#so y'know that's terrifying

[whisperingrockandroll]

SURPRISE! The last three pages of this year's Halloween arc were drawn by my wonderful sister @rtonart ! Between this and my brother making all the "corrupted" edits of previous comics, this means all three of us worked on the arc together. A family project :)

My younger brother suggested doing a nod to Pibby this year by "glitching out" older comics and playing around with different effects and gimmicks. It turned out really weird, but a lot of fun. Learning With Pibby is a show/pitch/pilot we're both very passionate about and still rooting to ultimately get made. Never give up hope!

It was so cool to do this and really fun way to bond with my brother and sister, and I hope you guys got a kick out of this arc too, despite how fucking weird and confusing it must have been.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 80

 So Dan knows that there’s heroes that have gone back in time, he’s aware of that fact. But he doesn’t exactly care and has more important things to worry about. Like the fact that Danny and Ellie are now three years old, right when he’s moving, though maybe that’s a blessing in disguise seeing as the GIW are searching for them in Amity. 

  But still, he has more important things to worry about than the speedster vibrating five feet away from him. Like making sure Ellie and Danny are alright to visit (ugh) Peepaw Clocky while he goes to work. 

  Ms. Mercy is not messing around, which he appreciates in a workspace, but he has to wait for another opening in the daycare before he can bring his, as far as everyone else is aware, siblings who he got emergency custody of. 

  What with how Jazz is interning in Gotham, they figured Metropolis would be safer. Now if the speedster would stop following him, he would really appreciate it. He’s literally just an intern under Ms Mercy as an assistant, not even one of the scientists, and it’s not like his timeline of the end of the world exists anymore! 

[media-illiterate]

Fallout 4 Alternate Timeline

Because @datura-tea asked about my tags on this post, and I already have it sitting in my wips folder, I thought I'd post my alternate timeline of events for Fallout 4! It always bothered me that the Commonwealth is still so underdeveloped while the West Coast has trains and a working electical grid. So I tried to come up with a coherent narrative of how it could have backslid into its current state.

Timeline under the readmore because it is, not short.

2077: The Great War occurs. The surviving students and faculty of CIT take refuge in the institute’s underground particle-physics labs, locking the rest of the wasteland out. They live in fear of being discovered by other survivors and raided for their tech, making them paranoid and isolationist.

2097: Building on prewar research, CIT survivors complete development of their Mass Relay teleportation device. Dubbing themselves simply as The Institute, they fully wall themselves off from the surface world and embark on an ambitious plan of underground expansion, scavenging what they need from the surface.

2131: The Institute develops gen-1 synths to act as surface operatives, mostly removing the need for Institute personnel to go to the surface. Now mostly insulated from violence, the Institute much more callous and combative towards surface dwellers.

2163: The Institute isolates samples of FEV from the air, and begins a program of carefully controlled mutation. The resulting supermutants are found lacking, and the program is put on hold.

2176: The Commonwealth People's Government is formed from several prominent settlements. The new nation takes steps to protect its people from the Institute’s aggressive scavenging methods, earning its ire. Though the institute takes steps to try and destabilize the CPG, their new gen-2 synths prove insufficient for the task.

2177: Reactivating their FEV program, the Institute begin producing supermutants from kidnapped wastelanders and releasing them into the commonwealth with the intent to destabilize the CPG. Through careful false-flag attacks using disguised synths, they manage to spark a state of war between the mutants and surface humans that will last for more than a century.

2180: The newly formed Commonwealth Minutemen, a volunteer citizen’s militia created by the CPG, help drive off the initial wave of supermutants from central Boston.

2180-2224: Tensions between the Institute and CPG continue to escalate. Though the efforts of the Institute’s FEV project hampers the young nation’s expansion, the supermutants are too disorganized and scattered to topple the government. Faced with an increasingly cohesive and rapidly developing CPG, the Institute begins work on its Gen-3 synth infiltrator project.

2225: The Institute discovers information on Vault 111. Preparations are made for an expedition to recover a pristine pre-war genetic code from one of the pre-war vault dwellers in cryostasis.

2227: The part where they murder your spouse and steal your kid happens.

2229: An early model synth infiltrator "malfunctions" in downtown Diamond city, exposing the existence of Gen-3 synths to the world. The cause of the malfunction is never found, though escaped synths often claim that it was an intentional suicide-by-cop.

