#not to mention the Horrors Of War

[sphyrne]

i know we all know that monstrous regiment is good but also monstrous regiment is so good

[trash-gremlin]

could you imagine how good spirit animals would be if it wasn't written as a children's series

[gallusrostromegalus]

I need more of this force sensitive teenager 😭

(With reference tho this post)

Attachment is Forbidden. To hold on too long, against the current of reality, is to bind and strangle, to cause suffering and grief.

Attachment is Essential. To become disconnected from the world around you is to fall to cruelty and madness, to cause suffering and grief.

The Force is very complicated and only vaguely comprehensible to three pounds of electrified jello piloting a meat suit and specialized to sort different kinds of berries. It is a knife's edge to walk and the blade cuts and cuts at those with the force until they learn to wield it. When you seize the edge of attachment and the blade is in your hand, the decision is yours to decide what to preserve, and what to cut away from yourself. Can you really be the Judge of which relationships, which laws, which lives are worthy to keep and which to discard?

The Jedi and Sith agree on this one facet- Yes. Yes, you can, you should, and you Must, or what is the point? The dispute is whether to trust in your own judgment, or to attempt to divine and follow the will of The Force.

There is, of course, another option.

There is always another option with the force. The question is always, is that option worth the cost?

---

The morality of choice is not on her mind when she discovers the other option. What's on her mind is grief, the final hell of the descent of fear into anger into suffering. But the fear wasn't hers, the anger wasn't hers, even the suffering wasn't entirely hers- Her parents and siblings alike bear the emotional and physical scars of her inability to control this- but the grief, the grief is overwhelming and far too personal to be anyone else's.

It's not like anyone else can mourn the life she should have had, dead on the cold ground in front of her like a carrion corpse. She can see it so clearly in the Force, it's her as she should have been, loved and respected and loved and encouraged and loved and free to grow into the shape she should and loved and loved and LOVED- but there her theoretical future self is, dead on the ground, strangled.

And despite breaking, her heart insists on beating.

If this is the final step of the descent into darkness, and she is not dead, what's the next one to take?

Well, immediately, big ones, very fast, and very far away from here.

She runs away, away from the institutions, away from the medication that never helped, away from the frightened eyes, away from the exasperated sighs and hands that dragged and the 'its for your own good's, and into the night.

Barefoot, over the rough ground, over the sharp stones and uphill into the mountains, into the desert away from the lights of town, into the night. She's probably bleeding, her lungs burn and the windy night is cold. At the crest of the Hill she stops, wheezing and sobbing, only able to scream and cry.

The lights of the town (or at least, the few not effected by the power outage) are still close. It wouldn't take long to run back home, especially not downhill, to crawl home and scrape and beg forgiveness, it won't happen again-

...except that it would. It always did.

And now she'd crossed the line from "Shattered furniture" to "possibly leveling part of a building". And there was no going back. Police would get involved for real this time. No more institutions would take something capable of destroying a building. Can't stay home, where she'd hurt another member of her family. Can't go somewhere private if I'm a living wrecking ball. Can't be in public, twitching and chattering, frightening people. There is, of course, another option.

She looked down the other side of the hill, deeper into the only-sort-of-explored so-called wasteland of thorny succulents, bare rocks and unforgiving temperatures.

The question is, as always, is it worth the cost?

Well, heading back to civilization cost what was left of her dignity, and quite possibly the lives of her family. And she was fuck all out of pride, and not willing to gamble with their accounts.

Into the wild it was.

Of course- she considered, starting her descent down the other side- the desert wilderness is no place for a barefoot twelve year old, especially not alone and possibly being hunted by law enforcement. It's a place for the toughest of beasts, of nocturnal horrors and all things red of tooth and claw.

"Can't be myself anywhere, can I?" She asks, hysterical. She winces at another sharp rock. "Be nice to have proper paws or something-"

She stops.

There is, of course, another option.

---

The Jedi and Sith agree on another point too.

You can use the force to shape reality. Any part you want! Change minds with a wave of your hand! Defy gravity with extremely direct eye contact! Generate lighting by thinking about it really hard!

