#Rod Hull

[gifnebula]

[nomorescreencaps]

[ID: Ten screencaps from No More Jockeys. Tim Key names Rod Hull and says the category is No More people who one of their names is long and thin. Horne sniggers and Watson repeats the category in question form. Alex confirms saying "Like a rod." Mark then ask Tim to name another and Key replies Chris Branch, making all three laugh. End ID.]

[saucyseventies]

Emu throwing Rod Hull into a freezer. Best comedy moment ever.

[weaversweek]

There's somebody at the door.

Bless you.

There's somebody at the door.

This is not a call of werewolves.

There's somebody at the door.

Boring old werewolf instincts:

Sexual jealousy

Constant aggression

Rigid hierarchy

Must win sports

Homophobia And Sexism Is Normal™

Eat people

Cool new werewolf instincts:

There is no five second rule

Corvids are friends

Hang out as a pack

Karaoke

Gotta pee

[convertgrapeling]

just occurred to me to wonder how the fuck anyone could explain rod hull and emu to gen z

"yeah it was just this guy with a bird puppet on his arm and he used it to attack people's necks and one time it went for snoop dogg's genitalia. yeah, it was great."

[westeroswisdom]

Wise words from Lord Corlys Velaryon.

[joegeniusblog]

PASSING: Bobby Hull, 1939-2023

NHL Hall of Famer(HOF) passed away on January 30th. of this year. Mr. Hull was 84. Bobby Hull was a historic player only 1/2 a notch below Orr, Ruth, Russell and Gogolak. Hull, along with Chicago Blacks Hawks’ teammate Stan Mikita, was the earliest adopter of the curved stick. This enabled Hull to lift the puck to the eye level of the goalie, adding elevation to his 118 MPH shot which was…

[llamagoddessofficial]

In the diver au, do the sirens still come to see MC even when she isn't diving? Asking because I am terrified of SCUBA diving

Dw anon, as someone who actively enjoys scuba diving I am ALSO afraid of scuba diving. Y'all will never catch my ass below 10m

Sans: He's careful not to appear too often. He doesn't want her to start suspecting he does little else but wait for her to return to him. But yes, he does sometimes come to see her, even when she has no plans to dive - sometimes she just likes to go out on a boat with her buddies, maybe to be their surface guy, maybe to fish, maybe just to hang out. Either way Sans will be there. He circles the boat, maybe even pulls up alongside it... he's always all smiles, all whistles. He likes playing tug-of-war. He tolerates the presences of her friends; Sans knows that humans never dive alone, and if her friends start disapproving of him or seeing him as aggressive she might not get in the water.

Sometimes, he returns lost items to her when he comes to the boat. Fumbled kit from previous dives. Most of the time it's genuinely lost stuff, but occasionally, he actively steals things from under her or her dive partners noses only to 'return' them later and gain favour. Her friends like him, they're none the wiser that he sees them purely as obstacles in the way of his beloved. He only has eyes for her.

Red: Of course he does. Diving or no diving, she's cute and he wants attention. He'll show up and circle the boat like the shark he is, laughs and non-serious shouts of "your boyfriend's here" go up from her buddies; if she doesn't go greet him when he surfaces he literally rocks the boat, aggressively bumping the hull until she relents and comes to interact with him. He always has such a smug look on his face. If he's seen one of her friends getting a bit too chummy with her recently he might only show up to target some harassment their way - kicking up water at them, snapping or deliberately tangling their fishing lines, or even pulling the line himself so the whole rod eventually goes flying into the water. (Of course, they're only getting that back if she asks)

He likes that she's more confident on a boat. In the water, she's mindful of the fact that it's his territory, but if he's misbehaving on the surface within arm's reach she'll reach out and smack him on the skull. Those whacks are the highlights of his week.

Skull: She never sees him when she's not diving.

But... that doesn't mean he's not there.

In the day, he lurks below the surface, below the boat whose hull and engine hum he's memorised. He listens to the muffled sounds of her laughter.

... And at night, he can be far, far closer than she realises.

[vexwerewolf]

Tell us about one of your favorite Lancer mechs you've piloted

(art by @deeganart)

-- IPS-N Tortuga @ LL12 -- [ LICENSES ] HORUS Goblin 3, IPS-N Tortuga 2, HA Sherman 3, SSC Dusk Wing 3, IPS-N Raleigh 1 [ CORE BONUSES ] Sloped Plating, Heatfall Coolant System, Auto-Stabilizing Hardpoints, Improved Armament [ TALENTS ] Vanguard 3, Leader 3, Grease Monkey 3, Nuclear Cavalier 3, Combined Arms 2, Empath 1 [ STATS ] HULL:4 AGI:2 SYS:4 ENGI:4 STRUCTURE:4 HP:24 ARMOR:3 STRESS:4 HEATCAP:10 REPAIR:8 TECH ATK:+5 LIMITED:+2 SPD:4 EVA:8 EDEF:14 SENSE:15 SAVE:16 [ WEAPONS ] Integrated: Fuel Rod Gun FLEX MOUNT: Hand Cannon / Hand Cannon MAIN MOUNT: Deck-Sweeper Automatic Shotgun HEAVY MOUNT: ANDROMEDA-Pattern Heavy Laser Rifle // Auto-Stabilizing Hardpoints [ SYSTEMS ] Personalizations, ASURA-Class NHP x3, H0R_OS System Upgrade I, H0R_OS System Upgrade II, Flicker Field Projector, Redundant Systems Upgrade x3, BB Breach/Blast Charges x5

This mech does everything.

It's tough, it's survivable, it can hand out truly obscene amounts of damage. It can create instant Size 2 cover anywhere within Sensors. It can shut down high-power enemies. Every time it moves, the first attack against it has a flat 50% chance to miss. It can give allies +1d6 damage as a reaction. If an enemy so much as sneezes in its vicinity, it will light it up. So long as there are less than five combats in the mission, it can use ASURA every combat. Once per mission, everyone gets a point of Structure repaired and a use of all Limited systems restored for free.

