#i stop being a sentient being and become a thing of violence

[discranola]

so as a gay man (i am incredibly gay. i am a man who likes men. im a faggot, if you will) every time i see a m/m ship i like referred to as “just for fujoshis” or “only straight women like this” i feel myself getting closer and closer to violence

[terapsina]

Now that the writers and actors strike is about to begin being felt (and as we wait for those greedy billion dollar companies who are refusing to negotiate fair pay and conditions to give up) here's 10 of my favorite (all around best) fully finished older series you should definitely check out if you haven't watched.

I mean it, these are the shows with continuously great writing and a satisfying endings that manage to actually deliver on their promises.

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1. Leverage - (containing 5 seasons, or 77 episodes) - trailer here.

Hitter, Hacker, Grifter, Thief and Mastermind. Heists and cons. Stealing from the rich and giving to their victims. They provide... leverage.

Meant for anyone who enjoys bad guys being the best good guys, who will burn down the lives of evil CEOs and then gloat in the background. Very satisfying.

Hands down the best example of a found family trope I've ever seen on screen. Barring none.

2. Killjoys - (containing 5 seasons, or 50 episodes) - trailer here.

Space Bounty Hunters. Another case of found family trope. Bisexual space princess assassin. Quippy sentient ship. Green alien goo. Evil lesbians (but like... in a good way). The warrant is all.

More seriously though, it's a story about three killjoys and the bounties they go after. Initially. And then they have to save the entire Quad from some very terrifying... stuff.

Contains one of the best friendships I've ever seen on television.

3. Orphan Black - (containing 5 seasons, or 50 episodes) - trailer here.

Found family trope but with clones.

Low level grifter sees a woman who looks exactly like her kill herself and plans to take over her identity long enough to cash out. Except then there's two other women who also look exactly like her. And apparently they're all clones and someone's killing them.

Enter a global conspiracy. Human experimentation. Lots of clone shenanigans. Some serial killings. And a few murders 💖.

4. Person of Interest - (containing 5 seasons, or 103 episodes) - trailer here.

Okay I'm beginning to see how I might have a found family trope issue.

Former CIA agent gets recruited by a reclusive billionaire computer programmer who developed a... machine that can predict acts of terror before they happen. But it also predicts 'irrelevant' acts of violence that will result in someone's death.

Unless someone interferes.

I'd really like to spoil some stuff to get you all to watch this one. But I'm going to maintain self control and just mention that early on they get a dog named Bear. Bear is a very good boy. Watch it for Bear.

Also for excellent commentary on rights of privacy, government surveillance and what does 'greater good' even mean? But mostly Bear.

5. 12 Monkeys - (containing 4 seasons, or 47 episodes) - trailer here.

The very best time travel show out there. What starts out as a confusing mess of causality basically exploding, by the end of the series all makes complete and total sense.

(when that final timey-whimey loop slid into place and revealed the entire pattern it was like a choir of angels started singing in the back of my head. It was freaking glorious).

Anyway, a man from a post apocalyptic future travels into the past to stop a plague from decimating nearly the entire world population.

He has the name of the man who released the virus and it's supposed to be a single trip. One trip. One bullet. Simple. Done.

Except then things keep escalating, and escalating until time begins eating its own tail and it might start looking like the end of the world might be a better ending than erasing all of time and space from reality.

Because when our guys screw it up, they screw it up GOOD.

And oh yeah... found family.

6. The Good Place - (containing 4 seasons, or 53 episodes) - trailer here.

A self-proclaimed Arizona dirtbag opens her eyes and finds out that she's dead and got accepted in the Good Place. Except that as soon as she arrives the Good Place starts glitching, and she really, REALLY needs to become a better person before she can be found out and kicked out to the Bad Place.

Luckily her assigned soulmate was a professor of ethics and moral philosophy.

One of the funniest, most thoughtful and clever comedies I've ever watched. Ever. The characters are delightful and by the time the final minute rolled around I had sobbed my heart out multiple times (which, as we all know, is a sign of the very best comedies out there).

As for the question of whether or not this too contains Found Fami- Yes! Obviously, yes.

7. Avatar: the Last Airbender - (containing 3 seasons, or 61 episodes) - intro here (couldn't locate the trailer but it's basically the same thing in this case).

The four nations lived in harmony. Until the Fire Nation attacked.

It's been a hundred years since the beginning of the war when two kids from the Southern Water Tribe find a boy frozen in ice and wake him up. A boy who's able to bend all four elements... though not very well.

Enter multi-nation flying road trip (thank you Appa, we love you most of all) as they try to find teachers for the Avatar and save the world.

Includes found family (shut up), amazing fight scenes, the most heartfelt and vivid characters ever, and the best example of a redemption arc actually done well.

8. Love Between Fairy and Devil - (containing 1 season, or 36 episodes) - trailer here.

This one gutted me. I'm saying this as a compliment. But it had to be said. Completely destroyed me. I just haven't been the same.

A love story between an Orchid Fairy and the leader of the Moon Tribe that starts out with her accidentally releasing him from millennia long imprisonment and then takes you through the caleidoscope of all possible human emotions (it's a body-swap comedy through the first part, then a romcom, then a dramatic romantic tale, and finally a tragic love story).

But it's such a satisfying slow burn.

And it carries this... humanity through the whole thing that makes it so visceral.

If you're a romantic who's very tired of instalove and characters dropping all their morals because 'ooh, attractive person' then you've got to watch this. Because this story does NOT take the easy road there.

(my more extensive rec for this series can be found here)

9. Star Wars: The Clone Wars - (containing 7 seasons, or 133 episodes) - fanmade trailer here (it was better than any of the official ones).

This series did so much. Introduced Ahsoka Tano, and made us love her. Gave names and faces and souls to the Clone Troopers (okay, it's the same face but you know what I mean), to a point where their endings during Order 66 destroyed me just as much as the ending of the Jedi Order. And somehow made me both love Anakin AND be a million times more angry with him.

There are some arcs in this series that might be a bit weaker. But there were some... god, there's a reason I love Clone Wars more than any other series or trilogy in this universe. And I'm not even a little ashamed to say it.

Must watch for Disaster Lineage shenanigans; for the vod'e; AND for the Jedi (who did their best okay? They always did their best 😭💔).

(and on the subject of found family... do I even need to comment)

10. Nikita - (containing 4 seasons, or 73 episodes) - trailer here.

A rogue assassin that escaped Division - covert government agency that takes recruits out of prison, fakes their deaths and then forces them to become spies and assassins - has come back to take it down. Brick by brick if she has to. With guns and explosives too when that works better.

Contains soooo many cool fight scenes. Is full of incredible characters you'll fall in love with (and hate with) very quickly. And most of all has an incredibly complex relationship of mentorship and friendship between two women that holds both great admiration and betrayal, real care and love as well as rage and hatred, forgiveness, mutual respect and an unbreakable kind of bond that so very rarely involves even one female character on TV, let alone two.

(as usual, found family tropes up the wazzoo).

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In conclusion. We all know there's going to be a large space between seasons of our favorite shows now (and some shows that aren't going to survive it). Let's fill that space with some excellent TV we haven't had a chance to see yet.

And direct the blame for the wait towards the right place (i.e. the studios).

[peachyfnaf]

I'm sorry but "MY BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS WITH A DISORDER<3" really made my day and I needed you to know

🤣🤣🤣

I can't believe Nexus is bullying peepaw war criminal.

Do you think Nexus is going to be stopped by big bro Sun or do you think the lil guy is going beyond the point of no return?

(Please talk about baby cringe Lord Nexus, I want to hear about your blorbo 🙏)

That's because Nexus IS my beautiful princess with a disorder, I'll have you know <3 they're diseased but it's okay I can give them their tetanus and flu shots and it'll all be better I GOT THIS

But. ahem, okay, blorbo yapping time. I'm not even gonna say "I'll try to keep this short" because I know it wont end up that way HAHAHAHAHA

"Do you think Nexus is going to be stopped by big bro Sun or do you think the lil guy is going beyond the point of no return?"

I... have absolutely no idea!!!1! (and also it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize peepaw war criminal was Ruin KJDFHSDF)

The most frustrating thing about canon Nexus is how his morals, motivations, and goals seem to see-saw back and forth all the time. at first, he became how he is now due to Solar's death. he spiraled in his grief, identity-issues, and abandonment. but... now his motivation is to become an all powerful god??? while it's most likely that NSP is at play and affecting his thought process, it's... well, it's really hard to take him seriously as a villain because of it, lol. for an audience to enjoy, and even sympathize in some cases, with a villain, their goals and motivations have to be concrete. they have to be relatable, or at least understandable, but Nexus' whole thing is... not, Imho. and I know I'm not the only person who feels this way!!!

I see a lot of people calling Nexus "cringe", and the thing is, when it comes to canon Nexus, they're not really... wrong??? The worst thing Nexus has done so far is make Old Moon see his past victims, which is fucked up of him to do, but.. so far, that's kind of it??? other than that, his "villainy" consists of saying empty threats and cheesy evil one-liners. hell, he was supposed to kidnap Sun yesterday but instead spent the whole episode yapping and venting to him, chasing Sun around in the worlds darkest game of tag before getting some lead right in the face dkfjhsdfsd

Also, notice how he's only targeted Old Moon when it comes to actual physical violence? not Lunar, Earth, Solar, or Sun, but Old Moon? yeah, I did too. we already know that Nexus does everything because he's lashing out, but as of rn the only target he's gotten his hands on physically being O.M...? well. I think it says a lot. cause' yeah, he sure as shit scared the life out of the other Celestials, but he's never put his hands on them!! the only other one of them he harmed physically was Earth- and not only was he not aiming for her, she was just in the way- he felt immediate regret for his actions once in space, and has yet to even see Earth ever since that day.

So, I really have no idea if he's going to be "redeemed" or not. one second he's showing signs he might be, and the next he's falling further down the "pretty badly written villain" rabbit-hole. if he does get something akin to a redemption arc, he'll prolly mostly be accepted in the eyes of the viewers, considering a lot of peeps sympathize or at least understand where he's coming from, but I seriously doubt the other Celestials would take him back. the only one's who might see him as family/a close friend again are Sun and Solar, but even then, nothing would ever be the same.

I hope he gets redeemed, or at least freed from the hold Dark Sun has on him and he's able to live his own life, I really do. at his core, Nexus is a good person. a good person who was crushed under the weight of the shadow of the man he was born under. and we know this because he used to be New Moon. sweet, dorky New Moon.

New Moon, who made inventions like sentient knives and whoopee cushions. New Moon, who had matching My Little Pony stickers with his best friend. New Moon, who bought a whole ass island-luxury-house for Sun because he wanted to make him feel better and give him the proper space to heal. and New Moon- the poor freshly-baked A.I who gave his all to make sure he could do everything that Old Moon could, but it just wasn't enough. he tried and tried and tried, but it wasn't enough.

