#Deep Space Homer

[flyinghellfish]

[jhsharman]

Look Up In the Sky...

[captainfreelance1]

Simpsons S5 E15 Deep Space Homer Fan Edit

A While Back I made a Drawing based my favorite Simpsons Episode Deep Space Homer, I recently become curious to see how the two would match up together.

So Under the Grounds of Fair Use, I decide too combine my drawing with footage of the actual episode itself.

I really think I did a good job editing it, I left my usual logo off this because I felt this was least amount work; I ever had too do also didn't want folks to think I was taking credit for other peoples work.

[the-new-hip-priest]

Remember when Fergie was on Good Morning America and did those cartwheels? I think about it a lot, mostly because it looks like such a satisfying stim. Sometimes I just wanna cartwheel/sing down the length of my house when I'm feeling jubilant, y'know? It's like I can only emphasise my delight through gym class memories (and Barney).

[kollectorsrus]

[wheelybard]

My face when I found out the Simpsons episode deep space Homer parodied The Gamesters of Treskilion Instead of Amok Time.

[geekysteven]

The USS Odyssey was destroyed by the Jem'hadar. If I wrote it, they'd have shown up 10 years later in the Ithacan system with Captain Keogh as the sole survivor

[lasudio]

VeronaHills, Round Ten: Land (A)

Scot followed Dixie to university (mostly in search of someone to start a family with).

There were empty spaces on the bookshelf where Scot's sci-fi stores once sat. Out of everything, that was the biggest dose of reality for Beulah. Her first boy was out of the house for the first time. It was just her and Homer and River and Delta left in the house that had once burst at the seams with frantic familial activity spanning three generations of Lands.

A household consisting of a mere four family members - heavens! That simply would not do.

Sweets was almost a corgi, if not for her slightly longer legs. An almost breed was much cheaper than a purebred, so Beulah and Homer happily went in on adopting her. The shelter had correctly named her for her sweet doggy smile. Beulah even swore her fur smelled like its caramel colouring (Homer agreed to disagree).

Delta liked Sweets. Deep down, she'd half expected her parents to adopt another child instead. Thankfully, a dog was much easier, and a nice change of pace. She'd heard Dixie describe the pitfalls of parentification and preferred not to have to experience it first hand.

Having homework ripped to bits ("Sweets had it in her teeth, it was too dangerous to grab!") was the cherry on top.

[blubadventures]

Fonts

Today we're going to get very technical and talk about custom fonts in PICO-8. I know I just made this blog, but we're taking a deep dive right away because it's one of the first things I did in my game, and it's still fresh in my mind.

PICO-8 ships with a default character set called P8SCII (a pun on ASCII) that includes 256 different characters. This set includes uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation, hiragana, katakana, various control codes, and other special glyphs. You can see it below.

The default font has some pros and cons. If we focus on the uppercase Latin letters, punctuation, and numbers specifically, all of the characters conform to a 3x5 pixel size. This is very space efficient and consistent, which makes it an excellent font for writing code on PICO-8's tiny 128x128 screen.

Code is written in "all caps" so to speak, although the concept of uppercase and lowercase letters doesn't really exist in PICO-8 programming. Instead we have normal letters (seen above) as well as an alternate set of 26 characters called "puny characters," which looks similar to the regular font but even smaller!

So it works great for coding, but what if we're reading a lot of English words? Here's an excerpt from Homer's Iliad written using the default font, with regular characters for uppercase and puny characters for lowercase.

It doesn't look bad necessarily. I'd even say it conveys a certain amount of retro charm. But I'd be lying if I said it was easy to read.

Enter custom fonts! This is a relatively new feature of PICO-8, and it is one that is a little bit complicated to implement and not very well-documented at the moment, but I'm going to do my best to explain it.

Unfortunately, you can't simply have your custom font loaded and ready to go by setting it up in the cart itself. Custom fonts are defined by messing around with specific memory values at runtime. I'll explain an easy way to actually create and load your own font in another post, but for now lets talk about the memory addresses that need to be modified and how it works under the hood.

First of all, custom fonts must be enabled with the following poke:

poke(0x5f58,0x81)

Address 0x5f58 contains the bitfield for the current character rendering mode. There are a few options, but the ones we care about are 0x01, which enables special rendering modes entirely, and 0x80, which enables the custom font.

Once enabled, all future printing operations will use a custom font that is defined in RAM from addresses 0x5600 to 0x5dff. That's 2,048 bytes total. Remember that there are 256 different characters in P8SCII, so that's 2,048 / 256 = 8 bytes per character.

Each character in the custom font can be as large as 8x8 pixels in size. Each of the 8 reserved bytes for a character represents a row of pixels, and within each byte, each bit represents whether the cell is filled or not, with the least significant bit being the leftmost column.

Here's an example. Capital T has index 116 in P8SCII. 116 x 8 = 928, which is 0x03a0 in hexadecimal, so the custom font for T is defined at 0x5600 + 0x03a0 = 0x59a0. Here is how I have defined T in my custom font.

peek(0x59a0) = 0b00011111 = '#####---' peek(0x59a1) = 0b00000100 = '--#-----' peek(0x59a2) = 0b00000100 = '--#-----' peek(0x59a3) = 0b00000100 = '--#-----' peek(0x59a4) = 0b00000100 = '--#-----' peek(0x59a5) = 0b00000100 = '--#-----' peek(0x59a6) = 0b00000000 = '--------' peek(0x59a7) = 0b00000000 = '--------'

(Remember, the least significant bit is the leftmost pixel drawn, thus the binary representation and the actual drawing appear to be mirrored.)

