#considering my Primitive tools

[slimmestslime]

do you guys think i could make a shimeji purely with paint3d

i would use mspaint but i dont want that type of anti-alias brush look to it. so i specifically mean paint3d’s brushes

and i would LOVE to use anything else but. um. school firewall forbids thou’s use of fun. so yeah.

[fastafeijoa]

Headcanons on Harley! And a lil sketch too

•Extremely self-condident. Absolutely sure whatever goes wrong with experiments isn't his fault. It's not necessarily someone else's fault either, it could be just a natural part of progress.

•British, moved to the US with his parents when he was little. They had sort of a small British community there so he didn't pick up American pronunciation.

•Asexual Also believes romance is like a "low quality drug for the soft, spineless people who seek only primitive pleasure and have no idea of their place in life". But! If he grew up a little less love-deprived, he'd be homoromantic. Dude likes men. Specifically, just one man. In several AUs with my wife he's in very close, warm platonic relationship with her version of Sawyer. This is the perfect fit for him, literally like a part of himself he was missing.

•Wasn't satisfied with his looks until his early 50s. Sawyer likes long hair on other people and himself but in middle school he got bullied into wearing a short haircut and used to have his hair cut even shorter before starting his work at Playtime Co, not really paying attention to his looks anymore. At the factory though he felt like things were going to change for the better and allowed himself some self-indulgence, letting his hair grow out a little bit. That, along with him gaining weight (which he liked, starting to see himself as beautifully imposing), made him finally pay attention to his looks and consider himself handsome.

•Can lock in and work on something without a single break for hours, often without even changing his position. Him being a surgeon has helped develop this skill a lot. Sometimes he'll even forget he's allowed to, say, scratch his nose, like if he's performing a surgery. Gets immensely overloaded in this state and if anyone bothers him at this time they're a dead person. •Yep he's autistic.

•Used to be genuinely disgusted with tenderness. Like, genuinely. At first when Yarnaby would try to cuddle up to him, lick his hands or just headbump him he felt pathetic and gross and was quick to push him away. Overtime, however, as he realised his mental health could use a little boost and a pet is a good tool for that, he became less disgusted and even started to secretly enjoy it when Yarnaby showed affection towards him.

•Uses cane due to chronic arthritis. It's not always bad so sometimes he doesn't need the cane and walks around carrying it like if about to beat up someone. And sometimes he'll lean on it when he's tired from standing. Also there's a knife hidden in the cane, just in case.

•Visits the local flee market from time to time. Usually just to philosophize and not to buy things: dude's got an inner poet in him and enjoys to dress his life in metaphor while looking at old toys and trinkets. But on occasion he will actually buy something: he got his cane at the flee market.

•6'2 ft tall. Quite menacing.

•Is somewhat paranoid. Definitely has OCD. Won't trust his mental health to anyone but himself though (handles it poorly) and is afraid of taking any kind of sedatives or antidepressants because they "might mess with his unique mind". Ofc he's perfectly aware that can't happen, it's just a hello from his OCD. Yeah, he also won't trust OCD meds because of OCD.

•Had tough childhood with mother who didn't care and father who was overly possessive (hm I sure wonder if Harley inherited that….. hm………)

•Has been feeling so much better than before in his life since the start of the Bigger Bodies Initiative. At times he might be miserable, grumpy, tired or unable to handle his temper, but his project gives him a lot of drive and motivation and quite often he's seen walking around genuinely excited, with a slight sinister grin and proudly straightened back. Among tortured children, scared and exhausted workers and products of brutal experiments he shines with grim joy. This, all of this, is everything he ever wanted.

[exquisink]

Beneath You - Geto Suguru X Fem!Reader

CW // manipulation, coercion, geto is a pining mess, reader's not a jujutsu sorcerer, cunnilingus, face sitting, body worship, geto is a walking red flag but the reader has no idea for a long time, geto's got a big dick, lactation kink, reader is inexperienced

Word Count: ~10K

Summary: There’s a twist of disgust inside of him as he to compare himself to a human, but he doesn’t consider you so low. Not at all. Far from it. If anything, he may go as far as to declare with full conviction that he’s the one beneath you. Yet here you are, blessing him with that ‘common decency’ he doesn’t deserve, even still. Because that’s the kind of person you are. People like you are rare finds, and he is sworn to protect rare breeds of human like you who belong to his new world order.

AO3

Another mission takes Geto to a remote village where grade 1 curses have wreaked havoc amongst its residents. He doesn’t intend to stay for long—grade 1s are not too much of an issue for someone like him—but upon arriving, he’s stunned to already see some locals hard at work given what little tools they have to survive. While true, the existence of curses isn’t completely a secret to the general public, he’s still shocked to find a select few of these villagers have begun to fight back.

Those non-sorcerers are not as primitive as he has been led to believe…

One particular villager leaves an impression on him. You are that villager. You’re not even a sorcerer, yet you attend to those afflicted or attacked by curses at a moment’s notice.

You’re the first person he meets, on the train ride there. He’s glancing at his ticket lost in thought over everything that’s transpired since the incident with Riko, and notices you peering at the thin slip of paper, before you lock gazes with his.

“What’re you going to my next stop for?” you inquire with a smile. “It’s probably not a good idea right now. There’s been reports of mass murders by an unknown cause and I’ve been called to treat any surviving victims.”

Geto hums, a flash of irritation in his eyes because he’s not one for small talk—especially given what he’s witnessed in the past few months.

“I’m there to stop the problem myself,” he responds, his tone a bit short but you don’t seem bothered by it. “Worry not, I’m sure it’ll be over after I take care of everything.”

“Wow, you sure got it all figured out, eh?” you remark, tone laden with curiosity for him, your grin widening. Geto stares at you for a moment. Why do you remind him of someone…? “That’s good to know. It’s nice that there’s still people like that out there. I’m glad you’re here to help out that village. We can always use true heroes like you.”

Geto perks an eyebrow at that last statement, averting his gaze to the nearly empty train. The train is about to slow, meaning they are close to their stop.

 “…You call me a hero and yet you’ve just met me,” he murmurs, more to himself.

Ah. He’s beginning to see who you remind him of now.

“Aw, well, let’s just say I have a knack for understanding someone’s real character,” you answer with a wink. “Since we’re going to be working together for a while, what’s your name?”

“Suguru Geto,” he answers, a bit too quickly for his own liking. Why’s that? Why is he suddenly so intrigued by you…? Why can’t he just ignore this sort of thing like he always does? He does sense something a bit unique about you, though. Perhaps it’s to sate his curiosity. Nothing more. He can forget about this mission and you by extension when this is over.

“Nice to meet you,” and you respond with your name. It rolls off his tongue nicely when he addresses it, and when you giggle, it’s the most pleasant of sounds to him. Unlike with most humans, who sound discordant and annoying, yours is light, beautiful, ringing like cathedral bells…

…Why is he pulling the cart before the horse here?

The train slows even more. Then comes to a complete stop. You both leave the train side by side, but you appear to be in a rush. He doesn’t mind. He’s probably going to run into again sooner than he wants to…

…And lo and behold, he’s correct to make that assumption as by the next morning, he’s found you at the front lines, securing any remaining victims and keeping them secured in a safe house protected by a veil a weaker sorcerer from the village has managed to cast themselves with the aide of a cursed scroll. That’s what you explain to him. So now he discovers you’re aware of sorcerers and what people like him do. He finds himself impressed by the effort from these villagers—they do seem to be a little more progressive here—but he learns that he’s called to this village because there are no sorcerers here who can compete with grade 1 curses. All of those who have tried, have died in combat, as you explain to him between treating victims.

And these villagers…don’t look opposed to the existence of sorcerers or curses. Or at least, it doesn’t seem so. Not necessarily. They don’t appear alarmed by them…as if this is a normal occurrence.

So much unlike the ones he’s encountered in the past.

He observes you like a deer caught in headlights, dumbfounded, as he scans rows upon rows of wounded villagers on the floor. Some are unconscious, some are barely breathing. Some are cut up terribly, blood seeping through their bandages. The stench of bitter metal, vomit, and shit hits his nose and his lips curl as he grimaces; it’s so foul he can’t breathe, fearing he may vomit himself…

And yet her you are, undeterred by the horrors which have befallen this village, the only one saving them all. As if they’re worth something more than a scrape of metal or a speck of dirt.

It’s awe-inspiring…yet confounding all the same.

He almost wants to scoff at how futile your efforts are, to save such scummy people who may sooner feed you to the wolves than thank you, but he finds himself drawn to how focused you are on healing them. You have no reverse cursed technique, only relying on traditional medications and the few incantations the living weaker sorcerers have learned. Humans, in general, can’t use reverse cursed techniques, so there’s no other option for them. This all likely won’t be enough, he figures, and it’s not like he can contact Shoko because she’s not meant to be fighting.

But maybe he doesn’t need to call Shoko because you’re already making a huge difference by actively trying to make changes. That’s so much unlike the behavior he’s seen in humans before.

What a conundrum he’s faced with now… he must accept that his own feelings aren’t all that pure. His morals aren’t as unshakable as he once believed.

He’s so trapped in his own inner conflicts that he doesn’t realize you approach him to dispose of the blood and vomit soiled gloves protecting your hands and retrieving new ones after disinfecting your hands. While you adjust them, he catches your eye.

“Geto, can we rely on you to exorcise those damned curse spirits? We can’t afford anymore casualties. The population of this village is already next to null, and we’re going to lose all of our villagers at this rate. It’s good you came to help us when you did.”

He nods, expression grim as he makes his way to the exit of the safe house, but not before turning back to announce: “I’ll make sure the barrier technique remains intact as well. You’ll be safe in here.”

“Thank you, Geto—you really are a hero,” you praise him before you run to your nearest victim who’s moaning in agony from a broken arm and a leg that’s been sliced cleanly off. He watches you, immobilized by how intrigued he is of you and the few residents in this village before he takes action to completely eradicate the cause.

The curse spirits are more than even he bargains for, but he manages to eradicate a few that night. Preventing further casualties or more injured villagers.

When he returns, some victims have been nursed back to adequate health in a rapid amount of time. He’s impressed by your efforts. Just watching you as you give them their herbal treatments and clean up their wounds. He does get injured a few times himself while he’s out there exorcising the spirits, and as you stop once you completed cleaning up another victim’s wounds, you signal him to come over.

“Let’s take care of you, Geto. You’re a godsend,” you praise him yet again with so much genuineness and a strong hint of reverence, that your words catch Geto a bit off-guard. He’s staring again, immobilized for a few moments once more before he ambles to your side and settles in the cushion before you. You pick up a fresh damp cloth with some medication to help disinfect the wounds. His body is scratched, slice and diced, and bruised all over, and you shake your head at the condition of his body. Nothing you haven’t seen before, at least he thinks, and yet…

“This might sting,” you warn him while he removes his top, and as you rest the damp cloth on a particularly large gash on his shoulder, he flinches and grunts out loud. “Man, you sorcerers…you really are full of heart. All of you. Sticking your neck outs for people like us who can’t do much for ourselves due to our lack of cursed energy. Many of these villagers can’t even perceive what attacked them.”

Geto hums absently. “It’s no glamorous lifestyle—that much I can assure you.”

You let out a dry laugh at that, while apologizing to him under your breath when you go over some tender parts of his skin from his many wounds and gashes.

“I’m a medicine woman, a healer, yet I’m sure I haven’t seen stuff more gruesome than you must’ve,” you comment, working to stitch the gash up after you clean and disinfect the area. He probably doesn’t know that you’ve noticed how frail he looks, like he’s neglected his own health in favor of his role as a sorcerer.

He manages a wry grin at that. “You have no idea.”

He freezes when he realizes how close your face is to his, and his cheeks burn as he flits his gaze elsewhere, to the door, to the sealed windows, to the moaning and groaning victims. Anything to avoid getting lost in those eyes that are so full of kindness that he doesn’t deserve, not with the sort of thoughts that have plagued his mind for months now since Riko’s death.

Once you’re done stitching up that large gash, you move to clean up the smaller cuts and bruises around his body. You sponge him gently with a fresh cloth, and he’s caught in another daze again as he observes you.

“You’re not scared of me,” he realizes out loud. “Or the curses.”

“Of course not,” you almost snicker at the absurdity of his statement, which has him furrow his brows at your behavior. Are you not aware of how rare sorcerers are in this world? “We have had a few sorcerers in this village who have since perished when these attacks began, protecting villagers who don’t understand what attacked them in the first place. I’ve had sorcerers in my family, but they’re all gone, fighting these curses that are too powerful for them.”

Ah. So she’s got a fair idea of the world for sorcerers, then.

“I’m sorry,” he replies, tone solemn. He knows too well losing those close to him to things like this. You manage a smile.

“We all have to go one day,” you reply with a deep sigh, moving to sponge his lower back. “I just wish I had more time with them. We’ll be together in the next life.”

“You believe in the afterlife?” he mutters, as you move to continue to clean the dirt and grime off of him.

“We have to believe in something to keep going,” you counter with a curt nod. “And for me, it’s to be with my family again. That’s enough for me.”

