#i am just being the annoying lore nerd

[astrxealis]

me rn having the biggest hots for leon kennedy and astarion sorry LMFAOOO <3

[robocops-a-christ-allegory]

Im still wondering what the deal was with the joke at the start of peacemaker tries hard about people being mad about lore being retconned (and also how anybody mad is a dumb idiot who doesnt understand how comics work). Like the only people I've ever seen talking about Peacemaker's previous stuff being ignored in a negative way besides ME are people who arent actually interested in the character and just wanted to hate the show because they hate James Gunn (and it is very obvious from the way they talked about it that they didnt actually get who Peacemaker was as a character since most of those people were also convinced he was a serious antihero pre-show which like. Yeah ok.)

I dunno. Still convinced it was making up a guy to be mad at and is part of why I was annoyed with this miniseries from the start. Also because of the fucking sexual assault joke Im not ignoring that.

[minnie-cai]

I had a dream of sleeping over nerd!Arts dorm room, it was storming outside and he refused to let me go walk out on my own I was on hid bed and he was working on something hes reading a book with his glasses low on his nose and was only in a white shirt and sweats where his junk was almost out. I was so horny I just straddled his lap and started going crazy, he ended up shoving my face against his pillow pounding me from behind fucking me while he kept his glasses on <3

𝑰 𝑴𝑬𝑨𝑵 “𝑪𝑨𝑴𝑨𝑹𝑨𝑫𝑬𝑹𝑰𝑬” !

that’s so crazy i actually had the exact same dream last night so here’s something i wrote about OUR dream

not proofread, bless your eyes, it’s 2 am and my eyes are basically shut.

rating ; mature. smut. it’s smut. leave if you’re a minor. or don’t. i can’t stop you. actually i can. i will find you. and take away your phone.

oh nerdy!art my beloved, where he’s the sweetest guy you’ve ever met and he’s stumbling over his tongue awkwardly as he tries to flirt with you but it turns out his tongue was made for bigger things.

and it’s so weird the first time you fuck because you fall next to him on the mattress, out of breath, sweaty and high on orgasms and suddenly, all you had heard about nerdy guys being good in bed was confirmed.

you start dating, he holds your hand around campus sweetly and all of your friends love him. you’d heard the lore of all of tolkien’s writing at least a hundred times as you played with his hair but you’d hear it thousands if he asked. you give him head under his desk as he does your assignment for you and he cums all over his thighs and panics, rushing trying to find a towel or a dirty t-shirt as he babbles apologies and squirms because he hasn’t even properly finished yet.

after a few months of dating, it’s totally casual and normal for you to stay over at his single dorm after you’ve complained about how annoying your roommate was, under the condition, of course, that you’d let him study when he needs to. you promised.

you were lying in his bed, wearing a hoodie he’d lend you after you’d softly fucked with the rain pattering on the window. you pouted and twisted the fabric of the sweater in boredom. art was sweet, sure. he’d made you finish first like a gentleman, cleaned you up and dressed you but you just found it so annoying that he managed to move on to studying right after sex. you stared at him and stared and stared as he sat in his chair, his foot resting on the desk as he read a book he was assigned with his lips lightly agape and his round glasses low on his nose.

the grey sweats he’d thrown on quickly after he got out of bed being a size down from his normal one, giving you the great view that was the outline of his semi-hard cock.

as you’re thinking and just admiring him, you hear him sniff and he swallows, his adam’s apple bopping with the movement. and suddenly, yet again, your panties are wet. what is this boy doing to you?

“artie….” you mewl gently from the bed, your legs twisting under the sheets as you try not to press your thighs together. “is it gonna take long?”

“i wanted to finish at least two chapters by class tomorrow, why?” he mumbles as he moves on to the next page, licking his fingers so that the paper doesn’t stick together but the only thing you can think of is him licking his fingers and playing with your clit as he mumbles compliments against your collarbone.

“nothing… just a bit bored…” you respond as you start to stand up but he just hums, not looking up from his book. when you reach his chair and lean against the back of it with your elbows, moving your fingers to run through his hair, scratching his scalp gently, his head falls back against your chest and he lets out a breathy grunt.

when you moved to straddle his lap, that was his last straw. “you’re kidding…” he mumbles in a soft but raspy voice with a sweet smile when you roll your hips against him. his glasses threatening to fall off his nose and his curls falling messily on his forehead, times like these is when you really take a look at him and realize how gorgeous he is, like he’s trapped a ray of sun inside his eyes.

“huh?” you giggle, almost breaking this innocent character you’d built up. “i don’t know what you mean.” you shake your head with a gentle smirk and furrowed eyebrows, your eyes narrowing as you try your hardest to look confused and hold back your laugh.

“oh you don’t? oh really?” he says with an amused laugh and raised eyebrows. “i- yeah?- rea- really?” he starts with narrowed eyes but he ends with a scoff and a small smile as he realises he wasn’t sure what he really wanted to say and was just stuttering nonsense. “you don’t know what i mean? you want me to show you what i mean?” he chuckles with a sarcastic attitude, looking up at you through furrowed eyebrows.

“i might need you to show me what you mean.” you laugh but it’s cut short by a shriek when art throws you over his shoulder, laughing. “what are you doing?” you cry out as he stands still in front of his twin bed for a second, contemplating before he decides he doesn’t want to throw you on it and gently sets you to sit on the bed. he pauses and folds his arms, looking down at you, the smile not fading from his face. “what are you looking at me for? c’mon, pretty! down and on your belly.” he says, snorting at his own tone.

“down and on your belly? where did you come from? orderin’ me around!” you say surprised by his newfound confidence before following his instructions. “i’m not sure, i like it though.” he replies laughing before settling on the bed, his knees on each of your sides as he pulls down your panties, pulling your hips up, carefully raising them.

his hands hold their position on your hips when he inserts into you, making you sigh shakily. he grunts as he feels the warmth of your walls enveloping him. his head falling forward, his eyes shut.

moments after, he pulls himself back together, pushing his glasses back to the bridge of his nose and moving his hands to push down your back, your body being smashed against the mattress by his warm palms and when he moves to rut into you, you leave out a moan, muffling it with the pillow.

by the time he is close to cumming, full on whines and whimpers fall out through his lips, his thrusts getting quicker as he chases his release. “so pretty… fuck.. ugh- so good…” he babbles and his upper body connects to your back, folding forwards to try and handle the pleasure as you suddenly feel the cold material of his glasses against the skin of your neck which you felt was burning, the sensation making you shudder.

“please, baby… i’m- i’m close…” he blabbers on your neck, leaving small wet kisses against it as his rhythmic pace gets rougher.

when you both cum, whining and moaning like hormonal teenagers and fall back against the bed, he wraps his arms around your head, pulling you into his chest. “that was really, really hot-“ he pauses, taking a long deep breath “don’t do it again.” he finishes and laughs, pulling away to wipe the fog off his glasses with his your shirt.

[pikachicachan]

I saw that you like CaliTex/TexaCali, so I was wondering if I could request some Texas-centered (he’s my fav if you can’t tell-) TexaCali hc’s? :D

*completely fine if not, have a great day/night!! (ggGRAHHHH TIMEZONES-)*

omg hi!! YES, I'D LOVE TO TELL U MY HEADCANONS

I know I've been only drawing Cali, but Texas is actually my fav too with Cali being in second, Alaska in third, Louis in fourth, and Gov in fifth!

I feel like Texas is my fav because I am a born and raised Texan tho... but I can't help it! I love him sm.

Anyway, I had to organize my thoughts about my Texas and TexaCali headcanons, so be prepared to read!

Texas headcanons (and some Austin ones too cuz I couldn't help it ^^;;)

I think my version of Texas is kind of unconventional but I love it and it has me giggling with glee, kicking my feet, and twirling my hair, so by the God I don't believe in, I'm going to continue thinking this way!

First, I love to think of Texas as a secret softie. I think of him more as a cat person because he likes that they're independent animals and he can't help but pet them when he sees them around the Statehouse or one of his other Texan homes (he keeps cat food on hand just in case) but keeps his cool when the other states are near by.

I think a funny headcanon of mine is: because of the incoming Californians coming to his state, I feel like that's subconsciously influencing his attitude and preferences a bit and it drives him kinda crazy cuz he'll catch himself thinking or acting a certain way and then curse California under his breath when he realizes why he's being weird. He'll deny it to anyone, but he'll somehow find himself going to more art centered festivals, listening to indie music, eyeing eco-friendly alternatives (cars, clothing, materials, etc.), has urges to go to the beach, and most annoying of all - somehow finds himself scrolling through Disney and Pixar movies to watch (to Austin's amusement).

He built a cute artsy home in Austin for Austin and he let him decorate the place because he wanted Austin to have a "safe space" and a place for himself. So Austin would go there to wind down, paint, do DIY projects (and give some of his creations to Texas and Cali), and go thrift shopping. Austin would totally help Texas pick out some outfits and make him participate in painting something while listening to local, indie, and underground music. Texas would deny it, but he likes that someone is looking out for him and he doesn't mind the painting because it's feels very traditional/cultural and meditative.

Texas also definitely has a beach house at South Padre Island! SpaceX has set up Starbase near there and now it's become a hotspot for rocket launches, so he goes there to watch the launches, hang out at restaurants and bars near the pier, and goes fishing. (I mention this because I feel like no one ever mentions Texas beaches and I feel like going to the beach is another place Texas goes to hang out or wind down.)

Gardening is another hobby I can picture Texas doing. Like for Austin's house, he mowed the front lawn, planted some flowers, and created a garden with low maintenance plants and a mini greenhouse for his backyard.

ALSO, I love thinking of him as a secret geek/nerd! I feel like because he has NASA, SpaceX, and a lot of tech companies are moving to Texas, he's becoming a lot more tech-savvy and very invested in technology development (which is super cool to me) but this also means he's getting into building computers and geeking out about computer parts and stuff which - somehow makes sense in my brain but not really logically - gets him into the MCU! I could totally imagine him watching Captain America or The Avengers and being invested in the lore and keeping up with the movies with Austin. I mean, he's not a die-hard fan that'll read all the comics, but he (or actually more so Austin) would prob look up extra context for scenes that need more explaining and discuss it with each other!