But they both hold a secret taboo.

As much as the Jedi profess detachment and humility and selflessness, and as much as the Sith proclaim self-determination and experimentation and manifestation of vision, they hold the same secret rule-

When you grasp the Blade of Attachment, and are deciding how to sculpt the future, don't turn the blade upon yourself.

Like how there is a line in the sand between shattered furniture and demolishing a building, or one between parental rights and child welfare, there is a line between using the force to alter your body as a means of preservation of the self, and using it to transform the self.

The line is so secret, it's rarely discussed and even then only in metaphor. It's called The Rubicon, after a mythical river a foolish emperor once crossed.

There are of course, those who have Crossed The Rubicon- Darth Nihilus and Darth Sion come to mind, though there are some suspiciously long-lived and more-hands-having-than-circumstances-would suggest Jedi as well- there's always someone who will decide the forbidden option is worth the cost. In this case, the currency is flesh, and to an extent, the self.

...But if you are twelve years old and already changing and grew up told your self as it is is repulsive and dangerous, so you grew alienated from that self to the point of being a stranger to the person everyone seemed to know and that self was useless in your present circumstances anyway...

The Force shines. It shines bright and beautiful and even the crude matter of life is luminous in the dark, and it is so, so easy to see how a hand is just an elongated paw.

She runs.

She runs down the hill, cries of pain now intermingled with those of discovery and the joy of creation. She runs toward the desert, towards the beautiful night-blooming flowers, towards the blissful silence, towards the personal space measured in hundreds of square miles, toward freedom, towards a new future self, and away from the carrion corpse of her youth.

There is a river at the bottom of the hill, and as her eyes open to new possibilities and spectra, she sees how it's nearly entirely underground, and how the ox-bow at the bottom of the hill is only where it briefly breaches the surface and she runs toward it, gait shifting awkwardly under her but everything was always awkward, but now it's awkward with Purpose-

-She leaps across the river, and when she lands palm-first on the other side, the things on the ends of her arms are no longer hands.

---

The Apprentice awakens with a terrified shriek. Her bones ache with sympathetic sensations of shape-change, winded and shaking. A dream, a dream, it was all just a terrible dream-

Her Master stumbles into the room to check on her, legs not feeling quite right, and one look between them belies the awful truth.

It was not just a dream.

They embrace, too tight and fingers digging into clothing, tears hot, faces hidden in each other's shoulders, trying to find comfort in shared horror and grief. Something happened earlier, when they heard something break, and now they were bound to this stranger's destiny.

Attachment and Detachment are the choices you make the shape reality.

Attachment and Detachment are forced upon you no matter what choices you make.

The Force is very complicated and only sort of comprehensible.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was Neil Gaiman, and I was sitting in an empty bathtub fully clothed in an abandoned subway shaft. I got to experience death by someone giving me a lethal dose of insulin so they could pull two of my teeth out painlessly. Then I came back as a zombie, but like, one with consciousness and sentience and I helped stop a gang war.

[heavenhellandhumanity]

I know, people like different tropes and fanon etc. etc.

However, I would love to see more of the Star Wars fandom make a big deal about Leia's adoptive parents, Breha and Bail Organa. I mean, they're amazing people and I see a lot of amazing content about them, don't get me wrong! But in concerns to Leia as a person and her actions.

Leia became the Huttslayer and this is narrative gold because her father and her grandmother had been slaves under that particular Hutt in the past. But let's not ignore the fact that she grew up the man who knew Palpatine was a Sith Lord (and seen his friends and children murdered because of it) and still ran a damn resistance under his very nose. Leia grew up knowing she would be Queen of Alderaan and what that meant - if you pay attention to EU canon, she had to undergo three trials in order to be declared heir, trials which had almost killed her mother when she was a teenager. Leia is the biological daughter of Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala and that is a part of her history, but the parents who raised her and loved her were two people who knew full well the price of fighting against tyranny, and did it anyway.

And her biological father is part of that tyranny. I believe Shmi Skywalker would look at her granddaughter and be proud but I believe that Darth Vader can't say shit about it, not when he has managed to enslave and terrorise so many more people than Jabba the Hutt ever could.

