#stealth sons

[graveyard-guardian]

these genes have no business going this hard

[moongothic]

God I wish I could remember what Oda once said about mothers in One Piece... I can't remember if it was about Luffy's mother in particular or moms in general, but he essentially joked about how you'd have to be A Really Horrible Mother to allow your child to go off and become a pirate (dangerous business no loving mother would allow)

And just... My vague memory of that comment is living in my head right now, because truly, if Crocodile somehow is Luffy's mom, truly nothing would make him a worse mom than

Literally trying to murder his child and beating him to near death multiple times the first time they actually meet

Going so far to stop being a mom that he became a dad instead

[hanakihan]

sigh I’ve been thinking about sacrifice au where jinwoo is an eldrich being living and walking in forest at night and village is terrified, so they send gifts but none are touched

then they decide to send a sacrifice so maybe this monster will leave them alone and people will stop disappearing and usually it’s supposed to be a maiden but no one wants to send young girls here, jinchul volunteers because at least he’ll die fighting or even may survive. It’s still better than to send a young girl or an older person. He’s one of few who can fight and knows forest’s layout because he used to hunt before becoming village’s right hand man.

so he goes into forest dressed fancily with some gifts (and a dagger and a sword in his robes just in case) closer to nighttime. His trip is mostly peaceful until he’s attacked by some kind of beasts and he thanks gunhee for giving him weapon. he mostly holds on until there’s too much and he starts to sustain injuries. and just when he thinks he’s gonna die other weird shadow(??) creatures step in and actually save him??? he lost too much blood and is too tired to keep up with what’s happening but he sees glowing violet eyes and feels someone’s hands on his back supporting him before everything goes black. then he wakes up at daytime and he’s pretty much taken care of by a stranger.

apparently jinwoo is that eldrich being wandering forest but he’s not the one making people who wander in forest to disappear. he’s actually the one to hunt spawning monsters but he’s not always on time to do so, jinchul is actually the first and only one he was able to save. jinwoo also can’t enter village or approach it unless someone from it invites him in.

anyway things happen, jinchul does invite jinwoo in village and gunhee allows jinwoo to take jinchul on night patrols in forest and they start to bond. jinwoo did eventually ask why jinchul was alone in woods at night dressed as if for wedding (veil and all that along with some red eyeliner wheeze) and jinchul embarrassingly admits he was supposed to be a gift or sacrifice. jinwoo actually wheezes at this because it’s such stupidly human thing to do.

‘What are you, a bride sacrifice?’

‘… you make it sound even worse—‘

‘Are you a virgin then, since you’re a bride wheeze’

‘… that’s it I’m leaving goodbye’

jinwoo has too much fun teasing jinchul over his status as a gift and then jinwoo remembers that he technically didn’t accept him as a gift lmao

It’s just a silly au where a human sacrifice bonds with eldrich being who’s actually nice and wants to help and socialize after centuries of loneliness and they just spend nights patrolling and talking and bonding to the point you can rarely spot them separated (gunhee on background laughs and collects bets from everyone who lost lmao)

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Free Day Thursday

I got another chunk of the Splinter Cell au out of my brain and onto a page at last! This time: father-son bonding time with Jak, Dax, and Damas

Tess looked tired when she stopped by the barracks looking for Jak. Daxter eyed her and grimaced.

"Oof. Rough shift, babe?"

Tess leaned against the doorway and grumbled. "Takes a lot of energy to be perky and cute all the time."

Daxter stretched out on the cot he'd monopolized. "Oo girl, don't I know it. Say, I dunno if you noticed, but there's plenty of space right here to relax a little."

Tess smirked. "Tempting, but I have to check in with Vin first. And I need to find Jak. Krew's starting to get antsy about how long your "hunting trip" has been. He says if you two don't come back with one heck of a trophy, he'll make you regret it."

From anyone else, that would've been an empty threat. But Krew had ties to the Baron, and was still stinging over Jak ruining his bet on the race. As Krew's "employee", Jak had been given a certain level of protection from the KG, who didn’t like crossing the crime boss when they could help it. Retracting that protection was just the beginning of what Krew could probably do.

Daxter wrinkled his nose. "Ugh! Is it too early to give our two week notice?"

The ottsel sat up.

"Do we even need Krew anymore? We're gettin' strong! Makin' allies! We got all the intel we need from Vin and the Scout Flies. I say we just ghost ol' Hover Huckster and let him pick up the slack!"

Tess didn't look amused. "90% of our intel on KG movements comes from me eavesdropping at work."

Daxter cringed. Leaving Tess to do the lion's share of the work at both the saloon and the factory was not ideal boyfriend behavior, even he knew that.