Having the extra Flex with the Hand Cannons allows it to do a truly filthy trick with its Core System. Hyper-Reflex Mode says "any character you hit with Overwatch becomes Immobilized until the end of their next turn." If you Overwatch with a Main/Aux or an Aux/Aux, your first attack in the sequence must be against the enemy who triggered it, but your second attack isn't subject to this restriction, so if someone triggers your Overwatch while HRM is on, you can fire the second Hand Cannon at some rando who's also in range and they both get Immobilized.

It has no melee weapons and needs none thanks to Combined Arms 2, and thanks to Combined Arms 1 it can get soft cover just by being adjacent to an enemy.

With 10 Heat Cap and Heatfall, it can safely Overcharge Loop to fire its Andromeda, and it has a 1-in-3 chance of being able to trigger Nuclear Cavalier every time it does so. Andromeda gets +1 Accuracy automatically.

Switch customized it to have a small fleet of camera drones constantly circling it so that they can livestream all their mech fights, and they always carry an omnihook with them so that they'll be able to connect to the omninet no matter where they are.

This isn't a meme machine. It's a fucking dream machine.

[beardedmrbean]

The women of Iran are dancing. Women blinded, with one eye, or one arm, are dancing. Iranian Kurds are dancing. Across Europe, Iranian dissidents are dancing. Iranians – often, relatives of the regime’s victims – are drinking to show their joy. The daughters of Minoo Majidi, a mother shot dead by security services during the 2022 protests, shared a video of them raising a glass to President Raisi’s death. 

Dark humour – the jokes of an oppressed people – are circulating. “Mr Raisi, you surprised us. We have no tapas for our drinks,” chuckles one Iranian in a celebratory video on social media. There was the gag about how a Mossad agent called “Eli Copter” had caused the crash. People have handed out cakes and sweets in public squares – an act of symbolic importance in Persian culture, often associated with joyous events. Celebratory fireworks filled the skies in Iranian cities.

Such courage is all the more impressive given how little Raisi’s death is likely to change anything in this closed prison of a society. It may somewhat alter the succession, since he had been one of the men tipped to succeed Khamenei, but the Ayatollahs retain their stranglehold. The bravery of anyone involved in any celebration or act of civil disobedience such as removing a headscarf, is astounding. Those letting off fireworks or handing out sweets are risking their lives. 

History will remember Raisi as a squalid tyrant who took a twisted pride in human suffering. He was involved in the torture and extrajudicial murder of thousands of political prisoners held in Iranian jails and the mass killings of opponents in 1988, when as many as 30,000 are believed to have lost their lives. As Mariam Memarsadeghi wrote in a chilling article for Tablet magazine, “virgins were systematically raped before their execution, to circumvent the Islamic prohibition on killing virgins and to prevent women and girls from reaching heaven”. 

And yet, the BBC posted about “President Ebrahim Raisi’s mixed legacy in Iran”. You can imagine the 1945 headlines about the mixed legacy of “motorway-builder, vegetarian rights enthusiast and dog-lover” Adolf Hitler, or that of “inspirational plus-size influencer” Hermann Goering. Reuters described how Raisi “rose through Iran’s theocracy from hardline prosecutor to uncompromising president, as he burnished his credentials to position himself to become the next supreme leader”. 

Reading such things you would think Raisi was, at worst, a slight renegade. A cheeky chappie in a kaftan whose loss will be felt by light entertainment for generations. They tweeted like he was Rod Hull – rather than, you know, someone nicknamed “the Butcher of Tehran”. But in the real world, faced with the real consequences of the regime he ran, people are dancing. 

It wasn’t just the BBC in its classic “tightrope walk” mode, either. Things were getting a bit Candle in the Wind at the UN, as the entire Security Council (including both the UK and US representatives) stood to observe a minute of silence for President Raisi. Goodbye Tehran’s rose. 

European Council president Charles Michel tweeted out his sincere condolences, while the “European Commissioner for Crisis Management” committed the EU’s Copernicus satellite system to help locate Raisi’s helicopter, in the name of “#EUSolidarity”. 

Lest we forget, Johan Floderus, a young EU official from Sweden, has been incarcerated at Iran’s notorious Evin prison for more than two years. We don’t see much “#EUSolidarity” coming from the other direction. Not to be undone, President Higgins of Ireland channelled the spirit of Eamon de Valera c.1945, by offering his “deepest sympathies” upon the death of a tyrant. 

Such statements go well beyond basic diplomacy. Nobody asked anyone to gush; they chose to. The message it sends is a slap in the face to those bravely putting their lives on the line for freedom. But it’s par for the course in what is (sometimes optimistically) termed the “international community”. 

Speaking of which, on Monday, the International Criminal Court put out joint bids for arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas and the prime minister and defence minister of Israel. Given that the ICC has no jurisdiction, nor power of its own to arrest anyone, there was something bleakly comic about the manner of the announcement. Chief prosecutor Karim Khan delivered his statement flanked by a couple of glaring bureaucrats. The ICC appeared to be putting on its best “don’t mess with us” face. It looked like a geriatric version of Bugsy Malone.

The ICC application refers, pointedly, to the “territory of Israel” and the “state of Palestine”, which makes it clear which side its bread is buttered. It notably ignores Hamas’s use of human shields, surely a factor when assessing the civilian death toll. It even holds Israel entirely responsible for “closing the three border crossing points” after October 7. 

Yet Hamas destroyed the Erez crossing, murdering its operators and blowing up the barriers separating it from the Gaza strip. Small wonder border checkpoints weren’t up and running immediately. Condemning Israel for this is grotesque; gaslighting on an international scale. 

The timing is also telling. We have known about the crimes of October 7 from day one, thanks to the body-cams Hamas terrorists so proudly wore to document their butchery. Yet the ICC waited until May 2024 to condemn both Israel and Hamas on the same day. The effect is to suggest a moral equivalence between a democratic state and a genocidal terrorist group that says it wants to repeat the atrocities of October 7 indefinitely. You don’t have to believe Israel is above criticism – and nor should we – to recognise this. 

