#hunting practice!

[tamber-tales]

aha, but I have another cat! and she eats crickets now too!

I bet more pet cats would if people would let them try. after all, cats chase/eat them outside when left to their own devices

I just saw a video of some girl like "did you know that hornworms turn into beautiful butterflies?" and as she was putting them into a critter keeper, she mentioned feeling sad seeing them in the pet shop since they "just get eaten by dogs and cats". Honey, that's not what they're for

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji might be an unstoppable force, but Xie Lian has 800+ years of practice of being an immovable object.

(poll results here for context)

[sleepypandazzz09]

A terrible quick sketch of malleus singing. I just really love the song ok

[the-mang0tree]

blub blub

their actual colors

[all-that-jazz-93]

Y'all practical effects bitches are really sleeping on the Mission: Impossible movies.

"Oh everything is CGI these days!" Mission: Impossible uses practical effects whenever it's safe to do so, and their definition of safe is incredibly skewed because Tom Cruise is, frankly, batshit insane.

The man refuses to use stunt doubles because he insists the audience can tell when it's not him. He's apparently one of the best stunt drivers in the world. He drove up a cliff and skidded to a stop right on the edge for real in Dead Reckoning. He got a fucking helicopter license and spent like three years training for the climactic scene in Fallout.

Most of the helicopter chase in Fallout was real. The midair oxygen-tank swap in that movie was also real. They practiced for it in a wind tunnel and then did the real thing in freefall.

When Tom Cruise dies, it's either going to be because he realized Scientology was a crock and tried to get out and they fucking killed him (highly unlikely that he'll ever come to that realization), or because his luck finally ran out while filming a stunt for a Mission: Impossible movie (significantly more likely).

Seriously, if you have the blu-rays of any of these movies, I strongly encourage you to watch them with the director's commentaries. Especially the ones directed by Christopher McQuarrie. That man has an almost pathological distaste for CGI (and when they do have to use it, he's incredibly respectful and complimentary of the people who do the special effects).

Do yourself a favor and watch these movies. They're not just kitschy action flicks. They're kitschy action flicks with a metric fuckton of practical effects, and a production team that really cares about the stories they're crafting.

[theoldkyokodied]

posting this one seperatly bc of the subject matter uhm. anyway

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Starship Invasions (1977)

[kokoasci]

shoutout to the tetchou truthers

[thunderc1an]

messy concept feeding off of my last post of a horror + mystery spinoff warriors series

[lassieposting]

Absolutely obsessed with the ecosystem and interpersonal political implications going on in Poppy Playtime right now, like.

What we have in the Playtime Co factory is a society made up of creatures who were all, at one point, human. And while it's stated that the experiments have varying levels of intelligence and ability to recall their former lives, we know that a lot of them, if not all of them, retained at least some of their humanity post-transformation. For example:

Most of the experiments are angry, resentful and vengeful towards Playtime Co - they understand they have been wronged, and they are capable of holding grudges.

Poppy and the Prototype seem to have the same end goals (putting a stop to the experiments and saving the innocents being used in them), but diametrically opposing views on how to go about achieving them (the Prototype is a gritty realist who knows no war was ever won without bloodshed and is willing to cause collateral damage in the name of his cause, where Poppy is far more idealistic, moderate and morally opposed to/upset by the deaths of the Playtime Co employees). This dispute has escalated far enough that the Prototype apparently shut Poppy away before the Hour of Joy could begin, and Poppy now wants the Prototype dead for what she sees as a crime equal in atrocity to Playtime Co's - they are able to understand ideologies, have ideological disagreements, and strategise against each other.

Huggy Wuggy, who seems to be only slightly more intelligent than a predatory animal, can still write, and uses the ability to try to guide fleeing prey in the wrong direction - that suggests he uses the vents to hunt on a regular basis, and he's clever enough to use basic deception.

On the subject of Huggy Wuggy, when he escapes the facility, his first instinct is to go home.