“I see,” he states. Once you’re done patching him up, you pat his unwounded shoulder.

“There you go! All fixed up…mostly.” You throw him a thumbs up while using a fresh cloth to wipe your neck glistening with sweat down. “You have to give your shoulder some time to heal, obviously.”

“We have a doctor back at the organization I work for who can help me with that,” he replies with a smile. “Thank you. Your kindness is most appreciated.”

“I like to think of it as common decency!” you retort under your breath with a playful wink. “Just doing what’s right.”

“Most people don’t think that way,” he points out, and his eyes catch you rubbing your arms and shivering a bit. It is a bit chilly tonight, he remembers, and the thermostat in this safe house doesn’t work.

Quirking an eyebrow, he picks up a nearby blanket in a basket by your tool kit that appears freshly washed, wrapping it around you in a gentle motion. He catches himself in the act, warring with himself over why he’s suddenly concerned for you. He usually does not allow himself to get too close anymore—especially after Riko.

“You should rest. The barrier won’t break, so nothing will get to you and the other villagers, for now. Don’t you have others working with you?”

“Thank you, Geto. You’ve got an eye for practicality,” you reply with a winning grin in spite of how exhausted you appear to him. His brows furrow—why do you risk your life for these people who don’t matter? “But unfortunately, no. This is my post—there’s only one person and they’re out of commission themselves.”

“Is there anything else I can do to help?” He doesn’t understand why he’s asking, but given there are more curses that aren’t showing themselves at the moment that he still has yet to exorcise…he’s going to be here with you for longer than he initially expected.

“Well, uh, I guess you could, with giving them their nightly medicine,” you murmur through a yawn. Geto looks at you with concern etched across his face, resting his hands on your shoulders.

“Rest,” he insists, frowning. “I can keep watch, and I can give the medicine. It’s this one, right?”

He gestures to the vials by your feet in a basket.

“Yeah,” you answer through another yawn, covering your mouth. “They need to be given the entire vial…taken orally, obviously, and the taste isn’t great so…give them some water if they ask for it. If they’re strong enough to ask for it. Let me watch you take care of one villager before I really pass out.”

“Sure,” he replies, and he does as you instruct him. Feeding a villager the entire vial and offering water, which the villager thanks him for profusely before desperately gulping it down to wash away the taste. As he turns around to seek your approval, you flash him a quick, tired grin before you settle into your chair and attempt to rest.

He’s never seen anyone like you…and all he can do is try his best to return your efforts.

The next morning, he’s waiting for you when you wake up. You complain of a dull throbbing in your head, clutching the side of it as you reorient yourself.

“The rest of the curse spirits have been exorcised,” he explains to you. Before you open your mouth to speak, he continues to clarify for you: “You were knocked out cold for a while. You’ve been neglecting yourself to help the villagers. Everyone is safe now. The problem is gone. My work here is finished, but I wish to stay to help you nurse the villagers back to perfect health.”

It’s against his character, and frankly, he still doesn’t understand why he’s offering to help out when he does have the freedom to return to Jujutsu Tech.

Something about you compels him to stay. His lips press into a grim line as he wars himself over his own aged inner conflict.

Why help those pathetic monkeys who can’t even fend for themselves?

It’s because of you, and he loathes this fact. He loathes that you stain him with your futile ideals. How you can still see humanity as worth protecting when they have taken your sorcerer family members away.

Everything about you—everything about you shatters his conviction about non-sorcerers. This whole conundrum…perhaps he must accept that there shall always be a gray area no matter how much he wishes to adhere to the belief that people like you are the reason he suffers, are the reason his comrades die.

But now he’s come to view you as a comrade. Someone to protect from harm’s way.

“I can’t ask that of you,” you finally answer him after a period of reflection. “You have your duties, and I have mine here, and mine don’t stop at this village. You must have more waiting for you, do you not?”

“You’re not asking this of me. I’m offering you,” he retaliates as he rests his hands on your knees, squeezing them gently. “Let me stay and help. The people I work for already know I’ve been gone longer than anticipated, so what’s another day or so?”

You snort at that. “You sorcerers really stick your neck outs for us, huh, Geto? Alright. I’ll let you help—for one more day. But then you have your own life to return to, alright?”

His heart skips a beat at that. “Of course.”

And he does stay and help as much as he can for that one more day. Once the remaining villagers can more or less leave the safe house, you offer him your place to stay for the night and offer to cook him some things to regain his strength before he leaves.

You prepare him a hearty stew along with other family favorites, splayed out all over a low wooden table.

“It’s the least I can do for you,” you announce after setting up the table and offering him some piping hot jasmine tea to accompany his meal. “Please, eat. I’ll prepare you some more meals for you to take back with you too.”

“That’s kind of you,” he mumbles as his eyes scan the colorful array of food. He’s moved by your kindness—more than he cares to admit to himself as he brings the bowl of stew to his lips, blowing on it gently before taking a sip and humming at how delicious it tastes. Rosemary, basil, and thyme hit his nostrils, and the soft potatoes are so chockful of flavor. 

“It’s a gift,” you tease with a little smirk playing on your lips. “I may not be a fancy shmancy sorcerer like you, but I can cook a mean meal that can win anyone’s heart!”

“I believe it,” he admits openly, downing the rest of that stew with a bit of gusto before attacking some of the finger sandwiches you prepared. You grin at him with a little twinkle in your eyes.

“Now you just eat up, relax, and you can stay the night,” you reply, “This is the bare minimum of what I can do for you after you protected this village. This is what’s left of my home. But, ah, it’s not like I get to stay here as long as I want to anymore. I tend to hop from village to village taking care of people.”

“So, you’re a nomadic medicine woman?” he inquires, mid-sipping on the stew.

“Something like that,” you declare as you rest your clenched fists on your hips. “I try to stay within the more remote villages since they don’t have as much access to modern medication. They don’t care enough to upgrade or fund these areas, so us countryfolk are left to fend for ourselves a lot of the time.”

Fucking monkeys, he finds himself thinking, but more about those who don’t want to progress than those who wish to help themselves, like you do, and by extension, clearly your family.

“Eh, it is what it is, I guess!” you go on as you whip around to return to the kitchen. “Now I have a big ole’ mess to clean up so you just sit back and relax, okay?”

“Are you sure you don’t need any—” he starts, but you interject before he can finish.

“—no, finish your meal and then rest up! You’ve helped me more than enough!” you call back to him with a dismissive wave over your shoulder as you disappear into the kitchen.

You don’t get to see it, but he’s smiling more genuinely than he has in the last few months, digging into the rest of the dishes you prepared for him. He might have some disdain toward non-sorcerers as a general rule, but he supposes there are some outliers, like you, who happen to come from a family with sorcerers and non-sorcerers. Someone like you, who can understand the horrors of the world yet still wear a smile through it.

It’s refreshing, indeed.

When he leaves the village the next day, you follow through on your promise and offer him some extra meals for him to take back with him. A little something to remember you by, you joke, to which he responds saying he can’t forget a kind soul like you. You remind him that there is still true good in this world, and you only shrug it off, calling him an idiot in jest.

“I’m just doing what’s right,” you remind him as you wave him goodbye. “Now go on before you miss your train ride back home! You stay strong now, ya hear?”

He doesn’t miss his train back to Jujutsu Tech. And then not too long after he returns, he learns of Haibara’s death through Nanami and Gojo has taken up the mission. He’s then sent on another mission shortly thereafter, in a village not too far away from the village you resided in, and maybe he should have expected to, but he doesn’t at the time this happens.

He finds two helpless twin girls caged by the villagers, threatening to execute them due to their ability to use cursed energy and see spirits. Even with your words echoing in his head—‘I’m just doing what’s right’—‘I think of it as common decency’—he’s scoffing at those notions. A deep scowl on his face as he scrutinizes the village for damning two innocent little girls.

Even now. These monkeys have none. No decency whatsoever. Not like you. They’re not understanding like you. They’re not full of heart like you. You’re not blind like these monkeys are to the true, unshakable reality that they are nothing but scum for putting these girls in danger over something they can’t help or change about themselves. They’re not like you, who understand the horrors sorcerers face trying to protect scum like these…filthy fucking monkeys who refuse to understand something bigger than them exists.

These people are beneath him, beneath you. They don’t deserve mercy.

“Excuse me, why don’t we all step outside for a moment?” he finds himself suggesting, and securing the girls, he goes out somewhere he can’t be witnessed committing the atrocity he’s about to do.

That village burns to the ground at his hand. Cursing them all to Hell like they all fucking deserve, these fucking monkeys who don’t understand the burdens sorcerers bear swearing to protect their weak asses. None of them deserve respite. None of them deserve safety. They have proven to him time and time again that they don’t understand the suffering, the struggling he endures again and again and again at their hands. Unknowingly or not, such monkeys are a plague to society and are best wiped from existence.

Even with your influence, he can’t wholly change his mind, and maybe he’s still plagued by the guilt of not telling you the whole truth of the matter, by that but not by very much. He hopes you’ll understand him one day. That you’ll see him beyond his actions and for his own truth—that these people, these monkeys, don’t deserve to live for the horrors they impose on sorcerers like him.

Smirking in triumph, his eyes scan the area, smirk widening with pleasure from the growing number of dead corpses of non-sorcerer scum before he ventures into the buildings. The stench of rotting corpses fills the air.

As he searches through the village for any survivors, he freezes when he finds you amid the rubble and cobblestone, unconscious, arm splayed over your heart cradling medication and herbal remedies, and he pales upon recognizing your face.

He doesn’t expect you to be here, but he should have considered the possibility before burning it all and calling it quits on the stupid rules the world of jujutsu imposed on him. He’s done playing games with the higher-ups and jujutsu society.

Thinking nothing of it—what you don’t know won’t kill you, and he’ll nurse you back to health—he scoops your body into his arms and tosses you over his shoulder, taking you along with the girls away from that wretched village.

There are no remaining survivors aside from you and the girls, and you are not a local. You don’t count in this equation. You just happen to be in a place where shouldn’t have, but you have your own duties to fulfill, he reminds himself as a disgusted frown graces his features, gaze flitting down at your unconscious, battered form in pity, don’t you?

He returns you to the cult he’s now taken over after he expelled himself from Jujutsu Tech. Like he’s reminded himself, what you don’t know won’t hurt you. He doubts you’ll have the means of discovering what he’s done to that village any time soon, anyway.

You’re slowly recovering from the incident. The guilt does gnaw at his stone cold heart, seeing you being thrown in the crossfire when someone like you doesn’t deserve it. Someone so kind, so genuine. So true to your character. Unshakable.

You may be the only one who almost made him change his mind about stupid, simple humans, but not quite. Not everyone deserves to be saved.

Frankly, not even he deserves to be saved. He’s told Satoru himself: if Satoru’s going to kill him, then he should be the one to kill him. There’s a point to it, at least.

There is a point in keeping you safe, though. He believes in that. Wholeheartedly.

He’s drawing idle patterns along your collarbone as your eyes flutter open, taking in the surroundings that you’re still adjusting to since he brought you here. You are barely conscious through most of your time here, but you’ve already been in the temple for quite some time now.

He calls your name, and you stare at him, a bit out of it. You don’t remember where you are, naturally, since you’ve been constantly drifting in and out of consciousness.

“Geto?” you murmur upon recognizing his face as a dull pounding comes on in your head, clutching it tight as you sit up against the headboard of the bed.

“Hey,” he greets with a little smile, happy to see you’re fully conscious this time. The most you have done since he’s brought you here is drift in and out. You seem more alert this time.

“I had a mission…” you trail off, then your eyes widen, and you gasp upon realization. “Geto, how did you find me? What happened to that village? And where am I?”

“Everything’s fine,” he lies through his teeth through that plastic smile of his. “The problem there has been exorcised. I found you there unconscious, so I took you here to heal you. I’m afraid it might be wise not to leave just yet, because you’ve taken quite a blow. What were you doing there?”

“I told you—I had a job there too!” you counter, “The girls…the ones who are sorcerers from that village, are they alright?”

“Yes,” he assures you as his smile brightens his entire face. Of course, he can rely on you to worry about what truly matters in the long run—the safety of those two innocent girls.  “They’re here, safe and sound. You need to focus on your recovery. At least this way, I can repay you for the kindness you’ve given me. Though I doubt there’s much I can do in comparison.”

“You’ve done more than you could possibly imagine for me,” you breathe, reaching to rest your hand on his cheek. He leans into your touch, before resting his hand over yours. “You look…strong. Healthy. Since I saw you.”

“Do I?” he chuckles as he intertwines his fingers with yours; when you don’t seem taken aback by the gesture, he relaxes his body a bit more from its more rigid posture. “I’m glad to hear it. I’ve been feeling much better. And it’s in part because of you, you know. I’ve come to realize that you and I, we’re not so different, right?”

There’s a twist of disgust inside of him as he to compare himself to a human, but he doesn’t consider you so low. Not at all. Far from it. If anything, he may go as far as to declare with full conviction that he’s the one beneath you.

Yet here you are, blessing him with that ‘common decency’ he doesn’t deserve, even still. Because that’s the kind of person you are. People like you are rare finds, and he is sworn to protect rare breeds of human like you who belong to his new world order.