Multinational organisations like the ICC are often held up as moral arbiters in themselves, when they will only be as virtuous or corrupt as their component member states, and reflecting the same biases. The World Health Organisation has long excluded Taiwan from its membership due to Chinese pressure. A ruinous decision, when Taiwan’s early warnings about the risks of human-to-human transmission of Covid in late 2019 were ignored. Something is rotten in the state of many international bodies and moral courage is in short supply. 

Given such a clear-cut case of evil as Raisi, the mealy-mouthed global response does not bode well. For genuine bravery, we can look to the people at the sharp end of such regimes. Because still, in the midst of it all, the women of Iran dance. 

[creepypuppetbrigade]

After watching several episodes of the show Emu's World, I think I've finally figured out Lesley.

She is an immortal Rod Hull-esque children's show host that used to have a bright colorful innocent puppet show about teaching basic concepts in a fun way, and then the talking objects that furnished her home gained sapience and she ascended to godhood.

You can't prove I'm wrong.

[kivishipps]

Have you ever wondered what the Arbiter must be thinking when he watched John beat the shit out of the hull of a Wraith with ease, killing the pilot in a matter of moments with his hands alone?

Edit: Thought about this while watching his part of the campaign where the player as Arbiter is shooting at the wraith with a fuel rod gun(?) and Master Chief is having NONE of it and just climbs up the hull with no hesitation and beats it in. Thel absolutely has to think this guy is one hundred percent insane, or god, or both.

[legally-allowed-to-slime]

It was damp.

The wind blew her stomach into a hollow carcass, rib cage like thin and lonely bones in the desert. A limp, dead glow from the anglerfish took the place of any twinkling stars, and two fish circled her lighthouse in a silent and eternal dance.

Gem shivered and allowed a fixed smile to materialise.

She could feel it, tingling in her bones every time she stepped on a dock or flicked out a rod, running through her in unsteady cracks that spread into flashes.

Electricity and water didn’t mix. Rather, they mixed too well, and she had a feeling she was the conductor of this jumbled orchestra.

Her skin felt numb, night air stinging her. Even Grian had advised her against staying up for nights on end, at least not to the point where her flesh felt like ice even in broad daylight. And the man himself had casted his rod thousands of times in just weeks.

She had to admit it was taking its toll on her.

Trembling, Gem grabbed her rod, moving methodically, like she was the dead left alive. Her heart rumbled around, refusing to give her relief. She felt suffocated. Need air.

Need water.

She gasped, and clung onto the railing to stabilise herself, lungs twisting in pain. Gem grabbed the canteen at her side and exhaled in frustration after finding it empty.

Something lurking inside, spurring her on made her lean over the side of the boat and scoop up the seawater, bringing the canteen to her mouth in one fluid motion, before gulping the whole thing down. It didn’t taste salty. Just refreshing.

Um. Okay.

The air was cold.

Gem forced herself to relax and began to pull up the net, the seawater that dampened the ropes warming her hands. The water sloshed and creaked around the hull.

There was a sudden splash a few feet away, and she startled, watching the spot carefully. A purposefully moving shade rippled in the waves and disappeared.

She’d been seeing more of those recently, though she wasn’t sure if it was just sleep deprivation-induced hallucinations, or a trick of the dark. Maybe it was both.

Gem gripped the sword at her waist, waiting for any signs of disturbance.

The clouds creeped across the horizon.

Silence. Nothing but the ocean glinting under the muted moonlight.

A minute passed, then another. She started to relax. Maybe the fishing really was just getting to her head—

—was what she was thinking, as something, some thing’s gaping jaw revealed too many teeth growing from slimy gums, grey and green and every other colour on the spectrum and beyond fading into an abyss that threatened to consume. She couldn’t see anything, blindness taking over her, erasing everything that ever existed.

Gem bit her tongue so hard she tasted iron. Hands shaking, she barely managed to fumble her sword out and blindly swung it, shutting her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see anything as she died.

The thing growled, and Gem’s feet were glued to the deck.

Silence hung in the air, time agonisingly ticking.

Then there was a low swish, a shake, a splash, and then nothing.

A soft drizzle started, pattering onto the water’s surface and settling on her shoulders.

Gem forced herself to pry her eyes open. The water crinkled innocently at her, and somehow, she had the feeling she’d been let go.

(For now.)

The ocean rocked beneath her, and not too far away, lightning struck.

[in1-nutshell]

Heyyy

Recall when I sent in that ask about Ironhold's role during the '86 movie? I was wondering if I could make a request for a more in-depth look at that. Like, what happened after the decepticons returned to Cybertron? Did they try to oppose Starscream's rise to power, or did they just let him take control?

What are their reactions to Galvatron, Cyclonus, Scourge and the Sweeps?

Post-movie, what are they up to during the events of five faces of Darkness? You mentioned them joining the autobots, how does this complicated their relationship with Rumble?

Reminds me of the first time I watched the movie.

Pre Movie: "Ooh! Haven't seen this! I wonder what's it about!"

During Movie: *Ugly sobbing*

Post Movie: "... I was not the same person as I was before..."

Anyways, hope you enjoy!

Ironhold during the 1986 Movie

SFW, Platonic, Romance, Familial, Angst, Character death from the movie, Cybertronain reader

G1

Ironhold wasn’t aware of all of Megatron’s plan for taking down Autobot city, and quite frankly they were too tired to care.

The Decepticon’s already managed to conquer Cybertron, did they really need to stomp out the rest of the Autobots on Earth?

Couldn’t they just live their lives separately and in peace?

Apparently not.

Ironhold was supposed to be on the same shuttle as Rumble, but they ended up in their separate shuttle to make sure any stray asteroid didn’t damage the hull.

Which would be a great plan… except that due to a faulty part, they were not able to fly out with the others.