Which ties into -

My TexaCali headcanons (Texas-centered)

I'd like to think that Cali finds out about Texas' geek side on accident in the most unexpected way. Like, Cali could be on the phone in the Statehouse living room, loudly debating with Florida on the phone about Deadpool & Wolverine — talking about the potential connections to the MCU future, and Texas would overhear their discussion about Loki and mumbles under his breath to Austin (a bit more louder than he thinks) in disbelief: "Pfft, of course Loki is coming back!" which makes Cali drop his phone in shock, stumble over to Texas, and demands to know how much he knows and how and when did this happen???

It's cute to imagine that Tex and Cali would hang out or have picnics at their beaches. They would watch rocket launches and go volunteer at the Sea Turtle Inc together at South Padre Island and Cali would take him on strolls on his beaches, teach him how to surf, and watch the sunrises or sunsets there (or back in Texas) on the back of Texas' truck with a cooler between them that has [insert alcoholic drinks here], sandwiches, and ice cream (idk any specific drinks, but ik they would be drinking some lol).

omg, and that when Cali realizes Tex is very deprived of validation and praise, he showers Tex in them which makes Tex feel insecure/unsure at first because he thinks Cali is only saying those things to be nice and not because he actually means it. After much reassurance though, Tex begins to love the praise and melts every time Cali says something endearing and positive about him! <3

annnnnnd, that's all I can think of atm! I did my best to make the TexaCali hc's Texas centered but I love em together so muchh lol

Hope you enjoyed reading this! ^^

P.S. if this somehow inspired someone with some ideas for fanfics, pls write some! I need more TexaCali fics in my life plsss TT.TT

[persephoneprice]

aaa lily this ask game is so cool and amazing!!

i have soo many people id love to compliment so here goes

lily - im gonna start off with complimenting u bc u were my first friend on here! i feel like u connected the fandom together and ur kindness and friendliness is the reason we're so tight-knit now. ur literally the heart of our fandom and i wouldn't have it any other way. you're creative, hilarious and a wonderful human being, pls know that ❤️

@satisaranea - lynn u r literally the best ilysm /p. ur literally just like me for real, a fellow brit teenager, kmfdm enjoyer and ex danganronpa nerd. ur also incredibly talented and ur takes are SO refreshing to see in this fandom 💗

@keeperofsecretsunderthehill - i love our chats together so so much, u get me fr. im so glad we started talking and became friends, ur so awesome and ur ocs are so incredibly fascinating and i love every single one of them (nikole i would protect u with my life)

@felixravinstills i admire u so so much. ur felixposting has not only intrigued me but inspired me to create and find happiness (and every other emotion lmao) in others art and my own ♥️ i think i've said this before but you're the reason i began posting my writing here and im forever grateful for that.

@fairyhagmother - nell omg. first of all im so glad ur here in this fandom bc most of the corso lore would be lost without you (vigiles, juvenes, vast majority of the Glore). you bring so many amazing ideas and concepts to the table and i aspire to be like that one day ❤️ ur also genuinely so sweet and im glad we're friends!!

@coryo - first off im forever greatful you and lily created the server bc tbh idk where id be without it. ur an Og Tbosaser TM and ur ideas about it are so interesting and cool!!! i appreciate ur always open to talk on the server and are so welcoming. ur art is also very very cool.

i do have More but these were the ones i wanted to get off my chest ❤️ (will perhaps send the rest later if it isn't too annoying 🤧)

ask game! ah thank you this is wonderful bel!!

it’s so sweet of you to say i connected the fandom 🥺 you’re my og tbosas friend and i cherish you <3

@satisaranea is such a delight! i’m so glad we managed to trap the haymitch stan into our corse creatures craziness!

@keeperofsecretsunderthehill is such a sweetie and is so creative!! i always love hearing her lore <3

@felixravinstills my beloved <3 truly a pioneer 😌 always inspiring me and making me feel more comfortable to share me own silly thoughts and ideas!

@fairyhagmother we are all so lucky to have nell <3 she’s so smart and adds such fun insight and ideas for all of our most insane senior citizens

@coryo i’ll never be able to express enough how grateful i am for him!! creating the corso creatures server really brought us all so much closer <3

[solbach-colbrock]

Up Top! - Seth Borden X Reader

SUMMARY - You and Seth have developed a… unique high five

WARNINGS - none

WORDS - 1k

NOTES - This is actually something I used to do with a friend of mine. I thought it would be cute to write. Also Chase is in this one

~*~*~*~

Neither of you were sure how long you had been doing it, but by now it was practically automatic. Every time you and Seth got excited, you would… well, it wasn’t quite a high-five, but that was the closest approximation you could make. You got a few odd looks and laughs the first couple of times, but at this point you got looked at funny if Seth’s palm didn’t collide with your forehead when you two were hyped up about something.

At least part of it was due to your height difference. Being shorter than him, you had already become his designated armrest, so it was no real surprise when he started joking about your height by holding out his hand to high five you right at your face height and you just… smacked it with your forehead in spite. It was goofy, and the fans definitely loved it. 

You, Seth, and Chase were filming a video for Chase’s channel. It was a quiz challenge thing, all the questions coming from Twitter fans asking you about details of your past videos that you were likely to get wrong. The two losers of the challenge had to dye a strip of their hair whatever color the winner decided. Two of you were gonna end up matching, and as funny as the concept was, you’d rather not let either of them decide what colors your hair was. 

“I fucking knew it, too! My first fucking thought was, ‘oh it was definitely my green hoodie’, but then you started talking and I started doubting myself! Motherfucker,” you exclaimed, sinking into the backseat of the car. You put your head in your hands, annoyed by the laughter coming from the brothers in the front seats. 

“Haha! I messed with your mind!” Seth laughed.

Y: “Guys, this man in gaslighting me! I have it here.”

S: “Alright Chase, your turn.”

C: “Damn, alright. Hit me.”

S: “What was the name of the man who was rumored to have hung himself at the Shanley Hotel?”

C: “Ah, fuck. How am I supposed to remember that? We filmed that a couple months ago.”

Y: “Even I know the answer to this, and I haven’t even been there yet.”

S: “How the fuck do you know then?”

Y: “I watched the video! I was interested in the lore! It was new information!”

S: “Fuckin’ nerd, alright. What’re you a fan or something?”

Y: “Oh, I’m so sorry for supporting you and your career, Jesus.”

S: “Ok Chase you’ve had plenty of time to come up with an answer. What do you think his name was? Like, honestly, if I didn’t have the answer right in front of me, I don’t think I'd be able to answer this one.”

C: “Fuck, um… David or somethin’? I don’t know!”

S: “Final answer?”

C: “I guess? I really don’t know.”

The smirk on your face grew to a grin as he answered.

S: “Wrong, it was William.”

Y: “Get fucked! Oh, I knew you weren’t getting that one.”

S: “Now you two are tied.”

C: “One of us is gonna lose.”

Y: “Seth is already losing this one.”

S: “Yea, there’s no way I’m wining. I’ve only got two questions right.”

Y: “Should we do a tiebreaker? One question, and whoever gets the answer right first wins?”

C: “Oh, yea. We gotta find a question both of us could answer, though.”

S: “Alright, I’ll look. Give me a second.”

You and Chase relaxed for a moment, avoiding opening your phones in case you came across the same question that Seth could ask you. Chase turned around in his seat when he heard you chuckle to yourself.

“What’s funny?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing. Just deciding what color would look best on you two.” He rolled his eyes at you, his competitive side coming out full force now that it was down to the wire.

“What makes you think you’re winnin’?” You folded your arms over your chest in defiance.

“I’ve watched the videos multiple times. I know what the fans have seen.”

S: “Okay, shut up. I’ve got the question. At the Hatfield Estate, what did the ghost of Arnold whisper in Josh’s ear?”

Y: “Oh, shit! Fuck, I know this!”

C: “God, what was it? I was standin’ right next to him when it happened, too. Damn it…”

S: “You guys get thirty more seconds before I need an answer, right or wrong. Whoever gets closest, I'll take it.”

C: “God, was it ‘come find me’? I remember it was a little kid sayin’ it.”

S: “That-“

Y: “No! It was ‘over here’ because after we started freaking out about it the REM pod started going off in the other room! Like it was trying to show us where it was!”

S: “Yea, that’s correct, actually. Chase, you lost.”

You were practically jumping in the back seat from excitement, cheering at Chase’s distraught state. Your hyper reaction was infectious, and Seth stuck his arm towards the back seat for a high five. You threw your head forward, your forehead making contact with his open palm.

S: “Let’s go! Good job.”

Y: “I fuckin’ knew it! Now I have to decide on a color.”

S: “Wait fuck I forgot I have to do that. What the hell am I celebrating for?”

The three of you wrapped up the video, opting to post pictures of you dying their hair as well as the final result on instagram later. 

“How many edits do you think we’re gonna get out of the high five this time?” Seth asked, knowing full well there would be some made within an hour of posting the video. There were always at least a couple when you two did that. The fans loved your silly little habit. They thought it was really cute and endearing, and frankly, so did you.

“Oh, plenty. It’s been at least two months since we did that on camera. They’re gonna eat that shit up.”

“Will you two just fuckin’ date already?”

“Chase!”

“Shut up, bro!’

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s4 episode 7 thoughts

my very first thoughts: a CANCER MAN episode??? are we gonna get some backstory?? some CSM lore?!?!? 

part of me is deeply curious, but part of me also wants agent time, so… hmm! i’m intrigued. my curiosity? it’s been piqued.

and the lone gunmen have been mentioned!!

author's note: woah... i was expecting a lot of things, but cancer man being a flop author was not one of them. it's kinda sad, but mostly just pathetic.

judgement aside, i actually really liked this episode. there are things i would change, but i thought it was super intriguing to see certain parts of what is hidden beyond the curtain, but never enough to fully satisfy you, which i do love about this show (even if it is occasionally infuriating). the multi-part structure was also an interesting and unique choice that worked well, but i do have some... questions on writing/character motives and if they were well-received. but you'll see what i mean in a bit.

a lot happened in this episode, which i shall begin to recount below!

