#potato-with-a-backstory

[inknose]

just when he thought all secrets had been revealed, xie lian uncovers more shocking intrigue

[majorproblems77]

thanks @readingismyhobby24 for saying i can ramble about my son

This is more infomation about exodus AU Sky.

Okay, So as a skyloftian Sky has wings that are attached to his back. However, his wings are different from other skyloftians because during his fight with demise during his 'adventure' he loses his wings and demise escapes from the battle.

His wings act differently to other skyloftians which we will discover more throughout the story, but I will speak of one aspect of them.

FI - The AI he had to have integrated into him to ensure he could control the wings has several 'Projects' she can perform freely in case (if necessary) to protect Sky. One of these projects - Project Safeguard. Turns his wings into a shield that sits around him in basically a cocoon. It fuzes the wings into his back so they can't be removed for the duration of the project.

It's quite painful, so he dosent use it unless absolutely necessary. It also dosent work if he's not actually connected to the wings.

With this in mind, Sky can get quite panicked when he doesn't have his wings. He gets really bad phantom pain. Fi tries her best to simulate the feelings to help alleviate his struggles but they are just not quite the same. He gets quite upset about this and often refers to himself as a wingless skyloftian. Which is quite an insult on Bolt.

[boiling-potato]

"Well now that you're feeling better, you may leave now. I think that the rest of the recovery will be better if your home. If you feel any type of pain, don't hesitate to reach out, ok?"

"thanks doctor" the middle aged woman said to the doctor while looking at his teenage son in the hospital bed. The pink haired boy didn't seem to notice the conversation though. He's more focused on the window, outside was a somber sight to see with the pouring rain and lighting from the distance. Looking at it with a blank expression making his mother worry more.

He has been missing for three weeks, coming back with just a few scrape and bruises. Everyone thought he was dead since there had been multiple murder cases in the forest and yet here he is, alive with no fatal injury.

"You hear that, Salem? You can go home now."

The boy, Salem turn his head looking at his mother who's wearing a worried yet relief expression on her face. Everything was a blur, he can't seem to remember anything.. not even the incident.. He can't even remember this woman in front of him either.

"... I'm.. really glad.." the woman smiled, relief that he finally said something. She was just glad he's back..

"Here, I brought you your favorite clothes. I'll wait for you outside so we could home, the taxi is already waiting for us."

....

Salem opened the door to his supposed room, entering it, he observe the design to the posters, the arrangements of the furnitures and even the choice of coloring.. bright and... expressive.. He then stopped at the full size mirror, examining his reflection and every bit of detail on his appearance.. the piercings.. the hair.. and his "favorite" outfit...

".... What a horrible choice of style...."

Wow Salem I didn't know you have such a high opinion on people's choice of design! Hah! Anyway, here's a bit of an oc lore! Salem's backstory is one of my favorite stories I came up with! and I just recently realize that I haven't actually told any of my oc backstory huh? Probably because I'm bad at writting or I just can't find the time to write so instead, I'll just drop a lore here and there! Here's one of them! Hope you guys like it! Especially you ace! ಡwಡ✨ @aesopsbaby

[thychesters]

“Do you like cooking?”

Sanji looks up from where he’s quartering potatoes and isn’t sure what startles him more: that Luffy is in the kitchen and hasn’t tried to swipe a snack yet, or that he hadn’t heard him come in. (His captain is a great many things; quiet is not one of them.)

He stares at him, waiting, and the knife stills against the chopping block with a quiet thunk. Sanji blinks back at him through his bangs. The quartering continues.

“I’m good at it,” is all he says. He knows he comes off as distracted, too busy carefully considering the recipe Carne whipped together one day, long before the Straw Hats were even a blip in the grand scheme of things. Usopp had been the one to make the suggestion at the inordinate amount of potatoes they had in their pantry, and he’d squawked when Sanji dove past him to dig for the rest of the fixings for baked potato soup.

The kitchen smells of cooked bacon and freshly baked sourdough, carefully crafted from the starter Patty had given him when he’d left the Baratie, a gift passed with a grumbling about something to make sure Sanji didn’t forget how to cook.

“That’s not what I asked,” Luffy says, folding his arms on the other end of the table. He rests his cheek on them, watching him sideways. Sanji cuts an eye growing out of another potato but doesn’t look at him.

