#This lady's a lizard hoarder

[wandapinkay]

OK so I watched the first episode of the new Clone High I don't understand the initial fuss about it, it was hilarious I'm sure it's because I have shitty humor and laugh at everything but that's beside the point

[eldritch-spouse]

What happens if the icons meet their queen's parents?

The Icons meet your parents

Your relationship with the icons has to be spectacularly good for that to be an eventuality. Or not, perhaps you made a deal to arrange this regardless of the current compatibility level, equally plausible. It's also worth considering the other side's opinion. While it is likely that your parents always wished for you to find happiness and marry one day, none of them could ever expect you to marry a Ringlord. To a very religious and uninformed parent, that's the equivalent of saying you're engaged to Satan... But, let's say your parents love you very dearly, and they're willing to accept this very unexpected development in your life.

Your dear Lord/Lady will invite them over for a day's stay...

They need to be escorted too, lest they end up getting torn to pieces or seeing some unsightly things.

Rinx believes he won't have to do much to make a good impression on your folks, but make sure to remind him that keeping everything in huge piles next to the front of the mansion will make it seem as if you live with a hoarder (which you do, but alas, this hoarder has imps to keep things tidy). He'll ask you about your parents' tastes and make a list of small presents for them upon their arrival. This takes some effort, as Rinx is naturally stingy- Spoiling his Queen is different from spoiling literally anyone else. Be sure to reward him for his generosity! He makes decent conversation, usually about either you or the things he's collected in his lifetime. He maaaay steal something from your parents, just bat his meaty hands away from personal belongings.

Cero wants everything so perfect he's going to overwork his imps to death. When you jab at him, he claims he always demands the best, it doesn't matter that your parents are coming over. The first thing he does is give them a tour of the whole mansion, talking his elbows off in a way he hopes will impress, but ending up confusing your poor relatives. While he can't help always being a tad judgemental, he tries not to let it show as much as usual. Your parents are waited on just as you and Cero are, it's uncomfortable for everyone involved. Conversation consists of gloating about how lucky you are to have him, and how proud of your choice in a partner your parents must be. Cero is visibly trembling and twisting with the urge to correct your parents' abysmal table manners. You think he's going to have an aneurysm.

Kalymir deafens them upon arrival. He's very eager to show off his massive trophy hall, displaying his scars, weapons and all the things you've killed too! It's gruesome, might spoil their appetite. You have dinner on the highest platform of his ring, where there's a view to the main arena, which is always buzzing with violence. He may jab at your parents for being squeamish, or cringing at his vocabulary, but it doesn't get scathing like it does with many others, he's in a good mood. Hopefully your parents enjoy fun pastimes like beheadings and living piñatas. He's going to ask if they plan to move in. Oh, of course, the lizards will also be introduced. Kalymir talks about his conquests and the wildest things that have happened in Wrath. Overall, he'd say it went swimmingly.

Vesper has been thoroughly warned to eat very well the day before your parents arrive, because you won't be touching him with a ten foot pole once they're in Lust. No pheromones or hypnotism in the mansion, no exposed sex toys either. He's suffering. Vesper can make good conversation, at least. He's a little too touchy and underdressed, which is uncomfortable for your poor parents, but he legitimately doesn't know how to be any other way. Feel free to tell him to tone it down, regularly. Since Vesper's not really eating at the table, he's going to be doing a lot of talking, trying to pick conversation topics that aren't too scandalous. Might as well talk about his writings and love of theater plays. He may escape at some point while you show them the mansion so he can have a quickie.

Zizz is loaded on so many fucking energy supplements, he's a living battery, you think he might start glowing at any moment. This means he has the ever rare sloth zoomies when they show up. He's all over the place, taking your parents around the entire mansion way too fast, probably picking them up in the process, ranting on and on about the complexity of dreams while he hands them several blankets and pillows and where is his Queen?? The only time he does slow down is during dinner, where he may actually fall asleep while your parents talk. A bit rude, but hopefully you've warned them about it. When Zizz becomes coherent again, he's able to have normal, pleasant conversation with them. He gifts them the most pleasant dreams for a week straight and they're shown the fluffiest guest rooms.

Livius functions by wanting to know every possible thing about your parents he can. He pays close attention to what you say, and definitely mimics bits and pieces of your posture as they arrive. Only a bit of conversation is necessary for him to start blending in. Your mother is flowery and open-minded? Yes, so is he, the two of them are holding glasses of wine like long-time friends. Your dad likes fishing and fixing cars (*wheeze*)? Him and Livius are setting up the grill. He's also a tad too keen on physical contact, but not as much as Vesper. The King surprises your parents by mostly making conversation about you, they come out of it knowing very little about him other than the fact that he loves you and is very socially adaptable.

Vorticia spoils your parents with food so good they might want to stay for longer. It's a huge meeting, all her kids are there, the mansion is full and loud and she's soaking up the attention. Your parents get to meet so many people they'll probably get exhausted. She's admittedly sweet to them, though a little too insistent that they eat more. It's a bit rude of them to only peck around (your parents are bloated like balloons, she's insane)... Conversation revolves mostly around being a parent, responsabilities, the joys of good food and a big family. It's all fun and games until she forgets there's humans in the mansion and just fucking eats someone alive. Oops. She also gets a tad drunk towards the end. Thankfully, her kids are there to take the reigns, the youngest has not stopped talking.