2230: Realizing the security threat posed by the new Gen-3 synths, mid-ranking members of the CPG's nascent spy corps founds the town of Covenant over top of an abandoned tunnel network. Posing as a new settlement, almost no one outside the project know its true purpose: the town is actually a front for researching a method to discern humans from Gen-3 synths.

2233: The Institute begins its infiltration of the CPG using upgraded Gen-3 synths, killing & replacing key individuals at all levels of power. Though paranoia about synths continues to build, most fail to anticipate just how far the tech has advanced.

2235: The Institute finalizes development of an advanced model of Gen-4 synth, dubbed Coursers. Incorporating FEV and cybernetic enhancements, Coursers form an elite corps of assassins that eliminate anyone who learns about the Institute’s plans.

(Side note: I think coursers should have been so much weirder)

2237: Having completed their infiltration of the CPG, the Institute kicks off their plan to topple the CPG.

August 4: The Executive Chair of the CPG council, Robert Gray, is assassinated by his secretary in broad daylight. During the assassination and subsequent arrest, the secretary loudly declares that the Chair has been replaced by an Institute Synth.

August 12: Scandal breaks out as evidence of massive financial corruption is leaked to the public. Protests occur across the commonwealth as the full scope becomes clear.

August 26: A special election is held, and voters elect minister of transportation Patricia Weiss as Chair. She delivers a hawkish election speech warning the Institute to back down.

September 10: A portion of the CPG stages a coup, using claims of mass election fraud as justification amid mass public unrest. They capture most of the CPG council members, and declare them traitors to the people of the commonwealth. Weiss escapes and sets up a government-in-exile out of Quincy with the remaining CPG military. She issues a two week ultimatum to the coup’s leaders, demanding that they release the counselors and surrender.

September 20: Before the date of the ultimatum passes, the CPG council is executed via mass firing squad in the CPG council chambers. Public dissent boils over into active civil war. The Minutemen quickly declare neutrality, but their attempts to protect outlying settlements are hampered by the widespread violence and lack of volunteers.

October 30: Under the guise of a ceasefire negotiation, the coup regime arrests Weiss. She is put through a kangaroo court and hanged as a synth infiltrator, to the shock of the public.

November: Multiple settlements withdraw from the CPG as the violence escalates, Bunker Hill and Goodneighbor first among them. The CPG civil war begins to peter out as both sides lose support, and numerous CPG military units defect to become raiders in search of pay.

December: Loyalist forces gain the upper hand, begin a reign of terror style purge of the remaining CPG officials, and declare the coup defeated. Weakened by the withdrawal of numerous settlements in reaction to the violence of the purge, the Loyalist government promptly collapses. Remnants of the rebel CPG forces attempt to declare a new government out of University Point, but fail to attract any major settlements.

2238: The CPG totally collapses. The remnants of its military forces, both loyalist and rebel, defect to the gunners en masse; many, disillusioned with military life, become raiders. Only the Minutemen command staff, operating out of Fort Independence, remain cohesive.

The collapse of the CPG ushers in an era of violence lasting decades as raider warlords exploit the chaos to carve the Commonwealth up into bandit fiefdoms.

Rumors begin to circulate that several of the key players of the CPG’s collapse were secretly synths. In truth, the entire chain of events was planned to a T, and leaders on all sides had been replaced. Only the Minutemen were overlooked, being seen by the Institute as just ragtag volunteers.

Several synth infiltrators defect from the Institute, seeking a way to free themselves and their peers. The organization they found will eventually grow into the Railroad.

Covenant, its secrecy miraculously intact, becomes radicalized by the fall of the CPG. Their methods become more desperate and more barbaric as time goes on.

2240's: The Minutemen begin rebuilding support for the CPG among the populace, striking back against the raider warlords and defending settlements from their depredations.

2250: Supermutant attacks increase sharply as the Institute releases more and more mutants onto the surface in an attempt to stop the Minutemen from reforming the CPG.

2274: After weathering two decades of freaquent supermutant attacks, Fort Independence finally falls at the hand of a mirelurk queen; unknown to anyone on the surface, this was the work of the Institute, who used their advanced signals technology to drive the creature into a frenzy.

2282: General Becker dies, leaving the Minutemen leaderless. The militia quickly declines, becoming disorganized and factional; raiders quickly exploit the chaos.

2285: Disgusted by his role in the Institute’s FEV program, Doctor Brian Virgil sabotages the program, mutates himself, and escapes into the glowing sea with the accumulated research. Distraught by the sudden lack of new reinforcements, the commonwealth mutants face an extinction crisis. Many begin to question their way of life, among them a mutant named Strong.