It doesn't look great on Tumblr, but hopefully you get the gist. As you can see, this character is 5x6 pixels in size. But how will PICO-8 draw this? The two highest addresses (0x59a6 and 0x59a7) are still empty, and there are also still 3 columns of space on the right. Obviously we don't want the T to be floating in the air or have a big gap before the next character is printed, but how would PICO-8 know that?

Here is where things get more complicated. There are two components that define the actual size of a character.

The default size of the entire custom font. This defines a height and width which applies to ALL characters in the custom font.

An individualized width and height offset for all characters. This is a newer feature than the above, and it is what allows us to make variable-width fonts! Because it's newer, you'll see a lot of resources on how to do #1, but resources for how to do #2 are relatively sparse, at least at the time of writing!

Where do we define this stuff? Remember when I said that we have 8 bytes for each of the 256 characters in RAM for defining the custom font? There's a slight asterisk there, which is that the first 16 characters in P8SCII are never actually printed. These are called control codes and they represent various printing functions, not text. They do have a graphic in the first image I posted, but they are never actually printed. Therefore, the bytes in RAM reserved for these first 16 characters may be freely appropriated for other uses.

Font-wide settings are stored in the data reserved for character 0. We can think of this as the "font header". Each of its 8 bytes have different purposes. I'll outline them explicitly.

0x5600: Pixel width of characters 16-127. (Mainly Latin letters, numbers, and punctuation.) 0x5601: Pixel width of characters 128-255. (Mainly special glyphs and Japanese letters.) 0x5602: Pixel height of all characters. 0x5603: Draw offset x. 0x5604: Draw offset y. 0x5605: Set 0x1 to apply size adjustments (see below); set 0x2 to apply tabs relative to the cursor. 0x5606: Pixel width of tabs. 0x5607: Unused.

I'm just going to focus on 0x5600 and 0x5602 here, but you can experiment with other values as you wish. When designing my font, I found that 4 pixels wide generally looked pretty good. However, we also have to account for a gap between characters, which I would like to just be 1 pixel, so our actual character width should be 5, which is the value I poked to 0x5600.

For height, Latin characters vary quite a bit. For most tall characters, like lowercase d, I made them 6 pixels tall. However, some characters like lowercase g are meant to be drawn partially "below the line" when written on paper, so I had these characters dip 2 pixels deeper. Here are some examples.

Since we have characters that extend to both extremes in terms of height, we can say that overall the font is meant to be 8 pixels tall. Furthermore, I once again want a 1 pixel vertical gap when printing to the next line, so we'll say the height is technically 9, which is the value I poked to 0x5602.

But wait! What about the characters which are extra wide, like our uppercase T? That was 5 pixels wide, not 4, so won't it get chopped off? The answer is yes. (Technically, the entire T would still get printed, but we would lose the 1 pixel gap before the next character.)

This is where the per-character width and height adjustments come into play. Remember the data for character 0 formed our header, but we still have characters 1-15 whose data is still unused. That's 15x8=120 bytes. We have 240 printable characters (17..255). Therefore we can allocate one nibble (that is, 4 bits, or half a byte) for each printable character. The lower nibble in each byte will correspond to the lower of the two characters represented by that byte.

The 3 lowest bits in the nibble represent the width offset for that character as a signed 3-bit integer, for a range of -4 to +3. This is what will be added to the default width when determining the actual width for that specific character. The highest bit is used for a vertical offset; if it is set, the character will be drawn one pixel higher than normal.

Finally, to enable these per-character adjustments at all, the lowest bit of 0x5605 must be set to 1, as mentioned previously.

Let's see some examples. Remember that the T we drew earlier was 5x6. Or rather, it's 6x6 if we include the 1 pixel horizontal padding on the right side. But our default width is only 5. Therefore we need to set T's offset to +1.

We have to do some fairly complicated address math to figure out where T's offset lives. Remember its P8SCII index is 116. Among the actually printable characters, its index is 116-16=100. Offset data begins at 0x5608. Remember each byte corresponds to two characters. 100 (or 0x64) is an even number, so it is going to live in the lower nibble of its corresponding byte, which is located at 0x5608 + 0x64 / 2 = 0x563a.

T's roommate is character 117, which naturally, is U. The U I drew conforms to the standard width of 5, so its offset should just be 0. Across the board, I'm not using any height offsets, so those bits will always be 0. Therefore, our offset for T is achieved with the following poke:

poke(0x563a, 0x01)

Lets pick a more complicated example: lowercase L and M. Let me show you what I drew for those first.

Both of these characters have nonstandard widths. Worse yet, they're roommates! L will need an offset of -2, and m will need +1.

L's index is 76, and M's is 77. Their offset data will live in the same byte, with L taking the lower nibble. The address of this data is given by:

0x5608 + (76 - 16) / 2 = 0x562e.

M needs a width offset of 1, which is simply represented as 001 in binary. L needs -2, which is represented as 110 using two's complement on a 3 bit integer. Again, both should have a 0 height offset. Putting this all together, our poke will be:

poke(0x5626, 0b00010110)

Or in hex:

poke(0x5626, 0x16)

Or even in decimal:

poke(0x5626, 22)

Anyway, that's my overlong explanation for how custom fonts work. Now let's see the custom font I made in action, side-by-side with the default font.