I would love to see more of the fandom discussion around Leia to be how she's upholding her parents' legacy when killing Jabba the Hutt, and I mean the parents she knew and loved, who worked to end evil like Jabba. Not the man who helped it thrive.

(This is referring to many posts and fics, although one sparked me to finally post this. But like I said, everyone enjoys fandom in their own way.)

[fanfic-obsessed]

Historical choices

This idea starts on Kamino. Well before the time of the prequels. 

As with all my ideas, ignore any part of canon that contradicts it. 

Tipoca City became the capital of Kamino after the flood. It was never meant to be the Capital city. In fact it was not built to be a city at all. Tipoca was built as a remote research station, long before the flood. It was the first genetic research station for the Kaminoans.  

The very first project…how to prevent Force Sensitivity in their own people. For many reasons, all based on superstition and bigotry, the Kaminoan government decided that having Force sensitivity was undesirable and wanted it stopped.  The initial project, lost to the tides of time, took all the Force Sensitives they could get their hands on (though there were many adults captured, unfortunately Force Sensitive children and babies were easier to source) and began to experiment, with all the horror that that entails. 

By the time the scientists had a ‘breakthrough’ many decades later, everything that subjects endured had sunk into the location, darkening the Force as only that kind of pain and horror can. 

The scientists called it a breakthrough, removing Force Sensitivity from the Kaminoan genetic code and generations later the project had been forgotten, and it is assumed that Kaminoans simply were not Force sensitive. This is not quite true. What those initial scientists did was make Force Sensitivity above a specific threshold, well below the level to actually be considered Force Sensitive, toxic to Kaminoans. 

The funny thing is that after the genetic treatments to ‘remove’ force sensitivity, miscarriages among the Kaminoan population (which at that point was still reproducing, not cloning) shot through the roof, often including the death of the mother/carrier (I have no idea what the Kaminoans called the egg producer). At the same time the Force is not simply in sentients, it is also a vital part of the lifeblood of the planet.  There is a careful balance that the Force maintains which was utterly fucked by the mass death, and continued death, of any Force Sensitive Kaminoan.  While the connection is never made, these imbalances are the cause for the global warming that eventually floods the planet, also the violent frequent storms.  It is this and the birth rate issue that caused the Kaminoans to start cloning and genetic experiments to survive (All the while they kept including the genetic code that turned Force Sensitivity toxic). 

Even as their reputation as cloners grew, they never cloned sentients other than themselves (And there were no Force sensitive Kaminoans now). So they never realized that The Force on Kamino (in particular Tipoca City, but across the planet) had grown dark, violent, and feral. It is noted that animals cloned on Tipoca city tend to be more aggressive than normal, but that is not really noticeable given the contracts they were getting.

Not until the cloning of Jango Fett begins.  The Clones are near human and, though Jango Fett is not particularly Force sensitive, they are the first sentients since the treatment was completed for whom being touched by the Force was not lethal (since the Kaminoans no longer remember that the particular piece of genetic code was artificial, then never think to add it to the Fett clones).  The Force on Kamino curls around the clones, it loves them with desperation and the long lasting memory of the last time its children walked the surface. The Force ensures that every Fett clone is Force sensitive. 

To the trainers and Jango Fett there are a number of spots on Tipoca City that feel…deeply haunted. The more superstitious refuse to enter some of the oldest parts of the city, including where the growth tubes are located (no one is left alive to know but the growth tubes are placed in the oldest labs, where the subjects of the first scientist endured horrors beyond imagining).  

To be clear, the Force on Kamino is of the dark side. It is corrupted.  It is suffering and horror and despair leaching like poison into groundwater. It is a beaten, hurting animal biting anyone who comes close to prevent being hurt again. It is a feral thing that can not distinguish between friend and foe. And the Clones belong to it. 

This comes to a head when the majority of the CC batches are six.  One of the trainers spits out that the Jedi would also think the clones were just useless meat droids. And the Force on Kamino may have been a feral thing, a thing of suffering,  but it was also connected to the rest of the Force and it knew that the Jedi would love its children. 