You grin wide, and his breath catches in his throat; how are you so effortlessly beautiful? Yet you aren’t aware of your own. How…perplexing.

“Of course. Like I said, I may not be a fancy pants like you, Mr. Sorcerer, but I can help where applicable—I call myself a medicine woman since I use some tricks my sorcerer mom taught me!”

“Do you feel good enough to get out of bed?” Geto asks, “If you’d like, I’d love to give you the tour of my temple.”

You blink at him owlishly, eyes flitting to every area of the room, awed by how huge and spacious it all is. “Wait…this is yours? I knew you were fancy! I could tell by those pretty bangs of yours, but not this fancy!”

He chuckles, his tone bright and rich, at your remark about his bangs—he usually gets the opposite reaction—and smiles as you take in your new home, if he can help it. You look more than thrilled for him, and he can’t help his heart swelling with pride from earning yet another pat on the back from you. It just reminds him of how good-natured of a person you are.

“So how’s that huge gash on your shoulder? Did that doctor friend of yours help?” you find yourself asking as your gaze lands back on him. He freezes for a moment at the mention of Shoko before grunting.

“Yes, it’s much better now,” he replies, smiling. “Thank you. For everything back there. You really are an extraordinary girl, you know that?”

You rub the back of your head, wincing a bit from the mild throbbing still. “Aw, shucks, it’s like I tell ya, I’m just doing what’s right.”

He hums, and while a bold move, he moves to press a soft kiss to your forehead. You freeze, gazing up at him with those shimmering, timid eyes as you realize what he’s just done.

“What’s that for?”  you whisper, eyes flitting down to his lips in spite of yourself. His lips curve into a smirk when he catches that little action of yours and merely shrugs.

“You’ve done a lot for me,” he answers in a smooth tone. “It’s just a little token of appreciation. And I find you’re a wonderful girl.”

Your cheeks burn from the flattery, and you laugh nervously. “That’s awfully nice of you to say, Geto! But I’m nothing special.”

“Don’t be silly,” he insists, brushing his fingers along your cheek. “I won’t rush you, of course. You’re still recovering. But I’d like to know you better.”

Now it’s your breath that catches in your throat when he says that, and you’re smiling even bigger, before wincing again as the dull throbbing in your head makes another wave. “I’d love that more than you know, Geto.”

“Suguru,” he corrects, still smiling. This time it reaches his brilliant sparkling purple eyes. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

You beam at him, your gorgeous eyes twinkling. “Uh-huh, we sure are—owww!”

You clutch your head again, wincing, another wave of throbbing pain...

“You should take it easy,” he reprimands you with a frown. “Treat my home as yours. You can stay for as long as you need.”

“You’re far too kind, Suguru,” you reply, still beaming through the pain. “But hey, I can power through it! Just might need to be knocked out cold for another week or something though…”

Geto can’t help chuckling at that. “I’ll have some of our servants bring you food and medication. You can just relax as long as you need to, and I’m here for you.”

“Mr. Geto!!!!” A loud voice calls before a young blonde girl runs up to him. “We’re hungry!!!! Is she awake and is she okay???”

“Keep your voice down, Nanako,” he chides, before flashing you an apologetic smile. “She’s fine, but you need to use your inside voice around her.”

“Inside voice,” Nanako replies, lowering her tone to a low whisper. “Okay! But we’re huuuuuungry! Does she want to join us for lunch?”

“It’s noon?” you groan at him with an exasperated look. He stares back at you, apologetic.

“Well, would you like to? None of us would be opposed to lunch in bed,” he teases.

Nanako pumps her fists in the air.

“Yeah!!! And we can play Pokemon!”

“Nanako,” he chides again. “Inside voice! And she’ll need her space.”

You grin at Nanako’s antics, not minding in the slightest. “I’m really glad the twins are alright. Those people treated them so harshly.”

“They are,” he promises, then turns back to Nanako while scratching her head affectionately. “Order some food and bring Mimiko here. We’ll have lunch together, alright?”

Nanako nods and runs off.

“If I wasn’t feeling like shit, I’d cook for you again,” you offer, “It clearly looks like I’ll be out of commission for a bit longer than I want to, but if it means I get to spend more time with you, then I’m not complainin’!”

“There’s no need for that,” he replies, flattered by your comment as his heart swells with more pride. Your approval is all he cares about right now—because you don’t yet know the truth of the situation you have found yourself in; the guilt from lying to you is still weighing heavy on his heart. But you understand the real priorities—those humans are scum, which reassures him to a certain extent. “We’re happy with the pleasure of your company.”

“Man, stop buttering me up!” you whack him on the chest playfully. “I’m just little old me, not a big shot like you, Suguru.”

“Nonsense,” he retorts, “You’re plenty special.”

“And you’re still smooth talking!” you huff, before spluttering with laughter. “But alright! I’m seriously down for lots of rest and lots of food!”

“I’ll let Nanako know what to order for you. What would you like?”

You list out your typical go-tos, and he takes it all into account. He’s putting in his very best efforts to bring you the utmost comfort, and you don’t have to tell him you’re grateful for his hospitality. It’s safe to say he’s obviously not the type to offer something like this so openly.

Once you fully recover, he lets you go so you can fulfill your duties—much to his own reluctance. He’s become too attached to you—far more than he wants to admit to himself or to you.

Keeping you from doing what you believe is right is selfish of him, though he fears that you may not cross paths with him for a while.

“Aw, don’t fret, Suguru! I can come back, you know!” you assure him with an actual pat on his back.

“I’d love for you to,” Geto replies, his stare bordering on longing and tender. But of course, you don’t take it that way. You’re already turning your back, waving over your shoulder. “Take care.”

It’s at that moment he realizes he should have told you more, that he should have told you what happened, but he doesn’t want you to be afraid of him.

You do follow through on your promise, like you always do. Your character always proves to be unshakable. You’re a woman of your word, and he takes great pleasure in the fact.

For the last four or so years, you have returned in between your duties to spend time with him and the twins, who are more than thrilled to have you spend more time with them. They remember your kindness even before he burned it all to the ground.

Though you still have yet to learn the truth of what happened, he wants to maintain the illusion that everything’s still fine between you.

You make Geto more alive than he’s had since that dreaded day. Since he’s made that decision to stray from the conservative ways of jujutsu society. Full of fools who don’t understand the burdens they’ve forced upon people like him.

He strives for progress; he strives for harmony; he strives for peace. The only way to get that peace is to eliminate the cause of everyone’s suffering.

Geto just knows he’s clinging onto something from you he knows won’t last, but damn it, he can’t change what his heart wants. And it’s you. By his side. Through Hell or high water. There’s a point in protecting you, even if you aren’t traditionally what he accepts. He can’t bring himself to allow a good person like you die—there’s already so few of you out there.

He does wonder if you’ve caught onto the subtle changes in him. Well, it’s not too subtle to those close to him, or who have once been close to him—to them, it’s like he’s made a complete 180—but he wishes for things to reman more or less the same with you. You still view him through rose-colored lenses, and he would hate to shatter your perspective with the crushing reality that he’s not the hero you praise him to be, that he’s a monster.

Even if he kills that village for the safety of those girls, it doesn’t change that he doesn’t regret what he did, that he prefers that non-sorcerers be evicted from society…permanently.

“Are you going to keep staring into space, Suguru? Because those veggies ain’t gonna chop themselves,” you call out to him as you read along in your family recipe book while working with multiple pans and pots. Your culinary genius never fails to impress him, but that doesn’t mean you don’t appreciate a helping hand every now and then and he’s offered to numerous times.

He pulls himself out of his thoughts, picking up the large, sharpened premium chef’s knife and deftly chops the cucumbers, dices the onions, shallots, and bell peppers…

“You guys are so lucky I don’t charge you for all of this cookin’ I do for your conferences,” you snort, switching off some areas of the stove once those dishes are complete. “So how many members are we even feeding? This could feed entire villages, you know!”

“We have accumulated a staggering number of devotees and members,” Geto chuckles as he tosses the variety of veggies into a large ceramic bowl before handing it to you. He tries to ignore the softness of your skin as your fingers brush against his. He can’t lose sight of the reality—he’s a liar, and he has yet to come clean about his actions. He can’t entertain his feelings right now.

Maybe he shouldn’t bring it up while you’re in an environment with knives present.

“I really do appreciate everything you do here. The girls have really come to love you. Even some other members of the family have praised you, and that’s a rare thing, given how guarded all of them are,” Geto tells you with a winning smile on his face.

He doesn’t appear as worn and torn as he had all those years ago—well, four years is not that long but it’s enough to drastically change a person—and he can tell you’ve noticed. He may have found comfort in troubling ideals, but there’s a part of him that believes that you still see goodness in him, that he’s striving for the greater good, ultimately.

“Here you go again buttering me up like I’m about to these veggies,” you snicker as you toss them into the pot before twisting around to face him. “I think we’re all good to go here. Thanks for your help, Suguru! These dishes should be done right on time.”

Geto flashes you a smile before taking one of your free hands into his, kissing gently along your knuckles.

“Thank you,” he praises, violet eyes flitting upward to meet yours. “You have no idea how grateful we are for you.”

You roll your eyes as you retract your hand. “Alright, you. Enough of that. Leave me to the kitchen now. Actually, wait—!” you start while scooping a bit of stew from a large ceramic pot with a ladle, before presenting the piping hot sample to his lips. “—Taste test?”

You tip the ladle into his mouth, and he hums, smacking his lips as he judges the flavors. He then makes a pleased sound, sipping the rest of the sample with gusto, a little bit of the stew spraying on your hand.

Ah. An open opportunity. He lowers his lips to the area of your hand that still had some leftover stew, pressing his lips to the inflicted area and lightly slurping the leftovers up before pulling away with a little grin.

You make a mock displeased face before wiping your hand clean. “Ya nasty. Okay, now you can leave me to my devices.”

He does just that—frankly because he doesn’t want to test your patience while you’re in the cooking zone—and retires to the common area where Nanako and Mimiko are playing some dumb mobile game that’s completely taken up their free time between training sessions. Geto isn’t going to be one to rob them of their youth like those villagers were going to, so he tries his best not to be too strict with his rules about particularly electronics.

Especially considering Nanako’s cursed technique…

The meeting runs smoothly. You do stay behind to greet some of the members of the family you have met in the past. Even Miguel seems pleased to see you, which is a rarity for him, but it’s likely because they both share a love for the culinary arts. Regardless of the reasons, Geto is just happy to see you finding a place here—a home away from your home, where you had everything from you taken away just like he did.

Once the meeting concludes, Geto insists you stay over for a few nights. You at first try to decline, reminding him that you can’t exactly leave people in the more rural areas of Japan unattended, but he swears to make it worth your while.

An offer you can’t refuse, mainly because you’ve grown attached to him too.

“I’m afraid I haven’t been fully honest with you,” he brings up one evening, as you’re assisting him with some household work in his temple. You offer to in spite of the numerous times he refuses. You just like to be of service where you can. “About what happened in that village.”

“Why bring that up now? It’s been years,” you answer as you wipe off a bead of sweat from your brow with the back of your wrist.

“Because what I’m going to tell you might change everything between us. I’ve been selfish.”

“Suguru, you’re scaring me,” you remark, “What happened out there? I was out cold for most of it.”

“I know,” he replies, expression grim as he wipes his hands with a cloth. “I think it’s best if you take a seat for this.”

He leads you to the common area and sits you down on one of the couches there. He begins telling you that the villagers aren’t as open to the existence of sorcerers as your village was, that they threatened to execute the girls believing that they were the cause of their misfortune. He braces himself for the icy cold sting of rejection as he admits that because of that, he massacred the entire village and took you, and the girls, with him out of there to safety.

But instead of a backhanded slap across the face, or a lot of shouting or yelling, he meets your gaze to find your expression blank. Like you’re grappling with everything he’s just spilled to you—something he’s kept from you for all these years because he’s selfish and he can’t help that side to himself.

“I don’t blame you if this means you don’t want to see me again. I’ve done terrible things, and I will continue to do terrible things…” Geto can’t bear to look at your blank expression anymore and he flits his gaze elsewhere, resting his hands on your knees. “Sometimes we must do the things we mustn’t…for the greater good. For the protection of those who deserve protection. F….for those who truly matter in this world. You deserve protection. The girls deserve protection. But that village…they’re nothing but scum better off erased. I don’t regret a single thing I’ve done.”

Deciding it best to face the music, he meets your eyes again. Blank. Expressionless. Void.

Like him.

“But I don’t regret meeting you,” he goes on, eyes softening as he feels his heart drop to his stomach when you’re unresponsive, likely from shock. He squeezes your knees gently. “I don’t regret saving you, protecting you. I know I should have told you the truth sooner, but I didn’t want things between us to change.” He rests his head on your lap, voice strained. “I didn’t want to lose what we had. I didn’t want to lose you.”

