good grades, everything’s fine.

...

But Simeon won’t forget the nightmares.

What Even is This Save? (Solomon)

Solomon’s save is the definition of chaos.

One sim’s a vampire, the other is a spellcaster that really wants to fight the Callientes for some reason, there’s one normal sim that’s always sick for some reason,

It gets weird, confusing, and horrible.

Just how Solomon likes it.

His house makes no sense, like, what even is architecture?

Money cheats are needed because Solomon‘a goal of chaos and confusion is proving to be kind of expensive.

Square up Mortimer Goth, Solomon’s sims are here to steal your weird knight statue that’s worth a shit ton of simoleons for NO REASON.

He joined the scientist career for the sole purpose of getting to the alien planet and kidnapping adding an alien to the household via cheats.

The vampire ended up dying on their wedding day because Solomon forgot that he gave them the sun weakness.

Oh well, the ghost got added to the household! VAMPIRE GHOST!

The Child (Luke)

Before you say Luke’s too young to play the Sims, you should know that I was nine when I first started playing, and I turned out fiiiiiiiiiine.

He’s just happy to be playing.

Look, his sims are gardening :D

Look, two of them are getting married :D

Look, they had a baby :D

Look, his sims are building a rocket ship :D

Look, his sims’s rocket just crashed-

The concept of death hit the little angel right in the face that day.

“*sniffle*... my sims...”

Don’t worry, with tears in his eyes, Luke quit without saving and everything was fine!

Speaking of My Sims, Luke played MySims Sky Heroes and that was when Luke had his first bout of gamer rage.

MC came over to hang out with Solomon and Simeon, and in the distance they could just hear:

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY TIME WASN’T FAST ENOUGH TO CONTINUE THE STORY!? I’LL SHOW YOU FAST ENOUGH TIME!”

Okay, maybe Simeon should take the game away... just for a bit... he should take heed not to be bitten by the incredibly angry chihuahua.

Bonus:

MC: Why are our Sims married?

*Insert Boy Here*: Uh... that’s weird... I have no clue why they’re doing that...

[satellitesoundwave]

top five IDW1 dynamics? doesn't have to be ships!

This was harder than I expected! A thing that varies by fandom for reasons completely unknown to me is that for some media I get more attached to the dynamics between characters, and for others I get attached to particular characters themselves. tf is firmly one where I get attached to individuals, so a fair few of my favourite dynamics kind of end up being ones where it’s a “look I really like character A, and I may not feel as strongly about character B but what they bring out in A is fascinating” situation, which for me is a distinct feeling from when I get attached to the dynamic itself

Now, for the actual top 5:

5) Rewind/Chromedome my beloved. James Roberts has an excellent grasp on utilising foils which I covet from a skill standpoint, and cdrw is like, the pinnacle. The memory surgeon. The archivist. The one who lets go too easily. The one who holds on too tightly. Together they bring each other into a sharp relief that clearly defines them as individuals, but they also feel like two halves of a whole. And then they build a better understanding of each other across the series? Ideal

4) Hmm. you know, I think I’m gonna say Tracks & Jazz in Spotlight: Jazz? There’s something neat about Jazz taking his anonymity with a stranger and using it to style himself as this kind of platonic ideal of an Autobot solider. And how it being framed as a memory Tracks is retelling gives us insight into Tracks, but leaves ambiguity around what Jazz is thinking and feeling that the reader can read into

3) Whirl and Cyclonus. As an enthusiast of both slow burn and characters going from enemies to friends and/or lovers, their gradual development from actively trying to kill each other to friends who care deeply about each other really hit the spot for me. Also, it feels like they’re on the same axis of fucked up, but Whirl’s at the end labelled ‘mouthy’ and Cyclonus is at the end marked ‘silent.’ It’s nice to see them meet in the middle