Once their ship was ready, they were off.

They commed Rumble to know what had happened in the shuttle.

Rumble: “You shoulda been here Hold! It was a massacre!” Ironhold chuckling a bit: “Yeah, I bet it was.” Rumble: “Megatron even got Ironhide out!” Ironhold froze for a second: “What?” Rumble: “Yeah! The bot really tried stopping the boss with half his chassis gone! Ha!” Ironhold: “…Rumble what was the plan again…” Rumble: "You forgot already? Well the massacre part wasn’t really part of the plan or taking the ship. But, hey! What can you do? Plans change in the heat of the moment.” Ironhold shudders a bit: “…I’ll meet you all on Earth.” Rumble: “All right then, see ya on Earth Hold.” Ironhold: “Love you.” Rumble: "Aww c’mon! Ya had to say it over the line… the others are here.” Ironhold: “You don’t have to say it back My Spark.” Rumble: “…loveyoutoo.” Frenzy: “Ha!” Rumble: “FRENZY!”

Ironhold arrived on Earth and froze once again at the heavy damages done on Autobot city.

This shouldn’t have come to this.

But they had a job to do.

One by one any Autobots that came across their path fell unconscious, they were feeling merciful today.

They spotted their father fighting Optimus from a few feet away.

The two truly looked like they were going to end things today.

To end the war for once and for all.

They truly thought Prime was going to finish Megatron with honor… until the glint of a blaster came into view.

Before Ironhold could react, Hot Rod had tackled Megatron down trying to get the gun.

He failed and ended up being held hostage.

That was when Megatron noticed they were there.

Megatron: “Ironhold! Finish Prime now!” Ironhold looks down at the Prime. He was disarmed and badly injured. They could easily end the war with one blow. The war would finally be over… Hot Rod: “Optimus!” CLANK! Megatron and Hot Rod both had surprised looks on their faces seeing Ironhold dropping their blaster and helping the Prime up. Megatron tossed Hot rod aside in anger.  Megatron: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” Ironhold: “THIS IS NOT HOW THE WAR SHOULD END! ENOUGH WITH THE BLOODSHED MEGATRON! Aren’t you tired of this fighting? I am done—” BLAM! Ironhold stares in shock at the new hole in their chassis and the smoke coming from their father’s fusion canon. He held a grim expression as they fell on their side. They could feel Optimus’s servos on them for a few seconds. The last thing they saw was Hot Rod shocked face staring at them.

Hot Rod couldn’t believe what had just happened.

One of the most loyal Decepticons, Megatron’s spawn, had just gone against his orders and protected Optimus.

Megatron had shot his own child.

He wanted help them, but now his worries were on his leader.

Anyways he saw some Cons bringing them back into Astrotrain.

Rumble nearly screamed when he saw Ironhold with a smoking hole coming from their chassis.

Thhhis was another time he wished he were a bigger bot to carry them back to the ship instead of relying on the others

Once on the ship, Rumble placed Ironhold’s helm on his lap and gently stroked their helm.

He didn’t care for any stares.

He just needed to know if they were okay.

Ironhold wakes up a few minutes after the unanimous decision to throw Megatron out the shuttle.

Rumble told them everything what had happened.

Ironhold is quiet during the entire story. Ironhold groans as they try and stand. Rumble grabbing their servo: “Are ya nuts!? Sit back down!” Ironhold ignores him and manages to stand. Ironhold: “Starscream.” Starscream turns to them, half expecting to hear a rebuttal about his new rise to power. Ironhold vents softly: “Do you want to lead?” Starscream pauses in confusion: “Yes?” Ironhold: “Then do it.” Starscream: “What?” Rumble: “What?” Every Decepticon: “What?” Ironhold groaning a bit: “I say we give Screamer here a chance. And if he messes up I will take control. Am I clear?” No one says anything. Ironhold stand up straighter: “I said, am I clear?” There is a mumbled agreement with the others. Their knees suddenly start buckling and falls. Rumble, Frenzy, Soundwave and some other cons catch them. Ironhold groans again as they are set back down on the bench.

Once they get back to the base, they get patched up just in time for Starscream’s cornation

They were really starting to reconsider their decision to make Starscream in charge

Luckliy Starscream’s regin didn’t klast long thanks to the entrance of Galavtron

But they soon realized that Galvatron was worse than their father and Starscream combined.

Especially once he slipped about Unicron.

They were done.

Ironhold knew that the other Decepticon’s had already claimed Galvatron as their leader.

After thinking about it, they ultimately decided to leave.

The Decepticon’s had strayed fair from their morals in the beginning and there was no way they would bow for Galvatron, Cyclonus, or any of the Sweeps with Unicron pulling the strings.

That night they cried a little as they pried Rumble from their frame.

As quietly as they could, they confiscated a shuttle a flew off.

They were flying around for a while until they received a strange energy spike on the Junkions Planet.

Ironhold lands on the planet and walks out only to be met with several blasters to the face. They slowly raise their servos up. Ironhold: “I come in peace.” Daniel: “Yeah right! Like we’re gonna listen to you!” Ironhold: “I came to help you.” Springer: “Help us? From what?”  Ironhold: "From Galvatron and his cronies.” Arcee: “And how do we know you aren’t setting us up for a trap.” Ironhold opens their subspace and pulls out their Decepticons insignia before throwing it on the ground: “Because I am not going to follow his orders. The Decepticon’s reason to fight is not something I am going to fight for. I know the past we’ve fought, but believe me, I am done being a Decepticon if THIS is what it means to be.” They look at Hot Rod for support, they know they don’t deserve it, but there was a small part that hoped for a change. Hot Rod: “I believe them.” The other bots: “You do?!” Hot Rod: “They tried to help Optimus before… before that. They stood up to Megatron and ,correct me if I’m wrong, you said you didn’t want to fight anymore.” Ironhold nods. Hot Rod: “And If they came all this way to help us, I say let them. We’re going to need all the help we can get fighting Unicron.” Kup is the first to approach Ironhold holding his servo out: “Welcome to the team kid.” Ironhold smiles at the older mech and shakes his servo.