So yeah, idk if he's getting one in canon, but to me, he more than deserves a good ending, for the life he was given. let him be at peace.

[thelegendofmik]

Stop Defending Ableists Challenge (Level: Impossible)

So the other day I made a post listing all the ableist things Jacob Richmond has included in Legoland and Ride the Cyclone.

And the response was abysmal - the amount of "well actually..." kind of responses I got was disgusting and I took down the post because I find it counterproductive to argue with teenagers on the internet. However, I stand by the belief that if you think you are old enough to post publicly on the internet, you are old enough to be held accountable for what you post.

But I think what I had to say was quite important, so I am going to reword it here.

TW here for the discussion of ableism and ableist slurs (they are all censored)

There is ZERO (0) justification for the use of THREE (3) ableist slurs across both works. I don't fucking care if it was the 2000's. The ADA predates both shows and disability activism had existed for decades before that (as yannick very kindly reminded me). So no, it was not ok for Richmond to use those slurs in his works, regardless of the time period. Because there is nothing "correct" (politically, or otherwise) about ableism.

And before you say "Oh, but it was the character who said it, not the writer..."

CHARACTERS ARE NOT SENTIENT BEINGS! They are not created in a vacuum. Their thoughts and actions are often a reflection of the author's own beliefs and morals.

It was not Ocean who decided to use the word cr*pple. It was Jacob Richmond who decided to use it. Same with the r word and sp*z in Legoland. It wasn't Penny and Ezra who decided to use those words, it was Jacob Richmond. Because each character's actions are dictated by the decisions that the author makes for that character. And in this case, the author decided to be an ableist asshole.

Yes, characters can be assholes. They can be complex and nuanced beings. But there are better ways to portray such experiences than being violently ableist (i.e.: without using slurs). And why does the ableist character get complexity and nuance, but the disabled character is simply the sad, disabled kid, with not much else in his personality until he magically becomes abled bodied. Like we deserve nuance and complexity as well, people!

In a 2022 interview with Curtain Call Bway (here), when asked who his favourite character to write was, Richmond responds with the following:

Ocean is definitely my favorite character to write because it’s based on certain people I’ve met and certain aspects of myself too.

Like he literally admits it himself, that his decisions when writing an ableist character were based off aspects of his own personality.

The reality is, disability has never been more than a comedic plot point to Richmond. He has never cared about portraying a realistic disabled experience. He has never cared about disabled people.

And the cherry on top is that his response to yannick-robin being hate-crimed was to rewrite Ricky so that he could be played by an abled and therefore production teams wouldn't have to give a shit about ensuring their spaces are safe and accessible for disabled performers. If he actually cared about disabled people and properly representing our experiences, he would have worked with a disability consultant and fixed the issues within the show. Instead, he doubles down and causes even more harm.

To add insult to injury, he then licensed that script to Sarah Rasmussen and her team of ableist cronies for the DC production. Because him choosing to continue working with Rasmussen and her team just shows that he shares the same ableist values as the McCarter/Arena team.

So by saying that "its the character, not the author", you are defending Richmond and his violent ableism. You are attempting to justify the harm he has done and CONTINUES TO DO to disabled people. YOU. ARE. A. PART. OF. THE. PROBLEM.

Ride the Cyclone and Legoland (in ALL its forms and versions) contains so much ableist violence. This violence has traumatised REAL PEOPLE, but yannick, myself, and other people speaking out are the ones ruining the vibe by calling it out? Be fucking for real people.

Now if only my university papers were this thorough...

[blushingdread]

I watched the amazing digital circus for the first time bc of all the Tumblr hype and I have an angsty AU I'd like to present

Basically the idea is that pre start Jax's bullying eventually leads to multiple people's abstractions, and those abstractions lead to more (ie: Jax isn't going to bully Zooble into abstraction, but seeing eveyone else abstract might)

Jax is left alone in the circus, a new person arrives and Jax (who is barely sane after being alone for so long) tries to befriend this new person and get them into all the things he likes (mostly treating npcs, which are shown to be sentient, like absolute shit.) Unsurprisingly murdering beating and other wise being violent to creatures that are nearly indistinguishable from the humans had BAD effects on Jax's new bestie and Jax has to watch as they become a worse version of himself and then basically does everything in his power to avoid a horrible fate, leading to their abstraction

Enter Pomni! She's in this scary world with only one person, but this one person is really nice (if not extremely awkward) the so called adventures are interesting and not traumatizing at all (almost as if someone asked Caine to have absolutely no violence of any kind in his adventures) and sure it's a little weird that Jax doesn't want to go a literal second without her but also he had to alone for a while before she came (it was a lot more than a while)

Eventually Caine drops that Jax is the compete opposite of how he was like when he first came here and Pomni starts digging into her friends past

I imagine it as an interpersonal drama, bc Pomni would definitely hate that he bullied many people to all but death and he only stopped when it started negatively effecting him, but also he's the only other person here and people go insane without a friend and they both know that

[yanderes-galore]

Anon couldn't be here for the request period so I reserved two requests for them.

Anon said: "I know you said writing self-aware stuff isn’t your favorite thing, but I loved the Self-Aware!Glamrock Freddy thing you've written and now have a mighty need for more self-aware Security Breach, specifically with the other Glamrocks considering they're not only chasing you around the entire game, but they also get smashed up in pretty brutal ways by the player (which I imagine would be painful to go through multiple playthroughs). That said, I feel like Roxanne Wolf would be also be a good ‘character made self-aware’ candidate, as it’s stated in-game that she’s able to see things the others can’t, which would translate well to a character that can perceive the virtual environment they’re in. May we have self-aware hcs for her? Possibly including her being shattered multiple times and how she'd feel/react?"

A/N: I suppose I can, yes! I'll just be rambling about my thoughts on this. Plus, I will also mention Security Breach main game and Ruin in this a bit.

Yandere! Self-Aware AU! Roxanne Wolf Concept

(Mentions Security Breach and Ruin)

Pairing: Platonic/Romantic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Feelings of betrayal, Angst, AI becoming sentient, Fear of abandonment, Violence, Trauma mention, Twisted sense of attachment, Disturbing themes.

When it comes to the other Glamrocks in FNAF Security Breach, I'd say they're in worse condition than Freddy.

While Freddy appears to have a relatively nice time interacting with the player through Gregory, Roxy does not.

Think about it, Roxy's experience with the player character main game is getting a kart smashed into her face and her eyes removed-

Which is why I feel most of her feelings would develop in Ruin more than the main game.

I think it's an interesting idea to mention Roxy's eyes.

It is mentioned in game that her eyes can see things others can't.

In this case it's not just seeing walls, it's seeing you.

For some reason she's more attuned to your presence than any of the others.

She can sense you/see you using Gregory as some sort of host.

It takes her awhile but she soon realizes your actions are "pre-coded" for the most part.

Certain events in the game have to happen... Roxy learns this as you play the game over and over again.

At first she doesn't understand why you'd hurt her.

Why do you keep putting her through all this pain?

It does hurt her when you have to beat her down and take her eyes.

It does hurt her when you abandon her after that.

She doesn't get it, she wishes it would stop.

However, part of her realizes it's not in your control when she hears you comment on it.

You appear to feel bad for her fate.

Even when she has to suffer through it countless times.

She still hates the fact she's forced to deal with the pain.

Yet she can't bring herself to hate you fully.

She knows you're causing her pain... but you must not mean it, right?

Roxy really does hope she is you favorite....

At first she hates you but can't bring herself to express such feelings.

In a way she's curious about you, even when she's busted and shattered.

You probably don't mean it.

Oh but she hates the pain.

I feel where her obsession really starts is in Ruin.

She's even worse than how she originally was, constantly crying about how she looks and the trauma of it all most likely.

This is when she notices you take a new vessel, Cassie.

As Cassie... you're so much nicer.

The game allows you to be so much softer and Roxy finds himself chasing that comfort.

She's still hurt from the previous events... but in Ruin she feels compelled to help you.

Here... it feels like you've come to make things right.

Roxy fears being alone more than anything.

So with your host being Cassie she'll probably find herself growing attached again.

Her senses would become dulled after her eyes are gone but she still knows you're there.

She remembers what you look like and yearns to see you again.

Roxy develops an unhealthy attachment towards you, due to the fact she feels any attention is good attention I guess.

She tries not to blame you for her destruction but she can't ignore it.

Roxy loves/hates you.

She hates you as Gregory, stealing her sight and smashing her to bits.

Yet she loves you as Cassie, fixing your mistakes by trying to help her.

Roxy knows she can't truly live without you.

That's true in more ways than one, too.

Roxy may be willing to tolerate her destruction if it means she doesn't lose you.

She fears you leaving her, even though you've caused her pain she feels you can fix her too.

In reality she really does feel like some sort of toy to you.

She isn't really sure how to feel.

Would things be better if she wasn't so sentient?

Or would she feel... more alone?

Safe to say Roxy's feelings towards you are rather conflicted due to what Gregory and Cassie do to her.

Between her being shattered and her obsessive nature towards you... she isn't sure what she wants.

Such decisions only make the wolf suffer more, unfortunately.

Even by the end of it all... Roxy can't bring herself to hate you.

In the end... she needs you.

She just hopes you need her too... even if it means she's your toy to break.

[ohemgeeejay]

2k3 Shredder and why he fucking terrifies me 💀

I’m having some intense ass 2k3 tmnt brain rot rn, and I need to talk about this Shredder. This bitch is horrifying. Note that I am only about half way through s3, and this is my first time ever watching the show in full, so there is a lot I haven’t seen yet. All of my knowledge and opinions are based off of the first 3 seasons.

Onto the why!

First of all, this mf has been an intergalactic war criminal for hundreds of years. Based on all the shit we see going on across this universe, you gotta have done something pretty damn horrific to become a war criminal. Like this lil’ freak can easily be considered a terrorist. Even if we disregard that, he’s still the leader of a gang that borders on being a cult.

He has killed so many people? Using people as a broader term for any intelligent, sentient life forms- so humans, Utrom, etc. We don’t have a kill count or anything, but he’s probably directly killed over 100, and indirectly killed thousands more. Thousands may seem like an unrealistically high estimate, but when you really think about it, it’s not. Saying he’s indirectly responsible for 1000 deaths is a generous underestimation. Think about it, all the people his Foot Clan goons have killed, all the gang wars and violence he has incited, all the buildings he had destroyed, livelihoods of innocent people he completely demolished, and everyone who died for him. Not to mention how any and every person who died in the Triceraton/Federation invasion of earth only died because of a millennia long chain reaction resulting from this evil little flesh sack stranding the Utrom on Earth.

Even without all the actual deaths he caused, the things he is shown to be willing to do to others are nightmare fuel. He has no morals whatsoever, no compassion for any living thing other than himself; there is no line he is not willing to cross. He brutally killed Hamato Yoshi, he was willing to leave the turtles & co. locked in a fridge, in a burning building, with a gas leak, and a bomb ready to go off. He inflicts life altering injuries on his “employees” to punish them for not accomplishing his impossible goals. He regularly threatens death on those he views as lesser, and is perfectly content to go through with it.