2) We see very little of it but Pharma and Ratchet, because the professional side of things with those two is a question I rotate in my mind regularly. I haven’t studied medicine myself but I work in patient-facing medical administration, so I have first hand experience with how the interpersonal skills of doctors affect their ability to provide adequate healthcare to their patients. A lot of what doctors do depends on a bond of trust between them and their patient; a patient’s willingness to initiate contact with the doctor when they’re concerned (which patients don’t do if they feel like their doctor doesn’t take them seriously), mention symptoms that might be relevant, answer questions honestly, etc. And doctors are gatekeepers in several ways (of advanced medical knowledge, of medications, of services you can only access through them) and it gives them a lot of power. Patients’ who’re sensitised to that power imbalance often have their guard up, and a doctor who can’t or won’t use interpersonal skills to get the patient to lower their guard and extend trust will struggle to provide that patient the best possible healthcare, no matter how good that doctor is in terms of their medical knowledge.

I reckon this would be actually kind of critical in a place like the Lost Light where Ratchet is essentially a GP in a very small pool of GPs (though this issue does apply to specialists/surgeons/etc to a degree as well). His grouchy and gruff demeaner and tendency towards dismissiveness could really work against him here, and it’s not like patients who find him alienating can go to a different medical centre and see a doctor they know isn’t friends with him or potentially asking him for his professional opinion. And you have the contrast of Pharma who we get the impression is a lot more interpersonally astute. That he was able to negotiate a deal with the DJD, and that he could keep running Delphi while experiencing the worst god-awful stress of his life without his coworkers noticing how far off the deep end he was being pushed, suggests he’s decent at reading people/situations and willing to pack away his negative emotions and only present affableness or something similar when a situation calls for it. and because of this I think there’s a real possibility that Pharma could have been the better doctor compared to Ratchet, due to putting more work into his interpersonal relationships with his patients and so putting himself in a position to provide better long term health outcomes for them (which imo is the main metric by which how ‘good’ a doctor is should be gauged). Add how this also provides room to explore how much awareness Ratchet might have had about this difference between them, and it has secured its spot as a compelling dynamic to me

1) Tarantulas and Prowl, surprising absolutely no one. They are such a mess, it is very fun

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

okay, I want to hear about your thoughts on Renesmee wanting to eat Edward?? What's up with that. Also would love to hear about your opinion on this child in general. All the people in her life are hardcore projecting on her, what's the alien child's perspective on all this shit. Thanks for all the twilight meta its wild.

Thank you, glad you enjoy my rambling, strange, thoughts.

What’s Up With Renesmee Devouring Her Enemies?

So, this one’s actually a bit of headcanon on my end, not really supported by anything directly. We’re going way into left field with this.

But I do have this. Renesmee is a highly efficient predator, perhaps in a way more so than the vampire (although she is weaker and slower than vampires) and Renesmee is... not human, for whatever that means.

Everything we see of Renesmee’s early biological development, and what we see happening in Nahuel and his sisters, makes a lot of sense from a biological standpoint.

The mother is turned essentially into a hybrid incubator, such that even if she wanted to abort she likely would not be able to or would not survive it. The child grows at a rapid rate in the room and has to eat itself out, at which point it has a starter meal of the human mother. The child then grows absurdly rapidly to the point where, mentally and physically, it can survive on its own. Growth then slows and then stops when sexual maturity is reached, presumably for reproductive purposes.

Vampires cannot do a few things. They are a half-sterile race, only able to reproduce through humans and the previously male half of the human species. They also need external help to kill a fellow vampire. In other words, they have to light a fire.

Until you burn the pieces, the enemy vampire isn’t dead. Now, using fire as a tool is to date something only the human species has figured out. It is not intuitive and an odd coincidence that vampires had this prerequisite knowledge (I have thoughts on what vampirism even is and where it comes from). 

I imagine, just as Renesmee presumably has reproductive capabilities that vampires lack, she also a has a toolset that vampires lack: the ability to kill a vampire without the need for fire. 

Given that Renesmee’s able to eat human food, this implies she has a digestive that is able to break down nutrients. The reason vampires can’t eat other vampires is they lack this. Edward swallows pizza, he’s vomiting that shit back up three hours later and it’s going to be very solid and very gross. Whatever venom did to his innards, most of his vital human organs aren’t working anymore.

