#a heartbeat I tell you!

[starlitangels]

Okay

Don’t think I didn’t hear the distortion on his voice when he said “Can’t” while his ears were ringing and that last “Thank you.” My ears are good

What’s going on (rhetorical)? I don’t actually want an answer don’t bother replying or tagging any theories kthxbye

[holmsister]

Literally laios to kabru

[donelywell]

February 29- March 2 2024

The first time Sonic went Super in Road Trip wasn't exactly as stunning to Tails as other au's and stories.

Tails is like maybe 5 here (I'm not actually that organized on the timeline for this au yet, I'm getting there though, things are getting in order.) and he wasn't forced to grow up and be a hero in this au. So he's a bit more childish than canon Tails because he doesn't feel as pressured to mature and grow up fast. Plus, he genuinely thinks Sonic is going to die and this is the last time he see's him, so tears are bound to come down.

Part 1

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 132

So it turns out Danny and Billy share a realms guardian. Not like they knew that until they literally got scruffed and taken through a portal- apparently realms paperwork can take years or even centuries so they actually got really lucky with how much their guardian was pushing. 

Apparently the primordial being of Space and the primordial being of Storm is one and the same and has been… well not throwing a fit but also yes throwing a fit at the Observants and other paperwork beings of the Zone. 

So it’s not the worst kidnapping either of them have gone through, apparently they’re getting a checkup and a crash course in realms stuff?? Oh god what do you mean there’s the equivalent of galas in the Zone and they have to go to them??? Sam/Tim help them! 

On the bright sides, way less attacks on Amity now that a primordial being that literally shuffles around entire galaxies just because is hanging around to teach him how to do things. And when Billy gets found out to be ten he can cheerfully say he has permission from his guardian. The one literally letting them get through space so quickly just because they think the league is neat. In an idle wow yep kiddo that is a funky looking cat we aren’t taking home yep, way. 

[shyravenns]

There is nothing funnier than the image of Price and his stereotypical pretty housespouse both going through a series of emotions when he brings home the human equivalent of a stray cat that is Nikolai, and realizing that a) Oh god he's hot and b) Oh god he's hot and I think I might like him

[xenomorphicdna]

I AGREE WITH YOU SO HARD MAN i find it boring as hell that we have those complex, alien, amazing blend of machine and organism massive structures and people want to reduce them to what is basically a finger

Ignore the fact that I not only had this ask sitting in the box for several weeks but the art as well.

Time to continue the on the string propaganda as is my duty

YES there is SO much room to make these supercomputers incredibly interesting without taking them off the string.

Like I get it, silly creature in scenario (I love those) and I'm not gonna criticise it much here- this is mostly gonna be an appreciation post, but big machine that is not human could very much stay a big machine that is not human.

Faithful mutual @sin-ari talked to me about how such a complex machine would struggle to portray it's emotions through the puppet. The puppet is meant to comfort the ancients and provide a way to communicate in the same style. But who's to say iterators feel things the same way? What if they had emotions that are indescribable to us? Things we could never experience?

And I'm going to keep talking about Ari's points cuz yess iterators should express their emotions with all of their structure. You should hear the thrumming and crackling of the flux condensers! You should hear the growling of their systems with anger, you should feel the metal walls vibrate with sound!!

The PLACE is alive and you should feel it!!! If you wander into an iterator structure and it's quiet, not a single 'whoop' from the flies, if the lights aren't dancing like they usually are, if rooms are empty with inactivity, could you not feel the sadness?

Does the general system bus play a different tune?

[tennessoui]

more hunger games au anyone?

(first snippet) (1.6k) (dark. hunger games. canon typical violence for both sw and thg) The cannon rings out over the arena. It’s a sound Anakin has heard so many times before that he hardly even registers it now.

The Anakin on the television screen does not recognize the sound either nor does he seem to understand what it means. From an outsider’s perspective, he looks wild, eyes flashing, nostrils flared from his heavy breathing as he stabs the hunting knife again and again into the chest of the tribute from District Two, long past the time he has died. 

So long in fact, that even members of the Capitol audience turn away during this replay, looking vaguely sick. 

Anakin watches though. Anakin knows what’s coming. 

Anakin had not lost his mind at all, but from an outsider’s perspective, he can see how this must have looked as though he had. 

