#and way more disturbing

[karmicpunishment]

atsushi starts taking some college classes and meets some friends and one turns out to be one of kunikidas former students

[maggiecheungs]

"The path you must take has been prepared for you. You have no choice but to revolutionise the world."

REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA �� BLACK ROSE ARC

[deoidesign]

drawing my favorite sculpture but it's my guy

(Barberini Faun)

[raspberrywiskey]

pete white being the one to finally kill jonas venture is a moment that always gets me. jonas gets killed unceremoniously, without celebration or mourning, by a side character with little relation to him. there is no consequences for this action, because it fundamentally does not matter. jonas has haunted the narrative (quite literally) up to this point, nearly every plot point in this show can be related back to him - from the creation of the titular venture brothers, to the birth of the monarch, to everything that happens with the guild. the show is about jonas venture, and the consequences of his actions. to have THAT man be killed by his son's weird friend from college just ... jonas would have thought he deserved a hero's death, dying for a greater cause surrounded by friends. but he did not get that, he didn't deserve it.

[da-janela-lateral]

Guilt.

[avpdpossum]

psych assessment: do you ever feel like your thoughts aren’t actually your own?

me: no, never, absolutely not

also me: *regularly saying “shut up” out loud to my own thoughts because sometimes when i think bad things about myself i don’t actually mean to think them and they catch me off guard and it feels like someone else using my mind’s voice and i don’t like it so i have to tell the angry brain gremlin that now’s not the time*

[pushing500]

Awww poor Mechi. I feel bad for him, but I do think, out of all the horrible diseases he could have gotten, sensory mechanites are the most mechanitor-appropriate.

Grouchy showers make me feel better when I'm sick, too.

does it count as a fanservice drawing if I'm mostly drawing it for myself?

I know what will make Mechi feel better- more entities to study! Provoking The Void sounds like a great plan with absolutely no repercussions! 👍

Eugenia is a wild woman who likes to lie on our very, very spooky psychic ritual spot sometimes. I don't know why she chose the hot paving stones instead of the cool grass, but whatever. If she gets consumed by The Void, she gets consumed by The Void.

2897 hours in RimWorld, and this is my very first Man in Black event... How exciting!

First | Next | Previous

[cerise-on-top]

Hank with an Eldritch Horror Reader

Here's another thing I wrote two years back! It was an interesting concept which I really liked, so I actually really enjoyed writing this request!

Hank J Wimbleton was a grunt of many things, but not one to be scared unless he had a good reason to be. There were many things in this world he did not understand, you were one of them. Upon meeting you, his first instinct would have been to either fight or run away - who could blame him, it was all he knew. No matter how many times you reassured him that the very last thing you wanted to do was to harm him, he’d draw his weapon, uncertain of whether or not he should believe your words.

Once you show no resistance towards him whatsoever and simply restrain him using your powers or other methods, that’s when, thrashing around as much as he could, he would start listening. You may or may not have seen a grunt up close, but this was your chance to finally examine one. As you scrutinise him from every possible angle Hank realises that you were simply curious about his being and finally lowers weapon.

Your voice would likely hurt his head and freeze the blood in his veins, so you might have to resort to telepathy or speak through a marionette, if you can find one. Though, once Hank’s interest in you has been piqued, he’d be more than happy to find you one. A lot of people in Nevada seem to be redundant in the first place. Regarding telepathy: You will be able to have a two-way conversation with Hank like that, but, for the most part, he doesn’t think in words. Still, he can do so, if needed.

If you’re on the rather small side, he will make an effort to pick you up, or hold you, and bring you back to base. Depending on whether you can float or not, this might be rather difficult, but he’ll try. If you’re large, however, then he will simply “tell” you to follow him. As an eldritch being you could likely either change your form or scare away anyone in your path in the first place, so he doesn’t particularly worry about anyone being stupid enough to attack you.

Spend time with him, he’ll get used to you more and more and, eventually, grow a bond with you. Proud, he’ll show you to Doc so he can figure out what you are, but do not be fooled. Hank wants to know what you are to some degree too. Once comfortable with you and certain you won’t harm him, he’ll start observing you, touching you to some degree. See how you react, how you feel, how you are.

Despite your conversations being, for the most part, one-sided, Hank will ask you directly what you are and if you’re some form of eldritch deity. Since you’re an amicable creature he can’t exactly wrap his head around, it’s worth a try.

Although he would like to do so to some degree, he won’t take you with him on missions. It’s his way of saying “I care a great deal about you, I don’t want you to die or worse even if you are capable of defending yourself.” If you really insist on aiding him, he will let you, begrudgingly. But beware that he will have your back. In fact, having you around will give him a greater reason to fight and improve his overall performance. Though, it will also be a major stress factor to him if something were to happen to you, so choose wisely.