Does he like cooking? Of course, he’s good at it — he’s had a decade to hone his skills; lived under the gruff tutelage of an old geezer who’d just as soon tell him his bolognese sauce needed work as he would kick him upside the head as a way of telling him he did a good job. Of course he likes it, it’s a point of pride when he watches someone take their first bite and immediately dig in for another or ask for seconds; when someone sits back, eyes half-lidded and belly full and content.

“Do you like being a pirate?” he asks, depositing the last of the potato chunks into the pot, careful not to let the water splash out onto the burner. He shifts his attention to the bacon, picking up another knife to begin crumbling it.

He can sense rather than see Luffy immediately brighten. “Yeah! It’s a lot of adventure and finding cool things. I figure I gotta see everything if I’m gonna be King of the Pirates, right?” With a glance he can see Luffy’s sat back up, though he hasn’t broken his gaze with Sanji’s back, something firm in his eyes. “Doesn’t make sense to do something if you don’t like it.”

That gives Sanji pause, and he watches the bubbles drifting around in the pot to hide his frown. Of course he likes cooking; he enjoys it and is good at it. Because he keeps his crew alive – he’s sure Nami and Usopp have a grasp on a few recipes between the two of them, and Robin, while still an enigma, might be able to handle things. Chopper he isn’t sure of, but Zoro and Luffy are lost causes.

After a beat, he goes back to chopping bacon. That’s just it, isn’t it. Luffy’s not just a pirate, he’s the one who’s going to become King of the pirates. But then no one on this crew is just one thing; each of them have their strong suits and play off of one another. Nami’s not just their navigator, she spent her childhood bleeding ink for a man who sought to use her for her own purposes and now she’s set off to quite literally chart her own course on her terms. Zoro isn’t just a swordsman, he’s a moron with no sense of direction who’s also a voice of reason. Usopp’s the bravest coward he knows, a child who told lies in the hope they would one day be true, and ingenious with even a limited supply of materials. As for Sanji …

Of course he likes cooking. He can go to bed at night knowing his crew is full and nourished and no food has gone to waste. That they know what good food actually tastes like. He can clean the kitchen and have one last cigarette, content with the knowledge none of his crew will know hunger, that they will never know the purgatory of being lost at sea with nothing but mold and rocks, the feeling of the indentations of each of their ribs, or the exhaustion of staring out into the horizon, waiting for death or rescue, whichever comes first.

Of course he’s good at it because he has to be. Because he’ll keep that starving little boy fed until he loses the ability to pick up a knife, and then he will adapt from there. Because he will endure Luffy’s complaints that he wants a snack even if he’s still bloated from breakfast because his beaming face will never be gaunt and his expression hollow. Because it gives him a sense of purpose, even if he won’t blurt that in the middle of the kitchen, no matter that it’s just the two of them and he trusts Luffy with his life. He will never see that little boy reflected in any of them.

Bacon finished, he sets down his knife and turns back toward the table, adjusting his sleeve. A watched pot never boils, after all, and he leans against the counter, folding his arms as Luffy watches him patiently – or as patiently as someone like Luffy can.

“Yeah,” he says around an exhale. Because it makes sense to him, because there’s a reason for it and he is the one to provide it, this service, care, and support. His shoulders don’t sag and Luffy grins. “Yeah, I like cooking.”

[gothsuguru]

that baby wasn’t remembering a damn thing omfg look at yuji’s face

[astrll-art]

remember when luffy set the kitchen on fire to get sanji back and nothing else happened!!!!!!!!!

please do not repost!

[hideandgopeep]

Modern Reiner HCs Anon: my brain is working, I haven't forgotten you! I'm still pretty bad with thinking outside of canon, but placing Reiner in our world is healing 💝

Probably gonna be around today depending on what the brain requires (i am babying her right now).

[bam-monsterhospital]

on the one hand, eso is allergic to pretty young men npcs and its engine affords absolutely ZERO aesthetic favours towards mans... which is why bastian looks wayyyyy older than 27 and craggy as hell visually.

on the other hand, his character is great and griffin puatu's performance is so goddamn wonderful and endearing that it overlays and makes up for any lacking visuals on the game's part...

all this to say, i treat drawing bastian a little like how all those oblivion fan artists approached interpreting lucien lachance back in the day.

not quite to that extent, but like, same energy.

[rowanthestrange]

hmm, the doctor being genetically engineered/manipulated to be optimal, and their favourite fruit being bananas, also genetically engineered/manipulated to be optimal for people’s consumption.