It whispered this to the children, curling around them. One of the children, who would one day be Fox, glared up at the trainer and spat out that the trainer was lying.  The trainer, reacting more to the tone than the words, struck CC-1010. 

The Force on Kamino reacted. It had suffered the trainers to live because they were making it’s children strong. There had been no decommissioning or reconditionings because the Force was working to ensure its children performed exactly as they should.  But now the trainer had hurt one of its children, and not for training, but for speaking.  The barely leashed violence broke free and roared through the clones. The clones, empowered and driven by the Dark, this vicious protective energy built of the suffering from long before, took the city. It did not matter that the oldest of them were barely physically 8. Within 4 hours there were not any trainers left in Tipoca City (Jango Fett had been off planet on a bounty). Within 6 hours there were no Kaminoans either.  Within three days the Clones were the sole living sentients on Kamino.

Jango Fett came back three weeks after that to a very changed landscape. He is allowed to land because Boba (the toddler that he still is) does consider him a father.  The children, and they are all still children, have not eaten anything solid in two weeks (The Force is sustaining them, also the Force does not know what are good child rearing practices for near humans-it has existed long enough that it can’t even really tell the difference between child and adult in near humans).  The clones are now clearly something OTHER and very unsettling besides, but they all call him dad and he gets the creeping sensation that Jango was not allowed to deny them (Very much ‘oh no these ARE your children (threat)’).  The Force start playing with Clone ages (trying to figure out the best age for each clone to be for ‘their’ Jedi, the Kamino Force is invested in the Clones getting whatever they want and knows some Jedi will love the Clones dearly). 

Jango makes it another 6 months before he ‘sneaks’ away to make a panicked call to the Jedi Temple (He knows he screwed up), trying to make it their problem instead of his. Prior to this he made several attempts to call Dooku but none went through. He is chased down and told that The Force (called Buir/Protector by the Clones) allowed him this far because it knew that he would call the Jedi, but that it is time to return home now. 

There was a wandering Jedi, Master Faye, closer so she came to Kamino and was immediately given the feeling that she would care for the clones or else.  The Force on Kamino is still a wild, feral thing and the Clones are that much more aggressive for their connection to it. However the innocence of the clone children, now that they are not being trained for war any longer, has also been bringing balance back to the Force on Kamino. As they behave as children do, they have begun to drain away the leftover suffering, bringing light back to the Force. 

Some of the storms have even begun to ebb. 

It is still a bit of a horror show that Jedi now have to deal with, also children (who may be more than a little eldritch) who committed at least one Genocide. But there is hope.

[fluentisonus]

I need to do a rb/addition to that roman slavery post I made bc the notes keep missing the point I was trying to make & it's really annoying me but also I'm to tired to phrase it well

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

SUMMARY: Five battle-hardened American soldiers are assigned to hold a French Chateau near the end of World War II. However, they encounter a supernatural enemy far more terrifying than anything seen on the battlefield.

[spale-vosver]

When rabbis warn you about how difficult Jewish conversion is they aren't talking about the time it takes they're actually talking about the sheer existential pit that forms inside you when you think about Jewish life pre Shoah and how you're choosing to bear generational trauma the likes of which you can't even imagine until it's 2am and you're listening to Mitski and it hits you and you're dissociating on the toilet

[glouris]

I don't understand how gow youtubers that post these “whAt iS gOiNg to HaPpEn iN tHe NexT gAmE???” vids just completely ignore Atreus. They are even more in denial about Kratos stepping down from the mc role than me about Heimdall kicking the bucket, it’s crazy. That one guy deadass went “Well maybe Atreus will die and that will lead to Kratos going to another pantheon” MISS MA’AM ATREUS HAS BEEN SET UP TO GO ON THE JOURNEY TO A DIFFERENT LAND WHILE KRATOS IS HELPING SETTLE THE MATTERS IN THE 9 REALMS??

