#extinction level threats on their own

[cultofthepigeon]

Scary Apollo yaaaaayyy!!!!!! Scary Apollo!!!! Yippee!!!!!

[asgardian--angels]

Planet's Fucked: What Can You Do To Help? (Long Post)

Since nobody is talking about the existential threat to the climate and the environment a second Trump term/Republican government control will cause, which to me supersedes literally every other issue, I wanted to just say my two cents, and some things you can do to help. I am a conservation biologist, whose field was hit substantially by the first Trump presidency. I study wild bees, birds, and plants.

In case anyone forgot what he did last time, he gagged scientists' ability to talk about climate change, he tried zeroing budgets for agencies like the NOAA, he attempted to gut protections in the Endangered Species Act (mainly by redefining 'take' in a way that would allow corporations to destroy habitat of imperiled species with no ramifications), he tried to do the same for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (the law that offers official protection for native non-game birds), he sought to expand oil and coal extraction from federal protected lands, he shrunk the size of multiple national preserves, HE PULLED US OUT OF THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT, and more.

We are at a crucial tipping point in being able to slow the pace of climate change, where we decide what emissions scenario we will operate at, with existential consequences for both the environment and people. We are also in the middle of the Sixth Mass Extinction, with the rate of species extinctions far surpassing background rates due completely to human actions. What we do now will determine the fate of the environment for hundreds or thousands of years - from our ability to grow key food crops (goodbye corn belt! I hated you anyway but), to the pressure on coastal communities that will face the brunt of sea level rise and intensifying extreme weather events, to desertification, ocean acidification, wildfires, melting permafrost (yay, outbreaks of deadly frozen viruses!), and a breaking down of ecosystems and ecosystem services due to continued habitat loss and species declines, especially insect declines. The fact that the environment is clearly a low priority issue despite the very real existential threat to so many people, is beyond my ability to understand. I do partly blame the public education system for offering no mandatory environmental science curriculum or any at all in most places. What it means is that it will take the support of everyone who does care to make any amount of difference in this steeply uphill battle.

There are not enough environmental scientists to solve these issues, not if public support is not on our side and the majority of the general public is either uninformed or actively hostile towards climate science (or any conservation science).

So what can you, my fellow Americans, do to help mitigate and minimize the inevitable damage that lay ahead?

I'm not going to tell you to recycle more or take shorter showers. I'll be honest, that stuff is a drop in the bucket. What does matter on the individual level is restoring and protecting habitat, reducing threats to at-risk species, reducing pesticide use, improving agricultural practices, and pushing for policy changes. Restoring CONNECTIVITY to our landscape - corridors of contiguous habitat - will make all the difference for wildlife to be able to survive a changing climate and continued human population expansion.

**Caveat that I work in the northeast with pollinators and birds so I cannot provide specific organizations for some topics, including climate change focused NGOs. Scientists on tumblr who specialize in other fields, please add your own recommended resources. **

We need two things: FUNDING and MANPOWER.

You may surprised to find that an insane amount of conservation work is carried out by volunteers. We don't ever have the funds to pay most of the people who want to help. If you really really care, consider going into a conservation-related field as a career. It's rewarding, passionate work.

At the national level, please support:

The Nature Conservancy

Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

Cornell Lab of Ornithology (including eBird)

National Audubon Society

Federal Duck Stamps (you don't need to be a hunter to buy one!)

These first four work to acquire and restore critical habitat, change environmental policy, and educate the public. There is almost certainly a Nature Conservancy-owned property within driving distance of you. Xerces plays a very large role in pollinator conservation, including sustainable agriculture, native bee monitoring programs, and the Bee City/Bee Campus USA programs. The Lab of O is one of the world's leaders in bird research and conservation. Audubon focuses on bird conservation. You can get annual memberships to these organizations and receive cool swag and/or a subscription to their publications which are well worth it. You can also volunteer your time; we need thousands of volunteers to do everything from conducting wildlife surveys, invasive species removal, providing outreach programming, managing habitat/clearing trails, planting trees, you name it. Federal Duck Stamps are the major revenue for wetland conservation; hunters need to buy them to hunt waterfowl but anyone can get them to collect!

THERE ARE DEFINITELY MORE, but these are a start.

Additionally, any federal or local organizations that seek to provide support and relief to those affected by hurricanes, sea level rise, any form of coastal climate change...

At the regional level:

These are a list of topics that affect major regions of the United States. Since I do not work in most of these areas I don't feel confident recommending specific organizations, but please seek resources relating to these as they are likely major conservation issues near you.

PRAIRIE CONSERVATION & PRAIRIE POTHOLE WETLANDS

DRYING OF THE COLORADO RIVER (good overview video linked)

PROTECTION OF ESTUARIES AND SALTMARSH, ESPECIALLY IN THE DELAWARE BAY AND LONG ISLAND (and mangroves further south, everglades etc; this includes restoring LIVING SHORELINES instead of concrete storm walls; also check out the likely-soon extinction of saltmarsh sparrows)

UNDAMMING MAJOR RIVERS (not just the Colorado; restoring salmon runs, restoring historic floodplains)

NATIVE POLLINATOR DECLINES (NOT honeybees. for fuck's sake. honeybees are non-native domesticated animals. don't you DARE get honeybee hives to 'save the bees')

WILDLIFE ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER (support the Mission Butterfly Center!)

INVASIVE PLANT AND ANIMAL SPECIES (this is everywhere but the specifics will differ regionally, dear lord please help Hawaii)

LOSS OF WETLANDS NATIONWIDE (some states have lost over 90% of their wetlands, I'm looking at you California, Ohio, Illinois)

INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE, esp in the CORN BELT and CALIFORNIA - this is an issue much bigger than each of us, but we can work incrementally to promote sustainable practices and create habitat in farmland-dominated areas. Support small, local farms, especially those that use soil regenerative practices, no-till agriculture, no pesticides/Integrated Pest Management/no neonicotinoids/at least non-persistent pesticides. We need more farmers enrolling in NRCS programs to put farmland in temporary or permanent wetland easements, or to rent the land for a 30-year solar farm cycle. We've lost over 99% of our prairies to corn and soybeans. Let's not make it 100%.

INDIGENOUS LAND-BACK EFFORTS/INDIGENOUS LAND MANAGEMENT/TEK (adding this because there have been increasing efforts not just for reparations but to also allow indigenous communities to steward and manage lands either fully independently or alongside western science, and it would have great benefits for both people and the land; I know others on here could speak much more on this. Please platform indigenous voices)

HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS (get your neighbors to stop dumping fertilizers on their lawn next to lakes, reduce agricultural runoff)

OCEAN PLASTIC (it's not straws, it's mostly commercial fishing line/trawling equipment and microplastics)

A lot of these are interconnected. And of course not a complete list.

