#juuuuust research

[getinthehandbasket]

My dearest porn writers,

I'm going to give you some advice. If you already follow it, great! If not, please consider taking my advice.

Watch more porn. Seriously. You wouldn't look askance at someone who has reference pictures or videos of characters, locations, objects, etc. - so please do the same thing with porn!

I cannot tell you how many times I have been reading porn and gotten very confused with limbs going places and bending in ways I'm not sure is humanly possible.

You watch porn, maybe take some screenshots, and describe what you see. Your porn will make more sense and probably be hotter. I promise.

[a-dragons-journal]

Singlet+

I've been meaning to write this one for a while, so let's see how this goes.

~1k words; essay on the experience of one person who sits right on the funny little edge between "normal roleplay experience" and "actual plurality".

So, let's start with this: I am not plural. But. I do seem to live in a weird space juuuuust on the edge of plurality (and no, I do not mean that I'm a median or blurry system - I mean on the edge of that).

For one thing, I'm a daemian - that is, I practice daemonism; that is, I have personified and given faux autonomy (fauxtonomy, if you will) to my "internal narrator" of sorts and he now lives in my brain with me as a thoughtform, a brain companion, in the shape of an animal. Strictly speaking, that does qualify us for plurality, but we personally don't view our daemonism through that framework and consider ourselves a singlet (as hilarious as the plural grammar makes that sentence, I know). Many daemons don't consider themselves plural; this isn't particularly unusual - in muir case, Locke is a part of me before he is anything else, and while yes there are forms of plurality that look like that, for us personally it makes more sense to view him as "part of me, therefore, still one person".

For another, I had... basically plural experiences when I was younger. I don't want to talk about the details publicly, but suffice to say that for many years I had what I would now call headmates, and I suspect that if I had been exposed to plural spaces during that time period, they may well have stuck around permanently, instead of "fading out" and eventually disappearing as is what actually happened. To this day I don't know how "real" or "imaginary" they were, and I doubt I ever will - they were certainly real to me at the time, but I have also always been very good at suspension of disbelief. Trying to analyze it in any great level of detail is made basically impossible by my piss-poor episodic memory rendering the memories of that time so fuzzy that I can't rely on them for details.

For another, my experiences with OCs are often... soulbond-adjacent? Recently in particular I've had a lot of funny experiences with an OC of mine, a character in a Vampire: The Masquerade campaign I'm a part of (Viridian Caldwell, for my own future self's reference), which led me to do some research on soulbonding because of how fictive-adjacent the experience of her is.

And yet. The answer is a definite no. I get very strong impressions and echoes from her; she "gives" me facts about her and her life that simply Are and that I feel as strongly about being true and unchangeable as I do about my own noemata; she's almost a separate person living in my brain sometimes; I somehow come up with near-prophetic knowledge about her world (as confirmed by my Storyteller, who happens to be part of a system alongside a number of fictives from the world in question, including several who know Viridian personally) with zero explanation on a semi-regular basis.

And yet. The answer is no. Because while I seem to have all the effects a soulbond proper would produce on my end - she is not aware of me, not really. She is not conscious of my world and my life. When I really quiet my own brain and reach out to call out and see if someone's there, there's only silence. It's as though I have a one-way soulbond somehow - which, of course, puts me in the fun gray space between "soulbond" and "normal roleplay/writing experience".

And she's not a unique instance of this. This just happens to me with OCs, although it's been a bit more dramatic with her because of the presence of fictives from her world to converse with (and, realistically, because of the real-time roleplay aspect that a TTRPG has that a video game or the writing of a fanfiction doesn't).

It's as though my brain has the capacity for plurality, but it just... doesn't manifest fully.

And, truth be told, I kind of prefer it this way. I like being a singlet; I would kind of hate having to share headspace with other people. Especially since, if my childhood pseudo-plurality experiences are anything to go by, we would not have good separation of thoughts and memories and true privacy would be very difficult if not impossible. Plus, because of that, I would... probably never get over the doubt of Is It Real Or Not, and I don't need that stress in my life. (For this reason, while I'm 99.9% sure that if I intentionally tried to bring her over as a fictive, it would work, I will not be testing the theory just out of curiosity.)