2288: The Sole Survivor wakes up.

[la-cocotte-de-paris]

Back when I looked like the modernised version of my url

[crossover-enthusiast]

I wished more corruption mods utilized Skid and Pump to their fullest extent

[mad-hunts]

[soldier-poet-king]

I'm experiencing existential shrimp emotions and yet still expected to play nice and go to work and it's just. Man. Man. I wanna sit around and think and feel until I reach some sort of tenable equilibrium. Not just crush the intensity under my heel into apathy, or at least the false facade of apathy. I care too deeply! Let me care about every little thing intensely and consumptively! I don't WANT to not be like this.

[mantleoflight]

//frustrated vent under the cut. feel free to ignore

//Y'know what would be great? If Bungie actually made a novelization of Destiny so we knew how the Last City actually worked.

//Bc lemme tell you, there is nothing more frustrating than wanting to build a crossover and having the equivalent of scattered sticky notes compared to a multi-volume encyclopedia. Trying to balance and scale power to make au's fair and fun for everyone is not easy when you don't have good enough source material to go on.

//bc lemme tell you, it feels really scummy of me watching Bad Batch tonight and having to be like "yeah, Crosshair would take out entire fireteams before they knew what was happening." because we really just don't have any idea how the Vanguard or Hidden are structured. And we have no idea what kind of training Guardians get because in game you don't get training. You learn as you go and get lucky if you find people who know what they're doing better than you. There is no training, only encouragement.

//I know we have loretabs about Shaxx training guardians for his Crucible, specifically 1 lore tab about how to take care of your gear, and 1 of Shaw with a class/crowd of newlights during the Lucent attack. But that's all I can find.

//We really don't know their command structure beyond gun-crazed raccoons answering to the main Vanguard directors (Ikora/Zavala). But that's not stable and it's definitely not sustainable. Nor is the Vanguard running everything else in an attempt to keep everything together in the Last City.

//Even Ikora says the Vanguard was never meant to be a political or ruling organization. It was strictly for protecting the Last City, for recruiting and training Lightbearers to prevent Dark Age Warlords from springing up again.

//If the Republic (old or new) came to town, they'd find a sick, barely inhabitable world with a single safe city and a weird inversion of the death star sitting right above it. Sol wouldn't even be worth being noticed by the Empire, and if it was noticed, it wouldn't take much to slag this sparsely populated system - Uluran, Eliksni, Hive, Vex, or not.

//Idk guys, I'm trying to build something worth being proud of but like, it definitely sucks when you can't balance out skill, power, and advancement stats. it really feels like a no-win scenario

[spidey-bie]

I truly love how I keep asking Ansi what his relationship dynamic is like with Hobie and she never gives me a straight answer. Straight up said, "We're merely two individuals who like to exist in the same space." My love.......what does that mean? I just need to know what y'all like to do together.

And then it clicked.

They cry together.

Hobie is coming close to the end of his rebellion. Constantly fighting to bring forth a better future for his community.

Ansi is at the start of hers. Completely unaware of what that even means for him and even more lost in where to start.

Neither of them have proper outlets to let out the emotional stress that's pent up inside of them. But when they're together that dam collapses. Everything that they've been holding back comes pouring out. And when neither of them has the strength left to cry anymore they sit on Aunt Maybelline's couch eating beignets and drinking chamomile tea, watching whatever's playing on the old antenna tv.

They're just two individuals who like to exist in the same space.

(if there are grammar errors then no there aren't. It's 1 in the morning.)

[mariana-oconnor]

The eternal struggle of balancing the number of exclamation marks on the tightrope of 'just enough enthusiasm' between the chasms of 'apathetic soulless automaton' and 'overly peppy and clearly unhinged'.

[puppetmaster13u]

More Possessed Doll Au (the au was created by @phoenixcatch7 so go check them out they do great stuff!)

Honestly this would be early-ish I am thinking into Bruce doing his vigilante work with the doll body. Or he just straight up has thick eyeliner/raccoon makeup lol.

[thorne1435]

Sometimes I think, like, how is it that these other trans people are struggling with dysphoria when they look so perfectly gender, y'know?

And then I realize, that people have told me that I look perfectly gender. And I still struggle with dysphoria. And then it all makes sense again.