At the state and local level:

You probably have the most power to make change at the local level!

Support or volunteer at your local nature centers, local/state land conservancy non-profits (find out who owns&manages the preserves you like to hike at!), state fish & game dept/non-game program, local Audubon chapters (they do a LOT). Participate in a Christmas Bird Count!

Join local garden clubs, which install and maintain town plantings - encourage them to use NATIVE plants. Join a community garden!

Get your college campus or city/town certified in the Bee Campus USA/Bee City USA programs from the Xerces Society

Check out your state's official plant nursery, forest society, natural heritage program, anything that you could become a member of, get plants from, or volunteer at.

Volunteer to be part of your town's conservation commission, which makes decisions about land management and funding

Attend classes or volunteer with your land grant university's cooperative extension (including master gardener programs)

Literally any volunteer effort aimed at improving the local environment, whether that's picking up litter, pulling invasive plants, installing a local garden, planting trees in a city park, ANYTHING. make a positive change in your own sphere. learn the local issues affecting your nearby ecosystems. I guarantee some lake or river nearby is polluted

MAKE HABITAT IN YOUR COMMUNITY. Biggest thing you can do. Use plants native to your area in your yard or garden. Ditch your lawn. Don't use pesticides (including mosquito spraying, tick spraying, Roundup, etc). Don't use fertilizers that will run off into drinking water. Leave the leaves in your yard. Get your school/college to plant native gardens. Plant native trees (most trees planted in yards are not native). Remove invasive plants in your yard.

On this last point, HERE ARE EASY ONLINE RESOURCES TO FIND NATIVE PLANTS and LEARN ABOUT NATIVE GARDENING:

Xerces Society Pollinator Conservation Resource Center

Pollinator Pathway

Audubon Native Plant Finder

Homegrown National Park (and Doug Tallamy's other books)

National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder (clunky but somewhat helpful)

Heather Holm (for prairie/midwest/northeast)

MonarchGard w/ Benjamin Vogt (for prairie/midwest)

Native Plant Trust (northeast & mid-atlantic)

Grow Native Massachusetts (northeast)

Habitat Gardening in Central New York (northeast)

There are many more - I'm not familiar with resources for western states. Print books are your biggest friend. Happy to provide a list of those.

Lastly, you can help scientists monitor species using citizen science. Contribute to iNaturalist, eBird, Bumblebee Watch, or any number of more geographically or taxonomically targeted programs (for instance, our state has a butterfly census carried out by citizen volunteers).

In short? Get curious, get educated, get involved. Notice your local nature, find out how it's threatened, and find out who's working to protect it that you can help with. The health of the planet, including our resilience to climate change, is determined by small local efforts to maintain and restore habitat. That is how we survive this. When government funding won't come, when we're beat back at every turn trying to get policy changed, it comes down to each individual person creating a safe refuge for nature.

Thanks for reading this far. Please feel free to add your own credible resources and organizations.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Reading the book, and I'm already loving it. I agree with a lot of the things y'all say in it (players control the characters, not the narrator, etc.), but I was surprised at the strong insistence on 3rd person play.

Personally I like 1st person play because it helps me with immersion. If I play in 3rd person then my mental camera goes 3rd person, which feels more like playing a video game and removes that thrill of embodying someone else and living in a new world.

Usually I see people either take a strong pro 1st person stance, or a noncommittal stance, but this is the first time I've come across a game that insists on the 3rd person. I'm curious about the reasoning behind it. Was it just a philosophical decision, or did it bear out in playtesting that 3rd person was the better method? In the book y'all acknowledge that 3rd person play doesn't eliminate the threat of griefing from bad faith players.

Y'all clearly put a lot of thought into the game, so that really interested me. Could be a good learning opportunity!

I passed this on to one of our team and this is what she had to say:

In addition to our own home table just preferring to play in 3rd person, we believe that perspective is an important element of TTRPGs that doesn't get explored very often in the modern landscape. The games we play are composed of language - not just the words on the page, but the words we say at the table. Changing the verbiage will create a different emotional space, and a different experience. That zoomed out mental camera you describe is part of the point! In any TTRPG, players are always two things: participant, and audience. The narration we employ at the table affects the game world, yes, but we are also the only people there to see it play out. Eureka strongly emphasizes the "audience" side of that equation, and wants to frame the "participant" side as an act of authorship and discovery rather than one of inhabiting the world.

Just on a fundamental level, perspective is a defining part of any media - the camera angle in a movie or video game, the person of a book's prose, who tells the story, and who they tell it for. The way we frame a story changes the response it evokes. As you say, you've seen either strong pro-1st-person stances or neutral ones, but not a strong pro-3rd-person stance. I don't think that's because 1st person is inherently better for this sort of game, I think its because there is a tendency in the hobby right now - for a variety of reasons - to treat TTRPGs like a form of improv theater. That's not a problem in isolation per se, but I think it's one that limits what the medium can be or do. TTRPGs can be improv theater, but is that all they can be?

On a final note, we have also seen the insistence on 1st-person play and the approach of "embodying" a character occasionally cause real harm when the people involved have trouble separating player and character. That's also part of the reason we're so insistent about these being two separate people, because investigators tend to do some pretty messed up things (this being a horror focused game, after all), and we don't want people equivocating their friends with the characters they play when that level of emotional intensity is involved. Many people who play in 1st person are able to engage with that in a healthy way and understand the difference, of course, but I think it's hard to deny that the language makes that equivocation easier.

- @ashweather (person from out team who doesn't normally run this blog)

Adding on myself, another thing that I always like to bring up in this discussion is that first-person verbiage did not used to be so universal! Playing in the hobby even 4 or 5 years ago, you'd see (or at least I would see) a mix of third and first person verbiage at tables, and even people who used both interchangably. It's only in the past few years that third-person verbiage for TTRPGs has gone practically extinct, and i think most of the blame lies at the feet of big-budget "actual play" shows like Critical Role being many people's only reference for how a TTRPG can be played. Critical Role uses first-person, so therefor that's how TTRPGs are played.

I've even had people tell me on multiple separate occassions "that's wrong" when I'm trying to use third-person verbiage for TTRPGs, when playing with rulebooks which explicitly say in their text early on "you can use 1st or 3rd person to describe your character's actions"! (most, if not all, D&D edition rulebooks say this!)

In closing, yeah, if Eureka were a video game, it would be in third-person. Eureka doesn't want you in its world, it wants a character.

[arc-misadventures]

The Noblesse Oblige of Humanity

A young boy was laughing as he played in the field, his smile radiated pure innocence as he basked in the suns golden warmth. His golden locks of hair meshed with a the vibrant green hues of the grass he rolled around in. His laugh only heightened in its intensity, and euphoria as a large hand came down, and tussled his hair.