"Er...I'll let Jak know we gotta go hunting," he said sheepishly. "If, y'know, the New Parents will let us out of their sight for ten minutes."

Which was how he found himself sitting on Jak’s shoulder two hours later, scanning the surrounding mountain country for Ramheads.

"Last time we found one of those, we were poking around the Eastern Temple," Jak yawned, squinting down from the central hub.

"Also a lot of loose boulders that were a real pain in the-"

He glanced to the side and cut himself off.

For some reason, Mar's dad got annoyed when Jak copied Sig’s more...blunt language.

Damas crouched at the ledge beside him and glanced up at Daxter. "Movement?"

"Nada. It's deader than Krew's love life down there," Daxter sighed.

Jak snickered.

The Wastelander king made a sort of harrumph sound and narrowed his eyes.

"Ah yes. Krew. You know, Sig didn't tell me how you ended up working for him."

There was a distinct flavor of disapproval in his voice that left Jak cringing. He'd never liked the feeling of someone being upset at him -- which Samos almost always had been when he was little -- but he'd gotten pretty good at shrugging off other people's disapproval, or at least not capitulating.

As it turned out, parental disapproval felt much worse.

Feeling a little defensive, Jak stood up sharply.

"Wasn’t by choice. Torn sent us to work for him so we could get information out of him."

He folded his arms and looked away.

"Not like anyone else was giving us food," he said sullenly.

Damas clicked his tongue and sighed. With one hand, he pushed himself upright and slung his rifle over his back.

"I see. They put you in a difficult position."

Jak scoffed. "Yeah. It happens a lot."

"Hm." Damas folded his arms across his broad chest and shifted to gaze down at the valley. His shoulder brushed against Jak’s just barely, a tacit show of support.

"What is it you would do if given the choice?" he asked.

Jak raised his gun, exhaled slowly, and took aim at the upturned floating platform that bobbed between the temple and the valley. Before he could overthink things, he fired one blaster round into the unbalanced base, smoothly flipping the platform upright once more. Jak slid his morph gun back into the holster on his back, crouched, and leapt to the circle of Precursor metal. As it floated down, he thought about Damas’s question.

What would he do if he had a choice?

It seemed simple at first: he wanted to get out of Haven. He wanted to go home.

But...where was home now? What was home? Did he really belong anywhere?

Jak supposed he could just explore the world until he found someplace that felt like home -- he'd always loved exploring, almost more than racing -- but what about his friends in Haven?

What about Mar?

Finding Damas and Phobos meant he wouldn't have to be the child’s sole caretaker anymore -- Jak wondered if he was supposed to feel guilty about the weight of the relief that came with the thought. He felt almost that he could breathe easier and just be Mar's brother when he didn't have to worry about who was watching him, and where their next meal would come from.

Jak hopped down onto soft grass and absent-mindedly took a seat while waiting for Damas to make his way down. Idly, he plucked a few blades of grass and crushed them between his fingers to release their sharp fragrance.

"What would you do if given the choice?" he asked Daxter as they watched the platform float back up.

It seemed Daxter had no such troubles of indecision. His answer was so quick it had to have been either rehearsed, or something he was genuinely excited about.

"I'm gonna own my own pub someday!" The ottsel chirped, "Better than anything Krew could ever come up with! I'm gonna have drinks, and music, and dancing- ooh! And I'll make so much money I'll be able to set Osmo and Ximon up with a permanent contract for pest control! They'll get their store back in no time!"

Daxter hopped down from Jak’s back, gesticulating wildly with each new idea.

"And- and- and Tess and me are gonna have an apartment above the bar. And a pool! Right on the roof! So you can come up and swim where nobody will bother us! And I'll always have enough food for us and anyone else who's hungry!"

Jak smiled, but his heart ached for his best friend. Daxter's ambitions were both grand and heartbreakingly simple. A home he could own. A roof over his head. Enough food that he didn’t have to worry about where his next meal was coming from. And in the midst of all that he still planned for his friends: a way to repay the man who had taken him in while Jak was in prison, a way for Jak to relax without showing the world his scars.

"You're a good man, Daxter," Jak murmured, unintentionally interrupting his friend's rambling monologue about menus and upholstery.

Daxter paused, and gave him a simple smile in return. They didn't need words to understand his meaning. You're a better man than I am, each believing it of the other without a shred of doubt. To Daxter, Jak was the unselfish one, dealing with his annoying habits and the entire weight of the world every day and still choosing to save people, no matter how angry at them he was. He wondered if he should have said it more when they were younger. If maybe it would have made Jak believe it now.

