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knackeredforever · 5 months

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Ok this is probably gonna be a long rant but it’s for things that I’ve thought about for a while when it comes to the “ai” craze.

I’m ranting about what I’m ranting about is “ai” or what this hellhole of the modern internet has attributed the title “ai” to a fucked up form of machine learning that steals / plagiarises the work of others without their consent. For the rest of this rant I’ll be referring to “ai” as machine learning because that’s what it actually is algorithms programmed to copy others work.

The name “ai” is purely used to make the machine learning software sound more marketable and cool, artificial intelligence as most people envision it still doesn’t exist machine learning is basically constantly iterating program learning by being given fitness values that the outcome with the highest fitness value is used as a baseline for all the other runs to learn from. The machine learning does this by constantly taking over peoples work trying to use this work to guess what a prompt entered by a user wants in response and that’s why machine learning software would ask users whether they were satisfied by the outcome of the machine learning (I’ve used machine learning alot so I’ll shorten it to ml from now on) that will be the fitness value if the user enters yes that will give that ml outcome a higher fitness value therefore further uses of the ml software for that prompt of similar will give results similar to the high fitness value outcome.

One annoying outcome of the machine learning boom is because of its given name of “ai” when ai is used in the context outside of machine learning people now immediately assume it’s machine learning one example is video games which have used the term ai for decades e.g. enemy ai but now using that term makes people think it’s using machine learning even when it isn’t. One example I can think of was dragons dogma 2(I think? ) where developers were discussing the games new ai systems which journalists immediately assumed meant machine learning despite the fact it didn’t.

Another form of machine learning is the so called “ai voices” which is just taking audio sampling of people’s voices copying it and using it to try to say things those people didn’t originally say. It’s genuinely terrifying especially for people like voice actors who many have spoken out of the use of “ai voices” to replicate their voices who now have to worry about people using their voices to say offensive shit and people thinking it’s the original voice actor that said it. Another element that personally pisses me off is voice acting at an unprofessional level basically for shitposts to give an example my YouTube feed used to be filled with shitposts of people doing impressions of characters or performing the glorious task known as sentence mixing taking already existing audio and manually editing it to create new audio this is very different from machine learning as in machine learning new audio is created by trying to simulate copied audio samples from someone else. While in sentence mixing no new audio samples are created the audio is just edited to sound like something else is being said.

But now my YouTube feed when it comes to shitposts of this variety are usually filled with ai voice shitposts usually made by very small YouTubers but bigger ones also sometimes use it. This pisses me of for various reasons such that a lot of these videos that would have previously contained admirable amateur voice acting or sentence mixing now have bad incredibly flat machine learning voice acting and if your not willing to put the effort in the voice itself then I don’t think the video is probably gonna be very funny.

But another element that saddens me when thinking about this is the fact alot of people probably got into voice acting through doing shitposts online so the fact alot of people aren’t even trying to do these voices and that means they could have missed out on the realisation that they really liked voice acting and deciding they wanted to pursue it further.

“Ai”’s are machine learning plagiarism algorithm that are now forcing people online to be part of their sample size whether they want to or not social media’s are stealing artists work to replicate it worse for lazy people even fucking mspaint is doing this now MS FUCKING PAINT.

I’m sure there might be some good uses for this type of software but so far the main people who use and advocate it are corporations trying to get out of paying people for their art and lazy people.

What proves to me on a personal level that machine learning is used for nothing more than laziness is that in my computer science class we are almost finished with a long individual project and it’s one that I mostly really enjoyed working on my own game which was the good part. The worst part was every fucking computer science lesson where I had to hear other students talk about ways they could use machine learning to do their work for them so that they don’t have to do anything themselves no one cared about actually making something, something they wanted to make. All they wanted was something easy and I have known a lot of these people for years I’ve overheard their conversations most of them do business studies and when it comes to talking about their passions when I overhear them it’s always what job will get them the most money what can they do to make girls to be with them for their money. It won’t surprise you that most of these guys watch videos in computer science lessons on ways to be alpha males. (Unfortunately my computer science class is only guys) so I know machine learning isn’t a tool to help artists it’s a tool for people to bypass the art creation process due to laziness.

Now a second personal anecdote so about a month ago I went to a university open day with my dad for a game development course as that’s the career I want to pursue without getting into personal details my dad doesn’t exactly want me to go to this uni or course he debated me on several points about wanting to go to this uni and I argued why I wanted to go their but then he said that he had problems with me wanting to do game development because “the entire industry will mostly be ai generated in a few years anyway” my dads job has nothing to do with game development in the slightest he made this assumption probably because of news stories saying how machine learning was the future of all industries and that all jobs in those fields will disappear.

And honestly I’ve never heard a statement in my life that made me want to pursue game development more.

I want to pursue game development to create games by my own hands to have something that is truly my own not for money but for the love of creating games I wanna make.

I refuse to let all art become nothing more than having stolen slop fired back at users written inputs because if someone didn’t create it what is the point of art at all.

Art is human expression and machine learning is an attempt to replicate the human expression but it will never win.

That’s why I don’t want to support the use of machine learning online wherever I can because it goes against everything I stand for even if it means criticising something I like for using it as I want to support art not stolen non consensual machine learning.

I’m sorry for the long rant but this is a collection of things that have annoyed me for a while.

#ai #ai art #ai voices #fuck ai voice acting #rant #ai rant #machine learning #artificial intelligence #text post #long rant #long post

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madelineserenity · 1 year

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Reaper Nurse Christmas Prompt Countdown | Day 1: Mariah

(This one is with a reader in a polygamous relationship with the nurses. As Christmas is a time for family, I'll be writing some with a child, girlfriend/wife/fiancée, etc. reader. Play Peer Gynt in the background for best effect)

Birds flew playfully in the morning sky.

Insects bathed happily in the cool dew that dripped from leaves and made spider webs glow like the sun.

The sunlight shone gently through your curtains as the breeze tickled them awake.

The entire hospital was bathed in the morning light.

You drowsily sit up and stretch your arms up, straining until you hear a small pop in your shoulder. Even though the day was so calm and peaceful, and you were more than willing to lay back into your soft and squishy pillows, it was too beautiful a day to be wasted. You pulled out the little yoga mat tucked into one of your little box shelves, before rolling it out on the cool marble floor. You pulled yourself into an upward-facing-dog position, hearing another loud pop in your back. The nurses had given you your yoga mat after learning you had trouble waking up in the morning. You used to need two or three prompts from the nurses to get out of bed for breakfast, and even then, you'd be lethargic and rather quite grumpy. Now, you felt like you had so much energy and you felt ready to take on the world in the mornings.

As you shifted positions, lying on your side, and pulling your right leg up to your back, you wondered what lovely breakfast they'd organised for you today. The nurses loved to spoil you, even if some of them were... a little wild, to say the least.

That was when you were startled to hear the sound of an upcoming announcement. What could it possibly be at this time of day?

(turn off your Peer Gynt, it all goes downhill from here, folks.)

🎵 I 🎵

A song? Just as it started, your phone's morning alarm began to chime, lighting up its screen.

7:45 AM 1st Dec

🎵 Don't want a lot for Christmas... 🎵

No. No no no no NO. You immediately flung yourself up, almost tripping as your mat shifted under the sudden movement. You threw open your closet and pulled on your baby blue dressing gown, pulled your door open and ran into the halls.

🎵 There is just one thing I need... 🎵

There was nobody around. Your room was on the fourth floor, far away from the soul shards, and thus, away from any men who could take advantage of your mortality, who could kill you to get you out of their way...

🎵 I don't care about the presents... 🎵

The nurses were probably downstairs, definitely very confused as well. They knew you would prefer to have the freedom to wake up and come down by yourself, they coddled you so often it was the least they could do. Right now though, you wished there was a nurse around. They knew where the PA room was and turn that bloody song off. You had been able to keep the memelord nurses from playing it yesterday, "It's not even December!", but what could you do now!?

🎵 ...underneath the Christmas tree... 🎵

A door opened behind you.

🎵 I just want you for my own... 🎵

"...Who's there? I know one of you jackasses is there. Can y'all stop cloaking and trying to give me an aneurysm?"

🎵 More than you could ever know... 🎵

She appeared.

You could see under her bag, she was smirking.

🎵 Make my wish come true... 🎵

It was Caroline, a professional shitposter and absolute anarchist.

"Merry Christmas, love. I bought a little padlock Matron wasn't aware of - attached it to the public address system room door -"

"YOU DID THIS?!"

🎵 All I want for Christmas is.... 🎵

"Mhm! And here," she pulled a shiny, new key out of her pocket. "is the only key to it!" She skated to the side of the hall and unlocked the window, but before you could get to her, she'd skated away from you - backwards, just to be a show-off - chuckling.

As you tried to grab it, she tossed it out of the window, down four levels, directly into a massive bush of thorny roses, just as the

🎵 You 🎵

rang through the halls.

You screamed at the top of your lungs, frightening the life... death? out of the nurses below, who immediately panicked and skated like hell to the elevators, some couldn't bear to wait for the lifts while you were in danger, so they ripped their skates off and started gunning it up the long, painful flights of stairs.

This was going to be hell...

#this was inspired by my recent adhd diagnosis #got new meds and theyve changed everything #I CAN FINALLY DO SHIT #reaper nurses #torment therapy #dark deception #reaper nurse #x reader #christmas #all i want for christmas is you #mariah carey #shitpost #I FEEL SO AWAKE #I CAN WRITE WITHOUT TAKING SIX HOURS #IM NOT TIRED AFTER WRITING THIS #IM MORE AWAKE THAN EVERRRRRR

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autumnslance · 1 year

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(@driftward) Sigh, I see you picked a prompt meme where I can't trick you into being nice to yourself some more, so... let's choose violence. 9. Worst part of canon, 18. It's kind of criminal the fandom has been sleeping on... 19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like... (you can't pick anything Thancred related) 23. ship you've unwillingly come around to (or maybe you can 😇😇😇)

Choosing Violence:

9. Worst part of canon

The attempts at gritty grim dark "reality" in parts of the game cuz that's what's been popular in the fantasy genre for 40-odd years so have to follow suit, right? Especially with all the references to ethnic/racial bigotry and sexual assault in various places.

Which, OK, I know what they're going for in how it's similar but different in this fantasy world, but also there's nothing can be done about it in too many cases so it's just there instead of doing anything useful as commentary let alone story. It doesn't make the world any more "real" just for its presence. This is a fantasy MMO theme park setting meant for escapism, anyway.

18. It's kind of criminal the fandom has been sleeping on…

-The updates to Rhitahtyn and Lahabrea's MSQ fights. Or any of the reworks in general. Just the ability to review the actual lore and story instead of via regurgitated memes and shitposts at all.

-The Company of Heroes cuz many people are whiny about an honestly not that bad part of the MSQ so write off these varied characters and their history and current exploits. But I guess since Riol's one of the few Company members that people tend to think are fuckable and lump him in with the Scions anyway, they'll stay in underutilized NPC land even though they have more screen time and lore than the Ward and Sundered Ascians put together.

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like…

Drogar beat you to it. ;-)

But in seriousness, there's honestly not too much I'm "ashamed", "mad", or "horrified" about liking in a fantasy MMO with a heavy emphasis on complex characters and stories that often times go into rather dark and difficult places.

There's a couple dark fics I've read that are quite good, but they're not my cup of tea, just a thing occasionally poked at to go "nope, still not my thing, some good lines and ideas though" before I go back to avoiding them for another few years.

23. ship you've unwillingly come around to

None; I either am "I can see it, sure" or "Not my bag, baby" and proceed to filter it out of my social media as much as possible. Usually due to inundation rather than actual dislike, though there's some I am firmly "nope, not for me."

With the exception, of course, since you allow it, of my darling WoL daughter falling for a disaster rogue and taking something like a year or two to convince me to write and post about it in public. This wasn't supposed to happen, yet here I am.

#Lyn Prompts #Choosing Violence #Grumpy Old Lady Hours

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xxhellonursexx · 2 years

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TITLE: “Mourning”

About a week ago, after finishing my most recent “My Maker's Maker,” it occurred to me, out of the blue, that I ought to make a strip in which Louis leaves a Christmas ball early and returns to his room, where he sits, grieving for the past (and Claudia), prompting Lestat to seek and find him. The overall theme of it was supposed to be something along the lines of “it's okay to feel sad at Christmas time—loss can really complicate one's feelings towards traditionally happy times.”

I resisted this. It's not unusual at all for me to make emotional pieces, but something sat wrong with me about depicting Lestat and Louis grieving at Christmas. So I decided against it, outlined another “My Maker's Maker” strip, and inked my “VC Gift Exchange” piece with the intent of scanning and coloring it when I got home from work.

I got home, put it in the scanner, and decided to check Tumblr before doing anything else.

The very first thing I saw was a post by @i-want-my-iwtv showing Christopher Rice's Facebook announcement that Anne Rice had died the previous evening from complications related to a stroke.

Once the initial shock subsided, I immediately thought, “I've got to post something.”

What immediately came to my mind was a feeling I'd had when finishing “Blood Communion.” I finished the final passage and thought to myself, “This feels like goodbye.”

And, ultimately, it was.