Not bad! Personally, I find this dramatically more readable, but it does come at a cost: it takes up way more vertical screen space than before.

[patrochillesvibes]

do you know why some people seem so uncomfortable with the idea of associating patroclus with kindness? i'm honestly starting to wonder if I got a bad translation of the iliad or got my memories mixed up because I remember him being portrayed like that by homer

Oh, it’s pretty straightforward!

This sentiment is due to a combination of things:

Lack of basic reading comprehension skills and an understanding of literary analysis.

The need to be or seem as “edgy” by hating “mainstream” to gain approval from peers.

Proliferation of hate culture that has permeated all spaces across the internet.

“I liked it first/before it was cool” syndrome.

Formerly gifted child syndrome who cling to the idea that liking The Classics™ still makes them smart.

Hipster snobbery phenomenon

Internalized homophobia.

Internalized sexism.

Racism (Patroclus is often depicted with darker skin compared to Achilles).

Toxic narcissism of Academia culture producing the most insufferable and pretentious asses with the frailest egos imaginable.

Ditto for toxicity of The Classics™.

I’m sure you were expecting a thorough literary analysis instead of a rant about how today’s antis don’t understand basic tagging etiquette and how every time I go into the fucking patrochilles tags I gotta deal with fucking antis. But there’s really nothing deep about people foaming at the mouth over a fictional man having *gasp* feelings. It’s internalized cultural bias, babe.

Maybe one day these haters will grow up and realize how cringe it is to make hating something your personality. I almost feel bad for them.

Thanks for the Ask!

[sedehaven]

Large

fist-sized dahlia, petals like velvet tongues, curled in, deep violet of

predawn texas sky, darkness over slow-blowing prairie running with the wind

as big as homer's wine- dark sea, scenting salt and deep water til it kisses the setting

sun, spinning in the vast blue-black ink of space, stars glimmer like glitter cast in an

obsidian mirror, omens to season births, deaths, and every mortal seeming--

the movement of sky, wind, sea, and stars -- such large bodies -- kiss

our living lips, and the curling petals of flowers

-- S. E. De Haven

[treasure-mimic]

There exists a concept in the human study of marine biology called 'Deep Sea Gigantism'. Pressure and scarcity are powerful forces which, paradoxically, promote creatures getting bigger rather than smaller. The farther down you go, the larger the fauna get. The Giant Squid is so elusive because it can only exist so much farther down than humanity can safely venture. The deep sea isopod is 25 times the size of its terrestrial brother, the woodlouse. Mermaids are not so different.

Shyerllya is a Colossal Mermaid. The species is regarded, if not truly known, for a level of placidity, their great size makes agitation difficult. They are filter feeders, they are drifters in the current. There are many stories of benevolent colossi aiding an imperiled ship. This is not one of those stories. Shyerllya is of the same bloodline as Scylla, the great monster of Homer's The Odyssey. Shyerllya shares in her ancestor's rage.

Colossal mermaids do not give birth often, nor to large litters. It takes unfathomable energy to keep a body of that size moving, needing to carry a second quickly becomes a deeply taxing endeavor. Across twenty years, Shyerllya has given birth three times, to one child each. Each of those children was subsequently lost, venturing too high and becoming shredded in a human's fishing boat. Too large to even be hauled up with the catch. She now responds in anger to shapes above that are comparable in size to herself. In most cases, she ends up felling a whale. Sometimes she finds herself charging through empty space, the water playing tricks with the light. Sometimes, she finds a boat.

Shyerllya does not differentiate between boats. She struggles to tell the difference between them and a whale, she won't spare a vessel for the simple act of not fishing. She can tell the difference between marlin and swordfish and every species of shark, but she can't tell the difference between a two-man skiff and a commercial cruise.

The people on the deck, those who were even capable of seeing what would happen, talk and meander leisurely. As far as they're concerned, they are utterly alone out on this ocean, the flat, glassy surface of the water stretches indefinitely in every direction. The natural instinct, dulled by centuries of conquered nature, had nothing to fear from that it could not see.

The only hint of her approach was a bulge, a mound of water that rises above the surface and is momentarily hesitant to break. A few took notice, they are long since too late to do anything.

Once her hand breaches the surface, the attack begins. It is marked, fulfilled, and concluded by two motions.

First, her body rises up enough for her hand to slam into the deck. Her jagged nails carve deep grooves into the wood-paneled deck before finally finding purchase in a swimming pool advertised (oversold) as 'Olympic-Sized'. Enough water to fill the pool poured off of her. What looks to be drips off the side of her wrist are to the people on the deck a flood which pushed aside everything not bolted down. There is only a moment's opportunity to scream.

Second, her hand wrenches down. A haunting, overwhelming creaking sound obliterates the screams of the people on deck as the foundational structure of the ship is warped. Compared to the breadth of the entire ship, it's little more than a corner. But it's enough. The deck dips beneath the waves, water rushes to fill every empty space it can access, and at that point the ship's fate is sealed. The slow, steady, inevitable process of sinking begins.

Evacuation starts. Alarms sounding off from every square inch of surviving ship, all combined, didn't have the strength to catch Shyerllya's ears. As people jump from the sides into cold, night water, as clumsy attempts to drop lifeboats begin, Shyerllya cares for none of it. The image of Scylla throwing sailors down her maw may be a powerful one, but it is purely symbolic, swallowing the flesh of these miniscule men will give her nothing. To her, the boat itself is the offender, the ship is the enemy which must be destroyed. She continues to claw and to push, until over half of the ship is underwater.

