#wrong body problem

[doomspoon888]

I wonder how human!scream will feel about trying sex in his temporary robot body once he realizes he's got both parts

Well, technically, because of the way he 'arrived' in this universe with Megatron already up inside him, he does know there's something there between his legs, but he hasn't really thought about it much because of the whole, being surrounded by robot versions of everyone and suddenly being a giant jet

Once he gets used to the whole being a giant jet thing, he's going to start thinking more introspectively about having 'a pussy'

Megatron: it's called a valve

Starscream: i may be gay but even I know a pussy when I see one

[sunderwight]

SV AU where Shen Yuan transmigrates into a kind of mimicry demon.

He still gets tasked by the System with replacing Shen Qingqiu, except this time he actually has to pull off an imposter role on multiple levels, while the real Shen Qingqiu is stuck in a coma due to his qi deviation. Initially he thinks the situation is going to be temporary -- just take over until he figure out how to get the original goods to wake up -- but Shen Jiu's condition proves to be more difficult to repair than just waiting. Shen Yuan buys special side missions from the System to find items and artifacts to keep Shen Jiu alive, mainly because he doesn't want to be stuck playing this part until Luo Binghe kills him, but also after the first couple of times Shen Jiu regains some consciousness (not enough to leave his bed), Shen Yuan starts to feel kind of... bad for him. Too. Despite everything.

Shen Jiu, of course, is deeply suspicious of this doppelganger that has obviously taken advantage of his weakness to infiltrate the sect and steal his identity. He initially theorizes that the creature must be keeping him alive because it needs some aspect of his vitality in order to keep posing as him, but as they share more encounters is forced to concede that the thing might just be insane? And weirdly softhearted. Over time and by feigning sleep to listen in on Shen Yuan's muttering, he figures out that this all has something to do with Luo Binghe, which he's not pleased about. But he can't deduce what. (Luo Binghe doesn't get to move into the side room in this version of the story, because Shen Yuan has the house on lockdown for obvious reasons, but he does still get to make Shizun's meals!)

Anyway, Shen Jiu doesn't manage to conveniently wake up before the Immortal Alliance Conference. Shen Yuan has to throw Luo Binghe in, which he hates, but along the way he manages to recover that magical flower macguffin that won't work on Without-a-Cure (which he doesn't have in this AU because his species is immune to it), brews a tea that finally fixes Shen Jiu, and then fucks off to go mope about Binghe being in the Abyss.

Shen Jiu doesn't tell anyone about his demonic replacement, for a variety of reasons. One, he's punishing the other peak lords for not figuring it out themselves. Two, he's punishing himself for the fact that a literal demon replaced him for like 3 years and everyone considered it an improvement. Because it was. Three, he has mixed feelings that might potentially amount to not wanting to hunt down and kill Shen Yuan, but he's not admitting that even to himself.

Everyone thinks that Shen Qingqiu's return to asshole form is a result of Luo Binghe dying, and that his sudden new research projects are part of him like, trying to make sense of a senseless tragedy, and coping. But no, he's still trying to figure out why the fuck Luo Binghe was important and why Shen Yuan inserted himself into their lives only to basically just do Shen Qingqiu's job while he was indisposed, and then fuck off the moment Luo Binghe left the picture again.

After... healing Shen Jiu. Also. For some unfathomable reason.

But this version of the System's just happy that the plot is back on track! And surely it will stay back on track. Yes? Problem solved, right? Shen Yuan? Definitely nothing is going to mess with the rest of the story, cough cough, wait why are you visiting User 01, and what would you, a demon shapeshifter, need with a Sun & Dew seed...?

[fatedroses]

Elidibus informing Emet of a pivot in their plans in the most messed up way he can manage.

[the-barefoot-hatter]

pediatricians are hard to find.

you aren't broken and other important things a triangle needs to hear

[starcurtain]

Hey! I apologize if this question has been asked before since it seems like a pretty obvious one, but where do you think the idea of Aventurine being a sex slave came from? Other than the obvious factor of it being something fun for the fandom to mess around with, I mean.

