#also I keep imagining the Eye being (funnily enough) Jon’s only anchor in this world

[sparky-is-spiders]

Hey the TMA Somewhere Else is Dredge au still lives in my brain actually. I think Jon spends a lot of time trying to study how the eldritch stuff interacts with the environment. Minorish spoilers for Dredge below. If you haven’t played it yet, please do. Pretty sure it’s still on sale on Steam right now. It’s such a good, lonely, somber little horror fishing game.

Okay I’ll try to avoid too many spoilers because I think this game is best experienced blind and I’m pretty sure I only have a couple followers who’ve played it. But anyway, some Jon nature studies (btw this is an au with any/all Jon):

- Jon actually stays in Stellar Basin w/ the researcher for a while. Helps her take samples and stuff. His interest was perked when he heard that the mutations supposedly came from the creature, so he starts looking for evidence and taking water and soil samples (how did the eldritch influence spread? Through creatures? Through water? Or was the whole area influenced when whatever lived in the basin came through?)

- She starts testing out a theory that the monsters in the area might actually be aberrations who’ve reached some evolutionary peak. This means trying to get samples from the monsters. Which means Jon getting very, VERY close to them. Only complicated by the fact that they make scientific equipment go absolutely haywire (not to mention she’s going off knowledge from the Eye and a crash course from the researcher), so the results prove… inconclusive.

- Once the photographer gives them a camera, they take lots of pictures. Mostly abberations and monsters, but occasionally the local wildlife too. Their favorites are the pictures they snapped of a sperm whale dragging a giant tentacle down to the depths.

- They save up until they can purchase a small apartment out in Greater Marrow. Much like their old flat, it’s barely used and barely organized, and it doesn’t feel even a little bit like home. Their notes are spread all over the place, pinned to walls and filling up shelves and piled all over their rickety desk. The photo of the sprem whale attacking the giant tentacle is pinned in the center of the corkboard (it was a very good, VERY lucky shot, and they think they were honestly more surprised than whatever the hell the tentacle was part of).

- He tried capturing one of the piranhas out in Devil’s Spine, but even dead, they call to their mother, and he has to toss them overboard or have his boat crushed between massive jaws.

- She consulted the researcher (and the Eye) about ways to keep a fish farm, but for the aberrations instead. It took a lot of trial and error, but she managed to keep one of what she classed as “incubator” aberrations (perhaps a cyclopean flounder?) until the “eye” hatched (for non-Dredge players: cyclopean flounders appear to have one giant eye, but it’s actually an egg (the pupil is a yolk)). Unfortunately, what exactly emerged from the egg is unknown. They Eye alerted Jon that it had hatched, but when she checked the area it was being kept in, she only found gorey remains, a hole in the mesh keeping the fish contained, and slime clinging nearby. It was a shame, she had gotten somewhat attached to the unfortunate flounder.

- He’d spend days, sometimes even weeks at a time using his spyglass to watch schools of fish with abberations, observing their behavior and how they interact with the regular fish. He tried going on a dive to observe them once, and I can’t decide if I want that to end with him getting attacked instantly, or with him awakening hours later on the deck, drenched in water, covered in seaweed, with no memory of what he saw and a notebook full of scribbles and gibberish. Either way, he 100% tries again multiple times later.

- Attempts to Know about the ocean or See below the surface of the water are met with… resistance. Part of it is the Eye’s limited presence, it’s only just gotten here and it’s still slowly gathering strength and they can’t draw much power from it (Useful in that it means they don’t need to take as many statements anymore, need to sustain themselves with human food too, but it also makes them weaker). Part of it is the sea itself. It doesn’t want to be seen or known or understood, and attempts to do so have been met with failure and sometimes attacks. (Jon still remembers their first attempt, where they tried to know if all that unnatural fog was somehow connected to the Lonely, reaching out with all their strength, only for a shark with shining white eye to rise to the surface of the water and tear a massive chunk out of the hull).

Ok that’s all I have for now. Go play Dredge. Goodbye.