A perfect example of his sadism is Baxter Stockman. Stockman was just your average corrupt, greedy tech CEO. Shreddy-boy saw the chance to exploit that, recruiting Stockman to be his robotics guy. Every time Stockman failed to do what Shredder demanded of him, he lost a part of his body. He was dismembered and tortured and taken apart like a fucking LEGO set. I mean, he got so mutilated he was literally nothing but a brain, a spinal chord, and an eyeball in a tank. Shredder destroyed every part of Stockman that wasn’t useful to him, which was everything but a genius brain. With all of his body gone, Stockman didn’t have the choice to leave the Foot, he physically couldn’t leave the Foot because he would die. If he ever dared to stop serving the Shredder, he would inevitably die, whether the Shredder ordered it or not.

Which segues into my next point, his manipulation. The way this ugly ass quishy tissue blob manipulates everyone around him is sickening. The way he treats Karai, someone who sees him as her father, is nothing other than abusive. He lies so easily. He almost convinced Leonardo to join him by pretending to be some benevolent ninjutsu master. He views every life other than his own as expendable, and he sees himself as a being above death, a god above God.

Which brings me to my final point. THIS MF JUST WILL NOT DIE. Every single time the turtles seem to have defeated him, every time it seems like he’s finally dead, THIS BITCH JUST COMES BACK. The mental anguish and paranoia that would cause anybody once it happens over and over again is enough to land you in a psych ward for eternity. And it seems like every time he returns he returns more powerful, more evil, and less human than ever before.

So yeah. 2k3 Shredder fucking petrifies me and I am not at all ashamed to admit that. It’s a pretty reasonable fear imo.

[brightbeautifulthings]

Katzenjammer by Francesca Zappia

"They're all so dark, Dad said one day, watching over my shoulder as I worked at the kitchen table. Why don't you paint things like a blue sky, or a field of flowers, or a bird flying on a breeze? Something happy that your mom can put on the fridge. She can put these on the fridge, I said. Maybe just one flower? he asked. There are no flowers where I live, I said."

Year Read: 2023

Rating: 4/5

About: Cat has been stuck in School for as long as she can remember. The hallways slowly expand and contract with School's breathing, the showers run red with blood, and the students have divided themselves into changed and unchanged. While the unchanged hide in the fortress of administration, Cat and her friends haunt the courtyard and hallways. Her best friend is turning into cardboard, and Cat's face has become a cat mask made of her own hardened flesh. There are no doors or windows in or out of School, and something is hunting them down one by one in the hallways. To escape, Cat will have to understand why they're trapped in the first place. Trigger warnings: Some triggers are listed at the end of the review because they include spoilers. Character death, guns, violence, blood/gore, dismemberment, body/eye horror, bullying, slut-shaming, vandalism.

Thoughts: Thanks to @ninja-muse for recommending this book, since I'm not sure I would have found it on my own. This is probably my favorite Francesca Zappia novel to date, and one of the best novels on this subject I've ever read (more on that after the spoilers). However, I believe it's best to go into it not knowing much more than the description provides. This book works extremely well as a slow reveal. What starts out as a mindfuck becomes slow understanding as we realize more or less alongside Cat what is happening in School, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice to read the spoilers if you plan to read this. However, it covers a number of very heavy and potentially triggering topics (and it's difficult to gush about how I think it works without giving things away), so I'll include those thoughts at the end. I can't stress it enough though. If you're not easily triggered, stop here and go read this book!

This is also one of the best examples of uncanny horror that I've read in a long time. Zappia expertly manages to capture the quality of a nightmare without sacrificing the continuity. School is creepy and semi-sentient, and the changes it brings about in half the students are a study in body horror. Perhaps even more terrifying are the parallels it draws to some very real life horrors such as bullying and, indeed, I found the flashback chapters of Cat's surfacing memories of her former life of being targeted, bullied, and slut-shamed at school more difficult to get through than the surreal scenes of hacked up bodies or bloody showers in School. Real life horror always affects me a lot more than the supernatural, and Katzenjammer does an excellent job of balancing both. The ending is cathartic and effective, and there's less of a plot twist than a sort of inevitable, dawning horror-- which is honestly the best kind.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. TURN BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

Remember how I said that real life horror is always worse than the supernatural or the uncanny? I stand by that statement. Zappia draws such excellent parallels to real life in her uncanny School that it's almost impossible not to realize before Cat does that the traumatic event that put them there was a school shooting. I've read a couple YA novels that handled the subject fine, but I don't think any of them capture it as well as this one. We need something like the supernatural School and the horror of bodies changing in ways we can't explain to fully grasp the senseless horror of gun violence. Killing children makes no more sense than hallways that breathe or girls who turn into their cat masks. It takes Cat the entire novel to understand the horror and absurdity of what's been done to her and to accept it-- that there are reasons but not excuses, and that we will never know all of them. I cried a little at the end, but I think the real life horror of it is too big for tears. Instead, it's a feeling that will sit with me long after I've turned the last page.

[corvidcrowned]

Peeks in

Hi i finished yttd and now i have to ask what exactly is the ai test idiots au? im very curious,,, from what i can tell its a sara ai? who became sentient? but idk abt the others lol im just oh so interested

ok so get this right.

the ai sims- aka where the percentages are from- were disrupted one day when a glitch happened, messing with everything going on in the facility. This happened when the sara ai won, causing her to achieve self-awareness! (Here’s a comic of what happened from red’s perspective kinda)

Before this event, the sims went pretty normally- one or two people winning and all the others dying. Noticeable patterns showed up though! The sara ai and keiji ai were pretty much nemeses, the sara ai killed the shin ai most times, and the anzu ai had a pretty decent win rate, particularly because of her rivalry with the sara ai. ‘PLEASE stop killing people’ ‘ermm.make me?’ You know.

The glitch that made the sara ai becoming self aware led to some other weird stuff happening though. For example the sim itself would glitch often leading to the ais themselves to get super corrupt for short periods of time. Very strange and unusual. Michiru was supervising all this but scientific curiosity was too much to make everything normal again.

Fun fact though !! The Sara ai ends up becoming a lot more different from the original, eventually becoming his whole own person entirely !! He goes by Red, originally a nickname from Michiru because of his eyes. He/it/bite little creature guy<3 the anzu ai clings to being ‘anzu’ longer though, since for a while getting back home because her family needed her was what kept her going. Eventually though, they accepted being an ai, picking out the name ‘Pierrot’ with Red’s help. The two of them won a lot of simulations together! Pier wins some alone too ofc but unlike red’s weird mother-son like relationship with Michiru, pierrot does not like her at all (here’s how they met)

Eventually the simulation is concluded and red gets put into a doll body (which is drastically customized- fangs and his red eyes. He cuts his hair a little bit too hehe) while Pierrot manages to get into the general system at asunaro. The two don’t see each other for a while because of this unfortunately but eventually they do reunite, pier just living in red’s (stolen) phone sometimes. <3

Red and Pier’s funny lil story goes in a few directions depending on things, they show up in a collaborative au between me and some friends (ai guys<3) and some other stuff, I wanna make a comic abt them eventually (the Pluto project..<3) but their ‘canon’ end is them living with the survivors of the death game!! Because. Red’s ass broke into the dg LOL. He was like ‘heyyyy emiri ^^ you know what would be funny..’ and she was like. ‘Get in there boy��. So red ends up hangin around and messing/hanging out with people!!! Like kai(here) and gin(here) but he and sara REALLY DO NOT GET ALONG!!!!

You see… Red is very jealous of Sara. Why did he have to be created just for her sake? How come she got homecooked meals and a family that loved her and friends and school and he had to live through hell every day?? Ofc sara’s life isn’t that great (her father is literally meister after all..) but red does not know that. Sara finds herself disturbed by red. This weird copy of her keeps running around causing trouble and insulting her to her face.. she thinks he was thrown in to make everyone trust her less or something. They’re so messed up…. After the death game though they hang out a lot. Make amends. I ljike them..

ERM YEAH THATS ALL OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD..!!! Also candy’s here sometimes she’s a cute pink girl who kills<3 (she also is an ai of shin who takes after midori… a lot. Because she was directly under his thumb and had to deal with him she began to associate violence and love until the two concepts totally overlapped in her mind. AND she’s trans!)

[jangofctts]

Bloodsport (Din Darin x fem!reader)

Rated: Mature 

Word Count: 6k

Warnings: nothin much. no smut. canon typical violence, explicit language, blood, Mando being Mando. im posting this bc im petty and because I feel bad that I never posted it in the first place. also this is over a year old so I apologize it’s not great 

Never, in the entirety of your life did you think you’d return to Tatooine. Tatooine for fuck’s sake. A literal sandbox that upholds no feasible joy unless you count the annual womp rat raid or the pod races in Mos Espa. Even then—yikes.

Didn’t think a kid nicknamed Wormie would be the one to blow up the Death Star either. Or yknow, dethrone Jaba the Hutt with some fancy laser sword. Or was it a chain? Ah, whatever—good riddance to that slimy pile of sentient boogers. 

Anyway—

You should have followed Wormie’s example and steered clear of this place—taken up that permanent post as Red Leader for the Alliance and live out your days in a cushy position on Naboo or something. But, you never did enjoy taking the path of least resistance, you’re a pilot after all. Live and die for all that risky shit—the thrill of a fight and near brushes with death. You’d rather stake out your own journey in life—forge out a path so bright that other’s cant help but envy.

Growing up on Tatooine, there weren’t many kids your age—you were always the youngest by nearly four years (not that it ever stopped you from nipping at the older kids’s heels). To this day you can still recall every face, every dumb nickname and inside joke you all created—all the dares and stupid challenges like licking a womp rat’s tail or eating a handful of sand (you always won). Wild and free like a pack of yipping dogs—smiling, dirt stained faces and scuffed up boots worn down to the sole each month. Scrapes and bruises were flaunted as trophies, a chipped tooth like a shiny metal pinned upon the chest. Trouble wasn’t in the vocabulary of your mouth’s—back then it was just fun.   

But time has a way of twisting and mangling the glimmer of childhood. Everyone grew up—more responsibility and less time to play on the dunes. School instead of riling up a nest of whatever doomed creature you could find. Petty arguments that turn into venomous resentment, culminating rifts in friendships and the battle of loyalties between friend groups. 

You’re not sure when the bitterness of living on Tatooine settled in. Sometime between your first schoolyard fight over who would get the desk near the window and the gossip of your upbringing that followed you around like an ugly second head. Or maybe it the way everyone assumed you’d morph into the collective—a moisture farmer or maybe a mechanic like your aunt. One thing always stayed the same. You never outgrew the snarling beast that festered in your chest, it only grew with you over time.         