[glarnboudin]

Tiratola, the Long-Tailed Terror!

Aliases: the Dragon of Etna, the Serpentine Savior, Our Lady of Flame

Date Discovered: May 20th, 1954

Place of Origin: Mt. Etna

Notable Stomping Grounds: Mt. Etna, Messina, Pisa, Stromboli Kaiju Reserve

Height: Generally holds head around 15 meters above the ground, but can rear up to tower at around 34 meters at her tallest.

Length: 115 meters

Biology:

A prehistoric varanid of enormous size from the same lineage that produced Kraydi, Tiratola brings to mind the dragons of yore, slinking and serpentine and adorned with a crown of fearsome crests and horns. Indeed, her Mediterranean location closely matches with depictions of dragons from the ancient Greeks and Romans, although her demeanor is hardly that of a rapacious devourer of maidens and hoarder of gold.

Rather than her jaws, Tiratola’s primary weapon of choice is her tail - even for a reptile, hers is incredibly long and dexterous, making up more than half of her total body length and as flexible and powerful as the body of any snake. With it, she can lash at targets several hundred feet away, coil and constrict her opponents, and even pick up and hurl objects as big as buildings or handle very small objects with the very tip of the tail like an elephant’s trunk. Indeed, her style of combat is very similar to that of the American kaiju Gorgolisk, preferring to coil and constrict her opponents with her powerful body.

As a kaiju, Tiratola also sports a fairly standard powerset:

Super strength

An enhanced healing factor

Immunity to radiation

She also has one more trick up her sleeve - like many other prehistoric varanids as well as Tyrantis himself, the Terror of Italia sports venom glands within her jaws that she can either ‘chew’ into her opponents or spray like a spitting cobra, and like Tyrantis, this venom has further honed into a flammable compound like something out of the pages of myth and legend.

Of course, comparing Tiratola’s fire spitting with Tyrantis’ flaming breath would be akin to comparing a firecracker with a flamethrower - rather than napalm-like torrents of ignited venom, the enormous reptile’s sprayed venom ignites into a cloud of scalding sparks and embers that explodes outwards in a shotgun-like blast with a loud crack and a blinding flash. While it’s not the best at actually damaging opponents, it still stings and burns quite painfully for targets, especially if hit in the eyes and other sensitive areas, and the sharp rapport of the venom combusting can cause a few seconds of disorientation. Injecting the stuff into the bodies of opponents, however, produces rather more grisly results as it reacts with oxygen in the bloodstream, causing the wounds inflicted by her teeth to burst open a few seconds after she lets go. To a kaiju’s durability and regeneration, it’s not nearly as harmful as it looks unless Tiratola injects a truly immense amount of venom or her opponent is considerably smaller than herself, but it’s still quite painful to experience.

History & Personality:

When the Superquake of ‘54 rocked the world, the actual tremors weren’t the only force behind the resulting destruction - tidal waves lashed the coasts, avalanches and rockslides buried towns, and a number of already-rumbling volcanoes were roused to erupt once more, pushing up not only molten material but all manner of strange new landforms forged from the Yamaneon tunnels beneath the earth. Home to several volcanoes as they are, Greece and Italy were particularly subject to this, disgorging an assortment of subterranean environments alongside quite a number of kaiju. Among them was the great reptile Tiratola - emerging from the volcanic aftermath of Mt. Etna, the serpentine saurian made herself known to the public at large when she swept through the outskirts of Messina and smothered a major fire when she settled herself on top of it for warmth, inadvertently saving much of the city from burning to the ground. In the aftermath of the fire, she would go on to save even more lives as she nosed around the rubble, unearthing nearly two dozen people that had been trapped beneath fallen debris.

Since her awakening, Tiratola has come to roam across Italy and Greece, frequently digging people out of rubble wherever she went and frequently engaging smaller mutants emerging from local Yamaneon tunnels as well as the occasional full-on kaiju - her most famous scuffles include preying upon a hoard of Paleozoic invertebrates that emerged from a Carboniferous swamp in the Greek Kassandra Peninsula and engaging a hulking one-eyed hominid kaiju that had been menacing the city of Taranto, dragging it down to its doom beneath the waves before it could do anything worse than superficial damage to buildings. Aside from an incident involving the Leaning Tower of Pisa, she’s been responsible for relatively little destruction, and has become somewhat of a local hero to the populace of the regions, something that Tiratola has come to notice.

Low to the ground as she is, the Whip-Tailed Terror is by her nature literally closer to human beings than many other kaiju, and is more aware of their activities as a result. She’s come to recognize how people react to her presence and realizes how easily she can reshape the tiny world that she now finds herself in. Were she a more malevolent sort, this awareness and her ability to easily wind through city streets could potentially make her an incredibly dangerous thrat to human beings, but the ultimate result of this is that Tiratola has come to realize that she quite enjoys the attention and praise she gets from acts of heroism. Being a reptile, she is by nature a very energy-efficient creature, conserving her strength when she does need to exert herself… but being a kaiju, acts of aid towards humans are trivially easy for her. A couple sweeps of her tail can smother a major fire beneath dirt and water and pulling people from danger can be easily accomplished by simply pushing her head into, say, a burning building and using her keen senses to locate survivors in the same way that modern varanids break into termite mounds and locate warm chambers to lay their eggs in or mother crocodiles dig out their young from nests. It costs little to the great reptile to lend her aid to others, and the reward for doing so is more than worth it - adoration and cheers whenever she enters a populated area, occasional offerings of fish and other treats, even occasional cleanings by teams of volunteers that scrub her down and aid in peeling off any lingering bits of unshed skin. The latter task has also provided another boon to the people of Greece and Italy - analysis of Tiratola’s shed skin has shed a lot of light on kaiju cellular biology, and the scales themselves are durable enough to be shaped and worked like metal or glass, fostering a small but lucrative industry of decorative items made from the kaiju’s scales.