The moment ended with the thud of Damas’s worn boots against the grass. He looked a little annoyed, although Daxter couldn't have said for sure whether it was the floating flip-pods that irritated him, or Jak leaping off without him. For all that they were still strangers to each other, the Wastelanders really did not like Jak getting out of range of sight. It was like they were afraid he'd vanish if they looked away.

If he was being honest, Daxter knew how they felt. Every waking moment from the instant he'd found Jak in that awful prison, for weeks, Jak had behaved the same way about him.

Damas glanced down at the blades of grass Jak was idly shredding, and the green staining his fingertips. His annoyance softened into quiet amusement.

"There are easier ways to find raw eco," he joked, leaning on his staff.

"Huh?" Jak looked down at his smudged fingertips and grimaced with chagrin.

"Er...let's uh, let's just get going."

The boy hopped up with an ease Damas envied -- regenerative light eco was all well and good, but it didn't stop his knees from popping when he had to get off the floor!

"You didn't answer my question before," Damas prompted.

"Had to think about it first!" Jak brushed him off and headed for a short drop down toward the valley.

Of course, Damas acknowledged that Jak might not yet feel comfortable sharing that kind of inner thought with a relative stranger -- or a strange relative, for that matter. Thus far, he hadn't been able to spend much time alone with the boy. Phobos had been much more successful in getting him to open up a little, but she had more opportunity to see him off the battlefield, seeing as she'd dedicated herself to monitoring their son.

Well, their younger son.

During the missions Damas had accompanied Jak's teams on, he'd noticed that the boy was developing a habit of trailing around behind him, watching intently whenever Damas gave orders to his people. Phobos even swore up and down that she'd seen Jak subtly mimicking his posture and movements whenever they were in the briefing room at the same time.

It gave Damas hope that Jak might at least have positive feelings about having them in his life, but he didn't want to push too far too quickly. Jak was a teenager, after all, and he had boundaries. Or, he ought to have had boundaries. Some of the things Sig told him made him worry that Jak had trouble standing up to people using him.

"Usually all we have to do -- whoop-! Watch the loose rocks, Dax-"

"Yeah, I noticed. I'm not patching your shirt this time. Learn to sew!"

"Yeah yeah. So- the Ramheads aren't the intelligent ones I don't think, they're more like...cannon fodder. But they're really territorial."

Jak swung his feet up under him and slid down the remainder of the incline on his heels, kicking up a plume of dust behind him.

"So basically we shouldn't have to do much more than walk around a little to draw one out."

Damas pursed his lips thoughtfully, then hopped down to follow Jak, avoiding the gravel a little easier than he had.

"Sounds pretty straightforward."

"It is! They're big, but they're dumb," Jak bragged, "You just gotta be fast."

"And not get two of your ribs snapped by a headbutt like last ti-"

Jak slapped a hand over Daxter’s mouth.

Sheepishly, he added, "I mean, yeah, keep some eco around in case of freak accidents, I guess..."

Ah, he's trying to impress me.

Humor bubbled up in Damas’s chest, and he tamped down a smile. He had absolutely no doubt that the boy was capable; thus far he'd proved to be a prodigy of a gunner. His risk assessment left something to be desired, but reports indicated this was largely the fault of the people who had been grooming him to deal with all their problems since he was Mar’s age.

"Well it can't possibly be any more difficult than clearing a city sector and setting watchposts," Damas reasoned, "Let's see if we can't scare up a couple of these Ramheads of yours."

Jak grinned. "Right! So, we're gonna go south, first."

"Oh?" Damas adjusted his rifle strap and kept pace with Jak easily. "I thought we were headed for the valley?"

Daxter squirreled up onto Jak’s head and pointed one paw south. "Lemme guess: you remembered somewhere you haven't trespassed on yet."

With a snort, Jak broke into a jog. "It's not trespassing if it's completely abandoned!"

"I think the centurion-heads would argue against it being completely abandoned, buddy."

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

"I traded it in when it got recalled and got an improved sense of street smarts!"

Damas strode after them with a grin lingering on his face. They were loosening up now, finding their stride. Listening to them bicker reminded him of Phobos and Sig in the old days. Putting on a small burst of speed, he caught up and gave them a slightly mischievous sidelong look.

"Is a tie-breaker required?" he asked.

"No," Daxter groaned, "I'm resigned to my fate. That's what I get for swearin' I'd never let Bigfoot out of my sight again."

Jak cheerfully added, "Dax keeps promises no matter how dumb they are."

"Good man." Damas nudged the ottsel's shoulder in rough approval.

"In that case, I agree to this little detour, but on one condition. Which is...?"

He waited.

Jak thought back to conversations they'd had during the couple missions he'd accompanied them on, and he thought he could guess the condition.