[darlin-djarin]

i consider myself a man of religion (<- praying to god that the mandalorian season 4 gets cancelled)

[dathomirdumpsterfire]

~Chapter 3: Haunted, Hunted, & Other Fun Hobbies~

[Ao3 link below the read more, at the end.]

It begins the day after Maul makes his return to Dathomir. 

The sith is elbows deep in datapads trying to gain background knowledge on the Crimson Dawn's next venture: an escargot farm, of all things, for a particular breed of shellfish. One that acts as a nearly universal aphrodisiac when eaten. Vos had declared the market for it 'an untapped niche' with projected gains in the 'I could buy a moon every other year' category. 

He already has a planet. Dathomir is more or less his, but Maul thinks he might like a moon or two. Besides, one never knew when they might need a spare astral body in his line of work. Perhaps for trade, perhaps for crashing into things. He is flexible. 

One minute he is reviewing zoology documents made by a mon calamari, and then gently, like a cloud over the sun, he is being watched.

His spine straightens and the sith pulls his sense of self tight to his skin, guarding himself while attempting to observe the observer. The presence slips through his fingers, but he too slips through theirs. They go round and round like two predators in the night, stalking each other through the flow of the force. 

Eventually the feeling fades, and Maul is left alone in his office space, perturbed. He waits an hour or more, patient and wary, but the sensation of being sought does not return.

He exhales heavily through his nose and returns to reading about aquarium keeping, stopping only to make snacks, refresh the tea pot, and stretch his back.

Dathomir's red star sinks below the horizon. Domir takes with it the light that had been coming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows, leaving the spectacular view of the sunrise canyon in deepening purple hues. Maul takes this as his cue to end the day.

The sith stalks out of his simplistic office, and heads to the end of the hallway. The decor transitions from plasteel to roughly carved redstone at the doorway, from the soft orange glow of sodium-vapor bulbs to flickering oil lanterns and magelight. He had appointed the bedroom den at the end of the hall with far more dathomirian aesthetics than the modern office space. 

Some furniture he had been able to scavenge from the temple, mostly of carved stone, though there were a few precious wooden pieces left unburnt by the droid army among them. A small table, a few mismatched chairs, and a hefty trunk. The rest of his furnishings Maul had collected from offworld. 

The result is… functional. Quiet and dark. The bed space is large and comfortable, partially carved back into the wall for extra protection. Nowhere is too open. Everything he wishes to be reminded of has a place to sit, somewhere he can see. 

Dim candles light all the cracks and corners without hurting his eyes. There are books and scrolls to read, an orb recovered from his mother’s temple, projects to tinker with in idle moments. It is… good, he thinks. Though he might reorganize his memory items again. Later. 

For now, he plans to undress, bathe, and-

w

  a

   t

    c

     h

    i

  n

g

 

l

o

  o

    k

      i

       n

       g

          f

               o

                      r                                                      ?

                                     y       o       u           ?

Maul whips around, expecting a physical presence, but there is no one and nothing there. He coats himself in a basic spell of obfuscating mist and draws his force presence close to his hearts, under his skin. 

The observer tries to catch him up with a searching pattern that feels like smokey claws and gossamer hairs, winding ribbons and closing jaws. Threads, deceptive in their affectionate creeping. 

"One?" he rasps in the empty hallway, "No… more. Several." 

There are so many aspects of force trying to locate him that surely it must be a ritual, fueled by multiple people. Four or five, at bare minimum. He would guess it was his former master's doing, but surely Sidious would not need to look for him so much as come for him if he decided to spare the effort. 

So who? Who?

But to look with that part of him which can See is to open himself, and Maul is not certain of the wisdom in letting this coven of force users near him just for the chance to find them.

Sweat beads on his scalp, dripping down and sliding off his chin. The effort to remain untouchable, hidden from these hunters, is intensely taxing, but the force vibrates in warning whenever he starts to slip.

Then, suddenly, he is alone again. 

He waits, just as before, shoulders high and breathing hard as he remains watchful. The air remains still, lacking that dark innervation. Maul falls back against the wall, and presses the heel of a palm to his forehead. The effort has earned him a headache and shaking fingers. 