The silence hangs in the air between them, constricting him like invisible chains around his neck and torso. He buries his face into his lap, awaiting your ultimate judgment—because he’s accepted a long time ago that he is indeed beneath someone as pure and as kind as you are. He’s not once deserved your kindness or this ‘common decency’ you so often preached because that’s the kind of person you are. He’s admired you for your character. He hasn’t stopped admiring you for your character.

His lips begin to quiver, and he feels a wetness down his cheeks, and, stunned, he raises his hand to find they’ve been stained with tears. You haven’t said a word since he confessed his sins. He doesn’t regret those sins.

“They were people too,” you mumble, digging your fingers into the fabric of your pants. “You…you really killed them? All of them? I-I know I’ve heard reports of a natural disaster taking the village, but all this time…that was to cover up your crime?”

“Yes,” he confirms, bloodshot eyes meeting your dead ones. “As you know, the existence of sorcerers is rare, and thus when such occurrences happen, and they do—perhaps not to such a degree like my own crimes—they have to cover it up to the general public. So they declared the village was overtaken by an earthquake. But the reality is I cursed them all to death.”

“You…” You hug your knees to your chest, shivering. “You—you…why?”

“Not everyone is like you. Not everyone is understanding and kind like you. They were going to kill two innocent girls!” He wants you to understand that particular detail—if he plays a bit more on your empathetic nature, does that mean he has a shot at keeping you in spite of the sins he’s committed? “You do understand where I’m coming from, don’t you? Those villagers you tried to protect in your village, your family died protecting them!”

“Yes,” you breathe, remembering your lost loved ones, your eyes now shimmering from sadness at their memories. “They were heroes. They did what they believed was right.”

“And I did what I believed was right,” he insists, desperation evident in his tone as he squeezes your knees too tight, to the point his veins begin to pop. “I saved you and the girls from those wretched, vile people.”

“You did save us,” you mumble, “That’s true. But the villagers, they didn’t all deserve to die…”

“I know you must be conflicted, but please understand where I’m coming from,” he bites back a whimper. “I don’t want to lose you. You’ve become dear to me and to the girls.”

“Suguru…” you trail off, but then you’re taken aback as his hands move up to cup your cheeks, wiping away the tears pricking at the corners of your stunning eyes.

“A man does what he mustn’t to protect those who matter to him most,” he whispers as he draws his face closer to yours, until his lips are barely against yours. “For her. To be worthy of her. Do you believe me?”

“I want to,” you whisper back, your eyes dropping to his lips then back to meet his eyes. Your breath hitches as you force down a sob. “I want to, but this is—Suguru, this is…a lot…”

“Then try to believe me. Try to trust me. That’s all I ask of you. I know I don’t deserve it,” he says, his lips teasing yours, hovering so close yet not quite meeting. His warm breath fans over your lips.

“But I am nothing without you,” he finishes, his words coming out in a low, raw whisper—he sounds so jaded from the horrors he’s witnessed all of his life. His eyes unravels so much to you, a man who has known too much violence and too much tragedy, and in this moment, a need for you to accept him as he is—hero or not, criminal or not.

Finally, his lips meet yours. His softness takes you aback, no urgency in the kiss just yet. His moves move languidly against your own, coaxing soft sounds out of you. He can tell you’re hesitating, frozen by the action, but his persistence encourages you; he’s frightened, that this is the only chance he might ever have with you. You shyly return the kiss, uncertain. You’re breathless when he pulls back, his entire expression softening.

“Wh-what was that for?” you murmur, your fingers brushing absently over your lips, still tingling from the kiss.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he confesses, his voice lowering an octave as he reaches out, brushing his fingers through your bangs. “I love you.”

“Suguru, I…” you stammer, your body still trembling, a war of unfamiliar emotions rushing through your mind.

“Shh,” he whispers, drawing his lips closer to yours once more. “There’s so much I want to try with you. Can you try to trust me?”

You gulp, averting your gaze as your heart races. You find it difficult to breathe. “I…”

“Do speak up,” he purrs, as a teasing smile tugs at the corner of his lips.

“I don’t know if I can wait.” The playful edge to his tone catches him off-guard, but he frames his words to make it seem like you don’t have a real choice on the matter. Trust is no longer something you can withhold from him, even if you want to, and maybe that’s selfish of him, but he’s come to accept that he’s no virtuous hero a long time ago.

“O-okay,” you squeak, the sound of your (reluctant) submission charges something within him. An all too eager Geto scoops you up effortlessly into his arms, carrying you princess style as his lips trail kisses all over your face and forehead. The tension in his body melts off of him as he whisks you away to his bedroom.

“I’ll prove to you that I’m still the man you know,” he murmurs into your skin as he rests you on the feathery mattress. “I’m not a hero, I’m afraid,” he adds softly, speaking to himself more than to you. “No, not a hero…I’m far too selfish for that.”

He rests a hand on your cheek, a calloused thumb brushing along your soft skin with a reverence that catches you off-guard. He leans in, his hovering over yours, your breaths mixing.

“But I can still be the man for you,” he murmurs between heated kisses along your jaw. “The man you deserve.” His voice dips in a rawer way.

“Suguru…” Your hands instinctively reach up to grip his shoulders.

“I’ve…never done this before…” you confess, your voice barely a whisper, laden with nerves.

He pauses, a low hum vibrating in his throat as he kisses you once more, dragging his lips along the edge of your mouth before pulling back with a low, fervent growl. The intensity in his gaze is far too much.

“Then I’ll be gentle, my dear,” he vows, his voice a low rasp as he presses his forehead against yours. I’m yours to use as much as you like.”

He moves to unbutton your top, revealing your delicious figure. There’s a tremble in his hands as he explores your body. He traces the swells of your breasts before pulling them out from your bra, grinding his teeth against a nipple before sucking it into his mouth with a loud slurp.

You gasp, another flush blooming across your features. “Wait, Suguru—!”

He ignores you as he suckles a bit on the nipple, eyebrows furrowing as some milk splatters on his tongue. He hums at the exquisite taste before jis bewildered eyes meet yours, removing your nipple from his mouth with a pop to speak.

“How are you lactating?” he asks, not doing much to hide how giddy he is from this new discovery. He definitely plans on taking advantage of this for more than one occasion.

“Um…partially diet and uh…herbal medicine stuff…” you flush, covering your face from embarrassment. “S-some new mothers face difficulties with nursing so some remedies I created help with that…and I have to test them on myself, so…”

“I see,” he groans as he laves his tongue around your nipple, flicking off leftover droplets of milk. “Fascinating.”

He closes his mouth over your perky nipple and suctions hard, groaning at the taste. More flavorful than any meal you have ever cooked for him, and he can’t get enough of the pitchy moans you’re working so hard to bite down.

One of his hands fondles your unattended breasts, and he coos at how soft your mounds are, flicking his finger over your nipple as he greedily drinks from the other one.

“Fuck,” he moans into your skin. “Don’t hold back on those beautiful noises. You should enjoy it.”

“Suguru…it’s just…embarrassing…” you admit through a pitched voice. He laughs a bit at that, not to mock you (shockingly), but because he wants to ravish you.

He parts the nipple he assaulted with a kiss before switching, suckling on one nipple while a finger toys with the opposite. He prays that he will be the only one who gets to have you like this, and he intends to see that through. He doesn’t like the idea of you being with anyone else. The thought makes his blood burble beneath his skin.

He shifts gears, flipping you over so that now you’re on top of him. You yelp from shock, but it’s muffled as his lips plunge against yours, his tongue invading your mouth and gliding along the edges of your teeth. His hands snake down your waist and hips, stopping at the hem of your pants where he tucks his fingers inside and pulls them off along with your panties (which he definitely plans to keep to himself).

He purrs your name, and you let out a low whimper.

“I meant what I said before,” he murmurs against your lips before pulling away, sliding you up until your cunt is hovering over his face. “I’m yours to use.”

“I-I don’t know what to, um, exactly do…Suguru…” Your face is beet red.

He chuckles at that, sliding his tongue up your folds. “In that case, I’ll guide you. Worry not.”

He shoves your cunt into his tongue, twisting it between your folds and a shaky gasp leaves your lips. He digs his fingers into your ass cheeks, close to your crack as his tongue laves over your sensitive skin, your own slick already building from the slightest treatment. He hums, tongue flicking over your clit as his eyes never leave yours, admiring your flushed face, your rosy, parted lips as more breathy moans escape them.

From his focal point, you truly are a goddess, a true beauty—further proof that he’s truly beneath you in every conceivable way.

“Suguru…” Oh, his name rolling off your lips sounds so good, so sweet.

“Don’t be shy,” he purrs, his breath fanning over your folds before plunging the wet muscle into your fluttering entrance, making you choke on another gasp as you grasp for something—you reach for the top of the headboard to maintain a semblance of balance as his tongue fucks repeatedly into your spongy walls.

His grip on your ass cheeks tighten as his tongue ravishes you, and he growls when he feels your gummy walls clenching around him. You’re coming, and you throw your head back as you do, shouting as you’re unfamiliar with the sensation.

“Thank you for blessing me with such a beautiful sight,” he praises, tone full of reverence as he pinches one of your ass cheeks, making you squeak again. “My mouth isn’t the only thing free for your use, my love.”

He guides you back down to his lap, where his growing erection through his robe is evident. He grinds up into your pussy, still drenched from your arousal. “My cock, my fingers, anything. They’re all yours.”

He grabs one of your hands and rests it on his clothed erection. He groans your name. “Do you feel what you do to me? What more can I do to show you—that I am the man for you?”

“I…I don’t know,” you admit, tone wistful. “Suguru, I told you. I’ve…never done this before.”

He adjusts your positions, taking a moment to completely disrobe and reveal his bare body to you. He moves to cup your face, brushing his thumb along your lips.

“I’ll make this worth it for you,” he purrs, as he grinds the tip of his cock against your pussy. You bite back a moan in spite of yourself. “Can you trust me? I understand it’s too much to ask—”

“—Yes,” you murmur, and as he presses a kiss to your lips, he pushes the tip of his cock inside, experimentally. Sensing any discomfort from you before he rests his back against the headboard, guiding you up and down his girthy cock. His lips trail down your jaw and neck, growling into your skin as he keeps a gentle, but far from slow pace. Trying to get you used to the sensation, to the feeling of being filled to the hilt by his impressive size. He doesn’t want to hurt you. His fingers sink into your waist, as he purrs your name over and over.

“I’m yours,” he vows as his intense gaze never leaves yours. “I’m yours, my love. That much is true.”

He shouts as he comes, and you soon follow after and he’s moaning throughout as your walls clench around his girth. You slowly come down from the hot flash in ragged breaths, yours syncing with his.

“I’m yours,” he repeats, nuzzling his nose against yours. You glance down at him, chest still heaving as you catch your breath.

“I know,” you say, as his hands intertwine with yours. “I’m yours too.”

[alexanderwales]

I've had a number of jobs that I would consider blue collar, mostly when I was younger, just not skilled blue collar work. I worked at my uncle's landscaping company for a summer (planting bushes, repotting stuff, watering plants), and on my other uncle's farm for a few years (feeding animals, helping hook up equipment, being an extra pair of hands, doing a lot of the various odd jobs that farming seems to consist of). I was a janitor for two years when I was taking a break from college, and did enough manual labor that I had some actual muscles from it.

When I worked as a janitor, one of my duties was to bale cardboard, which means taking all the cardboard generated by the store and placing it into a baler, having it crushed flat in bulk, then tying the bale of cardboard up with wire so it could be placed in a corner of the loading bay and later, shipped of somewhere else for processing. I imagine that before the baler was invented, this was a lot more labor, and even with the baler it felt like a significant amount of labor. And I did always think that it could have been easier, simpler, faster, except that it was cheaper for a human to do everything. Even the very primitive baler probably cost thousands of dollars, and it was just a glorified hydraulic press. But I didn't respect the work, and would have been happy for that to no longer be a thing that humans had to do.

I guess my opinion on automation is that it's generally good insofar as it means that people can stop doing things that they would rather not be doing, things that they do because they've been coerced into doing them for money.

But I do think there's something to working with your hands and seeing some tangible results from your labor. I took wood shop in high school, and every now and then I have cause to use those skills for something, even if I am outcompeted by giant factories that can make the same things by the hundreds with better precision. There's also the question of customization: my wife is far more handy than I am, and is always making little custom things for us, either 3D printed or with tools at the local Makerspace that she helps run. I think it's good to look back at something you've done and being able to say "yes, I have done that". And of course there are other ways to compete against a factory that's shitting out things by the thousands, and not just by having things bespoke: there are things that benefit from not having to be made in quantity, or with fresh ingredients, or locally sourced products.

I guess there are a lot of things that I would replace with robots, if I could, but also a lot of things that I wouldn't, because I place some value on doing them myself, or having a process that I can control, or an end product I can take credit for.

We're entering a new era of automation, assuming that AI doesn't just fail and escape from the public consciousness like a weak fart. I'm hopeful that it can kill a lot of grunt work, things that people didn't ever want to be doing, and worried that it will kill the kinds of enriching labor that people actually enjoy. But of course I worry that it's going to be like a lot of automation has been, making an inferior product at prices so low that only the very rich can afford what humans do.