I wonder if I didn't train myself out of the ability to be Plural Proper, to be honest. Not intentionally, but - I may have mentioned that my power of suspension of disbelief is very strong, and as a child this came with me being extremely easy to manipulate because it was very easy for me to fall into believing things that I wanted to believe. (Again, I don't really want to talk about the details, but suffice to say I had a pretty bad case of Protagonist Syndrome, as it were, for a while.) I had to learn to combat that natural tendency of my brain for my own protection (especially as someone active in witchcraft spaces) - and I wonder if it didn't come with the side effect of immunizing me to developing true plurality (at least without actively trying) by shutting down any attempt by my brain to form a true headmate in the process.

I don't know. I might never. All I know is that while I am, after careful consideration, definitely a singlet, I do seem to live right on the edge of plurality, and it comes with some weird experiences. (And I would like an explanation for why I keep spitting out nigh-prophetic knowledge of this campaign's world; if I find out Viridian is a fictotype of mine or something I'm going to flip my fucking lid.) I've started half-jokingly calling myself "singlet+", half as a joke on cis+ (ie, someone who's questioned their gender and come to the conclusion that they are indeed cis but has a better understanding of their experience of cisness for it) and half as an "unless" "unlesss...?" acknowledgement of the weird border area some of my experiences sit in. It's... not really a serious label, but also isn't entirely a joke.

So... yeah. Singlet+, I guess. Another victim of the "if you only have two words for fear in your language, one for mild test jitters and one for life-threatening terror, you're going to have a lot of trouble describing a lot of normal human experiences" problem of how our language around plurality often works.

[the-golden-comet]

Ooh wow, your wish is my command...!? What's that about?

Hello hellooooo! 💖

(Jazz hands) 👋 My current WIP in production, YWIMC!🧞‍♂️

Noah, our protagonist, is a graduate student at WSU studying History and Architecture. While out on a field study he discovers a magic lamp, and inadvertently gains a roommate. His genie pal, Ali ✨

Ali, thankful to finally be out of the lamp, grants Noah three wishes. Noah immediately uses up the first two, but wants to save the third one. After all, past masters have all but died and/or forgotten everything after their encounter with Ali, so that unknown can be rather frightening.

So, because Ali is bound to Noah until he uses all his wishes, he crashes with the researcher at his place. Except they are two TOTALLY different personalities.

While Ali is more of an outgoing, life-of-the-party, easy to get along with dude.…Noah is not. Noah is shut in, hates people, and would rather be left alone to complete his studies. Ironic considering he has a LITERAL GENIE.

This is a slice of college life, magic in the mundane novel that outlines how two dudes with opposite personalities live as roommates as Noah finishes up his degree. How Ali seamlessly uses his magic to make Noah’s life juuuuust a little easier, meanwhile remaining inconspicuous so the general public doesn’t get suspicious.

Oh, and did I mention already that they were roommates? And they were roommates 👀✨

Thank you for the ask! 💫

[justmessybottoms]

padded professor/researcher anon from your omo blog here!

imagine this professor, up late, writing up a report yet again.

but this time, the coffee isn't sitting well with their tummy, and they've got a gurgly tummy...

but they hold it in as long as they can, hoping they can get to the bathroom after they finish this report.

and then right as they finish and send it off, in walks their spouse, startling them...

...and it all comes out.

Oh, hi again! Goodness, this poor professor just can't catch a break - they really think they're going to make it this time, that they won't have to suffer THIS type of accident too... And then their spouse startles them juuuuust enough for their body to give up and let everything go, much to their humiliation I'm sure...

Thanks for the ask!

[adafruit]

It's 10pm, do you know where your RTK prototypes are? 🔧🛰️🎯

We juuuuust plugged in this uBlox RTK F9P shield into USB and given the intense cost of these modules we definitely had a nervous twitch but then we heard the "ba-dunk" of enumeration and wheeeewww it came up as a serial port. Heartened, we soldered on a right-angle SMA connector and connected a chonky active antenna . Start up a copy of u-center and huzzah, there is GNSS data streaming out. Next up, we have to figure out what we want to use as the underlying transport layer from base station to rover - maybe an ESP32-S3 Metro and ESP-Now? more research is needed!