So I scanned the illustration from the end of “Blood Communion,” typed out its final lines, acknowledged Anne's death, and posted it. I guess I must have struck a chord, because I woke up later to discover this post has far-and-away the most notes I've ever received on a single post ever. It brought me no joy whatsoever.

I opened Youtube, feeling numb, occasionally looking back to Tumblr to see other's reactions. I like listening to oldies, and I let my playlist play in the background. A lovely song came on: “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”

Sometime ago, Anne had made a rather sweet post, commenting that she and Lestat had danced to this particular song. She focused on the song's opening line: “Tonight you're mine...completely.” It was, in her mind, a perfect way to describe their togetherness.

Then the idea arose in my mind of Lestat realizing that his beloved dancing partner and storyteller of over 40 years was gone.

And my heart broke with a pain that absolutely took my breath away.

When I was finally composed enough to think straight, I knew that this piece, which I had originally decided against, had to be made. This single panel represents the very best I could do. I was absolutely distraught and cried throughout the entire process of creating it. I'm still distraught now, hitting the “post” button.

Lestat and Louis are very sad, but not comfortless. They have each other. And so do we.

I will be back soon with my usual humor, shitposting, and general buffoonery, but I need time. Thank you for understanding.

#vampire chronicles #anne rice #lestat #louis de pointe du lac #prince lestat

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johannestevans · 3 years

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The #MonstrousMayChallenge 2021

Love monsters?

The #MonstrousMayChallenge is going to be a series of monster-centric prompts for every day of the month of May!

Draw, write, talk about, analyse, shitpost, critique, rec, discuss, create, consume, and otherwise have fun with each prompt.

Tell your friends, pick and choose the prompts that you like best: make art, make fiction, make rec lists, make jokes, make monsters!

May 1. What is a Monster? May 2. How to Talk to Your Monster May 3. The Vampire May 4. Iconic Settings May 5. Feeding Time May 6. The Lycanthrope May 7. Adverse Weather Conditions May 8. The Monster in Love May 9. The Undead May 10. "... and add a monster." May 11. A Baby Monster May 12. The Alien May 13. The Domesticated Monster May 14. Clothing Your Monster May 15. The Mermaid

May 16. The Gentle Kaiju May 17. Monstrous Transformations May 18. Angels & Demons May 19. Monstrous Flora May 20. The Monster in History May 21. The Hybrid May 22. Kept Captive May 23. The Human is the Monster May 24. The Dragon May 25. The Monster Dies May 26. The Hive-Mind May 27. The Fae May 28. The Monster Extinct May 29. Cultural Differences May 30. The Minotaur May 31. Happily Ever After

The full write-up for the #MonstrousMayChallenge is below the cut — for every day of the month of May 2021, there’ll be a new prompt all to do with creating monsters and monster-centric stories!

You can either go directly off of the prompts themselves, or if you want a little more inspiration, you can come check this post for more in-depth exploration of the idea in question.

For each entry in response to the prompts, regardless of what platform you post to, make sure to tag the #MonstrousMayChallenge! In the meantime, just spread the word and tell your friends to get them ready for May!

Feel free to pick and mix the prompts you like best, to skip any prompts that don’t suit you, or to swap in prompts of your own if you like — every 3rd day is a specific category of “classic” monsters, and they’re not for everybody!

“Monsters are the patron saints of imperfection.” — Guillermo del Toro (x)

The emphasis on all of the prompts below are on monster-centric and monster-POV stories. Monstrous romances and monstrous erotica are both welcome and encouraged, just as much as platonic monstrosity is, and please feel free to join in regardless of your medium, whether you draw, write, animate, or create in another way entirely!

Just a note as to what expect — this challenge is intended for those who love monsters, who identify with monsters, who feel for the monsters, and all the prompts are written with that expectation in mind.

One small note: throughout these prompts there are references to folklore and ideas from different cultures and backgrounds. When exploring ideas from cultures that aren’t your own, remember that not every representation of spirits or monsters can be divorced from its original context, and take care to do your research to ensure you aren’t harming others by furthering harmful stereotypes or appropriating ideas of cultural importance.

We’re all here to have fun, which means that using a love of monsters as a vehicle for racism (whether that’s outright or by upholding colonial and imperial ideas, appropriating from other cultures, or fetishising other races and cultures) is not what we want to see in the course of this challenge, and isn’t welcome here.

Note the above especially in regards to the Alonquian W*nd*go.

Saturday 1st May 2021 — What is a monster?

Here’s a warm-up challenge to start the month off:

For you, what is a monster? What makes a monster monstrous? What delights you, excites you, scares you, horrifies you about a monster? What fills you with affection for monster?

When you first hear the word monster, what springs first to mind?

This is a free space — talk about, write about, draw, animate, sing about, the monster(s) you love best, and why you love them!

Sunday 2nd May 2021 — How To Talk To Your Monster

How does your monster communicate?

Do they have a mouth, lips, a tongue, like humans do? Do they communicate verbally at all? Do they communicate via telepathy, via their tentacles, or their limbs? Do they speak, but at a pitch or volume or speed inaudible or incomprehensible to human ears? How is this gap bridged?

Does your monster understand humans but struggle to make itself understood? Does your monster want to be understood?

Alternate: How does your monster communicate with other, different monsters?

Monday 3rd May 2021 — The Vampire

The vampire is a walking corpse that sustains itself by feeding off the the blood of the living.

There are a thousand variations on the myth — a corpse that rises from its grave at night only to mindlessly glut itself on the prey it can find becomes a reclusive gentleman who lives in isolation in a brooding, gothic castle overlooking a Transylvanian woodland (Dracula); a sparkly immortal Mormon who likes to climb into young women’s windows to watch them while they sleep (Twilight); a rich aristocrat so intent on preserving his properties and his privilege that he clings onto immortality at all costs (Interview with the Vampire); an extremely sexy vampire in sunglasses who’s devoted to killing other vampires (Blade), and so on and so forth.

Explore your own take on the vampire:

Is your vampire actually dead? Do they just appear dead, or sleep in coffins?

What makes a vampire? A curse? A ritual? Transmission of vampiric disease — via the exchange of blood or via sex? Are they born that way? Do dhampirs (half-vampires) exist? Do vampires become vampires by choice? Is there a contract or an agreement?

Does your vampire drink blood? Cerebral fluid? Consume human flesh? Do they sap energy from others in non-literal ways — for example, do they feed off of emotions or energy, or seek to devour a soul?

If they survive off of the above, do they also eat or drink other things? Are they capable of doing so without becoming ill?

Is your vampire sensitive to sunlight? Bright light in general? Do they physically react to it? Do they burn, or crumble to dust? How do they cope with this — do they only come out at night, do they wear leathers and carry a parasol, do they use a medicated suncream?

Can vampires become ill? Sick? What weakens a vampire? What kills them?

Does your vampire have any other powers? Can they fly, hypnotise people, transform into gas or another animal?

What happens if a non-human becomes a vampire?

Alternate: A non-vampire monster becomes absolutely obsessed with vampires. They love them to pieces! Why? How do they get their vampire fix?

Some inspiration, if you want it:

Article: An 18th-century guide to hunting vampires from National Geographic

Article: The Great New England Vampire Panic from the Smithsonian Magazine

Video Essay: The Sexy Vampire Trope, Explained, from The Take

Tuesday 4th May 2021 — Iconic Settings

Imagine an iconic setting within the horror genre or without — your Transylvanian castles, your unending deserts of shifting sands, your haunted houses and their infinitely winding corridors, your unholy spires atop distant peaks, your deep and dismal caves, your roiling seas…

What monsters lurk within these settings? How do they feel about their environs? What happens if you transplant a monster from one such setting into its opposite, or combine a few of them together?

What happens if these settings are invaded, lost, destroyed, expanded, changed?

Alternate: Imagine any iconic setting you like, but instead of the monster lurking within, the setting is the monster.

The seas themselves are sentient; the caves are toothy maws of impossible beasts; the mountains themselves have eyes; the castles and houses and ancient tombs and temples are, themselves, imbued with a spirit… Is it hungry? Angry? Lonely?

Wednesday 5th May 2021 — Feeding Time

What does your monster eat?

Is it predator or prey? To a human understanding, does it look like what it is? If it eats meat, does it prefer to eat it dead or alive? If it’s not from this planet or dimension, does it struggle to find new things to eat? What does it look like when your monster eats? Is it private about eating? Does it look scary when it feeds?

Does it eat at all? Does your monster get its energy from the sun, from electricity, from magic, from something else entirely?

Alternate: From a monstrous POV, a human’s dietary habits seem monstrous and strange. Why?

Thursday 6th May 2021 — The Lycanthrope

The werewolf is a person who turns into a wolf, typically at the time of the full moon. Lycanthropy is the name of the condition of being a werewolf, or someone who turns into some other animal.

The variations on the werewolf are infinite — the core is often people bitten by strange beasts and left forever cursed with their regular transformation (for example, in The Wolf Man); but a curse is also possible, such as when kings are turned into wolves as punishment for their hubris (as with King Lycaon in Metamorphoses); or of course, a curse inherited, such as when young men who come into their inherited lycanthropy and suddenly have a whole host of new puberty concerns (Teen Wolf).

And it needn’t be a wolf at all — there are all manner of shapeshifters between one myth and the next, and as much as there are werewolves there might be werelions, werebears, werebats, et cetera, et cetera.

For your lycanthrope, why not explore:

What animal or creature does your lycanthrope turn into? A wolf, a bear, a lion, a snake, a bird? Something magical — a phoenix, a unicorn, a griffin, a dragon?

Once transformed, can your lycanthrope be distinguished from the normal edition of the beast? What are the differences, for example, between a werewolf and a wolf?

Can your lycanthrope transform at will? Is it influenced by their emotion? Is it kept to a regular schedule? Can that schedule be interrupted? For example, if it’s a monthly cycle like someone’s menstruation, can they go for periods without transforming or with “spotty” transformations? If it’s with the phases of the moon, does hiding from the moon help? What happens if you send them to another planet?

Is the transformation painful? Physically or mentally taxing?Are there any health problems associated with lycanthropy?

When transformed, how conscious and aware of themselves is you lycanthrope? Do they know they’re transformed? Do they remember what they were?

Alternate: Sometimes, another monster turns into a human.

Friday 7th May 2021 — Adverse Weather Conditions

What weather is your monster happiest in? What weather is your monster least happy in?

Is your monster native to an area that’s extremely hot and humid? Very cold and dry? Is your monster used to heavy rains, droughts and little water, sandstorms, electrical storms, blizzards? If your monster lives in space or underwater, how are they affected by solar flares or tropical storms, shifts in tides and gravitational flows?

How has your monster evolved or developed to handle these weather conditions — or, is there anything your monster hasn’t evolved for, and struggles with?

Alternate: Your monster is a house-monster, and will not be going outside. They would like a blanket and a cup of hot cocoa and a nice comfortable bed, please and thank you.

Saturday 8th May 2021 — The Monster In Love

Your monster’s in love — what do they do about it?

Does your monster have any particular mating rituals or ways in which they show their affection? Does your monster mate for life, does your monster date, does your monster romance singular or multiple partners? Does your monster yearn, do they pine? Do they bring gifts, do they do special dances, do say particular words or have mating calls?

Is their love reciprocated — is it even understood?

When one monster loves another monster, what does it look like? What does it look like when a monster is in love with a human? When a human falls in love with a monster?

Alternate: Your monster has never been in love, and is baffled — perhaps even disgusted — by the prospect. Do they do research? Demand an explanation?

Sunday 9th May 2021 — The Undead

The undead covers a lot of things under a similar umbrella, and it’s up to you whether they count as monsters or not — ghosts, ghouls, poltergeists, spirits, revenants, draugr, reanimated corpses like zombies, arguably vampires… To infinity, and beyond.

We can be talking spirits without bodies or with new bodies, corpses with new spirits in them, corpses controlled by necromancers or the like, and so on.

So, for this prompt:

For your undead monster, are they conscious, sentient? Do they control their own body? Do they remember when they were alive, if they were dead and then reanimated?

If they have a physical form, can someone tell they’re undead? Are they rotting, corpse-like, desiccated, all bones, all flesh, all muscle? Are they missing parts? Do they have any extra ones? Do they look the same way they used to? If they don’t have a physical form, can you see them at all? Can you see them only sometimes?

What sustains this undead monster? Do they feed off of anything, or are they just sustained by the air itself, by magic, by some sort of magical object or curse?

Was your undead monster once a human? Once a werewolf? Once a faerie, once a dragon, once some other creature entirely?

Alternate: Your monster is a necromancer, and they are not undead, but control and raise, in some way or another, the undead.

Monday 10th May 2021 — “… and add a monster.”

Take absolutely any iconic work you like, whether it’s a classic piece of literature, a poem, a piece of mythology or folklore, a fairy tale, a fable, a shanty or a campfire song — anything that’s in the public domain and might be well-recognised — and add a monster.

Have Sherlock Holmes meeting a vampire, reimagine Jean Valjean as a minotaur, give Mr Darcy a deep and affectionate longing for his local werewolf.