At that point, she figures her job done. Pain catches up with her diminishing rage. She is not meant to live in such relaxed pressures, her flesh is pulling itself apart. She is not meant to breath air, her gills begin to burn. She turns tail and descends back into the depths.

Those people closest to her when she broke the surface are unluckiest, though perhaps that goes without saying, and those who jumped overboard earliest share in their misfortune.

The mass of Shyerllya's descent, the amount of water displaced by the very act of her being, creates an undertow so powerful it pulls like a whirlpool down into the depths. Anyone in the water as she descends suddenly find themselves hundreds of meters beneath the surface, impossibly far down and incapable of reaching the surface again in time. Even the ship itself suddenly lurches down by a story. They, and eventually the ship, gradually join Shyerllya in the depths.

All in all, 1/3 of all passengers aboard the now sunken Stellarium Triumph perished in the tragic accident. Ironically, all survivors of the incident were those on the other side of the ship from impact. None who saw the cause of the collision lived to tell the tale. When black box data is eventually salvaged, it suggests that the ship ran aground on some large rock or collided with an iceberg of equal size. Attempts to find the point of contact are still underway.

Ultimately, the sea keeps her secrets. And Shyerllya continues to hunt.

[homerjacksons]

Fluffy February - @fluffyfebruary Day 14: Free Space Word count: 853 Fandom: Ripper Street Pairing: Homer Jackson/Edmund Reid AO3

Happy Valentines Day!!!

--

“Looks like you got yourself an admirer, Inspector,” Artherton commented, an uncharacteristically teasing smirk gracing his features.

“I beg your pardon?”

Artherton waved an intricately decorated envelope in Reid’s direction and the constables standing around all hollered and cheered like school children.

Reid snatched the envelope from Arthurton, turning away before anyone could see the heat rising in his cheeks, and stalked back to his office, slamming the door closed behind him.

He sat at his desk, turning the envelope over in his hands gently, almost reverently, taking in the intricate artwork running across the high-quality paper. As soon as he laid eyes on it, he was brought back to the little market stall he and Jackson had come across in London with the young woman shyly selling cards and other small artworks. He hadn’t commented, but Jackson must have noted the way he was enraptured by her, by her china-like art, all the same.

His hands shook as he opened the envelope and pried the small hand-penned card out. Again, that intricate artwork bordered the paper, delicate leaves and vines with the odd heart-shaped bud here and there.

Reid,

I’m not one for fancy words and declarations, as you well know, but it felt imperative to mark the occasion nonetheless.

You’ve given me more than I could have ever hoped for myself, and I will be forever grateful for that.

Come over for dinner and I’ll show you just how much.

Happy Valentines day.

Yours,

H

P.S. Turn the card over.

Reid felt his cheeks grow warmer still as he read. Then he turned the card over and he couldn’t help but gasp as his blush deepend exponentially.

Right there, for anyone who had dared to open this letter to see, was a rough sketch of Reid sprawled naked across a settee, looking wanton even in the sketches rough edges.

He shoved it back into the envelope then shoved the envelope into the depths of his pockets, willing his face to cool down. He couldn’t quite help the twitch of his lips as they threatened to break out into a smile.

He checked his watch—the very watch gifted to him by Jackson, no less—and surmised it was late enough to leave without drawing too much attention and not so early that he would be seen as over-eager by Jackson when he arrived.

On the first count, at least, he was wrong.

“Off to meet your lady friend, sir?” Drake teased as soon as he opened the door to his office, and he felt heat rise to his face once more.

“That is hardly your concern, Sergeant,” Reid bit back, unable to regret the harshness of his tone when Drake just snorted in response.

The whooping and cat calling followed him until he was on the street, the station's doors closed behind him.

When he reached Jackson’s home, he barely let the other man open the door before he was barging in, brandishing the letter in the air. “What on earth possessed you?”

“Lovely to see you, too, Reid,” Jackson said with a raised eyebrow, clearly amused.

“Do you not care who could have seen? What assumptions could have been made?”

“Relax,” Jackson said with a laugh, smoothing his hands up and down Reid’s upper arms. “No one woulda known it was from me.”

“That’s hardly the point.”

Jackson snorted, leaning back from Reid. “You tellin’ me you didn’t enjoy it?”

Reid took a deep breath, but he knew the pink on his cheeks belied his true feelings on the matter, knew that Jackson knew his irritation largely came from how aroused he’d been by receiving such a thing.

“How did you have that drawn?” He hissed.

Jackson leaned in close, pressed his lips to Reid’s cheek, then whispered against his ear, “I drew it.”

Reid swallowed thickly. “I didn’t know you could draw.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Jackson said coyly, taking a step back, leaving Reid feeling cold with his absence.

“Like, for instance,” Jackson gestured to the small kitchen behind him, to the table set for two, candle in the middle. “I can cook.”

It was only then that Reid noticed the smell of fresh bread and home cooking, noticed the cosy ambiance of the entire room. He blinked, taking it all in, warmth combined with an odd sort of melancholy filling him up at the sight of it, at the realisation that Jackson didn’t just invite him here to bed him, that he actually had romantic intentions, too. At the realisation that all this feeling, all this love he didn’t quite know where to put, wasn’t at all one sided.

“Say something?” Jackson prompted quietly, eyes uncertain.

“You can cook,” Reid said slowly, turning a little to give Jackson his full attention again.

“That a problem?”

