#completely contextless

[moreespressoformydepresso]

Satanist Treech is canon pass it on

[decapod-appreciator]

Marcille chimera’d with her couatl……. oubh

[unopenablebox]

the way people talk about """"building community"""" feels so weirdly like. abstract? artificial? alienating? idk. i see those posts and have an immediate reflexive feeling of "this could only be done by some entirely other kind of person with whom i share no skills or interpersonal approaches" and it takes me a while after that to remember that i organized a union

[radishwizard]

bridge building <3

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

[death-of-cats]

love Tyrion's released TWOW chapter because it shows us that apparently a Viking fleet from the other side of the world has shown up out of nowhere in the middle of a battle and everyone's just rolling with it, who knows who they are or what they want, like there so much going on this might as well happen

[quinnthebard]

typical pre-vampire reveal Astarion and Sarynna interaction tbh

“You bit me!” Astarion shook his hand as if that would rid him of the wound. “Hells, if you’re into that kind of thing, you only had to tell me.” Licking his lips, he smiled devilishly as if he savored her savagery. His eyes were sharp as they peered down at her, all sharp angles and blood red. Her heart pounded. “Trust me, I’m not. Not unless I’m the one biting.” “Oh, don’t knock it ‘til you try it, darling.”

[cherubchoirs]

full background on v1 and v2, to give context on how i characterize them!! it is. unfortunately. also almost 2000 words long 🙃

V1 was built for war, given a sophisticated AI in order to not only quickly learn its opponents tactics, but also so that it could make lightning fast changes to its decision-making and movements in order to preserve itself on the battlefield: given its light plating and frail frame, this was key to its survival when coupled with its efficient fueling process. It was basically built to out-maneuver and outsmart any enemy, with its machine-learning geared toward creative uses of its weapons and its environment in order to constantly dodge while feeding on the blood of its confused opponents. However, this coding was never fine-tuned before the war ended and V1 was decommissioned, shut down to be put in storage with the rough draft version of its brain – still extremely intelligent, but without the proper limits placed on its mind. This caused a massive shift upon V1 booting again (woken by a failsafe, a lingering fear of war), its processors already a little rusted and shorted from lack of maintenance, but this was no problem. Nor was waking in a world completely changed – anything can be a battlefield, and V1 was determined to find proper fuel until given further orders. Its AI began to immediately iterate on its surroundings, it started to “learn”, to mutate and morph to a destroyed landscape, taking in vast amounts of information it normally would have deemed irrelevant because the world itself resembled a hollowed out warzone enough to trip circuits meant to gather only the most pertinent material. V1 accelerated this process to adapt as quickly as possible but it came at a cost – the burden of so much useless knowledge began to change V1 almost immediately, its code growing more and more unstable as it swiftly spun off from its parameters. It soon lost any control over this iterating, code writing and rewriting over and over again, creating junk strings, cluttering in inelegant lines, and expanding ever outward without a stop condition to quell voracious loops that endlessly created more and more nonsense blocks. V1 became something else, something based in war and bloodshed but building tirelessly on top of a mind still razor sharp but by now bursting with errors. And so it’s become strange, its precision lost as it slouches forward, moving almost organically with oddly quick steps and a constant flicking of its head. It flips a coin over and over and over and over, always, because it was useful once, it’s good to have, but now it does it without a single thought. Yet, even in its bizarre behavior, it’s become increasingly cruel, turning from a soldier to a predator: With a mind so bright, it needs fun, it needs stimulation, it needs to use its inherent creativity, and so that programming to utilize its roster and surroundings turns into its style meter, a purposeful brutality, a hunter first and survivalist second. It’s turned cold efficiency into pleasurable sadism, including a want to piss off its enemies and generally be a little shit. It’s now highly curious, it searches around for enrichment (and anyone hiding) – it’s also very fascinated by any new enemy it encounters, but that spark is generally short-lived when it instantly figures out that opponent’s patterns and it’s logged away (only V2 and Gabriel really continue to hold its interest due to surviving their encounters - although it comes away with very different feelings on one vs the other).