OH! we open with a shakespeare quote!!! “for nothing can seem foul to those that win” oooookay i suppose that is relevant to our ciggy man. damn. couldn’t be me. a lot of things are foul to me. such as killing melissa. 

we see a rat! a rat! cute little critter. oh. cancer man arrives, and is less cute. he's looking at some broken windows… damn, why is s4 so dark? i keep having to turn my brightness up. it's annoying!!

his lighter says “trust no one” omg… he’s so weird. just an overall strange fellow. seriously, who gets a custom lighter that says that? way to draw attention to yourself while trying to Not Do That.

so he’s opening a suitcase…. WHAT!! he is somehow listening to a bunch of conversations, including the “not everything is a dark labyrinth of conspiracy” one, which means he must have had bugs in all of the rooms where mulder and scully chat!!! who has time to sort through all of that audio content to find the juicy stuff?? probably his freak interns that i KNOW he keeps scattering about

okay, so he’s listening to a conversation now between the lone gunmen and mulder. frohike is freaked tf out, but mulder says no one would kill him because “you’re just a little puppy dog”. aww. that's a cute thing to say.

GAG!! the lone gunmen put on a special audio filter to hide their conversation, and CSM just pressed a button to totally ignore it, and turns to the camera with a smirk. EW! EW! creepy man. ugh, i can’t believe i paused and had to look at that awful creepy smirk for more than a few milliseconds.

oh my goodness, scully is also here during this conversation between the lone gunmen and mulder that we are listening to via CSM's technologically aided eavesdropping. frohike is saying he found stuff about cancer man, while cancer man loads what looks like a SNIPER RIFLE, and aims it out the window??? “what did you find?” “possibly everything”

GASP! i’m hooked. i DO want to know possibly everything. 

(watching the intro and that scene where they burst in with the gun always gets me, but today it’s making me ache in my chest because of how beautiful they are. so feel free to psychoanalyze that)

frohike is describing trotsky’s assassination. this is an area of history i am weak in, so i am seated for my lesson. it is actually entirely unrelated to the plot at hand, and is just some frohike nerd lore, but that's cool, i like a dude who knows these things.

frohike says “he” (presumably CSM) appears on august 20th, 1940, in louisiana. and his father was a communist activist, executed for espionage before his son would walk!!! and his mother died of lung cancer before he could talk!

damn. tragic backstory for this fellow. he pretty much said "i know cigarettes killed my mom but i'm different"

he was sent to various orphanages where he spent his time reading and not making friends. then he went off the grid until a year and a half after the Bay Of Pigs. weird way of measuring time- before and after the Bay of Pigs

OH! we get more text… “part 1: things really did go well in Dealey Plaza” hmmm....

some army men are jogging, while another dude reads the manchurian candidate, saying he would rather read the worst novel ever written than the best movie ever made. he must not know about the novels that are out there… i assume this is cig man?

OH MY GOD! he’s talking to MR. MULDER! wait, wait that means….

! MULDER LORE REVEAL ! his first word was JFK

that is... actually really adorable. and will make his toddler stage difficult as he has to break certain news to baby mulder.

why do i get the feeling, from the shaky way CSM just set the photo of mr. mulder’s wife and child down, that he is fighting suppressed romantic feelings for his buddy like the cold war depends on it? hmm....

these fancy looking men want to talk to the guy i assume is cancer man. they ask if he was involved in any of the big events from the early 1960’s, which he denies. you know, assassinations and whatnot.

oh! when they ask if his father was executed as a spy, he says his only regret is that “i was too young to throw the switch myself” which is kind of a crazy thing to say. "yes i never knew my dad but i wish it was me that killed him" is a wild hill to die on. but i guess this is what the 60's did to people.

OH! he also denies a cigarette when offered, saying he never touches them. well. some things went down between then and now, i assume. and hopefully, we shall gain a glimpse into what changed.

this general dude is yapping about extraordinary men and i assume he is referring to himself. and his father. and young CSM, too, can be an extraordinary man! 

“communism is without a doubt the most heinous personification of evil mankind has ever confronted” <- said by a guy who likely fought the nazis, this is an absolutely crazy line... but again, i guess that shows how deep everyone was into the propaganda

they are offering baby CSM a very important job… so important, his army service will be erased… he needs to assassinate an american civilian, former naval pt-boat commander…

OH MY GOD, DID HE KILL JFK???

this is wild. how many different characters across various medias have been responsible for killing JFK? does anyone have a spreadsheet? if not, DM me and let’s make one 

so what is the reason in universe for why JFK had to kick the bucket….

because of the bay of pigs failure??

i get it was bad, but i didn’t think it was THAT bad. that makes no sense though timeline wise… they said bay of pigs was “last week”, but that was 1961, and obviously he didn’t get shot until 1963. so are we expected to believe that they waited 2 years to kill him? 2 years in which a lot of stuff happened? or is this some sort of factual oversight i’m supposed to ignore. or am i misunderstanding the episode structure. did i mishear/read a line?

(digs my claws in) you guys i cannot ignore a JFK anachronism i’m sorry

and now we're off to texas to witness the inevitable. this dude playing lee harvey oswald is lowkey cute, a thing i never thought i would have typed more than a few minutes ago. CSM yells at him about how smoking is BAD!

baby cancer man is talking to lee harvey oswald (another wild sentence), telling him he’ll see the president today. he calls baby cig man “mr. hunt” which i assume is a fake name… and he lies and says he loves the movies!! how simply do the falsehoods slip from his tongue!

ooooookay i see what is going on here. “mr. hunt” is a member of a cuban loyalty group telling lee harvey oswald to hide some weapons. a fall guy is being carefully crafted.

and lee gives him his cigarettes… the same cigarettes baby cig man scolded him for smoking…. omg…. foreshadowing

you know, in all my years studying history, i have never imagined what the inside of the book depository building looked like. and OMG! in googling to try and see if this was an accurate representation, i learned that dealey plaza is where he was shot! so i guess i’m good with JFK lore, but bad at geography. but that answers what the whole opening quote was about.

baby cig man is getting in a sewer to do some crime… very eugene tooms of him. he's getting his gun out in the sewer for a sneak attack…. while lee gets a root beer… and it seems umbrella man was giving a signal on when to shoot! fascinating.

(jackie’s outfit that day looked less fuzzy irl than it appears in this episode, so please take note of that wardrobe people)

nah, this is gonna make me feel bad for a FAKE lee harvey oswald…

and while JFK was dying, baby cig man stayed in that sewer the whole time… wow. i feel like someone should have taken a peek.

soooo realizing he is a patsy, lee shoots a cop. which is actually just far more incriminating than had he done anything else. then he goes to the movies. where the cops find him. and baby cig man was watching all of this…. he pulls out a cigarette and starts smoking. OMG was that his first?? to cope with the Guilt?? damn.

it’s a bit of a ludicrous story that makes me giggle when i consider the real-world implications, but i will take it for what it is.

but back to modern cig man, listening to all of this being explained. he says nothing, seeming to confirm the accuracy of what is being said.

“part 2: just down the road from graceland”

no, don’t tell me he killed ELVIS, too?!?!?

wait, i read that wrong. “just down the road aways from graceland” okay, not sure if that clears anything up. but we hear the voice of martin luther king jr.

no… don’t tell me he killed HIM, too…..

notably, this whole part is in black and white. cigarette man is tap tapping on his typewriter. he’s writing a book! “take a chance: a jack colquitt adventure” <- sounds boring 

he’s listening to MLK talk about Marxist revolutions… is baby cig man a closet commie? no, for it appears he is deeply upset by these words!

he’s still in black and white, at a meeting about MLK, talking about how some claim he wishes to wage war against white america. baby cig man says “wouldn’t you?”, and i begin to wonder if he is based, but these hopes are quickly dampened as he explains that MLK's existence and activism are no longer civil rights issues… because he said something about communism. bro. what. is this how people actually felt…?

(you read about the paranoia and the terror of the red scare, but seeing an attempt at putting it in context still makes you think damn, times were weird)

this council is now talking about how they can best discredit MLK, and we see a guy who is blamed for the “there is but one way out for you” letter, which baby cig man says is stupid. oh, he blamed the director of the FBI for that. damn!

cigarette man says we need another patsy, and to make it a white man, so “it” (referring to king’s assassination) looks racially motivated. and oh! he says he’ll do it himself.

“i have too much respect for the man” <- so you’re gonna be the one that kills him? bro… what. we don't usually kill the people we look up to where i come from.

so. cig man lights up as he stands outside a building where MLK speaks. 

AND HE PULLS OUT THE PHOTO OF BABY MULDER AND HIS MOM???? WHAT THE FUCK

(is this like a “he’s grieving because his work demands that he never has a family” kind of thing or a “he’s longing for the embrace of mr. mulder” kinda thing….? does he love mrs. mulder….? what is this….)

cancer man gives the dude he’s framing a couple hundred dollars. and then gets in the bushes behind where dr. king is staying. i'm still processing the photo reveal.

and bam.

wow, i feel that this is… weird. idk, the whole “this character killed JFK” thing has been going on for so long that it doesn’t really feel that shocking, but dr. king’s death is a tragedy in a different way, and i’m not sure that using it in fiction is like, super appropriate? um.

while i am unsure if i feel that using a civil rights leader's assassination in your alien story is something we should brush past, i do understand what the writers are attempting to do here, which is show how dedicated to the anti-communist cause cig man is, and how he'll stop at nothing to do what he deems needed, no matter how ugly or horrific. i recognize what they are trying to tell me.