You don’t have to keep to the same characters or plots — rewrite an existing plot with monsters (Rapunzel or Cinderella, for example), have two plots crossover (what happens when the monsters in two myths team up to defeat the hero out to kill them?), add monsters or change the monsters in the narrative, or if it already has a monster, add another.

Alternate: Take a public domain domain monster and give them a break. Send Dracula on holiday, give the poor result of Frankenstein’s experiments a spa day, etc.

Tuesday 11th May 2021 — A Baby Monster

How do the monsters breed?

Do they lay eggs? Give birth to live young? Do something else entirely? Are monsters active parents? What happens when monsters interbreed, or breed with humans?

Is the breeding… fun? 😉

I know not everyone likes writing babies or kids, and equally that some people have come into this challenge specifically for the monsterfucking, so there’ll be two streams of main prompts — one focusing on the breeding for you child-free monsterfuckers, and another focusing more on monstrous baby development once an egg is laid or a baby is born, etc.

Feel free to do both if you want to do both, as one does lead into the other!

Questions about breeding and monstrous pregnancy:

Does your monster fertilise eggs for the purposes of a live pregnancy, do they lay eggs, do they clone themselves, do they breed in some other way?

If your monster has genitalia, what do they look like? Are they analogous to human genitalia? Are they particularly big or particularly small compared to the analogous human parts, if so? How compatible is your monster’s genitalia with a human’s genitalia — or another monster’s?

If there is a size difference between monster and partner, what comes of this? Are there any chemical differences between monster and partner — for example, does the monster’s touch impart a high or some kind of contact aphrodisiac?

Are any attempts at breeding viable? If the monster’s partner is filled with eggs, what happens the longer they carry them? If the partner does carry the eggs or the babies to the point of birth and laying, what happens? Is it a painful process? Will they survive it? Does the partner know they’re pregnant at all?

And the pregnancy/egg-carrying questions: how does the partner’s biology change to accommodate the pregnancy? Do they have any strange or unexpected cravings? Does their biology change in any unexpected questions?

Questions about monstrous child development:

How is the monstrous baby first conceived? Is it an egg laid, is it an egg fertilised, an egg fertilised and then carried, as the result of a live pregnancy, something else entirely? If they’re laid eggs, do they go through a larval stage or other similar development?

Are monstrous babies born alone, or in groups? Do they have a high viability rate? Do the monstrous babies eat one another? Do they eat their egg casing or their placenta, if applicable? If not, what do they eat — do they drink milk or blood, do they need their food pre-chewed by their parents, can they look for food themselves?

Are monstrous parents very active in caring for their offspring? Are monstrous babies born able to take care of themselves, able to have a sort of independence, or do they need to be cared for for a period first?

How fast or slow is a monster’s development? How long does it take for them to become fully grown? How much do they grow, and how does their body develop and change as they run through their lifecycle? Do they shed their skin or any body parts, do they change a lot materially?

Alternate: What does monstrous contraception look like? Do they have a concept of it? If they don’t, how do they feel about it being explained to them?

Wednesday 12th May 2021 — The Alien

What makes an alien?

Are they from another planet, another dimension? How similar are they to anything found on Earth? How did they get here?

Are they intelligent, sentient? Do they know they’re on a foreign planet or in a foreign dimension? How fit are they to survive on Earth? How do they respond to the animals, the new sounds, the new world, around them? What technology do they have? Do they appear to be aliens as people imagine them? Do they pilot aircraft as people think they do?

Alternate: A human (or another species from Earth) is the alien on another planet or another dimension populated with “monsters”.

Thursday 13th May 2021 — The Domesticated Monster

Let’s look at the monster domesticated.

The likes of Pokémon, fantastical creatures as beasts of burden or as steeds — unicorns and pegasi and giant spiders and dragons, for example — or other tamed monsters that have learned to live with humans, and live side-by-side with them.

Are monsters actively bred for a result, or do they domesticate themselves as cats and dogs did? Do they perform tasks or assist humans? Do they give milk or eggs or honey or silk or meat? At what point in their domestication are they? Are they happy? Are they well-treated?

Alternate: A monster gets a pet of their own — is it a fantastical species, or is it a dog, cat, bird, etc? Is it even a human?

Friday 14th May 2021 — Clothing Your Monster

Does your monster wear clothes or armour?

What sort of clothes or armour do they wear? Is it grown, made, bought, traded for? Do they wear any other kind of jewelry or decoration? Do they always wear it, or only for some occasion? What do they think of human clothes? Do they want to try wearing any themselves, or taking human fabrics for monstrous clothes?

Alternate: If your monster does not wear clothes, what do they think of human clothes? How do they feel about the fact that humans wear them? Do they have a full understanding of the separation between clothes and flesh?

Saturday 15th May 2021 — The Mermaid

A mermaid is a half-human, half-fish.

You can take this very literally, as in The Little Mermaid, with someone who has a human upper half and fishy bottom half (or the other way around…😏), you can think more along the lines of the fish-person we see in Abe Sapien from Hellboy or (also) in Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water, or you can look at different variations on mermaids — the seal-like selkie who can remove their pelt to walk on land; the siren that calls to sailors so they dash themselves upon the rocks; naiads and other spirits of the water; the rusalke of the water, and so on.

Questions for your merfolk:

Do they belong in freshwater, saltwater, brackish water? Do they stay in the seas, in deep lakes, in ponds?

Do they regularly come to the surface, or do they live very deep below? What sort of temperatures are they used to, and how much sunlight? If they live in cold water or deep below the surface, are they very large and blubbery to ensure they can cope with the pressure and the cold?

Are your merfolk bioluminscent? Fish-like, cetacean-like, cephalapod-esque? If they do look similar to humans, with a human face or human body parts, do they look or feel like human flesh underneath the skin, or is it just for appearance?

What and how do your merfolk eat? Do they eat fish, meat, seaweed, plankton?

How do your merfolk feel about humans? About fish and other marine life? About animals on land? Other monsters?

Can your merfolk step onto land? Do they want to? Are they curious about what they find there? Do the humans nearby know about them, care about them?

Do merfolk live alone, in groups or as families? Are they migratory? How far do they travel, and for what reasons? Do they build towns and cities? How do they feel humans compare to them?

Alternate: A completely different non-merfolk-esque monster lives at the very bottom of the sea. What is it? How do humans come upon it? How big is it?

Sunday 16th May 2021 — The Gentle Kaiju

Kaiju is a Japanese genre of films— your Godzilla, your Mothra, your Rodan, all of these are kaiju: strange, gigantic beasts.

This prompt is centred around any monsters of superlative size that are trying their absolute best not to harm any of the little people scurrying them about them.

You can take this literally — think kaiju tip-toeing their ways through great cities and trying not to step on anything important, huge space beasts careful not to disturb planetary orbits in case they hurt anyone, or even the likes of the human trying not to step on any ants — or you can think of other monsters trying not to harm others despite some aspect of their biology making it difficult for them — Lovecraftian beasts doing their best not to do anyone any psionic damage, for example, or Medusa-like beings desperate to avoid people’s gazes in case they do any harm.

Alternate: An extremely tiny monster or another monster very easily harmed by human activities needs to kept safe.

Monday 17th May 2021 — Monstrous Transformations

How does a monster transform?

Does in transition between one form or another, like a werewolf, or between forms for land versus water? Does it regularly transform or transition through different physical presentations? Does it shed its skin, leave its old body behind? Does it grow new teeth or claws or body parts? Does it transform in response to disease or ailment?

Does a human transform slowly into a monster? Does a monster transform into another? Is this transformation willing, conscious — is it against all desperate attempts to prevent it? Is it painful? Is it agony?

Alternate: A monster expresses deep curiosity about human transformations — perhaps the differences between a child and an adult and their scale of growth, perhaps the apparent transformation when a human changes clothes, or puts on a mask, or even make-up.

Tuesday 18th May 2021 — Angels & Demons

A demon is typically an evil spirit or devil, and are sometimes thought to be fallen angels; angels are typically benevolent spirits, often thought of as celestial messengers.

Being as they’re often thought to be celestial or infernal, do you think of them as being from another dimension? How well do they mesh with Earth, from their own perspectives and human ones? How do they look or appear? Do they have to present themselves in a strange or unusual form? How do they communicate with humans — and why? Are they evil, benevolent, or simply neutral?

Are angels and demons separate things? How many kinds of angels and demons are there respectively? If they’re separate, do they communicate with one another, balance with one another?

Alternate: A monster that is not a demon or angel decides to present itself as one or the other. What is it? Why does it present itself this way?

Wednesday 19th May 2021 — Monstrous Flora

Your monster is plant- or mushroom-based!

(Or lichen-based, or algae-based, or moss-based, or coral-based, or…)

What does it look like? What makes it different from a mammalian or scaly monster? Where does it come from? How does it move, how does it breathe, how does it eat? Does it sleep? Does it 😏… you know? Is it good at it?

Alternate: Your monster lives codependently with, or lives inside, some sort of plant. What does that co-evolved relationship look like? How big is the plant? What does it look like?

Thursday 20th May 2021 — The Monster in History

Throughout history, the perception of your monster has changed over time.

Is your monster immortal? Over the progression of recorded history, has it been this same monster recorded in one sighting after another, in art or in story? Or, is your monster the latest generation of a species or line of inheritance that has gone on for a long while?

How much has your monster’s culture changed and developed in that time — has it changed in reaction to or alongside human cultures? How accurate has human perception of your monster been as the centuries have rolled by? How has art or stories about your monster changed in their telling?

How has the monster reacted to changes in human history, or different events as they have happened?

Does your monster even notice the passage of time? Are they in some way insensible to it, or do they experience it in a way humans don’t?

Alternate: The monster is a time-traveler! How do they do this? Why?

Friday 21st May 2021 — The Hybrid

A few things are bred together to create a monster, whether that monster be sublime or an abomination before the universe!

Think about griffins, pegasi, basilisks, cockatrices, and of course the manticore — any sort of beast made by combining one creature with another.

What creatures have been combined to create this monster? Has a human been one of them? How has this combination been achieved — via actual interbreeding, magically assisted or otherwise, via alchemy, a curse, or some other magical process? Has this creature literally been stitched together and then reanimated? How have the different creatures contributing to the creature changed its behaviour or its abilities?

Alternate: An attempt is made to create a hybrid… and unfortunately this is not the result. What is?

Saturday 22nd May 2021 — Kept Captive

The monster is captured.

How big or small is your monster? How was it captured — was bait used to draw it in, such as a food stuff, a copied call? Was it herded into an ambush? Was it trapped under a cage, in drop trap, in a magic trap? How easy was it to capture — did it take a long time, were several attempts made? For what reason was the monster captured?

Now kept captive, how big is your monster’s enclosure? Is it a cage, a glass box, physical chains or bondage, something else entirely? How long has it been there? Is it alone — would it rather be alone than the alternative? Is it struggling with its captivity? Is it marking out the amount of time it has been kept trapped, screaming at its captors, harming itself in its desperation for escape?

Is it likely ever to be freed?

Alternative: A human is kept captive by a monster.

Sunday 23rd May 2021 — The Human Is The Monster

From the perspective of the narrator, the human is the monster.

Who or what is made to fear them? What makes the human so monstrous in their eyes? Is it to do with the human’s size, their appearance, their behaviour, the nature of humans as a collective?

Alternative: The human thinks they’re thought of as the monster — the real monster is behind them (figuratively or literally).

Monday 24th May 2021 — The Dragon

A dragon is a mythical creature, often large and scaly, with variations found the world over.

Is your dragon extremely big, or very small? Is it indeed scaly, or does it appear so? Is it some form of sea serpent, or does it fly? Does it have wings, fins, a tail, teeth? Does it have very powerful senses, or different ones entirely to what one might expect? Does it have a mouth, eyes, a tongue, ears? Does it breathe fire or ice, have gills? Does it have some other supernatural power — telepathy, telekinesis, affect the weather or the tide?

What does your dragon eat? Does it eat meat, vegetables? Does it feed off of magic?

Does your dragon hoard anything — gold, jewels, young people out for a wander? Livestock? Something else entirely?

Alternate: An ancient dungeon, temple, or some other monument, is marked by a huge statue of a dragon. Something else inhabits it.

Tuesday 25th May 2021 — The Monster Dies

It’s the end of the story — or perhaps the beginning.

The monster dies.

Alternate: The monster dies… but only for a while.

Wednesday 26th May 2021 — The Hive-Mind

The monsters in this one are multiple.

They share a hive-mind, whether that hive-mind is created by pheromones, by fungus or infection or disease, by magic, by telepathy, by technology, or something else entirely. How many beings are part of this collective? Do they exist in conjunction with one another, and move as a swarm or a hive? Do they synchronise their movements, and work together toward a common goal? Can they work independently, or only as a group?

Can others be inducted into this hive-mind, willingly or otherwise? Is this painful or uncomfortable? Does it wipe away what experiences came before?

If a member of the hive-mind travels far away, do they remain connected to the whole? How is this hive-mind used, when beings work independently? Can it be sensed or its effects be noticed by outsiders? What is its everyday function?

Alternative: A being once a member of a hive-mind or a collective is severed from it, and now alone. Are they grieving? Do they feel free? Are tasks suddenly more difficult or easy for them? How do they feel?