Ironhold was met with hostility on the ship, which they completely understood.

If the situation was the other way around, they would also be wary.

Once Unicron was defeated, Ironhold was ready to hear them say to scram, to leave and never come back.

They were surprised when Rodimus Prime offered them an Autobot badge and a spot on the team.

A flash of Rumble’s face flashed in their helm.

Ironhold smiled at the new Prime and accepted.

There was a party celebrating the victory and Ironhold joing the fold.

Despite the festivities and the laughter shared, they walked into their new habsuite with tears in their optics.

The weight of the loss of their father…

Their family…

Their Conjunx…

They could only hope that Rumble had some part in his spark to forgive them once he found out they defected.

[the-pink-baphomet1861]

The biology of Dredge

Or: What the f**k happened to that fish!

Menu/Next

Part 1; The blue mackerel 

So, Dredge.

It’s that one simple fun fishing simulator about sailing to four different scenic, beautiful, geographically impossible locations while helping the locals and interacting with the wildlife. Just you and your boat for miles, nothing else at all. Sit down, grab your rod, don’t worry! It’s not like anything’s gonna happen to you, especially not involving the noises you’ve been hearing from under the hull. They’re probably just the currents hitting the side of the boat, relax! Feel the cool night air and the gentle, salty, insidious mist on your face and listen to the sounds of the sea, but not too closely. You never know what might be whispering on the tides.

I am, of course, messing with you. In reality, Dredge is a game about sailing through a haunted sea full of unknown horrors and lovecraftian abominations all while searching for the key to a lock you can’t fathom. I loved Dredge, it was a fun game, and my favourite part had to be the art, (besides the wonderfully simple gameplay and riveting story, of course) and my favourite part of the art had to be the aberrations.

For some explanation to the people who haven’t played Dredge, every time you fish from a fishing spot, there’s a chance that the thing you catch won’t be a normal fish, but a mutant little beast with all sorts of fascinating deformities. The chance is basically guaranteed if you see a little blue glow above the fishing spot and these guys are a good bit more valuable than their non aberrant counterparts, so you’re kind of incentivized to collect as many as you can. 

Looks like mama’s eating good tonight!

That isn’t the reason I’m writing this though, because each fish and crab in the game comes with at least one aberrant variety, each with their own unique design and flavour text, which I LOVE! It makes the eldritch presence feel all encompassing, even as you deal with the much larger threats in the sea. Recently, however, I’ve been thinking about the actual, physical effects of these mutations and how they would affect the bodies of their poor, unfortunate hosts, and as a marine biology student, I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to both study and learn about the biology of some of the fascinating animals in the ocean and talk about a game I like! It’s a win-win!

Some ground rules first:

Dredge is a video game, and as such things that appear in it don’t necessarily reflect reality in all aspects. The team at Black Salt Games are amazingly talented people, but I’m not so sure how much marine biology they know, and if they do, they probably aren’t going to drag the game to a screeching halt in order to explain three pages of notes incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t been studying marine biology for at least three years. It would also make the game a lot more boring if everything strictly adhered to reality. So everything in this document will be strictly speculative.

I may be a marine biology student, but I am in no way a complete expert. There are going to be a lot of things that I’m probably going to mess up. This isn’t a strict scientific breakdown with 100% accurate information, and while I will try my best to find good, reliable sources for my info, things are going to get pretty fantastical as time goes on, especially for the fish that are specifically made for the game. This is just for fun and not some inscrutable scientific paper built on loads of evidence.

I will NOT be covering any of the larger monsters in the game. This is already a massive undertaking with nearly 200 fish and aberrations to get through and a ton of research to do, and that’s not even getting into the lore implications that these guys are full-on eldritch abominations from another dimension instead of just mutated animals. I might do something like this for them in the future, but for now it’s just the aberrations you can catch and sell.

And with those formalities out of the way, let’s get into it!

Specimen #1: Blue mackerel

This little guy is probably the first fish that you’ll ever catch, they’re the easiest fish outside Big Marrow, not requiring any special equipment, and are in many ways the game’s tutorial for how the fishing mechanic works.

But what kind of fish ARE these guys actually? As in, which species do these guys belong to and what does that mean for how their physiology will change once they start mutating?

Well that’s what this first section is all about.

Who’s that ichthyoid?

In this section, I’m going to be going over the appearance and description in the game and trying to use that in order to find out what species these guys belong to and how exactly their bodies work. This section will vary in length from entry to entry, as while the game isn’t generous enough to give us the scientific names of each fish, there are some that are more obvious than others, and there are some that need a bit more digging.

Starting off with our little guy here, we can see that my largest trophy was about 28,1 cm in length, although I did read that their max in-game size was 30 cm. They have a bluish grey colouration with six black stripes running down both sides. Their body is that of a standard fusiform plan, which means that the animal has an almost cylindrical form that tapers off into two points at both ends, as opposed to other body plans like eel-like or elongated. The tail fin also has a particular shape, in this case forked, which means that the tail has a two-pronged appearance while still being a singular fin, as opposed to a lunate tail fin, which is two separate fins that both have a pronged appearance

A triad of diagrams that display the differences in body plan, the different kinds of fins and tail fin shape, you’re gonna be seeing this a lot. BE ADVISED that these are incredibly variable and can change a lot depending on the species of fish.

Our blue mackerel also has two evenly spaced dorsal fins that are somewhat rectangular and relatively short, reaching their highest points at the top right corner of the fin (although the rectangularity of the fins might just be part of the artstyle) and the pelvic and anal fins seem to share these characteristics, although the pelvic fin is much shorter than the rest, and although I can’t fully make out the pelvic fins, it seems to an almost teardrop shape with the bottom left portion of the fin connected to the area near the second gill slit. The mouth ends in a pointed snout which isn’t too thin, but it is still quite noticeable. 