[irrealisms]

no apple but a heart liner notes

fic here if you haven't read it!

i had the idea of vitalasubz funerary cannibalism pretty immediately after seeing "cannibalism" on the prompt list. it's a good concept. but i wasn't sure if i could get it to the minimum word count (it ended up juuuuust scraping by) so i decided to write the time loop fic first and then do the cannibalism as a bonus if i felt up for it

and then one of my friends (unrelatedly! without knowing about this!) started talking about eclipse fed cannibalism on discord, and i was like Man....i should write eclipse federation cannibalism....unfortunately i only really have enough ideas for One Scene of it.....and they were like write one scene then! and i went You Know What. youre right. and wrote this in one sitting

for research for this fic i read all of @erstwhilesparrow's mcyt cannibalism fics in a row. check those out if you haven't already: double life desertduo(&/)boat boys, limlife mean gills, 3rd life desertduo, new life owen(&/)scott

i knew basically as soon as i had the idea that i wanted to do stuff with the despawn timer. how much can you eat in 5 minutes, when you're grieving and dissociating and in shock, your action spurred on only by the knowledge that whatever you don't eat will disappear forever? that this is the only way to preserve anything at all of the one you love?

in contrast i did not know until literally the day of writing it that i was gonna do something with hearts-as-hearts. it was a good idea, though.

did you know that after subz dies, vitalasy stands without moving or speaking for 50 seconds, turns slightly, and then continues standing there without doing anything or speaking for another 13 seconds. yeah. fun little canon moment. it's also 63 seconds off the 5-minute despawn timer!

the title is from quattrocento by margaret atwood, which is a great poem. idk how well it actually works for this piece thematically, it works okay i think but i'm not doing a ton with serpent imagery here (even though i could! subz and eclipse are in fact totally doing various mythological snake imageries!) or with garden-of-eden stuff? but the imagery always stuck with me when writing cannibalism stuff and i hadn't gotten to use it for a title yet and figured this was my chance

cannibalism as devotion.... cannibalism as memorial...... mm. good stuff. i should have made a way to make this Eucharistic somehow, cannibalism-as-worship doesn't show up here as much but it would've slapped.

something that didn't make it into the fic but that i did have some thoughts about is vitalasy's feelings wrt zam + subz after this. i think he's glad, on some level, that he got to eat subz and zam didn't, but also he feels kind of guilty for feeling glad, but also he's arguing to himself that he shouldn't have to feel guilty, it's not like he stopped zam from being there, zam wasn't there bc zam isn't/wasn't on their team.

other stuff that is even less fic-relevant but that i've been thinking about is that you could do a lot with "if you kill someone you get their heart" + the various meanings cannibalism can have. cannibalism as domination of an opponent. cannibalism as possession. cannibalism as respecting someone's sacrifice. killing someone and then handing them their own heart to eat, when you kill someone and give them back the heart. yeah. fun possibilities!

shoutout to ihob. nothing much to say here other than i'm glad i somehow included ihob in the vitalasubz cannibalism fic. i love ihob. i love that bacon only eats pork chops even though they're worse than golden carrots! he's on three hearts anyway, what's the added saturation gonna do! i love the dumb fucking three-way contract for its ownership. i love. ihob.

fun fact: the only other fic on ao3 tagged with subz's suicide stream is ALSO a vitalasubz funerary cannibalism fic. i genuinely did not know this until after posting. what can i say, it's a good concept.

[thefloatingstone]

You said some time ago that Mass Effect: Andromeda doesn't interest you. Did you start it or was that from research? If you could bring yourself to play it, your thoughts on the games exploration of colonialism would be welcome.

This is gonna sound weird but... I adore the trilogy SO MUCH you know?

To the point where it can be difficult to appreciate Dragon Age because it is juuuuust similar enough to remind me of Mass Effect without BEING Mass Effect. So a lot of playing Dragon Age, especially Inquisition, is me thinking at all times "GOD I wish my Mass Effect friends were here with me ;___;"

And I can only see Andromeda being the same at the very best of outcomes. At worst I just severely dislike the game. At best, I think it's a fun game but I will be missing the found family squad literally the entire time and just wish Garrus, Tali, Liara, Wrex etc et al were with me.

And the reason I believe this will be the case is because of one tiny, singular moment in Angry Joe's original review of the game where he did not like it, mostly due to the state it was in. This one moment did not actually have anything to do with his critique or his criticism or why he disliked the game. It was just a small clip sitting among the entire review when he was just discussing how bad the dialogue was in the game and he just mentioned it in the middle of his critique.