Thursday 27th May 2021 — The Fae

The fae are supernatural beings or spirits found in a variety of folklore.

The fae are often associated with woodland, bodies of water, bogland, or other particular areas, but there are variations on variations of different fae legend: elves, brownies, merfolk, y tylwyth teg, the bean sidhe, selkies, gnomes, kobolds, leprechauns, nymphs, pixies…

In a lot of modern fantasy, the fae are associated with rigidity around law and rules, certain contracts, and many superstitions are associated with fae or fae-like beings, where one offends them at one’s peril.

What makes the fae monstrous? What makes them frightening and an object of horror for others? What rules do they follow and expect others to follow? What superstitions are associated with them?

Alternate: The fae are introduced to pop culture depictions of fairies. What is their response?

Friday 28th May 2021 — The Monster Extinct

The monster has been extinct for thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands, and based off of the evidence of them — stories, fossils, remains, old art, people are trying to back-engineer what they were like, what they looked like, how they communicated.

How accurate are they? How off?

Alternate: The monster doesn’t exist yet, or is a long way off, but has been told about in prophecy, or glimpsed in visions of the future. Are these glimpses accurate to the truth? Do they tell the whole story?

Saturday 29th May 2021 — Cultural Differences

What does cultural exchange look like between monster and human, or between two monstrous cultures?

How do these distinct cultures affect one another or interact? Are there large cultural differences between the monstrous cultures and the human ones? Are there any moral, ethical, aesthetic, economic, political, legal, or other cultural aspects that are very much at odds between some cultures and the others?

For example, do the human and monstrous cultures both have money? Do they treat money as of the same importance? Do they rank things in the same orders of importance? Do they have similar customs around politeness, greeting, language? Does each culture respect the others, or do they consider themselves superior or inferior?

Alternate: A human has never had much experience of the culture they were born of — they only know the monstrous culture they were raised by and into. What does that look like?

Sunday 30th 2021 — The Minotaur

It’s my birthday and the minotaur is my absolute favourite, so! Minotaurs!

The classical minotaur was the son of Pasiphaë and the unwilling stepson of King Minos of Knossos: born with the body of a man and the head and tail of a bull, he was declared monstrous and trapped within the labyrinthine maze beneath the great palaces of Knossos, until the hero Theseus came to slay him dead.

Today, the minotaur is the name for any half-bull half-human delight, tragic or otherwise.

Alternate: You needn’t limit yourself to a half-bull half-human if you feel the need to abandon literal perfection — go for the drider, perhaps, a half-human half-spider, return to the merfolk of several prompts above, and go half-human, half-fish, the satyr, half-goat half-human.

Whatever it is, make it half-human, half-something else, and then decide:

Is your monster cursed? Were they made this way, were they born this way? Are they happy? Are they the same as their family members, or are they different? If they are the latter, are they loved and accepted, or made an exile?

What are the benefits and negatives to their physical appearance and to their biology? Are there any aspects that might be unexpected?

Are they viewed by people in general as frightening, intimidating, unusual, strange, incredibly sexy? Are they treated as a monster?

Monday 31st May 2021 — Happily Ever After

The monster lives happily ever after…

What does that look like?

Alternate: Or, your monster has a tragic ending — because you’re the monster, apparently! 😒😭

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Thanks so much for considering taking part in the #MonstrousMayChallenge!

If you want to do any of the above prompts, or if you want to do them all, but you’re not a writer or an artist, or you are but you’re not always in the mood for art, here’s a list of alternate activities you can do to tick off the prompts!

Do some worldbuilding, analysis, meta, or discussion of common tropes within or related to the prompt

Shitpost or make jokes or memes about or related to the prompt

Do some aesthetic or graphic posts

Watch movies or TV episodes, read comics, or consume other media, related to the prompts

Make rec lists for other people of movies or TV episodes or books (or other media!) related to the prompts

Comment on and show some love for other prompt fills in the #MonsterMayChallenge tag! Share your favourite work and support fellow creators!

I’m on Twitter, and will be posting about the challenge throughout, but I also write other short stories and books!

Check out my Patreon, my stories on Medium, my books for sale, and my WorldAnvil — and if you would like to, feel free to leave a tip!

#as defined by dictionary #monstrousmaychallenge #monsters #writing prompt #writing challenge #rb to signal boost!

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isa-ghost · 3 years

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JSE Renaissance Week - Day 4

Day 4 (June 28th): Artist’s/Writer’s day. Do you have favorite pieces of fanart, an edit, or a fic that you or someone else has created? Reblog that sh*t with a comment saying how much you love it– it’ll probably make someone’s day! Bonus points if you create something for this. Extra bonus points if it’s a collaboration with another community member!

BOLD OF YOU ALL TO ASSUME I HAVE ANY EGO ART I’VE CREATED THAT I STILL FEEL OKAY POSTING. I’VE IMPROVED SINCE THEN AND IT IS NASTY. EGO ART COMING MAYBE EVENTUALLY.

YEAH THAT’S RIGHT I USED TO MAKE EGO ART. ONLY OG FOLLOWERS WILL REMEMBER THAT SHIT. PLEASE DON’T GO LOOKING FOR IT, I DON’T LIKE MY OLD ART.

Until then I scream like a moron about my favorite creators, some of which have actually moved on from the JSEC but I love them anyway so they can fight me in a dark alley for having the audacity to love them.

*BIG GAY INHALE*

@turquoisemagpie. YOU ABSOLUTE TRADITIONAL ART WIZARD. MY GOD. Your art style has me head over heels all over again with every piece you post. You’re where like- 14 year old me wanted her art to be. You are so insanely talented, your style is amazing, your range is mindblowing, and I cherish the commission of my infamous Bunker Trouble Trio SO MUCH. It was my laptop’s wallpaper for probably over a year. If I hear your commissions are open, I will be HEAVILY considering coming back. I could write an entire post just gushing about how much I love your art. Always keep creating, even what you might think is your worst or less than your usual quality would more than likely be something I’m still working my way up to. You are the DEFINITION of goals. <3

@septic-dr-schneep. WHERE DO I START. Hyperfixation or no hyperfixation, your work ethic is INSANE. I can’t BELIEVE how much you crank out in one hour let alone one day. Even if that’s slowed since before my little Tumblr break, you still blow my mind. I feel drained of creative juices just managing out one long piece for my OCs! Keeping track of a whole series of blurbs, defining canon and not within those, and coming up with a coherent story through each blurb, BASED OFF REQUEST PROMPTS FROM RANDOM PEOPLE? That’s AMAZING. I admire that passion you have so much, and even your breaks and burnouts don’t stop you. I LOVE that!

@lum1natriix. GOD where do I start with your gifs. JSE or other content, they are STUNNING. They’re such smoothly moving, high quality. You put so much work into them and it SHOWS, and I don’t even know where you would Start with making one, it’s always sounded like a Big Process, but your finished products look so awesome! No matter what you make gifs (or edits) of nowadays, I still adore your work. :)

@huffletrax. YOUR ART STYLE IS ADORABLE. It’s so squishy and fun and your coloring is IMMACULATE. And I love that despite your cute, round style, you still really pull off those angsty doodles you make occasionally. >:D You have a range and I’ve loved watching your improvement from the time I was new on Tumblr up to now. Keep going!!

@huffle-dork. I hope this doesn’t count as a mass post because BOY YOU DESERVE SOME APPRECIATION. You have crazy talent, both in your characters AND BACKGROUNDS. MY GOD DUDE, YOUR BACKGROUNDS. Even the ones that are just maybe a swoosh of colors look BEAUTIFUL. Dare I say they’re print worthy all on their own! I love the way you color things, and your style has such range too! Sometimes I can see similarities in my art to yours, and that’s been such a helpful way of keeping my motivation to keep improving up. I admire your art so much, and I love your Subnautica Egos series. <3

@d-structive. GOALS. JUST- GOALS. AGH. I love your style range so much! Your usual squareish stuff, your chibi stuff, your silly shitpost style (dare I callback to the buff ballerina Jameson,,,). All of it!! There’s just something so fun and fluid about it, yet its so square and neatly sharp at the same time! You balance those sorts of elements so well in your art, and I really love your ego designs too. <3 You probably have one of the most easily identifiable Marvin designs in the community, and he’s a little sneaky bastard man. >:D

@spunketpunk. BRUH DO I EVEN NEED TO SAY ANYTHING CAUSE LIKE. WOW. Your COLORING. Your art POPS and its so fucking cool. I love neon and saturated colors and its so rare to find artists who do (at least in my experience) and that’s something that seems like a huge part of your medium and I LOVE THAT. It makes your art insanely unique, and I love the aesthetic of those colors combined with your usually sketchy, messy lineart. Just- *chef’s kiss.* Your originality is fantastic, never lose that no matter what you explore. <3

@dumbthinmint. HEY WHAT’S UP LENGTHY SUPER DEVELOPED AU MAKER BUDDY?? LIKE HOLY SHIT DUDE. The lengths you go research and lore-wise for your AU? BRUUHHH. *slams hands on table* INSANE. And the way you make theory posts IN REFERENCE TO IT? That makes your theorizing stuff SO UNIQUE, I love it! Even when I feel like I can’t push my Ego AU lore with my friends too much further, you’re out here constantly dropping BOMBS of lore and honestly that makes my personal motivation with my own stuff soar right back up. I LOVE watching your AU unfold and progress, and your dedication to it is stunning. :D

There’s so many other artists, writers, editors & more I could tag but I don’t want this post getting 53826 miles long. :’D Just know that if any of you create things and I follow you, I think you’re doing great, I admire your stuff, and I hope you keep it up, no matter if its JSE related or not. <3

#jacksepticeye #jse renaissance week

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soranis-sunshadow · 4 years

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Hordak: The power-hungry Warmonger

I’ve had an interesting chat with someone on Twitter that prompted me to make this whole post. (I had a shitpost TLDR post that sort of sums this up concisely)

This is a very long post so brace yourselves, grab a coffee or some warm tea and lets start!

The premise was that Hordak is unambiguously evil and that even with Horde Prime out of the picture, he’d go back to conquering the planet.

And I quote “That's where you're wrong he would still be doing this, he was so absorbed into gaining more power and conquering etheria he would still doing Prime or no Prime” - his words, not mine.

I pointed out that there is no evidence to support that assumption in the show but someone else added: “ “no evidence of that in the show” did u forget when prime literally pointed out that he was conquering etheria in *his* name and secretly wished prime wouldn’t come??”

That line keeps popping up in a lot of the arguments against Hordak. The specific line is this:

The argument that they (people that hate Hordak) try and make is that Hordak wanted Etheria for himself to rule it as its absolute despot. To... “colonize” it so to speak.

What Hordak did was to wage war on the planet for decades in his misguided crusade to conquer it in Prime’s name. He hurt countless numbers of people and destroyed their homes. That is undeniable, those are his actions. Whatever extenuating circumstances he may have (have a post about that too :D ), he is guilty of being a warmonger and a despot and he created the Etherian Horde then lead it in his bid to conquer Etheria.

There! straight out of the horse’s mouth ^

I don’t agree with the term colonizer that twitter folks keep throwing around a lot. Bear with me for a bit please. I know that it is a term that is heavily loaded for a lot of people.

The argument I make against that specific term is this: In order to colonize a place, you need actual colonists to settle and slowly replace the indigenous population. Colonization has long term effects that can be seen centuries later. If I were to point out colonization in action in SPOP I would point out The First Ones. They are the ones that started settling on Etheria, evidence of their presence is throughout the place in the whole show in the settlement ruins and technology they left behind.

They bound the planet’s magic with their magitech so that the locals couldn’t access it. (Something Shadow Weaver was salty about) Only the First Ones descendants that were connected to the runestones I.E. the princesses have any access to it. The princesses still hold dominion over the planet’s magic millennia later. The natives are relatively powerless and the princesses’ subjects still. It’s worth pointing out that the princesses are despots as well.

That is what colonization does to a place. It takes the power away from the locals and gives it to the colonists so that the latter may thrive, have power over them and in time, replace the natives and erase their culture.

Hordak waged war but despite his background of being a brainwashed cultist he never stifled the individuality of his underlings, he never seemed to care much about them at all as long as they were helping further his goals.

If anything, he’s a weirdly unenthusiastic warlord, as @cruelfeline pointed out in one of her excellent posts.

To quote her post “ And of course now, post-season four, we know that he appears unenthusiastic in his role because he is. His goal was never to be the uncontested Lord of Etheria. He doesn’t gain any real self-respect or satisfaction from having people grovel before him. He was never interested in actually claiming that as his goal, his source of personal achievement and identity: it was all a means to a very sad, very painful end. He doesn’t want to be “Lord Hordak, Ruler of Etheria.” He wants to be “Hordak, second in command to Horde Prime.” He does it all because he needs his brother to accept/respect/love him. “

He is not a kind boss, or a good one by any measure but he doesn’t replicate Prime’s brain erasing technique for whatever reason nor is he a self-absorbed narcissist like his progenitor. The Etherian Horde is made of Etherians, Hordak and his robots.

And notice one thing? Most of those Horde members are not first one descendants. Strange huh?