I haven’t really said much about the habitats of the fish yet, which you would think is pretty important, but here’s the thing, Dredge is frustratingly vague about where it actually takes place. I joked about it before, but the fact that a volcanic hotspot, a mangrove swamp, a coral reef, a temperate cliff area and wherever the marrows are all occur within a few days of sailing doesn’t sound likely to me at all, (although if anyone does know any similar real world areas I would absolutely love to hear about it) but there might be something we can use here. As you can see, each fish comes with an area marker that tells you what kind of gear you need for catching it, but we can actually use this to mark down a habitat and narrow down our search a little. For the blue mackerel we see that it is listed as coastal, which means that it probably stops appearing once you get too far out into the open ocean, so keep that in mind.

Now we can get to the fun part, actually identifying the specific species this fish belongs to.  

First off I think we can safely say that this fish belongs to the ray-finned fish group because it probably has bones and isn’t a coelacanth or a lungfish, which I think is pretty uncontroversial. Narrowing it down is where this gets tricky. You see, the identification tool I was using, a site called fishbase which seems pretty reliable, has a bunch of different options to make your search easier,but they’re all things like the habitat where the fish lives, what it eats, how many spines it has in its fins, and for some reason lacks things like the fish’s colour. All things that would be helpful for a real-world marine biologist trying to identify what they caught, but not so helpful for us trying to find a fish in a fictional video game.

Eventually I did manage to whittle away the options through looking at things like the fin and body shape as well as things like size for species I found interesting, until I got to the Scombridae family, which consists of tuna, bonitos, and of course, mackerels. From there all I had to do was find the species that fit the description best, easy right? WRONG! None of the species I found had all the key characteristics I was looking for. None of them had that deep, bluish-grey colour or those six long stripes running down the sides that I was looking for. So in the end I decided on the closest match I could find.

Image source:https://www.fishbase.se/summary/Scomber-australasicus.html 

The blue mackerel (Scomber australasicus) 

Most of the main traits are there, it has relatively short dorsal and pelvic fins, with a similar almost-teardrop shaped pectoral fin and that same forked tail fin. The colour is a pretty good match too, albeit silvery blue instead of dark bluish grey, but still pretty similar. There are some differences though. The six, distinct, vertical bands on the game version are much less distinct and vertical, and much more numerous and the anal fin is much shorter than in the game and the maximum size was also said to be higher, around 44 cm with 30 being an average rather than the stopping point, but I think we can ignore this as part of the game.

And yeah, I know. Big whoop. The fish called a blue mackerel turned out to be a blue mackerel. I do think that going through this is important however, as it doesn’t just give us a starting point to work with when it comes to the more vague fish, (and trust me, it gets vague sometimes) but also lets us learn a bit more about both the morphology and taxonomy of these animals. Plus, that info will be pretty handy when we inevitably find a fish we can’t properly identify and have to dip our toes into speculative biology.

Now we get to the part you’ve all probably been waiting for since this post started:

WHAT THE F**K HAPPENED TO THAT FISH?

Finally we can actually get started on looking at the aberrations and breaking down the physiological changes! Hoo boy, this is gonna be fun!

First off, some more groundwork. (I know, I know, but this is still important, so bear with me) 

The internal anatomy, specifically the skeleton, is something we need. It’ll allow us to pinpoint the basic look of what happened anatomically, which gives us the information we need to make more specific assumptions about what’s going on here. I will also bring in information about specific, real-world fish diseases for more accuracy. So be warned! There will be pictures of real fish gore and gross parasites, and with that disclaimer, on with the show!

I couldn’t find a specific diagram of S. australasicus’s skeleton, so I decided to use this neat 3-D model of another, incredibly similar (so similar that scientists used to believe that the blue mackerel was a subspecies) species known as Scomber japonicus, or the chub mackerel.

Image source:https://sketchfab.com/osakanaWatch 

Now let’s get into some mutations!

Mutation #1: Grotesque Mackerel

This little guy was the first aberration I ever caught, I can still remember the day. I was happily fishing, minding my own business, when suddenly the fish I had caught came up with a distorted version of the normal “You caught something!” jingle and I was looking at this gross, sick-looking, mutated version of the blue mackerels I was so used to finding. I knew that the aberrations existed, I had already peeked at the encyclopaedia a little, but actually seeing and catching one was a whole nother experience. I remember feeling both morbid curiosity and a bit bad for the little thing, neither of which were helped by the flavour text that pops up the first time you catch an aberrated fish, but that’s enough nostalgic waxing, let’s get into some marine biology!

The first thing to note is the noticeably bent spinal column, which gives the fish a very distinct hunchback look. There are several different kinds of spinal deformities that can affect vertebrates, but I think the one most likely to be the culprit here is called kyphosis, which is a deformity which causes the upper back to curve forward into a pronounced hump and can affect basically any animal with a spinal column, including fish. We can’t exactly dissect the animal to see where exactly it bends but it seems to reach its highest point around the 10th or eleventh vertebrae, roughly right before the halfway point, and is quite extreme, as the whole spine is at a curved angle. This would probably be quite painful for the fish, the vertebrae disks would probably start digging into each other as well as impede its ability to swim straight, but that isn’t the only thing that would mess with its swimming.

Most of the fins, aside from the pectoral, tail, and one of the dorsal fins have completely atrophied into the fish’s body, with the remaining ones having undergone some serious changes. The pectoral fins appear to have lost a lot of the spines that make up the fin, and the remaining ones have grown to nearly half the fish’s length, which makes it much harder for the animal to make sudden turns, not helped by the lack of a primary dorsal fin. Speaking of which, the secondary dorsal fin is the fin that seems to have undergone the least amount of changes, being just a bit taller than normal, as well as the abnormal colour, but we’ll talk more about that later. The tail fin has gone from a general forked shape to an almost perfect crescent, again suggesting a difference int the number of spines, but this time an increase rather than a decrease, and they have also appeared to have increased in number as well, leading to the fin being proportionally much larger than before. The fish would still be able to swim, just not very well, as the narrower pectoral fins, the larger tail fin, and the lack of stabilising fins would probably give it a rough time controlling its movements, leading to uncoordinated swimming as well as a lot of collisions with obstacles.