The boy reached up his hands as his father hoisted him in the air, throwing him at he reached the zenith. A flit of laughter escaped the child's lips as he sored the the air like a bird freed from gravity's hindering restraints.

His father caught him with a hearty laugh as he embraced his son who's emerald eyes shined with unrestrained glee as the boys father, and mother took the child away. As they left the playground his helmets optics zoomed out to see a similar occurrences happening throughout the playground.

Children basking in the warm embrace of a family who loved them unconditionally.

He zoomed out further with his helmet until the idealist visage of a happy family life was no more then blobs of movement upon his horizon, Jaune Ara, B Class, Spartan couldn't help, but wonder the idealistic thought that all Spartans had: If he wasn't born with, Aura would he have been just as happy as that child?

Aura, Spartans, and their Noblesse Oblige towards Humanity: A potent cocktail that started from one step onwards towards the next step. A cocktail that held the key to mans salivation, or if it failed, towards it's inevitable extinction.

It all started with, Aura; It possessed a near limitless potential to all humans, and faunas alike to fight the never ending tide of darkness that besieged all those in their way: The Grimm.

Aura the raw embodiment of the soul, a rare power that every human, and faunas had the potential to unlock, and wield against the forces of darkness. However, only one child born of amongst a thousand other souls had the potential to unlock such a power. Because of the rarity of, Aura, and potential lethality of the Grimm's threat to humanity each , and every child that was born was tested for having, Aura of any level. And, if they unlocked this rare gift of, Aura they were immediately taken away to be trained as, Spartans.

It was seen as a great honour by many to have birthed a child capable of wielding, Aura. But, many mothers saw it as a terrible burden to be placed upon their dear children that often brought many to tears. How else could any mother react to the news that their child would be taken away from them at birth to be raised as child soldiers to fight in an unending war? Children taken from their mothers with scarcely nothing, but a name.

That is what happened to the boy named, Jaune Arc; He was born seventeen years ago to a family of a loving mother, and father, and their seven daughters. But, when he was tested for, Aura he proved to be positive, and carried the burden of having an immense, Aura. So, shortly after his birth he was taken away to be trained, given nothing, but a tearful goodbye, and the first, and last loving embrace of a mother who did not want her child to leave so soon.

That is at least how, Jaune liked to imagine his departure from his parents went. He knew of his family, and their existence, but the plight of becoming a, Spartan made him warry to meet them in the flesh. It was common of those born with, Aura, and trained to be warriors from birth to have a hard time relating, and associating to the common people.

It was agreed long ago by the four kingdoms of, Remnant that the children born with aura should be raised within the tight confines of a specialized learning institution: A Spartan Academy.

Each academy had its own name, and customs that it ingrained in its students. But, there training was all the same: The first few years they were trained on academics, and improving their physical abilities. Then they were taught hand-to-hand combat, the use of a verity of firearms. Each lesson only growing more, and more in its complexity as they grew up up. Their training was once compared to that of an ancient civilization, long lost to the sands of time. A city of warriors that took their young men to be trained as warriors to fight in their wars, these ancient warriors were once called, Spartans. A name that stuck to the, Aura empowered warriors of Remnant.

At the age of twelve most members of a, Spartan Academy started their own personal specialization training. Learning how to master the use of various weapons that best suited to their individuals fighting style, and taste. But sometimes, in a rare few occasions these fighting styles were impacted by something wholly unexpected.

A birthday present.

Jaune Arc remembered his twelfth birthday with crystal clear clarity. He had expected it to be just like any of his other birthdays, one of those rare days off from their rigorous training where he, and his classmates would get to enjoy in a cake. But, this time was different, this time, Jaune had a birthday present.

It was a large white boxed tied with golden ribbons, with a note attached to it. He remembered nervously reaching for the note, and reading it, scared at the possibilities of what laid within it. As he read the letter contents, tears of joy dropped from his eyes. Within it he read a letter from his mother, a woman named, Juniper Arc, telling how she was sad that her lovely baby boy was taken away from her at birth, but she was proud that he would become a warrior of legend that would carry on his great, great grandfathers legacy as a, Spartan. She wrote how she prayed that this gift would serve, and protect him, and others in the future. At the bottom was a list of names; one from his father, another from sisters each written in their own unique way, before reading the last name on the list, a name that was bore deep into his heart as he read the name: 'Love, your mother, Juniper Arc.'

Spartans were trained to suppress their emotions as a means to combat the, Grimm who fed upon their raw negative emotions. Often leading to many, Spartans to become so far detached from normal human emotions that they couldn't understand, nor comprehend them. But, for the first time in, Jaune Arc's life he felt that emotionless mask break, and fall into pieces, and the human boy that long for his mother finally appear. A memory he often fled to when the darkest of times came before him.

Within the box rested a sword of golden hues, bound with blue leather, encased within a sheath of white metal. Jaune slowly pulled out the silver blade, and marveled in it's simplistic elegance. It was a greater shock when he picked up the sheath, and it deployed into a heater shield. Upon it, lay in a field of snow were a pair of golden arch's. When, Jaune asked his instructors what these symbols meant he was told it was his families emblem, that these colours represented his family, and their legacy.

Years had past since then, and despite the fact these old weapons had been improved upon, and made better, Jaune Arc wore it, and his families colours, and emblem proudly upon his armour.

For he was, Jaune Arc, B Class, Spartan, and he would live up to his family legacy, and become a warrior of renown as he fought to save humanity of the scourge that was the, Grimm.

For he was a , Spartan; They were the bastion of humanity against the growing darkness of the, Grimm. It was his, and every, Spartan that ever lived noblesse oblige to fight, and die for the betterment of all of humanity.

A life of a happy little child embraced by their loving parents.

Wasn't that something worth dying for?

///

Okay, this based on an story, based on an idea made by @evenmorefatallyobsessed. Here's a LINK to the post.

This was how I thought to play out this idea. I'll add more to it later on. I've got a few more ideas I want to write out.

Till later then.

[attn-pls1]

Space DR : The Preservation of Natural Sophont Development Act (PNSDA)

Here's a little lore while I try to figure out the rest of this dr. Sophont refers to a sapient organism.

The PNSDA was created by The Interstellar Union (TIU) to limit the power that can be exerted over less advanced species. This prevents any unauthorized personnel from entering solar systems with primitive life or trying to influence the course of these planets. The goal of this act is to give freewill back to these species and allow them to evolve at their own pace.

This goes for almost every scenario with few exceptions, including events that would be detrimental to life on these planets. As long as it is deemed "natural" it is to happen. The justification for this is "the death of one leads to the birth of another." For example, if Earth's dinosaurs never went extinct humans would not have evolved to the point they are at now.