“Certainly not.” Reid smiled, reaching out to take Jackson’s hand. “Just unexpected.”

“This is okay, then? ‘Cause we can skip dinner and get straight to bed you’d prefer.”

Reid shook his head, giving Jackson’s hand a small squeeze as he tugged him closer. “This is more than okay, Homer.”

[captainfreelance1]

I made this Drawing a few months ago, I based it on the iconic scene from 'Deep Space Homer' where Homer Simpson is enjoying a snack in Zero Gravity; I enjoyed making this drawing it was a lot of fun to make.

[owenthetokencishet]

I played in a narrative campaign last week and it's given me all sorts of new lore for my space marine army :) Check THIS shit out!

Space Marines knew no fear, but captain Morrow was certainly bewildered. As she and her Iron Ravens fended off a pair of the heretics' blasphemous Defiler engines, she saw something land in the distance with a flashing light. A teleport homer! She guessed, our missives has been answered!

But nothing came.

Three other Astartes chapters and a Militarum regiment in the subsector and nobody could spare as much as a squad of Terminators.

The combustion of brother Salazar's jump pack brought her back into focus on the battle at hand. She steadied her bolt rifle and took aim at the Defiler's waist. The round from her boltgun cut straight through the weak hydraulics and detonated deep in the daemon engine's flesh. The defiler's torso toppled like a Varakan hardwood as its legs collapsed underneath.

Morrow turned her attention again to the beacon. It was starting to give her a headache. She heard a ringing in her ears and saw spots in her eyes. She'd felt this before. Oh no.

Shadow in the warp.

The heretic astartes screamed in agony as the ground began to tremble. The first chitinous tendrils of the Tyranid swarm appeared on the horizon. From all directions.

The second Defiler's plasma cannon backfired and its entire right hull exploded in a bloody mist. A squad of legionnaries camped out in the east ruins was overrun by a swarm of hormagaunts, their dying screams echoing out across every mind on the battlefield; A cabal of posessed astartes was atomized by a neurothrope; and a horde of neurogaunts scratched and chewed at the drop beacon. Hellblaster sergeant Victus stared a Lictor dead in the eyes, and the Lictor did nothing but stare back before scuttling away. Whatever they're here for, Morrow thought, it's not us.

Thank the Emperor.

"<kzzzt>raven Gunship Corax Temperesta calli<kzzzt> captain Morrow," she heard through vox.

"Loud and clear, Temperesta. What's the matter, Vandeen?"

"Orders intercepted from fleet command, captain. Reads: "Tyranid response significantly <kzzzzt> than expected. Ordering immediate orbital bombardment of designated lure zone. By order of Inquisitor Hester LeVizikan" Temperesta is en route to your current location and will <kzzzt>in seve<zzzt>." They're bombing the <kzzzzzzzzzzzt>field. They've <kzzzt> us t<kzzzzzzt> "

Space Marines knew no fear, but Captain Morrow was shocked.

"Brothers!" She bellowed, "We have been ordered to evacuate!"

Her marines glanced back at her, perplexed. She switched to battlefield vox.

"Orbital bombardment imminent. All forces converge on south tower. Get as high as you can and await evac. Corax Temperesta en route and arriving in seven minutes."

Seven minutes, she thought as she fired a bolt round through the skull of a Plaguebearer shambling towards her, the heretic forces are nearly annihilated, and the xenos are not... so far... attacking us. We can hold out for seven minutes. In one last hail of bolter and plasma fire, she and the remains of Hellblaster squad Damnos climbed aboard their Impulsor escort and sped towards the south tower.

Aboard the impulsor, captain Morrow surveyed the passing landscape; A bombed-out ruin of a once-thriving hive city. She saw in the middle distance passing by, another of those same bizarre beacons pierce the desolate ground. She saw that it was emitting some strangely-coloured gas, and bore an inquisitorial seal. Skull and crossbones; The Ordo Xenos. She watched as the xenos converged on the signal and try to tear it open.

Morrow felt nauseous as her mind committed the sin of questioning. What are those things? Why are the xenos only going after it? why are they leaving us alone? And where are the reinforcements we called for?

She checked the chonometer she set in her HUD. Five minutes. The impulsor came to a screeching halt at the base of a large ferrocrete tower bearing the fragmented remains of a once-pristine palatine aquila. She banged on the Impulsor's cockpit hatch.

"Top of the tower! Come on!" Morrow ordered.

"---|| {Response}: NEGATIVE ||--- ---|| {Explanation}: error. Safety of Iron Ravens vehicle: IMPULSOR - IRON HEART at risk. " replied techmarine Charan X-01.

"Leave it, we can get a new one. Do whatever last rites your kind need to do and get yourself to the top of the tower."

The reclusive techmarine closed his hatch again and began to pray.

She and her hellblaster escort met with Lieutenant Hawat's force, Intercessor squad Colliss and the famed Stern Third veterans, at the front gate, where they had been keeping watch.

"Captain," said the young lieutenant, "What is this? What's happening?"

"Inside!" She cried as a bleeding Hellbrute limped to the tower gate. She banged on the impulsor's hull. "Prayer time is over. Out! Now!"

The techmarine clambered out of the Impulsor as the Hellbrute aimed its meltagun straight at the machine's chapter badge. X-01 had timed a smokescreen to go off just as his boots hit the rubble and he and the Captain were lost to the daemon engine in a thick haze. they, and all the marines outside ran indoors and slammed the gate behind them.

Four Minutes.

She turned to lieutenant Hawat and answered his question.