[the-heartlines]

this fic is getting WAY TOO LONG

[dum-vivere-vinum-rubrum]

I'm back yall

I got wild about cats for some reason- I actually started drawing bc of them and warrior cats (I was young ok) and I tried to copy all those MAPs styles- like with a cartoonish vibe ? Turns out I just needed to do shit on my notebooks (⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠)

[ehlnofay]

“Pax,” Martin says suddenly.

She looks up from the small seam tear in her gambeson. “What?”

Martin opens his mouth, closes it again. They’re sitting in his too-big room, Pax cross-legged and stitching on his cushy bed, Martin fidgeting in the chair next to the cupboard. He still doesn’t have many things here, though it’s been months. Not much more than a stack of books, a few changes of clothes, exactly two items of sentimental value. It can’t be nice to rest in such a cavernously empty room. Pax should really get him some more little knick-knacks, the kind a person has when they stay in the same place for a while. A paperweight shaped like a cat or some such nonsense. They wouldn’t know.

The bareness of the room makes it feel a little stark, uncomfortable, like all Martin’s awkward restraint is pressed into the walls. Pax will freely own that they don’t know what a normal person would do in this scenario, but they don’t think it would be whatever Martin’s doing. They’d at least get a paperweight or something.

At least the Xarxes isn’t here, radiating whatever fiendish miasma bothers everyone so much and poisoning the air of the room further. (Pax is willing to bet he would have brought it in here to study, but apparently the Blades wouldn’t let him.)

Martin still hasn’t said anything. Pax jabs the needle back into the padded wool fabric. “Spit it out.”

Martin wrings his hands.

He says, “Jauffre tells me you’re getting to be quite renowned throughout Cyrodiil.”

“Mm-hm.” The needle is sticking near the seam – Pax brings the cloth to his face and shoves it through with his teeth. “Can’t go three steps in the Kvatch gambeson without someone asking if it’s me. Talk like I’m going to fight off Oblivion single-handed. Black Horse Courier wrote a pamphlet about me and all.”

Martin nods – then keeps nodding, head bobbling up and down like a socially inept chicken. “Right,” he says, pauses again – spit it out, Pax wants to say again, he gets so ridiculous sometimes – “Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Doesn’t what bother me?” Pax pulls the thread taut. “The pamphlet? It’s a bit early in the day for them to write a whole book about me, Martin Priest.”

“I mean – the way people talk, as you say, like you’ll end the crisis single-handed. Like you’re a hero.”

Pax’s eyes flicker over to Martin’s drawn face.

“I am a hero,” she says, tugging the needle sharply enough that the thread almost snaps.

“Of course!” Martin practically trips over himself trying to eat his words; the tight set of Pax’s jaw softens. “That isn’t what I meant, Pax, of course you are. Just.”

He’s visibly struggling again.

Pax shuffles to the end of the bed and thumps the mattress with his foot. “Come on,” he says. “Sit.”

“I am sitting.”

“Over here, you git.”

Martin sits.

“All right. Now spit it out.”

Martin sighs, hands flexing on his knees. “Just. You are a hero, Pax, but you aren’t like heroes are supposed to be – you’re just a person. And yet everyone acts as though you’re not, as though you’re more an idol to be glorified than you are you. Doesn’t it grate on your nerves after a while?”

Pax says, “Nah.”

Martin cants his head. Pax stares at the rip in the gambeson – it’s almost all mended now.

When Martin doesn’t speak, they stick the needle in the wool and take a rustling breath. “I ever tell you,” they say, “that my parents were highwaymen?”

They can feel Martin’s watery old-man eyes on their scalp.

“No, you did not.”

“Well, they were.” Pax is painfully uncomfortable. “Are, I guess. They’re probably still kicking around the lower Niben.”

“I assumed they were dead.”

Pax shrugs, still staring down the eye of the needle. “Reasonable assumption, but no. And they weren’t bad – weren’t bad parents. Bad people. Fine parents.”

Martin shifts so that Pax just gets the rustling of his blue skirts out the edges of her eyes. He says, “Why did you leave?”

“Don’t push it, Martin Priest.” This is already more personal than Pax would like. “I’m just answering your question, I think. No-one’s ever what the stories say they are, you know? My mother terrorised the Yellow Road for years, I saw posters when I was in Leyawiin, but. She was my mother, you know? There’s always a person behind the myth.”

“So you’re already more comfortable with being misinterpreted?” Martin tries.