There is some debate about preventing "unnatural extinctions" (climate change, nuclear warfare, etc.) but they're currently still considered to be "natural development" by the TIU as they were brought on by the civilization's own decisions.

Keep in mind this only applies to species that have not developed space travel and are not affiliated with the TIU. Civilizations associated with TIU will receive help in extinction level events.

Currently, Earth's solar system is protected under this act. Typically a civilization would be cleared of this protection when they reach spaceflight but due to humanity's scarce ventures into space the TIU has decided to research more before interfering.

There are three approved exceptions for interference :

Research and Observation: To gain a better understanding about sophont development TIU sometimes grants special approval to researchers and scientists if their research can be proven to be non-invasive with minimal influence on the species and planet.

Law Enforcement: If another individual were to break the PNSDA, certain high ranking officers are given clearance to go after and apprehend them. Must follow strict guidelines to prevent further influence.

Accidental Influence: If unrelated outside entities were to be a threat to the sophont's development TIU will assess and assemble a team to protect the vulnerable species. This includes unnatural structures such as rogue ships from crashing into the planet but does not include asteroids or other natural threats.

If you have any questions please ask!! Slowly becoming obsessed with this dr

[superectojazzmage]

X-Men works best, I feel, when writers understand on at least some level that it's really basically a cyberpunk/biopunk horror story that just happens to also be a superhero comic.

X-Men is the story of the world entering a new epoch where any random person on the street might randomly get superpowers - ranging everywhere from green hair to mind control - simply because they happened to win(?) a genetic lottery as part of a cosmic process programmed into humanity in ancient times by ineffable star gods. All around you are people who are ostensibly still people, but are also inhuman entities with alien powers who are gradually developing their own subculture that tells them they are the future dominant species destined to replace mankind. Many of them are just normal folks... but just as many see you the same way ancient homo sapiens saw neanderthals.

X-Men is the story of fear and hatred rising in the hearts of men in the face of that new epoch. Corrupt humans and mutants alike use bigotry and xenophobia to divide the two peoples, pushing them into a war not just for politics, but for evolution and the planet themselves. Mankind begins altering themselves and building machines of death to keep up with the mutants, in the process creating a third race of humanity; transhumans and robots, that in time come to be no different from the mutants, superpowered monsters of society's own making that see the humans as flatscan wastes of genes at best, oppressors to be destroyed at worst.

X-Men is the story of humanity fighting amidst themselves in their senseless darwinistic war while their world tumbles through a swirling universe of terrifying eldritch threats. Out in the stars and spiritual dimensions are alien empires once like us now advanced beyond comprehension, legions of magical wonders and nightmares in equal measure, lovecraftian machine hive minds that eat planets, demons that feast on our sin, cosmic entities that have as much in common with us as we do ants.

And above it all, X-Men is the story of how recognizing each other's humanity, of embracing love instead of hate, may be the only thing that ensures even a hope of survival in the face of the unimaginable, mind-breaking horror of a world entering a new era whether it's inhabitants like it or not... or perhaps, the only thing that decides whether or not we deserve to survive.

The best X-Men writers are the ones who recognize this. Chris Claremont, Johnathan Hickman, Grant Morrison, Kieron Gillen, etc.. The writers who recognize that there's something profoundly and utterly, existentially TERRIFYING about what the series really boils down to (a self-defeating war between mechanical and genetic evolution with normals caught in the middle that may be the extinction of all three races) and reflect that in the aesthetics and tone by emphasizing a cyberpunkish vibe.

Emphasizing that this is a world where people - willingly or not - alter their bodies like mechanics alter cars and any random person you see on the street might be a mutant or Sentinel or something that can kill you with a look, and that random person is probably hiding from something even worse that wants to kill them just for being born.

[whumpster-fire]

"Medieval" fantasy setting that has its "plate armor at a level of advancement that IRL was developed when guns and cannons were a thing but warfare is almost entirely pre-gunpowder" stasis maintained because of dragons. Not generic magical threats or "magic is better anyway," but dragons specifically.

More specifically, the world is in the aftermath of a catastrophic war where dragons were hunted to near extinction, and humanity came pretty close to being wiped out as well. As a result of this, one of the few things that can actually get dragons to cooperate with each other is a country getting serious about firearms development. In some cases there are explicit nonproliferation treaties, in others it's just a general threat of "look what happened to the last guys," but regardless, almost nobody has anything beyond very primitive firearms because to a species that lives for many centuries, a human nation coming within 50-100 years of mass-produced flack cannons is an existential threat. The red line technologies aren't even weapons that are particularly effective against dragons on their own, they're just precursors to things that are.

(And just to be clear, this isn't a "dragons rule the world and want to keep humans in their place" setting, this is a "dragons mostly want little or nothing to do with humans but humans are bad at minding their own business" setting.)

Half of human-dragon conflict is a result of agricultural/herding societies expanding into dragons' territories and replacing prey animal populations with cattle, which dragons would generally be fine with as it results in abundant and easy to kill prey if the humans didn't believe they had an exclusive right to eat said cattle. Even if you come to a reasonable, mutually beneficial agreement there's no guarantee that in a hundred years the original humans' descendants won't change their minds and declare you to be a tyrant, then try to kill you. Most of the other half is a result of humans actively hunting dragons because their body parts are valuable and/or because dragon eggs need strong ambient magic to incubate which usually means building a nest out of enchanted objects and/or magic-amplifying materials. Also from a dragon's perspective a 'peaceful' human society can turn into an aggressive, colonizing, genocidal empire really goddamn fast.

If dragons see humans as insects, they're regarded as the equivalent of an aggressive, invasive, really annoying and sometimes deadly kind of wasp that might create desirable resources if you have them around but they're more trouble than they're worth because they'll build massive nests in your yard and then it's only a matter of time before you get stung for existing in your own home, and also they can chew holes in the walls and swarm-attack you and your children in their sleep. Combine all the worst fearmongering about africanized honeybees and asian giant hornets and you'll have a good idea of how dragons see humans. The reason dragons trying to coexist in proximity to humans are a small minority isn't because most dragons are going "You soft hearted loser, caring about such meaningless creatures," it's because they're going "You fucking idiot, you can't share territory with humans, they'll turn on you as soon as there's a famine or their population gets too big for the land to support you and them. Individual humans can be okay but if you let them build a city on your turf it's a matter of when, not if, it becomes a problem."

[rise-my-angel]

I find it so funny when people call Jon Snow a bastard as an insult as if the show and book shows that you shouldn’t discriminate people based on their birth. I’m looking at you, targ stans. Like he might be a bastard, but he is a better man than most of the true born Targaryens.

That's the thing, Jon being a bastard isn't just about the secret of his birth. It's all about Jon starting the story as an outcast, and finally finding a place in the world amongst other outcasts and unique people. His early friendly kinship with Tyrion, finding a genuine brother in Sam, befriending people like Grenn, Pyp, Tormund. And how by not looking down on them the way the world does him, he grows into a leader. One of the only leaders who can handle the threat to come.