The last of the skeletal deformities is the skull which, while still retaining the pointed shape, is also pretty messed up. The upper jaw appears to be forced forward over the lower jaw, along with the cranium, and the entire mouth just seems smaller than before. This might also be an effect of the spinal deformity, but it's hard to say for sure. It also looks like the skull has swollen and deformed a bit, as the snout is much less pointy and far more wide and blunt, as opposed to the normal fish.

You also might’ve noticed another feature of the mouth, those magnificent pearly whites of theirs. They’ve grown much larger and sharper than you can see (or rather, can’t) on the skeleton which, when combined with the deformations in the skull, would definitely affect their feeding behaviour and their ability to catch prey. In real life, while the blue mackerel is mostly a planktonic filter feeder, they can also be rather voracious predators, striking at basically anything they think they could eat, which is a lot. Things like plankton, squids, small fish, and even non-food items like burnt cigarettes and bare hooks aren’t off the menu, so they pretty much only have one row of small, pointed, teeth on their bottom and top jaws and some teeth on the roofs of their mouth. This coincides with their lifestyles as mostly planktonic but still very predatory fish in coastal and open oceans, with their teeth mostly serving the function of holding prey in place when feeding and to keep them from leaving the mouth, not to grab onto and tear like animals with larger teeth.

The altered teeth on the other hand are much larger and sharper, and appear to have decreased in number as well, there is still only one row however. They also seem to be much more uneven. Assuming that there are no large changes in behaviour, and the fish still catches prey in a similar way to before the mutations, it would mean that the teeth’s new shape would actually get in the way of capturing prey rather than helping them, which when combined with the decrease in swimming ability from the deformed fins and spine, would probably mean that the fish is much less successful than the healthy fish when hunting, which would lead to smaller body sizes and much more aggressive behaviour as the fish grows hungrier. Yeah, these fish aren’t doing well. 

With the skeletal abnormalities out of the way, let’s move onto the other forms of mutation. We can’t see much about the internal organs and muscular structure, but there does seem to be some swelling across the body, which could indicate a multitude of things. First, it could imply inflammation, which is when bodily fluids fill an infected portion of the body to allow the immune system to react better to a large amount of disease-causing organisms, but filling areas of the body with fluid can be detrimental in certain cases, not to mention painful. It could also be the sign of unregulated tissue growth, large amounts of an almost cancerous level of growth, which could cause the body to expand, which would not help the fish’s already hunger-strained body, but these growths are nothing compared to another little mutant. (we’ll get there soon, don’t worry)

The next part to discuss is the colour, which has gone from the regular bluish-grey to a vivid electric blue. There are multiple ways an animal’s skin can reflect a certain colour, such as specialized cells in the skin which hold different kinds of pigment, which is how colours like yellow or orange are produced by animals, but blue is a bit different. Instead of being produced by any sort of pigment, blue is reflected by the structures of an animal’s skin rather than any sort of pigment. So in a fish’s case, the scales would have certain structures on them which would scatter the light and make it appear blue. In our little grotesque buddy’s case, all it would take would be a shift in these structures in order for the light to scatter differently and for our eyes to pick up a different shade of blue. Actually, the fact that the fish has lost the black stripes makes it seem like the scales have actually lost pigmentation, which isn’t a very good sign for the fish’s health as the pigments in the body are breaking down for whatever reason. The lighter, more vibrant shade of blue could also make them more visible to predators, which also would not be good for the fish’s health, but in a different way.

The very last thing I want to talk about are those small beady, red eyes. The encyclopaedia describes them as bulging, but the illustration makes it seem more sunken than bulging, so let’s go with that. In any case, it probably isn’t good. Eye pigmentation is based on genetics, but to get a bright, vivid red like that usually means one thing: blood, and lots of it. It could mean that a lot of blood vessels could have burst and flooded the eye, obscuring the pupil and giving it a menacing deep red shade. The sunken-in state of the eyes is something known as enophthalmos, which can be a result of various things in fish such as sudden changes in salinity or a result of certain infections.

Mutation #2: Lumpy Mackerel

How long was that last section? Like three pages? Hoo boy we’re gonna be here forever. Thankfully I think that the rest of these are gonna go much faster, I hope. In any case now we’re gonna be looking at one of the more intense mutations in the game. Look at this thing, Where do you start!? I guess with the obvious.

This thing is absolutely covered in large, bulbous masses, I mean just look at it, you can hardly tell there’s a fish under there, and these things are huge as well. Compared to the rest of the anatomy, they would be at least a decimeter or even more if they appeared on a human, which isn’t good, in case you were wondering.

Now onto what I think these actually are. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what they are, but I have a few ideas. They could be cysts caused by something like lymphocystis, which are sacs that can contain air, fluids or semi-solid materials, which would explain things like the smooth shapes, but the problem is that cysts usually form in one specific part of the body due a specific cause, like an injury or infectious organism, and that cause can change depending on where the cyst forms, and considering the sheer amount of growths, I don’t think a single kind of cyst can be the culprit. They might be some of the growths, but I think that the main cause is actually cancerous tumours.

Tumours are clumps of cells that can form under specific circumstances, and can sometimes result in a rather obscure medical condition you might have heard of called cancer, which in short is when cells in the body undergo several key mutations which essentially makes them go feral, they stop fulfilling their ordinary function and start rapidly multiplying and draining valuable nutrients from the body, growing into a large clump that does nothing but take up space, get in the way of important functions and generally be a nuisance. There are two categories that specific tumours can fall into, benign and malignant, which basically describes how aggressively the tumour is growing and how much of a threat it is to your health. 