"Our distress call was answered. By the Inquisition."

"Captain?"

"I don't know, Bran." she said. The marines climbed the stairs to the second floor. "The rest of you, push ahead. Command meeting."

The intercessors, hellblasters, and sternguard continued up the stairs.

"Take off your helmets," Captain Morrow ordered, "No tracking."

The two subordinates obeyed. The tube coming out of Charan's eye still bothered her, but she kept her composure.

"The only reason we even KNOW the bombardment is coming is because Temperesta INTERCEPTED a tight-beam vox communication across the Imperial fleet. We're not supposed to evacuate."

"You're disobeying an order from the inquisition?" Lieutenant Hawat exclaimed, "Captain, you are bordering on heresy. There are many who already want you burned as a heretic for your mere existence."

"I'm a space marine, they can take it up with my Primarch." she said, coldly.

"But Corax hasn't been seen since the scouring,"

Morrow stared frustratedly at her first lieutenant.

"Charan. Any guesses as to what those things are out there?" she asked the techmarine, pointing to another Ordo Xenos beacon being gnawed on by Rippers.

"---||{response}: UNCLEAR||--- ---||Possibilites: SEVERAL||--- ---||Speculation: [Pheremone emission device Evidence: organic compounds present in atmosphere surrounding devices. Sniffing sounds recorded from nearby XENOS: TYRANIDS bioforms.] [Speculation: Warp de-

A garbled vox-message from captain Morrow's helmet interrupted Charan's diatribe and promtpted Morrow to put her helmet back on.

"ATTACKING. I REPEAT, THE XENOS ARE ATTACKING. CAPTAIN, RESPOND."

Three minutes.

"Gravis squad Gilvane, status." Morrow replied.

"<kzzzzzzzzzzzzt> heavy casualties <kzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt> only survivor <kzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt>AYSIN COLE, REMEMBER ME<kzzzzzzzzzzzzzt>"

As if on cue, the xenos rammed themselves at the front gate, and the marines ran. By the third floor captain Morrow and her subordinates had caught up to the infantry. They made it to the fifth floor when a Gargoyle broke through a solid plasteel window and mauled hellblaster sergeant Victus before being blown apart by brother Henrix's bolt rifle. They heard the scratching of gaunts and rippers climbing the buildings outer walls and the chittering of more bioforms below. Brother Kyrien threw every grenade he had down towards the oncoming swarm.

"SUFFER NOT THE ALIEN TO LIVE!" he screamed as he emptied his whole clip.

"Hold your fire, brother!" Morrow barked. "Supply is limited! Save it for the shots that count!"

They kept climbing, letting those with enegry weapons cover their tail.

Two minutes.

on the roof, Morrow caught a brief glimpse to the beacon again and watched as a neurogaunt dragged a human brain out of its casing.

She heard a low mechanical scream coming from her right. The Redemptor Dreadnought Farren Undying charged towards the tower, crushing Tyranids beneath his feet. He wildly flung arms he didn't currently have, slamming his Ballistus lascannon across the skull of a Leaper. Morrow hated seeing her old mentor like this. She knew he wasn't going to last long entombed, every primaris marine knows a redemptor dreadnought is a slow and painful death sentence. Part of her was grateful for the extra time she had with him while he was still coherent, but another wondered if it wouldn't have been a greater kindness to let him die on Merenghast. But this is an unkind galaxy, she assured herself, Even in death, we still serve.

The tyranids scrambled up the tower walls and Morrow's troops took position on the roof's edge and opened fire at the hordes below.

"ONE MINUTE 'TIL EVAC, BROTHERS!" Morrow cried, "HOLD THE LINE."

Intercessor Sergeant Vikram's bolt rifle ran dry, the hand carrying his bot plistol was torn off by a genestealer now overpowering him. Once it had a good grip on its prey, the creature bit sergeant Vikram's head off. Sternguard veteran Fenslor was shot by a parasite weapon that ate him from the inside out. Morrow heard the roar of jet engines fly overhead and saw the stormraven gunship 'Corax Temperesta' descending on their position. Half a second too late for brothers Henrix or Kyrien, Temperesta drove back the tyranids in a fire of lascannon and bolter fire before hovering level with the roof and opening its bay doors.

"Now! Now! Everybody aboard! Now! Let's go!" the other survivors from across the battlefield commanded to the astartes below.

All astartes on the roof ran for the gunship, shooting, slashing, or beating back whatever Tyranids made a grab for them. Once all the survivors were safely aboard, the pilot slammed the aircraft's bay doors shut in a crunch of alien chitin and climbed above the bombed-out skyline.

They were safe. A lot of good men died to get here, but we made it. we're okay.

"Deep-strike Sergeant Kallen reporting in, I hope you weren't planning on leaving without us."

"Kallen! You're alive!" Morrow exclaimed through vox.

"Don't sound so surprised."

Morrow removed her helmet and called up to the cockpit, "Open starboard bay door! We've got survivors incoming!"

The light of jump pack engines arose from the ruined streets as sergeant Kallen's Intercessor squad flew up to join the evacuees. Five survivors joined them aboard temperesta. The gunship ran one last lap around the city's perimiter, scanning for any other survivors. They spotted on a crumbling buttress, Farren Undying.

"Larissa? Are we going back for the old captain?" Lieutenant Hawat asked captain Morrow.

She watched him down on the ground swinging his missile launcher wildly, flinging projectiles at random as a screamer-killer charged towards him. She turned away, and wiped a tear from her eye.