There are also numerous examples of the experiments being able to form and maintain social bonds, and work together:

Mommy Long-Legs is described as "nurturing" and "motherly" towards the other experiments, as well as the children. She's placed in the Game Station precisely because her desire to protect and care for the children outweighs her hatred for her captors: she won't act aggressively in front of them.

DogDay says that he's "the last of the Smiling Critters", implying that the Playcare originally had a full complement of Bigger Bodies Critters and that they were all able to coexist peacefully.

Kissy Missy and Poppy clearly have a friendship, with Poppy willing to charge into unknown danger to help her friend.

Miss Delight originally calls the other teachers her sisters, and she's horrified and grief-stricken by her own actions when she turns on them.

Miss Delight and CatNap form a non-aggression pact that seems to include some kind of respect for territorial boundaries, as Ollie claims that CatNap usually avoids the school. That's Miss Delight's turf, and he clearly respects her space, even though it technically falls inside his own territory.

The Prototype - who's usually kept in isolation and under surveillance precisely because he's known to be violent - was on multiple occasions set loose in a room with at least CatNap (and potentially other experiments) without bloodshed. He's even confirmed to have patiently tolerated CatNap lowkey imprinting on him and following him around like a duckling.

The Prototype also opts to save Theo Grambell's life, knowing damn well that to do so means sacrificing his shot at freedom. There is no reason for him to do this other than caring for Theo.

Again, DogDay is the last of the Smiling Critters. Despite the fact that there would have been six of them, and one of CatNap. Working together, they should have been able to overpower him easily, and the fact that they couldn't makes me think that either a) there was a big confrontation in which CatNap either arrived with or was able to call out for backup or b) CatNap became an infinitely more capable strategist and picked them off quietly one at a time, using skills he'd have to have learned from someone.

Anyway. My point here: these were originally people, with all the associated moral hangups and emotional messiness, and they retained a lot of their humanity post-transformation. And they were on the same side, to begin with. During the Hour of Joy, they all turn on the workers together.

But after that? The complete breakdown of that unity and those complex social relations into an essentially animal ecosystem, and the psychological impact on the surviving experiments, fascinates me.

By the time the game starts, the experiments have run out of food, and they've begun turning on each other out of desperation. The Bigger Bodies monsters, previously social and cooperative, have been forced into direct competition for food, and as a result they've largely become solitary apex predators with fiercely-defended territories, where they can pick off smaller, weaker experiments at will. There's some evidence of cooperation and coexistence between predators - Bunzo Bunny and the Mini-Huggies survive ten years in Mommy Long-Legs' territory, possibly filling the scavenger niche and surviving off her leftovers, and Miss Delight is tolerated in CatNap's - but the small toys we see scattered bloodily all across the factory (and the small Bunzo we see picked off by CatNap as it tries to cross a room) show that there's a whole category of experiments whose lives would've become all about hiding, and sneaking, and being where the Bigger Bodies critters aren't. The predators, driven to the edge of starvation, have had to surrender a lot of the human values and morals they had before. The prey have essentially become rodents - they're in danger every second they're not safely hidden away somewhere.

And yet!

The way they've reacted to their trauma is still so human.

Like. Take the difference between CatNap and Mommy Long-Legs.

Mommy and CatNap - Marie and Theo - have a very similar start in life. Both were children when they were experimented on and transferred into their mascot bodies. Both were orphans, and both are described as not fitting in or being particularly happy in the Playcare - Marie was bullied, and Theo is described as "odd" and "antisocial with other children".

But post-transformation, it seems Marie was largely left to, essentially, raise herself. We know that she was aggressively hostile towards staff, and gentle and nurturing towards orphans and other experiments, but we have no suggestion that anyone was caring or parental towards her. Like most of the experiments, she has a digestive tract and would have needed to eat, so she must have had a "keeper" of some kind, but she doesn't seem to have had any attachment to anyone who could serve as a parental substitute and guide her into adulthood.