"Don't tell Sig you were doing stunts?"

Damas clapped him on the shoulder and smirked. "That's my boy."

He didn't miss the way Jak's eyes and smile alike widened in response.

[shopcat]

my dad just goes around telling people i've never met before and am a genuine stranger to and half the time HE'S a stranger to that i'm trans and can't see absolutely anything morally against that like ?? 😭 why do cis people not understand basic discretion or just not talking about other peoples business full stop oh my god... he also told this lady i was "looking for a roommate" (not at all) bc she has a daughter my age and that's part of why he told her which is just weird right

[what-ever-is-left]

yeah. i'm fishing for blurpo in cruelty squad. what of it?

[hinderr]

// father's son (series)

-

-

I SAID I'D DO IT. HERE HE IS, PRODIGAL SON (IN A DRESS)!!! OH HOW IVE MISSED YOU

+ alt versions under the cut

[twowink]

wondercord swap still a very good concept . unnerving 6' guy who dedicates themself to this little pink girl with an exceed amt of knight and chained imagery . quirked up blond guy who sees this mentally ill discord server as a fix-it project to avoid thinking abt his own issues and also go "well maybe i am bad but at least i am not as bad as them ^_^" (true but not justified)

[rabbit-hole-disasters]

Games and Strays 🌼

[graveyard-guardian]

i bet he tastes like cottoncandy

[goldensmilingbird]

I have trans Felix on the brain again. Also trans Alix

[starfightervicki]

Sons of the Forest:

Oh, is stealth useful now?

Oh, this is what it felt like to have my pinkie down on the ctrl key all the time. Haven't felt that strain since Skyrim.

[hardcore-gaming-101]

Metal Gear Solid 2

How do you follow up on a bona fide success?

It is the eternal question of the creative person, and one that was facing Hideo Kojima and his team at Konami Computer Entertainment Japan after Metal Gear Solid in 1998. Their game blew up as a critical and financial darling on the PlayStation. People clamored for more. More Snake. More stealth. More weapons. More silliness. Endless creative possibilities lay ahead of the developers, as well as the potential pitfalls of a sophomore slump. It needed to be amazing, to show off the technical merits of Sony’s own PlayStation sequel. It needed to be huge and thrilling, to exceed the work they had already done. With so much riding on it and expectations set so high, what could they possibly do to meet them? How could Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty even hope to rise to the occasion?

Naturally, by pulling one of the biggest bait and switch of all time and swerving into the deeply philosophical and utterly absurd.

Read more...

[crypt1dcorv1dae]

wait ok ok. i know how to work original comic richie energy into cartoon/modern richie.

hes trans. he used to do ballet and shit before telling his parents hes a boy, and his dad was like "fine fine whatever be a boy but if youre gonna be a boy you better do it RIGHT, no more girl shit for you ever again" (only really "accepting" if richie tried to be as cis-passing and heteronormative as possible, which is part of why he tries to hard to hide that hes gay) and made him quit dance :( and any other "girly" things he did (makes him keep his hair short, etc)

but later on, after telling his dad to fuck right the hell off, he starts doing whatever the hell he wants again bc fuck off he can be a boy who dances if he goddamn pleases!!!! he can grow his hair out if he wants!!!! he can be gay openly and proudly!!!! fuck you!!!!!!

[hzdtrees]

Forgotten Marvels, Pt. 3

[yournewmisstress]

In the Danny is Damian’s brother trope what if instead of Damian not telling the family about Danny wasn’t because of grief or shame or any of the more commonly used reasons for his silence. What if it was because he heard about how his father talked about Jason after his death, focusing and exaggerating the negative. That he was violent, angry, never listened to orders but in some iterations and popular fanon is that Jason was a cheerful and studious Robin.

What if while compiling info and researching the former robins during his tumultuous introduction he saw what kind of robin Jason was, good with kids and victims. Talking about his favorite books while on patrol and similar. Reminding Damian of his most Beloved brother.

Then he finds out about how Bruce talked about Jason after he died. Using him as an example as what not to do, erasing his good traits and just using him as a cautionary tale of what happens when you don’t follow orders. Just like what Ra’s said about Danny.

So he didn’t tell the family, not out of guilt or grief. But because his father stripped away Jason’s positive traits after death, the son he chose, adopted and loved. Who when he failed because he was a child led astray by his mother. What would he do to his brother, who loved the stars and excelled in stealth, who was quite in his kills but had no lust for killing.

Whether or not Bruce would do this to Danny’s memory doesn’t matter. B’s actions are gonna affect how Damian views his father even years after the initial actions. Because Damian will protect his brothers memory from being twisted even by their father.