Benign tumours generally aren’t very dangerous, they’re mostly just a clump, with some never even requiring removal. They don’t invade surrounding tissue or grow back after being surgically removed or even growing all that fast. However, benign doesn’t mean harmless, as they can still cram other, more important organs and do have to be monitored in case they do become malignant, which I think we should talk about now.

Malignant tumours are the dangerous ones, the ones that have entire foundations dedicated to treatment, and with good reason. These things are nasty, they do everything that benign tumours do and more, they’re cancerous, they invade tissue, they can grow really fast and take a lot of nutrition, they spread to new parts of the body, they kick grandmas and burn down orphanages, they are the worst. They are also what I believe to be causing these growths in the fish. I’m not entirely sure what exact kind of cancer it is and frankly I don’t think we can know, just that it is now everywhere. This I think is the result of metastasis, when cancerous cells break away from the original tumour and migrate to new parts of the body, where they begin growing into malignant tumours themselves.

However, there are a few other things we have to consider in this situation, the size and the amount. Most of the time tumours are rather small, even if comprised of thousands of cells, there are cases of absolutely massive tumours inside people, (don’t look up pictures if you value your mental health) but they don’t grow to this frequency in that size, probably because a person usually dies without treatment before that can happen. Which means that something, probably dark magic, is keeping the fish alive.

Other than the tumours, I couldn’t really see any easily identifiable deformities to the skeletal structure under the growths (except for one, but we’ll get there soon) as the only fin I could make out, the tail fin, seems relatively unchanged, at least compared to the grotesque mackerel, but the other fins appear to be either obscured or reabsorbed by the growing masses. Now for the skull, oh boy the skull. A particularly large mass seems to have grown either on the top of or inside of the skull, stretching the eyes from their sockets and deforming the jaws. I believe it to be inside the skull as the entire structure of the face seems to have been changed rather than a tumour simply growing on top of the skull, and since we can’t see the rest of the skeletal structure, we can’t tell if there are any more significant skeletal disfigurement.

The last thing I wanted to discuss is the colour, which has gone from the usual to a sickly greenish-yellow. Now yellow fish aren’t uncommon, with xanthophyll being the primary pigment, but given the obviously unhealthy nature of the fish, I don’t think that it’s just the pigments changing. So I did some research and eventually found another likely candidate known as jaundice, which is a condition that occurs when dead red blood cells accumulate in the body due to issues with the liver, causing the skin to turn a rather sickly shade of yellow, and it can occur in fish as well, and it can also be caused by certain kinds of liver cancer, which I’d be surprised if this fish didn’t have.

Mutation #3: Many-Eyed Mackerel

Here we are! The last mutation in this post! Can you feel the excitement? Let’s not dawdle and get right into it!

So unlike the other two, I thought I’d start with discussing the colours instead of the skeletal structure because it doesn’t seem to have changed all that much. The fins, except for the pectoral fins, which seem to be completely gone, and spine are all in basically the same place as the healthy fish and don’t seem to have undergone any specific changes, but the colouration is another matter entirely. The fish looks like a giant, eye covered carrot, which should clue you in on my idea on the matter. Carotene, a pigment most often associated with carrots, but can appear in a ton of other things as well, such as brown algae. It bonds with chlorophyll and allows it to pick up and receive energy from other light sources, basically expanding the range of colours the organism can use for photosynthesis. I don’t think it serves this function in the fish, as fish are not known for their photosynthetic qualities, but it is probably the result of whatever genetic scramblings the magic is doing to these fish, causing these pigments to form in the skin of the animal where there previously was none. 

Eyes are incredibly complicated structures with lots of different parts that all contribute to their function. You have the lens, optic nerve, iris, retina, cornea, and all the muscles that allow the eye to move and contract. This means that the eye begins to form very early in the development of an organism, driven by proteins called morphogens which tell certain undifferentiated cells to turn into specific cells at specific points, and all the eyes in the mutant seem to be fully formed despite their random placement. So that means that the extra eyes would have had to form very early into the fish’s development, probably caused by the disruption of morphogens in the embryo, which caused eyes and their surrounding structures to form sporadically across the fish’s skull.

The eyes also seem much larger than before, compared to both the illustrations and the real life photo. In fact, the one that I believe to be the normal pair of eyes, the top-right pair, seem to have bulged out of their sockets, and the other eyes seem to be in a similar predicament. We can’t know for sure, but it seems like the other eyes have formed with eye sockets of their own, albeit while bulging out of them like the normal pair, but again, we can’t know for sure.

At first I thought that the fish would be unable to absorb oxygen considering that several of the eyes seem to have grown over the the gills, but it’s possible that the eye growth would have spared at least the last gill slit, which would allow the fish to have water pass over their gills and absorb oxygen without the eyes completely compromising the fish’s ability to breathe. Gills are really good at absorbing oxygen and can function pretty well as long as water can pass through, so even if there's some difficulty, it's not as impossible as it seems.

Final words

So now we’re done with this round of fish! I’m not really sure what to put here, it’s not like there’s some scientific conclusion we can draw other than “these fish are fucked up”, which I’m sure you could draw just by looking at them, so I think I’ll just give my closing thoughts.

I really like Dredge. It’s a game which has a lot of great elements which make it fun and rewarding to explore, such as learning about the story and seeing the new fish designs that come with each area, especially as a student myself learning about the sea and the creatures that live there. Each of the designs are beautifully and carefully crafted to fit both sides of the game, and I love going over each one and learning more about both their eldritch, mutated forms with wild changes, and the real world biology that inspired them.

This is the first in a series that will be going over each catchable fish in the main game and the dlcs and analyzing their biology both as real world animals, and as little mutant monsters, and it would be wonderful to share this with anyone who is willing to listen to me ramble on about a horror fishing simulator and its wonderfully creepy inhabitants.

[westeroswisdom]

Clinton Liberty (Addam of Hull) takes us on a tour of some of the outdoor sets of House of the Dragon.

Apparently Driftmark and Flea Bottom are almost next door.