However, there may also be another reason for her gentleness towards humans - while unearthing survivors from rubble, Tiratola frequently makes vocalizations not unlike those of crocodilian and alligator parents when unearthing their buried young, even scooping them up in her jaws in a similar fashion to carry them to safety. It may be that trapped survivors reminds the the whip-tailed dragon of her own offspring, buried in sand and soil - joint Reptodite-human expeditions into the collapsed tunnels where the kaiju emerged have even found the crystallized remains of ruined nests and cracked eggs, suggesting that she may have produced several clutches of offspring before via parthenogenesis in the same manner as some species of monitor lizard, although none seem to have survived. 

Behind the Scenes:

Behold, my entry to @tyrantisterror ’s ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest 3D, Tiratola! I’ve entered both of his previous contests, and I didn’t want to miss out here, although this is admittedly my first time posting one here to Tumblr; there’s a bunch of really creative kaiju already entered into the competition, and I highly recommend checking them out. My entry really isn’t the best by far (I wanted to make Tiratola a lot lengthier and more serpentine, but I didn’t have the space to do it, and I can’t really do detail work for shit), but I’m still reasonably happy with how my girl Tiratola came out!

Tiratola is meant to be an homage to that tried-and-true staple of the monster movie genre - movie companies from other countries trying to cash in on a trend! It’s how the world got creatures like Gorgo, Paleosaurus, and Reptilicus - creatures whose movies were far from the source material, but were packaged as being the same thing in their posters and translated titles overseas, leading to weirdness like Godzilla vs Mothra becoming ‘Watang and the Fabulous Kingdom of Monsters’ in its Italian release, the infamous cut of ‘The Volcano Monsters,’ and so on. As such, she takes the basic concept of Tyrantis - ‘giant green prehistoric reptilian monster with a long tail and horns that breathes fire’, and reconstructs it through that lens. To that end, she’s also somewhat based on slurpasaurs and on cheap rubber props, staples of Italian monster cinema.

Designwise, I based her quite heavily on, well, monitor lizards as well as the classic LEGO dragon model plus the movie poster design for Reptilicus - both are a nice combination of reptilian features that doesn’t really lend itself to any particular order, with Kraydi factoring in as another reference. Indeed, Tiratola’s meant to be a cousin to that kaiju, another of the varanid lizard lineage that would have lead to dragons and their kin in the Lost Epoch - she’s meant to be a bit farther down that evolutionary line than Kraydi is, but still not exactly a direct ancestor.

I was struggling to get a feel for Tiratola’s personality at first, but I managed to get something when I reread ATOM and the way that its reptilian stars think, plus some takes on protective dragons and why they defend humans so much smaller and weaker than they. A big part of this series is about how the kaiju are far more intelligent and empathetic than they let on - I thought it’d be neat to play off of that. While her motivations come from a very different place than they would in a human being or a similar creature, the end result is still the same: if it feels good to help others, and doing so is relatively easy, why not do so? I also added a good deal of Ogra and Reptisaurus as well - I figured it would be only fitting.

The thing about her visiting Pisa is a nod to Dinosaurs Attack, the card where the Rhedosaurus and Giant Behemoth teamed up to destroy the Leaning Tower, while her battle with the giant is taken from the battle between the dragon Taro and the Cyclops in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. The date of her discovery is also the date that Reptilicus was released in theaters, albeit moved back a few years.

[intcthatgoodnight-a2]

my muses and what pets they should have:

booth: this man needs a dog. why doesn’t he have a dog? c’mon man, you got the wife, the kids, the white picket fence, get a golden retriever or german shepherd 

angel / angelus / darla / connor / sam: do not give them animals. it won’t end well. maybe connor with a dog, but only like post season 4 connor.

kathy: she just needs a farm okay. get her out of the city and get her some horses and goats and chickens. really though, she’s going to find a stray dog one day and just bring it home without asking or telling angel

cordy: a cat. my first thought was one of those little dogs, but no. a cat.

fred: also a cat. or maybe a guinea pig or a hamster

lucy: realistically the best for her would be a dog. a big dog. ideally though, ferrets. those crazy little noodles just have the perfect energy for her.

delia: she’d be fine with anything really, but i can see her being a cat person.

angela: she already has a cat named duck

connor: literally one of his most iconic lines is “I like dogs.” get him a dog. though you know he’s constantly around hank and sumo

chloe / 60: they have no interest in animals.

gavin: i love the fanon that he is a cat person who probably has multiple cats. but i can also see him with a pitbull that he treats like a big baby

dexter: do not leave him alone with animals. 

eleven: you really think the doc could be trusted to take care of an animal? no. his companions are basically like pets anyway.

amy: a cat. i think it was mentioned in an ep that she had a cat as a kid. 