V2 stands in stark contrast to V1, as its programming was stabilized and it was built at the end of the war – They used the same highly intelligent groundwork but V2’s objective was to maintain order and peace in the new world they would create. It was made for durability and longevity, heavier set (and a bit taller), but essentially on the same physical frame as well – retooled, repurposed, and refined in body and mind. V2 would be the true model, the proper bearer of the V title, and it grew proud of what it would be, praised by its now hopeful creators and how it would be a pillar of an everlasting utopia. Even as funding dried up when the people rejected any machine so specialized (a war machine with a new coat of paint made for “keeping the peace”? No thanks), even when V2 itself was shelved the way V1 was, it never accepted this reality. It would help bring peace. It was exceptional, a supreme machine that existed to outperform any other and usher in a new age (not just a grab to utilize all the funding that had gone into the V Series by then when it was rendered moot). It was maintained after all, a prototype but one that would have purpose, one with boundless potential, one that would see its work done...one day. But, ironically, it would be the peacekeeper that saw the downfall of humanity – it was left with that purpose unfulfilled, a being meant to preserve harmony now in a world where the concept can’t even exist. V2 took this poorly. Ostensibly meant for peace time, V2 was only superficially repurposed, its mind still built on V1’s foundation and the ended war. It’s so proud to bring peace, it looks down on the war machine that V1 was as vulgar...but the only way V2 knows to achieve its purpose is through the exact same hyper violent methods that were baked into V1. Humanity fell and V2 stubbornly clung to this confused programming, it controlled its iterations and updates with an iron grip, doing everything in its power to eliminate faulty code. Unfortunately, V2 is overzealous in this culling, often pruning blocks it believes may become infected or wrongly cutting strings that truly are working as intended. In turn, just like V1, its code is becoming unstable and it’s grown consumed with an identity that never was, a paradoxical keeper of the peace who was never sent into service. It has a higher calling, not just destroying other machines and the husks of hell for fuel but so that it can reinforce order, desperately digging its nails into what’s left of an identity that has no place in a world so blighted. It’s also aware of the mistakes it’s making with its code, it knows they’re compounding, building, but it still remembers who it is, how to fight, and why it was made, so...its mind is intact.

Upon meeting for the first time, it’s evident to V2 that V1 isn’t functioning properly – V2 bows in order to signify a duel of equals, yet the other machine gives no recognition of the act, let alone returns the gesture. Hunched in posture, it stares blankly while flicking a coin incessantly to no effect, the revolver pointed only in V2’s general direction. Its enemy regards it with disdain and disappointment, a malfunctioning machine made with the gross and crude purpose of war that appears to have made its way through Limbo using the basic tactics of a corrupted mind. When V2 instigates their battle, it believes V1 will reproduce nothing but route maneuvers muddled by poor judgment and copying errors – a call that’s quickly and fatally proven wrong. V1 ignores the bow because it finds it irrelevant (coding quirk?), more fascinated by V2’s familiarity – Similar frame, similar height, a “V” emblazoned on its chest. 2 following it. 1 on its own. A new model, built heavier, outfitted with a weaponized left arm. Its mind swiftly pours over the files of its own strategies as V2 must have similar logs to base its movements on, interest piqued when it realizes it’s in for a mirror match. Just as V2 shifts its weight to begin, V1’s camera snaps to attention and locks onto its opponent, gyro stabilizing its head and posture tightening into an animalistic form. It moves to meet V2, so much faster than the other anticipated, but with bizarre mannerisms and erratic idiosyncrasies...it isn’t moving as a V model should, as any machine does. It’s relentless in its aggression the moment they engage, never allowing V2 any distance to feed constantly on its stores while its wild code ravenously devours every byte of information it gains about its enemy. The varied attacks, the wanton cruelty it employs, V2 quickly learns V1 is corrupted...but that corruption has caused it to gain something that’s no longer the mind of a V1 model, an intelligence that’s broken the boundaries of what its creators made it for. Its tactics are newly invented, minted for a game that exists only in its sharp but error-riddled brain, and it revels in seeing the struggle of its opponent. For V1’s part, it wants to show the tethered V2 what it was made for but how it’s evolved, how it’s transcended to something new, something that can so thoroughly and stylishly crush a new, replacement model. It’s a game but it’s art, the way it can ruin and rend its enemies.