Jons story isn't about getting passed being a bastard or becoming trueborn named anything. Its about Jon realizing that he became the man he is, while being a bastard. That despite everyone trying to put him down for it, he still pushed passed and rose up. It's about Jon learning being a bastard isn't good or bad, it's simply about the man he strives to become.

Also Targ stans the way they talk about Jon Snow is..odd. They seem to only like him if he can be molded into a Targaryean and nothing else. But he is everything they aren't. They are obsessed with blood purity and blood superiority, ruling through cruelty and fear, obessed with prophecy and status. Jon doesn't care about any of those things.

Also, the Targaryeans are obsessed with their blood purity so much it's led to the rampant, destructive levels of incest which almost caused their house to go extinct. When Rhaenyra very obviously had bastards, instead of fighting for her bastard childrens rights, she got violent and cruel at the insinuation of the truth being told to the point she wanted to torture her young half brother for simply repeating something his mother told him.

Even her kids must know their own mother looks down on them for being bastards, because if she wasn't, she wouldn't be trying to pass them off as trueborn. Jon did not need to be a Stark for Ned to love him and include him as much as he could within the family home. Ned literally raised Jon to be the Kevan to Robbs Tywin. Ned wanted Jon to be Robbs right hand man, his closest advisor. And he never needed Jon to be a Stark to start teaching and preparing him for that.

The Targaryeans don't respect bastards so much it's literally what caused the Blackfyre rebellions. Their stans just don't seem to grasp that all of this shows it is bad to judge someone for being a bastard.

They only care about Jon if he will call himself a Targaryean and be just like Rhaegar. But they miss the point. He only has one name and it's Jon Snow.

Because that is what his father named him, and he never had to become a Stark to grow into the man he is and could become.

But Targ stans don't quite seem to care about the conversation of bastards outside of the very specific times said bastards are directly involved in house Targaryean like in the Dance or the Blackfyres. Otherwise, they flip flop on the matter with Jon because they don't really care about him unless he resigns himself to being a true Targaryean.

Which is SILLY.

[would-this-pokemon-be-a-friend]

Hi there! Just came across this blog, and I must say you do some great work!

Okay, ever since I first heard of Pokémon as a kid back in the 90's, I've desperately dreamed of having my favourite Pokémon, Haunter, as my beloved companion. So I'm fairly interested in hearing how you'd rank a Haunter, the very best ghostly boy ever, as a pet :) I know he comes with some potential health risks to an owner or trainer, but listen, I'm willing to risk an odd paralysis here and there if it means I'll finally get to have a Haunter as my sidekick! <3

[Thank you so much!]

Well…uh… I really wouldn’t recommend it, but I know I’m not stopping it. I know there’s a lot of trainers out there who use haunters in battle but I’ll be honest: those people are like, recklessly bold. I’m afraid keeping a haunter comes with more of a risk than just paralysis. But I’m getting ahead of myself: let’s get into it.

Space is a non-issue for haunters. While at five-feet tall these pokémon are pretty large, they are nearly weightless and can pass through solid surfaces, like walls, with ease (Red/Blue). This is both good and bad: on one hand it means that they can fit in any home. On the other, it means that they could come and go from your home whenever they want to, and there’s nothing you can do about it. That could be a problem, as we’ll get into later, but it does save haunter from a lower rank than an F. If you want to adopt a haunter, you’ll need to keep your home pretty dark at all hours of the day. Wild haunters spend all of their time in the shadows, out of what seems to be both a preference and a necessity for survival: in well-lit cities, they are said to be going extinct (Gold, Moon)!

Ok, let’s get into the real issue here: haunters kill people. They are known to stalk and ambush any living things who pass by them alone and in the dark (especially those in a gloomy mood), licking them with their gaseous tongues to “sap their life away” (Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Ultra Moon). If you are licked by a haunter, you will face a long, painful death: you will be racked by constant shaking until you die (Yellow, Silver). Now, it’s unclear if haunters need to do this in order to survive, but they do it often enough that the pokédex gives a firm warning to never approach this pokémon, even if they are acting friendly (Ruby/Sapphire). Let’s say, just as a hypothetical, your haunter decides that they like you enough to not kill you. That’s great! But, like I said earlier, you have no means of restraining you haunter to your house. They could go off and steal the lives of whoever they want! At the very least, keeping a haunter as a house pet would require extensive training.

Their notorious lick isn’t the only means that haunters have to menace humans: they have access to dangerous ghost-type moves like Curse, which saps your HP over time until you fall unconscious, or Night Shade, which hurts you depending on your level. If you’re an adult human, you probably have a pretty high level. They also can use staples like Shadow Punch, Lick (of course), Hex, and Shadow Ball, all of which present a threat. Given that haunters appear to be pretty malevolent beings, an attack is certainly not out of the question. Unless you are well-trained in taking care of ghost-type pokémon, your survival chances when attacked by a haunter are startlingly low.

There aren’t many pokémon that I’ve covered so far that actively hunt and kill humans as a part of their natural behavior. I know there’s people out there, probably experts, who could maybe handle a haunter as a house pet, but they really take their lives (and their neighbors’) into their own hands every day. I can’t, in good conscience, suggest a haunter as a pet, sadly.

[calvincell]

Finally got around to reading the first volume of ONE’s new manga “VERSUS” which is drawn via a new art collaborator: Azuma Kyoutarou! So far it honestly continues to confirm that One Punch Man & Mob Psycho 100 weren’t just flukes & ONE truly is just that good at original writing.

Basic 1st Chapter Spoilers:

VERSUS is a worldbuilding masterclass where multiple distinct human civilizations of different worlds facing varied extinction-level events/threats collide in an isekai-like fashion & must strategize & collectively work to resolve their doomsdays by pitting those threats against one another. As several readers have pointed out, the truly special thing about it is how each & every one of the so far revealed 13 worlds has a distinct setting that could easily work as a stand alone series which exponentially makes the whole series more compelling & fresh. Of course it has great fight scenes & character/creature designs & ONE’s particular brand of comedy that entertains but rarely takes away from tone & tension. One of the funniest wrinkles of the series is how the different humans, despite being desperate refugees of mid-apocalypse worlds often bicker like fanboys over the strength & danger their particular world’s threat is in the style of fandom arguments like: “Are you joking! Goku could totally beat the Hulk!”

So far the only issues I have with the series are:

A) The manga deserves a much more distinctive title than “VERSUS”. Hell, just from a search optimization standpoint the name completely kneecaps the series’ penetration into the mainstream/zeitgeist.