Given that Renesmee’s this mix of venom and who knows what kinds of fluids I believe her stomach is capable of breaking down and digesting vampire flesh. This seems to me the most obvious way to eliminate an enemy vampire when no tools are otherwise available.

Hence, instinctively, if Renesmee wants to murder Edward she will eat him.

(Also, as you can tell, the image is just horrifyingly delightful to me, and so it’s my go to response.)

As for why she would want to eat him, see here and here.

The Family and Renesmee

As you note, everyone in Renesmee’s life projects someone else onto her.

Not so much Carlisle, he just seems very bewildered and overwhelmed by everything at first, and one of the few who openly notes how not human Renesmee is and the implications of this (given the chromosome experiment, I’m sure Carlisle was expecting a squid).

Even in the early stages though we see Edward, Bella, Alice, and Rosalie as primary offenders. (I’d list Esme except Esme is... being Esme about it, so, she’s just floating through Renesmee’s life like her Cullen ghost self and not even at the point where she can project anything onto her. Besides, that’s what Edward’s for.)

Edward sees the best of both himself and Bella in Renesmee, a little intellectual who reads War and Peace at a few weeks old when she has no understanding of the concepts of War, Napoleon, Russia, or Peace. As Edward always does, he so obliviously projects onto her, that I imagine it doesn’t matter what Renesmee says or does around him and she quickly figures that out.

Bella’s left the planet. Renesmee’s this beautiful thing, that looks like Edward, that is her daughter. Bella has no idea what parenting is. She’s floating through life preparing herself to become Esme 2.0. It’s not so much that she projects onto Renesmee but that she... completely fails to connect her to reality. Renesmee is a concept to Bella. Renesmee might figure this out, but given her feelings for her mother, I imagine she’s far more conflicted about it. She probably wishes things could be different between them, and often tries to find ways to make it so, it just never works.

Alice treats Renesmee much as she treated Bella, as her little doll that she can dress in cute clothing. Beyond that, Renesmee is a nuisance who messes with Alice’s gift. Oh, Alice likes her well enough, but I don’t see them having an actual meaningful conversation or connection.

Rosalie’s probably the wort offender in the projection domain. She is absolutely projecting the ideal human child she never had onto Renesmee. When Renesmee inevitibly fails to live up to these perfect standards, which even a human child wouldn’t, I imagine Rosalie will get increasingly upset. Acknowledging Renesmee isn’t what she wanted either would probably break Rosalie, so she’s not going to do that, and instead try to get Renesmee to behave correctly. For however much she cares about Renesmee, I imagine Renesmee sours on her growing up, as she knows she will never be what Rosalie wishes she was. Grateful that Rosalie helped keep her alive, of course, but... she would also probably wonder, as fandom does, just how much Rosalie was hoping Bella would die in birth (for the record, I think this might have been an idle fantasy of Rosalie’s, but I don’t think she’d go this far.)

Then of course, there’s Jake. Woof, Jake. As I linked above, I think Renesmee will slowly become more and more disenchanted with Jake. She’ll either learn about or suspect her own gift, have no interest in having a romantic relationship with him, or learn about his checkered past with her mother. More Jake is...

Imprinting, at a very large distance, sounds nice but imagine what that means. You have this person who is utterly dependent on you, who will do whatever you want and be whatever you wish them to be. In other words, you have this codependent person you can never get rid of who is never authentic. They will never say no to you, will always do what you wish, and if you dare to tell them you want a little time to yourself they will probably combust into flames.

That’s not a good relationship for anyone: imprinter or imprintee.

Jake, in a sense, ceases to be a real person when it comes to Renesmee. Renesmee will figure that out and then... why should she live her life just to make this miserable man who once tried to murder her happy?

What Does This Do to Renesmee?

I imagine Renesmee grows up feeling very isolated.

She doesn’t really belong in the Cullens, for all that they’re the best fit she has. She certainly doesn’t belong with other imprintees in the tribe (and whatever occasional function she goes to with the Quileutes is probably a complete disaster), and she’s not human either.