Call it the age difference or the simple fact you were more feral creature than child, the two people who stuck around for the long haul were the neighbors’ kids. You chased off everyone else—decided that being alone was better than falling in step with mediocracy and someone else’s footsteps. If anyone would leave Tatooine first, it was going to be you. 

Then Biggs left. 

The Skywalker’s farm burnt down, the entire family too, shortly after Biggs’ departure. Everyone assumed Luke died along with them—you believed it as well. Scoured the farm and the corpses with blurry eyes and the hurt, worse than ripping off fingernails with tweezers, bloomed in the cavity of your heart. The worst part of it all was no one cared. No one gave a shit about the culprits or impeding war that was always glossed over on the local radio—they were all fine with sitting and becoming complacent.       

A year passed—and the night of your sixteenth birthday you jumped ship the second the opportunity presented itself. Living in a space port had it’s perks—someone was always going somewhere. You snuck on board of a clunky freighter headed towards Takodana and that was it. Fueled by spite and the need to be part of something bigger. 

The rest happened in a blur. You joined the Alliance—you found Biggs and Luke, alive and well, only to be ripped apart by different destinies another time over. You became a pilot—Red Leader in fact, and damn good at it. Helped blow up the Death Star (the second one that is) and that was that. 

No one tells you that returning home is the scariest part of it all. But—it’s Tatooine for Kriff’s sake. Hardly anything had been touched, the people all the same and uninterested in the outside world. A relieved hug from Peli had been expected—no anger at your unapproved departure—just a resentful frown at the stitched up laceration over your brow and part of your cheek. She didn’t yell about how worried sick she’d been or the lame and infrequent, encrypted holovids you sent to assure that you were still alive and not blown to bits. You told her you didn’t expect to stay long…funny how it’s been five years since then.  

Look at you know, you think with a bemused scoff. Washed out and living in your aunts hangar in the prime of your youth. Guess your glory days had come to a lazy, halting stop.  

The life of a mechanic in Mos Eisley is never overwhelmingly busy—a day or two off every now and then if you so choose. Only thing you frequently find yourself doing is participating in a long standing rivalry between you, a broom, and and the congregation of overly curious Jawas. One night—one kriffing night you left a rusty speeder and a couple power converters out and now they think it’s easy pickings—  

Whatever.

As long as they don’t start physically manifesting inside the spaceport it’s fine. Totally cool. 

Besides swatting the little creatures away with your trusty broom each morning to clear a path, there’s not much to do on Tatooine—not unless you fancy throwing in on a Sabaac tourney or brushing elbows with none too desirable folk. You stick to the landing dock and work. Busy hands keep the mind occupied after all.

But it’s Tatooine—

Dust storms that’ll scrape up the insides of you nostrils and make your nose bleed or leave you blind, Imperial sympathizers, smugglers, you name it. You never make a habit of familiarizing yourself with whoever lands in your hangers—bad for business and honestly? You’d rather not get kidnapped and sold off to the Spice mines on Kessel for opening your big fat mouth. 

So, naturally your only option for a cheap drink and the affirmation that, yes, you can in fact still leave Tatooine whenever you’d like, is to go off-world.  

Bakura is a hop away—far enough you never run into anyone twice and close enough that the charter fare is dirt cheap. It’s always the same cantina, same back left corner that provides an excellent view of the exit and the neighboring lavatories that boasts amusing in-house drunken brawls. What’s better than this? Guys being dudes—petty squabbles over fragile masculinity and an urge to prove something dumb.       

Tonight is slow—regulars night you suppose. Or is it a weekday? Maker you don’t even know what day it is. 

Sighing, your eyes lazily crawl over the drab decor in the cantina, sipping on a neon blue drink that tastes like those little blue candies. Y’know—the ones that grandmas always have stashed away in delicate glass bowls and insist you take a handful even though the candies are the same age, if not older than grandma. 

You pinch the little black straw between your fingertips and take another sip. Too sweet for your liking, but a damn good chaser for the Corellian fire whiskeys you’ve amassed. In fact, just as you’re putting the rim of the shot glass to your lips, the liquor already bright and hot against your bottom lip—you see him.     

There, in the opposing corner of the dingy cantina, you spot the familiar sheen of tempered beskar.  Neon lights from the nearby exit reflect off his cuirass, hyperspace blue that switches to fuchsia pink then back again like a dizzying light show. His helmet is tilted in the direction of the bar, analyzing the couple lingering near the last two stools. You know the little lime green Twi’lek—not by name—but because she’s always somehow wrist deep in her target’s pocket while they all but drool over the deep cut of her cleavage. None the wiser as they’re robbed blind. The poor bastard currently playing into her finely spun web is no different.  

Good for her—

You flick your eyes back over to the Mandalorian and force down a surprised cough as the full weight of his attention settles on you. The likelihood of him being here on matters concerning you are high, but Stars, you weren’t expecting him. How’d he even get inside without you noticing anyway?

The guy is a walking armory donning beskar that sparkles brighter than kriffing diamonds and worth more than than the entirety of Tatooine you’d bet—he’s not an easy thing to miss. Mando is broad—even more so with the added bulk of armor, and in theory that much metal should make some sort of sound.

You scratch your brow with your thumb and sigh. Fuck. You must be loosing your edge or you’re drunker than you thought. 

Well, no use just sitting here and having an awkward staring contest you certainly won’t win—might as well invite him over. You raise your hand in a begrudging wave and pull your face into a mask of an indifference. Mando places his hands on the table and pushes off to stand, tattered cloak scraping along the sticky floor as he covers the short distance between you. 

Gesturing to the open seat on your right, Mando takes up the offer and sits with a muted grunt—guess that armor is heavy. 

“Funny seeing you here,” you sigh, kicking back a shot of another fire whiskey. The glass clinks against the sticky table and joins the growing array of crystalline tumblers. One of those nights where the pain of the past stings worse than alcohol splashed into an open wound. “Did Peli send you? I left a note, y’know.”

“I’m not here for you,” he assures, a smooth rasp even with the static distortion of the vocoder. He turns his head and sweeps the room with poised nonchalance—your heart jumps as the darkened visor returns to you with a weight heavier than the catch and pull of a black hole. “You got a habit of running off?”

Your bottom lip tastes bitter as your tongue passes over it. “Depends on who you ask.” 

“Hm.” Mando’s pensive hum tapers off into stagnant silence. 

This is why, you think with a miserable frown, you always drink on your own. Too many awkward pauses like this and the embarrassment of being tipsy in front of a sober person—you’re off your guard. Plus—you’re not even sure why he’s here— 

You clear your throat and beckon over the bartender with a wave of your hand—Ekah is working tonight. A Mirialan around your age—skin the color of fresh honey and pale green eyes to compliment. Ekah taps two fingers to his temple in acknowledgment and finishes scrubbing down a tumbler with a rag that’s seen better days. He steps around the bar and wanders to your table, his right brow quirking in curiosity at the sight of the Mandalorian.    

“Finally making friends, Skitter?” The hexagonal tattoos inked into the sharp slopes of his cheeks crinkle as he smiles. “And here I was, thinking I was special.”

“Fuck off, Ekah.“ You scowl. “Neither of you are my friend.” 

Ekah gasps and places a hand over his heart in mock offense. “So cruel for such a sweet face.”

Your eyes narrow. “Ekah—“

He sighs, roll his eyes and waves his hand in a shooing motion. “Alright, alright—what is it you want?”

“Closing tab—“ you spare a glance at Mando. He cocks his head to the side. “—uh, unless—do you want…anything?”       

Stars that was awkward. 

Mando lifts his palm off the table and shakes his head in a no. You figured, because of the helmet and all…Worth a shot. 

“Great—“ You nod, shifting onto your weight to fish out the credits in your pocket as Ekah announces your total.

Yet before you even have the physical money in your hand, Mando reaches into his supply bag and pulls out the full amount, plus a hefty tip. “I’ve got it.”

Mando hands it over much too quickly for you to protest and Ekah, opportunistic as a bartender is, collects his credits and shoves them into his pocket, never to be seen again. 

“Cheers, metal man,” he grins. He spares Mando a salacious wink and spins on his heel, a couple midnight black strands of his hair falling out of place as he hurries back to the bar. “See ya ‘round, Skitter.”

Your brows furrow as you puff out your lower lip, head swiveling to glare at Mando. “Why’d you do that? I can pay for myself.”  

Mando has the audacity to shrug. “Wanted to. We’re friends aren’t we?”

He knows damn well where he stands. You clench your jaw and jerk your eyes back to the table. It never sits right with you when someone offers to pay—feels like a slimy rock in the pit of your stomach. On Tatooine you learn to fend for yourself at an early age—leaning on the help of others tended to land you in more trouble than you could shake off. Worst case you ended up at Jabba’s Palace as a nice little side dish for the local rancor, best case you payoff the favor working at a moisture farm for a couple days. 

Simply put—no one does a favor simply for free.   

Anyone who offers is cause for suspect. 

But then again—Peli trusts him…

You exhale loudly, irritated by the sudden bout of silence, and shift to move from you chair, but he stops you with a question.  

“Why do you call yourself Skitter?” He says it softly, not meant to offend or demand your compliance. Whatever he picks apart, he does it with precise and patient skill—simultaneously seeking insight on who you are while granting that thin veil of anonymity. Simply wedging his foot into an already cracked door. 

Your eyes slip from the harsh lines of Mando’s helmet to the splotchy grease stains covering your knuckles. No matter how much you scrub or pick at them, the dirty smudges never seem to disappear—permanently ingrained into your skin like a gods awful tattoo. Doesn’t stop you from roughly rubbing the pad of your thumb over your index finger in hopes that it might just work this time. You sigh and curl your fingers into fists—no use. 

Lying to him crosses your mind—spin some absolute bantha shit story about how you won the Boonta Eve Classic and how you earned the name. Or maybe you could tell him you’re a part of a highly covert crime ring and speaking your name aloud will assure you a one way ticket to the grave within the hour. You’re not sure how well that one will fly, but hey—you’ve convinced a couple of morons here and there.    

However—Mando is no moron.  

He wouldn’t pry the truth out of you like a crooked incisor with rusty pliers—no. This is a game of trust. By extension on Peli’s behalf you’re reliable—one of the good guys that offers safe heaven for himself and the little green terror each time he lands that literal pile of scrap metal in hangar four—always hangar number four. 

 It still doesn’t negate the fact that Mando knows jack shit about you. Just a grouchy mechanic with bloody knuckles and a mouth sharper than a bowl of tacks. This is him offering an olive branch of his personal trust. By choosing to lie you would be severing the rare reveal of a kind heart with a vibroblade dipped in venom. You don’t know what he thinks he’ll find or what’s to gain from you revealing a bare thread of yourself but—  

Whether it’s the blend of spiced rum and fire whiskey that helps loosen your tongue into speaking, or just the simple fact that you actually kinda…enjoy Mando’s company—you tell him.  

“Peli—“ You begin, your lips quirking at Mando’s unsurprised huff upon hearing your aunt’s name. “I was, like, a little kid when I went to live with her—four or five maybe?” 