But everything had been calculated. Every stab had been with intent. Anakin had been in control the entire time.

He wonders if that would make the citizens of the Capitol more scared of him, if they knew that. If they knew how in control Anakin was then and is now. 

On the screen, a girl screams for the fallen Tribute. Anakin makes sure to deaden his eyes, to straighten his posture, to flinch at the noise. 

On the screen, the girl reaches out to clasp at Anakin’s shoulder. She probably thought she could out-manipulate him. She probably thought he would never kill her outright. After all, his entire strategy had been to convince everyone he was hopelessly in love with her. He couldn’t just kill her after weeks of loving her. Hell, maybe she even bought his act. Maybe she thought he really loved her. 

She should have just stabbed him in the back.

On the stage, the couch, Anakin watches as the girl’s hand falls onto his shoulder. He watches as the Anakin in the Games turns around and stabs her in the throat. 

The hunting knife goes clean through. She is dead in seconds. 

The audience sobs as one. There are screams, though this is just a rerun. Anakin wonders about their reactions during the live showing. Did they faint? Did they care? Did they care so much they thought they would die? Was he a tragic character? Was he a villain? 

After all, they just watched him kill the love of his life.

Obviously, he had not meant to. Anakin on the screen recoils in horror. He pulls out the knife and watchs his fellow district 4 tribute drop to the ground.

Dead. 

The cannon goes off at the same time he begins to scream, eyes wide and mouth wider, bloody hands scrabbling useless at her open throat. He is still screaming, dry sobs leaving his parted lips as he tries to repair what can never be fixed.

Anakin on the victor’s couch watches his breakdown dispassionately. He should have cried, he decides. And right as he puts his face down to muzzle into her hair, the cameras pick up a hint of a smile.

Amateurish.

“Anakin,” the host says, as the screen fades to black. His tone is commiserating, sympathetic, pitying. He leans across the space between his seat and Anakin’s couch and puts a hand on his knee. Anakin does not have to pretend to flinch away. He is sick of people touching him. There is only one person in the entire world he wants touching him right now, and that man is in the audience watching. 

Anakin wonders suddenly if Obi-Wan had screamed when he watched him kill the girl. If he had cried out. If he had been relieved.

Anakin had been relieved, but he makes sure to hide that relief now. 

“Anakin,” the host says again. “I am so very sorry that I had to show that to you.”

Anakin turns his head away. He clenches and unclenches his jaw. He makes fists with his hands and then uncurls his fingers. “You watch it,” he says. “I have to live with it.”

The audience makes appropriate noises of sympathy. There are a few jeers, some boos. The girl from his district had been some people’s favorites to win. He knows this now. 

He bites back the urge to call them all idiots. Every last one of them who thought she could win. She never could have. Not when Anakin was there. Not when Obi-Wan told him shakily, that last night before the arena, lips pressed to his forehead and face wet: come home to me.

“What was going through your mind, Anakin?” The host asks, still in that same sympathetic tone. “You’d just killed your sixteenth tribute. It was just you and Robin remaining as soon as Diamond died. We were all so worried for the pair of you, weren’t we?”

He turns to the audience and the audience screams back. Anakin sits there. Anakin thinks. 

“I know more than a few of us were hoping the Gamemakers would create a rule change, just for the two of you. What I would have given, to see you and your beloved go home together.” The host shakes his head, hand on his chest. His eyes remind Anakin of the sea predators he pulled from the ocean in his district. He has shark eyes.

Anakin has killed and gutted a hundred sharks. Anakin is still in control.

What the host does not know is that he will go home with his beloved. And no one in the Capitol will ever bother them again.

“I wasn’t thinking,” Anakin says emotionlessly. “It was instinct. It—”

He swallows and shifts on the couch. From the pocket of his pants, he pulls out a thin slip of paper. It’s dotted in blood. It had come to him in a silver parachute, folded neatly within a thick blanket: his only gift from his mentor.

ROBIN. is all it says. 

But it’s in Obi-Wan’s handwriting. And Anakin knows what it means. He’d pulled it out countless times during his days in the arena, rubbing his thumb over the ink. To an outsider, it must have looked like he was worrying over the girl’s name, a token of his affections, visible proof of who he was thinking about at night when he stared out into the manufactured desert instead of sleeping.