So long as his underlings serve, they are rewarded. Even if they fail, if the reason for their failure is explained and they do no lie to him (to his face), they are given a chance to redeem themselves. After the defeat at the Battle of Bright Moon, Catra’s loss is rewarded because she had proven her competence.

If I were to liken his actions with anything in the real world, I’d be more inclined to call his war a Crusade in Horde Prime’s name. Prime was his God and Hordak was religiously motivated to do the horrible things he did because his god wanted them. That is what he has been indoctrinated to believe; Noelle said it, not me. He was a brainwashed religious zealot, not a colonizer. This is how he’d get back into his god’s good graces after being born a sinner (defective).

This is how he thought that he would prove that he was worthy of being by his god’s side despite him being disabled, he could still be useful to Prime, he could still serve. If he were useful, he thought that Horde Prime would not throw him away again to die.

Crusaders too believed that, by waging war on Muslims and the Orthodox Constantinople (the fourth crusade), they’d get into Heaven. They were violent and they were terrible but they believed they were doing good in God’s Name and that their actions were necessary. *they were not, and they were terrible*

Back to the “to my will” line. Taken out of the sentence, one could say that he’s conquered Etheria for his own ego and to satisfy his power-trip.

The whole sentence is this: “I’ve conquered this world for you, to show you that I am worthy, so that I may retake my place by your side. I have bent its people to my will.”

He explicitly states that the reason he did it was to serve Horde Prime.

It’s not the first time Hordak has said this. He said it to Catra before. He was not scared and trying to explain his actions to his master then. He was not begging for mercy and acceptance while on his knees.

And Catra understands him, she understands his need to try and prove himself to an authority figure and earn recognition. It’s what she had wanted from Shadow Weaver all along.

She sees herself in him after his little declaration. It’s why she is able to give him this speech in the same episode:

“Get.Over.IT! You don’t need Entrapta. You never did. You don’t need a Princess in your life telling you what to do. Look at what you’ve done without her. You’ve build an army. An empire! You and me, we don’t need anyone. Forget them all. No one matters, nothing matters but this mission. You want to prove yourself, prove your worth? Then do it! You and I are going to conquer Etheria. And then, they’ll all see!”

That is why this line of Catra’s in season 4 finally motivates him to quit moping after Entrapta and actually get some proper conquering done.

He even shows a good tactical understanding on how to wage a war of attrition, a war he could eventually win due to the replaceable nature of his robots, unlike rebellion soldiers.

Without DT’s interference and without the needless pushing their soldiers over their limits (causing mass desertions under Catra’s command), Hordak would have eventually won. Slow and steady would have won him the race but Catra wanted faster results.

This is his motivation, the same as Catra’s: to prove his worth. To seek validation and acceptance from a higher authority figure, his master, maker and literal god.

Catra proves herself a kindred soul, she understands his need for validation and his feelings of worthlessness, the harrowing self-hatred both of them endure, and together they amplify their worst tendencies. They go both into a negative spiral in season 4 and yet, they both provide a strange companionship to each other. They form a bond based on their mutual understanding. He even includes her in Horde Prime’s theoretical acknowledgement:

If he had actually wanted to conquer Etheria for himself and rule it, staying in Despondos away from Horde Prime would have given him the perfect opportunity to do so. He’s actually remarkably competent at conquering when he does it himself instead of relegating it to his mooks.

Sea elf village: 10 out of 10 would conquer again XD

What does he do instead? At first he looks for the portal events that appear naturally on the planet’s surface thinking that Horde Prime would come for him (that’s how he found baby Adora - he didn’t steal her. Light Hope lied about that trying to manipulate Adora).

When he becomes aware that Prime might not be able to come for him because of the planet being in a different dimension, he spends most of his time locked away in his sanctum working on a portal device that is supposed to reunite him with Horde Prime.

Why would he do any of that instead of staying on the planet and ruling it for himself if that was his motivation? It makes absolutely no sense for him to do any of that if being the sole ruler of the planet was his intent.

Another line that was brought up was this one:

The time that Prime is referring to is Hordak’s time spent with Entrapta. That’s why the shot lingers on the place her Crystal used to be. The crystal that had LUVD written on in. The scene is being quite specific in implying that this is the time that Horde Prime speaks of:

He is sad to go and leave her. When she mentions that they keep working on it ‘till it’s perfect, he smiles at her in agreement.

That is the only time Hordak even lets himself consider a life without Horde Prime and it doesn’t last long. Once Catra lies to him, the prospect of a life on Etheria with Entrapta is no longer possible. Her message about imperfections being beautiful and of him being intrinsically worthy of life, even without Prime is painted as a deception. Catra convinced him that Entrapta had deceived and used him, that he had been duped all along.

The only path left to him, as far as he knows, is back to his master.

Neither of those lines are in-show irrefutable evidence of his intention to rule the world. One would argue that Horde Prime punished him for his intentions to rule a world by himslef. To that I respond with this:

This is the crime that Horde Prime punished him for: Hordak had dared to become something other than a mindless, indoctrinated, slave; he had asserted his own will and individuality in whatever small way by becoming a person and taking a name.

So Horde Prime nipped in the bud.

If his clones were ever to assert any individuality, will or preference, if they ever stopped serving with blind devotion at a crucial point, they could become a threat to him.

He was right of course:

Hordak shooting Horde Prime whilst the latter was concentrated on hacking The Heart of Etheria was crucial in distracting him from this:

Hordak’s little defiance may have been short lived, since Horde Prime has such disturbing power over his clones and immediately possessed him, but that little distraction was enough to buy precious time and to force Horde Prime to the planet’s surface where Adora could get to him. If he had been defeated whilst in orbit, Prime could just have jumped in the body of any other clone throughout the universe.

Hordak’s actions aided in Prime’s definitive demise.

Another argument against Hordak is his last declaration to Horde Prime.

Hordak’s speech to Prime is not an affirmation of him going back to conquering Etheria. It’s Hordak telling Horde Prime that he’s a person and he has a right to be one, to have his own will.

- You created me to serve you and your will, but I have a right to be more than that.

- I am a person, an individual, I have a name, I am not just a mindless tool. I have lived things in your absence.

- I have experienced unconditional acceptance and affection.

- I am a person and I deserve to have my own thoughts, feelings and my own free will. I defy yours. You are not my master any more.

Nowhere in his speech is it suggested that he’ll go back to conquering. He just wants to be free of Horde Prime. Entrapta is alive and the alternative to a life in servitude to Prime is available again. He chose her over his own God. That is the only choice he made. Not to go back to conquest or kick puppies and orphans. He chose to be in her presence rather than His.

Sadly, he is only free of Horde Prime 3 minutes before the show ends. Any apology for his actions in Prime’s name made in those last 3 minutes would have been half assed and unsatisfying. He has a lot of reparations to make as redemption for his actions. Regardless of the fact that he was indoctrinated, literally programmed since his creation and that is the reason why he did what he did, people were hurt, homes were destroyed and he has to redeem himself for that and make long term reparations. This couldn’t have been believably addressed in the time left. The show-runner Noelle mentioned in one of the Podcasts that he does reparations after the show. I wish that had been part of the series and not an observation after it. Perhaps, seeing that would have quelled some of the vitriol aimed at him. (and at his “stans”- real people getting hate and bullying for the crimes committed against fictional Etherians)

The message of this show is forgiveness, acceptance and redemption. The characters are complex and they all have their respective shades of gray in their characterization (except Horde Prime who is basically Nyarlathotep). I don’t understand why the fandom is so divisive and so intent on pitting them against each other and villainizing one or the other in an attempt to make their own favorite character more morally superior. Can’t we appreciate all of them and the parts they had to play in the story?

Whew! That was one long essay. I am as always, open to discussion on the topic so long as civility is maintained. Have a nice day!

@garnet-xx-rose gets credit for helping me put my thoughts in order and for adding interesting points to the argument. Thank you Garnet!

#Hordak #Horde Prime #Catra #spop discourse #longwinded essays #This was one of the longest yet

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ironmandeficiency · 4 years

Text

that’s not how those work

pairing: fives / reader

word count: 4124

summary: you’re a witch on an outer-rim planet that gifts fives with protection crystals to keep him safe when he leaves. you forgot to tell him how protection crystals work.

warnings: implied smut, shenanigans

a/n: shitpost prompt # 13, everyone!! i’m extremely excited to write this one bc i can’t get over the idea of just chucking a big ass hunk of rose quartz at a problem and making it just, ya know, stop being a problem. this quickly became a favorite of mine and i hope y’all enjoy my first attempt at writing for fives.

the battle was rough, as all battles seemed to be, but tonight the sweet taste of victory permeated through your village. the chief opened your home to your saviors, the men with almost identical faces, and dared their jedi to tell them no when a celebration was set to be held in their honor.

there was drinking and singing and dancing unlike anything you’d ever seen, every sensation only intensified by the mirth of the soldiers. it thrummed deep in your veins and set itself to the drumming of your heartbeat. you were never going to feel this euphoria again, so you believed it highly justified that your eyes lingered on the trooper that had saved you from a blaster shot to the chest earlier that day.

you’d met him while the defense strategies were still being planned, the day the republic forces arrived. his smile blazed hotter than the sun that burned the skin of the men in the harvest fields. he had eyes that were rich and held life like the fertile soil your people grew your food in. and his laugh? you’d never heard any song as sweet.

thoughts of him have had you enraptured since day one. he told you his name was fives, pointing to the number etched onto his golden skin with a smile, and the rest was history. every waking moment that wasn’t spent with everyday responsibilities was spent with each other. you swapped stories about your families and when he shared details of his dashing exploits as a soldier, you told him of the spells you cast and their sometimes ridiculous outcomes.

magic was never a circus trick to you. you took it seriously and it gave you a sense of pride as the strongest in the village. but the way his eyes gleamed with such joy at the idea of seeing real magic, how could you say no? so you found an unsuspecting newt and changed the pattern of its spots. the grin on fives’s face while you arranged them into a five to match his temple was one you’d never forget.

these memories and more were floating through your mind as you approached where he sat by one of the many bonfires built to accommodate for the several hundred guests. he was chatting with his brothers but the moment he spotted you, he forgot what he was supposed to be saying.

you had to have him under a spell, he reasoned. there was no way just looking at someone would take his words from him that efficiently, but alas. he paused halfway through his story and now had two pairs of eyes looking over him worriedly.

they followed his line of sight and their worry dissipated as quickly as it appeared. it was just you, the woman he was just talking about, the woman he hasn’t quit talking about since the first day they set foot on your planet. jesse and kix hadn’t met you in the tenday that the five-oh-first has been stationed in your home but they might as well have known you forever with the way fives has been rambling on about you.

jesse wordlessly shoves fives off the log he was sitting on and barely hides the laugh when he sees you grin at the action. fives, on any other day, would have smacked his brother upside the head for a stunt like that. the only thing that saved jesse from his fate was the way you smiled at him and offered him your hand to help him up.

he took it gratefully and relished in the electricity that buzzed through him where your skin touched his. you began to walk with him, looping your arm through his so casually it was like you’d been doing this for decades instead of days. fives had no idea where you were leading him but he would have followed you anywhere.

the walk was comfortably silent. days had been spent pouring out stories; it was nice to just bask in his presence next to you without needing to fill it with tales of derring-do and fond memories of the dirt you walked in.

arriving at your home was a bit of a rush, if you were completely honest with yourself. normally the only reason people walked through your doors was to enlist your skills for one task or another, some menial and others dire. now, however, opening your front door felt so excitingly different with fives next to you, the starlight bouncing off him in a way that only served to deepen his eyes and smooth his skin. this visitor wasn’t here to ask something of you, not here to take from you; he was here to give, and you were going to give him everything you had in return.

the door was barely shut when your lips crashed to his and his hands found their rightful place on your hips, pulling you closer to him. he was floating away on a cloud of bliss; the fact he was in your home and holding you and being held by you had the arc trooper drifting far from reality. a soft gasp left his mouth as you worked to remove his armor without lifting a finger from where your hands cupped his face, thumb stroking the stubble of his face.

it wasn’t until you guided him to your bed that he spoke of the way you soothed him, the way you’d been able to chase the nightmares away without even trying. you offered your own confessions in return, admitting that your dreams have consisted of brown eyes and a sly grin ever since that first night, and that you’ve never met anyone as strong and loyal and comforting.

you both found solace in each other’s arms, in the way your bodies melded together with the familiarity of your own mind. there were no barriers between you and no definite point as to where the boundaries of your separate bodies were. it was nothing like you’d ever known, would never know again. love was what it was, and although it was doomed to be distant from the moment you licked eyes, you vowed to yourself as you chanted his name that you would do everything you could to protect your soldier.

when you awoke, fives had an arm wrapped around your waist, his face buried into your neck. his body was hot against yours and you would have been happy never leaving your bed if it meant that you’d get to be held like this forever. but there was work to be done if you wanted to keep him safe.