mr clever: just no

sansa: she already has a direwolf that is totally alive and well, okay i don’t know what you’re talking about, lady is alive

ginger: she would literally eat it. so no

abigail: i can see her liking dogs, though maybe this is just because i want her to hang out with wills dogs.

will: he is a known dog hoarder. 

harry: he already has an owl. at least before DH (cries). but i can see him as an adult having a few pets for the kids. but also i love the idea of harry having a pet snake. like a little buddy that wraps around his wrist or in his pocket and they talk to each other and freak everyone out

tony: surprise farmer tony with his alpaca and chickens. but i can also see him with a cat

elle: she wants a dog

friday: has no interest in animals

luke: picture this- there’s tooka cats that live at the temple. he lets the younglings take care of them / feed them, they wonder wherever they want. you can find him doing his meditation, floating a few feet of the ground, with a tooka cat asleep on his lap

han: i mean...han is the pet. between him and chewie, han is the pet

obi wan: this man is like a disney princess okay. animals are just drawn to him. that big lizard thing Boga that he rode in rots, yeah thats his now.

anakin: no. this is a bad idea.

[grumpyalpacaman]

Nexus Notes - Chapter One

"I already told you, you big dumb bastard, that energy core regulator isn't worth 3,000 Credits. It's not even close!" The young woman slammed her hands down on the clerk's table. Her eyes set in a narrow glare, she scowled between loose strands of bright red hair that fell in front of her face.

Behind the ramshackle stand of partially gnawed scrap metal stood the enormous shopkeeper.  The device she so coveted was tightly gripped in his huge, clawed hand. Dangling cables swayed to and fro and the polished chrome casing reflected the blinding glare of the sun. 

The taurus were the inhabitants of the planet Kakataka in the Aldebaran star system and the largest, most cantankerous of all sentient species in the galaxy. They were also notorious hoarders.

It erupted in a flurry of guttural growls, its ruddy brown scales rapidly scraping and clattering against one another to create a series of accompanying clicks. The chattering noises he emitted elicited a whir of life from a machine strapped to his broad, tapered chest. The gadget lit up and started to translate in a low, robotic voice.

"You don't know what you're talking about, Nexus. This a rare treasure. There is nothing else like it on Pantainos."

"Zakka, you are so full of shit," she said, as she reached into her lab-coat and withdrew a small pair of oval-shaped glasses. Slipping them over her nose, she peered past the imposing, alien shopkeeper to the staggering pile of discarded mechanical trinkets and components behind his kiosk. “I can see two more in the back from here!” Frantically, she removed her glasses and stuffed them back into her coat.

"3,000 credits or no regulator." 

The young woman stood up as tall as she could and crossed her arms over her chest in her best attempt to look authoritative. She was short and scrawny by human standards, not to mention leaning on a cane and absolutely minuscule compared to the seven-foot monster before her. "Listen here, you idiot, you have no idea what that's worth to me and you're just going to eat it anyway! So hand it over for a fair price and stop impeding scientific progress."

Without warning, the shopkeeper opened his jaws for the first time, the lower portion of his face splitting into two and spreading out in a slavering, triangular maw. Then, he chomped into the device in his hand. His shredding teeth crunched and tore the metal apart with ease as he ripped off a chunk and swallowed it before hurling the remnants straight at Nexus's head.

With only a moment of shock, she narrowly ducked under the incoming projectile. The move sent her stumbling and she barely managed to catch herself with her cane to avoid an untimely fall, face-first onto the cold steel ground. If the yelling earlier hadn't drawn the attention of the other merchants and customers that populated the market, this certainly would. Within moments, Zakka had dunked one of his whopping lizard paws into a pile of scrap parts and used it as a shovel to hurl yet more junk at the girl.

"Whoa! Is this how you treat all your regulars?" Head held low, she scurried away from the bellowing Taurus. Gears and batteries skittered across the ground and peppered her lab coat. One unfortunate stray something or other even bounced harmlessly, but no less annoying, off of her forehead. "Zakka, you Lunatic," she yelled as she departed the market square.

She looked back over her shoulder more than once on her way back to her apartment, just to make sure there wasn't an angry alien reptile behind her. It wasn't until she was nearly three blocks away that she stopped to catch her breath, leaning against the wall of a building and wiping her brow with the sleeve of her coat. Just from that short run, her muscles ached and her chest burned with exertion. "I left my apartment for that damn regulator and the dumbass took a bite right out of it," she said between gasps. “Still, I hope nobody calls the police on him. He may be a seven-foot, spiky asshole, but he’s still got the best stuff in the entire city. And perhaps more importantly, he doesn’t ask ridiculous questions like, ‘what are you gonna do with this?’ or ‘do you have a license for this highly unstable radioactive material?’”

She spent nearly a minute bent over and panting before rising back up and fanning out her coat to relieve some of the intense heat. “What I would do for a breeze right now. Just a little one.”

Pantainos City, built in the most habitable, lush part of the colony planet for which it was named, was in Nexus's own words, "Too damn hot in the Summer to be conducive to intellectual pursuits." So then why, she often wondered to herself, had the United Earth Federation decided to build its premier academies here? Pantainos was one of the UEF's earliest and most prosperous colonies and had become a grand centre for training and education in the past several decades. Academies and accompanying campuses for humanity's most prestigious schools in the fields of science and military had developed here and dominated much of the city. The best and brightest across all of UEF space were sent here to learn.