[katierosefun]

ough so i just finished watching heartstopper and something i do rather appreciate about this show--outside of all the beautiful queer rep and friendships--is probably just this. idea that you could be surrounded by literally the best and kindest support group and! sometimes you will still have bad days! something something when doctor who said that life is a pile of good things and a pile of bad things and the good things don't always make the bad things go away, but the bad things don't make the good things less significant or important! it is very true that you could have a million reasons to be happy, but still struggle very deeply with hurts that you've had in the past! but that's okay! that doesn't mean you're a sad story! you'll be okay! it's not bad that you have all these beautiful people in your life and still aren't 100% there all the time! you'll be! okay!

[paeinovis]

Honest to God the oceangate thing has lead me down such rabbit holes most of which were incredibly morbid

[chaoticrystal]

EVERYONE SAY THANK YOU SOUTH-AFRICAN FIREFIGHTERS!!

[thelioncourts]

If the shows gonna do Lesmand, don’t you think they have to go the polyam route? I just don’t see how they go there without it otherwise it kind of makes Loustat, Loumand and Armand/Daniel kinda cheapened

Okay, so I'm going to answer this and I'm going to beg people to not come for my throat; I'm simply answering this with educated guesses as well as general knowledge that I think pertains to this.

So. I don't really think the show is going to do Lesmand, at least not in a full-fledged ship/couple/whatever you want to call it. I truly don't.

If I had to give any kind of guess as to what Lestat and Armand's relationship is going to look like in the show, it's going to look a lot like it does in the book, but with a simplification of Armand's feelings in particular.

I think we're going to get, of course, the TVL/IwtV interactions between Lestat and Armand, namely their first interaction in Paris when they first meet as well as the tower scene and the torture scenes that occur in IwtV/TVL (with Lestat's POV). I think we're, of course, going to get Lestat with the theatre and handing it to Armand, Armand and Nicki, etc. and then, from there, I think we'll get certain aspects of the Prince Lestat era. I think if they're going to do The Vampire Armand (book), they're going to have to do an entire limited series, at a minimum, for him, and, in turn, Lestat will be in at least some of that.

But regarding romance, I don't see them doing a lot, if really, any of it. I think they'll have Armand begging for Lestat to stay with him after that first meeting, but I think that will be done to show some of the odd resentment Armand has for Lestat. Beyond that, I don't anticipate much romance, namely that we don't have much from a Lestat POV anyway throughout all the books combined.

I think one thing to keep in mind is that this is a television adaptation of the books, and it is not fully accurate to the text. These writers are not adhering to a solely book-fan audience, nor should they. They are appealing to a wider set of people, trying to maintain a following there.

Rolin Jones has repeatedly classified IwtV as a gothic romance and has said that they are focusing heavily on Loustat. He's not going to say that if they're going to go on a polyam route. Television works on a very particular set of...expectations, and s1 focusing on the essential marriage of Loustat, and its downfall, is fully setting us up to see them get back together and then be in a romance that is more sustainable for them (I don't want to say 'healthier' because nothing is healthy in this series, just in general).

It also appears that Armand/Daniel (Armandiel? Armandaniel?) is going to be important and, no doubt, focused on, given especially Daniel's current role in the 2022!world.

Loustat is a really heavy hitter with fans. Loustat posts by the AMC account get a staggering amount of likes/retweets/shares/etc. in comparison to literally anything else. Audiences are going to not be super thrilled about Loumand because audiences want him with Lestat; when the truth of Armand's actions are brought to light, fans are not going to like him with Louis or Lestat (killing Claudia, maiming her body, allowing Louis' imprisonment to make sure that happens, torturing Lestat, throwing Lestat's weakened body from the towers, etc.). Even when we see the different sides of him, the softer ones, the funnier ones, etc. we are going to see that predominantly in regard to Daniel.

It'll be made worse when TVL happens and they see what Armand does to Nicki. Audiences won't like Nicki near the end either, not for Lestat, but they especially won't think what Armand did is justified.

Anyway, this is all a very longwinded way to say that Armand is a character that television audiences are going to struggle with. I think they can absolutely sell Armand and Daniel, but there will be a lot of dislike next season with Loumand, and with that I think the idea of Lesmand will be so far from a (non-book mostly) fan's mind that it couldn't even be considered as a contender for Loustat.

So. Yes, long explanation short, I don't see Lesmand really happening on screen. Some moments? Sure. Insinuations? Perhaps. Long-term anything? Absolutely not.