[drunkenskunk]

So, I'm laying in bed, waiting for the painkillers to kick in, with an ice pack strapped to my knee, and I'm letting my mind wander. And I'm thinking about Warhammer 40k, because of course I am, this is what I do when I'm bored and in pain.

While laying here, I got to thinking: when were the first "official" conflicts between humanity and the all the other Xenos factions? So I'm just delirious enough to be like "let's figure this shit out."

And I'm already needing to start off with a mulligan, because the Orks, the Eldar, and the daemons of Chaos have always been ubiquitous in the Warhammer galaxy ever since humanity first walked upright, so trying to pin down "first contact conflict" is a mugs game. It would all be pre-Dark Age of Technology. Who the fuck knows for sure.

So who else is there: in terms of "major" Xenos factions (that is: armies with a codex), we got the Tyranids, the Tau, the Necrons, and the Leagues of Votann. Which is less than I hoped, but about what I expected for James "SPESS MEHREEN" Workshep.

So: the Tyranids. The First Tyrannic War was in 745.M41. However: if we really want to be specific and pedantic (and I do), then the first time the Imperium ran into the Tyranids was "sometime" around 500.M41 when genestealers were first encountered on the moons of Ymgarl. Then again, I'm not actually sure we should count that, considering that the Imperium wouldn't even make that connection themselves until much later.

Next: the Tau. Technically first "contact" was in 789.M35, when an AdMech explorator ship, Land's Vision, found the planet that would eventually be named Tau, and recorded a primitive species that had mastered simple tools and fire. But because that planet became inaccessible due to a warp storm, and the records got lost in the chaos of the Age of Apostasy, we (again) probably shouldn't count that. First real conflict was the Damocles Crusade, between 742.M41 and 745.M41... and it only ended because the Tyranids showed up.

Moving on: the Necrons. Technically, they've been "around" even longer than the Eldar. But they've mostly all been fucking asleep in their tomb worlds, except for a select few who woke up early (looking at you Trazyn). So, really, if we're ignoring shit like Szarekh the Silent King returning from his self imposed exile in response to the Tyranids showing up (are we noticing a pattern here?), first "official" conflict with the Imperium was the Sanctuary 101 massacre in 897.M41.

And finally: the Leagues of Votann. And, again: they've been "around" for who knows how long. It's heavily implied that their generation ships left Earth for the galactic core before even the Dark Age of Technology. But they mostly kept to themselves and didn't venture outside the holds in the galactic core until Cadia exploded and the Cicatrix Maledictum cut the galaxy in half, forcing them to leave. Finally, an "alien" faction being introduced to the setting that has nothing to do with the fucking Tyranids.

And, y'know... looking at all that? That really does kinda put in perspective why everything seems to have gone to shit in 40k, doesn't it?

Between the end of the Horus Heresy in 014.M31 and the start of the Damocles Crusade in 742.M41, the only things the Imperium of Man had to really worry about were Orks, Eldar, daemons, and renegades/traitors. Like, none of that is great (and a lot of it is self inflicted), but that kind of setup seems manageable. The Eldar never show up in huge numbers, and daemons require incredibly specific circumstances to even manifest outside The Warp. Hell, even the Orks for most of that time are basically just a nuisance, since a warboss on the scale of Urlakk Urg wouldn't be seen till Ghazgkull. Really, the most dangerous thing the Imperium had to worry about during that stretch of time was regular humans rebelling (rightfully so) in the face of the Imperium being a nightmarishly oppressive theocratic fascist state.

That's 10,000 years or so that you could almost call relatively stable, where the vast majority of issues were problems that it inflicted on itself. Business as usual.

AND THEN

In the span of just over 250 years, there's several wars with the Tau, the Tyranids show up over and over again, the Necrons start waking up, and... then the Leagues of Votann are also here now lol

Something, something, decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen, etc.

[officiallordvetinari]

Language and the Mind on Deva Loka

So we've reached the 5th Doctor in our watchthrough, and yesterday we finished Kinda. Lots of good stuff in this episode, but I was particularly interested in the Kinda's relationship to language. We first learn about the Kinda through the eyes of human colonists, who see them as "primitives" lacking a culture and incapable of communication (because of course they do). However, we soon find that they are an advanced culture of sapient beings, and that this went unnoticed by the humans because the Kinda communicate telepathically.

So far, pretty standard sci-fi material. It's the next thing we learn that piqued my interest: the Kinda are physically capable of speech, although only certain wise woman use it. We meet two, the Wise Woman Panna and her young apprentice Karuna. The obvious question - if the Kinda have language, why do most of them not use it? (it's said that men are mentally incapable of it, but that still leaves half the population who could be speaking but aren't.) The obvious answer is that they don't need to - they're telepathic, so language as a tool of communication has no use to them. But that opens up a second question - why do any of them use language? And why are those people given such high status?

On several occasions, Karuna telepathically "reads" other Kinda and reports the results to Panna. These communications take the form of emotions, basic concepts, and some simple sentences:

Fear. And hurting. And confusion. Where is my brother?

Darkness. Understanding nothing. Hurt. Heal me.

It's not just that most Kinda don't physically speak with the mouth - their mental communications are structured differently to Panna and Karuna's verbal communications. It's not "thought-speak", it's more impressionistic. It looks to me like the wise women's minds actually work differently to their fellows. I think this is the purpose of language in Kinda culture - not a tool for communication, but a tool for complex conceptualization.

Language serves this function on Earth too, of course. The psychologist Lev Vygotsky analyzed children's language acquisition in terms of tool use. Infants are born into a world full of tools they don't know how to use - physical tools like spoons, shoelaces, bicycles; and cultural tools like timekeeping, table manners, and language. Children learn to use these tools because their interactions with other people are mediated by them. In Vygotsky's view, children often narrate their actions out loud because they are practicing the skill of thought, and haven't mastered the tool of language well enough to use it internally yet.

For another, more sci-fi approach, consider the view of language as a memetic organism that engages in symbiosis with humans - we give it a place to live and a way to reproduce, and it gives us a new way of interacting with the world. (We could combine the two ideas to describe language as a parasitic tool - now that's pretty sci-fi.)

For humans, this process goes mostly unnoticed. By definition, it occurs before we're fully conscious. The conceptual world of language is just the water we swim in. For the Kinda, it would be strange and unusual! Their conceptual world would be alien to us, and the wise women's conceptual world is at least partly alien to them.

Back up for a second. We know that only a few Kinda use language. In humans, language is learned by immersion from birth. Young Kinda are born into a community with language users, and yet they don't learn to use it themselves. That's not something that happens with us! What's different for them? Maybe it's paucity of input - if there are only two language users, the baby won't interact with them enough. Maybe it's simply that telepathy is so useful, there's no pressure to use neurological resources on learning language. Or maybe - if you'll permit me to speculate wildly - a telepathic species would never evolve the capacity to learn by immersion. They lack the language instinct. Such a species would still be able to invent language, just like they can invent anything else, but they might require more intensive, formal instruction to learn it - more comparable to human mathematics or engineering than human language.

So how does your average Kinda think about language, then? It's a skill of wise women, much too complicated for a layman to understand. Sometimes a wise woman will select a young child as an apprentice and take her away for training. Nobody sees the child for a long time, maybe years, and when she reappears she's... different. When you reach out to her telepathically, her mind doesn't feel like your friends and neighbors. Still recognizably Kinda, but strange, full of concepts you don't understand and going in directions you can't follow. The skill/tool/memetic parasite has moved into her head and given her wisdom, and now she is a new kind of thing. A wise woman.

So at this point, I'm thinking that this is all a bit Faction Paradox. Memetic entities, conceptual realities, culture and technology are that series' bread and butter. The writers of Kinda may not have been thinking about it in those terms, but a FP reading of the episode would be very easy to do.

And then, in the last part of the episode, something else happens. Panna dies:

DOCTOR: Panna's dead. (Karuna takes Panna's staff.) KARUNA: Idiot. Don't you know anything? Of course I'm not dead. ... TODD: Ridiculous. I mean, if she is Panna, the wise woman, then where is Karuna? Answer me that. KARUNA: Well, Doctor? DOCTOR: Er, well, it's a good scientific question. Where are you? KARUNA: I am her. DOCTOR: Both of you. KARUNA: We are one. DOCTOR: So, when Panna died, her knowledge and experience were passed over to you. TODD: But how? KARUNA: It is our way.

So, did Panna literally transfer her consciousness into Karuna's brain? Maybe. They are psychic. This raises some questions - did Panna have two consciousnesses as well? Did her mentor's mind make the trip to Karuna's head, or did it die in Panna's? Is this a Bene Gesserit thing where Karuna has generations of wise women's consciousness now?

Or maybe it's not as literal as that. To me, "it is our way" sounds like it's describing a cultural practice. Put yourself in Karuna's shoes. You were raised by this woman for as long as you can remember. She taught you all her knowledge of history, medicine, etc., and more than that, she taught you her arcane methods of thinking about that knowledge. She is the only person you know whose mind works like yours. And she has always made it clear to you that you are her successor, and when she dies, you will become her. Isn't it possible that when she does die, you just sort of... do? Nothing physically or psionically passed between you, you simply start being her. To humans, identity isn't shareable or transferable - one person cannot be another person. But is that a fact of nature, or is it another cultural construct? Perhaps the Kinda constructed it differently.

And this, too, is Faction Paradox! The Remote in that series reproduce with remembrance tanks, in which a lump of raw biomass is bombarded by the thoughts of the entire society until it becomes a person. Using this method, dead Remote can be resurrected, but the more it happens the more the person will become a reflection of the way people saw the original. Still, there is continuity of a kind. Immortality not through physical, biological technology, but through cultural technology. Conceptual cloning.

I don't really have a conclusion here. Uhh... Kinda is a good episode, and social technologies are pretty cool. Thanksforreadingbyeee!

[ptseti]

WHO BUILT THE GREAT PYRAMID?

Many theories and debates surround who built the pyramids of Giza in Egypt. In some instances, some have argued that enslaved people built the pyramids.

In this clip, British journalist, researcher and writer Graham Hancock disputes this theory, noting that the precision, skill and care with which the Great Pyramid - the largest of all the Egyptian pyramids - was built, could not have been the work of enslaved people or unwilling labourers, but of individuals with 'love' for architecture that encompassed excellent knowledge of the earth's physics.

In other instances, scholars - specifically those from the West - have attempted to argue that this very architectural precision noted by Hancock, means the Great Pyramid could not have been the work of African people, who they viewed through their White supremacist lenses as too primitive and backwards for such incredible feats.

Yet, through thorough empirical research, well-respected scholars like Senegal's giant, the late Cheikh Anta Diop, demonstrated that all civilisation sprung from Africa and that Ancient Egypt, in particular, is undoubtedly an ancient African civilisation.

Hancock himself believes the Pyramid is the work of an ancient civilisation that was completely wiped off the face of the earth. His reasoning is its meticulous design is impossible to achieve 'with the knowledge' and 'tools' supposedly available in old Egypt.

Although he does not assign any race to this 'wiped out' civilisation, nor directly deny that this civilisation was African, we wonder if this is what he is subtly insinuating, given he has been accused of peddling racist, White supremacist narratives in some of his work and is widely considered a pseudoscientist by the academic world.

MY COMMENT:

The only chapter that is missing from the human story is the chapter or chapters that YOUR ancestors deliberately burnt, just as they chipped the nose from every statue in Egypt, to hide the TRUTH about our ppl and their achievements. FVCK U

[yes-i-write-fanfiction]

I saw you're post about Godzilla and Steven Universe, as a Godzilla fan I just had this fun little idea. A human tribe that worships Godzilla, a tribe that PD/Rose and Pearl stumble upon during a celebration and the Tribe inviting them to join in the celebration. The Celebration being that the Mountain of the Sea is visiting their humble village, and PD/Rose and Pearl join thinking nothing of it. Until the Mountain of the Sea actually visits and its Godzilla doing some patrolling of his territory.

It had been Pink's idea, of course. It always was. Donning her disguise of a Rose Quartz, she had dragged Pearl along with her to a seaside village she had recently discovered, wanting to pay visit to the colony natives.

Humans. Pink Diamond's latest obsession. Pearl frankly couldn't see the appeal. They looked a bit like gems except they were fully organic, much weaker and lived pitifully short lives. But for some reason, Pink were entranced.

This was, however, the first time that she had decided to interact with the humans.

Pearl had been... apprehensive, to say the least. Not that she thought that the humans could pose any harm to them but it just felt inappropriate for someone of Pink Diamond's rank to mingle with organics.

Well, whatever made her happy, Pearl supposed. It wasn't her role to understand, anyway, just serve.

The humans, though initially surprised by their sudden appearance, had quickly accepted them with open arms, welcoming them and asking if they were perhaps there to partake in the celebration of the Mountain.

This had immediately caught Pink's attention.

"A celebration? For what? There aren't any mountains nearby."

The village chief had laughed (laughed at a Diamond! The nerve!) and kindly explained the occasion.

"Not that kind of mountain, my friend," he said as he combed through his facial hair with his fingers. "The Mountain of the Sea is our guardian, a friend and protector of our people, and every year he rises from the sea to pay us a visit. To show him our thanks, we prepare a feast to celebrate him."