The sith returns to moving down the hall, but changes destination. His den, while comfortable, is not the most secure location available here. That title goes to his mother's sanctum, riddled with runes and steeped in ichor fueled protections. He has not yet deciphered the nature of even half of the witch-made wards from the books and murals that remain of her teachings. 

Maul slips into the sanctum, touching his chest where once her spirit had anchored itself. 

"Mother," he begins, searching for an acceptable explanation for intruding. "I seek… shelter, in your sanctum. I am hunted by a power unknown, and the force warns me to avoid its touch." 

That is an understatement. The force buzzes with indistinct warning, a vibrating drone so deep and ubiquitous it feels physical. Bumblebees underwater, crawling anxiety like marching ants. 

No reply comes. He counts that as permission.

The sith goes to sit on the stone floor at the center of grooved patterns and runes. He will meditate now and gather his strength, assuming that eventually-

It returns! So quickly the threads descend again.

Vitriolic green light bursts to his left, then forward, then above him. Sharp eyes survey the room as sections of sigils light and dim along the walls, like fireworks. The grooves in the floor begin to fill with-

"Ichor," he murmurs, watching the luminous waters fill in the circling patterns. He cannot identify the source of where it flows from. 

This… is not magick Maul has witnessed before. Savage had, reluctantly, described his own rituals, and the healing the Nightmother had done for Maul after Lotho Minor, but this is… different. Carved into Dathomir’s living stone, commanding the planet’s power even in the absence of a witch to direct it. It is wonderous.

The feeling of being looked for slides away from him with so much more ease, and he sighs in relief.

Maul ends up sleeping there, curled in on himself on the stone floor. Every few hours the cloying tendrils return again, and he wakes to watch the wards and push away the hooks that stretch for him.

It is only after a week of being chased back to his mother's room, day and night, that he realizes he is trapped on Dathomir until the hunt is ended. Until he ends it. To do that, he will have to learn to hide all on his own. Without becoming an unhinged, sleepless mess incapable of hunting these new enemies.

Maul faces this reality with easy acceptance. He has survived harsher challenges before, and will again. Mustafar, Lotho Minor, Hypori- the dark sustained him every time. 

This will end no differently.

[incoherent-orca]

in a world where the writers weren't cowards Katara would've definitely been on Hama's side

[velvetwarfare]

“ GET OUT — GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!! “

THE BEAST AND HER NEVER FOUGHT THIS BADLY. Whenever they did have a SPAT, it usually was pretty GRUESOME — but this time around, it seems as though the two were AT EACH OTHER’S THROATS, WRESTLING FOR DOMINANCE OVER THEIR HOST OF A BODY.

BETTY WAS BARELY COHERENT — ONE SLIP AWAY FROM LOSING CONTROL, ONE INCH AWAY FROM THE BEAST GRABBING THE REIGNS AND CAUSING ANOTHER WAR TO OCCUR IN HELL THIS TIME AS OPPOSED TO ON THE SURFACE YEARS AGO. IT WAS PISSED WITH HER FOR NOT BEING FED IN A LONG WHILE — AS BETTY FIRMLY BELIEVED HER BUSINESS AS A WARLORD WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN BABYSITTING HER SPLIT PERSONALITY OF A BAT BEAST. NEGLECTING IT ONLY MADE IT RAGE HARDER INSIDE OF THE AMULET IT WAS TRAPPED IN, RATTLING THE BARS TO IT’S CAGE UNTIL IT COULD NO LONGER BE IGNORED, STARVING AND RABID BECAUSE OF IT’S NEGLIGENT CARETAKER.

All she ever wanted was to lead a life SOMEWHAT NORMAL. Betty was so TIRED of being nothing but BLOODTHIRSTY AND VIOLENT. She desired AUTHENTIC CONNECTIONS, LOVE, COMPANIONSHIP THAT DIDN’T INVOLVE BLOODSHED. But the beast disagreed, REFUSING TO LIVE A LIFE WITHOUT BEING SHOWERED IN THE VISCERA OF THEIR ENEMIES — WITHOUT CLAIMING THEIR TITLE AS ‘THE ELDRITCH BEAST’ AND STRIKING TERROR INTO THE HEARTS OF ALL WHO DEFIED THEIR LEGACY.