But far from the glamorous universities and labs at the city's centre, Nexus walked along the ill-tended streets at the fringes of the sprawling metropolis as she made her way home with a scowl on her face. Not that her neighbours could tell the difference between her usual scowl and today’s, extra perturbed scowl. 

The moment she stepped into the lobby of her apartment and felt the cool, temperature-controlled air hit her face, she let out a long sigh. The familiar sights of the dusty floor, the seemingly permanent ‘out of order’ sign on the secondary elevator and the ever-expanding patch of mould on the far wall were just about the only means through which she could differentiate this and every other apartment building on the black. Nexus whispered a silent thanks to the closest thing she knew to a religious figure, Joey the maintenance guy, that one of the two lifts remained operational. If given the choice between the stairs and sleeping on the crumbling bench in the lobby, Nexus would have to spend some time seriously weighing her options.

With only a brief stutter of resistance, the elevator ascended to the second floor and deposited her in the hallway to find yet another annoyance. "Great. If the heat and the taurus weren't bad enough, some ass-clown piled a bunch of boxes in front of my door!" she thought. For some reason or another, cardboard shipping boxes of varying sizes, piled six high, stood right up against the entrance to her apartment.

Without another thought, she stomped forward and delivered a swift, hard kick with a flip-flop clad foot to the side of the box mountain. Much to her chagrin, the pile barely moved. So, she took a step back and shoulder checked it with the entire, fairly insubstantial, weight of her body and this time she sent it tumbling to the floor with an appeasing clatter. She grinned down at her handiwork, hoping there was something both fragile and valuable within.

The commotion brought someone running almost immediately as a man stepped out of the open door across the hall, looking concerned. His expression promptly shifted to surprise and confusion as he spied Nexus standing over the upended pile of his belongings.

If he put on a uniform, he'd look like he walked right out of a military recruitment ad for the Federation. She thought immediately of a very large and very stupid dog. He was like a man-shaped golden retriever and just as blonde.

"Did you knock over my boxes?"

"Oops," she replied with a shrug as she reached for the keycard in her pocket.

"The hell, lady? I keep important stuff in those."

"Well then maybe you shouldn't keep 'em in front of my door." By this point, she was already daydreaming about punching him in his stupidly handsome face. Though she was pretty sure she’d break her hand on that square jaw. 

He furrowed his brow and attempted to speak up but upon noticing the cane in her hand, he suddenly became very stiff and cast his eyes toward the floor. "Uhm... Sorry," he said as he kneeled and started to gather up his things, shuffling them out of the way for her. "So that's your apartment then?"

"Yep, 37B," she said with the absolute most disinterest she could muster while jabbing a thumb toward the numbers posted behind her.

With an armful of boxes, he stood back and extended his free hand toward her. "I'm just moving in next door. I'm Parker Walsh."

Her eyes drifted back and forth between his hand and his face for several seconds. "Are you suggesting I make physical contact with you?"

"Generally speaking, an offer to shake hands with someone would imply that, yes." Yet more confusion was starting to creep into his voice.

"Ew.” Rolling her eyes, she turned, swiped her card over the electronic lock and stepped into her apartment.

"Ouch," he shot back. "Can I at least have your name?"

"Nexus," she said as she slammed the door behind her.

"There is no way that is your real name," he yelled with his lips scant inches from the door but to no response.

"Parker?" said another man, sticking his head out of the open apartment. He was thinner and less chiselled than his friend but with a sly, fox-like countenance. "What are you doing out here?"

Parker shrugged. "Neighbour girl kicked over our boxes."

"And so you quit unpacking to come out here and flirt with her?"

"Not at first."

"But you did flirt with her?"

"She didn't even give me a chance. It’s just not fair."

"My heart aches for you, brother. Now get back to work. We need everything set up by tomorrow."

"On it." With boxes in hand, he started back toward his apartment, taking one glance at the door behind him as he went. "Well then. See you around, Nex."

The moment she stepped inside her apartment and flicked on the lights, she felt her legs start to shake. She grumbled softly, finally allowing herself to wince at the constant pain she felt in her muscles and eased her body into the wheelchair lying in wait by the door.

Inside her apartment, where one might normally find furniture, decorations or just about anything, Nexus had cables, power generators and several large processors stacked against the wall. In the corner sat a desk with a pair of computers, razor-thin glass panes mounted on swivelling stands. Nexus produced a third, smaller device from inside her coat. With a few swipes on the surface, her chair wheeled itself over to the desk. Once situated, she began sliding her fingers across the dual screens and they came alive with images and information. Her eyes darting back and forth between them. Within arm's reach of her chair sat the single greatest scientific achievement of mankind, an espresso machine. The divine tool was accompanied by a mountain of discarded flavour pods, generally counting among the excessively sweet variety. Though that didn’t stop Nexus from addition several more teaspoons of those godly white granules once the machine had finished its business.

All this technology (save the espresso machine) was connected to a strange, ceiling-high object in the middle of the room. The device occupied the vast majority of the available floor-space. It appeared to be a huge mechanical ring of some kind; that stood eight feet high and across. At the moment, it was deactivated.

She looked upon the centrepiece of her chamber briefly, shook her head, and returned to her work. "Damn Zakka, always a pain in my ass."