When we meet her as Mommy Long-Legs, she would be a young adult - she's grown up in her mascot body. But even acknowledging that she's been driven mad by fear and isolation, her emotional development shows several damage markers you'd expect from a child so utterly deprived of love and care and guidance. She's emotionally unstable and prone to throwing extreme tantrums over small and arbitrary inciting factors, like "cheating" at a rigged game - there's very limited ability or desire to moderate or regulate her emotions. She's erratic, has poor impulse control, and when she's angry she lashes out violently at whoever is most convenient - like Bunzo - even though it's someone else - the player - that she's actually mad at. She does try to hide her disappointment at our continued existence behind her bubblegum Mommy persona, but she never quite learned to convincingly mask her emotions the way adults can. Nor has she mastered the art of making and executing a plan - when she attacks, it's all aggression - the single-minded grab-and-smash of an angry, thwarted child. Even Huggy, limited though his intelligence is, stalks the player and tries to chase them into a kill zone. But Mommy relies solely on her stretch ability - automatic, instinctive - and her sheer rage to make her the GameStation's apex predator. Left to raise herself, she never learned a lot of adult skills or survival strategies, and it's become a fatal flaw - she knows her territory, she knows where there would be machinery to look out for, but she's so single-mindedly focused on punishing the player that she completely overlooks her own safety.

Contrast: CatNap.

CatNap is also a young adult when we meet him, and if he'd also been left alone to raise himself, he'd probably have a lot of the same developmental stunting. But he doesn't, and that's interesting.

Now, let's take a very quick detour to look at the behaviour we've seen, not from CatNap, but from the Prototype. We know he's fiercely intelligent, calculating, and a tactical thinker with a talent for using his environment and anything in it (up to and including the player - he makes use of Mommy after we kill her, even though he's the facility's super predator and could easily have done it himself) to his advantage. We know he's stealthy - from how close to us he is at the close of each chapter, he's likely been tailing us from the moment we entered the factory, keeping his distance and watching us to see what we'll do and how he can make use of our actions. Some of his behaviours are strongly reminiscent of a soldier in action - I have a theory here that whoever became the Prototype had, at some point in his previous life, been a military man.

And now look at CatNap. Who has he become?

An intelligent, calculating stealth predator who uses his environment and any weaponizable thing he can get his claws on to take out his prey with minimal risk to himself. He's capable of adult logic and reasoning skills - i.e. the teachers will get hungry and harm the surviving children, so locking them in the school to fight to the death removes all but one threat, who can then be negotiated with once the children have been moved to safety. He's able to form and maintain alliances and agreements. He's even able to identify that the player is either a) not a threat to him or b) proving useful to the Prototype, and overlook his own hunger to offer them mercy: leave Playcare, or I'm coming for you.

In other words, he's grown up a lot like the Prototype.

And there's a reason for that! We know from the interdepartmental report on CatNap that for some reason, after his transformation procedure, he was allowed to socialise with the Prototype - an experiment who's considered so dangerous usually kept on lockdown in isolation under constant surveillance. And the report notes that CatNap "follows [the Prototype] around like a lost puppy" and that the Prototype "doesn't seem to mind".

Which, on its own, could just mean that the Prototype recognised Theo for what he was - a traumatized, hurting, confused little boy - and, aware that CatNap was not a threat, opted for tolerance over violence. But when you consider CatNap's history with the Prototype, I don't think that's it. Theo befriended the Prototype, or vice versa, long before Theo ever became CatNap. He was mortally injured trying to help the Prototype escape, and the Prototype gave up that shot at freedom to get Theo medical attention. They are close, and the fact that CatNap, a decade later, has assumed so many of the Prototype's traits and skills implies that they remained close for a good long while after the Hour of Joy.

Theo, aged 7, is clinging to the one person he feels safe with and protected by after a major trauma. If he follows the Prototype everywhere, he won't be left alone with the scientists. If he's not left alone with the scientists, they can't hurt him anymore. And the Prototype lets him, reinforcing the idea that you're safe with me. It's not unlikely that he feels responsible for CatNap's fate - if he hadn't taken Theo to the Playtime counselors for medical attention, the boy would have peacefully died, and wouldn't be living a nightmare - and he's stepped up to parent CatNap.