It's something I kind of took for granted as being true before playing his quest, but after finishing it I realized there wasn't really any indication. The only thing I can really think of is his master's comments about him having a good body. Is there anything in his behavior you can think of that would lead to this conclusion if it wasn't a popular fan interpretation already/kind of just an easy conclusion to reach with a slave character?

(also kind of related but what do you think of the idea that he sleeps around/with his clients to make deals? he's obviously willing to sexualize himself with the boob window, but that doesn't necessarily mean he goes further.)

As far as I can tell, the idea that Aventurine was involved in sexual slavery comes from three (maybe four) places:

First, the comment from the master about Aventurine's appearance. People were holding this comment up as refutable proof that Aventurine was used in sexual slavery on top of being tossed into the Hunger Games; however, the response from other players on this interpretation, especially the Chinese side of the fandom, was very mixed, with a lot of people pointing out that the context in the game probably meant the slave master was talking about Aventurine's ability to attract attention from fans watching the literal Sigonian Hunger Games, rather than having a direct sexual-slavery connotation.

Second, the comment from Sparkle about stripping naked and getting on his knees for Sunday. This one has way more implication in English than I think it might for an Eastern audience, actually. In English, this pretty much sounds like Sparkle saying Aventurine trades sexual favors for success in his gambles. However, I suspect the original intention in Chinese was more about humiliation. Western audiences don't have as much history with honor-based prostration, i.e. accepting corporal humiliation as a form of reconciliation that Eastern audiences might be more familiar with. And in any case, Sparkle is Sparkle. She probably just went for the lowest blow she could think of here.

Third, the general assumption that if Sigonian slaves were being chained, branded, beaten, sent to death matches, etc., it seems logical that they would also be taken advantage of in other ways. I honestly think this is probably the fairest take--many, many real slaves around the world faced (and still face!) sexual abuse, so if slaves from Sigonia were treated so poorly you could make them fight to the death for entertainment, it stands to reason they were probably also not safe from other forms of assault. We also have no idea what happened to Kakavasha in any of the years between his being a tiny child fleeing the massacre and then being purchased as a slave as a late-teens-early-twenties person. That's a very long time for a child to have to survive on their own on an extremely hostile planet and not face risks of all kinds or end up needing to do unspeakable things to survive. So I think this is at least not that far-fetched, although it's important to say there's nothing in the game that directly confirms this.

And fourth: I read a tweet semi-recently that stated that one of the Chinese (or maybe it was Japanese) names for a quest Aventurine was involved in was actually a reference to a book about a teenage sexual assault survivor. However, when I tried to verify this myself, I couldn't find any quest Aventurine was in that was based on a book about sexual assault in either English, Chinese, or Japanese. It's possible I just missed something, but I'm taking this one with a bit of a grain of salt currently, since I can't confirm it personally.

Regarding your other question, about whether I think Aventurine sleeps around to make deals...

I definitely think he does not, for one major reason.

First, I will admit that Aventurine is definitely willing to use his appearance to his advantage. This is pretty obvious. He wears incredibly flashy clothes, baths himself in cologne, overloads on glittering golden jewels, and absolutely calls attention to his appearance when working with clients.

We see him actively doing this in his Moment Among the Stars video, where he is clearly using his looks as an equal tool (to his wealth), to daze his target.

It's not an accident that he says things like "Use me as you wish," with all the explicit connotations preserved. The implication is there. However, unless he was absolutely backed into a corner, I think that implication is all it will ever be.

The reason I think this is that the devs go out of their way to give Aventurine three fairly noticeable physical behaviors in his in-game scenes:

For one, he has some of the most closed off body language of any character in the game.

Aventurine's default conversation pose is arms crossed directly and tightly in front of himself. This is like "Defensive Body Language 101." By crossing your arms, you put a symbolic barrier between yourself and the person you're speaking to, and also ensure that your hands are up and available in case you actually need to physically defend yourself.