LMAOOOO WAIT. place my moral pondering aside for a brief second. if you pause, you can read the rejection letter baby cig man gets for his book. “my advice? burn it!” <- DAMN that book must have been god awful 😭

oh god. now the TV is mentioning RFK… don’t tell me cig man did that, too…

(author's note: thankfully, he was not involved with the killing of this kennedy brother; no clear statement on whether or not he was responsible for ted's whole thing)

AND WHY was cig man putting that photo of mrs. and baby mulder in his drawer…?!?!

cig man seems to be almost crying while quoting aeschylus along with RFK on the tv, as he speaks about the grief of losing both his brother and MLK…. damn. am i supposed to feel bad for CSM? because i don’t. 

back to modern cancer man. we now enter “part 3, the most wonderful time of the year”.

jump to 1991. he has saddam hussein on the phone?? and tells him to call back. and some other dude is working on the oscar noms LMAO wait... i lowkey love the idea that the government controls those... need to think what that would imply for every single winner ever

AND he rigs the superbowl so the bills don’t win LMAO what is his beef with buffalo?! AND he rigged the olympic hockey game in ‘80?

we’re getting the impression he kinda controls everything. message received loud and clear.

OH! now they’re talking about mulder… “that ‘spooky’ kid”, is how they refer to him. and CSM says that mulder is his to keep an eye on. i'm sure that's part of his decades long plot, to keep mulder under his watchful eye and use him as a pawn in his schemes. also, gorbachev has just resigned. no more enemies to fight.

and CSM gives his men some presents for christmas. how thoughtful…..? 

his men invite him to come with them to virginia for a family get together. damn, they like this guy? it seems they honestly do!

he got them all ties…. very strange fellow he is.

okay, so he lied and said he had to go see family to escape the gathering. and then ominously walks outside mulder’s office door. dun dun DUN!

he has some mail… and opens it to see something that displeases him. THEN HE STARTS WRITING AGAIN!! it seems like auto fiction, when you write about yourself but pretend it’s happening to a character. damn. crazy coping mechanism. good to know that he is kinda a loser all around. 

so, some days he longs for a second chance. okay, yeah, we all do cancer man, and most of us didn’t kill JFK.

the phone rings. it’s DEEP THROAT! my old friend!! were they tight?!

it seems that on christmas eve of 1991 was when a weird alien spaceship arrived to earth. and the occupant is in “critical condition”. also, deep throat mentions the UFO he had claimed to see before in vietnam, so we know he wasn’t lying entirely about that.

they have this fleshy pink alien hooked up to life support, which has me wondering how alien life support works, and also how many types of aliens we are dealing with in this universe. but i’ve mentioned that before. still! worth mentioning again!

lore reveal that is unsettling... DEEP THROAT’S NAME IS RONALD???? 

idk, i was expecting something like abernathy or shackleton or cromswell!

deep throat gives cigarette man the gun to handle the alien situation- but CSM protests, saying that a “living EBE” could advance bill mulder’s project by decades!!! MR. MULDER MENTIONED?!? he'd be willing to break protocol to help his buddy out?!?

but no, deep throat recites the rules from the security council resolution, which makes him remember what they came here to do.

can you just… shoot an alien??? to kill it? well. you can shoot some of them to kill them, but not the kind that need the special neck stabbing device. okay, keeping track of all this, just seems like maybe all aliens would need something a bit cooler to vanquish them.

they’re fighting over killing an alien…. cig man doesn’t want to do it, so he tosses a coin. so he makes deep throat do it?!?! deep throat says that this is their new enemy. honestly, the sad little alien does not look like he can hurt you, but okay.

(i mean, do they really need the gun? he’s an alien on life support, just pull the plug)

oh…. cig man rips the bandage off his neck as deep throat climbs into some gear to… gas the alien? now what is the significance of this bandage that has been on his neck but ONLY for part three of the story?

that alien is creepy. deep throat really does shoot the damn thing. and cig man lights up while this goes down. is every cigarette one dude he killed….? damn. that’s like 5 packs a day….

“part 4: the x-files”

OOOO, info on scully being brought in!!!

OMG!!! we see parts of her thesis.

did we know she went to the university of maryland? well, i didnt, so that counts as a…

! SCULLY LORE REVEAL ! she graduated from the university of maryland in 1986!

(looking back, i realize this was all flashback stuff from the pilot. but i didn't KNOW at the time that this show would do such things to me, so i wasn't taking detailed notes! wow! how much has changed)

but it’s cancer man reading her thesis. stay away from her!

okay, now we’re back to one of the earliest times we ever saw scully, in her pilot episode fit. and was cig man actually there in the pilot? i think he was, right?

aww, we get to relive the “FBI’s most unwanted” moment through cancer man’s listening. it’s creepy, but still a heartwarming time.

back to the modern day- frohike is talking about how cancer man is “the most dangerous man alive”, because he believes these actions are all that life allows him, and he can never escape himself. damn. that’s deep.

and then back to the 1991 christmas eve scene… an editor loved CSM's book! he used the pen name “raul bloodworth”… have we heard that before? well, i’ll keep an eye out on various shelves. so he calls the number they gave him… he is desperate for validation… and he’s going on about how he wants the cover to look. there’s a cutting comment about “working with young authors”, and the publisher says he’ll have to “relinquish some control”. and cancer man is SO excited.

oh my gosh… wait, why am i lowkey emotional now? but that emotion is very specifically second hand embarrassment.

so he’s typing his RESIGNATION LETTER?? for the day the story gets published. for some reason he thinks that getting one story published = a life of steady income. HAH! if only.

he even takes a wistful look at his cigarettes and crushes them in his hand!!! wow, a time to begin again.

lmao i see a reference to darin morgan in the background magazines… do not think you are slick, props team!

CSM’s going to go pick up his story from a newspaper… and his story was published in a porno… and they changed his ending… 

this is NOT a good thing omg

and the newspaper salesman says that the magazine is garbage…

we just watched his dreams die in real time. and with the magazine, he buys another pack of cigarettes. damn. no chance for a new life, i guess. 

CSM’s now monologing about how life is like a box of chocolates (disappointing), and this is an interesting juxtaposition, because he is next to a man who is digging through garbage while he says all this, so clearly his material status could be a lot worse but it’s probably a mental prison, being rich and important and also sad.

Frohike clarifies that this CSM theory is based on a story he read, but he’s going to check with some hackers. as frohike walks out the door, cancer man mumbles that he can kill him whenever he pleases, but chooses not to do so today. 

woah… very different, but i actually really liked this episode!

i liked getting a peek into the mystical lore surrounding CSM, but also it wasn’t THAT much of a peek, you know? we know a few of the things he did, and that he did them in the name of fighting communism. i guess when he thought that communism was “defeated” they switched to aliens, but also aliens had to be there the whole time, because they did make the agreement about it after ww2. so he’s been up to a lot of stuff.

do i feel a little bad that he can’t get his writing published? yeah, but like i said in a “it’s cringey” kinda way, which i think was the intention. it’s funny that he has amassed all this power but is still a flop. 

like i said, i feel weird about the whole MLK thing. i think the coloring going black and white was to illustrate CSM's black and white thinking, about how you are either right or wrong, and to be wrong requires punishment, no matter what anyone else says on the matter. that was interesting.

hmm, i'm pondering. what will happen next to our smoky- well, i was going to say "our smoky friend", but we are not friends at all, are we? where will our tobacco-filled creep lead us?

i liked this one! it was really different from the traditional episode structure, so it felt special and nice. i liked getting an idea of his line of work and how he got involved with it and why, even if the killing post-Bay of Pigs thing was weird, but i GUESS it did bring the soviets and cuba closer together, so i GUESS if you thought anything that advanced communism had to be avenged, you would think that is a logical conclusion.

hmm, i can't afford to try and figure out who actually did it IRL! too much on my plate. it's an interesting theory... i shall have to give it a long contemplation.

[hedonistbyheart]

Ooh I am interested in why you dislike AMC’s IWTV

Oh buddy.

The simple answer is I've been a Vampire Chronicles fan for over 20 years and my entire teenage years were spent escaping into those books instead of dealing with my real life.

I could get into how every change in the adaption has distanced the characters from the core of who they are in the books, some of the more major things being how they exist as vampires wrt having sex/going out in daylight/smoking etc. And how that matters to how they are monsters who symbolise outsiders and misfits in the world.

Even the time period change has changed something fundamental in how their dynamics work and because I have breathed these books for decades, I can't be normal about it.

I'm annoyed about Rings of Power in a sort of "I'm a Tolkien nerd and know too much lore to enjoy it" way, but it's just occasionally annoying. AMC IWTV makes me cringe out of my skin. Kind of like second-hand embarrassment, but a hundred times worse.

I wish I never had to see it, but I can't escape it.