"Temperesta's damaged and overburdened as it is," she sniffled, "We'd be putting the rest of us at too great a risk."

Morrow put her helmet back on. Lieutenant Hawat could see that she clearly needed a minute and took charge. He climbed up to the cockpit,

"Leave the dreadnought. Our first priority is to the living."

Temperesta sealed all airlocks and ascended to orbit.

Morrow would naver dare show it in front of her troops, but she wept. She wanted to scream. There were too many unanswered questions and hurt feelings for even her transhuman mind to keep track of. What are those beacons for? Why did he have to die? Why weren't we told about the orbital strike? Why did it have to be now? Where was the hive-ship these xenos had to come from? They clearly responded, why didn't the imperium send reinforcements? WHY DID HE HAVE TO DIE?

Why has the Emperor forsaken me?

[hydropyro]

Writer Interview Tag

Thanks for the tag @tavyliasin! I just finished reading yours and @redroomroaving's entries <3 I feel mine will also be quite heavy, though I don't struggle with the kinds of things you two beasts /pos do.

I will tag @dude-wheres-my-ankheg, @insanefan, @firlionemoontav, and @dark-and-kawaii,

Questions and answers below the cut -- potential mention of SA

When did you start writing?

I started writing before I could actually write. I would scribble lines onto paper or type nonsense into my grandma's computer and then 'read' it to her.

I was (am?) hyperlexic, and by second grade I had a high school reading level. In school we would do AR tests, and I had to check out books from the public library, as the in-school library did not have books that were challenging enough. This is also when I began to carry around a pen and paper and write my own stories.

The first I remember distinctly was a story about a butterfly who was lost. I don't remember the plot at all. I also wrote, and still have, a spiral bound 'book' that I wrote as a second grade project where we researched a topic (owls) and then wrote a non-fiction story about it.

As far as Fan Fiction goes -- last year! I did rewrite the ending of 'Lucifer' when that came out because they did it wrong -- but last year after playing Baldur's Gate 3 is when I first wrote a piece of fan fiction. And I am deep in these trenches.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

I really enjoy crime and psychological horror. The 'Hannibal Lecter' series by Thomas Harris is a particular favorite of mine.

I also was enthralled with 'Animorphs' in third through fifth grade, and had read any and all that I could get my hands on. I was not a huge fan of science-fiction, though there were a few individual stories that I enjoyed. I also read the 'Warriors' series by Erin Hunter. Another beloved series was 'Inkheart/Inkspell/Inkdeath' by Cornelia Funke, the 'Eragon' series by Christopher Paolini, and the 'Purple Emperor' series by Herbie Brennan. Fantasy/(low-fantasy might be the genre) was a particular favorite of mine.

My favorite book, though, which I read in fifth grade -- originally because none of my personal choices were deemed challenging enough -- was 'The Iliad' by Homer. I don't remember which translation was used, but it was not in prose format, so that may narrow it down.

I used to read a lot. These days, I don't read much. By seventh grade when I started my first 'real novel' I was afraid of being too heavily influenced by things that I read. In eighth grade I stopped reading fiction entirely for this reason, after a teacher (vice principal) confiscated my work and viciously accused me of plagiarism as the things I was writing was 'too mature for someone my age to even know about' (Take the hint, mandatory reporter). From that point on, I only read Biographies/Historical reports. 'Operation Valkyrie' by Pierre Galante is thrilling.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

Other than my 8th Grade vice-principal, teachers were always very encouraging of my writing. The school librarians, especially. I have had my work compared to 'The Hunger Games' specifically (though I don't agree with) and I was asked to take a test that would analyze a piece of work and tell you what well-known author it was most like. I had Hemingway.

I don't try to emulate anyone, and actively avoid being 'inspired' by any works, as I previously said. As an adult, I think I could better use other work as 'inspiration', where as a child it was more 'copying', which didn't sit right.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

From second grade, all through high school and into college, I carried around a spiral ring notebook (always college/narrow ruled! Never wide ruled!) and pen everywhere I went. When I say everywhere, I mean it quite literally. Over the years I have had hundreds of notebooks full of dozens of stories. Most of them have fallen into obscurity, but a precious few are near and dear to my heart.

I write, and have always written, where I am currently sitting. In school I would write during lectures rather than take notes (some teachers had a small problem with this, though I explained that I need to do that in order to focus. I guess ADHD wasn't as well-known back in the early 00s) and my grades were excellent, so I was allowed to continue. By middle school my father had purchased a metal clipboard case for me to carry, so I could write during sport events when I wasn't competing.

These days I write mostly at my kitchen table, where my laptop is set up, or in bed with one of my spiral-ring notebooks -- though if inspiration strikes while I am out and about I have Word and Google Docs on my phone. I prefer to handwrite and then type it out, rather than write directly on a computer.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

i wish I knew how to answer this question. I have been asked many times over the years.

The best way that I know how to explain my 'process' is that -- I don't write. (Obviously I do just follow me for a moment). I don't 'build' characters. The only time I use baby name generators or the like is when I have an inconsequential side character that needs a name for a paragraph. My characters are 'born', and they tell me their stories. I just record them.

As a child I spent a lot of time daydreaming -- called Maladaptive Day Dreaming by my psych professionals. While doing chores I would be living in my stories, and these experiences would inspire scenes. Walking through the forest while camping -- scene.

Though, I will note, that the hearing of my characters is not a hallucination. It is more like -- a memory of a conversation or experience and I am recalling it.