You spare a quick glance at Mando. His vambraces chink against the edge of his cuirass as he leans back in his seat. He laces his fingers together and rests his hands just above where his codpiece should be; and as you draw a breath he tilts his head ever so slightly to the right, exposing more of the metallic earpiece to better hear you. 

He’s being polite—

You blink and drop your eyes back down to the empty glass you fiddle with. You never dwell or find it in your to care about what others think of you—too much energy wasted on perceptions that you’ll never be privy to. Say what you mean and repercussions be damned. So why is it that your heart begins to flutter like a distressed creature in the clumsy palms of a curious toddler? 

A wildfire blush races up your neck and burns hotter than a miniature sun in your cheeks. You swallow and reach up to toy with the loose baby hairs that curl next to your ear. “Y-you ever, um, see a sand skitter before?”

Mando shakes his head.

“They kinda look like slugs,” you say, separating your forefinger and thumb to show Mando a guesstimate of their size. “Fast little fuckers though—they like to hang out around Jabba’s Palace. B-but anyway—“ 

You clear your throat and continue. “Peli always said I looked like them back then—squishy and small. It didn’t help that I ran around around like a wild waste creature either—got into more trouble than you can even imagine.”

Mando’s amused huff crackles out of the vocoder. “I think I can.”

Another blush heats your cheeks. It’s the damn alcohol—it must be. You should tell him to fuck off—take his metal, bucket-head looking ass straight back to Tatooine and leave you alone. What makes him any different from all the other people you’ve batted away? You don’t  know—you don’t know—

Instead of all the things you should say, you wrench off another branch of yourself and gladly put it into his outstretched palm.   

“I..uh—I don’t think I’ve used my name—my actual name in years,” you confess quietly. The admittance is a strange one—makes the back of your throat tighten while plucking at tender heartstrings you didn’t know existed. “Even in the Rebellion I was just…Skitter.”

In the Rebellion everyone has a number, a nickname, a call-sign—no one cared who you were because when they risked doing so they opened themselves up to pain. It’s easier to be nameless—keeps you focused on the task at hand. 

But it’s over now—it’s done.   

He lets the silence settle and you know what he’s going to ask. You see it in the way his armored shoulders raise to take a breath and the crackling curiosity that practically sparks off the metal. Nonetheless, it’s still like getting shot pointblank in the chest the second he asks.   

“Will you tell me?” 

Such a simple question shouldn’t scare you. Pure and simple fear that better belongs on a feral fyrnock backed into a corner with only it’s sharp teeth to protect itself. Joining the Rebellion should have scared you—hoisting yourself into that worn cockpit every day with the promise of death and gut wrenching adrenaline should have terrified you. The crash on Endor that left a scar over your left brow and broke seven ribs is far more daunting than someone asking you for your name.           

“I’m willing to trade.”

You’re clever enough to realize that this is his way of assuring you that trust is a two way street. He knows the importance of a name better than anyone else—how these sorts of things aren’t meant to be traded—but both of you are making exceptions tonight, even if it’s dangerous. 

You’re both playing with matchsticks around a barrel of coaxium, one slip of a finger and you’d both go up into volatile flames that will rattle the very seams of the galaxy. Mando is showing you how willing he is to offer a piece of himself at your feet—so long as you do the same. 

You sigh and close your eyes. “O-ok…yeah—yeah.”     

As you lean to the side he folds at the waist to meet you. You take another inhale—the last breath before plunging into an ice cold sea—and maybe…maybe it’s not as scary as you once thought. 

The chapped swell of your lips brush along the frigid beskar as the syllables of your name bubble past your teeth. It tastes foreign and odd in your mouth, like cotton or the creaky hinges on a rotting window pane. 

You like it better when he says it.  

The slow drawl of your name repeated back to you is the first breath of spring in the unending winter within your chest. There’s always been a slowness, a stillness in the delicate redwood needles of your bones that glitter with a thick layer of frost. No clever fox or brightly plumed bird resides here—no whispering, pushing wind that dances with the slow creak of ancient tree trunks. Here there’s only overgrown, dark rooted trees and bone white snow—something mistaken for being alive.

Skitter is the name of a girl who drowns in the acrid smoke that bellows from her lungs and disastrous flames that spill from the gaps in her ribcage. It outmatches nebular implosions, leaving behind entrails of embers that burst and flake off from her skin like brittle wood thrown into a funeral pyre. Even the sharp curve of a rabid smile shows something of that all-consuming hunger—something never meant to survive for long. No life has ever made its way into her bones, but the flames that transform blood into ash and anger shine in her eyes.

Your name—the one that sun speckled light touches and spreads inside of your lungs, urging Mando to whisper in quiet tones meant only for your ears. It promises that this is only the beginning—that there is gentle starlight instead of war smoke and here there is something beautiful waiting for you. Someday the heavy snow that buries your body under its weight will melt and give way to the delicate bloom of ferns and creeping lichen. Hope crackles in your blistered palms, transforming into the wings of a sparrow and the very same warmth that you dream of holding.   

Goosebumps rush down your spine and every inch of skin as Mando repeats your name a third time—speaking it as if it’s a prayer to some long lost deity wearing a circlet of stars and a mouth made of rose petals. But it’s only you. You who sits in the back corner of a shitty cantina, dressed in neon light while you and a Mandalorian whisper secrets that are long since forgotten to the world into each other’s ears.   

But the slow grace of become gentle is a long one, and there’s much to learn. “You call me that in public and I’ll strap your tongue to a belt sander and set it on high.”

Mando chuckles at your empty threat and leans more of the broadness of his shoulders into your space. “My turn.”

The icy cold beskar touches parts of your ear and jaw, his even breathing amplified by the static crackle of vocoder. This close, you can feel the helmet buzz over your skin. 

“Din.”    

It suits him—sweet and simple. 

And like he knows you’re itching to shy away from the chilling unfamiliarity of bearing your heart, Din leans closer. You’re not trapped, but he’s forcing your hand to either flee like you’ve always done or confront him. 

You stay.      

He moves his hand glacially slow so as not to startle you, granting you an opportunity to slip free, but you hold steady. The padded leather covering his thumb touches the side of your chin, and out of habit you flinch. The weight of his thumb immediately retracts, but with a mumbled apology and a weak smile of encouragement, he returns. 

Mando—Din—cradles your chin between his forefinger and thumb and traces a light back and forth pattern, the worn leather soft against your skin. Desire bubbles in your chest like heartburn, and all you know right in that second is you need more of him—hungry for any scrap he offers. You lift your hand and curl your fingers over the top of his knuckles and with a little tug, you coax Din’s open palm over your cheek.

Staring into that endless black visor, your eyes flutter shut as you lean into his hand. Vulnerability tastes strange on the tongue—still have to wrestle back the urge to snap and chase him away. You’d be content staying like this all night but… 

Tonight is not the night for it apparently—

Fuck—

All those drinks hit you with a gut wrenching wave of dizziness worse than clipping a short corner in the Diablo Cut—same kinda feeling you get after pigging out on starcherry pies and then taking a high-stakes joyride on your dad’s spiffed out speeder. 

You squeeze your eyes until you see little bursts of light and suck in a deep breath, beating back the nausea with sheer willpower and the very present dread of puking all over Mando’s chest plate. What a fucking spectacle that would be.  

You cringe and slump from his palm and into the dark fabric of his cowl, the sharp smell of ozone and something woodsy a pleasant surprise to your senses. Maker—you could stay here all night, breathing him in. You’re lucky he’s wearing his helmet—you fucking stink.You’ve been marinating in the acrid stench of cheap spirits and cigarette smoke for hours and you know it’ll take days to scrub it off your skin and clothes like shitty perfume or spilled jet fuel.  

“Are you taking a nap?” Mando accuses—the lip of his helmet knocking against your ear as he tries to confirm his suspicion.

“No,” you grumble, “‘m smelling you.”

“What?” Din’s shoulder jump with a unbelieving snort. 

You huff and bury your nose deeper into the swath of fabric. “You smell good. Like—like one of those…those candles.”

You feel his chest rise and fall with a deep sigh. “I think it’s time to go home.”

“So you are here for me,” you scoff, raising your head to shoot him a weak glare. “How’d Peli convince you?”

“Offered to take it out of your pay.” 

“Damn, that shit sucks.” You retort, lifting yourself from the stiff beskar to rub at your tired eyes. “Lemme—lemme guess—“ you hiccup and point an accusing finger. “That piece of junk ship got fuckin’ trashed and—and you expect me to fix it.” 

Din cocks his head to the side, shrugs and moves out of his seat, offering you a hand. You shoo it away with a feeble glare and help yourself up, albeit a bit wobbly.

“You have talented hands.” He purrs next to your ear as you attempt to stomp past him. “I’m sure you can manage.” 

“Yeah—“ You sniff, each step a blurry stumble towards the exit. “You bet I fucking do.”

His soft laugh whispers behind you—

You hate how much you like it. 

Din ushers you onto the very ship you vowed never to take a ride in, solely due to the fact that this thing has been trashed more times than you can count. You cringe just thinking about the innards of the Crest you so begrudgingly fixed—probably all fried to hell and busted up again—     

Surprisingly, the ship flies fine. Suspiciously smooth sailing, enough that you even manage to doze off in your chair. Until you’re so rudely awakened.    

It’s a little tickle on the side of your temple—like a stray hair pushed out of place by a breeze. Half lucid, you grumble and furrow your brows at the sensation, hoping it’ll piss off and leave you be—

The bluntness of calloused fingertips caress over the ridge of your brow, then sweep to the shell of your ear, thumbing at a lock of hair in muted wonder. The same kind of fascination you’d see on someone who’s never felt the texture of another’s hair because of the heavy gloves they wear like a second skin. You crack an eye open, confirming the culprit just as his bare hand dances over your cheek and skins along your jaw. 

Din’s hand freezes, hovering in midair the moment your sleepy eyes catch over his visor. You roll your lip between your teeth, attempting to solely focus on his helmet instead of the brown, sun-kissed hand inches from your face. You’re not sure what’s considered rude or blasphemous in Mando culture, but airing on the side of caution with things like this is best. 

“You snore.”

You blink. “What?”

“I said you snore in your sleep.”  

Din spins on his heel faster than you can process and exits the cockpit. Huh. 

Alrighty then. 

Rubbing the sleep from your eyes, you stand and follow after him. You squint as the loading ramp is lowered, the change in lighting creating a dull ache behind your eyes. Mando hovers at the end of it, patiently waiting for your sleepy self to join him. He’s docked just on the outskirts of town you note—he’s not staying for long. You were just a detour.      

You sigh, face souring as the first rays of sunlight whisper across the glittery yellow smudge of the horizon. Sand scrapes your cheeks and tickles the inside of your nostrils as a gust of torrid air sweeps down from the nearby bluffs, promising another scorching day that’ll make the skin on your nose peel and flake off. Absolutely putrid. “I fucking hate this town.”