I imagine her strongest relationships are Charlie Swan (who beyond the surrealness of his life I imagine takes Renesmee at very face value), Carlisle Cullen (who also seems to not project onto Renesmee and takes her at face value), and Bella (who she desperately wants a stronger relationship with but Bella’s not listening).

Well, Charlie at some point will die. He will not choose immortality. I imagine Renesmee never quite understands why he was allowed to choose death or what the purpose of the human species even is. To her, they are caterpillars who never went into the chrysalis. Given to Renesmee the Cullen diet is the norm, to her it would seem obvious that, yes, everyone in the world can turn into a vampire and if they ration animal resources correctly there’s no problem. Or, if not everyone, then certainly her grandfather need not die.

I’m sure Charlie tries to talk to Renesmee about this but given that he’s one of her few strong relationships in this world the talk of “I’m going to die some day, sorry kiddo” doesn’t go well.

So, I’m sure it takes Renesmee a very long time to recover from that blow, if, in fact, she ever really does. I’m sure a part of her will always grieve Charlie.

In time, I think she’ll leave the coven to go on a journey of self discovery. The coven will just be too damn suffocating and she needs to find out who she truly is. Now, if that’s before or after the inevitable collapse of the Volturi and destruction of human society is hard to say.

I will say that whatever the future holds for Renesmee, just like everyone else’s, it is unbearably bleak.

[cordycepsbian]

Team Mothiva's thing in this AU is "someone fucked up while saving them from the Ahoneynation so now they're Fucking Beasts".

Mothiva has the whole... "Definitely Not An Actual Person hiding behind flimsy disguise of personhood" thing going on, and she's got a whole Rose Bush Motif with the beautiful Definitely A Moth flowers and then is a massive Creature with fur made of barbed-wire that deals damage to anything that gets too close. It's artificial made to look like something organic, a metal sculpture of a Thing just dressed up to look pretty.

Primarily, she's building her form off of the fear of being unwanted- being unmarketable, being fake, failing in Being An Idol. It's the fear that her facade can be easily seen through, that everyone Knows what she is, combined with the fear that she is unlovable, impossible to hold, impossible to care for, doing nothing but harming everyone who gets close. It's a mess of sharp edges and abrasive "kills you if you stand within three feet of her" things, and she's handling it bad, and for fun "she's afraid that once she stops being her brand she won't even be a person at all" reasons there may or may not just... not be anything under the mess of razor wire. Y'know, a mess that'll kill anything that breaks its facade, like it or not.

Zasp is, in a very literal way, a shadow of himself. He's a spindly deadlander thing made of shadow and thunderclouds, a ungulate-looking beast that relies on being in the shadow of Something Else to survive. He has no "weight" to himself on his own, he's immaterial and intangible, but he's got a constant inescapable Presence, a dark shape of something alien waiting in the shadows, a looming threat and feeling of dread and buzzing, crackling energy that makes your skin stand on end. He's a shadow creature where affecting anything requires actively channelling Lightning Magic and he. Does Not Want To Do That if he has any choice in the matter whatsoever, because channeling that lightning magic Does mean there's a solid 90% chance he kills whatever he touches since bugs are not terribly resistant to electricity.

It's based on fear of being useless in anything but intimidation and fear - of being a looming, potentially career-destroying shadow to Mothiva, barely anything but a scary image to spook other bugs off, of being just an exotic piece of hired muscle, of being unable to really do anything but drum up terror and get rid of whatever he's pointed at. It's fear he's a display of force rather than a partner, that he's too alien to really be accepted even by those closest to him, all tangled up with the feeling of being unable to touch matters that fuck with his partner even when he desperately wants to because they're (metaphorically) in a whole other world from him and the fear that he won't be able to persist on his own without someone else to shield him from scrutiny, and it manifests in a form where he can't touch anything and is stuck as a constant presence bound to Mothiva's shadow and inescapably causing a Fear Radius without being able to do anything but.