But although I could overlook all of this criticisms as things that might not apply to me, this one singular moment made me realise Andromeda would not be for me.

please note this does NOT MEAN I WANT SHEPARD IN ANOTHER GAME PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET HER REST. But it means Andromeda just.... doesn't measure up. And in the immortal words of Vanilla Ice "anything less than the best is a felony." when it comes to Mass Effect. The trilogy casts a LONG shadow...

(also a clip of a Salarian going "Kill me now" as a snarky response did NOT do it for me at all.... They would not fucking say that 😭)

[jurisffiction]

no actually i have more to say to the nobody who's listening. the hate reads that have been really good have been like eviscerative but staunchly personal in terms of "i am told x, but all i know is i feel y" whereas this one (comes across, at least, like) it spends so much time making declarative statements that are like. still juuuuust about in the realm of taste and subjective judgement but a thin fucking slice away from being objective untruths that would be proven as such by reading literally any interview or major review ? it just seems. really under-researched. "but it's a hate read take they're not meant to be researched at all!" exactly my point. the others did not FEEL under-researched because they felt like personal takes. this one just seems stupid<3. Sorry if somehow the writer follows my blog. Which would be unlikely given the contents of the piece

[dreamsofalifeold]

Those researchers who say you "need physical contact" to "be happy and healthy" are wrong. I haven't been held in almost twenty years and I turned out juuuuust fiiiine."

[thecheshirerat]

Has anyone written a beginner witchcraft book that pranks you into critical thinking?

Like, I’m imagining an introduction that’s everything you’d expect. Magic is a tool for self-empowerment and ritual has changed the lives of many etc etc etc- but there’s a postscript to it that says something like “listen. You don’t need to know any of what I’m going to tell you to be practitioner. But if you’re going to interact with this community, you need critical thinking. So let’s play a game. One of these chapters is total bullshit backed by zero research and stated as fact despite the reality being it’s all my UPG. Your goal is to figure out which.” But each chapter seems like it’s juuuuust personal enough/over-general enough/cheesy enough/upg stated as fact that you check the sources (all provided) walk it through skeptically, etc etc etc but the thing is EVERY chapter has a little bit of BS woven in, leaving you confused and annoyed, probably. At the end it simply tells you “this is the true challenge. It’s not enough to identify one text that’s total bullshit and avoid that. It’s about identifying the little bits of BS that sneak into everything,”

(Also someone else write this I don’t have fricking time)

[rosieartsie]

Doing New Faith and TBOB for Nanowrimo and I’m off to a good start so far. Pray for me tho cuz I have so much research to do about exorcism and demons and I am juuuuust superstitious enough that I’ll need someone to hold my hand and assure me the demons won’t get me just cuz I’m reading about them lol

[peridhot]

Yoku Wakaranai Keredo Isekai ni Tensei Shiteita You Desu / I Don't Really Get It, But It Seems Like I Was Reincarnated In Another World! by Ashi, Uchiuchi Keyaki

Ren is a young girl in a primitive world of magic and brutality. Sold as a slave and about to be delivered to an unscrupulous merchant, she suddenly awakens to vivid memories of a past life: a world called Earth, where Ren was both a grown man and a research scientist. Now, she must learn to survive, combining her knowledge of science from her past life with her talent in magic from this life.

Read through Chapter 42

It's... fine. Frankly, I went into it with the hope that it was more trashy. That's just what I was in the mood for, y'know? Anyway, it really isn't anything special, but I stayed because it was *juuuuust* interesting enough, considering that I don't often read this genre so I'm not really burnt out on it. At some point, it starts focusing too much on cooking food than on really levelling up, though, which sucks. Also it doesn't do enough with the fact that the MC was a middle aged man in her previous life and is now a young girl. Again, it's... fine. Just fine. Relatively enjoyable, just interesting enough to keep me invested. Nothing special.

[missbaphomet]