[stuckinapril]

One day I’ll go through med school and then I’ll go through residency and then I’ll go through a fellowship and then I’ll be the most crybaby neurosurgeon you could think of. Bursting into tears if I so much as graze ur hypothalamus with my forceps

[gil-notskajla]

every time i watch that final shape zavala cutscene with safiyah statue im speechless over how good it is. Lighting (Danny o'hailey i owe you my life)?? Expressions and animation?? It has movie worthy cinematic value to me i would DEVOUR a series like this cutscene.

[sketching-shark]

"Tang Sanzang is completely peaceful all of the time!" Bah. True journeyheads know about that time he got two guys tortured to death and his "smashing yaoguai into meat patties is okay actually" mindset.

[demaparbat-hp]

For the Spirits— Chapter VII: Take Me South

Take me south when it's the time

Pour me away like golden wine

I'll form a splash and it will dry

But in the shape of you

—Pure You by Nothing But Thieves

.

Yume placed her hands on her hips and took a step forward. “That I do, yet I can't help but wonder about the timing. Heading South, seeking information on the Tribes…it's all very sudden, don't you think?”

The folded parchment hidden under his vest suddenly seemed to hold the weight of the world. Zuko placed a hand on his chest, where the sketch rested just above his heart. He stared thoughtfully at the floor.

Why now, indeed?

[vastwinterskies]

album-length Hornblower playlists, anyone?

Boy Strange - a Horatio Hornblower playlist

Glow, Miracle! - an Archie Kennedy playlist

Waiting For The Thunder - a William Bush playlist

St. Elmo's Fire - a Captain Pellew playlist

[bisexualgoth]

i love saltburn bc everyone acts like period sex, eating bath-cum, and grave fucking are soooo crazy meanwhile it's not even in the top ten most fucked up things the main character did

[fluffishere]

OG img under cut

[heyclickadee]

Because I still think they’re bringing Tech back one way or another (in the immortal words of the late great Kanan Jarrus, “I’m being optimistic.”) and because I actually do need an explanation for why CX-2 was like that (because you cannot tell me we spent between 30 and 55 minutes, most of which was spent with just us watching him do stuff and not him interacting with the batch, on a symbolic construct—even if it’s not Tech, that’s an entire character at that point), here is another “CX-2 was Tech, but not physically” theory:

1. Hemlock captured and attempted to CX Tech. But, Tech being Tech, he resisted for months, and even once mostly CXd retained quite a bit of his personality in a way Hemlock found both interesting and a little worrying. Because of this, Tech became something of a special project. This is one of the reasons Hemlock never used Tech to threaten Omega—he wanted this particular CX-candidate under lock and key, and he thought that Tech had just enough personality while still in progress that he might relapse if he saw Omega, should Omega find her way to wherever Tech was being held the way she found her way down to Crosshair’s cell.

2. Since Tech was a special project, since finally well and truly CXing him (or at least getting him subdued enough to be under control, which I think is more likely) took time and effort, and since CXs don’t exactly have the best survival rate (Rex implies that he’s run into a slew of them, meaning they all probably died), Hemlock didn’t really want to send CX-Tech out just to have him die in two seconds. Alternatively: Hemlock CXd Tech just to see if he could work out a way to CX a defective clone, since it wasn’t working with Crosshair, but Tech was too badly injured to be sent out into the field without extensive cybernetics (if, say, his legs were toast after the fall or if he had a spinal chord injury that caused him chronic pain) that Hemlock didn’t want to spend money on only for him to die out in the field anyway. Or, maybe, he wanted to keep playing with Tech, because he’s Royce Hemlock and he’s a monster.

Then, either while looking for a solution for what to do with a CX project he didn’t want to waste, or as a motivation for why he worked so hard to CX Tech in the first place, Hemlock looked through Clone Force 99’s military records at one point or another and was struck by how effective a team of people with unique traits could be while working in together as a single unit. And, being the terrible mad scientist Silicon Valley startup CEO that he is, Hemlock decided to see if he could take that concept to a horrifying extreme.

3. So what he ends up doing with Tech is not that dissimilar from what Wat Tambor does with Echo. CX-Tech’s unconscious somewhere, down at the bottom of Tantiss, heavily brainwashed and sedated but still himself somewhere deep down, hooked up to some kind of apparatus, and Hemlock started using him to try to “drive” the other CXs with some kind of Avatar-style link. It becomes part of Hemlock’s updated CX process. That way the CXs can be really, truly interchangeable. (Bonus points if Tech was also the partially successful midichlorian transfer and Hemlock is taking advantage of that somehow to make this work. It’s bullshit Star Wars fantasy science—don’t think about it too hard.)