Delighted with the tale, Pink had decided to humor the human and participate in the event. Pearl, of course, had simply followed her wishes. Despite this, however, she couldn't help but feel some doubt about the whole thing.

"My Rose, I am not sure this is... appropriate," Pearl said as she finally spoke up, finally alone now that the native humans were busy preparing for their 'ritual'.

Rose waved her hand dismissively. "Don't worry Pearl. I mean, what's the harm?" She smiled as she toyed with the flower crown that one of the younger humans had given her. "Unless you're afraid of this 'Mountain of the Sea', of course?"

At this, Pearl couldn't help but click her tongue, something that was very unbecoming of someone of her rank. "No offense, my Rose, but I highly doubt there'll be anything worth seeing. I mean, a mountain, rising from the sea? The previous surveys of the planet revealed nothing of the sort. It's most likely just primitive superstition."

Simply humming in response, Rose gazed at the altar where the humans were now placing their offerings. It was an impressive piece of art, even when considering the human's lack of advanced tools. Reaching her height if she were her Diamond self, it depicted a hulking figure with reptilian features. It vaguely reminded her of a creature she had once spotted on one of Yellow's colonies, except with a less pointy snout.

"You're probably right," Rose finally admitted, "but it's still exciting, no? There are no celebrations like this on Homeworld. I've never seen anything like it before."

Pearl pursed her lips, not entirely pleased. "Well, it's certainly... different. At least the view is nice."

She was right. The altar where the ritual was held was placed at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, a short walking distance away from the village. The water was crystal blue and the slowly setting sun painted the sky in a myriad of shades of pink, orange, yellow, purple and red.

Looking at it like this, Pearl supposed she could see why Pink Diamond adored the planet so. It certainly was beautiful.

"What's that?"

Pearls eyes followed the line of Rose's pointing finger and frowned. There, in the horizon, an isle.

"That's odd, I don't remember there being an island there befo-" Pearl cut herself off, her eyes going wide as she realized that whatever she had assumed to be an isle, not only was getting bigger, but also closer.

The village chief raised his arms and smiled. "My friends! The Mountain of the Sea is here! Let's welcome him together!"

In unison, the humans started waving and shouting hello as the shape got closer and closer and closer...

Pearl grasped Rose's arm and started tugging on it. When Rose didn't move, she put her whole weight behind it. Normally, she would have never done something so disrespectful but this was not a normal situation. Yet despite putting all her strength in it, she still couldn't move Rose, who instead stood firmly rooted in place.

"My Diamond-! Rose! We, we need to leave!" Pearl pleaded as she stared in horror as the shape got close enough that she could see that it was part of something even bigger. "Please, let's le-" Finally looking away from the shape, Pearl gazed upon the face of her Diamond, and instead of seeing her own fear mirrored in her expression, she saw delight. Like this was all a big spectacle for her amusement.

"The Mountain of the Sea," Rose whispered in awe.

The world turned dark, as the sun was blot out by the biggest creature Pearl had ever seen.

Pearl used to think that as someone that served a Diamond, she was used to feeling small. But this, this thing was totally different from what she had grown used to. To call it massive would be an understatement. This thing was gigantic. Gargantuan. Colossal. It towered over the cliff, peered down on them like they were pebbles.

The still coherent part of her mind thought that the name 'Mountain of the Sea' was pretty accurate after all.

[cavecritterthing]

Why are demons like this?

I've recently revisited Diablo III, and while I love the creature design of the series, I couldn't help but question the way we design Angels and Demons and whatnot.

In Diablo, the Demons look like... mutated, vaguely humanoid corpses with usually red skin, horns, growths, pustules, etc. Something that looks visceral, painful, something you could become, but also a perversion of the natural form.

Meanwhile the Angels are knights in shining armour, you literally don't see any part of them that isn't metal or glowing. They're depicted as stalwart, steadfast, unshakable, impersonal and more than anything else, inhuman.

While I like the Designs this produces, I can also imagine the opposite. Angels represent the virtues that hold society together, hope, love, compassion, order, peace, care, faith, justice, safety. All of these are human desires, very personal wishes and emotions that one grows in their very heart. Safety is such a universal desire, one of the oldest fossils that marks the beginning of the Cambrian Period, is a burrow. A little cave, a little home, to be at peace in.

Meanwhile what we consider demonic, like hatred, greed, excess, violence, debasement, callousness, doubt, fear, tyranny, disrespect... All of those are defense mechanisms. Why do we feel fear, because we suspect danger. Why do we greedily hoard resources, because we fear deprivation. Why do tyrants suppress opposition, because they lack confidence in their own natural superiority and survivability, if they do not enforce and reinforce it. Fear begins conflict, and conflict breeds innovation, adaptation, technological advancements.

I'm saying that in my mind, angels are natural beings, magnificent beasts with a visible humanity to them, primitive but timeless and purposefully developed in symbiosis with one another. Meanwhile demons are bulky suits of Spikes and armour, beat-up little stragglers that grasp for every unfair advantage they can find. Creatures who's humanity was suppressed by war and trauma, who've grown so sick of their own weakness, that they'd rather hide it behind Tools, Weapons and acts of "necessary" violence.

[pudding-parade]

Get to know you - Sims Style

@rstarsims3 tagged me for this a while back, and I'm finally posting my answers, which took me a while to compile because 1) Blabbity blab blab blab, as usual, and 2) Still needing lots of rest and stuff, so no sitting at a computer for hours on end.

But here we go! I'mma put my blabby answers and my tag list behind Ye Olde Cut.

What’s your favorite Sims death? What an odd question, especially to lead off… Well, I guess if I had to pick one, it'd be the one from TS2 where cloudwatching occasionally brings a satellite down on the cloudwatcher's head. But generally, mine die of old age, if they manage to get that far. I play with long, but realistically proportional, life stages, mostly because I'm almost always playing "experimental" saves where I'm "road testing" rulesets and such, so I need a lot of time to work out kinks and test ideas and stuff.)

Alpha CC or Maxis Match? I land on a combination of more-realistic (but not ultra-realistic) stuff for CAS, but for everything else, like with furniture and deco and stuff, I tend to prefer CC stuff that visually fits in with the EA stuff in terms of style and textures and whatnot, so that the CC doesn't stick out like a sore thumb when combined with EA stuff. In fact, my "go-to" CC for build/buy is stuff that adds on to EA stuff, like more doors/windows that match an EA door/window.

Do you cheat your sims weight? What, to make the fat ones skinny? The skinny ones fat? The skinny ones buff? No. I don't see why I would. It's easy enough to make a sim gain or lose weight without cheating, which I'm assuming means just using the sliders.

Do you move objects? Is there anyone who doesn't? That's a serious question. Is there any one who doesn't? I want to know.

Favorite Mod? I'm leaving aside the NRaas mods because I don't see them as mods so much as things that are just essential to make the game playable in the often-weird ways that I play. There are others that I also consider just essential for when I'm playing in certain styles, especially for more primitive settings. But for ones that are optional and just pure fun, I'd nominate all of @thesweetsimmer111's baby- and toddler-related ones.

First Expansion/Game Pack/Stuff Pack? I know for TS2 it was Seasons. For TS3…For a long time, I had just the base game, which I got when it came out, but didn't play beyond trying it out and then going back to TS2. Then, years later, I got a new computer and decided to give TS3 another try, but I couldn't find the CD or DVD or whatever it was, so I bought a combo pack with the base game, Late Night, and the High End Loft or whatever it is stuff pack, so I guess it would be Late Night. Other than that, I bought all the other TS3 EPs in one go when EA had them on sale for 50% off via Origin, which that combo pack forced me to install. (But which I am now free of again. 🏴‍☠️)

Do you pronounce live mode like aLIVE or LIVing? As aLIVE. Because that is when the game is live. Games do not live, but they can be live. See, this is one reason why English sucks.

Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made? Here's a thing about me: I don't really get attached to the pixel people. For me, they're just tools. I'm guessing it's because I'm not a storyteller when it comes to Sims, so I don't see sims as characters. Sure, sometimes I find one endearing for one reason or another. Usually, they have traits that make them assholes, and I like to watch them create chaos and ruin wherever they go. One of the founders of the Random Legacy that I will get back to one of these days is one of those. But I find I like other people's sims more than mine, though that's more of a testament to those simmers' story-telling skills than anything else.

Have you made a simself? Only by accident. A few times I've just been randomly moving sliders around and somehow I ended up with something that looked like me at some stage in my life. It stayed that way for a minute or three, before I yelled OH GOD NO! and quickly slidered the horror away.

But to be honest? I find the entire concept kind of creepy, at least in terms of putting a self-sim in the game and playing them as a character. That would just feel weird to me. That said, I suppose it might have been something that would have appealed to me if I had played when I was a kid, but the game didn't exist when I was a kid. Computers didn't exist when I was a kid, at least not in a form that regular people could own and that could fit on a desk. I was in my 40s when I started playing the game. My daughter played TS2 when she was a kid, and she had a self-sim inserted into the stories she would play, so…yeah. Maybe it's a younger-person thing. Or maybe I'm just weird. Yeah, it's probably that second option.

Which is your favorite EA hair color? Probably the black, but even with that I have to add some highlights to it because otherwise the hair just looks like a creature from the void eating the sim's head.

Favorite EA hair? None of them. They all need to DIAF.

Favorite life stage? I don't have one. I have a least-favorite, babies, because they're basically just objects, but once they're actually sims, I enjoy playing sims of all ages equally.

Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay? I originally bought TS2 just to build in it, and for a couple of years, that was all I did. I only started actually playing the game later. Now, I enjoy both building and actually playing the game, depending on my mood. Usually, I'll have a binge of building, but I eventually come to a point where I'd rather do anything other than build. Then I play the game. Then, eventually, the urge to build comes back. So it's a back-and-forth.

Are you a CC creator? I made lots of stuff for TS2, mostly object retextures/recolors. I've made a few minor things for TS3, and I retexture hairs and add preg morphs to clothing for my own use, but I wouldn't consider myself a CC creator for TS3. In fact, I'm actively resisting learning how to make stuff for TS3 because I really don't want to go down that rabbithole again.

Do you have any Simblr friends or a Sim Squad? Friends in the sense of "people I enjoy talking to and sharing ideas with and sometimes arguing with here on Tumblr?" Sure. Are those the same as friendships that develop face-to-face in the real world? Nope. But, sometimes I like talking to my Simblr friends a lot more than talking to my real-life friends, so make of that what you will. Y'all are less draining sometimes. LOL

Do you have any sims merch? No official merch, but my brother-in-law is into making pottery, and several years ago he made me a big stoneware mug with a plumbbob on it. Which is ironic because when I play the game I turn off the plumbbobs because I hate them. LOL But I love the mug. It's heavy enough that neither cats nor wagging dog tails nor giant snakes (though he could do it if he focused all four of his brain cells on the task) can knock it off of tables, but not so heavy that I can't comfortably lift it. I use it for eating soup and the occasional mug cake, and also for drinking the awful herbal tea my husband makes me drink, though since the recent surgery, I don't have to drink that anymore! *dances* So now it will just be my soup or cake mug. Or one for tea that I actually want to drink.

Do you have a YouTube for sims? I don't have a YouTube for anything. Well, OK, I have a YouTube account for watching other people's stuff and making playlists of things I want to watch, but I don't post videos on it, and I don't really watch video game-related stuff on YouTube, either.

How has your “Sims style” changed throughout your years of playing? It hasn't, really. I've pretty much always just come up with wacky scenarios to play and see how they go. In fact, for me, coming up with the scenario and figuring out how to make it work in the game and then inventing a ruleset to govern it is sometimes more fun than actually playing the scenario. LOL

And my Sims all look like the game made them because…the game makes all of them. I just poke the random button until it produces something that doesn't look too much like a freak of nature, then I hit up a couple sliders to remove or tone down any remaining freakishness. (Though I confess that I will spend an inordinate amount of time sculpting the titties of those who have them. Why? I have no idea, other than I just like me a nice pair of titties. Too bad there aren't any sliders for male titties…) Then I just slap on a different hair, maybe change the eye color, and slather on some makeup and facial/body hair and shit until they don't look too stupid, and then off I go. From there, they're all born in the game, and I just leave them as-is, mostly because I can't be bothered. "I can't be bothered" is pretty much my philosophy of life.

Who’s your favorite CC creator? I hate this kind of question. I feel like all they do is disappoint and discourage people if they're never picked. I refuse to do that over something so trivial. So, my favorite CC creator is you, the person reading this. Yes, you. Even if you don't make CC. It doesn't matter. You're the best.

How long have you had Simblr? I started my TS2 one in 2013. (I can remember that only because I know that I started it the same year I met my husband. LOL ) I started this one….2 years ago? 3? Something like that.