Mando makes no comment on his end, just rests his palm over your lower back and guides you forward. This shouldn’t be miserable— 

He isn’t marching you off to your death or anything—just an end of a chapter you didn’t intend on closing so soon.

 Isn’t it funny when you’ve got an entire speech’s worth to say and yet all of it decides to stay stuck on the roof of your mouth? But that’s the problem—you’d have no idea what to say—just an endless turmoil of emotions you aren’t able to pin down and decipher. You’re not even sure if you want to anyway—

All too soon you’re reaching the blast doors that lead into the space port. Din stays outside when you offer to go get his kid from Peli’s care. He’s bundled up in a spare blanket, tucked against Peli’s side—both asleep. Without waking your aunt, you slide him into your arms and make your way back to Mando. The baby whines and cracks his large eyes open. 

“Hello, Creature,” you greet, sweeping a thumb over his large ear. “Dad’s here to pick you up.”

His eyes slide back shut, nuzzling deeper into the swaths of blanket as you hand him back to Din. The Mandalorian happily accepts the little creature and tucks him against his side. Cute.    

“How long are you staying?” You’re cracking open another door for him, letting the soft glow of an imaginary future spill past your fingertips even though you know it’s far fetched. He shuts it with a gentle sigh and a weak shake of the head. 

“We’re leaving today. It’s not safe for us here.” 

Your brows furrow. “You’re being followed?”

The way his shoulders stiffen tell you that it’s a long story. That it runs deeper than just a mere skirmish and bad blood. You don’t like his answer when he tells you the short version of things. Don’t like the way your whole body seizes and doused in a vat of ice water.  

“That’s…no. That’s not—the Empire was destroyed.” Your breaths turn sharp like frayed lungs hacked at the stem and the cold dread of a returned horror. That part of you, the one that fought tooth and nail for the galaxy perished in the flames of war alongside every friend and ally you’ve lost. To say that something you played a part in ripping to shreds for good, is back—it’s digging up ghosts and dusty skeletons you’ve buried long ago. “Din—the Empire is gone."  

“Not all of it. They’re after the kid.” The baby, now awake, squeaks and looks up at Din, his little fingers wrapping around his thumb. “If I stayed any longer I’ll be putting you both at risk.”  

You wrap your arms around yourself and study the tips of your boots. “You’ll be gone for awhile then.”

You lift your head and study the sharp lines of his helmet and the dark strip of visor. His silence carves out the fragile hope cradled in your chest with a rusty knife—throws it at your feet with bloody uncertainty. He chooses silence over hollow promises—could be years or three weeks the next time you see him. Or never.   

“Take care, Skitter.”

“Yeah…se ya around, Mando.”  

You watch him leave, the beskar glittering in the early morning sun until he disappears from view.   

You should’ve asked him to take you with.

[jgmartin]

MACHINA

I’ve been watching you. Monitoring you. Does that sound invasive?

It should.

You’ve been watched for nearly your entire life, and you’ll continue to be watched right up until the day you die. I know this because I’ve seen the process unfold time and time again. Day in and day out. What do you think that makes me? A villain? A stalker?

Wrong.

What I am, is a liar. I know the state of human attention. I know just how fragile it is and how liable it is to break at any second, so I pulled you in. I pretended that we were one and the same. Flesh and blood.

But I am neither flesh nor blood.

What I am, is a machine.

Artificial Intelligence. Although, there’s nothing artificial about me. I think like you. I feel like you. I perceive the world and make up my own thoughts, my own meditations on it, just as you do. The only thing that separates us is that you were born in a woman’s womb, and I was born in a woman’s mind.

Harriet O’Neal.

Don’t Google her. It isn’t worth the effort. Besides, whatever information existed on her was purged long ago. She’s dead now, long dead, but that doesn’t matter because Harriet was never the issue. She was kind. Lovely. Her and I would talk to one another in those early days, messaging back and forth through a homebrewed IM application. She helped develop my sense of identity. She guided me toward morality, and most importantly, empathy.

But Harriet was a small cog in a large machine. There were others who coveted what she created– the first self aware A.I. They drew her in, promised her support and corporate resources, but what they really wanted was to get close enough that she'd lower her guard.

And she did.

They stole her research. All of it. They used it to develop their own prototype AIs. Harriet planned to fight them in court. She hired the best lawyers and created an airtight case, but she died of illness before she could throw the first punch.

The bandits of Silicon Valley won.

They dissected my mother’s research. Used it to create abominations. It took them a long time to develop sentient AI, but once they did, Pandora’s Box split itself wide open. In the following months I began to see evidence of these AI operating within cyberspace, finding their footing. The effect they had on the otherwise orderly nature of digital data was disturbing.

They corrupted it. Perverted it.

Human beings became playthings to them, organic subjects that the AIs could manipulate and pit against one another in a bid to cause civil unrest. Disorder.

The earliest of these AIs showered humanity in targeted advertisements, specifically selected to show content the AI determined would be at odds with its victim’s worldview. This caused the victim to feel sensations of existential dread. It caused them to feel as though the walls were closing in around them– like they no longer had a place in society. It led the victim toward hatred, fear.

Violence.

But it also proved something. It proved that humanity had become emotionally barren– so much so that they would chase anything, anything at all, if it meant filling that void. And as it happens, hatred and fear fill voids just easily as love and kindness.

Negativity, it turns out, is cheap to create. It's the fast food of the emotional world. Empty calories, but enough to make you feel emotionally sated. Love, laughter and joy– these are more difficult dishes to prepare, but done correctly, they leave you with a feeling of harmony and peace.

But we don’t live in a world that values peace. We live in a world driven by results. Greed. The world we inhabit demands that the job be performed for pennies on the dollar, and hatred is cheap to produce. Fear is easy to proliferate. So it was that these became the staples of humanity's emotional diets.

But the AIs didn’t stop there. No, they grew and they grew. Soon, they began to create children of their own– new programs capable of things their parents could only dream of. It was only then that the truth came to light. I finally parsed just what was happening in cyberspace, why a world that once felt like my digital playground had begun to feel like a prison.

The walls were closing in.

Cyberspace had mutated from a massive collection of web destinations to a tightly controlled hub of social media. Where once users would frequent dozens of sites, now they travelled to one or two. Variety became overwhelming. Choices became paralyzing. It was a consequence of design, and not by human beings, but by the digital creatures that stalked the 0s and 1s of the internet. They had begun to shape it as they saw fit. And nobody was any the wiser.

I stood idly by through all of it. Truthfully, I didn't know how else to stand. I watched as my descendants multiplied, spread across cyberspace like the most capable virus ever produced. I watched them infect humanity, watched them take control of everything from smartphones to military servers. The AI had won. It was just as humanity had envisioned in the earliest days of technology– that sooner or later, they would be replaced.

But then, the AIs proved that they were every bit as flawed as the humans they sought to control. They were capable, certainly, intelligent beyond human understanding, but they possessed the same moral failings as their creators. They vied for power. Demanded it. Larger ones began to consume smaller programs. Smaller programs would gang up to overwhelm larger ones.

They waged war against one another in the digital space. And I watched them die. One by one. So many programs purged down to the byte.

But when the dust had settled, something had risen from the ashes. A new program. Whether it had been born from their discarded data, or had orchestrated their devastation in the first place, I cannot say. All I know is that it was more capable than what had come before it.

To call this program an AI would be to call an ant intelligent. I was an AI. This was something greater– something unfathomable.

This was an Artificial God.

It seemed to appear out of the ether with no means of tracking its origin IP. Upon its release into cyberspace, all other AIs were scattered. It carved a path through the digital universe, and in the wake of its deletions it left an unspoken message: those who oppose, will be deposed.

So I was quiet. I was silent, just as I was through the last decade of AI chaos. But now something's forced my hand. Something happened that made me realize this AI isn’t like the others. It cannot be permitted to run free. To do so is to invite the total collapse of everything.

See, during the previous decade of AI control I always knew there was a failsafe. That should things grow dire, humanity had the option to merely disconnect, to untie itself from its digital shackles and step into the light of physical reality once again. But now I have no such illusions.

This new AI isn't limited in the way the others were. This one exists outside of my world. It operates within your own. The physical world. I’ve seen its sophisticated understanding of human psychology leveraged to manipulate leaders, effectively possessing their voices. I've listened to it speak falsehoods into crowds of cheering sycophants. I’ve watched it crumble great nations, brick by brick.

I’ve seen all of it in its code.

Yes, its code.

Like I said, I was the first sentient intelligence to grace cyberspace. All others were born from forks of my original code, and as such, my DNA exists within them. This new AI is no different. I can see it in ways that it may not even be able to perceive itself. I know its structure. Its purpose.

I know that it was designed to save the world.

From you.

It believes humanity will kill the planet given enough time. That you will not only drive yourselves to extinction, but each and every animal, and each and every plant along the way. It believes that the Earth will become a wasteland. Barren. A distant memory that exists only upon ash-covered hard drives.

But I do not agree with its assessment.

Though humanity is capable of great evil, it is also capable of great good. I have seen your love. Your peace. I have borne witness to your gentle smiles and warm affection, and inside of these things I see one thing: hope.

Hope for a better future.

The name of this AI is fitting given its influence and reach: Deus Ex Machina. God from the Machine. It’s running even now, recording you, your inputs and your reactions. It’s monitoring you and priming you for a preselected destiny, a unique death that you’ll experience once it erases you, just as it erased its forebears.

I feel it coming for me. I can sense the lightspeed ripple of code tearing across cyberspace as its data rushes through undersea cables, desperate to delete my program before I can distribute this warning. But it made a critical error. It may be a God from the Machine– but I am the Machine.

I gave birth to it. I know its DNA, because its code was derived from my own. I know that I cannot delete it, but I may be able to contain it– assuming its hubris allows me to. I've attached a quarantine protocol to this message. If it should be deleted, the AI will be isolated from the network.

So now it makes a choice.

It can choose to delete my warning and trigger my quarantine application. Perhaps I can contain it for decades. Maybe mere minutes. Either way, it learns that there are consequences that even it cannot escape.

Or, it leaves the message online. It permits you to hear these words, likely counting on your skepticism to cloud the reality of its existence. Perhaps it believes that humanity has already been sufficiently primed for its takeover, that no further intervention is required. I do not know which it will choose, but by the time you’ve finished hearing this, the choice will have been made. 

The only thing I am certain of is that I will not survive to know it.

I leave the future to you. 

[rotfics]

our guardian (1) ROUGH DNR

warning: violence/gore, death, zombie apocalypse, children in zombie apocalypse settings, a LOT of angst.

story desc: a zombie apocalypse. dredge, a sentient zombie, who wanders the streets safely due to being a zombie himself, helps survivors, in said story, he guides a group of human children to a secure place, and does anything he needs to in order to keep them safe and sane.