Only he and Obi-Wan knew who he was really thinking of. Only Obi-Wan knew he would forget the girl’s name without a concrete reminder in his hands.

He runs his thumb over the word in Obi-Wan’s handwriting once more. He must get this right. They are so close to being able to live forever happily undisturbed. He just needs to lie for another few hours. Then he will get his reward.

“It changes you, the arena,” he says quietly. “I felt…entirely like a different person. And I was always on my guard. I had no allies—” he had killed all his allies— “and I was alone. I cared only for one thing. One person.” This isn’t a lie. “And then—it’s so hard to keep count. When—” he glances down at the paper in his hand. “Robin touched me, I thought I had counted wrong. That there was another tribute, not her and not me. It was…instinct. I thought I was eliminating a threat.”

“I am so sorry,” the host says with his cold, dead eyes. “I cannot imagine killing the love of your life.” Neither can Anakin, of course. He’d chew off his own arm before he hurt Obi-Wan Kenobi. Instead of saying this, he looks down. He needs to cry, but the tears won’t come.

“It feels like it was someone else,” he mutters. The microphone attached to him will pick it up. “Someone else’s hands.” “But they were yours,” the host presses against the perceived bruise in what Anakin can only describe as restrained glee. “They were your hands.”

“Yes,” Anakin agrees. He looks out into the audience. He cannot see Obi-Wan, but he knows the man is there. He had been the first to hug him once he exited the arena. He had hardly been more than five steps away from him since then.

He keeps shooting Anakin looks, as if afraid that he will suddenly collapse into tears and shatter apart. After all, he just killed seventeen people in the span of one week. Obi-Wan had made it through his games with only three kills under his belt, and each one haunted him to this day.

But Anakin is fine. Anakin won. Anakin was back. Anakin had Obi-Wan, and so Anakin is fine. 

His hands start to shake when he thinks about losing Obi-Wan, and tears of fury gather in the corners of his eyes. He would burn the world down if they were to try and take Obi-Wan away from him. Seventeen people would be nothing.

“And what do you have to say to the people who think you planned to always kill Robin?” the host asks. “That you never wanted her to win the Games?”

Anakin shakes his head and then rubs at his eyes, brushing the tears away. “I loved her,” he lies. His thumb rubs over Obi-Wan’s handwriting once more, the swoop of the ‘o’, the slant of the ‘b’. “When you love someone the way I loved her, you’d do anything for them. It makes you crazy. To love like that. You’d do anything for them.”

“Are you saying you thought that you would die in the arena so she could live?” the host prompts, hands folded neatly into his lap.

Anakin shakes his head and then nods. And then he shakes his head again. The host takes pity on him. “Now that you’ve won your Games, Anakin, what will you do?”

Anakin’s thumb swipes once more over the writing on the paper. “I just want to go home,” he says. And this time, it’s the truth. 

[starlightiing]

I want to (redacted) Esteban's (redacted)

[faaun]

my research partner and i are huddled in a blanket in paddington waiting for a too-late train i already miss you and you and you

[foxstens]

genuinely can't imagine how kevin even got through his first few months at psu

[cyberpunkboytoy]

Thank you @yukirayu for creating a render of this Towa from the N+C cafe event, bc I've been needing to study the fit.

So much to take in here. The sheer amount of medical swag: blood pack shoulder bag, the 'stitches' on his pants, the scar choker, the anatomically correct heart pin. But then he's mixing in some street fashion with the jacket and the silver chain, and a simple but stylish Tshirt that just says "euphoria."

But despite the urban+menhera fusion and the stylish pink and red hair dye, there's also plenty to poke fun at. He has a chain at the bottom of his pants that connect his legs—this man cannot spread his legs. Which might literally trip him up bc those shoes are not fucking tied. Watch your feet, Towa, you are going to eat shit. You are going to kiss concrete.

[coriander-candlesticks]

I'm trying to get my room sorted finally, and started moving my shrines/altar areas to their proper places! I can't move all of them, of course (my tall bookshelf isn't in my room yet) but it's getting there.

Most of them are pretty bare bones still, but I have at least one thing for every member of the Theoi that I have a shrine jar for (I just haven't cleaned them all yet so not every item is on the altars).