Pax shakes his head. “No. Well – yeah, kind of, but. I think.” He doesn’t know how to say this part – how to explain why being idolised never bothers him, why he remembers it all so well, the stew and the talking and the smell of the paper, the stain the candlewax left on the table. “I’m six years old, right? And I’m telling strangers I’m lost so they dismount and my parents can rob them, and my father’s training me with a bow so I can help when I’m older, and the travellers always look so upset with me when they find out. And I’ve never seen a dead body up close but I know the smell of blood well enough to know when it’s time to close my eyes. And we go back to the wagon and the adults are laughing and I’m reading Pelinal by candlelight.” And now he’s just recounting his childhood memories and it’s weird and he hates it, and Martin looks all sympathetic when he peeks up and it’s weird and he hates it, but the only way out is through and Pax pushes along through his terrible nightmare explanation. (He’s not even sure Martin understands what he’s trying to get at.) “And I don’t mind stealing but the blood turns my stomach and I don’t like how they always act betrayed because I lied. Even though I don’t owe them anything. And I’m reading Pelinal and at least the blood has a point. And at least there’s a song at the end of it. And then I put myself to bed and my parents say goodnight and I know if we all dropped dead in the night no-one would care, and I get older and I know that if I left they probably wouldn’t follow me. And no-one would remember me. You know?”

Martin, stymied, lays a compassionate hand on Pax’s shoulder and says, “I definitely don’t.”

Pax knocks it off.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says, ever earnest. Pax groans.

“Forget it,” she says, and tips her head back. Revises her answer. “No, it doesn’t bother me. It’s nice. The Hero of Kvatch is important. People are happy when I show up.”

“It’s nice to be wanted,” Martin says softly.

Before they have time to think better of it, Pax replies, “Yeah.”

They press their chin to their chest to hide their face and resume sewing.

Martin, because he’s annoying, does not tacitly agree to stop talking and never bring it up again. “But at least people want you because you – did something. You earned your reputation.”

His face is pinched and pale, brow furrowed, and he’s beginning to wave his hands about in the way he does when he’s getting het up. Pax screws up their face. He’s been fidgety the last few days, tucking himself and his books into odd corners and wincing whenever someone addresses him –

“Ah,” Pax says, and they lift their head, aggressively grateful to pass over the spotlight. “This is about your doubts.”

He presses his lips tight together, a strand of hair falling in his face. He’s got to do something with that, it’s getting too long to just leave loose all the time. “Pax, I’m really doing my best, but I still don’t feel –”

He huffs and goes quiet. He’s getting himself into a proper state about this. Pax stretches out her legs and drops her feet in his lap, much more comfortable now they’ve returned to the status quo of Martin being the weird and weepy one. He gives her a look.

“Emperors are supposed to be – mighty,” he manages. “Blood of kings, the divine right to rule, they know what they’re doing. I’m no Emperor. I don’t know what I’m doing!”

Pax knots off his stitching and drops the gambeson on the floor. “Martin, I met the last Emperor.” He spreads his arms, makes sure Martin’s paying attention. “He was literally just a weird old man.”

“Pax.”

“You’re a slightly less weird, slightly less old man. I’m pretty sure you’re fine.” Martin is staring, aghast, as though they just told him they ate a divine relic – or something else ridiculous bordering on blasphemous. “I don’t think Emperors are that special, Martin, they’re just lucky. You’re the same as all of them.”

He still looks shocked. Pax crawls over the mattress so she can prod him in the chest.

“Ow,” he says. “Rude.”

“Calm down, Martin Priest. I promise you the Blades won’t arrest me for treason for saying you’re just a person.”

He frowns, pushes his hair back behind his ears. “I don’t know that you’re wrong,” he says reluctantly. “But I don’t want to believe you.”

Pax sits back on their heels. “Why?”

“I don’t know what it means if you’re right.”

They are quiet for a bit before Pax reaches around him and steals his pillow.

“Doesn’t make much difference, does it?” she says as he snatches it back out of her arms. “We have to do what we have to do anyway.”

Martin clutches the pillow to his chest. “I just wish I had a little more certainty.” He cracks an awkward smile. “Or some of your confidence, if you’ve any spare.”

Pax is not a touchy feely person. They flop against his side. “You know I’m not – I’m not the hero everyone thinks I am, right, like you said?” they ask. Martin nods. “It’s just that I want to be. I like that they think that. I’m going to keep going in that direction because I want to be what people think I am.”

Martin’s hair is really too long; they can feel it brushing the top of their head.

“I want to be a good Emperor,” Martin says quietly. “I want to do this right.”

“Then you’ve got a good start,” Pax says. He draws his knees up to his chest. “Just keep going in that direction.”