And you can see echoes of that ongoing bond in how CatNap behaves a decade later. Who taught him to hunt? The Prototype. Who taught him strategy and tactical thinking? The Prototype. Who gave him the survival skills he needed to make his way to the top of the food chain and stay there? The Prototype.

Unlike Marie, Theo had someone to protect him. Someone to play with and care for him. Someone to hunt for and feed him once the bodies began to run out, at least until he was fully capable of catching, killing and pulling apart his own prey. Someone to socialise with. And he's better adjusted - for a given value of "better adjusted", because like, nobody in this factory is even remotely okay - as a result.

And that's still so human. Despite the absolute horror-show feral animal situation they're all living in.

Just? idk man i have a lot of feelings

[hheisa]

Still practicing but with some twst doodles

[gatoburr0]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

This was home.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[coulrology]

FLOATING HEADS RAUUGHHHH 👻👻👻

[lucabyte]

i am looking at nohats au 👀 please share more

So! NoHats! I'm going to grab you and use this to ramble. A Lot.

The NoHats AU is @samhainian's it's just that I'm the strange little freak who takes the words said unto me and executes on them. But I can still do a little explainer on what our overall thoughts and vibes are. (And, that we are in fact propping up a little box with some cheese under it here. 🪤 Please (PLEASE) feel free to pick up what we're putting down.)

We're far from the only ones exploring a "what if siffrin fucking died" AU, though the main difference with NoHats is the placement of the death in the timeline. Instead of being 'Mal Du Pays Wins' or 'Act 6 encounter goes horribly wrong', the death is… Just after the (literal) falling action.

(This placement is because Sam is a comic book fan who thus has become used to characters being ripped away at the cruelest times by shitty writers. THANK FUCKING GOD adrienne is not that and isat is delightful yippieee, but, back on topic.)

Giving the party the full understanding of What Happened that you get by putting the death after black hole siffrin, but before the A6 encounter leaves an interesting gap to be filled. See, making Siffrin's death very much not Loop's fault means that… this once again reads (when not read as simply a tragedy...) as the universe doing what it sees fit to fulfull Loop's wish… Thus making Siffrin's death Loop's fault again, but only in their eyes. And only in a way they could express if they were honest about who they were…

And this is where having had excuse to waffle about my general Postcanon Loop thoughts the other day comes in handy, because Sam and I have that as our canon-compliant reading to begin with, NoHats plays off of a lot of the same readings of Loop's character. Namely: Uh Oh Somebody's Lying By Fucking Omission Again. (BECAUSE TO BE FAIR THIS TIME… HOW THE FUCK WOULD YOU HANDLE THAT?)

Now, neither Sam nor I are fanfic writers, so this has been a little bit trapped in our heads and DMs (and my unfinished art but,)

But our thoughts on how NoHats like… Goes.

Siffrin's death is peaceful, but that does not mean the aftermath of it is. I can't imagine the party takes it well, especially after understanding the circumstances of the Loops. (And, of note, in A5 where nobody had the discussion on what to do with each other's bodies should something happen…) But I'd imagine it traumabonds them somewhat (understatement of the century) and now knowing how the rest of the party feels, they resolve to travel together for the forseeable future.

The party track down Loop to deliver the terrible news, since they were clearly Siffrin's friend too, and invite Loop along to travel at least long enough to (let them grieve) get the burial over with. Loop, here, can be helpful in knowing what Siffrin would've wanted where the party would be at a loss. Loop, I think, takes a bit of a lead on the funerary aspects of it all, because, um. (Performing rites on your own body, huh?)

Then, as things are after a death, life just… Kind of has to continue on as normal. The party travel, pick up Nille, and get to know Loop as this mysterious new person. Maybe in this situation they might stay in Bambouche for a while to give Bonnie more stability since. They are probably taking it the worst. It would've come out of absolutely nowhere for everyone in the party obviously but god, for a kid? For A Kid?