The large shared altar shelf is, from left to right: Hephaestus, Dionysus, Ares, Artemis, Poseidon, and Hera & Zeus. The second is my cthonic altar to Hades & Persephone, on the shelf below the large one. I've got a six-cubby bookshelf that alternates between altar spaces (Apollo, Athena, and Hermes) and books. Hestia and Aphrodite are on the top of my dresser.

[modern-inheritance]

Heartbeat

Had a thought as I gave in to dozing and curled around my stuffed wolf Rantu Antu (yes I know the name is wrong but I was 5 years old and mom was reading Island of the Blue Dolphins to me) for a quick nap.

I’ve said before that Saphira recognizes Arya’s mind from when she would touch Saphira’s muted consciousness while she was still in tbe egg. But what if, after Arya recovers under the mountain and falls back into her bodyguard role, Saphira starts to remember something else?

See, I’ve also mentioned in passing that Arya is a heat seeker when she sleeps near anything warm and living, and will usually wrap her arms, or honestly just her entire body, around anyone nearby. A sleep cuddler, if you will. She’s far more physical than most other elves due to her Varden upbringing as a ‘teen’ and will sub/unconsciously cuddle with people she trusts and feels completely safe with when asleep.

And we all know she was very protective over Saphira’s egg. She wanted Saphira to feel safe even if she wasn’t fully aware, wanted her to not feel alone.

So, on nights when they hadn’t been near anyone else, when Saphira’s egg was silent and hadn’t been touched by anyone but them, Arya would touch Saphira’s mind, check on her, make sure she was calm. And then, feeling protective and worried that Saphira was feeling alone after no new prospective Riders had touched her egg for days, Arya would tuck Saphira’s egg close to her chest and sleep that way, curled around her or one arm slung over her carry bag or tucked between her and Fäolin.

Saphira doesn’t really understand what else she’s remembering until, one day while Eragon is probably bathing, and Arya is standing guard beside Saphira in an empty cavern outside the dressing area, they are alone. They’re not speaking, just waiting. Orik is off seeing what he can scrounge for dinner.

Saphira, after a long, long stretch of silence, cocks her head slightly. Arya doesn’t move when the dragon snakes her head behind the elf, but she does start when Saphira suddenly presses the side of her head against her back, and simply listens.

Still, neither of them say anything. Saphira gives a sort of huff of confirmation and returns to her previous position. Arya shuffles a little and settles back to at ease.

They don’t mention it again. But sometimes, when Eragon was particularly rash and angry in Ellesméra, snapping off at Saphira while she had her own problems, Saphira would go in search of the elf. They’d go to a Meadow Arya seemed particularly fond of and sit together for a few hours. Saphira’s head first resting in Arya’s lap, and then against her side as the dragon continued to grow.

Whenever Saphira felt alone, when Eragon needed his time apart as they both struggled with their new world and new responsibilities, Saphira would find Arya. She would find her and listen to the elf’s heartbeat, and feel just a little bit less alone.

[neige-de-mars]

I want sushi so bad

[thegameartist03]

watched a playthrough of Still Wakes the Deep (PHENOMENAL game) and i am disappointed that Caz did not have that taffy in him. everything seemed like it was perfectly set up for him to have that taffy in him (being presumed dead after rescue, knowing where the taffy stuff was around him, surviving as long as he did, not getting horribly injured, hearing things from the Big Taffy) but i completely understand why that wasn't the twist the game developers went for.

however, in order to cope i am now imagining a version of the game where Caz got Ethan Winters'd by the taffy after he fell in the water. this would affect the gameplay at multiple points and add new mechanics as well as incorporate the original ones, and certainly provide some conflict for a man who just wants to get home to his wife and daughters and keep his friends safe.

bonus! being taffy'd would give the player the option to save people who originally died by sacrificing Caz's humanity bit by bit and embracing the taffy more to overcome obstacles. you could even communicate with the already fully taffy'd guys and get them to calm down or move or target specifically you instead of other people.

just a concept, i probably won't do much with it. but i do have a very distinct image of Caz having a shiny oilslick sheen to his eyes like the Big Taffy after he's pulled out of the water.

[pulchrasilva]

I think being cannibalised would be kinda therapeutic