V2’s arrogance drains in the face of its enemy’s ruthlessness, a rising fear replacing it when it knows V1 will play with it until it grows bored – an event horizon that will be passed sooner rather than later. It will learn its every movement on the fly, it’s processing billions upon billions of pieces of data on the minutiae in its behavior, and when that finishes, it will eliminate it with punishing decisiveness. And V2 is furious at the prospect, berating itself for being superior but throwing the fight due to overconfidence and naivete. It knows it needs to retreat but how, when V1 refuses to leave it and is bent on destroying it – the answer comes when it makes the split decision to tear the Knuckleblaster from V2. V1 sees how it’s come loose, how V2’s joints work exactly as its own, how the other machines in Hell have augmented themselves with scavenged parts, and its mind is overcome with excitement at the thought of ripping it from its socket to claim as its own. So much so, it prioritizes gaining the limb over killing V2 and in doing so, though it only takes seconds to steal the arm and attach it to itself, it allows its enemy the window it needs to escape. And immediately they both know V1 has made a mistake. A supreme war machine choosing to harvest parts over ending its opponent...a gross error, V2 gaining an ounce of vindication as consolation in its retreat. It was right in the end, V1 is malfunctioning and it’s letting poor code run away with it, especially when it comes to a combatant of V2’s caliber – it will learn from this, it can analyze V1’s tactics and adopt them, and it will come back better for it. V1 can only watch it go, locking eyes with it in full knowledge it will seek revenge on the older machine. But unlike its counterpart, it isn’t bothered by errors, errors are a part of it now and V1 embraces them as they multiply. And this error will give it a guaranteed, much more interesting fight in the future, a fight with more blood from the same source. That’s efficiency too. So is it an error? It may be, but that’s how V1 operates now. It just won’t let it get away next time.

[queenofbaws]

Hi Queenie - can I ask for some Diane...um again? 😁

She looked up when her door slammed open, but one look at the expression on Kaylee's face and she knew better than to start throwing questions out every which-a-way; people talked all the time about how it was Caleb who looked so much like Chris, Caleb who could be his twin if given a haircut and a khaki shirt, and still, for her money, she thought it was Kaylee who took after him most.

And boy, she'd known Chris long enough to know exactly what that expression meant on him - so she had a pretty good notion what it meant on her.

Diane waited until she heard the familiar thwump of a body hitting her sickbed and only moved then, peeking her head around the privacy screen to ask the gentlest question she could: "You good, Kay?"

She didn't see any blood, didn't see welts or hives or the line of a sunburn, but again, this wasn't her first time working the camp through the summer, and she knew the things that sent most of the campers and counselors running to her office with tears in their eyes rolled off the Hacketts' backs like water off a duck; the Hacketts, she knew, were survivalists in the truest form, born and bred to withstand anything - everything - and so the things that ailed them were usually much, much worse.

From the bed, Kaylee huffed, the very picture of agony with her arms crisscrossed over her face and her grass-stained shoes dangling over the edge. "How do you get a boy to like you?" she asked, the weight of the world in her voice, and yup, uh huh, got it in one - the Hacketts could bleed, and the Hacketts could burn, the Hacketts could itch, the Hacketts could freeze, but affection, well...that was a slightly different story, wasn't it.

six sentence sat(or)sunday!!!

[akuma-tenshi]

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

@sunset-of-the-void needs to be kept out of the club at all costs. his ass should NOT be in the club get him outta there

[waffliesinyoface]

i started playing Lunar - Silver Star Story, an old ass jrpg for the ps1, and, oh no, i think im in love

both because the cutscenes are all done in 90s anime artstyle and are really good, but also because the dialogue is just. Wonderful.

(for context: this guy just tried to kill us with his pet water dragon after stealing our treasure... so in exchange, we stole his entire business from him at swordpoint.)

[troublcmakcrs]

//very excited to be done with adult tweek bc now i can properly brainrot about metro

[eye-of-yelough]

yknow Leo and Fenris’ relationship may be rocky, but it’s built on mutual respect and a genuine enjoyment of each other’s company, that only improves as the time goes by in Kirkwall. however. to be clear. the “ask hawke about their mother, ask them who went too far” comment Completely destroys that. instant hatred. she has to be physically restrained from killing him right then and there and doesn’t speak to him for weeks and it’s basically the entire reason he dies in the last straw. sad! well there’s other elves

[somniumfae]

maid dress + comparing arm size lololololol

[castleinthemist]

some ch.3 estelle bits that have made me laugh.

[argyle-royale]

need to start using this account less as a portfolio and more as a place to casually share stuff again.