“fives,” you whispered, rolling to face him. his groan was almost adorable as he nuzzled his face into your neck in protest of your movement. “fives, i’ve got a gift for you but i have to get up to get it.” another groan emitted from his throat as he tightened his arms around you, mumbling something incoherent about not wanting you to leave.

unwrapping him from you by sheer force wouldn’t have any effect on him, and you weren’t one to use your magic so frivolously, so you relented and let him hold you for a while longer. nearly an hour had passed before he kissed your collarbone, leaving the bed on his own volition. you took advantage of his absence and walked to your altar.

precious stones were one of the most common ways for your people to show their feelings and intentions with one another. each stone carried a different meaning, and picking a stone based on color alone could get one into quite the sticky situation if they didn’t know the intentions behind it.

fives’s status as an arc trooper meant that he often found himself in the thickest areas of the fight, on the riskiest missions with the minimum amount of backup. this man needed protection, and lots of it, if you were to judge by the scars you memorized the night before. he did what needed to be done in a fight at risk of his own life and constantly had to make decisions that could cost lives if they were wrong.

his role required an unshakable confidence and although you didn’t doubt his skills for a second, a little help wouldn’t hurt. plus it would make you feel better, knowing that he carried pieces of you wherever he traveled in the galaxy.

he returned to the room just as you picked out the stones he needed, walking up to you and resting his chin on your shoulder. only a fool would think he wasn’t observing everything around him and analyzing it; the soft smile on your face as you leaned into his touch, the meticulous arrangement of the altar in front of him, the concentration on your face as you seemed to be moving the stones around to compensate for some being removed. there was a reason behind it, just as there was a reason for everything you did.

his answer was given moments later as you led him back to your bed. the first thought that went through his head was continuing from last night, but you mentioned a gift. were you giving him a stone from your personal collection?

you told him of the significance of gifting stones not long after you met him. being given a stone directly from someone’s altar was one of the strongest displays of care for another person. all the signs pointed to that being what you meant by “gift” but part of him was trying to keep from being hopeful.

moving your legs to sit criss-cross on the bed, you open your hands that contained three stones that you believed were best suited to protect fives once he left the safety of your bed. his eyes met yours in a silent question of you think i’m worthy of this gift? and it took considerable amounts of willpower to not show him how worthy he was right then and there, gift be damned.

“i know you’ll be leaving soon, and i know it’s selfish but i don’t want you to forget me during your travels. these will help keep you safe and guide you in making the best decisions you can.”

his hands wrap around the amethyst tower first, running his fingers along the smooth faces and absurdly sharp edges and point. he spends a moment admiring it before meeting your eyes, a question on his lips. “you said before that the meanings of the stones were just as important as who you give them to. what does this one mean?”

you smiled, knowing he’d remember the importance of your words despite the casual tone you used. “amethyst is known for its ability to protect against negative energies and awaken its owner’s higher consciousness. it can guide you into making wiser decisions without having your emotions overtake logic.”

he hums at that, inspecting the tower a bit more before carefully resting it on your bedside table. his eyes catch the swirls of the malachite and you notice, moving to hand it to him as you answer the question you know is waiting on the tip of his tongue.

“this is malachite. it’s widely seen providing protective luck, like keeping you from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. maker knows you need some of that.” you add the last bit as an afterthought and are thoroughly pleased at the laugh it brings from him. he follows the swirls and circle patterns as he turns the stone over in his hand, studying it to learn of the ways each part of it connects to each other. once he’s satisfied with his inspection, he sets it beside the amethyst.

“this last one is carnelian, the courage stone. it boosts the holder’s willpower. many say that it helps the holder trust their own judgement and find the confidence to do what’s right in the toughest situations.”

he doesn’t move for a long moment, which worries you. the stone is sitting in his palm and staring at him with unseen eyes.

fives can’t recall a time where he felt so cared for, so appreciated. it was clear that you had put extensive thought into the meanings, which didn’t surprise him in the least, but he was still trying to register that you did that for him. sitting there in front of him, that soft smile on your face that had him falling at your feet, it was clear that you expected nothing in return for your gift. but he still felt that he had to give something in return, to show you that he cared for you the same way you cared for him.

he left your bed speckled in lovebites and a vambrace lighter, but he was given so much more in exchange. he had your love and your protection, and that was enough for him.

weeks later he finds himself, alongside rex, jesse, and hardcase, captured by a separatist-aligned village. none of them could have told you how exactly they were captured so easily nor how they still weren’t free after three days.

they heard talk from their captors about a message sent to one of dooku’s goonies about having skywalker’s fist begging for mercy (a whole ass lie, rex hasn’t said a word to them since they were taken three days prior). soon these overheard tidbits involved a date of arrival for the people who would take them off the planet they were currently stationed on.

all four of them knew that if they left this planet, there was a large chance they wouldn’t be reuniting with the five-oh-first.

this was unacceptable and made fives desperate to break free. but how the hell was he supposed to do that?! he didn’t have anything that could cut through the ropes that bound him to his chair, and his ankles were tied to the legs of the chair so he couldn’t move his legs. the edges of his armor, if positioned in a certain manner and moved, possibly could have done something to help but it was in a convenient pile several feet away.

he shifts yet again, agitating the rope burn on his wrists from days of struggling, and hisses when he feels something pointy jab him in the thigh. in an unforeseen twist of fate, they had left his belt on. and attached to his belt was the leather pouch he kept his protection stones in.

he had an idea.

slowly but surely, he moved his fingers what little he could to grab at his kama and rotate his belt until his fingers met the leather pouch. he blindly untied the knot in the string keeping it closed and felt around for the amethyst tower.

“fives! what the kriff are you doing playin’ with your rocks?!”

“i’m gettin’ us outta here.”

twirling it in his fingers and hoping to the maker he doesn’t drop it, he begins to use the amethyst to saw through the rope. it’s long work and takes several minutes before the rope is thin enough for him to pull it apart from his wrists. it hurts like a bitch and he’s mildly concerned when he feels a damp spot in the rope. a sigh of relief escapes his lips when he regains movement in his arms, quickly bending down to free his legs and ankles.

“well kriff me with a z-6, it actually worked!”

“couldn’t you have thought about that, i don’t know, three days ago?!”

“knock it off jess, or i’ll leave your shebs here!” fives wasn’t going to leave him, everyone knew that, so the retort was taken with merely an eyeroll.

as the quartet gathered their armor and snuck out of the village, fives realized something: these protection crystals weren’t playing around.

a simple bout of surveillance, they said. they’re not going to have anyone posted at their “abandoned” outpost, they said. it’ll be in and out, they said.

they were a bunch of liars.

he was now -alongside echo and tup- running for his life through the most horribly laid-out building he’d ever been in with only vague recollections on how to get out through the darkness. the enemy voices seemed to be getting louder the farther they ran and it was infuriating. his lungs and legs told him that he was going his damndest but it still seemed like the enemy was getting the upper hand.

“the doors should be up ahead! but there’s one problem!” echo shouted over the chaos.

tup couldn’t believe his ears. “what could possibly be worse than this?!”

“even if we get to the doors, we’ll be shot before we can even open them!”

fives nodded in agreement as much as he could while in a mad sprint. that tiny detail did put a slight damper on their chances of escaping alive. but then again, echo was operating on the assumption that they had to stop to open the doors like a civilized person would. lucky for the three of them, fives could barely be considered civilized on his best days.

he brought a hand to his leather pouch and fished around for the malachite chunk with its intricate patterns and curious shape.

“what in the nine hells are you doing?! do you want to die here?!” tup shouted from beside him in frantic confusion. this was no time for fives to ogle his rock collection, they had to get out of here!

“echo! how far are we from the doors?!”

“a few hundred feet!”

“when we’re fifty feet out, turn on your lamp! i’ve got an idea!”

“this better not get us killed!”

fives would have turned on his own ages ago, but his had unfortunately been damaged on the way to the outpost (he tripped and hit his head on the trunk of one of the weirdest trees he’d ever seen, but if anyone asks he got punched). his feet pounded on the ground to the beat of his racing heart, hand loaded with what was about to be his and his brother’s saving grace.

his eyes were peeled, waiting for the moment echo’s headlamp flickered on and illuminated the doorway to the outside world. it felt like forever in those brief moments, but the moment the light flickered on it was like only seconds earlier he had fumbled for the stone.

it was divine intervention, or maybe it was the protective luck of the green stone he held in his hand. hell, it could have been some sort of protection you had put on him and the stone without him knowing. when he spotted the button that would guarantee his brothers’ safety and lobbed his malachite chunk at it, there was still part of him that doubted it would work.

but he heard a satisfying clink and a clatter, then saw the beginnings of a sunrise peek through the opening doors. echo nor tup could believe what just happened despite it happening right in front of his eyes. the sight of freedom, the closest to a guarantee for another day they’d had in hours, seemed to increase their already breakneck pace.

fives had no idea how it happened, but by some sheer force of luck (thanks malachite) he ended up kicking his stone ahead of them when they ran outside. gods he would have mourned his malachite if he had left it behind, but thankfully he didn’t have to. with the grace his training had blessed him with, he swooped down with one hand and snatched the stone from the ground without breaking his pace.

they didn’t stop running until they were on the outskirts of where they had set up camp, the trio collapsing to their knees when they heard familiar voices calling out their arrival. there was no telling how much longer they could have sprinted from that base high off the adrenaline of near death and awed disbelief, but the moment they felt the hands of brothers lifting them from the ground they were out like lights.

the first thing he registered was the near blinding pain in nearly every muscle of his body. everything was throbbing and tense, and oh how he could use a massage right about now. the second thing he noticed was the absence of his malachite in his fist. did he imagine picking it back up after opening the doors? was he going to have to explain to you how he lost one of your gifts the next time he saw you? he couldn’t think over an incessant beeping he couldn’t identify and-

“fives?... fives! hey, you’re okay, vod.” kix’s voice and comforting hand were soon bringing him back down.

“my malachite! where is it?!”

kix gave him a funny look about the fact the first thing he asks about is a rock, but obliges his brother’s question. “if you’re talking about the green one, it’s right here. looks like it got a little chip in it, though.” the relief on fives’s face perplexed the medic who was unsure as to how he would have chipped it in the first place when he was supposed to be in the middle of an op. he handed the rock to fives who familiarized himself once again with the shape of it, as if it were an old friend he was reuniting with after lost time.

“speaking of, what even happened out there? the last thing we hear from you is that the outpost was flooded with enemy forces, then next thing we know you’re all sprinting like mad men!”

“he’s a karking genius, that’s what!”

echo’s awake now and apparently cursing? as if that’s a thing he does regularly? and calling fives a genius? who was this man and what did he do with his batchmate?

without anyone egging him on, echo continues. “we’re runnin’ for our lives through th’ base, in near complete darkness, and i don’t think we’re gonna get out alive! we can’t get to the doors an’ stoppin’ to open ‘em would have gotten at least one of us shot, but then this bastard! this complete and utter bastard decides to throw one’a his rocks from his girlfriend at the button! and it works! the doors opened and we didn’t stop runnin’ till we got here!”

fives looked between kix and echo and back at kix again. “what kind of drugs did you give him?” kix’s reply was teetering between amusement and mild concern. “none, but i think he’ll be fine after some more sleep and food.”

“what’s this i hear about fives being a bastard?”

kix laughs at rex’s jab before moving to check on others that were in the medbay, knowing that he was subtly hinting that he wanted to speak to fives about the mission.

“just talked to tup,” rex began, taking a seat at the foot of fives’s cot. “he said that you wouldn’t have gotten out if it weren’t for your quick thinking but clocked out before i could get much more.”

fives chuckled at the image of tup falling asleep mid-sentence for a moment before rex continued. “based on what little he said, there was no way you were getting out of there. how did you do it?”

as he heard the story, rex was awed. this kind of thinking, the seat-of-your-pants strategies that saved the day when least expected to, it was exactly why he promoted him to arc trooper. he couldn’t help but feel a little proud. there was just one more question that’s been nagging at him since they were taken prisoner by the seppie civilians, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “what’s your deal with rocks these days?”

the grin that overtook the arc’s face was that of a lovesick loth-wolf pup.“i was given these protection crystals by a witch.” oh yes, fives’s cyare. rex remembers her well. “she didn’t tell me how to use them, but i seem to be getting the hang of it.”

before rex could give a reply, a loud bark of laughter was heard across the medbay.

“ey, what’s so funny?!”

“the way you’ve been using those crystals! that’s not how they work!” kix was now doubled over, holding his sides as if they were literally splitting. “oh stars, this shit’s priceless!”

“hey, kark it, asshole! it worked!” fives, in a brilliant moment of stupidity, decided to throw his malachite at the hysterical medic.

“oh, kriff! what was that for?!”

fives sat up and chuckled, whispering a humorous it worked! before kix was storming back to him, malachite in hand. oh shit, he was going to regret hitting kix with his rock later today, he just knew it.

#star wars reader insert #star wars fanfic #star wars imagines #star wars the clone wars #fives x reader #fives star performance #arc trooper fives #arc trooper fives x reader #ct-5555 #arc-5555 #swtcw #shitpost fics #shitpost writing prompts #shitpost fic masterlist #fives #fives imagine #arc trooper fives imagine

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supernaturalist1234 · 3 years

Text

This is honestly just me ranting/figuring things out, but I’m on mobile so I can’t add a cut, sorry for having to scroll...

I want to attempt drawing comics again, because I do actually enjoy figuring out spacing and storytelling and stuff, but I have no ideas. Zip, zero, none. So like. I have a few options.