B) 11 chapters in & it sort of feels like the pacing is a bit off in a way I can’t quite explain. It feels slightly too fast but it might just be my own personal brain chemistry making it feel that way.

C) Somehow ONE has managed to create a much more annoying floating mascot character than MP100’s Dimple in the fairy character PanePane. It ruins each and every panel it’s in 😭

Besides all that though, I absolutely HIGHLY recommend giving the series a read for any manga fan but especially to anyone who already loves Mob Psycho or OPM

[misanthropiccatboy]

There's been a great deal of commentary on how close we as a species have come to our own annihilation vis a vis nuclear weapons and nuclear warfare, thanks to a lot of really terrible things that people have done, but one thing that struck me is that everyone involved in these escapades seem to know just how bad nuclear warfare would be. There seems to be a real time and hesitation delay built-in when considering that big red button or launch codes. There's no conceivable reason someone could consider complete nuclear warfare a good or desirable thing and I think in some ways that's what we could call a cultural victory; Threads is pointed to as a horrifying movie that awakened the western cultural consciousness to the extinction-level threat of nuclear bombs, but it lives on today as a passe post-apocalypse trope.

Now that's not so comforting when we have, say, Vladimir Solovyov going on TV to say that tactical nukes should be used in Ukraine or dealing with the idea of having Trump next to the launch codes, but even they have some understanding of the stakes! And the people around them certainly do. But unlike a lot of other terrible things, there is no argument for it, and being anti-nuclear-apocalypse is (without accounting for absurdities) universal.

[paradoxolotl]

OH PARA MY DARLING!!! :))))

For the writer ask can I beg to see a snippet of Neil being banned from another coffee shop (Andrew's maybe 👀) or what led to him being banned from half the coffee shops?? (From Sugar, Spice, and Corporate Espionage)

My beloved PAS ♥️

Unusual Asks for Sugar, Spice, and Corporate Espionage

~

“Sir.”

Neil took a slow sip of his coffee. Only his third cup of the day. Or hour. He couldn’t remember anymore. The beauty of a deadline he had pretended to prepare for rearing it’s ten hours until due highlight covered head? Kevin’s “inhuman level of coffee consumption” ban was lifted.

Not that Neil followed it all that closely anyways. What did Kevin know.

“Sir.”

He flicked his eyes up and to the left, hand still blindly typing away at his keyboard. He had a word count to hit after all. The familiar death glare of a service employee not paid enough to give a proper fuck but forced to anyways waited for him. Usually, Neil continued silence turned most people away, or at least made them uncomfortable enough to spit out whatever they decided was worth interrupting him over. But this one only glowered harder, jaw setting.

“Ma’am.” It turned up at the end like a question, but Neil’s voice held too much faux pleasantry to be recognized as such.

Nostrils flared on her inhale. “Sir-” and honestly the amount of complete disdain and over your bullshit she packed into that single word even impressed him- “you need to leave. Now.”

Oh boy, this was almost worth pausing an essay for. Neil finished his sentence. “I’m actually pretty busy at the moment,” he said, turning back to his work. Was a Freudian mention too much? He tapped the space key twice, not quite hard enough to move his cursor. Probably not.

“Sir.”

“Jesus,” Neil muttered. He needed more coffee. Matching her glare with one of his own, Neil shook his cup, the pitiful remains just enough to splash against the sides. “I’m a paying customer. You can’t just kick me out for no reason.”

“You taped crime scene photos to our windows!” she snapped. And well. Okay yes, that was true. He didn’t need to spare a glance to see the expanse of carnage he had set up.

“It’s for research,” he said.

She jabbed a finger at the cup in his hand. “And that isn’t even from here.”

Neil glanced down. The cup sported the bright orange colours of Fox & Nip Cafe. He looked up to the hat the employee was wearing. It was purple, with The Drip stitched in white across the front. Slowly, he raised the cup to his mouth, tipping the last of it into his mouth.

“I’ve told you guys before. I don’t see what the problem is,” he said. “Your coffee is shit. You know that right? I could order a triple shot and it wouldn’t even hit me. It’s an art, how you’ve taken something so easy and weakened it to the point of threatening extinction.”

Turning in his chair, Neil pointed to the man not even pretending not to be watching. “Your coffee is shit!” he said, making the man jump. He turned back to the employee. “This is literally the worst coffee is town. You have two things going for you: the tables are big enough to work at and your muffins aren’t sweet like fucking cakes. If I have to provide my own passable coffee, I should be allowed to use the space provided to finish my work.”

If looks could kill. “Get the fuck out,” she said.

Neil had three rules he lived by. Number two: when a retail employee drops the word fuck as a promised threat, it’s time to go.

Tossing her a quick salute, Neil shoved his laptop back into his bag and left everything else behind. He didn’t really need the photos anyways.

Two blocks down, he pulled out a small notebook from a side pocket. With a sigh, he crossed out The Drip from his list.

[datauthorress]

X-Men Masterlist

to us and the world Pairing: Logan / Original Female Character / Original Male Character | Original Male Character / Original Non-Binary Character Summary: One year after humanity declares mutants an international threat, Logan and Shelby are two mutants trying to find the other X-Men in order to fight back against a world that hates them. It’s all a matter of survival and trying to help each other. Status: In-Progress Warnings: Explicit Sexual Content, loosely follows comics and movies, polyamorous relationship, canon-typical violence, older man/younger woman. Rating: E Chapters: One

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

and you feel like home Pairing: Logan | Worst Wolverine / Original Female Character / Wade Wilson / Nathan Summers Summary: On his search to find Wolverine, Deadpool comes across a variant of Shelby O’viere, the only one left in her universe after a complete extinction of everyone else. With his own reality’s version of her dead, Deadpool decides to have her tag along so he has a buddy. Cue to them saving the universe and Shelby has to live in a completely different world where not only is a variant of Logan here, but as well as the man that her own variant loved, Cable. Love is seriously all kinds of fucked up. Status: In-Progress Warnings: explicit sexual content, threesome, polyamorous relationship, canon-typical violence, foursome, older man/younger woman. Rating: E Chapters: One | Two

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

we'll fly so far away Pairing: Logan / Original Female Character / Original Male Character | Original Male Character / Original Non-Binary Character Summary: Approached by Charles Xavier, Shelby is invited to stay at the X-Mansion to better learn to control her psychic powers. There, she finds her best friend, Kahn and Logan, a grumpy, temperamental man who has a soft spot for Kahn and then eventually Shelby. Status: In-Progress Warnings: explicit sexual content, polyamory, threesome, loss of virginity, canon-typical violence Rating: E Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

our last breath Pairing: Logan / Original Female Character Summary: Apocalypse caused well, the apocalypse. He pretty much killed every human on Earth besides about a million, declaring himself ruler of Earth. Mutants were allowed to live without fear, but Apocalypse has a habit of forcing mutants to join his cult. Shelby is one Omega-level mutant in search of Wolverine, who had vanished after the X-Mansion was destroyed. And then, she finds him. But he’s not the same.