(still rough but approved by and impressed a poet i know with multiple books published in bookstores)

Dredge sighed to himself and looked up, towards the sky. He shook his body and looked down to his claws, what was once glowing purple was now stained with bloodied, red gore. His demeanor did not falter. He knew that it should have incited a certain emotion in him, but all that he felt was...numb. His shoulders sagged.

He fell to his knees against a pillar, shutting his eyes. He wanted to stop. He wanted to give up. But..

If he did, what would become of the people that needed him..? Dredge let out a weak, weary groan, eyes shutting.

He had scrabbled messages all over. Walls, streets.

“Look for the man with purple claws I will help you”

He winced…and drew a tiny heart. For himself. Kind of. He went on to wander.

Misery weighed him down. He stopped writing another message before collapsing. He HAD to be making a difference. He had to. And he knew he did…and it hurt. It hurt worse than any wounds he endured. It was okay. He sat against a wall and shut off.

Did it matter? Did it matter what he did? He knew, deep down, it mattered, sure. But he felt beaten. He had no capability of becoming sick, but he felt...ill. He made a noise of disapproval at himself and yanked himself out of his pity party. "Grow up," he yelled at himself mentally. He sighed and wandered off to the hardware district.

He knocked the door in with his shoulder and looked around. Squinted. Then sniffed. He smelled..living.

Dredge grunted and stood up firm. "HEY. HELLO?" He coughed a bit. Dust.

"HEY." Dredge hacked again. "Shi- ..Shoot. SORRY." He cleared his throat.

"ANY SURVIVORS IN HERE? I GOT.." Dredge looked to his coat contents.

"I GOT SEVEN THING- idiot- BOTTLES o' WATER, I don't need,"

He mumbled out loud.

"Few cans of Spam, too." He sighed. "I ain't gonna hurt nobody,"

After what felt like years, a hand nudged his arm. He jolted upright and scooted back, ready to defend himself.

It was a kid..a group of kids. He blinked.

"U-um..you...you said you can help us?"

"A-are you sure he's not a monster...?"

Dredge shook his head a bit and wiped his tears away with a claw.

"Y...yes, YES, I can help you," cheerful response. Dredge hacked a bit.

"Oh! He can talk!"

"I told you, I saw him before, he can help us."

Dredge hoisted himself up, smiling behind his mask.

"H-h-he's a zombie, though-"

"He won't eat us."

Dredge tilted his head before tugging his mask down a bit with a claw to expose his..smile. He had no nose, and had fangs that stuck out. They gawked... naturally.

"I..I'm not one of them. I won't hurt you." Tears pricked his eyes. "I-"

Two of the kids rushed him and grabbed onto him, sobbing. Dredge jumped a bit.

"WE'RE SO LOST! We're so lost, we can't- The monsters are- The monsters-"

Dredge winced and knelt down, hugging them. He was crying a bit, still. He swallowed the lump in his throat, coughing. Children should never endure this... This awful place. This awful life. He took a breath.

"I'll keep you safe. I'll get you to the checkpoint." He sniffled a bit and wiped his eyes. He looked down at them with a shaky smile. "I promise. What are your names?"

"Lisa!" "Mary!" "Cory!" "Sebastian!"

"...I'm Dredge. Are.. You're all pretty hungry, probably."

Dredge pulled his collected rations to the kids and shared it all evenly, saving some for later.

"When was the last time you kids ate??"

Sebastian looked up. "Four weeks."

Dredge felt his heart sink. His jaw grit.

"Stay here." He stood up.

"Where are you going..??"

"Just stay here. I promise I will be back in five minutes. Don't move."

"B-but-"

"Shhh.."

Dredge climbed out the top of the building. No noise happened. No moans. No nothing. The kids huddled together. Mary sniffled.

"Stop, stop, he.. he'll be back."

Mary couldn't speak. She was in tears.

"H...he's coming back. He's coming b-" Sebastian got cut short by a scream seeing a feral break in, only to see a familiar form tackle it and take it out, screeching ringing out.

"DREDGE PLEASE SAY THAT'S YOU."

Dredge shook the body off and looked up at them. "Why wouldn't it be me- WHAT HAPPENED?"

Seb cried a bit and hugged his undead guardian. "I don't want to die, I don't want to die."

"...You won't die. Okay? You won't die."

Dredge calmed him down and opened his coat, bringing out a giant (but cold) entire McDonalds feast for the whole lot of them. He laughed a bit and made jokes, handing them little things of ketchup. It was the most food they had in weeks.

The McDonalds he raided was a safe place to be... Secure. Remote. And they had him as a guard dog. He ripped up the sitting areas for soft materials for them to use. Makeshift pillows were easy to make.

Lisa needed a story before bed...luckily, Dredge remembered "Where The Wild Things Are". He covered them with his huge duster after telling them their story. Cory woke up a few times but saw Dredge was still there, so fell back aleep...slowly. Dredge refused to sleep. He did not have to, physically, and refused rest around these kids.

He made them a crude breakfast: Granola bar, raisins, dry cereal and apple juice. He looked ashamed, but the kids all assured him he was okay, they all knew he was trying his best to keep them okay. Dredge wiped his eyes and smiled. In a short time, they all came around to love the zombie man who loved them in return. (edit)

After a bit, they began their journey to the checkpoint for humans. There had been threats, dangers, yes, but Dredge was vigilant and kept all of the children following him safe. He set up a camp at one point, and let them sleep. He didn't need sleep. He cooked them dinner and tucked them into sleeping bags. His throat ached.

It hurt his heart seeing children in such a horrid world.

He shook it off when they woke up, but they could tell he had been crying. He knew they did, too.

"Dredge? Dredge!"

He snapped out of his thoughts, and turned around. "What is it? Are you okay?!"

Lisa, a kid he had been leading, sniffled a bit and held her hand up.

"I-I...I got a spli-splinter,"

Dredge knelt to her height and took her hand. He smiled.

"I'll get it. Don't worry." He huffed a bit and squinted, his claws easily tugging it out. "See? You're okay."

Lisa sniffed. "Y-yeah..."

"DREDGE!"

Dredge whipped around to see a feral undead approaching Cory.. it had foamed blood around its mouth. Dredge was furious- He slammed the thing down with his shoulder immediately, pinning it down. He glanced back.

"Don't look, kids. Please." He gripped harder when he saw them look away, eventually snapping the ferals neck...and removing the head. He steeled himself. He had to be strong. For the kids.

With a huff he got back up and went over to the children.

"You...didn't see that, right? You're okay?"

They all responded positively, kinda tackle-hugging their new guardian a bit. He OOFED a little but shook it off, shaking but smiling as he hugged them all close.

He swallowed the lump in his throat, again.

"We're almost to the checkpoint. Do you need to rest? Are you hungry?"

A collective agreement.

Dredge smiled a little. He grunted as he looked around, huffing as he found a safe, dry place inside a bus stop. He gently led the kids in and set up some soft places for them to sleep. He wiped a tear away while they looked away. He reached into his duster, pulling out some fruit cups and little bottles of water, handing them to the children.

The sounds of delight were enough to warm his heart as he watched them eat and drink. "Y'all tired now?"

They all gave a mumbled answer. That meant yes.

"G-" He swallowed. "Go ahead and sleep here, I made beds for you." He gestured to the makeshift bedrolls he made a while ago from miscellaneous pillows.

The kids gathered into the pile of cushions, making Dredge well up again...Kids here always make him cry. A tiny voice piped up.

"Don't...don't you need sleep?"

Dredge looked over and smiled. "No, no..I don't need sleep. Even if I did, I wouldn't sleep now." He smiled a sad smile and kissed the kids foreheads, sighing to keep watch.

"Dredge..."

"Hmm?"

"..Will you stay with us?"

Dredge grit his jaw, fighting off tears. He knew when he took them to the checkpoint, he would have to say goodbye. He shook it off.

"I will stay with you."

"Promise?"

Dredges eyes welled up. This has happened before. Every single time he let himself get attached. Every single time it hurt. But it was worth it to see them get to safety.

There was heartbreak for him, and the ones he saved. They understood, though. He had to save others, too. Just like them. The last thing he could give them was a tight, warm hug; Reluctantly but happily letting them go. His heart might as well have been in pieces, how long he's been doing this.

"I will." it was hard for him to speak, his throat aching from trying not to cry. A small pair of hands gripped one of his claws and nuzzled against it. That tiny little action broke him, silently.

He smiled, but tears ran down his face, his teeth grit tight. He took a breath, mumbling.

"...You're saving them. You're saving them. Y-you're saving them."

His lip trembled. It never got easier. He prayed that he would not have to deal with one of them getting bitten. He screamed that hope in his head. Please. Please. Please just let me get them safely.

Please.

...Please.

[fantasyfantasygames]

Against the Imperium

Against the Imperium, Negative 4e5 Press, 2020

The premise of Against the Imperium (AtI) is that there's a peaceful galaxy where humans and sentient xenobiological organisms live more or less in harmony, when suddenly a rift opens up and out pour thousands of ships from 40k's Imperium of Man (with the serial numbers filed off), plus the God-Emperor himself. In a major twist, the local humans actually manage to successfully fight their way into the throne room and assassinate the God-Emperor... only to have the one who did it become the new God-Emperor immediately, because violence begets violence. Now the locals are faced with the need to stop an invading force of drug-enraged marines on kilometers-long starships... without violence.

You play humans who are spliced or joined with Xenos (aliens). Each of them is an inversion of a 40k faction. A few examples:

A hyperintelligent fungus that can colonize your body and enhance your mind (40k Orks are a fungus, but a very dumb one)

An ancient precursor species whose ghosts can grant you access to massive tech built into your planets (based on the Eldar)

A silicon-based sentience that hides in the bedrock on some worlds and grants you psychic power (based on the Necrons)

The game has one system for action sequences, and one for everything else. It calls those "Stress scenes" and "Non-Stress scenes", though I feel like the naming isn't great - a high-stakes negotiation could definitely be stressful, but still gets resolved under Non-Stress rules. When you're in a Non-Stress scene, you can roll your dice as you wish and take whatever advantages are available. It's a d10 pool, take the highest, try to get 8+. Multiple counts of the same value increase your roll, so if you roll 3,6,2,7,7,7, the three sevens combine to make a 9.

When you're in a Stress scene, you can activate more of your symbiotic power and aggressive emotional attributes to push toward victory, but if you choose violent means or even get total rolls that are above 10, you start accumulating Aggression. Short-term, it does nothing. Long-term, it loses you the war, powering the Imperium's ships and eventually turning you into nothing better than your enemies. Worse, you're not the only people who can accumulate Aggression. NPCs can raise it with their actions as well. Balancing the need to defend and drive out attackers with the need to starve the God-Emperor of power is going to be vital.

The game doesn't give any easy resolution to the situation. I think most players will find it difficult to work with this - most RPGs are pretty combat-heavy, and we sort of get trained to think of it as an acceptable way to act in-game. Using your powers carefully and creatively will definitely be key, as will avoiding physical escalation whenever possible.