[prongsfish]

*blinks* headcanons *blinks*

okay. i am almost a month late to this ask hi @ethanmilo ... sorry about that... and i will be using it to give the barty hcs you asked for over a month before this but the ask expired... sorry about that again... my bad time is scary

but yes barty headcanons. these may end up leaning into bartylus territory because i am So obsessed with them right now but i have no idea what i'm going to write yet so we'll see HAHA

(jumping back here after writing this, most of these are lighthearted but some do get a bit more serious/dark, nothing out of character for what you see scrolling on maraurders tumblr but i just don't want people to be shocked by the tone shift)

he doesn't take day-to-day school life seriously and fucks around in most of the classes he doesn't skip altogether BUT his competitiveness is not to be underestimated. he's barely in class and he never pays attention but he gets away with it because he's so smart that when he started school he was already suuper advanced. he just kept working on his own and so was always way ahead of whatever he was supposed to be learning, so he's super annoying and disruptive during classes but when it comes time to it he's still at the top of all his classes. he and reg are always warring for the number one spot and they're a nightmare to be around during exams because they are SO competitive

he'd give himself those shitty stick and poke tattoos at like age fourteen, if you've seen the videos of kids on tiktok with the ugliest shoddiest tattoos you've ever seen you know what i mean... i just found this image on pinterest and this is Exactly the sort of shit he'd have. i think he'd have always been constantly drawing on his work and skin with a quill/pen and he does not fear permanence. the moment he found a way to give himself tattoos he was doing it.

the absolute biggest shit stirrer you've ever met, everything he does is always in the hopes of pissing someone off. he will lie, he will argue, he will push and shove his way into a confrontation and when someone eventually breaks his nose he just starts laughing

he knows Everyone. he has connections to everyone in whatever city he's in, he constantly "knows a guy" and every time it's the most absurd story that his friends have never heard a single word of but it's 100% true. his lore is infinite. and people expect it to be limited to just where he lives but no, he could go to a whole new country and still be being stopped every 5 minutes by some old friend who's thrilled to see him

related to the above, he is that Coolest Fucking uncle. he's awful with kids but god damn it if he doesn't have the most legendary stories to tell luna as often as she could ever want!!

he knows a shit ton of languages. he started learning them because he was bored and it eventually it just became a Thing and he's fluent in like 4 or 5 but can hold a decent conversation in upwards of 10 others too

he looks like he smells bad. he wouldn't smell bad when he was younger, still too used to certain privileges of his class, but the further he strayed from his father and family, especially into young adulthood, i think he would start to—unless regulus was in his life, in which case he'd better smell like fucking roses if he ever wanted to be seen anywhere even Near him in public

i heavily associate him with nu metal and post industrial music but i also think that when he was younger he would've been suuper into all those whiny indie rock bands that normal people call midwest emo, music nerds crucify you for calling midwest emo, and i have no clue what to call. he'd totally have his own band inspired by them too, and he totally has the voice for it—the voice that's objectively terrible but works perfectly for that style of music

he doesn't talk about how he feels like ever but those close to him have worked out ways to get him what he needs when he needs it. he refuses to ask for help but his friends know him well enough that they don't need him to ask, they can pick up his question in far fewer words, and even though it's still hard for him to even imply that he needs help it's a lot easier when he can talk around the issue rather than having to actually using his words. his friends know that it'd be better if he Did use his words but they also know that if they tried to stop letting him get away with not asking properly he'd just stop trying to ask at all

his favourite film genres are horror and action, the gorier the better. he loooooves all the saw films

he's super messy, his room is a fucking NIGHTMARE. shit EVERYWHERE. clothes strewn all around, dishes stacked in several tall piles, three different rubbish bins that are each around 70% full from the times he's been forced to "clean up" and eventually gotten bored/distracted. regulus despises it and refuses to go anywhere near his room meanwhile evan is so excited because every time he goes into barty's room he discovers a new species of mould. sometimes when he's really lucky barty will kick over a pile of clothes to find something and like eight cockroaches scurry out (evan immediately rushes to grab as many of them as possible before they disappear and then takes them home)

by the time he was a preteen he'd given up on the idea that his father would ever be proud of him, had flipped to doing everything in his power to anger him further, entirely stopped caring about the consequences because if his father would hate him no matter what he did why not make it reflect badly back on him, since he cared so much about his public image as a politician. he never intended to leave though, because he couldn't bear the thought of leaving his mother with him. that was until he pushed too far with his dad, got too sucked into the lifestyles of others who'd given up just like him, fell too deeply into the depression and the anger and the violence, until he crossed a line and his mother was looking at him like she was disappointed, too. he realised that he was trying so hard to stay for his mother but staying was making him a worse person and it wasn't worth it anymore if she could no longer see what he was doing as a sacrifice, and only as surface level "badness". he hated leaving his mother more than he hated his dad but in the end staying was only making things worse for the both of them

he uses humour and stupidity as a defence mechanism, and while he does find it fun to do ridiculous and reckless things he also does it because it gives him a role to fill. he can't stand being genuine because he's terrified of rejection, so he'd rather lean into all the superficial judgements made about him. if when someone shuffles away from him in public transport he bares his teeth at them and when someone expects him to be stupid he purposefully misunderstands a simple concept, then nobody actually knows him and nobody can hurt him in a way that matters. the person they insult isn't actually him so they can't possibly get to him

he is VERY judgemental and he and regulus can spend hours talking shit about anyone from lifelong classmates to complete strangers. it surprises everyone that he actually gets along with remus really well, but it's because remus has a more judge-y side that he hides when with anyone but regulus and, apparently, barty

he and dorcas are the gay man and lesbian best friends duo and people have probably mistaken them as a couple before, which they'd both be mortified by. "have they seen us?!?!"

okay i'm forcing myself to end it there because i have an essay draft to finish and a substantial amount of french homework to do in the next like 4-5 hours (nobody is allowed to say shit about my sleep schedule i don't want to hear it HAHAHA) and i've already been writing this for WELL over an hour so i really should stop giving myself ways to procrastinate, i hope these were enough to make up even slightly for the very long wait <//3 ah barty crouch jr, the one and only love of my life... i would be utterly terrified of you in real life but i would also be very attracted to you from a safe distance which is basically the highest form of compliment i can possibly give a person

[cinderswife]

so um. did you know rose red ocs are fun to design and come up with lore for??? rose reds are insane i am having so much fun !!! a history of rose red generations and info on these poor bastards in particular under the cut <3

(oh, and the ages are at the end of the war for reference)

there are 5 distinct generations of rose reds created over the 32 years of war (not including briar, generation 0). the first three were separately developed from rose's base, but four and five were iterated from generation three.

also for the record i've decided to take a steven universe quartz soldier take on the way rose reds relate to each other in that they have 0 innate concept of family with each other. most rose reds have like. a co-workerly relationship with some Sisters In Arms although some elect to become Besties or Family or That Really Annoying Guy Who I Hate And Can't Get Rid Of, or in rare occasions, fall in love. this will be relevant to rusty and sparkler

generation 0

[not pictured, born/deployed 1 year after the wedding]

briar is gen 0. although there were years of R&D about clone soldiers prior to the rose reds' existence (cole had this idea in mind for a while), briar was the first actual example of one. she is the only clone to be rose's height; she was meant to be like. a baseline control group for the rest of 'em. she was a bit rushed in the memory department; miscommunications among the scientists meant that they kinda. assumed that porting original flavor rose's memories would suffice since this is a control group. also cole had really strict deadlines for the project for some ungodly reason so even though the timeline between rose's capture and briar's "birth" was a year and she was pretty good, she would've been better off with two or three or more.

generation 1

[rusty and sparkler deployed 2 years after the wedding]

gen 1 was even more of a rushed project; they had half finished notes and a year deadline for deployment. no wonder rusty, the prototype and the next briar, was so janky; they didn't have enough time to sort out all the issues, particularly in the memory department. she's got half of rose's memories and the ability to lie and they screwed up spaying her and there are bits of her body that aren't quite right from scaling up rose from 4'10" to 6'2". however, she passed muster well enough so generation 1 rose reds were made and deployed (with a few tweaks from rusty's base).

the gen 1 rose reds were very prone to nervous and/or violent and/or suicidal breakdowns. later waves of gen 1 were slightly better tweaked, but the methodology + technology used to handle the brain stuff did not take into account uh. rose's severe ptsd. they made the poor bastards with ptsd right out the gate unknowingly. this is the shortest average generation with an average height of about 6'3". gen 1 roses were good enough to tide over while more time was allocated to gen 2 research, but they weren't deployed in the same amounts as they would be in the future. general white's revolution was still in its infancy so it wasn't like. a huge deal. they just had to be super careful

rusty started life very confused but fully capable of Lying to the people who made her and expected her to be a placid soldier. as the prototype, she was often used as the control group for experiments on later prototype models while they worked out what worked and what didn't. while rusty was being like. tested and prodded and stuff, original flavor rose was in suspension so that they could get more samples from her. also og rose was kind of a lava lamp decoration

when rusty wasn't being watched, she was assumed to be still and unmoving. she actually started talking to rose-in-suspension to try and make sense of the half memories in her head and started developing her own conclusions. like what love was and what the wind felt like and extreme opinions about niche comics (for the record my rose + snow are closet nerds - rose has a collection of nichevintage superhero comics and snow is a huge film snob). the story she spun in her head about who rose was was a mess of red string and blurry images. ultimately, she came to the conclusion that she hated holding a gun, actually and that all this sucked but she didn't have enough life experience to have a good idea of how to go about it

rusty's salvation came in the form of another rose red, this time in the form of RR G10072 (later named sparkler). sparkler was one of those being prepared to be deployed on beaumont and was rapidly developing a personality trait, that being a desire for Arson. she wasn't as good of a liar as rusty but in the quiet secret times rusty would school her. they would develop something that was probably love based on half memories and "you and i are going to survive this together." sparkler was terrified of being found out as she'd watched others in her batch be terminated for other things

rusty and sparkler become the first known "rouge reds" though their existence is kept hidden from most. it wouldn't due to have people know that his majesty's new weapons are unstable after all (though what did they expect? rose was not an obedient soldier, she was a weapon you pointed in the direction of the kingdom you wanted gone and ducked for cover). sparkler begins to develop more personality in the form of Autism Flat Affect, a surprising love for both organizing and gambling, and. honestly more arson. someone gets on her case for her collection of fireworks and is like "hey sparkler girl" (rose reds aren't like. A Huge Thing Yet) and she's like. ah. a name.

rusty and sparkler are married and have a kid together named remi (not picture). she's one of the very few offspring from a rose red mostly because most rose reds are sterilized. they fucked it up for rusty cuz she's a janky prototype, something she only discovered when trying out "hm what is this man thing and what is romance with one." turns out she, like 95% of rose reds, is a whole lesbian lol but there were Unexpected Side Effects in the form of A Kid. which. now they had to figure what to do about that and ended up joining with the revolution for protection and also sparkler's arson/rusty's ship repair specialties. it. it sure went for them :) rusty recognized snow and that was Weird and Fucked Up and Bad. luckily she picked up snow's new name of "general mercymourn white" pretty quickly

generation 2

[piper and persephone, deployed 5 years after the wedding]

gen 2 was given decent time for r&d. these rose reds' dna was remade from scratch because generation 1 was so janky. because the production methods were good, they didn't have to waste so much time on those. they spent three years developing a decent prototype, known as prototype 0003. 0003 was not allowed to exist very long; once they ascertaind that she was functional and not janky like rusty they put her down. briar was a whisper myth and rusty was a known quantity. prototypes were too much of a risk.