Virtually all of Aventurine's conversations take place from this stance, no matter who he is speaking to (from the Trailblazer all the way to Topaz). He deliberately closes his pose off and tightens up his silhouette, which just sends a glaring "Don't touch me" message.

This closing off is also blatantly apparent when you compare it to the deliberately open poses he strikes while trying to make himself seem accessible to others (like tempting clients) or seem powerful (to intimidate):

Complementing this habit of closing himself off is a second noticeable aspect of his body language: He frequently avoids eye contact to the point that he even holds conversations while entirely facing away from the person he's speaking to.

I might be a bit lenient and say maybe he's doing this to on purpose to be mysterious, whoo~~ But... in all honestly, he just does this with everyone, even with Ratio while trying to talk about an actual important issue (wanting to look into Acheron's real identity). Hell, even the fake Aventurine does it to himself!

We can even say that wearing the rose-tinted glasses in the first place is another intentional barrier, one Aventurine deliberately removes in specific moments to give people the (false) impression that he's "letting them in" to his circle:

Now, this might be a bit more complicated in Aventurine's case, because eye contact has a whole extra meaning when eyes are the defining trait of your species and come with particularly challenging racial stereotypes. So it may be that Aventurine is simply used to conducting conversation while looking away to minimize racial prejudice against his eyes' unique appearance.

However, I'd also argue that the devs deliberately turned his entire model away in cutscene after cutscene to create a clear sense of being inaccessible, unapproachable, and unwilling to engage in the physical intimacy of standing closely, directly facing, and staring at his conversation partners.

While he faces away, he controls both the figurative and the literal direction of conversation, forcing people to keep their eyes on him while he is free to move as he pleases. Over and over again, it just says "I want to be the one in control. I'm not afraid to show my back to you, but you are not welcome to come near me."

And, in fact, that's a third aspect of his character's body language that I am sure the devs did not include accidentally: More so than other characters, many of Aventurine's conversations are conducted from weirdly far distances. Like, half the time he's talking, he's standing all the way on the opposite side of the room!

This habit of speaking from a-larger-than-normal distance is apparent in the first scene with Himeko...

And then in just about every other conversation too:

The bubble is twenty feet in every direction.

Like yes, he does approach and have conversations like a normal person... sometimes... But it is significantly more noticeable with Aventurine than with other characters that he often conducts whole conversations--even with his allies--from a distance. Just genuinely weirdly far apart.

Leaving space for Gaiathra, I guess.

And it's because these significant decisions were made with Aventurine's in-game body language that, when he deliberately alters his own behavior, it is instantaneously noticeable.

In 2.0, he closes the distance, the glasses come off, and he gets directly up in the Trailblazer's face.

It's uncomfortable not just because the player is suddenly being loomed over, but because this behavior has already been subconsciously established for the player as out of character for Aventurine.

The barriers the character himself was putting up are deliberately stripped away so that he can use physicality and demanding eye contact to intimidate his target. He has to reverse his own normal body language in order to come across as domineering (and, I guess if you're into that, appealing in a domineering manner).

And ummmm, just a tiny aside here because I can't resist:

This does mean that when the game goes out of its way to demonstrate Aventurine altering his own normal habit of distant and defensive body language, it is absolutely intentional.

Yes, this is a Ratiorine post in disguise. There literally isn't any other character in the game that Aventurine is shown being comfortable standing so close to and interacting with in this manner. This doesn't occur in every one of their scenes, but Ratio is the only character that this happens with repeatedly. It's not an accident that the devs literally added "They were walking side-by-side" as flavor text.

But look, I'll be fair: There's a great example of this in Aventurine's scene with Acheron too, where he closes the distance and attempts to make eye contact with her--seeking her guidance and closeness--and she is actually the one stepping away, speaking with her back turned, demonstrating her power and control (and issues with connection!) in that scene.