Neither of them handle it well and everything goes horribly (you can summarize almost literally all of our aus like this). They don't like it and also we never got to a point where either of them can do anything with these forms besides, like, feel bad about being A Fucking Creature and slash or cause collateral damage.

drinking your writing with one of these

we don't have anything to add just that your Beaft Writing is tasty

[embero]

so breath of the wild's weapon degradation huh

after finding an article on my twitter feed asking players whether or not they believed it should return in the next game, and after a conversation with my friends who recently expressed nothing but absolute disdain for the system, i wanted to express my thoughts on the system.

i remember back before the game actually came out and news spread of the weapon degradation being a feature they were adding to the game, i was hanging out with a group of friends who all loved zelda a lot but weren't even willing to give BoTW a CHANCE because of the introduction of weapon degradation. and i mean i get it, i can't think of too many games that did a good job incorporating that sort of system into their game except for maybe like metal gear solid V which does it to punish you for not being stealthy (i haven't really played the other ones) so if the system is in those games too, cool!

but the way that BoTW integrates it's weapon degradation system is really well thought out and deliberately designed.

first, BoTW added several new weapon types that link can swing around, i'd say between them all we got a couple majors categories like two handers, one handers, spears, boomerangs, wands, and deku leaves, and within those categories we got sub categories like hammers and greatswords for two handers, or clubs and enemy arms. most of these have unique properties of some kind, all of them vary in the various combat stats they provide, and almost all of them are effective when swung at an enemy. with that in mind, the weapon degradation system kind of forcefully pushes players to use different weapons more frequently as to get the player to try something other than just a sword and shield. you might end up finding you actually really like those forked boomerangs you found on lizalfos or use those wands you get from wizzrobes way more often once you are forced to discover how potent they really can be.

second and probably the most important part, the weapon degradation system encourages players to think of ways to approach combat without necessarily just swinging your weapon at an enemy till it dies. enemy encounters in most locations of the game (except for the god awfully designed shrines w/ trials of strength) are very open and dynamic in how you can approach them! this is not only thanks to the great level design in how they litter environmental objects around most enemy spawn locations, but also in how general the player's toolkit is. cryonis, statis, magnesis and your two remote bombs open up a world of potential. that combined with the consistent world alchemy (elemental interactions) and hazards available for you to utilize, every encounter becomes it's own isolated sandbox that becomes surprisingly more effective than just swinging your weapons at enemies! so long as you think outside of the box of course, and that's something that we haven't really been challenged with in the zelda franchise before. (as a side note to this, it's one of the many elements of the game that make it so alien and hard to call a zelda game as it really defies the standards set in place by it's predecessors, but it's still a great game!)

sure you could argue that you can do all this without weapon degradation, i mean it's not even coming into play in any of these gifs. but with the system it encourages players to do stuff like this, to think beyond just running at the enemy with your sword and swinging wildly.

other small reasons why the weapon degradation is good and important:

weapons with high degradation rates allow you to quickly get them to "about to break" status, allowing you to utilize the incredibly powerful thrown weapon explosion: a sometimes life saving move on powerful enemies.

weapons breaking rarely matters as the game constantly showers you in new ones, almost every enemy in the game drops one and you're never left needing any unless you're literally only swinging your weapon without using anything else at all (or if you're on master mode).

it makes master mode far more interesting, as enemy health regeneration means you can't hoard your strongest / best weapons since enemy vulnerability periods are incredibly important burst windows and not worth using throwaway weaker weapons on.

speaking of master mode, it practically FORCES you to think outside the box in combat encounters. the degradation system is flat out punishing when enemy health pools are so large and knocking them back too far can let them regenerate all their health back if you don't keep up the pressure. as a drawback, this creates weird and unsatisfying strategies such as loosing an arrows at the enemy every so often just to make sure they can't regenerate hp.

it provides one drawback to not obtaining the master sword, which would be pointless if weapons didn't break so easily (that being said I dislike the master sword and it's place as an unbreakable weapon, the charge up mechanic and it being only optimal against bosses is ok though).

i think it might not be obvious to some just how much the weapon degradation system was made to encourage experimentation!

hell if we want to talk about dumb systems the game has i'd start with cooking and how overpowered it is, but this isn't about botw cooking and i don't know how to end this post so........

yeah go play botw, experiment and have fun.