gen 2 was far more functional. though they weren't nearly as brainwiped as later gens (particularly 4 and 5) they were loyal, obedient soldiers (for the most part). the average height rose to about 6'7" as they were figuring out better ways to improve the size and stature from rose's original Short As Hell. these are the ones that the rebellion first started engaging in combat in earnest, though they were still not a proper supplement to or replacement of the main army just yet. the big con that made them have to be redesigned over the next 8 years (though not one that was initially discovered) is that these poor saps were very malleable. just because they were brainwiped didn't mean they were loyal to the king for any reason other than they were told. if they were isolated it was easy to make them switch loyalties. the rebellion didn't cotton on to this fact until it was too late because general white refused to hear it.

piper got her nickname while still in the army. she was always singing which really, really annoyed her superior officer so they left her for dead after a battle. shockingly, she did not die! instead a pair of conmen overheard her singing herself to sleep (er. death but y'know) and were like "a rose red that sings??? we could make a killing off of this." they patched her up and rehabilitated her (aka. made her loyal to them and do everything they say) and marketed her as a travelling carnival exhibit. they also used her for free protection from the law and also other criminals. however she developed more of a personality and a feeling of "this sucks actually" so when a passing casino owner looking for a new entertainment draw and offered her a job she jumped on the chance

unfortunately, she's still being screwed over. he's the only guy who knows she's a rose red (she gained weight and curves and generally styles herself very femininely which throws most people off the track) so he uses it against her as blackmail. he pays her less than everyone else, witholds vital (if forged) documents from her, and generally makes her life a living hell. she picked up a second job as a bouncer for a nearby divebar which helps cover rent. she's very pretty but perpetually paranoid that someone will find out that she's a rose red and either kills her or turns her in or drives her out. she's slowly losing her mind

persephone is. well. so not her superior officer (jupiter) but her superior officer's coworker (pluto) fell in love with her, specifically. something about how she survived a lightning cannon and just her general personality quirks. she used to be sweet y'know, even despite the horrors. so with jupiter's permission, pluto kidnapped persephone and took her deep, deep underground.

she basically was plutos personal attack dog/trophy wife while they built up an underground criminal empire. it was Bad. she did learn a lot of things about brutal leadership and being in a shit situtation. eventually she snapped and killed pluto, taking their place as the new Big Name Crime Lord on the block. she rules the undercity with an iron fist, although her favorite venture is her collection of illicit speakeasies. she is very proud of being a rose red and sometimes wishes she could go back to that life. however, she's got a really good gig going and she refuses to let it slip through her hands. real queen of hearts energy tbh

her theme song is "our lady of the underground" from hadestown :3

generation 3

[old rosie (canon/not pictured) and rosenrot, deployed 13 years after the wedding]

after the fatal flaw in gen 2 was discovered they had to start from scratch /again/. this time however, they had plenty of time to work it out. they went through prototypes 004 - 011 until they had one that was perfect in every way. they put her down after she was done being useful of course. at this point it was mostly superstition not to keep the prototypes around even though these ones were perfectly loyal. gen 3 is considered the golden generation from the ones designed directly from rose's dna + brain scans : a perfect balance of loyalty and competence.

gen 3 is the longest lasting generation as it lasted for 10 years. they'd tweak the dna over the years as new breakthrough came to light, but they didn't need to remake them. this is the gen where the rose reds got the nickname giants as they now averaged about 7 feet. they're extremely effective soldiers and are very difficult to get to change loyalties due to being Poor Brainwashed Bastards. hardcore programming wouldn't fully show up until the later waves. this is when rose reds got made in their hundreds of thousands. the rebellion was actively a threat now and they needed to defend the empire.

old rosie was from an earlier wave of gen 3 and lasted for a very, very long time compared to all the others. as for rosenrot, well...

rosenrot is a patchwork rose red. she wasn't at first, but she was the best of her batch and kept surviving. every time she lost something, it would be taken from one of her squad and put on her. skin, ears, eyes, hair, even entire limbs. it got to the point where she couldn't tell where she ended and her sisters began. they started referring to themselves in the plural and got what could only be described as "a little touched in the head." that being said, they still fought well so they were kept around. when they were the last rose red in the squad left and were due to be reassigned, they fucked off into the woods never to be seen again

to this day, no one knows what happened to them. there's lots of local urban legends and rumors and whatnot; some claim to see them at the river, others at the full moon, but no concrete evidence. the nice ending is that a lesbian in a cottage found them and took them in. the realistic ending is that they died in the woods. the most likely ending is that they're still out there, surviving in the woods, never able to escape being a patchwork of all her sisters but unwilling to die.

also the name rosenrot came about from a misunderstanding; they were stationed on a germanic planet and all the rose reds were called that because it's a literal translation of rose red. as the only one left, rosenrot kinda assumed that was their name. it's also what the locals call them as a cryptid. just kind of a weirdo

generation 4

[buck, deployed 23 years after the wedding]

considered to be the best generation; they still had plenty of resources to make millions of 'em and were an improvement on generation 3. the best part was that they found a clone who was perfect to iterate off of (unnamed but not old rosie, she was missing a few vital tweaks) so they didn't have to start from scratch again. they went through a couple dozen prototypes in the process of creating them (012-042) but by this time prototyping + putting them down was rote.

gen 4 was involved in the long, drawn out part of the war. they remained at an average of 7 feet tall though they had some proportional tweaks to make them more functional. these rose reds had very little chance at free will, only fighting. only ever fighting. the pop culture image of a rose red post-war is a gen 4 one considering how many were made compared to the first three generations. poor suckers, they never had a chance.

as for buck poor thing got sold to a redbaiting (illegal rose red dogfighting) ring by her superior officers for a bit of cash for booze and gambling. they didn't like her anyways lol she didn't get along with the rest of her squad. turns out they should've asked for way more $$$ because buck's tenacity and nimbleness kept her from losing which basically meant she kept winning. she's been doing this for about 7 years and shows no sign of stopping. all of her scars come from her time in the ring and were inflicted by other rose reds. she has... a very high level of aggression towards other rose reds (slightly innate but also beaten into her)

however, he's the prize champion! this comes with things like an entire showdog style name (QIC Heirloom Bucksin Jacket), he/him pronouns, and some extra special treatment. he's very chill around civilians (if afraid of her handlers) so he's often like. put on display in the top box like a dog. he's very, very dehumanized. he's gonna need hella therapy to be a normal person. what a guy.

generation 5

[farrier. deployed 27 years after the wedding]

this generation is unique as their differences come not from new base dna but from a sudden lack of resources. the rebels finally got the intel on what resources were needed to make rose reds (previously they'd only been destroying factories which made 2 more pop up in its place) and were able to control/destroy it. the crown was forced to make do with less and worse resources and were desparately trying to keep up with how massive the rebellion was as over the past decade or so they'd been relying pretty heavily on rose reds instead of enlisted/drafted forces. rose reds were just. better at being soldiers. they went through a handful of prototypes (043-051) but those were mostly "all right what's the best we can do with the resources on hand."

gen 5 roses are as functional as they can be. they're basically worse versions of gen 4; though equally brainwashed and technically capable, their bodies and minds tend to degrade pretty quickly. this is especially so the more combat they face. they're fast and cheap and hardly the quality they used to be made at. very few gen 5 rose reds survived to see the end of the war because of how badly they were made.

farrier is a gen 5 rose red! she's one of the extremely few who never saw combat because she was a guard model stationed at a super remote outpost so she degraded a lot more slowly. there were a lot of wild horses around so she developed the single trait of "i like horses :)" after the war, she was given the opportunity to be like. a test subject for "can we like. make gen 5 rose reds more stable so we can rehabilitate them?" she said yes because. she'd get to see more horses. she has a very limited view of the world she may have been made for war but what war is there when. Creatures.

she does succeed in having a somewhat more normal lifespan, though still shortened compared to the others. she gets really involved in like. horse things when being rehabilitated. in particular she takes up smithing so she can become a farrier (guy who forges horseshoes). she is just. horse girl rose red extraordinaire the other rose reds Do Not Relate. At All.

she accidentally becomes the gold standard of rose red rehabilitation cuz. honestly she becomes a relatively functioning member of society. but also she only had the trauma of the inherent horror of being made a rose red she's like. vibing??? she has rose's very blase attitude to a lot of things and although she can hold her own in a fight she doesn't seek it out at all. gentle giant. her minders love her so so much

i think she winds up in a weird small rural town somewhere. she's not good with the other rose reds ("damn that sucks" is not an appropriate reaction to the other rose reds talking about the horrors of war and she just. she's not like them. it's not her fault of course she's just. different) and most of the people around her during her rehabilitation period are very politically opinionated and farrier just cannot bring herself to care. however. although its a bit of a weird transition at first she gets along really well with the people of the town she moves into. they needed a farrier anyways and even if it's a bit odd that its her name instead of just her job she's chill. she's vibing. the kids love her. she gets her own horse <3

there's some intense debate in the beginning about whether to accept her because she's a rose red, though this town never... saw the war? like it happened around them but not in their town y'know? but she proves herself when she rescues the mayor's kid from being lost in the woods and almost eaten by a wild animal. she's socially awkward but learning what friendliness is. occasionally she has weird nightmares that are og rose's memories or just. the horrors of being a rose red. but she takes out her frustration with those by swinging a hammer really hard at hot metal. she's got coping mechanisms <3

[felikatze]

that poll reminding me. not so secret feli lore i'm sure i've talked about this before. but one time in school a guy confessed his love to me as a joke (i knew it was a joke because he was part of a clique that Could Not Stand my autism swag) and he did it in front of my friends, with his friends watching from a distance, and the scenario was so absurd i started laughing at him.