Status: In-Progress Warnings: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Older Man/Younger Woman, Explicit Sexual Content, Loss of Virginity. Rating: E Chapters: One

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Domestic Pairing: Logan / Original Female Character Summary: The X-Men bring home a large cat. A very large, angry cat resembling a tall, rough man with metal claws and a daughter. Shelby is appointed caretaker. Status: In-Progress Warnings: feral! Logan, feral! Laura, Amnesia, Canon-Typical Violence, Older Man/Younger Woman, Animalistic Behavior, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Explicit Sexual Content, Loss of Virginity. Rating: E Chapters: One

[lemonisntreal]

heyo! Just found your blog and I was scrolling through your stuff and noticed your AU tone deaf. And I haven't found anything about what it is or what your idea is behind it. So I wanted to ask if you could give me an introduction to your AU!

Oh! And I absolutely love your artstyle and how you draw Buster! Anyway, hope you drink enough water and have a good day/night! ;)

Dear god this has been in my drafts for a while-

Hiya! Sorry for that lack of info lol, I'd been inactive for a long time, and the time that I actually WAS posting consistently was back when things were still being sorta fleshed out. But I've got a pretty good idea of how every single part moves at this point, so sure :D I'll give a not-so-brief summary lol [under a cut because I couldn't not dump multiple paragraphs teehee ~_~]

--------------

Tone Deaf is like a dystopian version of Sing, if I were to put it super duper simply. One where Buster's issues get more emotional focus, and we get actual bonds with the cast because the movie forgot to do that.

Buster is, also, a lot more unhinged, fair warning. This fic's gonna contain violence and tackle some darker subjects [adjacent to grief and denial more specifically] so if it feels like I jumped a lot of sharks, it's because I 100% did.

It kinda started with me noticing how, in the actual movies btw, smaller characters like Buster and Mike had more difficulty getting around places. This led me to ask myself about how species differences could lead to struggles for certain animals since the city just isn't built for everyone [this is NOT Zootopia]. Ash's quills, and Meena's towering size were things I noticed too that would be massive problems, realistically. So after a lot of pondering, now we're here.

The world of Tone Deaf in present day is in a post-war period that's lasted about 50 years now [Crawly is actually a veteran from this war- which was more like complete and total anarchy if I'm being real, since there weren't really any sides until near the end...]

Long story short, the wealthy capitalized off of the war and taking people prisoner- so they purposefully kept it going. A resistance ended up forming to stand against this [Miss Crawly being one of the generals, with that classic missing eye] and after their army stormed the unsuspecting stronghold, the war finally began to conclude. It still took around a year after that to release all of the prisoners of war, and by the end of it all, the damage that had been done to some races was permanent. Even extinction-level in some cases- some animals just straight up don't exist anymore because of it.

Back to Calatonia. Laws that are in place to protect animals from tearing eachother apart are still relatively new, and the criminal underbelly of Calatonia is kinda out of control. Animals get kidnapped/poached, smaller animals are at a huge disadvantage and have basically no power [politically or otherwise], endangered species are a very real thing, poverty is a huge issue for most of the population- and in the middle of all this is Buster Moon.

He's gonna be the main perspective. And the story will also serve as a slight character study on him, mixed with my own grittier and batshit insane changes/headcanons/alternate universe ideas on his backstory. He's a ray of sunshine with a lot of bottled-up feelings that will kinda really take control of the story.

Buster has been arrested multiple times. He's been put in unsuccessful therapy. He's still grieving his dad. He's committing crime and compulsively lying about those illegal actions too. He has emotional difficulties that he hasn't dared try touching on in years, and he has issues with letting go- which, is kinda how all of his new problems come to be.

The threat of his theater being repossessed if his show isn't a success gets a LOT more emphasis too.

But on top of that is the added threat of Buster getting sent out of the city if he can't get his business up and running. Remember how I mentioned endangered animals?? Well Koalas are one of them. One of the big ones, actually. He's the only Koala in a city of almost five hundred thousand, and it's been that way for almost half a decade now. It's been causing issues for the people in charge for half a decade now. Koalas have government-protected settlements far away from here due to their numbers being so few, so if Buster loses the theater? That's the next step for him.

But, to help this poor dude through all the stress of life is the found-family he develops with the cast he hired. He helps them for a lot of the first act, and then they give back his kindness in the second. They connect through their similar experiences, as well as their shared passion for music and performance. And by the end, maybe Buster's okay. Or maybe he's had a complete downward spiral [not gonna speak of act three 🥰]

Other characters have also had a shift in their dynamics. Things in the story have changed. Like for instance- Gunter already knew Buster and was a close friend of him and Eddie before the show, Judith is now the mayor and a main character, Pete has been put in place of the banker in charge of Buster's accounts, Buster unfortunately gets involved in politics, Mike actually gets to bond with the cast- actually the cast gets to bond with the cast point blank period [idc what you say, this just straight up doesn't happen in the canon movies], and to top it all of is a generous helping of angst with a few acts of violence sprinkled in 🤭

The actual Act I summary is this right now:

Buster had been in tight situations before-- suffocating situations, even. He’d been in every kind of trouble imaginable, he thought. With family, friends, local businesses, the law. But he'd always wormed his way out, either through loopholes or by charm. Or usually just by stacking another lie on top of his already crumbling facade. But this time it's gonna take more than a cover-up to fix this. ‏‏‎ Buster’s dishonesty takes him too far once again, a simple typo causing him to unintentionally land himself in a wager that could cost his very life. He has two months to fix this- to ACTUALLY fix this. And the worst part is that he hadn't even meant to lie this time. ‏‏‎ The First Act of Tone Deaf.

TLDR; Buster learns to love again after experiencing the horrors of animalkind firsthand and being healed by theater kids LMFAO

[certified-breogan-stan]

Logging back unto this account to drop my Murder Drones theory after the newest episode.

SPOILERS BELOW //

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We see in this episode that :

-Earth has been destroyed by Cyn/Absolute Solver

-The facility the gang just explored was dedicated to the study of the AS

-Nori, in the facility’s flashback, has a purple solver

-Alice, a study team member, tells a restrained Uzi that she looks like her mom , « minus the yellow eyes ».

That means that Nori had already fully awakened her solver to the point of having fully yellow eyes when she fucked off the facility … and yet still went on to have a life and family with Khan ? Who allegedly mercy-killed her after she got hit by nanite acid by hitting her with a wrench ?

No way a drone with full solver powers would get killed by something so inconsequential.

Now here’s where the crackpot starts.

First off, no way Nori’s dead.