How do you edit your pictures? Other than basic cropping and resizing and maybe adjusting brightness/contrast a bit if the pic is too dark or whatever, I generally don't. I don't even use Reshade all the time anymore, only in certain situations, though I do have an NVIDIA profile for the game that adds ambient occlusion and better antialiasing and shit like that. Sometimes, though, I'll decide to photoshop scenery pics, and then I just kind of stab at it with various tools and filters and layer blends and shit until I like I how it looks. There's no actual process involved. I'm random like that.

What expansion/ gamepack is your favorite? I gotta go with World Adventures. Bits of it are a bit, shall we say, culturally problematic, but man, I never get tired of doing those stupid, stupid tombs. LOL Plus, I love that NRaas Traveler allows you to "travel" to any world, and I don't think that mod works without WA, so…. Yeah. WA.

Tagging: I have no idea who's done this, so I'll just tag a few random people, off the top of my head. Feel free to do or ignore, as you choose. No pressure from me! So...@nectar-cellar, @happy-lemon, @erasabledinosaur, @esotheria-sims, @lilleputtu, @littlefrenchsims, @anamoon63, @lazysunjade, annnnnnnnd @papermint-airplane.

[biff-adventurer]

i love cowboys so much (my friends joke about biff being one when he wears certain hats), but i do worry about what folk know about them. like, the wild west wasn't wild b/c it was unclaimed territory. it was wild because of all the wild outlaws stirring up trouble.

it's got nothing to do with nature being wild and free--nature is just nature. we live within its world even today.

to frame territories as wild and unbound is colonizer language. if something is unclaimed, it's ripe for the picking; if something is unbound, it's ripe for the taming. and the taming and grooming of nature being attributed to a civilized society is one of those ideas that lead people to feeling like conquest is a natural, foregone conclusion. it feeds into this dichotomy of civilized versus uncivilized; the closer you are to the primal force of nature, the less human you are.

but the people of those times did not consider themselves as human animals; we are the apex predator of this world, not the masters of it. peoples who sustained themselves on the land were not more or less attuned to the spiritual forces of nature because they were uncivilized; it's because they reflected on the bounty of the world with respect and reverence. it does not make them more primitive in human thought. people's technologies are limited by what is materially available to them. and the closer you look, the more complexity in tool craft and weaponry you'll find.

so, when it comes to the cowboys in shaaloani, i hope folks will be mindful. it's really not a matter of "people who play this kind of character are racist" situation. it's just about having care about how people talk about shit. it doesn't have to be fancy. it just means talking realistically, in most cases.

i'm often reminded of an encounter i had with a cowboy from the new world years before tural was introduced to us properly. they were quite rude and preached an activist perspective regarding blue magic and the walaqee people, but refused to listen to the problems inherent in their depiction. the mature, adult thing to do when people come to you about problems is to listen and stow it away for later. not act as though you are being attacked by a naysayer, unless people come to you with actual name calling.

which, honestly, makes me feel like people these days don't understand the difference between discomfort and wrong doing. just because you feel the pain of shame or feel uncomfortable by something that is said, doesn't mean you are being attacked. discomfort is an inherent part of learning; shame is an inherent part of humanity. you've got to learn to live with both to really lead an enriching sort of life with a variety of experiences. ask questions even if they make you feel stupid, and take what people say in stride. there is so much in this world to hear/feel/think outside of your own heart.

i love the romantic notion of cowboy heroes, and i love characters who are a bit country or rustic. their ideas of being wild and pure and forever free don't have to be associated with nature--especially when being free from the law is the real freedom they're after! (b/c, let's face it, the law can be shit sometimes, and that's how we get dark knights.)

anyway... save a horse, ride a cowboy.

[herelieskennauncovered]

Posting these taxonomic breakdowns because I have nowhere else to post them :)

I made these at work because I was very bored, and didn't particularly have a lot to do. I am currently confined to my desk until the end of February and I'm descending into madness from boredom.

Anyway. Heres dogs:

Domain - Eukaryota

Kingdom - Animalia

Phylum - Chordata

Class - Mammalia

Order - Carnivora

Family - Canidae

Genus - Canis

Species - Canis lupus

 Subspecies - Canis lupus familiaris – domestic dog

A eukarayote is an organism whose cells have a membrane –bound nucleus.

Animalia (An Animal) is a multicellular, eukarayotic organism. They consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes(muscle cells that contract to produce force) and are able to move, sexually reproduce, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula (an animal embryo in early development when it is a hollow ball of cells), during embryonic development.

Chordata (A Chordate) consists of any animal with a flexible rod supporting their back side, most of which being also vertebrates. All chordates possess, at some point as a baby or adult, five distinguishable characteristics. A notochord, a hollow dorsal nerve cord, and endostyle or thyroid, pharyngeal slits, and a post-anal tail.

·         A notochord is a flexible rod of cells that forms the supporting axis of the body.

·         A hollow dorsal nerve cord is a tube-like structure that runs along the back of animal, and forms the central nervous system. The hollow cavity is filled with cerebrospinal fluid. Alternatively, this is called the spinal cord.

·         An endostyle is a grooved organ in the pharynx (a passageway in the head and neck that is both part of the digestive and respiratory system) of some chordates that secretes mucus to trap food and aid in digestion. A filter-feeding tool consisting of parallel longitudinal folds projecting into the pharyngeal cavity.

·         A thyroid is a small butterfly shaped gland that makes thyroid hormone and calcitonin. It helps to regulate growth and metabolism.

·         A pharyngeal slit is an opening in the pharynx that allows water to pass in and out of the body, i.e. your mouth; gills

·         A post-anal tail is a tail that extends past the anus. Humans possess this tail in early stages of development, while still in utero.

Mammalia (a Mammal) is the class of vertebrates that possess mammary glands, a broad neocortex (the portion of the brain that controls sight and hearing), fur or hair, and 3 middle ear bones.  These bones are the malleus, the incus, and the stapes, also known as the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup due to their shapes. These bones are separated from the outer ear by your eardrum. These perform important functions to help you hear. Mammals use sight and hearing as key sensory tools to navigate. Mammals often use an “up-and-down” motion with their spines for locomotion, not side to side. This is why dolphins and whales swim up and down, and fish swim side to side.  

Carnivora (carnivorans) are descendants of a late Paleocene radiation of mammals whose primitive food habits were carnivorous. This does not mean that all carnivorans are strictly carnivores. While a lot of physical descriptors can vary, all members of carnivora have simple stomachs. They are considered generally intelligent with relatively large brains. Their fur can be any color, but is usually thick and multi-layered.

Canidae (canids) are dog-like carnivorans, and constitutes as a clade (a group of animals with a common ancenstor). Caniformia is a suborder within Carnivora, and defines “dog-like” as having largely non-retractile claws, having longer jaws and more teeth than feliforms, and lean towards opportunistic scavenging. In opposition, feliforms are far more specialized for a strictly carnivore diet. Caniforms have single chambered or only partially divided auditory bullae (a hollow bony structure in the skull that encloses parts of the middle and inner ear), composed of a single bone, and the bulbourethral glands (responsible for producing pre-ejaculate) and vesicular seminalis (secretes seminary fluid) are always absent.

Canis is a genus of Caniforms distinguished by their moderate to large size, large and well developed skulls, long legs, and comparatively short ears and tails. They can be solitary or pack animals. They have a dentition whose arrangement is specific to Canis. In general, all species in this genus look and act quite similar to each other, but cannot interbreed.

Canis lupus, is a wolf. This species has several subspecies, all able to interbreed. Wolves are identifiable from other members of the Canis genus mostly by their size and behavior. A wolf is the largest in size of any member of the Canis genus, and is further distinguished by having rounder muzzles and ears, shorter torsos, and longer tails than other Canids. They are specialized for cooperative game hunting, and live in social family packs. They are extremely social, expressive, and monogamous. They are active at night, and native to North America and Eurasia.

A dog is a subspecies of Canis lupus, taxonomically referred to as Canis lupus familiaris. Meaning literally “familiar wolf” in latin, they are able to successfully interbreed with Canis lupus and other subspecies of the aforementioned. They are domesticated but still possess many behavioral similarities as Canis Lupus. They are highly, highly social, extremely expressive, extremely cooperative, and intelligent. The fact that they are domesticated is what caused them to initially separate from Canus Lupus as a subspecies, forming different physical features based on selective breeding by humans. Dogs frequently have larger eyes and floppier ears, but can exist in many different sizes and shapes. All dogs can interbreed regardless of their breed. A breed is a further classification beyond subspecies, in which the animals only differ in locality and physical features, typically having a lineage of similar looking dogs with a distinctive appearance that separates them from other dogs.

and heres cats:

Domain - Eukaryota

Kingdom - Animalia

Phylum - Chordata

Class - Mammalia

Order - Carnivora

Family - Felidae

Subfamily- Felinae

Genus - Felis 

Species - catus

Binomial name: Felis catus

A eukarayote is an organism whose cells have a membrane –bound nucleus.

Animalia (An Animal) is a multicellular, eukarayotic organism. They consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes(muscle cells that contract to produce force) and are able to move, sexually reproduce, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula (an animal embryo in early development when it is a hollow ball of cells), during embryonic development.

Chordata (A Chordate) consists of any animal with a flexible rod supporting their back side, most of which being also vertebrates. All chordates possess, at some point as a baby or adult, five distinguishable characteristics. A notochord, a hollow dorsal nerve cord, and endostyle or thyroid, pharyngeal slits, and a post-anal tail.

·         A notochord is a flexible rod of cells that forms the supporting axis of the body.

·         A hollow dorsal nerve cord is a tube-like structure that runs along the back of animal, and forms the central nervous system. The hollow cavity is filled with cerebrospinal fluid. Alternatively, this is called the spinal cord.

·         An endostyle is a grooved organ in the pharynx (a passageway in the head and neck that is both part of the digestive and respiratory system) of some chordates that secretes mucus to trap food and aid in digestion. A filter-feeding tool consisting of parallel longitudinal folds projecting into the pharyngeal cavity.

·         A thyroid is a small butterfly shaped gland that makes thyroid hormone and calcitonin. It helps to regulate growth and metabolism.

·         A pharyngeal slit is an opening in the pharynx that allows water to pass in and out of the body, i.e. your mouth; gills

·         A post-anal tail is a tail that extends past the anus. Humans possess this tail in early stages of development, while still in utero.

Mammalia (a Mammal) is the class of vertebrates that possess mammary glands, a broad neocortex (the portion of the brain that controls sight and hearing), fur or hair, and 3 middle ear bones.  These bones are the malleus, the incus, and the stapes, also known as the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup due to their shapes. These bones are separated from the outer ear by your eardrum. These perform important functions to help you hear. Mammals use sight and hearing as key sensory tools to navigate. Mammals often use an “up-and-down” motion with their spines for locomotion, not side to side. This is why dolphins and whales swim up and down, and fish swim side to side.  

Carnivora (carnivorans) are descendants of a late Paleocene radiation of mammals whose primitive food habits were carnivorous. This does not mean that all carnivorans are strictly carnivores. While a lot of physical descriptors can vary, all members of carnivora have simple stomachs. They are considered generally intelligent with relatively large brains. Their fur can be any color, but is usually thick and multi-layered.

A Felid, of the family Felidae, are cat-like carnivorans. Cat-like, meaning they have retractile claws that are attached to the terminal toe bone, slender muscular bodies, and strong flexible forelimbs. They are digitigrade, meaning they stand or walk with their toes on the ground, and the rest of the foot is lifted. Their skull is shorter than a canid’s, with a round profile and larger orbits. Their tongues are covered in papillae, fine, cone shaped projections made of keratin. They are solitary predators and obligate carnivores, meaning their diet consists only of nutrients found in the flesh of other animals. Some scientists argue that they adapted towards an obligate carnivore diet because they cannot detect sweet flavors. Cat eyes are large and adapted to seeing in low-lighting, using a reflective layer of tissue in the eye called a tapetum lucidum. The tapetum lucidum reflects light back onto the retina to provide more light to photoreceptors in the eye. The eyes of felids are also particularly adapted for distinguishing movement in low light, with a high proportion of rod cells. They have 6x better vision in low light than humans. All cats share a broad range of vocalizations, including purring (which they can breathe through through both phases of respiration), hissing, growling, and sometimes roaring (though not all cats can roar). Cats also possess a Jacobson’s organ, or a Vomeronasal organ. It is located on the roof of the mouth, and is also present and functional in all snakes, lizards, cattle, pigs, dogs, and some primates. 

Felinae is a subfamily of Felidae of small cats with a bony hyoid. The hyoid bone is a horseshoe-shaped bone between the chin and thyroid. It is often called a lingual bone, or a tongue bone. The presence of this bone is what prevents some cats from having the ability to roar. The other subfamily of Felidae is Pantherinae, which includes cats that can roar like lions, jaguars, leopards, and tigers. 