It should be stated NoHats is not intended to be grimdark, just y'know. An exploration of grief. This is also why it's got a bit of a lopsided focus on Bonnie vs the rest of the party because hhrrhghghhghghhhghhghhh <- incoherent

Now, a crossroads.

How does the party discover Loop to be Siffrin? How long does it take. How much have the party embraced them as part of the family (especially with something as intense to bond over as this)?

There's the Odile option. Have her put it together and have to bring it up somehow. This could also be done by Isabeau, perhaps. He's smart. (which. God. If anything's the real Isabeau Torment Nexus it's this)

Then there's the other option batted around by Sam and I. The: The Universe Dislikes Duplicates option.

The items in the house that fzzt away when inspected. The Universe doesn't like there to be two of something, at least not when they're acknowledged. But one of something is just fine…?

Which is to say. I'm not a personal proponent of 'Loop getting their body back'. EXCEPT …… except this one time.

There's only one Siffrin now, so they don't need to be obfuscated to exist.

Consider, if you will. Loop swallowing their guilt for long enough to be comfortable. Falling back into old habits. Without another Siffrin around to compete for the niche of, they actually begin to act like Siffrin again. Not intentionally, it's just… The party is as welcoming as they've always been. And the party swears they keep catching glimpses of a face under all the light.

Then, one day, while still not fully human again, the resemblence becomes undeniable. Loop having not even noticed until everyone looks at them like they've seen a ghost.

Has it been months? How long have they kept up this lie? Is it even a lie, to them? They're Loop. But they were, once, Siffrin.

Even after explaining it, does that make it better or worse?

Bonnie cuts through the betrayed, struck-nerve reactions with a sobering "I missed you."

… Anyway !

Yeah so that's the vibe for NoHats. As for LoopLoops? That's more nebulous. I think it can go anywhere really in the NoHats timeline. I err personally toward the "Loop continuously replays the last 10 minutes before Siffrin's death almost immediately after they find out and have to parkour their ass up the House in the most distressing situation possible to try and get them to hold on, just please hold on." (Remember! Siffrin can remember the contents of Loop's loop backs in the A6 fight!)

But there is the possibility that this happens months, or worse years down the road. One last Loop back. Throw it all away for the chance to just get that one thing you didn't know you even wanted but now know you NEED.

Misc:

Okay miscellaneous time.

This is where I admit that I have a bunch of unfinished NoHats art that I haven't gotten around to yet because I feel like a right tool being so obviously Loop-Centric with my fancontent (I AM . . I REALISE I AM NOT DOING MUCH TO BEAT THE ALLEGATIONS.) So like if people want to see that please say because euaghghghhfh <- the nervous.

this is like the most fucked up place to do isaloop fr. anyway.

one of Sam's mid-game observations that I'm just going to share for no particular reason is that Bonnie's hair shares a bunch of shapes with Siffrin's. The flick up at the top, the 3 pronged shape of the fringe… just something to think about.

Without 2 Siffrins around to compare each other to it'd likely be a lot harder to notice Loop's similarities. Doesn't mean that those similarities don't sting more in this context though.

If you do NoHats without LoopLoops. The concept of this all fading into memory years down the line while they just have slightly-glowy but otherwise regular Siffrin hanging out is fucked up to think about. Just like real grief. Augh

6. a peek into the original dms as a treat from us

[aphyray]

Something's coming... 👀

The Hunter's Elegy. Deadname ghosts and name necromancy in a dystopian future. A private detective novel full of cover-ups, cults, and penance. #acab

Starring discredited cold case documentary maker Reese Keyes and his justifiably egotistical new boss, private investigator Hunt Cheroneau, who's having him record their every arrogant word while the two of them solve a case that cuts far far deeper than either of them are prepared for.

-

The extremely visceral cover art there is by the very talented @morggo. Go check out their work! It's sick as hell!