Being a warlord was meant to BALANCE the two. She could still INFLUENCE OTHERS WITH THE FEAR FACTOR AND FEED THE BEAST SOULS TO SATIATE IT — and simultaneously so, Betty was free to do as she pleased without the INCESSANT ITCH TO LOSE CONTROL.

But lately, she attempted to SILENCE IT COMPLETELY, TIRED OF CATERING TO IT WHEN IT YOWLED LIKE A DYING CAT IN IT’S CAGE. THE BEAST THEN FOUGHT BACK — THE AMULET CRACKED AND EXPELLING HORRIBLE NOISES AKIN TO AN AZTEC DEATH WHISTLE, TRYING TO CLAW IT’S WAY OUT.

—

THE BODIES OF SINNERS LAY IN RUINS. VISCERA PAINTED THE WALLS, BLOOD CAKED UPON TORN FURNITURE, WINDOWS SMASHED, LIMBS ASTRAY, THE STARK SCENT OF DECAY AND DEATH. HER BODY WAS MID-TRANSFORMATION, FUR BRISTLING UPON HER ARCHED BACK LIKE SPIKES, EARS ELONGATED LIKE BAT WINGS, FANGS LIKE TUSKS, CLAWS LIKE GIANT PAWS, HER MAW EXTENDED LIKE A CANINE’S, BETTY RESEMBLED A HYENA DAYS WITHOUT FOOD. A SPLIT BETWEEN THE BEAST AND HER HUMANOID FORM.

In a flurry of MANIC DISTRESS, the hybrid SLAMMED herself into the wall, AN ANGELIC AXE CLATTERING TO THE FLOOR.

“ GET OUT — OF MY FUCKING — BODY!! “

Claws GRASPED onto the weapon, SHAKILY PRESSING IT TO HER THROAT,

“ I WILL FUCKING CARVE YOU STRAIGHT FROM MY BODY SO I DON’T HAVE TO PUT UP WITH YOU ANYMORE! I’M TIRED OF LIVING LIKE THIS! I’M TIRED OF YOU!

DIE!! “

In her DELIRIOUS mind, SAWING HER THROAT MEANT EXTERMINATING THE BEAST — in reality, THEY WOULD BOTH PERMANENTLY PERISH.

@mothvalentino

[cypress-punk]

The cool thing about Getter Robo is that you think its just an edgier super robot series where the power of courage or friendship or whatever is replaced by a sort of manic will to win as expressed by the Getter Rays as the fun scifi power source. But then you Learn.

You learn that the Getter has a will. You learn that it has an agenda. You learn that it handpicked the human race to have Getter Robos because Gettet Robos are essentially its avatars, physical manifestations of its will. You learn its a the power of evolution, and yet it wiped out the dinosaurs and harms the Dinosaur Empire. Why? Because they were in the way of the development of its preferred symbiote species, homo sapiens.

And then you see it. Getter Emperor. You see it destroying worlds. Creating innumerable clones of its favorite humans to serve it beyond death. You see it in a genocidal war to wipe out all non-human life in the cosmos, a war so terrible they start using time travel to try and strangle this horrific monster in the crib. And they fail. Nothing can stop the Getter.

"Believe in the Getter" is a phrase that sends a chill down my spine because I know what its all in service to. Believe in a God that will one day make you an instrument of ultimate genocide. Believe in a God that promises the survival of the human race right up until its completed its mission to obliterate all other life. Then it kills the universe and moves on to a new universe where it repeats the cycle.

Its a really effective cosmic horror in my opinion. An inversion of the usual super robot ethos of heroic conquest of evil. Sure the villains are pretty awful. The Dinosaur Empire has a fucking war crime lab where they test biological weapons on a human zoo. But does that make them worthy of extermination? Does it make the cosmos worthy of extermination? If the choice is between the continuation of the human race at the cost of all else, is it right to fight to preserve the human race? Is it even a choice? Or has the Getter already got its grip in too deep by the time Saotome builds that first Getter Robo?