I think theres a big gap in understanding the definition of kink for a lot a people since I've seen wildly varying definitions thats led to a lot of confusion and of course, huge fights. To me, before I decided to look up the definition, kink was inherently sexual, and Im a kinky person, but also enjoy things that other people would consider a kink in a completely non-sexual way, and I would not define those things as a kink because they were non-sexual. I would say "Not in a kinky way" and would not include it in the context of kink. I defined kink as "sexual attraction to a particular act (or verb)" and fetish as "sexual attraction to a particular thing (or noun)" Now I've decided to research more into it because I was insanely confused by "kink isn't inherently sexual" and now I think I'm just extra confused? lol, theres so many different answers and definitions that I don't really know who to believe or what to think. I think this also has to do with things like cultural context, the way one was raised, the communities they are/were in. Like for example, I used to be pretty active in the agere community some time ago, but not so much anymore. I'm not into agere sexually in any way and I'll never be, it squicks me out to think about it in a sexual way, but I dont mind people who are into that way (or as I used to say, people into it as a kink), it's not really my business and I personally don't care, but as you may or may not know, a majority of the agere community did care. A LOT. there was a big separation between ddlg/abdl/ageplay (sexual) vs agere (non-sexual). I'm not sure how to best explain it but... if you were into something like that completely non-sexually, you wouldnt refer to it in the context of kink EVER. Like you wouldn't mention it if you were talking about or listing off your kinks, or you would say "in a non-kinky way", and there was a difference between "agere/petre kink" and "agere/petre" (or anything else you want to apply it to, like bondage and such) same with "ageplay/petplay" as "play" indicated it was sexual. I of course understand enjoying the non sexual aspects of kink and having non sexual feelings with kink but to me they were always tied to the sexual part (to me sexual doesn't necessarily mean having sex either, just sexual pleasure/gratification/feelings) and I just thought that was the norm? And for "kink" things I enjoyed non sexually (completely non sexually I mean, getting no sexual pleasure from it), I never defined those things as kink or being kinky, and I probably wont either (out of personal preference really). I think I can see like, enjoying aspects of kink separately from sexual stuff if you enjoy it sexually? I'm not entirely sure how to word it, like being into petplay but enjoying wearing a collar non sexually because it makes you feel safe (or you just like wearing it) even if sometimes you enjoy wearing it sexually?? If that makes sense?? Or that part being completely non sexual despite being attached to the kink part? Or how some people enjoy kink completely non sexually because coping/pain management/etc? But I would've defined those by their terms outside of the context of kink or without the word kink, or define it as what it is done for. I'm not sure, it's so different and there's so many definitions and stuff it's kind of making my head spin. I hope this is at least somewhat intelligible, I just wanted to explain what the definition was to me for the longest time and where I got that definition from, and maybe help understand where the confusion is coming from?

Oh boy I juuuuust woke up so do forgive me if I'm not perfectly coherent right now.

You're right. That is exactly the issue, and I think it's because people don't actually talk to kinksters to get their definition. I'm probably not putting this the best because I am mega sleepy-brained right now but the dictionary definition is devoid of context and nuance and lacks any sentiment of the deep emotions that lie at it's core. BDSM isn't beating someone up to cum, it's two consenting adults in a mutually agreed upon situation where one (the submissive) wants and receives the action of the scene and the other (the dominant) wants to provide and gives these sensations to their submissive. What these sensations are and if they're sexual or not can vary wildly from individual to individual. The dictionary doesn't care for that level of nuance. I have a redefinition somewhere on my blog that is more mindful but it would be an archeological dig to find it among 20,000+ posts.

I used to be on agere too and I was pretty controversial back then as well. I was most active between 2016-2017 but I didn't find myself fitting in with the community even then because I have always been an age player, not an age regressor, and age play isn't sexual for me. I say this to illustrate that there is a difference between an age player and an age regressor. I think the terms get erroneously used as synonyms but they're two different mental states. Same with pet play and pet regression. I can only explain my own mindset and experience but age regression is called this because it's a regression, the way you think actually literally changes. I was never able to get there, I always felt like I was just putting on a mask. Age play, however, doesn't imply true mental regression. I don't mentally age down, but I act in a way that would be considered younger. It's the difference between mind and body. Or at least that's how I see it. Other people may have different definitions but I can only speak for me rn.

You can be both a regressor and an age player, and that's perfectly fine, but that's why the distinction between regression and play matters so much as well as also being why the two are used as synonyms. Same for pet regression/play etc. Both are extremely therapeutic in many of the same ways but it's understandable why some people don't want sex during.

My primary point is that BDSM is different for every person in it. Some people are exclusively sexual, some people aren't sexual at all, and then you have most of the community where we have a mix of sexual and nonsexual kinks. Unfortunately I don't think the misleading definition is likely to change, not unless the same work is put into understanding kink in the same way that we are working to understand being LGBT. You can't wrap up kink in a nice little bow of "this is always only ever sexual" and call it a day.

I'm sure I'll touch on this a bit more tomorrow when I get a chance to write my thoughts on headspaces but I need to get back to bed.