Felis is the genus of small and medium sized cats native to most of Africa, Europe, Asia, and Indochina.  The word Felis means “cat, ferret” in Latin. Reginald Pocock has divided up the genus, compromising only the following cats, due to a genetic divergence that separates them from other felinae lineages. The European Wildcat (F. silvestris), Jungle Cat (F. chaus), African Wildcat (F. lybica), Black-footed Cat (F. nigripes), Sand Cat (F. margarita), Chinese Mountain Cat (F. bieti), and the Domestic Cat (F. cactus). Felis catus is a small domestic cat commonly kept as a pet, or free-ranging as a feral. The species is social but hunts alone. They specialize in killing small animals such as song birds, reptiles, and rodents, the latter being what led to their domestication by humans. Today, they are most closely related to a European Wildcat (F. silvestris), though some of the earliest documented tame cats were African Wildcats (F. lybica). Despite genetic selection by humans, many cats still possess all the same traits as their wild counterparts, including a Jacobson’s organ, large, pointed ears, the ability to see in low light, and its fast reflexes and hunting capabilities. However, domestic cats have a smaller skull and shorter bones than European Wildcats.  Their fur color may vary wildly, from solid white, black, and tan, to spots, stripes, and occasionally both, inclusive of other colors like orange, buff, brown-gray, or nearly any naturally-occuring fur color possible. The social behavior of domestic cats ranges widely as well, from friendly individuals to feral cat colonies based on groups of co-operating females. Cats territory size and range can be anywhere from just near their homes or miles away from a central point. Despite this difference in behavior, all male cats mark their territory by scent rubbing and spraying urine. Differing from dogs, cats traded an evolution of physical neonatal traits to behavioral neonatal traits, and treat adulthood with humans as an extended kittenhood, including meowing loudly, mimicking human cries, and displaying great affection towards their humans as surrogate mothers.

[loominggaia]

Are the runes, spells & schools of magic legitimately parts of the magic of gaia? Or are they just mortal constructs, crafted by peoples to better understand & utilize their arcane powers?

Magic is simply a form of energy that is native to Gaia. Just as wood can be turned into lumber, paper, and pulp, magic can be converted into many different forms too. Many of Gaia's beasts instinctively utilize magic to survive.

Peoples, too, have learned how to use magic in various ways. In the earliest times, fae mages knew only the rudimentary spells they were born with. But they used their great intelligence and curiosity to experiment, and through experimentation they were able to branch out and invent new spells. Generations of mages expanded on what their ancestors had learned, and over thousands of years, some very complicated spells have been designed. With each passing generation, spellcrafters figure out new ways to achieve things that were once thought impossible.

Mr. Ocean had some dialogue about this in "From the Ashes":

...“When I was young, back in ancient times, my people believed that magic could only do so much. They said the rain would come and the rain would always be. They said the things you are, are things you have to be. But these limits lied with them, not with magic…”

[...] “They only knew the small world around them. I was the first of the Tekeetians to explore your land of Terria, and the limits of my world became so much larger. I came to know the properties of air, of light, of fire, in ways which my people had never known before. In my explorations, I discovered a way to dispel the rain.”

 [...]“I slithered to the surface with eight tentacles, and two of them became legs. The thing I was then is not the thing I am today. My peoples’ understanding of magic was primitive in those days. Perhaps I am wrong—my brain is growing mold, after all—but I have lived for over a thousand years, and I have watched as the limits of magic are pushed back further and further to such a distance that I must doubt the limit exists at all. I think it only exists in the minds of people. Perhaps those who fear the idea of unlimited power, or those who lack the imagination to innovate. A stagnant puddle is more comfortable than rolling waves, but it will not take you anywhere you haven’t seen before.”

Basically Mr. Ocean is saying that he has watched magic evolve significantly within his lifetime. What was thought impossible in his youth is now possible in his old age, thanks to arcane innovations.

Now, as for runes and sigils, these are just arbitrary methods of spellcasting and spellcrafting. Today they are considered the "standard" way that most magical colleges teach, but they are definitely not the only ways. Spells can be casted and crafted through song, dance, ritual, art, thought, basically any way you can imagine. All over Looming Gaia, you will find different cultures who cast and design spells in different ways.

Just as you can shape wood into a sculpture using a knife, fire, sander, or hammer, there are also many "tools" you can use to shape magic into a spell. Runes and sigils are just the more popular ones.

*

Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Read the Series

[pterodragons]

creature time: dinosaurs (sorta)

Despite being a non-earth world with specbio, there's still lots of earth fauna and similar mass extinction equivalents (for my sanity - I'm not trying to reinvent the spine or anything). And the one i've been thinking about the most is the good ol' KPg extinction! And the exceptions to it!

While I don't have names for species or families yet (hence the goofy labels), I do have names for the two main clades of non-avian dinosaurs: Feroxaves and Pseudornithoptera.

Feroxaves ("fierce birds") is an avialan clade closely related to true birds, although they retain more primitive traits. They have clawed forelimbs, teeth, and long tails like other non-avian theropods, but also have beaks at the ends of their jaws. Those with more "fearsome" appearances are colloquially considered dragons.

They are found throughout the world's continents, even alongside their true bird cousins. Many take on niches of small insectivores or terrestrial foragers, but some mid-sized scavengers may grow brave enough to ambush prey from above. Larger species lean toward a more cursorial and omnivorous lifestyle. In south Aenucoya, there are the long-snouted piscivores that wade in water to catch fish much like a heron.

Pseudornithoptera ("false bird wing") is a clade originating from burrowing ornithopods, similar to Oryctodromeus. Their name comes from the feathers on their backs, which can lay flat or raise into a tall mane. From afar, when combined with the leaping agility of smaller species, it gives the illusion of feathered wings.

As niches were left open post-extinction, they diverged into several main groups. In the tropics of Dreodora, they are the dominant megaherbivores. In Aenucoya, they are skittish browsers and foragers that avoid competition with ungulate grazers. There is also a carnivorous clade, whose burrowing forelimbs have become tools for grappling prey.

[morphofan]

Tech (and Wrecker) visited the North Carolina State University campus.

"This is the campus of a rather prestigious local university. Admittedly, I do not understand the term 'university,' as it is only accessible to the humans of Earth...."

"This 'bell tower' is considered the main point of interest on this campus. Impressive."

"How do I look? Now please get me down; this stone is very uncomfortable to sit upon."

"Quite an impressive erection, I must say....

"What is so funny, Wrecker?"

"I said, 'erection', Wrecker.... As in 'structure' or 'edifice'. I was not making a 'dirty joke' nor am I in possession of a 'potty mind'. Remove your own mind from the primitive refuse removal system, please."

"What? Lie down here? For what reason, Wrecker? (Sigh), very well, I shall humor you if it will make you stop talking.

"AH. I see. Very amusing. You are a child, Wrecker."

"Do stop with the phallic innuendo, Wrecker. Be respectful, please. You are embarrassing me and our female host."

"What an intriguing seal. I wonder why that female is holding a hat on the end of a stick. I shall need to research it later...."

"I am humbled. How brave these humans must have been, to go into battle with only the primitive weapons of the time."

"The people of this planet have my respect."

"That center symbol looks familiar, somehow."

"I have no idea whatsoever what this sign could possibly mean. I am sure it makes sense to the students of this school."

"There are many impressive erect--STRUCTURES, here."

"Hello? Can you see me?"

"Pick me up, please. I have very short legs, and cannot cover much ground."

"There are a number of Objets D'art on display around this campus. I quite like this one."

"The colors are lovely, and the metalwork quite impressive, considering the limitations of this planet's tools and resources."

"What did you say, Wrecker? You have an idea for an especially aesthetically-pleasant photograph that would highlight the details of this sculpture? I am intrigued."

"Infantile. You are absolutely infantile, Wrecker. This entire excursion has been one long, rambling penile quip to you, has it not? I am going home...."

[phoenixknight777]

Exploration Log: Planet 86, “Ulisa”

Ngl this is probably one of my favorite early short stories. Definitely one that I might consider writing a part 2 of someday.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The pod door opened, allowing the alien atmosphere into the airlock. A single man stepped out, possibly the first to ever set foot on this soil.

“H.O.S.S., how's the air?”

“Seems breathable” replied the supercomputer mounted on his wrist. “If you’d trusted my scans, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“Oh shut up.” Chaucer replied as he removed his helmet. “You know as well as I that those things aren’t always accurate”

“Accurate enough for a computer like me. Why’d they even send meat on this mission? I can handle it all, and far more efficiently.”

“H.O.S.S., as I’ve told you before, some things just need a human's instinct. Speaking of which, deploy the scout drones.”

“I did that as we landed. Of course, you would never have thought of that.”

“Just show me the feeds”

A barage of images flash through Chaucer’s ocular implants.

“Slower you idiot.”

“I would’ve been able to handle that speed.”

“And, like the last 4 times, I cannot. So again, slower.”

The images pass by again at a more manageable speed, showing a sky view of the area in a 30 mile radius. Chaucer’s trained eyes look for things that might be useful to potential settlers.

A forest of woody looking plants to the east, tall enough for construction. They’d need to be tested for poisons and other natural defenses.

A large body of water to the south-west. They would have to check its potability. Wouldn’t hurt to look for plants and animals either.

Due north, a few mountains with caves. Well rounded, so likely stable. They could be good shelter.

“H.O.S.S., run full spectrum testing on those plants and that lake. This one looks promising. And patch me into drone twenty four. I wanna investigate those caves myself.

“I could do it quicker~” the computer replied in a singsong voice.

“Yes, you could. Just do it. Call it a gut feeling.”

“That’s irrational.”

“And that’s exactly why you need “meat” on these missions. Now hook me in. We’re burning batteries.”

Chaucer’s vision flickered for a moment. Then the drone's camera feed replaced his vision. Tapping his wristpad, he took manual control of the machine, maneuvering it into one of the ground-level caves.

Odd…

“Those look like stairs…”

“What was that?” replied H.O.S.S.

“Stairs. At the caves. Probably just a coincidence, but still. How’s the analysis coming?”

“82%. You humans. So impatient.”

“Yeah yeah, take your time.”

Chaucer turned his attention back towards the caverns.

Continuing past the entrance, the front descends deeper into the underground.

“This planet was definitely civilized. Not primitives either. There’s a huge metal vault down here. Scanners can’t penetrate and don’t recognize the metal. High carbon content though.”

“Peculiar. I’ll send a land drone to run tests.”

“No. I’m investigating this myself.”

“But…”

“Shut it H.O.S.S. There's only been three planets discovered with intelligent life. I’m going myself, in case this is the fourth. Send down the Skipper.”

A few minutes later, the Skipper had descended from their shuttle in orbit. About 7 feet tall, the mechanical exoskeleton looked like little more than a roll cage with mechanical dog legs and a pair of grasper arms. Designed for off-world mining, it was an invaluable tool for explorers like Chaucer. Strong, fast, and modified to be equipped with a myriad of scientific tools, it allowed him to go almost anywhere with minimal difficulty.

“By the way,” said H.O.S.S., “those tests are finished. The water is drinkable, and there’s kelp-like plants. The trees have a slightly emetic substance in the leaves, but the bark shows multiple medicinal properties. No life above the microscopic level in either location. That concerns me.”

“That concerns me too. There must have been macroscopic life in the past for the trees to develop a defense like that. But where did they go? Also harvest some of those trees. The medical guild will be very interested.”

“Already on it.”

Chaucer set out, quickly crossing the distance. Entering the cavern, he cautiously looks around.

No signs of life.

Going deeper, he quickly comes towards the metal vault.

“Even weirder in person. Almost no reflection. I’m gonna try to take a sample.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I’m picking up electrical readings that were not there when the drone was.”

“All the more reason to take one.”

“Fine, but be careful.”

“I thought you wanted to take over the mission?” replied Chaucer as he started the mining drill in the Skipper’s wrist.

“I do, but unfortunately I’m programmed to care for you”

“Awww, that so swe-“

Clunk 

The drill shattered on contact with the vault wall.

“Chaucer. Get out. Now.“

“Why? Just cause the drill broke-“

“No, the electrical signals just got stronger. And they’re moving.”

As if on cue, a harsh buzzing filled the air.

Drones. Hundreds of them. All armed.

Chaucer turned the Skipper and pushed it to the max as he left the cavern.

Reaching the surface, he saw a massive cloud of drones pouring from every cave in the mountain. 

“H.O.S.S, send defensive drones. Now!”

“Done and done. Seriously, what would you do without me.”

Chaucer continued running from the drones, blasts from ion weapons poking holes in the personal shields of the Skipper. 

A few moments later, the friendly drones swarmed over a hill. Most started using repurposed mining lasers to fire back at the offense. A few landed on top of the Skipper and began projecting a much stronger barrier around the mech, protecting him.

As the shields of the defensive drones began to falter, Chaucer approached the landing site. Abandoning the Skipper he dashed into the pod, slamming the door shut.

“Go! Go! Get us out of here!” he screamed.

The pod rattled as it rapidly ascended.

Escaping the atmosphere, Chaucer began to calm down a little.

“How much will the mech and drones cost us?” he finally asked as they began approaching their ship.

“A decent bit, but we’ll make plenty from the plants. Plus, the planet is habitable, just with dangerous ruins. We’ll still make more than enough to replace them from the finders bounty.”

“Alright. That’s good. I guess that explains the lack of animals. I say we name it Ulisa, after my ex. Seemed nice but was secretly a killer.”

“As good a choice as any I suppose. Setting a course for Terra. Once we refuel, on to planet 87.”