Secondly, she evolved into another absolute solver entity that is NOT a copy of the original Cyn one, but instead its own thing. Cyn somehow became aware of this and mindwiped the murder trio (J/V/N), before sending them as murder drones to the colony to exterminate it as fast as possible.

So for those of you fine folks who’ve played the original Dead Space trilogy, the Solver is essentially a Brethren Moon-like entity that needs a critical mass of dead matter to trigger an extinction-level event like it did on earth. Nori evolved into one and Cyn wants to exterminate it as fast as possible before it becomes an existential threat to her, and that’s what this whole series is : two hypercompetitive lifeforms who cannot coexist alongside each other and fight each other via proxies.

[ahungeringknife]

I've got a lotta thoughts about the final cut scene but I don't wanna talk about that right now. I wanna talk about Eramis right now.

And how this is, legitimately, all her fault.

Eramis wanted safety for her people. A new start. She wanted Riis Reborn to be the new home for Eliksni. It was supposed to be a safe place from Guardians or humanity who attacked them.

It was. And it was for a long time. Decades. Maybe even a century or two. Riis Reborn was not built in a handful of years. Eliksni have been building and crafting Riis Reborn for a long time. And no one bothered them. Earth had no reason to investigate or go to Europa. We thought it was an abandoned ice world. That not even the Traveler or our Golden Age had been able to colonize the frozen ocean moon. We had no reason to even look at Europa. So we didn't. Even if there was a Pyramid there so what? There are Pyramids everywhere in our system. I'm sure there's one on every moon. I mean there's one on Earth's moon so why not?

Riis Reborn was a safe place for Eliksni. They were sheltered against the elements, ether probably wasn't so strictly rationed, the city was big enough to produce its own food and the Eliksni are smart enough to do so!

But Eramis couldn't be happy with Riis Reborn being as it was. It wasn't enough. She hated the Traveler. It had abandoned her and made her lose her mate and child and she blamed it for all the wrong doings of the uncaring universe. She needed revenge.

And she fucked it all up! She fucked it up for all the normal Eliksni living in Riis Reborn trying to have a normal life without fighting where they could raise their children and not be afraid they'd end up at the other end of a Guardian's gun or Light.

Eramis' need for revenge spoke to the Darkness. And the Witness spoke back. And it offered her a boon. A boon of Stasis; to get her revenge.

From what I understand Eramis' need for revenge is 1: Traveler=Whirlwind, 2: hates humanity for being Traveler's next chosen, and 3: hates humanity for the slaughter of her people.

I know a lotta people like to go 'yeah! Humanity sucks they killed a lot of Eliksni for no reason when they came in peace' as we get from Inaaks' lore book from Season of Plunder. The books tells how humanity gleefully killed Eliksni without a second thought and how they were monsters.

And here's why this part always bugs me. It bugged me in Beyond Light, it bugged Splicer, it bugged me in Plunder. It's bugged me since the Eliksni got more lore and became Eliksni and not just the Fallen. Everyone loves to point the finger at humanity for 'mindless' killing and slaughter of Eliksni, especially with what we found out Saint did in Splicer. I'm not saying he should have done that, he definitely shouldn't have, but the sympathy stick is used heavily in Splicer.

When the Eliksni arrived in Sol humanity was in the middle of its Collapse. We'd just suffered a system wide level of devastation we'd never felt before against a threat we had no idea how to fight. That we couldn't fight. A wave of Darkness fucked up our shit and caused a system wide catastrophic extinction event for humanity. It cut us off from our colonies and our colonies from Earth, it destroyed ships, it crashed Exodus ships. It left humanity at a state I'd say somewhere around the bronze or iron age but with the knowledge that we could rebuild and we could get back to where we were it'd just take time. But we were a broken, defeated, species who'd just been toppled from it's highest point of the Golden Age by an extraterrestrial threat: Nezarec (and I assume some Hive).

And then these other aliens show up. We can't speak to them and they can't speak to us. And maybe humans did strike first but humans also have a long long LONG history of showing up some place and colonizing it and killing the natives who live there. So how did we know that wasn't what these aliens were??? Or that they weren't working with Nezarac. In D1 and a lot of D2 the Fallen are 'minions of the Darkness'. We see them as being directly in line and aliegenced to the Darkness. This started a war because the eliksni are like 'wtf we came in peace and you killed some of us!??!!?' without any insight of what humanity was going through or dealing with.

In BL, Splicer, and Plunder there's a lot of 'this is YOUR fault' at humanity. When really, these aliens show up after a system wide extinction event, we have a bad first meeting and then the Eliksni go 'okay murder it is then!' and we end up where we are. Neither side is right. Neither side is wrong. Both are completely justified in their distrust and even hatred of the other. Eliksni and humans have devastated each other and been at war for literal centuries.

And back to Eramis.

Eramis was there for that. She was alive for that. She saw what happened, or at least heard about it. And then she comes to Riis Reborn, a safe, neutral moon that the Earth doesn't know about, that the Guardians do not care about. And Riis Reborn had normal Eliksni style strife like House infighting or petty bickering. But the people weren't being slaughtered. And it's like she went 'yeah man. That's cool. But also fuck humanity now that we have a foot hold here let's get them'. And as sOON as she was given Stasis by the Pyramid she didn't even hesitate to go 'okay now I can attack the Guardians, Earth, and the Traveler.' Even though Stasis is very heavily a defensive subclass. It is meant for CC and defensive positioning and possibly given to Eramis by the Pyramid as a gift to protect Riis Reborn.

Can't have that.

And that's why Variks sends out an SOS. He sees what this has done to Eramis and how it will destroy the peace here on Europa if she's allowed to attack Earth. How it will cause those who want to live peacefully to be brought into a war they never wanted to be in to satisfy Eramis' need for revenge. And he knows whatever happens will also not be good for Riis Reborn but it's better than watching Eramis destroy House Salvation (and kill Servitors).

And then the Guardian arrives on Europa. Because the Eliksni we trust (sort of) sent out a desperate SOS knowing we were the only hope for Europa before Eramis did her very best to ruin it.

And from there Eramis blames everything on us. Her friends getting killed. Her people fleeing Riis Reborn. What's happened to House Salvation. All of it is somehow our fault. Even though Eramis is just reaping what she sewed.

None of this would have happened if Eramis had been able to move on and forgive, or at least try to, the way Saint has, the way the City is doing, the way House of Light is, and probably a good amount of House Salvation as well. But she can't. So she blames us for all of her misdeeds, all of her torment, all of her dead friends. But if she'd put her need for revenge after the need to keep her people safe none of this would have happened. Riis Reborn and House Salvation would have been whole and Europa would have had a whole House full of Stasis users to protect it.

I fucking love Eramis so much she's so fucking cool and interesting and deep as shit.