Anyway, this was a whole longggg tangent into analyzing Aventurine's body language, but my point is that, overall, the devs deliberately adjusted his model's actions in-game to give the impression of a person who clearly wants to be in control of every interaction he has with other people, who insists on distance over intimacy, and whose stances and habits suggest that he is significantly less accessible and open than his "Use me as you wish" motto might suggest.

Long story longer, I think that there is almost zero chance Aventurine is willingly ceding control over himself or the actions expected of him to anyone he isn't 100% comfortable with, and I think that using physical intimacy of any kind would be an absolute last resort for him. Frankly, he comes across as more likely to shoot himself in the foot than let someone he doesn't trust lay hands on him.

To me, he reads very much as "You may look, but you may not touch."

[freaky-flawless]

Torakitty got a ghoulfriend! Clawdeen Wolfie!

I had so much fun with this custom! Definitely had some hiccups here and there...pretty much right at the end which was a bummer... but I'm obsessed with her! I have a couple more MH X LPS customs I'm itching to start when I get the time!

[australet789]

me: *finishes an animatic, sketches a comic of 6 panels with background, hand swollen*

me also: "maybe i should try and finish my aphrodite design today"

[doomspoon888]

the fact that starscream, who is normally very fussy about hygiene, hates how often humans wash themselves is so funny to me

thanks for the update and hope youre feeling better!

He will soon learn the joys of human hygiene, it's just because he is following Megatron's lead rn and probably being tormented with Megatron's '13 in 1' bullshit products

Ffs megatron, moisturise him!

[minrathous]

it's so frustrating they don't take the necropolis as an opportunity to explore spirits with more depth in veilguard. or even Manfred's whole thing. Manfred being able to learn to speak implies that any wisp is capable of it with time. they have preferences and emotions and comprehend speech but you still shouldn't be concerned that they are used for slave labour in the necropolis. you're supposed to be horrified that Hezenkoss is abusing spirits but not at that. engaging with spirits as people introduces too much nuance to the situation and veilguard is absolutely incapable of dealing with it. otherwise they'd have to engage with why Solas wants to tear the veil down

[reclusiarch-orm]

oh my god. reading the notes the psychiatrist made when i was last there. last time, they made a note of my hat. (THEY MADE A NOTE IN MY CHART THAT I WORE A FUCKIGN HAT-) but alas i have now also aquired a note that i bowed for the psychiatrist when i greeted him. which. fuck you bro why did that need to be noted in a medical psych chart lmfao

[crimeronan]

i swear to god i've seen an exactly equivalent number of posts recently with the premises "it's gross to talk so much about how you wanna fuck trans people, can't you be normal about people you don't wanna fuck" and "it's gross to act like trans people are unfuckable and that we're only attractive as a fetish, actually i'm a girl with a great dick and it's fine" & i'm like. rubs my eyes. maybe the truth is that human experience is varied and different people wish to be desired/perceived/discussed in different ways and what's validating to one person feels yucky to another. maybe if someone's form of validation isn't for you then you don't need to immediately assume the worst faith possible interpretation of their words. i mean this in the most constructive way possible bc i do this too and i frequently look back at assumptions i made and realize i'm insane. Just Because It Felt Bad To You Doesn't Mean It Feels Bad To Everyone.

[halfbaked00q]

OH YEAH. okay one thing I DO want to talk about from Skyfall. That I think we should be talking about more. is the "he went into the priest hole for TWO (2) DAYS" thing.