It wasn't long before she noticed she had an update on her post on the local University forums. She wasn't exactly a student, but where else was she going to share her hypotheses?

"Oh fantastic, this idiot," she said with mock excitement when she saw who posted. "Hello, Student 681966, a man so boring he uses his student ID as his screen name." Nex skimmed over his latest dull refutation of her work and rolled her eyes. 

"Your ridiculous idea of a potential intersystem artificial intelligence program has no bearing in modern computer science. Even the most simple-minded of your species is aware that software is limited by hardware.

You persist in the idea that your entirely theoretical sub-space processor would alleviate this issue and allow a program to move freely between systems, but this has in itself a litany of issues. There is no evidence to support the idea that information can travel freely between sub-space and normal space. How do you propose such a device would maintain a fixed location within sub-space? In addition, the power requirements would be astronomical.

Fixed sub-space pockets have never been found to be a remote possibility and tests have resulted in failure, every single time. The only possible use for sub-space is point A to B travel through fixed gates."

With a guttural groan of frustration, Nexus swept a hand back through her sweat-matted hair. "This guy has no imagination."

Reclining in her chair steepling her fingers, Nex pondered the list of possible rebuttals. Everything from explaining the potential power of a flywheel energy storage system in the absolute vacuum of sub-space or reference to the sub-space tests performed by Earth scientists decades earlier that implied the possibility of direct access to sub-space beyond simple two-way passages. However, when she received a sudden response from a rather important contact, she decided to let her opposition stew for a little while.

Anxiously, she opened the message with a tap of her finger and pulled the contents up on-screen.

"I have acquired the information you requested."

That alone was all she needed to send her mind alight with fireworks. There was some more afterward about releasing the hold on the promised payments and how to contact him again. She absent-mindedly tapped out an affirmative response and delved into the attached files with all haste possible.

A few weeks ago she'd contacted someone who claimed to have worked on some classified Federation experiments performed on Pantainos. She'd been making a few inquiries about them and they had become a subject of great interest to her, even though they never got off the ground. What they were attempting to develop and why it failed is still unknown to this day, but Nexus's digging had told her that it had something to do with personal-sized sub-space gates, as opposed to the massive rings that transported ships across the galaxy.

"I was right," she muttered to herself after nearly twenty minutes of poring over the contents. "Schematics, test results, dates and locations."

She gleaned from the notes that they had managed to design a miniaturized sub-space gate, though from what she could find, it wasn't able to sustain itself before collapsing after only a few seconds. Several pages appeared to be missing, including details of who was involved and the purpose of the experiments, but all the technical data she needed was right here in these files.

Again she gazed upon the massive mechanism in the centre of her apartment, this time with new excitement and rattling nerves. She bit her lip and considered her options before giving a small nod of affirmation. "To hell with the regulator, I've got work to do."

She wheeled over to the huge ring and pushed herself out of her chair. For hours she consulted the new specifications and adjusted her machine. Multiple trips were made back and forth between the device and her computer and she went through around a dozen cups of coffee and sixty teaspoons of sugar. She scoured every crate of spare parts she had lying around (which was no small number) and the clamour of her tools filled the apartment until the early morning.

She awoke with a start around noon the next day. She had passed out in her wheelchair with a collection of her tools sprawled across her lap and around her wheels. She yawned, grumbled and rubbed the sleep from eyes shadowed by black bags.

Blinking rapidly, Nexus looked at her device, consulted the schematics and then back to the device. It was a match. Better than a match even. She felt she'd improved on the old schematics. "I did it?" She brushed back a tangle of red hair and chuckled to herself. "Of course I did it."

Still coming to, she mumbled out a few commands. "Computer, begin recording a new log now. " A small robot, not unlike an ambulatory tripod, came alive. There was a lens built into the machine’s head, which promptly veered in Nex’s direction.

She pushed herself to her feet and stumbled toward the terminal mounted at the edge of her ring-like device. "Sub-space portal NG Model-1, test 27, sans energy core regulator. Upgraded system to further compensate for the Verdricci effect. Added new subsystems to target a specific location within sub-space, based on new research documents. No more firing off randomly. Begin activation now."

Triumphantly, she punched in the key sequence to start up the machine and listened with glee as it whirred. Lights flickered on around the ring and sparks coursed across the empty space in the middle.

Staring into her would-be sub-space gate, Nexus's hands shook excitedly. "Alright UEF, let's see what you were up to."

The machine's laboured noises intensified and she could feel a charged tingle on her skin. Then, all at once, a disc of torn space appeared inside the ring, contained and stable. Her smile vanished, only to be replaced by a slack jaw and wide eyes. The sight beyond the portal sent shivers through her body and made her stomach churn. Floating in the vast emptiness of sub-space, was a cylindrical device surrounded by lifeless human corpses.