Anyway read the Getter Robo manga. Its really good except for the one section where there's a really racist guy and a character who's entire personality is "predatory lesbian" but they don't stick around too long.

[brutalmasks]

' it's quite funny how the world works. suddenly, killing makes you a villain if you're not some high end fancy pants ordering men to die in the name of honour. a flag is a stupid think to waste your life over, but, it's made glorious and beautiful and honourable. nobody tells you about the rage that comes with it, with the understanding that war is man-made violence and, therefore, it isn't a part of the natural cycle of life and death. '

bunny mask's first thought when the other first began speaking that the other had a very powerful way of commanding her attention; a trait that bunny mask herself found interesting, for this meant whoever possessed it oozed confidence, in her opinion. and although the spirit herself would willingly listen to anyone given the chance, it made her wonder about who this woman beside her was already. or what all she had experienced, as it were, since life events seemed to often have a tendency to shape who you are. bunny mask was clad in her usual attire at the moment; her mask in the shape of a rabbit obscuring the upper part of her face completely, with only wide slits cut out of it near the top to accommodate her glaring white eyes, and the dress she wore a nearly pristine looking white color.

and i say nearly because of the soot that was smeared across her collar. however, she thought she knew what she was getting into whenever she followed the sight of smoke in the distance, so this was of little importance to her: what was important to bunny mask was seeing if anyone needed her help here. it was usually a bad sign whenever a deep, dark smog that screamed ' fire ' had created a wall of it's own in the sky. but it turned out that she was wrong. this place was clearly pillaged and completely torn apart brick from brick, as the places that people used to call home were reduced to piles of wood scorched by embers. a thick layer of ash seemed to have formed in the midst of the landscape, and bunny mask could feel in her gut that something terrible had happened here.

perhaps as part of a war, as mya highlighted. the spirit could feel her heart drop while the other described her perspective on the sometimes militaristic and bleak nature of humanity. no, was it her experience? bunny mask thought that the way she phrased her words made this all sound very personal. a frown tugged at her lips as she bent down to touch the ash, letting it run through her fingers. mya was right — this was nothing to be proud of. she looked up at the other from the side, then, and spoke, ❝ you are right. i sincerely hope you were not here to witness what had happened here, for that would be a horror that you would likely never forget. but the men who do things like this, who ordered their own to risk their lives to ruin other's; they simply refuse to think they are the villains of anyone's story because they believe they are doing it for a noble purpose. though they are certainly not. ❞

bunny mask stood up and took a deep breath as she surveyed the land before her. there looked to be no survivors here, so the people here were either all killed, or maybe some had escaped. the latter might've been wishful thinking but bunny mask wanted to have some hope that this place was not turned completely into a mass grave, ❝ was that what this conflict was born from? the excessive pride of a nation, who are of the mind that they're righteous and good, but commit barbaric acts such as this one? ❞ she had to tell herself to take a deep breath now or she would likely lose herself to anger. and that would not be a pretty sight, for neither her, nor the other who stood just an arm's length away from her. in and out. bunny mask could feel the claws of her right hand dig into her palm as she took a moment to inhale, then exhale, but she didn't care.

everything about this was wrong. bunny mask let her eyes become half-lidded with the sense of sorrow that had come over her suddenly, like a tidal wave. it was just as she feared. mya had experienced this for herself, ❝ it is not natural. that, i must agree with. i am of the belief that we are fated to leave this world at a specific time and the lives of the humans that died in this town were stolen. they still had much to experience, to love. and from what i am hearing, you were forced to partake in the wrongful robbing of people's lives yourself, were you not? through war. an organized form of slaughter, glamorized to appear necessary by the masses, where there is no true victor. where everyone loses something and you are left feeling full of rage because of what you were coerced to do. ❞

the chill running through bunny mask's bones only intensified when she saw it on the ground. a doll, abandoned by it's owner, within the ash. bunny mask's voice became low, ❝ i am sorry. i am... so sorry. ❞