I could use prompts, or incorrect quotes, and just get back in the flow and hopefully get some inspiration. Pros: I could do it in one update, I won’t have to do much thinking, and they’re funny. Cons: not really much storytelling, I don’t get to think about spacing, and part of the deal would be forcing myself to not procrastinate and doing a one shot doesn’t do that.

I could do a redraw, but that has the same issues as above and is even less on the spacing scale since it’s right there.

I could draw a scene from fanfic I like. Pros: I get to show support and appreciation for an author I like, I get to draw out how I imagine the scene in my head, depending on the fic it could be super fun to draw the characters in a different way, and if I like how it turns out I can do another scene. Cons: Even though as a fanfic writer I would probably die if someone drew fanart (no matter what or how it looked), and lots of people feel the same, I still have that anxiety that they won’t like it or I’ll draw it differently than they meant. That’s it that’s the cons. Honestly the author finding it is a fear on its own, which is very conflicting since at the same time I would want them to be aware it exists in case they don’t want it to.

I could make something up as I go, or pick something old from my drafts. Pros: I’d get to draw it however I want(within reason), and I could space it out over a couple of updates and force myself to keep to a consistent schedule. Cons: I may never get an idea and if it doesn’t turn out exactly as I imagined I’d probably be sad and give up which defeats the purpose.

I could wait for an original idea. Pros: almost none of the cons above. Cons: might never happen if I’m honest.

Anyways this has been me avoiding life with a strange sh*tpost that somehow also isn’t a shitpost

#shitpost #for later #the process by which bread toasts ups called the Maillard reaction #sonic the hedgehogs full name is Ogilvie Maurice Hedgehog #cards against humanity bought an island to preserve wildlife #it’s called Hawaii 2 #there are the fun facts of the day #oh also #the television was actually invented only two years after sliced bread #so it probably was the best thing since sliced bread #anyways logan is amazing #just gonna say that again #cause i have to appreciate logan

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lastsonlost · 4 years

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So I was half-right.

Instead of misogyny it's Nazis because of course it is.

If you spend a lot of time in certain Extremely Online corners of the internet ecosystem, you’ve likely stumbled onto #NoNutNovember, or just #NNN for short. An annual challenge encouraging men to refrain from masturbating (or even, for many, having any sex) for the month, No Nut November was initially created as a parody of internet-borne phenomena such as the Ice Bucket Challenge or Movember, skewering the silliness of viral internet challenges along with the more extreme claims made by proponents of NoFap, an anti-porn subreddit with half a million members. (According to one of the moderators of the NoNutNovember subreddit, /u/yeeval, the subreddit has no connection to NoFap, though the two are often conflated.)

For most participants, the challenge is essentially an excuse to shitpost, as well as tweet memes skewering some of the more exaggerated purported benefits of abstaining from masturbation. But there are many who take it seriously, with at least 52,000 people as of this writing diligently documenting their day-by-day progress (and setbacks) on the subreddit r/NoNutNovember. Per /u/yeeval, “I’d say 90% of the posts are from people actively participating and also there’s the occasional fallen member who stays on the subreddit for the community and laughs.”

On its surface, No Nut November is a fairly innocuous challenge: while it may seem silly to abstain from masturbation for virtually no reason, some of the memes are pretty funny, and a month of abstinence (whether it be from sex or masturbation) certainly isn’t going to kill anyone. u/yeeval says the goal isn’t to demonize porn or masturbation per se, but to prompt men to examine their own masturbation habits and whether or not they’re healthy. “In my opinion, most originally participate in NNN for the meme aspect of the challenge but as the days go on people begin to see how big their porn or masturbation dependency is,” he says.

"Neither of those things are bad or immoral in themselves but just like any outlet can become excessive in times of depression and loneliness.” Yet it would be naive to ignore that there’s significant overlap between the general anti-porn ideology behind NoFap — and, to a degree, No Nut November — and that of the far right, which has increasingly coopted the movement. (NoFap’s website states that, with the exception of a small number of users who may abstain for religious or moral reasons, they do not have an anti-masturbation stance.)

Because the challenge is associated with abstaining from porn, some people associated with the movement have taken the extra step of harassing adult performers on social media, giving it an additional layer of troubling implications. “In the past [No Nut November] has always been like, ‘Oh, look at this ridiculous thing some people are participating in,'” says adult performer and director Casey Calvert. “This year, people [in the industry] are talking about, ‘Oh, actually this is connected to the far right and maybe we shouldn’t just be saying hahaha, No Nut November.'”

A new meme brings these implications into sharp relief. Coomer is a reference to a meme of an unkempt, skeezy-looking bearded man in a white tank top with vaguely Semitic features, accompanied by descriptive text like “doesn’t even know anything about politics,” “extremely aesthetic right arm (huge muscle),” and “has never heard of NoFap"

It’s been circulating on 4chan for the past year, but Alex Hawkins, the vice president of the porn tube site xHamster, says he started seeing it in the replies on his company’s Twitter feed back in September, when presidential candidate Andrew Yang tweeted about limiting access to pornography. At first, “we didn’t really know what it meant and thought it was funny,” he tells Rolling Stone. Then, in late October, the coomer resurfaced thanks to a Twitter campaign led by a user named TeapotLad, in which users vowed to change their avatars to the coomer should they fail No Nut November. PewDiePie shouted out the campaign in a recent YouTube video, as did far-right YouTuber Paul Joseph Watson, who is perhaps best known for being one of the many extremist figures, including Milo Yiannopolous and Alex Jones, to be banned from Facebook. “No Nut November and the Coomer meme represent a deeper meaning,” he said in a tweet. “Porn is evil. It literally re-wires your brain and causes erectile dysfunction. Take the pledge. Don’t be a Coomer.”

The term has also been used in the context of “OK coomer,” a play on the “OK boomer” meme, in response to tweets critical of No Nut November or masturbation abstinence in general. “It’s positioned as this epic battle between the weak beta masturbators and the strong, alpha NoFappers,” says Hawkins.

Like most memes, “coomer” carries with it more than a tinge of irony, and it’s not always easy to determine whether it’s being used flippantly or to actually deride men who masturbate. But the implication is clear: masturbating is an urge that should be resisted at all costs. David Ley, PhD, a clinical psychologist and sex therapist who studies pornography and mental health, saw the meme after he tweeted his criticism of No Nut November, referring to it as “a creepy little smorgasbord of insecurity-driven hate with anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia all rolled up in one,” he tells Rolling Stone. (Ley has partnered with the cam website Stripchat to do AMAs about sexual health, and plans to appear in one debunking some of the myths associated with No Nut November.)

The idea that there are significant health benefits from abstaining from masturbation is partially based on the (primarily internet-propagated) theory that semen retention is linked to an increase in testosterone and male virility, an idea that has been widely debunked. For the most part, however, the idea that masturbation is somehow feminizing is “rooted in extremely antiquated ideas of masculinity,” many of which are also promoted by far-right groups, says Ley. The Proud Boys, for instance, a far-right extremist group known for its propensity toward violence, has long advocated for its members to abstain from masturbation on the grounds that it boosts testosterone and makes them more appealing to women; indeed, founder Gavin McInnes gave a shoutout to NoFap in a 2015 article for the far-right publication Taki’s Magazine. (The organizers of NoFap have strongly refuted any connection to the Proud Boys.)

An even more extremist version of this far-right anti-masturbation philosophy has been promoted by David Duke, the former head of the Ku Klux Klan, who has propagated the conspiracy theory that Jews dominate the porn industry and use pornography as a way to control white men. On far-right threads on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, this sentiment is fairly widespread. “Jews not only control most of the pornography industry, they also rely on the goyim to maintain a routine of ejaculation in order to stay docile and non-violent,” one comment reads. Another shared a viral Pornhub tweet poking fun at viewers who’d failed No Nut November, writing, “the Jew mocks you as they poison the minds of millions.” (Pornhub is owned by the Canadian company MindGeek, the CEO of which, Feras Antoon, does not appear to be Jewish, even though there are numerous 4chan /pol/ threads speculating as such.)

This anti -Semitism is also often accompanied by healthy doses of homophobia and racism as well: on these threads, you’ll frequently see users deriding men who masturbate to heterosexual porn, on the grounds that being aroused by another man’s penis makes you gay (even if said penis is depicted going into a vagina). And because mainstream porn often features white women paired with black men, there’s also a virulently racist element to much of this discourse, such as the suggestion that interracial porn is intended to steer white women away from procreating with white men and toward men of color.

The irony of this strain of the anti-masturbation movement is that, while it’s ostensibly intended to fight the larger porn industry’s attempts to brainwash and emasculate white men, anti-masturbation ideology has historically been used as a tool by fascist figures to gain social control. Cultural stigma associated with masturbation, combined with the fact that pretty much everyone masturbates, invariably leads to a lot of men “developing a lot of internal shame,” says Ley. “And that makes them open to manipulation and social control.” As an example, he cited the National Socialist Party in 1930s Germany, which strongly discouraged Hitler Youth members from engaging in masturbation. Because anti-porn and anti-masturbation movements tend to be comprised of young heterosexual males, they could potentially be viewed by some on the far right as ideal recruitment grounds. The fact that something like No Nut November appears to be a joke on its face “appears to serve as this interesting front door recruiting kind of strategy to bring folks into this deeper, much more insidious and shaming movement,” says Ley.

Of course, it goes without saying that not everyone who participates in No Nut November or NoFap is a white supremacist or religious fundamentalist, and that the founders of these groups explicitly reject any suggestions of overlap between the two communities. u/yeeval says he has seen no hint of any anti-Semitic or misogynistic commentary on the subreddit, chalking any suggestions of Jewish porn conspiracy theories to “someone trying to make a bad / overtly offensive joke.” “NoNutNovember isn’t a political movement. We are not anti-porn. We are not anti-woman. We are not anti-masturbation or anti-sex,” he says. “In its most simple form NoNutNovember just a fun internet challenge that has grown in popularity due to many memes that circulate the internet…However, I also think that the reason that it has become so widespread is that it has given many the opportunity to look within themselves and realize that they might be relying on masturbation and porn for comfort.”

The coomer meme is also, at least inherently, apolitical, says Alice Vaughn, host of Two Girls One Mic, a podcast about porn tropes. “The concept surrounding ‘Coomer’ is neither right nor left politically. The urge to shame those with higher sex drives is nothing new, and is a subject many are uncomfortable with, especially adolescents (which is predominately 4Chan’s user base),” she says. But the rise of “coomer,” with its distinctly conservative implications about male sexuality, would seem to refute that the anti-masturbation movement is totally innocent or entirely intended in jest. The fact that it’s often used in the context of “OK coomer,” a play on a meme intended to skewer boomers’ criticism of Gen Z, also indicates that this is primarily a youth-driven phenomenon. When you consider how younger generations have typically adopted a more healthy, progressive view of sexuality than previous ones, this doesn’t make a lot of intuitive sense — but it actually tracks with current data, which indicates that younger generations are having less sex, Ley says.

Usually, this phenomenon is attributed to male millennials and zoomers (members of Gen Z) spending more time watching porn, and to an extent this may be true; when it comes to determining the effects of pornography viewing on male sex lives, research is somewhat mixed. But it’s also just as likely that sociocultural factors like economic unrest and fear-mongering abstinence-only education have also played a role in these declining sexual activity rates. “We’ve spent decades telling these young kids be afraid of sex, and that only hereto monogamous sex is OK and moral,” says Ley. “Now all of a sudden they are really conflicted about sex and their own sexuality.”

That said, there’s also an awful lot of men who are not participating in No Nut November in earnest, and many more who aren’t participating at all. In an email to Rolling Stone, Pornhub vice president Corey Price said that traffic is virtually unaffected by No Nut November, and few of the adult performers Rolling Stone spoke with said that they hadn’t seen their engagement go down considerably during the month either. Considering that annual Pornhub traffic numbers are in the tens of billions, if there is indeed a wider porn conspiracy to sap men of their virility, that conspiracy appears to be working pretty well. But for those who are participating in the challenge, and may have stumbled along the way, Calvert has a comforting message: “I personally think No Nut November is very silly,” she says. “Not masturbating for a month does not make you a better man or a stronger man.”

............

Let me see if I got this straight.

Porn is evil

And not fapping makes you a racist homophobic Nazi

Did I... Did I fucking miss something?

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citrineghost · 5 years

Text

A Letter to WordPress

Dear WordPress,

Tumblr has been around for a good while now and many of us have been here since the beginning (or close to it). It’s become something of a comfort and a home base for many. You can understand then why it’s so terrifying and tension-setting when a new owner comes around.

This website has been through a lot of changes, very few of them good in recent years. I want to open up a dialogue from the user base about our feelings and desires surrounding this site, because to so many of us, not only its design and function, but its success and future are a big deal.

Obviously not all of the things I list below will be universal opinions, but I’ll try to outline some of the things I’ve seen the majority of users want. I’ll also throw in some things that are more personal, because I can’t claim to know everything the rest of the users want, but I can tell you where I see obvious problems.