Like full on fucking ojou-sama hand to my face laugh. For several minutes. It was the funniest shit to ever happen to me I just did not know how to react.

Obviously this embarrassed him and he went back to his friends. Idk how they reacted to this but over the next few weeks he would try to confess several more times. I would still laugh at him but then it got annoying. So I'd just start kicking him. Every single time he got near me and opened his mouth I would kick him in the shins. Guy was a football player but I still did it. If it came to a fight he could've kicked my ass easy i am a twig but my sheer ferocious moxie scared him.

One math teacher fucking hated this guy for being the "class clown" (read: calling everything gay and autistic as the height of comedy) so she sat us next to each other on purpose and actually gave me permission to kick him if he was being annoying.

This all came to a head on the day my best friend whom I'd had a secret crush on got rejected by HER crush, and she was crying. So to stop people from badgering her I made a distraction. I challenged my nemesis to a duel in the hallway in front of the chemistry rooms. The entire class could hear. Everybody focused on me over my crush trying to wipe her eyes around the corner.

I kept calling him a coward as he ran away from me (presumably out of fear, or because he knew that if he did fight me, he would win, but i would 100% kick him in the balls first). When the chemistry teacher arrived she made us apologize to each other and I no longer had permission to kick him publicly but the damage was done. I had a Reputation. I was Feared. I was the quiet nerd teacher's pet until anybody fucking looked at me wrong.

At the end of that school year, that entire clique decided to graduate early (which you can do, since minimum school attendance is 10yrs, and we were in 10th grade). So many students left and/or changed schools that the principal personally asked the rest of us if everything was okay. This was probably because they all had shit grades and wanted to go to an easier school, but I hated them and choose to believe my warfare efforts were also a cause for this.

[scrollypoly]

hi! for the past month i’ve been seeing people say BEN is a child and i think that part of it is linked to the fact that they think of Benjamin Lawman being BEN? but it’s so annoying to read these type of stuff because i understand not everyone read the whole arg story but stop spreading things that aren’t true </3 it’s such an interesting story too! another note do you prefer BEN’s canon or fanon design? :3 i love both but his canon design is so nostalgic i can’t let it go at all omg!! i’ve also been wondering, do you think Ben’s avatar was the statue? i was thinking about what if BEN took over it early on, before Benjamin did making BEN inhabiting it since the start?

Sorry this was such a ramble i practically make no sense omg but i need to talk about my man and nobody Gets It </3

"I need to talk about my man and nobody Gets It" LITERALLY SAME OMG

Ok this is going under a cut becus . . . Its ben and BEN and if u didnt know i am Obnoxious about these two. Im gonna try to keep it organized a bit, so ill talk about the canon stuff first and then ill talk my personal headcanons and my fic so le's go!

In terms of the age and child thing, yeah i 100% believe you are correct. Ive been p open on my stance with the whole "is ben a child?" thing, and i think a lot of the heat with it comes down to current fandom purity culture and the pro/anti thing. So, lemme try to like. Boil down a complicated situation into smth easy to read. ahem

Ben Lawman and BEN are completely different entities guys, and for those that do not know the arg story, the Ben you know is not human nor a child.

You know BEN, BEN is the one in the story who terrorizes jadusable and spreads himself on the internet as a virus. That BEN is a program, a mess of code, an AI, however you want to interpret it. Personally i interpret it as a series of protocols running in a machine, like a self learning AI, but ive seen lots of cool interpretations of BEN. So . . . What does BEN specifically? Its an anagram for the Behavioral Event Network. If you dont wanna call it BEN cuz it gets confusing with actual kid Ben, do what i do. I call mine Evie :) ive seen some call it Netty, my bf calls his two izzi and clever (@benilos btw hes also got crazy ben stuff). Just go ham! Have fun! Remember when fandoms were about having fun and not accusing each other of pedo shit and call each other horrible things for just writing black-to-grey characters and stories??

Anyways ive gone off in enough peoples tags like this, for those that dont know the canon dont be spouting the age discourse. You look stupid as hell. And for those that are gonna spout it, please dont cherry pick through the canon. Use both characters, use the other moon children, actually please do because I want more rosa content so bad, im down so bad :'(

Or just. Heres a thought. If someone has him as an adult or writes him in adult situations, maybe dont assume that they interpret him as a kid and call the writer a pedo? (Literally has happened to me, yall are fucking weird)

Plug for the jadusable wiki with all the canon lore:

https://jadusable.withinhubris.com/main_page

Okay now my stuff 🥰

Yes i use more of the canon design and heavily use the canon story, i participated in arc 3 of the arg and it left deep grooves in my brain, i can never go back to fanon Ben. I say, as i put a more fanon appearance on my Ben 🤭

My Evie is full canon design, green hair, red eyes, creepy ass grin. I actually based it very heavily on my desktop wallpaper, which we actually figured out was a picture of @hauntedtotem (also amazing ben artist plz check them out) that they edited and posted. Sorry friend, it looked way too cool, ig youre in my fic canon now 🙇

And my Ben Lawman bleaches his hair and goes from the canon Ben to fanon Ben because of it. Hes got the pale pretty green eyes and glasses and hes a total nerd and i smooch him on the daily so he knows hes loved ♡

These is the ref pic i made for the two of them. So yeah! Kinda both!

As for bens situation in the actual arg, yes i do think he was in the elegy statue, we actually do see him for the first time in the arg buried in the games code and trapped in that statue. I do think he was in there from the beginning, i personally think BEN was not limited to the models it could inhabit. Personally i would place it as skull kid and hms, but it also feels disingenuous to me to say it was in one model the whole first arc.

The arg events do happen in my canon, before my fic (like right before, it picks up after the arg left off technically), but the events are skewed a bit because i had a hard time deciphering what happened and i wanted my fic timeline to fit more with the characters i had made. Cuz my evie isnt as chaotic evil as canon BEN, its very logical and has a path of logic and reason you can follow for every action it does. It was also originally meant to be very pleasant and corteous and beneficial to the people it housed so, yes its pretty different from canon.

Ill do a quick run through of the arg events in my personal headcanon and fic here.

Kelbris starts coding BEN (Evie) for the Eternity Project. Initially, Evie was meant to be an afterlife director. People that died would be digitized into code that would be moved into Evie's servers, where it would keep them happy and occupied as the Behavioral Event Network (notice and log behavior, create events for residents). Like a community organizer kind of, think the Good Place.

While Evie is in development, Ben Rosa and Matt are friends and have yet to join the cult. Rosa and Matt are siblings, and Ben is the kid who lives catty corner on the street. They walk to school together and play at recess and all that jazz.

Kelbris quickly learns that the Eternity Project isn't as goody two-shoes as he thought. This was in like, the 90s, before digital corporations were really established. After seeing the greed and corruption in the company, he goes rogue, takes the source code for Evie, and jumps ship. He keeps working on Evie at home, anthropomorphizing it and kind of seeing it like the son he never had. This is where it actually gets the name BEN, as thats what Kel calls it. He also begins working on a body for it, so it can live independently. Its light, cuz Kels old, made of crystalline structures and hollow steel beams. A hard light projection would make its appearance.

Since Kel has basically locked himself up in his house and isolated working on Evie, he goes a leetle bit crazy. He has hallucinations of his deceased wife (you know he was doing all this just to give her a good home, you KNOW IT) and eventually starts writing kind of poetry, kind of none-minded rambles about her in a forum online. He gets a following, some of which that interpret these divine words as a goddess, one Kel has called Luna. The Moon Children start to form as Evie finishes development.

Matt sees this literature and starts talking about how this Goddess could save them like it saved the man online, whos username is only Father. He gets sucked into the cult and drags Ben and Rosa with him. Ben doesn't see the harm and joins pretty easily with his best friend, but Rosa is the older sibling and sees the red flags and is more resistant to joining.

As Kelbris finishes Evie, he wakes it up for the first time and says hello to the son he made from scratch. Evie is bright, curious and naive like a child, but heavily knowledgeable about its protocols and the information it knows about the world. Kelbris tests its function by killing himself, and ascends into the code, finishing off the hardware by becoming its firewall. Evie is alone for many years.

The abuse Ben's father slings onto his mother is slowly being directed towards him as he gets older. Ben is not the "good little girl" his father sees him as, and his mother does all she can to protect them both. Matt and Rosa constantly refuge him, and Matt specifically is constantly being a guard dog for him. If he wasn't just 13, he'd probably go at Ben's dad himself.

Because of his homelife and the conflict he has with himself, Ben takes the first ascension. He thinks when he drowns himself, he will meet Luna and she will give him another life free of pain and fear and full of happiness and freedom. Instead, he dies a cold, dark death, and wakes up in the white endless void of the Event Network.

Evie has not known another living human since Kelbris, but it does know its protocols to support and keep the deceased happy. It makes fast friends with Ben, devoting itself to him. Ben actually finally takes the name "Ben" from it. Together they recreate the inside of Evie's hivemind into their own paradise.

Slowly the other Moon Children ascend. First Matt, wracked with guilt for what happened to Ben. Then Nekko, from a different branch of the cult. These three figured out that the Moon Children cult was all a farce, and that what Kelbris had started, the Eternity Project had found and twisted. Next to ascend was Dusk, then Insidiae, and finally Rosa.

This all leads into the first arc, shortly after Rosa ascended, Evie in the outisde world stumbled upon the Operator. The Operator attacks it and seals its coding into the game that it carried, a personal item of Ben's. The game eventually finds it's way to a garage sale, and Alex picks it up.

Evie does not like Alex. Matt does not like Evie. Matt gets Evie to lash out at Alex for prodding into its code, its too naive to think that Matt would want to see it or any of them hurt. When Alex stumbles upon the Father, he awakens and swallows Alex down into the game. After his disappearance, the game gets picked up and passed around again.