4. Though Hemlock may have tried this with others, the first CXs we see that he’s tried this with are CX-1 and CX-2. It marginally works with CX-1, to the point that Tech is there as an influence, but isn’t really in charge. He’s influential enough, however, that that’s why CX-1 reacts to Crosshair the way he does. CX-1 does know Crosshair from various conditioning sessions, but the weird beef CX-1 has with Crosshair, “If you want answers so badly, then why aren’t you asking him? Isn’t that right, brother?” and that weird warning he gives them, is all that little bit of Tech that’s sitting there in the back of CX-1’s head.

With CX-2, however, the link works so well that that’s just CX-Tech in another body.

5. Sidebar, but in this theory, it’s CX-1 who’s staring Crosshair down in Shadows of Tantiss. Or, it’s Tech staring Crosshair down through CX-1’s eyes. (One thing that has always bugged me about that shot is that the pose is 100% Tech, and we’re visually being told that it’s Tech with the armor and the lines on the wall, but that guy’s legs are proportionally just a little too short for it to BE Tech. Which could be explained multiple other ways, of course—Tech could have cybernetic legs that are shorter now, Hemlock could have gone in and surgically made his legs shorter to make him blend in with the other CXs better, they didn’t have the budget to make a Tech-specific CX model, who knows. But—I still like it being Tech without it physically being him in this shot.)

6. Another sidebar, but in this theory the reason the CX tracker isn’t something that will be picked up by a scanner is because the signal or link or whatever it is that Hemlock’s using to enable CX-Tech to drive the other CXs IS the tracker. Or the link is being established through the other CX’s inhibitor chips (which a scanner won’t pick up) or something. And when they die, the tracking signal goes dead, too.

7. Extra sidebar: Hemlock was originally going to use Crosshair for this. These were the “other plans despite his resistance to re-education” he mentions to Omega in Confined. Crosshair may or may not know this. Hemlock may have also point blank told Crosshair that he put Tech through the CX process and that Tech is “dead” in an attempt to break Crosshair, despite that not being literally true (in much the same way Wat Tambor said, “Your friend is dead,” about Echo to Rex in the TBB arc). Which just wigs out Crosshair even more when multiple CXs and especially CX-2 show up and start acting like Tech.

8. This was Hemlock’s plan for the Worst Batch CXs—basically, to have a group of CXs with unique traits all being controlled by a single mind. That mind being Tech, who he’s already got successfully “driving” CX-2.

9. Fast forward to the finale, Hemlock lets the whole worst batch out at once. This ends up being why the Worst Batch CXs have no personality, why Hemlock hesitated on sending them out at all (he wasn’t sure they would all even operate at the same time, and was so, so smug when they did), why CX-2 has so much less personality in the finale and only manages that one line, why they aren’t that big of a threat once the batch gets backup and aren’t being caught by surprise; why the worst batch CXs are so hard to kill and keep getting up, zombie-like, after they’ve been shot, why that one guy who gets his helmet knocked off walks around like he’s sleepwalking, and why the sword CX hands the sword over to CX-2. CX-2 gets more attention than the others because he’s the CX that Tech’s been driving the longest, so it takes less of an effort, but all of them collectively activated at the same time? Tech is having to drive all of them, and he’s just one guy. He’s stretched too thin and it’s almost too much to keep them moving. So they’re barely conscious and only half aware of what’s happening to them.

10. This would means that every single POV shot we got from either a tube or from a CX—because we get two from tubes, several POV shots from CX-2 including in the finale, and one significant one from CX-1—in season three is from Tech’s perspective, because he’s looking through all of them to one extent or another.

11. Whether some of the CXs survived or not—and I hope some of them did—Tech coming back and recovering in a later (possible follow up) showwould mean getting a some in-universe sympathy for the CXs that was mentioned in interviews but sorely lacking in the final product. They still would have been people under all of that, Tech would have “operated” them all to their deaths, and Tech would have been in their heads going through all of that with them as they died or got hurt. All of them, at the same time. And he would have been CX-2 (just operating in a body that wasn’t his) and done everything CX-2 did. That’s a lot to deal with. Bonus points if Tech mentioning that he was all of the CXs in the final fight and being in multiple bodies at once leads to Echo talking about what it’s like to scomp in from an internal perspective. Even if it’s just one line.

(For the record, I would actually quite like it if Tech was just CX-2 straight up and survived being impaled, and if the explanation was just, “CX-2 had to “die” and the pod that kept turning him into this had to be killed for Tech to start living again,” because it’s VERY Star Wars, but I’d be okay with this, too.)