[moominsnufkin]

I drew so many OCs todayyy I’m tireeeed

[elfyourmother]

I’m a person with a history of legitimate trauma over abusive ppl trying to control my things as a means to control me and tell me that I take up too much space that I don’t deserve to have, up to and including coming home to entire altars destroyed, D&D books I carefully saved up for gone, statues broken and my creative writing torn up and thrown away, all by my evangelical Christian mother who disapproved and thought everything that meant something to me was Satanic, coming home to find my books in a garbage can in the hallway, having things deleted from my computer bc my abuser didn’t approve of the music I listened to, etc etc etc

so ffs can y’all tag your goddamn Marie Kondo discourse so I don’t have to see this shit anymore because it’s fucking triggering and not all of us are ~hoarders~ or crypto racist whites just mad a Japanese lady is telling them what to do or w/e, lol some of us are abuse survivors who had to fight to have anything at all and get anxious any time somebody talks about “helping” us clean bc every other case of that came from a place of abuse and control and will spark bad lizard brain fight or flight responses no matter how sweet and kind and well intentioned the advice/help being presented

[empressofweirdos]

Ghostly Fly on the Wall

I sat upon the large wooden crate that was pushed up against the wall. If you could call it that. Being a long dead spirit, it was really more of a ‘floating’ than a ‘sitting’ situation. But semantics. Point being, could anyone had see me, they would have seen me perched on the edge of the crate bent over all huffy and frumpy as I took in my new surroundings.

Why was I frumpy? Because for the last 70 years my soul had been bound to the weapon I had last used to kill before being killed myself. Karma can be a real bitch. So’s the witch that cursed me. Anyways, for that past 70 years I’ve been drug around the world because my spirit has an umbilical cord attached to my sword that won’t let me more than 50 feet away from it before I run into a glass wall. Do you know how small a hundred foot circumference is? It’s painstakingly tiny when you’re in countries and locations that you always wanted to travel to in your waking days but can’t explore BECAUSE YOU’RE MAGICALLY TIED TO A STUPID SWORD FOR ALL OF ETERNITY BECAUSE YOU MADE ONE LITTLE COMMENT!!!

Getting off track.

So anyways, there I was, taking in my new surroundings because I had once again been sold off from one antique dealer to another. (Technically it was the sword that was sold, but we’re a package deal and I’m the only one of us that’s sentient sooooo...) Being a ghost and not being able to sleep, I had been awake the entire journey and knew we were in a little town in the middle of the desert country of Amirtha. Completely on the other side of the continent away from my home country. And my sword was now hung on the the wall behind the counter as a pretty dust catching display. Again.

You think they’d at least recognize master worthy quality work when they saw it and advertise it to wandering swords men or mercenaries. Not hang it up like an aging relic meant for decoration. Glancing over, I could see my new ‘owner’ was unload the rest of his goods from his business trip and stocking up his odds’n’ends store. Place looked like a general goods store mixed with an antiques shop. Guy must’ve been a hoarder cause he had everything from pots and pans to a bookshelf of conjuration crystals and alchemical text books. Familiar items from back up home in the north to what I could only assume were familiar items to him here.

And it must’ve cost him a life time to collect it all because he looked like he had seen a life time or two in his days. Hunched over back, long yellowish-white scraggly beard, colorful robes that dragged on the ground as he hobbled about rearranging the entire room for his new wares... if I had been back home I’d have taken him for a wizard or sorcerer or something. But his skin was far to too tan to be a shut in, even for this part of the world. The man had definitely seen some sun in his time, all wrinkly and saggy and leathery looking skin. There might have been an old scar or two, too, but he was so wrinkly that it was hard to tell between all the folds.

It was about the time that I decided that it was going to be a boring hell to be stuck here for the end of my eternal haunting days so I might as well explore the rest of my tiny bubble, that the door at the front of the quickly opened and shut, the little guest bell by the door ringing from the vibrations in the wall. 

Was it robbers? Tax collectors? A scorned little old lady lover from down the lane? It was the middle of the day so a customer wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary, but wheres the fun in that?

I swiveled around to see who had entered with such zeal and what possible drama they could entertain me with. Might as well enjoy what I could, cause this town seemed sleepier than two shepherds with collided flocks. I was greeted with the site of a local looking girl garbed in local looking men’s travel clothes. Not traveling to the big city clothes, but traveling on a long journey with lots of action and adventure. And they seemed fairly unused too.

My incorporeal eyes instinctively rolled back on their own. They had them here too. The girls that demanded to go on the adventures with men because they could too, even though they had no goal. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a strong-willed female adventurer that can hold her own ground. But the angsty girls that believe the world is against them all so they need to prove them wrong even though they have no game plan are a real pain in the ass to say the least. More likely to kill a kingdom than save it, if you ask me.

“I need a weapon.” She proudly proclaimed, striding up to the old man. She was speaking in her native tongue, but part of my curse allowed me understand anyone regardless of the tongue they were speaking in. “Something agile and lithe would be preferred, but I’ll take what you have.”

The old man stopped and slowly turned to look at her, still holding the wooden box he had been fiddling with. He eyed her for a moment through squinty eyes before resuming his fiddling. “Ah, off to make your way in the world are you?” He jovially asked with a raspy voice.

Her face twisted up a bit from a mixture of annoyance and aggravation at not having been taken seriously. Mid to late teens, she was definitely in her mid to late teens. “I have good coin to offer you in exchange for a weapon. Good coin I can always offer elsewhere.”

“And tell me,” He clapped the lid on the box closed and set it back on the shelf, scurrying off to the next project.”Where else in this tiny village do you hope to acquire a blade from without being ridiculed and sent home with your tail between your legs? Hmmmm?”