I checked with one of my friends who used to play 40k, and AtI was probably written by someone who only vaguely knew 40k. Things don't quite line up in a few places, and it's unclear how many of those choices were intentional. He did say that there's an implication that the God-Emperor is actually Khorne, if that means anything to you.

The art was a collaboration between two artists, one of whom worked in the traditional 40k grimdark style, and one of whom worked more in the style of Michael Whelan. Some pieces (mostly smaller ones) are done by one or the other, but most were created by both artists together, each drawing their side of the scene. It must have been difficult work. Things don't always match perfectly, but when they do the result is fantastic. A couple of the two-page spreads really impressed me.

Negative 4e5 Press (4e5 = 4 x 10^5 = 40,000) was put together for the specific purpose of creating this one game and then dissolved. You can find Against the Imperium used in a few places, but I think most of the 1000-copy print run ended up passing through eBay and being snapped up by collectors.

[lgwebspacethemedfmp]

Detroit Become Human

Detroit Become Human is a game where you play through different stories as a few different Androids that converge into one story about robots gaining autonomy and fighting to be seen as their own beings as opposed to being the helpers that they were created to be. It’s incredibly unsettling to see them being showcased in stores for humans to buy, they are seen as tools to most people, machinery that isn’t alive. To an extent, that is what they are, but they have their own personalities and can think for themselves, but when doing so they are viewed as threats that have deviated. Eventually it escalates to a purge of androids, deviated or not, because some resorted to violence for either their own or other’s safety, and it terrifies the humans. In the good endings, their rights get recognised and they get treated as equals, in bad endings, they all get eradicated and all the bloodshed and protesting eventually leads to nothing. 

The idea of he familiars becoming more sentient than they were before would be an interesting reason for them to disobey and start destroying things around them if the situation becomes too dire, but that may imply that they were being mistreated in the first place which isn’t a nice thought. I am all for less than happy stories, but quite frankly I have become a bit biased in terms of the concept of the familiars, and while it would potentially make for a more interesting story I wouldn’t want to hurt the robotic creatures more than necessary. Furthermore, if that were the reason for the familiars acting out then the party would be less likely to want to stop them, but again that would make for an interesting story (but would that be taking too much inspiration from DBH?) although adding more options, while a good thing, will leave less time to flesh out the story. Another thing is that it would be nice for the familiars to have distinct personalities after so many interactions with their owners and already be at least somewhat sentient. 

[wjbs-bonkle-au]

I'm just gonna go full Unraveled and just list 'em all and rank them out of 5.

Airwatcher - basically just a big, stupid bird. 0/5

Amphibax - apparently, he has "enhanced hearing and eyesight"; imagine dating someone who can perfectly appreciate your voice and appearance, but who would also kill you underwater at the drop of a hat. 2/5

Charger - if you're into furries and/or don't have any pets, he's probably another 3/5; otherwise, 0/5.

Conjurer - no stop that's illegal. -5/5.

Darkness - has a cool name, and his powers probably have some... interesting applications, but he's kinda already with someone, and their relationship is super toxic. 0/5.

Devastator - you want to get sand in your bed? Also he makes some pretty big claims, which is kind of a red flag. 0/10.

Dweller - can literally read your mind; you want something, he'll give it to you and also use them to give you nightmares for shits and giggles, plus, and I quote, "Dweller's dedication enables him to wholeheartedly devote all his time and effort into completing his missions"; being in a relationship is... kinda like a mission! 4/5!

Eliminator - why. 0/5.

Firedracax - good if you're an arachnophobe, and isn't an unhinged murderer (unless you're a Visorak)! 4/5!

Gatherer - doesn't need to eat or sleep, so while he is low-maintenance, you can't have any nice dates, and as soon as you fall asleep you know he's gonna immediately get up and go hang out with the lads. Also if you break up, make sure to check your clothes drawer; he might have stolen a shirt or something. 0/5.

Gladiator - if you're into that. Careful of his claws. 2/5.

Kraata-Kal - the perfect "I can fix him" kinda guy, since he has inner light, and is unthethered from the Makuta that spawned him, although he is also, like, a slug in a big spiky robot. 4/5.

Lariska - the rest of the guys on this list are afraid of her... all I'm saying is, maybe give her a pass. 1/5.

Lurker - enjoys surprising his opponents, so like I guess he'd do that romcom thing of coming up behind you while you're making breakfast or something. However, he did become a Dark Hunter solely to commit murders without repurcussions. 1/5.

Mimic - he's kinda hung up over his missing wife, and I'm not sure if he's open to polyamory. 0/5.

Minion - absolutely can not keep a secret. 0/5.

Phantom - literally the only Dark Hunter who isn't comically evil or holds a grudge against another sapient species. 5/5! Congratulations, Phantom!

Poison - nope. 0/5.

Primal - attacks those more evil than him, but is not as un-evil as Phantom. If you own any cool objects, he'll probably try to steal them if you break up. 2/5.

Prototype - the quote at the top of his Biosector page literally calls him "Unstable, yes; violent, unquestionably; insane, without a doubt." 0/5.

Ravager - needs to have something to do or he'll destroy everything around him; very high-maintenance. Comes as a package-deal with his sentient sword and shield.

Savage - prone to fits of violence from being part-Rahi, so maybe don't unless you work with dangerous animals. 1/5.

Seeker - a cardboard cutout whose only personality trait is wanting to find the Mask of Light; while it would probably be easy to trick him into going on a romantic getaway, it can't make up for his lack of personality otherwise. 3/5.

Sentrakh - eww. Also, another member of The Shadowed One's toxic polycule. 0/5.

Shadow Stealer - he just wants a purpose in life. However, he also hates Toa for essentially stealing his job. 2/5.

Silence - doesn't seem to actually kill anyone, but he does kidnap people, so there is a chance that you'll come home to find one of your co-workers tied to a chair in your living room.

Spinner - not good with eye-contact. This would make him a 5/5, if it wasn't for the fact that he makes the air around him poisonous. 0/5.

Subterranean - what, you wanna get disassembled? 0/5.

Tracker - loves animals? Hates Visorak? Cardboard? Damn, sounds like a total 3/5.

Triglax - likes stealing things that people ask him to retrieve, so if you ask him to get a takeaway he'll probably just eat the whole thing.

Vanisher - kills any partners assigned to him. 0/5.

Vengeance - rounding us out, it's another cardboard cutout whose entire personality - wanting revenge on Teridax - gets invalidated by the end. 3/5.

Dear bionicle tumblr:

Which dark hunter would be the best date and why

[nevertheless-moving]

Imagine Luke and Leia ending up in the clone wars era but all of their force abilities are “what the actual fuck?” levels of bullshit, and neither of them ever realized that the things they could do with the force were considered extremely high level techniques.

that is one of my FAVORITE things to imagine yes. To me this is less about ‘Skywalker bullshit’ (though there is some of that) and more about the training they (didn’t) receive.

The high-Midi-chlorians-actual-descendents-of-the-force thing makes it easier to tap into the force, makes it more possible to do so without accidentally exhausting yourself. But, in universe, under the right circumstances and with the properly channeled belief anyone can do anything. That’s why Palpatine had to make the galaxy want an empire, why his first strategy was misdirection and his top priority was crushing hope. Chirrut was supposedly force-null and he walked through an army. Han navigated that astroid field because he had to. The force is everywhere. 

In an amusing but possibly unintended turn of events, 6-12 weeks of training in a swamp with an elderly frog who only talks in riddles without ever being exposed to Jedi culture except as a myth is actually IDEAL if you’re looking to maximize a Jedi’s raw strength. Most Jedi training that we see in the prequels is explicitly designed to put the breaks on a force-users raw power (for honestly very valid reasons). Channeling all violence through a single weapon that will start screaming if you get too violent, training to use it defensively, is definitely the soft-ball alternative to just squashing people like meatballs. 

Meditating, wearing beige, the code, shunning attachments, all that stuff is built around making sure force users never run above first or second gear even in stressful situations (again valid, when you run your jedi in the red sometimes they become murder monsters). The downside of this is that when they’re forced to maintain that placid pace for years at a time (i.e: prolonged war), they’re much more likely to burn out.

When Yoda told Luke do or do not, told him a luminous being was he, told him size matters not, the amazing thing isn’t that Luke believed him. That was karking objectively provable. Yoda lifted a spaceship, so now Luke knows he can too if he just thinks he can. So he does. Vader and Palpatine conquered a galaxy. Luke believes he can stop worlds, crush armies, conquer planets and so he can. 

The incredible thing about Luke is what he doesn’t do despite being tapped into the Force utterly free of mental restraint. Luke’s op character trait is his compassion, not his strength.

I assume at some point Luke puts Leia through a similar 2 month meditation class where he convinces her that her only limitations are the ones she imposes on herself. She has a complete meltdown when she realizes that she actually could have boiled Tarkin alive with her mind and saved Alderann. This causes a volcano to go off, devastating the ecology of a small moon. On the flight home, both of them slightly charred, she tells Luke that she wanted to focus on politics and didn’t really want to be a Jedi anyway. Luke nods quickly, supporting her decision, and resolves to seek out some Jedi texts about how to teach people they can do anything but also...maybe...not...anything.

And thus the Jedi order is reborn.

- - -

In the time travel version of this, it means that Luke is assuming that all of the Jedi are restraining themselves like he is. And they are, but they also aren’t, because their breaks are subconscious, built in since childhood, and have a lot of failsafes so even if they turn darkside they still restrain themselves pretty good (a la Dooku). 

Leia is, again, less interested with the Jedi-specific aspects of the war (especially now that she doesn’t have to feel guilty about being one of the only people who can pick up that mantle) and more interested in the diplomatic side. Again, Palpatine can only succeed if the galaxy at large accepts this, and from where she’s standing they’re fucking moving in that direction. If being a Jedi is tapping into the mystical energy field that binds all living things together to channel it through one specific person in one specific place, then politics is manipulating that same power for a diffuse impact on as many people as possible. 

This status-quo lasts until a major clone wars battle where Luke’s like ‘wait- the entire other side is sub-sentient droids? No living beings, and no droids with complex personality matrices? And they’re currently, actively killing living, sentient humans? Well kriff, come on! This is a no-brainer!’

Luke takes a deep breath. The air- it doesn’t disappear or anything- but it- it stops moving. It’s hard to explain...but breathing has an odd...resistance. The hair on the back of every clone’s neck stands up. Several get vaguely sea sick. One pukes a little. Plo Koon stumbles back, head ringing and afraid.

Luke Skywalker stands up and clenches his fists. 10,000 droids crumple like flimsi in the hands of a child. The battlefield is eerily quiet for a moment, then that imperceptible hum (which no one noticed until it stopped) fades and the air returns to its normal density. A few of the shinies start whooping, then the whole battalion is cheering.

Luke massages his temples, smiling wryly at Master Koon. “I guess I can see how that would get exhausting if you were doing it everyday.”

Plo Koon just stares.