[voyager3rv]

Cold Start!

Day: 948

Location: 35.558, -75.462

Entry:

Well that was something ! ! !

We had known we were in for a bit of a challenge with the weather that had been upcoming in NJ. ( temps were going as low as 3F )

- - Pre - Departure - -

So we dragged the lines early, dropped all our water and had a small space heater in a cargo bay to distribute heat through while we endured the arctic blast. We held well between the shrubs during our last stay, Nebbie was able to kick consistent vibes at approx 50F and that was with two electric heaters at 2200 watts.

~ Due to limited electricity throughput from the line ( 20A ) ~

[ We would have rocked propane, but after 2+ months of usage we were pretty much beat ]

This essentially set the tone for our disembark,

J and I were both a little slow to get back into the groove, but we made due and pressed on. Leaving went pretty smoothly and we were greeted with driving head on with what was described as "gale winds"... (shrugs) you honestly can't make it up. But it was such a great test for all the work we had done, this old gal, prior to our renovation would have been ramblin' back and forth like she was busting a move. :D

- - Departure - -

Our initial heading had us arriving in ( 35.558, -75.462 ) by Sunday afternoon, so we decided to split the trip into two days, somewhere around 266mi the first day, and 220 the next.

We got to our first layover without any other excitement, we were lucky to have some really beautiful sunset views over farmlands in MD as we parked, plugged electric only and settled in for the night.

The second day was really when all the excitement happened, we had to plan a spot to fuel our propane before landing, and after having called the campground we were essentially told we were beat for a Sunday fill. So we hunted around... or more like, J hunted around, and after five or six different spots we were able to narrow it down to an Ace hardware, believe it or not.

(added to the list of places to stop)

I jumped up front and went to start Nebbie, but when I turned the key.... ( click, click sppzpzp cacsfma lfnskj ) was actually exactly how it sounded. Now I remembered what that one thing was I still had to do... replace the battery. No worries though, we've jumped before and today was no different. So after getting Nebbie started we hooked the smart car and rolled out to our first stop, the gas station!

The first one was not set up well for us, so we had to cross the highway and pulled through another.

So this might have come easier to someone else, but not to me that day, because I tell ya what I confidently turned that engine off thinking we would be swell, and guess what. We weren't! lol so I had to unhook the smart car, turn it back on, jump the RV and then re-situate on the opposite side of the gas station to rehook.

(just a good ol regular fill up in RV life)

We were only forty minutes to the ace hardware, and on the way we decided to get smart. I asked J to research about the (emergency start) switch on the dash and how it operated and how we might be able to use it. So after a quick youtubing we felt confident that it would be straight forward.

We pulled into the Ace lot which thankfully was pretty abandoned and did a whole two loops before arriving correctly at the side of the propane fill up area. The worker there had seen us driving and met me there at the side, he was super nice and we discussed camping, and the type of camper he had as well.

After I hopped back into the driver's seat, anxious and ready to DRIVE! I look at J and asked her "No but really, one whole minute", she responded "One minute", my eyes flipped around in my head while I pushed the button (emergency start) looking between J and the wheel, waiting for the go ahead.

At juuuuust about one minute I turned the key, ( du du duuuu ) no dice. After sitting for a second, and pushing the button again, this time for thirty seconds, we tried again before Nebbie roared to life!

We were in some kinda luck!

With a full tank of gas, and propane we made our way further south, taking in the ocean views from Virginia bridges to Virginia Beach, driving all along the sand bar by Kitty Hawk and through towards Rodanthe.

First trip back on the road in the books, we're parked about 200 feet away from the ocean and the sunrises and sunsets have been BEAUTIFUL, the next week days here are going to be so relaxing!

- Transmission End -

[b1111199]

TF Story- Samus in Triple Trouble

Originally posted to DeviantArt: contains transformation, splitting and identiry change.

PART 1- Starting with Samus...

It was not easy being a researcher for the Space Pirates. Long hours, constantly shifting goals and no lunch breaks were the least of the problems. First you'd get shipped off to some backwater planet and be grateful if the air was breathable, capture dangerous wildlife and brave dangerous temples to loot Chozo artifacts (hope you didn't pick out a co-worker you hated the least) then with your outdated and barely functional scanners, try to figure out how to weaponize them. But all of this paled in comparison to the worst problem of all. Juuuuust as you were beginning to make progress, you'd show up for work one day, only to find the place completely looted and trashed at best, completely blown to smithereens at worst. All because of the one known as "The Hunter", treating research labs a free goody bags of artifacts and prototype weapons. Eventually every Space Pirate Researcher was a survivor of a raid by The Hunter- spared only by fate and bathroom breaks- and together they started to concoct a plan. They worked on it in secret- knowing that Space Pirate High Command would never approve of a plan that didn't end with The Hunter being torn to shreds by his talons- ready to exploit The Hunter's own routines against her.