First and foremost, here’s an obvious one. You can’t really go anywhere on Tumblr without knowing: we want the bots and the nazis gone. We need some kind of captcha system for every time someone wants to include a hyperlink in a post or response. Until the staff count gets higher, I would honestly suggest closing down the report system for everything but bots, nazis, and death threats/suicide bait.

Make NSFW content welcome again. Outside of porn bots, the pervasiveness of NSFW content is slim to none. As long as minors and those with ‘NSFW’ blacklisted aren’t seeing the NSFW content, there’s nothing wrong with it being here. A large number of the people posting NSFW content on here are artists who use this content to make a living on commissions. The ban has done nothing but make valuable members of the Tumblr community leave and take their art elsewhere. The focus should be cracking down on anyone who isn’t properly tagging NSFW content with ‘NSFW’. If the focus is put on that, the problem with NSFW content will be null.

Please keep Tumblr unintegrated with other social media. Most users will agree, the anonymity is such a huge part of what draws us to Tumblr. Other people only know what we tell them and it’s very appealing for our real life accounts (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) to be completely separate. When users want to share links to other accounts, they can do so easily with links on their blogs.

Replace ads with either, better, more sensible ads or members content. A large part of the ads on Tumblr make absolutely zero sense just by looking at them. Not to mention, they’re all completely unfit for the user base. I’ve seen weight-loss ads (harmful to the many people on the site recovering from eating disorders) and ads for products most people wouldn’t need or want until their forties. Most of the user base is 13-35, if I had to guess. I can tell you right now, you would make more money and the user base would be much happier if ads were removed in favor of members content. Adding a paid membership that allows users to gain access to new features (rather than restricting what’s already here) would be a huge boost in morale and company income. Use that income to improve the site. Don’t get comfortable making more than the bare minimum in profit until the website is functioning reasonably well. Hint: it’s not right now.

Keep the base functions of Tumblr. Don’t try and get radical, hoping big changes will excite the community. They won’t. We’re creatures of habit and we just want memes, fandom, and relatable nonsense. Keep reblogging, replies, customizable blogs, tags, and likes functionally the same.

Be receptive to bug reports and post change logs so that the community knows that they’re being addressed and fixed.

These are the obvious pleas of the community. Please keep in mind that the heart of Tumblr is in its users and if you ostracize us, there will be nothing left. We love this website and we want to see it thrive as much as anyone. We just don’t want to sacrifice the spirit of the community in the process.

Read more under the cut if you want to see some more of my own personal suggestions. I’d love for other users to sound off in the replies with whether they agree with any of the pleas or suggestions and also give their own!

Okay, so, here are some personal opinions that are by no means the voice of the community. I think they’re pretty sensible, but what do I know?

Change back the color. I hate this saturated navy color and I’m pretty sure a lot of others do too. I’m part of the disabled community and I know and have seen people saying that these extremely contrasted colors that were added are making their Tumblr experience worse. It gives people headaches due to light sensitivity and, frankly, it’s ugly. If you’d like to cater to those who are visually impaired/colorblind, that’s fantastic! Do so with an account setting that turns on higher contrast mode or adds patterns to things to make them distinguishable.

Add an option to blog suggestions and posts that have shown up on your dash from followed tags that says “Stop Suggesting This.” I’ve been suggested a number of blogs that I’m not interested in following. I don’t want to block the user, but I do want some different suggestions and for those blogs to stop showing up in suggestions. I’m also tired of seeing the same post twenty times from a tag I follow. There is currently an option that says “This particular posts sucks.” While I think that was a great attempt at catering to the community, I don’t want to use it because my intuition says that there’s a negative connotation. Does me saying the post sucks make it show up less for other people? Does it lose popularity? I can’t tell. The only thing I know is that I don’t want to say that a good post sucks just to make it quit showing up on my dash.

Implement some of the features that XKit uses. I would bet at least a quarter, if not more, of Tumblr users use XKit to make using Tumblr less painful. That shouldn’t be the case. Tumblr should have these functionality options available in dashboard settings.

A very hot take here that many might disagree with: Make notes viewable more like mobile has them. As it is, it’s hard to tell which ones I’ve seen on desktop. It can be tricky on mobile too, honestly, but it’s easier than on desktop. I would also heavily suggest making the unseen notifications darker so that they stand out and making a button to indicate that you’ve seen them.

Keep the dash, messages, notes, and profile as separate processes similar to how mobile has it. The trek all the way down the damn dashboard is a long one. I want to be able to see notes and messages in full size without losing my dash progress. When I switch back I want to be right where I was. I understand if this one isn’t possible or practical. It was just something I like about mobile over desktop but I’m aware that they’re two different beasts with different capabilities.

As far as the aforementioned members features, I do have some ideas, but I can’t guarantee they’re the best the user base has to offer. I’m sure others could think of better. Anyway, some things I’ve thought of are groups/clubs, digital currency, and separate dashboards. So, as it stands, You can have multiple blogs on one account. People can follow them separately. That’s fantastic. What would also be nice though, is being allowed to make separate dashboards. This would probably take up another chunk of server space, so I understand if it isn’t feasible right now, but I would jot it down. The ability to separate shitposts, aesthetic imagery, fandom content, and NSFW would be amazing. If you follow a huge number of blogs, like me, you could even make a friends dash so that you don’t miss your friends’ posts. It would just be a matter of allowing people to add and name their new dashboards. Then, when they go to follow people, it prompts them to choose what dash their content goes to. You could even simplify it by making the follow button default to the main dash, but adding a little dropdown arrow beside it. You could then choose which dash to add them to from a list. Below are some bad paint-drawn concept drawings.

Anyway, I hope this has all been helpful in some way. I’m fairly certain that WordPress will never actually read this, but it was cathartic to write and I hope it will be cathartic for someone else to read.

Sincerely, birb-ghost

#wordpress #tumblr #news #update #updates #verizon #yahoo #design #web design #developers #development #concept #concept art #art #drawings #good omens #bug #bugs #ghostpost #letter #letters

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nillial · 5 years

Text

hey what’s up everyone. have something prompted by me seeing this shitpost by @bramblepatch about kravitz not seeing the whole lich in taako’s umbrella despite reaping liches for a living and me Immediately going “OOOHH BUT WHAT IF HE DID KNOW” here it is on ao3!

The hair on Kravitz’s neck stands up. The feathers on the collar of his cloak bristle. His stomach drops, his mouth goes dry, and the air changes, just slightly and just enough to be noticed.

It’s back.

Without thinking, he wills away his human form in favor of his reaper one. The skin melts off his face, his cloak grows longer until it’s billowing at his feet, the hair on his head lights aflame and the ash it produces morphs into feathers, but he doesn’t feel it. All he feels is that.

“There’s something here,” he says, panic crawling into his tone.

Beside him, laughter bubbles out of Taako’s throat. “I feel it too!”

“It was— no, not this, the— there’s something here. It was in the Miller’s lab, too, I could feel it. It’s dead, and it’s powerful, and it’s extremely close.” He turns around to face Taako, the grip on his scythe tightening. He hopes it isn’t him. “Are you harboring a dark spirit, Taako? Do you— do you have suspicions you might be some sort of vessel?” Taako, who looks largely unaffected, shrugs. “Maybe? I mean, it’s been a few years. Was that a thing for a while?” He gestures with the umbrella he’s been carrying around with him all evening. “I eat old dead dudes with my umbrella. Is that a possibility, maybe?”

The kind of power this thing is emanating is too strong to be something Taako has killed and gotten away from alive. This is something that’s been around for a while. Festering somewhere.

He drags a skeletal hand down his face. “I don’t— no, I don’t think it’s that.”

He scans the quad in a desperate attempt to pick up something. It has to be here somewhere and it has to be after him, or after Taako, or after his friends, or after all of them. Kravitz may be undead, but those three are, he thinks, mortal, and he really doesn’t want to get them killed. He just convinced the Raven Queen to let them go. She’ll have his ass if he shows back up in the Astral Plane with the three souls he just pardoned for the second time.

And this (hopefully?) date was going so well, too. Of course a lich had to show up. Of course.

There’s a blast of light from behind him— a Scorching Ray shooting up towards the sky. Kravitz senses a wave of necromantic energy coming off of it, which is weird, because Scorching Ray isn’t a necromancy spell. When he follows the ray down to its source, he sees Taako, who has his umbrella pointed towards the sky.

They stare at each other for a moment. And then Kravitz says, “What was that?”

Taako lowers his umbrella. The confusion and shock on his face is too genuine for him to be lying. “The Umbrastaff’s trying to kill you, man, it’s not me!”

“What?”

Taako frantically jabs a finger at his cheap dollar store umbrella. “The Umbrastaff— check it out, I used to think it was Umbro but it’s actually Umbra— it acted on its own.”

He takes a minute just to look at the Umbrella in Taako’s hand. It really looks like he picked it up from Fantasy Dollar General five years ago and hand-painted flames on the sides. There is no way Taako killed something that powerful, trapped it in that umbrella, and just carries a caged entity like that around with him without having died yet.

But he’s undeniably been doing exactly that.

“I don’t understand, that’s not—” He sighs. “Can I see it?”

Taako eagerly pushes it into his hands. “Okay!”

The handle is unnaturally warm, not because Taako was holding it, but because something has just used an immense amount of power to charge up a spell and break the barrier keeping them trapped there just enough to release that spell. There’s necromantic energy in its core— so much that Kravitz is feeling a headache coming on. It could theoretically be the cumulative power of all of the “old dead dudes” the Umbrastaff absorbs, but this has to be a (very dangerous, unbelievably strong) singular entity. And they’re stable. They shouldn’t be stable.

Kravitz has been doing this for a long time. This is, no doubt, a lich.

And while it’s a pretty interesting lich, it’s also, like all liches, an unsafe one. And part of Kravitz’s job description is to re-kill liches, so…

He begins to reach for his scythe, and then the handle warms up, slow and then impossibly quick, until it burns. For a moment, he fears it’s charging up another spell, and then—

And then he hears a whisper. Faint, not quite in his ear but not quite from behind him, not quite anywhere, but it’s there. They speak in Taako’s voice, but it’s not Taako’s voice. It’s a woman. It’s a woman, and she’s scared. She’s pleading. And she begs, just quiet enough to go unheard but just loud enough to be noticed— “Please.”

He waits for more, hopes for more, but nothing comes. Kravitz is left with a very warm umbrella and a lich he’s feeling weirdly sympathetic towards.

He glances up at Taako, who’s rummaging for something in one of his ungodly number of pockets. He’s not sure what she wants with him. Maybe she’s trying to trick him. Maybe she just wants to kill Taako. Get some revenge.

But that woman— whoever she was— didn’t sound like someone looking for vengeance. Her “please” didn’t sound like someone who was angry at her captor and angry at the world, begging him to understand why she needed to be let go. It sounded gentler. It sounded like someone using her last bit of strength to plead for mercy. And while Kravitz is somewhat used to death criminals asking for sympathy so they aren’t thrown in the Eternal Stockade— a request that he isn’t always immune to, which is why he’s here tonight— he gets the feeling that the Eternal Stockade isn’t the worst of her fears. Why, he has no idea. Kravitz is the one who's been throwing death criminals into the Stockade for God-knows-how-long and he still gets the creeps when he goes down there.

He isn’t sure how he knows all of this. It’s like she crawled into his mind.

Kravitz shudders.

Maybe she was just using Taako’s dialect to make Kravitz trust her, or maybe she was deliberately hiding her anger to mask her intentions, or maybe she’s just a good liar, but she was also… stable. It’s difficult for a lich to stay stable in good conditions. After spending time in an umbrella for a while, a lich’s mind should be long gone. But she isn’t. She’s still there. And that doesn’t make sense.

He really should just pull out his scythe and send the soul inside of the Umbrastaff to the Eternal Stockade. It’d be the safest option. It’d be doing his job.

He spares another look at Taako, who has apparently found what he was looking for (loose pudding), and then back down at the umbrella. This is Kravitz’s job, but it’s not like Kravitz always does his job correctly. He lets people gamble for their souls when he should be collecting them. He gets bored and goes down to the Stockade to pop open a bottle of wine with some souls that have stories to tell. He pardons highly-wanted death criminals twice and then goes out on what he thinks is a date with one of them. He’s found ways to get creative in a job he’s been doing for a long, long time.

This lich— she isn’t like the kind of lich that all liches eventually become. She isn’t a detachment of herself. She’s not a fragment of who she once was. She’s not a jagged shard of a shattered mind. She’s all there, and she doesn’t want to hurt Taako. If she did, he would have been dead a long time ago. Frankly, Kravitz doesn’t know what she wants to do, but if he had to guess, he’d say she wants to help him.

So what if a lich was here? Maybe she was too slippery for him. Maybe she was too good at hiding for Kravtiz to find her. Maybe Kravitz failed to catch her. It’s less paperwork for him anyways.

God, he really hopes this doesn’t backfire.

Kravitz hands her back to Taako.

#taz #kravitz #taako #lup #taz balance #taz spoilers #did i finish this fic three or four days ago and then forget i finished it? maybe so #did i write it in one go? maybe so!#did i also read it ten times and tell myself it was ready and then Immediately forget about posting it? maybe so!!!!!#anyways. hope yall enjoy #lillian writes stuff

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