I had like. known that was A Thing, but ig didn't see or forgot what it looked like. but the first look at it I was like. whoa. this is.... how do I say. like there's something visceral and primal and primitive about it just being bare rock. and I made a comment about how insane that is, and esp seeing the mine/cave-like rock and the thought of TWO DAYS down there.. that it's sth "like returning to some sort of primordial earthly womb (tomb)"

but then later they showed that the priest hole is NOT just like a bolthole. but a whole-ass tunnel system!!! EXTRA wild! what was Bond doing down there? WHERE exactly was he in the priest hold then? Was he hunkered down in some corner? Was he wandering around the caves like some sort of primordial spectre.

also there's something interesting/cool about it being like. seemed like it was just going to be a bolthole, and then they revealed it was this whole-ass tunnel system. Skyfall has a lot of maze/hidden/hiding symbolism, and there's something interesting about there being this, like. hidden earthly labyrinth at the heart/hearth/underneath Skyfall.

also the idea of baby Bond wandering a stone labyrinth under the very bones of his ancestral home after the death of his parents... and the whole when he came out he wasn't a boy anymore or whatever it was exactly Kincade said.... hmmm......... Minotaur? Minotaur vibes perhaps? I think there is something here- I think there's something to be said about hidden monstrosity/adversity bringing out monstrosity in us, plus the whole nature/nurture question of like, Bond and HIS "nature," was he born brutal or was he made brutal

(by his career, by his forging as a 00 agent, by M's machinations-- speaking of machinations. but okay god the way she. Manages him... I DO think there's a lot of interesting parts throughout the movies but there was a particular moment in Skyfall when she was like. hunt them down. for Ronson. like ggngng that was like. the emotional equivalent of those loop/stick leashes they use to capture stray dogs.... lowering the loop around his neck and tightening... and then once it's tightened she can move him around cuz it's a stick and not just a rope leash, she can literally physically lead him...) (and also the nature/nurture question of Silva's rats thing)

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Imagine you're Mr. Wu and your weird gay daughter runs away in tears after destroying some unespecified object while yelling about you ruining her life. Because you told her you'd be moving to another state. This is the last time you see your daughter in half a year, and when she comes back, she comes back... wrong. She's wearing a light leather armor, a fur-lined cape, and a green flower crown. She has two long scars, one alongside her spine and the other along her chest, the tissue around them covered in burn scars. Doctors say she shouldn't have survived. Doctors say she didn't. Yet she's right here, in front of you, hospital gown clinging to her small, fragile, trembling frame. She fidgets with her hands. Getting her to stay still has always been difficult, but now it seems impossible. She won't let go of her phone. She's always texting her two friends. When you take it away, she gets anxious. You always knew those damn phones cause kids to act weird, but your kid having a panic attack seems too extreme, even for her. Then again, she's always been odd. Nowadays, she wakes up crying and screaming almost every night, and you realize she's been stealing her phone from your bedside drawer every night to text her friends, returning it before you wake up. You catch her once and decide to give her that damn phone back. It's the only thing that calms her down, as if she were a baby with a pacifier. She spends her last weeks in LA clinging to her friends, having sleepovers and playing her weird board games with them. Everytime they drop her back at her house, there's an excessive amount of hugs and tears. But the moments when they call her, or when she leaves to meet with them, or when they show up at their door to pick her up... those are the only moments in which you see her happy. One of her friends, the rude and disobedient one, came back with a big scar on her face. She's been acting a lot nicer, though. The other one too. She acts a great deal more adult now. You doesn't know what happened or where your daughter went. She won't tell you. But you can tell this friendship is the only thing keeping her afloat right now. Maybe you know, deep down, that no one else would understand.

And then you decide to move anyway because fuck her amirite

[ociels]

his brother died and one of his first thoughts were that it should’ve been him instead because now people are going to be disappointed…

[blood-orange-juice]

no time to explain but each Archon quest is a syzygy

[doomspoon888]

MEGATRON IS BRIDAL CARRYING STARSCREAM THIS IS NOT A DRILL. I REPEAT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

REFLECTOR, TAKE A PICTURE; THIS IS A MOMENT IN HISTORY

Human!Starscream does not yet know how to weaponise his mech body against Megatron so he will bide his time and be 'meek and defenseless' until someone shows him how to use his guns and claws and wings to bully everyone. Until then, he will cosy up to this robot version of Megatron who has decided to protect him from all the other terrifying robots, some of whom are capable of teleporting