There was something off about this latest facility that Samus found herself exploring. Where there should have been samples of local wildlife, there was instead different local plants, placed there as if the researcher were trying to look busy. She could feel a trap coming but the automated security was pretty much the same as ever. Her gut instinct was overwritten by a cocky thought.

"I guess even Space Pirates get disenfranchised."

She continued to scan the notes they left behind and all were pointing to the artifact that they had located, how it would make them unstoppable when they figured it out and how terrible it would be if "The Hunter" got her hands on it, all standard stuff. She made her way to the main laboratory and found the artifact taking pride of place in an over elaborate container. Samus's instincts were telling her that something was off, she should have faced some kind of Pirate Boss to obtain something so allegedly powerful, but she second guessed herself and remember the times she fought the boss right after picking the main item of the area up. She scanned the access panel and opened it up...

Meanwhile, all huddled in the security room, the researcher pushed against each other to get a view of the security feed. She had fallen for their deception and she would never be the same person again...

PART 2- It's a compact?

Samus reached out and grabbed the mysterious artifact, which appeared to be a small plastic disc of some kind with curved edges. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand. Noticing a hinge on it, she opened the device. It had a reflective surface and a small fabric pad that could be removed to reveal buttons underneath. It looked like a strange combination of a communications device and a makeup compact.

But before she could scan it, it scanned her! A laser came out the device and tracked over her power suit. Samus attempted to throw away what was now clearly a trap away but before it left her hand, a wire shot out from it and connected to her power suit. A message flashed up on her power suit’s HUD-

W.O.O.H.P. agent reactivation program initialised.

Samus’ mind raced with questions.

“Initialised? Agent program? What was going on? Reactivating who?”

PART 3- All of them?!

Another strange message appeared on the HUD.

TOTAL reactivation in progress.

Step 1: Separating “Sam” from “us”.

001/100% complete

Before Samus could even try to make sense of it, needles shot out of her suit into her. Normally for administering pain killers, the strange compact had turned them against Samus and they were now extracting something from her.

010% complete

Samus quickly realised that they weren’t draining her blood. This felt more like a Metroid attack, the suit was absorbing something else from her. But what was it absorbing?

030% complete

Sam us, trying to figure out how to disable the malevolent programming, felt what she could only describe as her body getting too big for her bones. Anyone looking through her visor would have seen her eyes sag and shift down as the eye holes of her skull grew larger.

050% complete

She felt her feet rise off the floor as she shrank and now her entire body weight was supported by the power suit’s crotch which was riding up her butt. The pain quickly overwhelmed rational thought Sam us could have had and her mind became consumed with “Get me out of this stupid thing!”

075% complete

Sam us clenched her legs against the sides of the power suit that was now a foot and a half too large for her frame and found that her muscles and skin had now caught up with her skeleton and that she was fit enough to support herself in the cavernous cavity. She was relieved but then she realised, she had forgotten why she was even in this stupid painful hunk of tin in the first place.

100% complete: “us” completely extracted from “Sam”

Step 2: “us” refinement

001/100%

No sooner than that message appeared on the window of the suit did it open up, dumping Sam on to the cold hard floor, butt first. As she rubbed her bruised keister she tried to figure out what the heck was happening. What had actually happened was that the suit had extracted the “us” from Samus leaving only Sam behind but she had no way to know this. As far as Sam was aware, she was in the mall with her friends, trying to ignore Mandy’s… Mandy-ness and, without so much as a hasty and embarrassing briefing, she was whisked away to this dull evil lair.

“And they gave me the wrong suit!” she screamed, tugging at the wrongly sized blue number she was stuck in. As if in response to the complaint, the creepy suit walked towards her and pointed it’s cannon arm right into her chest.

“YIPE!”