My hallucinations are very different.

Things that I have found are more likely to get my characters talking is TV shows with strong character development. I wrote a great deal during my 'Supernatural' and 'Lucifer' days. Baldur's Gate 3 has also helped get the creative juices flowing -- though my fan fic is, obviously, directly derived from that source material.

What is your reason for writing?

A sweet and simple answer is -- they make me. The characters and the story make me. My mind is never quiet, and there is a catharsis in allowing the story to flow from my brain and out through my fingertips.

The reason my therapist may ask me to give is more -- intense -- and one I had not realized was the likely case. Feel free to skip to the next question.

Stories -- my characters, the worlds I build, the relationships they form -- are my safe place. There were times in my childhood that I would have eagerly left my home to go to 'Abser' -- lightyears away.

They are the friends I could never have because we moved every year -- they could never leave me. They are the safe, strong, and capable adults I never knew.

They were my punching bags. I was a quiet and sweet child -- straight A student because school was safe. Star athlete because I was admired and loved there. Even when I went to church to a god I didn't believe in because it got me out of the house, I was the best worshipper -- i knew all the trivia at Sunday school. And so torturing my characters once I was forced home was cathartic.

They were my avatars. They could love and live and hate and die -- when they were raped as children they could grow up into successful, happy adults -- not damaged at all. They could have loving parents who would move Heaven and Earth for them.

And, they could live out the -- more mature -- fantasies that I had and hid away out of (appropriately placed, I later found) fear that making them known and -- god forbid acting on them -- would lead to ridicule and abandonment.

In seventh grade I created a character named Kacie. She looked like me. Protagonist. Loving family. Strong woman. There was another character I didn't like much, called Leon. He was mean. Aloof.

As the story developed -- Kacie didn't, so much. But Leon told me his story. Raised without a mother by a man who hated, abused, and neglected him and his little sister -- doing anything and everything he could to protect his little sister, even if it put him in danger -- hiding behind his art trying to white knuckle his way through life -- addict -- hedonist -- angry at life itself -- and utterly alone in the world.

Of course, it is art so his experience is much more extreme than mine -- (sorry, Leon).

ha, ha, fan fic though!

Still the above -- they make me -- but playing with these little dolls that I didn't make, but that I made my own -- is just fun. Sure, I'm probably expressing more yet-to-be-discovered trauma as well, but man do I love to justify my favorite devil and make Alakvyr and Abdirak kiss.

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

For my personal work -- when I graduated high school my librarian gave me a notebook and wrote on the inside cover 'Never Stop Writing'. I have yet to use that notebook. When I finished the first draft of my complete novel I was brave and sent it to my family to read. They had never read my work before. My step-dad, who is my hero, said he 'couldn't put it down'.

For my fan fiction work, I love that other people also love them! As I said, I don't percolate on ideas, and for my fan-fiction I hardly even edit. I word vomit -- try to fix some grammatical issues -- and throw it out into the world. When writing fan fiction I wanted it to be solely for the passion of writing -- not perfect.

I love to hear when people catch the little references I put in (think 'call it a ninth sense' that Raphael says in game) and when people tell me that I 'captured' an established character well. Especially Raphael and Abdirak.

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

Firstly -- awe

Secondly -- I don't know if I want to necessarily be 'thought about' by my readers.

My original work has very few readers -- and though those who have read it have given raving reviews except @summerwarlock who beta read my work and gave an incredibly helpful and extensive review (still raving, but also helpful tips and critiques) no one has asked me questions or wanted to 'better understand' me, my story, or characters. So, as far as fan fic

Think of me as a fan! A fan with gremlins in my head and gloriously agonizing brainrot -- but a fan.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Original Work: hahaha hahahahahaahhahahaha who knows? Probably the same as fan fiction, though.

Fan fiction: probably character development/character study. I love to pull characters apart to deeply understand who they are and why they do, say, think, and feel as they do. One of my favorite things to write is Raphael justifying himself -- and I feel especially successful when people read it and say 'holy shit, he's right'.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

Original work -- I was held back by fear of being judged for writing the story the way it needed to be written. I have a character who is a power-mad king. An absolutely shit-pile of a person -- but I wrote him fairly bland. Other characters would tell you 'oh he's awful' but I never showed him being awful because 'what if people judge me for thinking this'.

Fan fic has helped me a lot with this, as well as Summerwarlock's tips. And so, the hedonistic, rapist, abusive king will do those things because it is in character. Sorry -- all the other characters.

For fan fic -- yes and no. I write for myself. I write because I enjoy it and fan fic is my passion project. I don't even edit my work, remember. I just passion all over the page (muhahah) and throw it into the ether. I love that other people enjoy my little weirdos as much as I do.

How do you feel about your own writing?

Original work -- oh, pure shit. Let's move on.

Fan fiction -- I'm a gods damned genius. No, that's a joke. There are some lines that I write that I think 'fuck yea, that came out of me?' but other than that, they're just silly little dolls I'm squishing together, so I'm not too concerned.

I do enjoy sharing it, though, especially with those who write similar things as I do. The Abdirak group I'm in are full of great, loving people who -- as writers themselves -- aren't afraid to give helpful criticism or ask questions that may make you think differently about your work. And they are also wonderful cheerleaders, as I hope I am for them.

I am a passionate person, but I am a very reserved person, so I worry sometimes that the depths of my adoration don't come across -- but I truly do adore you all, and I am so grateful to have found and been accepted into this community.