The old man turned his head to look at her, only to see her looking blankly defiant straight ahead, so he shrugged and turned back. “What does a young lady even plan to use a blade for here? There’s nothing but goats and cows around for target practice. Maybe if you had an aerial weapon you could use the lizards too but...” He trailed off as he dug through a pile of rolled up scrolls.

I craned my neck from my seated position to get a better look at her, but all I got was a better profile of her blinking.

“...I never said I was gonna use it here.”

“Ah! Planning on going off on an adventure then! Where to?” He pulled out an armful of scrolls and waggled one in her face as he passed her by to the counter. “The glistening isles of Rik’Ma’Duu? The towering peaks of the whistling craigs? Or perhaps one of the many glittering and bustling cities of the world? I hear Felnerik is lovely this time of year.”

The girl blinked and followed behind him slowly, already looking a bit downtrodden by this point. “I wasn’t quiet sure where yet. Just anywhere that isn’t here.”

The old man dumped the scrolls on a ottoman behind the counter and sat down on the adjacent ottoman, looking right at her still as humored as ever. “That’s all? You just wanna leave town? Well why not just woo and get married to a traveling merchant as they’re traveling through. You’d get stability, wealth, status, AND a one-way ticket out of here. Four birds with one stone.”

I groaned loudly as I prepared myself for the up coming defensive speech.

The girl slammed both hands down on the counter, clearly aggravated at the suggestion she do something more sensible and down to earth than run away from home. “And be tied to a husband I have to follow around for the rest of my life? I don’t just wanna leave this town, I wanna go explore the world. I wanna see things, experience things. On my own watch. My own time. Not some husband who tells me what we’re doing and decides how we’re going to live.”

Was definitely the typical start to the typical speech.

“Furthermore, I don’t just wanna travel for the rest of my life. I wanna do something with it. I wanna make a difference. Somehow, someway, I wanna leave a good impression on the world, even if just a single embroidered quilt square. I wanna help people. I’ve heard about some of the things going on out there in the world, and I don’t wanna just stand by in this sleepy little village when I could do something!”

Slight deviation from the normal speech, but still well within the guide lines. Mean while, the old man just sat there with arms crossed while listening to her. Maybe he’d heard this same speech before, or maybe it was his first time. Hard to tell from his demeanor.

“I just... I just...”

Cue the water works and the pulling of the heartstrings...

“I just wanna leave a bit of good in the world, a bit more than it had before me. Even if it doesn’t last forever.” She leaned up against the counter, looking she might collapse from emotion. “I know I’m not the strongest, or the bravest... but I... I just need to...”

“Well perhaps if you had a weapon that was strong enough to lend you a bit of your strength, you might be.”

I looked at my shop keeper in shock. Did he really buy into it? Good grief, he was both senile and eclectic! I took a side ways glance at the girl, who held an equal look of disbelief on her face. Or at least I think so. Hadn’t really had a good look at myself in the mirror for the last 70 years. 

“See this new sword that decorates my shop wall?” He brought his hand up, as though rapping on an invisible wall behind him, to gesture to my sword.

The girl looked at it in questioning disbelief. “It doesn’t really look that new...”

“Well it’s new here, and that’ s a form of new.” He crossed his arms at her once more, this time looking down his nose at her defiantly. “Anyways, I just returned back from a business trip where I haggled for this along with a lot sale. Former owner didn’t know what he had his hands on, but this blade once belonged to a strong and formidable warrior years ago.”

I slapped my palm against my forehead. He was going to give her a figurative pair of slippers.That wasn’t helpful, that was the exact opposite of helpful. And she was leaning right into it given the sparkle she had in her eye.

“Yessire, this sword use to be wielded by high ranking knight from up north.” A  sly and mischievous smirk curved across his face. He must’ve made his money off of conning young, naive folks like her. “It’s not overly well known, just a foot note in history really, but I can tell you the tale if you’d like.”

She was looking at the blade all dreamy and starry-eyed by this point, eating up the sales pitch hand and foot. “There’s a story behind it?”

“Yup. Pull up that stool from over there,” He pointed behind here to a wooden stool with a purple cushion hidden beneath some hats,”And I’ll tell you the story of the Arch Knight of Remoana, Thyzal.”

My eyes nearly popped out as my jaw hit the floor when he said my name.

[cyclingpandasiscorrect]

Tickled: The dark world of competitive tickling - A film review

My first reaction to being told to watch a documentary about tickling was curt. ‘No’, and it was forgotten. It was only once another friend passionately urged the same, that my interest was pricked.

Sat at home with nothing to do, I asked the first friend for a link. The reply was instant; the link and a smug ‘enjoy’, though I was probably reading into the smug too much.

Kiwi journalist David Farrier kicks off the film, reeling off his past exploits: Justin Bieber visits New Zealand, a lizard eating hoarder, dizzying stage acrobatics, and the infamous ‘donkey lady’. Describing himself as a reporter of the “weird and bizarre side of life” seems fair, but when he happens upon a video online, the weird gets weirder.

An international ad, offering young athletic men flights to LA, a stay in an expensive hotel and 1,500$ to compete in ‘competitive tickling’. 

The following one hour and thirty minutes tell the bizarre tale of the tickling world, shrouded in mystery, threat and the hunt for the elusive, many named, master tickler. 

Tickled is well worth the watch.

Yours lovingly,

The Cycling Panda.

http://123movies.net/watch/QG3rXkxo-tickled.html