But instead of firing, the suit did something weirder: It started to melt. First the cannon melted right onto Sam and quickly coated her blue suit. As she tried to brush the goo off, she missed the red portion of the suit melting off of the yellow part which continued to stand upright. Sam stopped struggling as she realised that the green blob had now turned into a perfect copy of her own suit. Same cut, same heart shaped belt and same zipper that got stuck half-way up every third time you tried to close it. But there was no time to be thankful for that small accommodation as the legs of the creepy suit were still melting and were now starting to writhe. The legs shrunk inwards and the excess material came out the top, turning into three indistinct blobs. Sam was reading herself to fight this blob monster, something much more in her pay grade, but the freakiness refused to stop as the middle blob opened to reveal a human face. One very familiar to Sam.

“Alex?”

“Sam? What’s going on here?! And why am I so… blobby?”

“I was hoping you’d know.”

“Why would I know? You think I want to be a blob?!”

Once again, as soon as complaints were made, the goo reacted and Alex’s body became more shapely and more human until she looked like she was ready for just another mission in her catsuit.

“This has got to be at least in the top ten freakiest missions we’ve ever had.” Sam groaned as she rubbed her temples trying to process it all.

“Or, at least top fifty.” she quickly added.

Alex had noticed something important was missing but before she could finish asking- “Where’s Clover?”

-a terrible wail cried out:

“ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEEE?!”

Sam and Alex looked down. Where the red blob once once stood was now Clover… or at least her torso.

“I guess there wasn’t enough red in that creepy suit…”

The words just kind of fell out of Sam’s mouth as she and Alex stood there bug eyed at Clover writhing in frustration.

“We got teleported to who knows where and they forgot my legs! How will I ever wear shoes again?!” she screamed, tears starting to form in her eyes.

“Muh-Maybe they’ll send them later.” Alex said very unconvincingly as she picked up the top half of Clover and put her on a box so she was at least at eye level.

“Legs aren’t like a magazine subscription!” Clover complained. “I can’t wait by the door for my own body to…”

Then the freak-fest continued as all three girls screamed in horror. Clover was melting! Clover, now a red blob with her head on top was dripping over the edges of the box and starting to coat it. The trio’s scream was cut off as they heard an ominous metallic creak. It came from the box that Clover had been perched on. The red Clover-adjacent blob was crushing it and absorbing it. The creak graduated to a crunch as the box was demolished and sucked into the red mass. Clover gingerly opened her eyes to see that she was now standing up, and with her own full body. She knocked her fists together and it didn’t sound like metal. The girls had a lot to think about-

“So are we actually us or crazy blob robots that think we’re us?”

“Does that matter? Identity is more about perception than-”

“Please don’t get philosophical, I promised my parents I’d get a useful major!”

They were interrupted by screaming coming from down the hall. It was in a language that none of them understood but the tone was universal: it was the panicked screech of mad scientists who accidentally made things worse for themselves and were trying to get away.

“We can’t be sure…” said Alex, striking a pose.

“...but perhaps we were sent here to kick butt and save the day.” continued Sam, joining her in the pose.

Clover joined in and declared “Let’s show them what happens when you mess with the wrong spies.”

____

[fairymint]

something I forgot in the previous post, but it’s okay since it technically....doesn’t belong there? a different point entirely. I will admit fully that while Volo does share Felix’s ADHD, he does not share Felix’s PTSD. something is probably wrong for sure...but....

meta-wise, it’s just a personal preference;;;; i don’t like to just slap PTSD on my muses, having it myself. probably my jaded colored glasses being a victim here, but I don’t hand out every thing to all of my muses and especially ‘f/o’ muses because i kinda look at canon or them and go like ‘haha but he is too abled tho.’ People who do write these disabilities tend to do an amazing job and their research, as RPers, really adds to the character. it’s just not common here jdlkdslfjslfs;;; perhaps i’d have to take it a bit more seriously? it’s just;;; debilitating, real PTSD is something you live with for life, and notsomuch in the direct, stereotypical way.

interactions wise, Felix’s PTSD setting in juuuuust post game does make Volo take a step back. He was compatively well-behaved until then, but Red Sky and Spear Pillar are sort of non-stop stress....which doesn’t uncap until his brain deems it safe. The lucky ones get to watch him isolate, and the unlucky ones get to be his due victims, as he’s lashing out for dear life....at a moment of peace. And it’s much deeper than story!Felix. Episodes Felix has are intense, and angry. It wouldn’t be the first time on this blog he’d be offputting to someone who got ‘too’ close.