I’m with you all the way, he doesn’t say, because he’s said far more than he likes to already.

It doesn’t need to be said, anyway. They both know.

[boiling-potato]

"My dear young master"

"I will be forever grateful"

----

Every milkshake mansion character had a very unfortunate fate. Trickster brought them in, give them everything they want, let them do everything they want in exchange for them to be part of her "perfect family"

"Being a part of the milkshake mansion is like entering a bond with it, you can never escape it. It's an obligation but it doesn't mean you should respect or get along with it." That's exactly how all of them thinks except for Willow

[rabbitslikecarrots]

So here’s the thing, for the majority of my life I have been irrationally frightened of earwigs. (I’m not going to include a picture, for the sake of my sanity, but for those who don’t know what they are the Latin is Forficula auricularia). I remember quite clearly the day my older brother, who I had always looked up to and saw as a strong protector in many ways, picked one up in the garden and it bit him and made him bleed. I must have been 5 or 6 years old.

This phobia was fine when I lived in the city and worked in a sterile lab all day, but now I spend as much time as I can in the garden. You know what else likes to be in my garden? Yep, earwigs. They’re everywhere. So I decided I needed to do something about it.

Now, I’m no psychologist, but I do have an AS level in psychology 😅 I figured, how hard can it be? I did all the desensitisation things people recommend, exposure therapy and that, but I found the most useful thing I did was rename them. The word earwig struck fear into my heart, but “heckin’ soily bois”… now that’s the name of a friend. So every time I saw one, I would calm myself from whatever reaction I had, wave, and say “hi there friend, you’re just a heckin soily boi”. I felt idiotic every time but IT WORKED!

I had an earwig in my harvesting bag today and I put my hand in and got my potatoes out even though I knew it was in there. I still can’t touch them, but it’s great progress and I’m proud. I used to cry on sight, but look at me now!

Just wanted to share that :)

[plutoandpolaris]

Me, in my infinite hubris:

“I’m gonna set my Underwater AU in the 1700’s so I can have it take place during the golden age of piracy!”

Good going, genius! Now you’ve gotta somehow sift through maps like THIS

Just to figure out a birthplace for your characters.

Christ.

[kisuminight]

More worldbuilding things! This time, we are going over Bedwars, which I mentioned previously as part of c!Purpled's and c!Hannah's backstory.

Now, Bedwars (and other minigames like it) are about killing people. So why would something like that exist in a world where you (the Blade) or someone else (your Driver) going through a respawn immediately disrupts your Resonance and permanently kills you? It's a massive gamble, and losing it means losing your life/your partner/your anonymity (if you have to really throw around magic to survive).

Basically there's a safety system--on reputable servers, anyway. For servers with minigames, there are several Blades and Drivers working as admins/mods whose entire purpose is to monitor ongoing games, give an invincible heart/buffer effect to a player before they take lethal damage, and then teleport them off the field/back to their bed and restore them to full health.

Hypixel does this. c!Techno is (secretly) part of their extreme-emergency on-call staff. They haven't needed him much, but it is accepted amongst the mod-team that if there is ever a cross-server war, Techno is probably siding with Hypixel. He and Seraphine like to make snarky comments at each other. One of the few times Techno gets called in is when a bug makes a slime mob end up with player coding, get a virus, and decide to take control of Hypixel (yes the Hypixel mayor storyline takes place, but it is set pre-canon in this AU by about 20 years).

MunchyMC did this too, and c!Bad and c!Skeppy worked as part of their admin team for a while before they adopted c!Sapnap and switched to part-time work to raise him. c!Alyssa and c!Callahan, as well as c!Ant and c!Velvet, also worked for MunchyMC, though they were more part-time/interns. Sapnap grew up around Munchy, but not really part of the mod/admin team. c!Dream and his previous Driver were there to participate in the minigames a bit before they moved on. c!George only spent a little time around Munchy more recently, after he became Dream's Driver.

This also makes the Minecraft Monday and MCC dubiously-canon status more probable. I think for the MCC, it is something that happens every couple of years. It happened last before the events of dsmp, and the next one doesn't occur until after the events. Maybe make it a four year cycle like the Olympics?

Unfortunately, I don't think the Dream & Techno MCC win really fits into the storyline unless we push it way back and say it happened during the same life as the duel.

And obviously there are bad servers where the safety net isn't in place--some servers advertise this fact and some servers hide it. But Bedwars is done through Hypixel, which is very safe, and Punz figures it's a decent way for Purpled to get some experience with combat in a non-traumatizing way.