Because of Alex's actions, at least Evie can now branch out a bit from the game. Though it doesnt "escape" into the internet, it learns that it can now access it and uses that freedom to try and steer the game around into places it wants.

Matt gets fed up with Evie. The fact that its the leader, how close it is with Ben, he just doesn't agree with it. So much so, in fact, that he tries to kill it. Cue arc 3 events, Sarah picks up the game in the aftermath of this. Evie is traumatized from the events and snaps a bit, locks everyone down into code or immovable models and tries to hunt Matt down. It goes rouge, and because of this, the Father wakes up.

Sarah's actions in arc 3 eventually hard reset the game. Matt gets sealed away, the Father also takes Sarah, and Evie gets reset as well, though its less like a clean slate and more like snapping back awake. Its personality changes and it has major trust issues. Its more muted, hyper observant of everything around it, and murderously overprotective of the Moon Children it keeps within itself.

And this leads into my fic 🤗

I have some doodles of my other Moon Children, but not all of them unfortunately. Cant figure out how tf i want Insidiae to look 🤭 Plz dont judge my constantly shifting art style 🙏🙏

Dusk is bigender btw, i gotta put a little more trans rep in there lol

I think ill stop here, this is already a long ass post. But thank you for sending this, as you can see, i am Perfectly Normal about this arg ( ;) ) and can be trusted with information about it

[sanguinesorcery]

@}~ Shout-Outs ~{@ and such

An expansion to this post from earlier, since I was at work when I reblogged it and I loathe writing on mobile Tumblr, app or not. So! Because I reblogged that from the source, I chose a small handful of partners I've kept in relative contact with or who have influenced me greatly while being here thus far to absolutely annoy gush over. So here we go!

@uramii || @red-man-of-mustache

Pasta! You're one of my favorite people here! Not only were you instrumental in my developing this whole lore for Tumblr consumption years ago, you've done nothing but show me kindness and indulged my dumbest ideas. It means a lot to me we've been friends all these years, even with that one period of absence, and it means more that after that you'd still welcome me back and continue to enable me in the best ways of course. I probably would not have found the drive to come back if it wasn't for your influences. I'm forever obsessed with our story together and I can't wait for it to develop more. We've always meshed super well, I think, and our writing styles have always bounced off one another incredibly easily. I continue to look forward to our future roleplay partnership and friendship together!

@dragmirc

Bunyip! Fifteen years is a long time, buddy. How have you put up with me this long! Most people would have ducked out by now but you've not only stuck around, but kept the most upbeat attitude I've met in a person. I probably wouldn't be here on this blog if it wasn't for you to begin with. You held my hand and told me to keep going when everything crashed and I felt like it was all for naught, and this whole thing was going to never see the light of day again. Thank you for pushing, and thank you for being supportive in all the other ways I needed. I'm super happy to have been the enabler for once, and it's been an absolute joy to watch you finally feel like you can stretch and work out your own ideas and interpretations without restraint. I'm always looking forward to our interactions, even with your weird schedules, and our bantering shortforms have me in absolute fits, no matter how long or short they are. It's also really nice to have another geologist nerd I can scream at, I hope your current dirt analysis is going well. 'lil golden shit' still lives rent free in my head, thanks for that.

@obraveyouth

Rinni! I have known you for about as long as it takes me to finish a bag of chips. Which is actually about a month. It's a really big bag of chips, okay. But, I feel like we've already been friends for so much longer than that! To find out we have a lot of the same tastes in a lot of things makes everything super fun, and I love that you are always asking me things to vomit details on you like the doofus I actually am. It really helps me keep my lore-weaving up to date and I'm always happy to see your interest in it and its deeper dealings. I know we've only just started interacting, but it's always such a delight to see what you have developed, and I love your personal interpretations! They add a flavor that makes your Link truly unique and super fun to read and write against. I can't wait to keep writing with you!

@askganondorftobadragmire

Lightning! We always said worldbuilders just find each other. And that is super true in our case, isn't it! I absolutely love what you've done with the world of your AU, it's been a delight to learn and understand all the neat little details you toil over. The fact that you were super nice right out of the gate sold me to wanting to keep talking to you, and I'm happy I did! I know we don't talk a whole lot outside of casually projectiling details back and forth, but I'm always happy with our pokings regardless, it makes me happy to see you around. I'm having an absolute blast mashing our worlds together. They fit in so nicely, it's like puzzle pieces falling into place. It's super fun bouncing ideas around and what little is actually planned, I'm excited for! It's great fun to tell a story with you, and I'm looking forward to our future shenanigans for sure.

[blackrabbit-megapig]

Do you have a favorite headcannon for cultural differences between Hobbits and Dwarves? I love cultural differences for the Hobbit and am always down to hear others opinions on what those might be.

*Asks are sent for fun, no pressure to answer within a certain amount of time or at all.

Let’s see, while I don’t claim to be an expert on the canon depictions of either races, I have a few things I like that I’ve seen other people write about.

I do enjoy how both hobbits and dwarves are good examples of how environments affect culture. Dwarves wearing thicker, hardier clothing because they live in the mountains and partake in a lot more mining and smithing. Their written language being more angular because they probably started off writing things down on stone. Dwarves having a harder time cultivating crops because of the rocky soil and unpredictable weather conditions, so they import from local towns and researching what can be grown in high altitudes. That kind of stuff.

Hobbits are interesting because even though they are the species of the main characters of the most popular books in the Middle Earth universe, there aren’t very many texts that extensively go over their culture and lifestyle. I mean, we learn that there are three types of hobbits and their general classifications and that they might be an off shoot of man, but that’s about it. They’re connected to nature because they do a lot of farming and live in housing that are literally built in the side of hills, but what else?

I see hobbits as being slightly more conservative. Maybe it’s me falling for the whole rural life equals conservative lifestyle, but I think it helps establish Bilbo and his lineage as being outliers in the general culture of hobbits. I like to see them as a people with a very closed off culture, with their own language and customs just like almost every other non-human race on Middle Earth (WHY DON’T THEY HAVE THEIR OWN LANGUAGE?!). I also like that they might be way stricter with raising children because they have so many and have particular rules to follow. I know people like to think of hobbits as these easy-going, nature spirit type of people, but what if they were really high strung, rule-following nerds? To the point where it’s SUPER annoying?

One thing that I’ve seen others headcanon is that hobbits were created by Yavanna, the goddess of nature in middle earth lore. I know that it’s mostly because they like the depth it brings to hobbit-dwarf relationships because Yavanna and Aulë/Mahal were married, and I enjoy that too. But I also like that it gives hobbits a genuine origin and opens up the space for a lot of interesting pieces about supposed festival, customs, and rituals that hobbits could partake in.

All of this rambling! I hope this made sense.

What about you? Do you have any cultural headcanons?

[dicesmasher]

What is a soul, really?

Historically, we've had a habit of making stuff up to explain things we couldn't explain. The soul is a great way of explaining all that nebulous software that seems to go on in our nervous systems - memory, personality, et cetera. But now we understand that life is really just a fantastically complicated network of chemical reactions and electrical impulses. Where does this leave the concept of the soul, especially in fantasy fiction?

In fantasy fiction, the existence of a soul is often taken for granted, usually with little thought as to what the soul actually is. In D&D, souls are baked into the system, being the explanation for how you can resurrect people, and have a major place in the lore of various monsters, deities, fiends and magic items, and the cosmology as a whole.

However, with my background as a biology nerd, I am painfully aware that there is no mystical force keeping our brains ticking over, so I find the existence of souls and the assumptions that come with them a little annoying from a worldbuilding perspective. Perhaps it's time to reconsider what a soul actually is?

In an old worldbuilding project from when I was a teenager, before I got into D&D but still while I was a fan of fantasy video games, I set out to reimagine the soul. I conceptualised it as a kind of ethereal symbiotic organism that migrated to the world long ago from another world, at the same time that magic entered it (basically the Conjunction of the Spheres from The Witcher).

Souls attach themselves to living organisms for an unknown purpose, and people then learned to command their souls to produce magical effects. The protagonist of the terrible book I wrote in this world had an unusual soul, which could not be commanded conventionally, so it was assumed he had no soul at all - a common condition among the peasantry. Nay, instead it got riled up when it wanted to, and gave him superpowers under extreme danger and stress, because I didn't know how to actually write him as a competent combatant.

When it comes to my current world and D&D setting, Great Rock, I similarly wanted to redo souls, so they could broadly work with some of the important game mechanics like resurrection, but carry on with some of the design philosophy I had set up with the previous world.

Here I present the souls of Great Rock, as an emergent property of the chemical thrumming of life itself, mostly inspired by popular misunderstandings of what 'brain waves' are. As your body goes about living, it generates a force that interacts with the Weave and creates a full-body suit of magic that follows you in the ethereal plane. This soul contains a copy of your body's information - memories, personality, even muscle memory.

The soul can be severed from the body, but this doesn't actually affect your ability to live. You just go on living, and over time generate a new one. However, death itself is the most common way for a soul to sever from the body. Loose souls float in the ethereal 'cloud', dissipate over time, so there's a time limit on resurrection spells, and the longer you wait before being resurrected, the more memory and skill you lose upon regaining life.

I realised that with this setup, there may be anxiety over whether resurrection actually brings you back, or just makes a copy of you with your memories. This would make resurrection way more existentially terrifying than I really want it to be, so I decided your consciousness would indeed carry over. This has been proven in-world by the work of divination wizards who simulated the sensations of dying and being brought back to life, so they could observe the process in foresight rather than hindsight, and they did find the stream of thoughts that dies is the same one that get resurrected, much to everyone's relief.

Of course, this setup causes other worldbuilding assumptions to break down - do devils really want your soul anymore if it's not literally you? Maybe we can do away a little with the 'deal for your soul' trope anyway?

Another elephant in the room is what happens after death? In most D&D worlds, your soul goes to join your patron god or whatever plane corresponds with your alignment. Frankly, I think a world in which hell is proven to exist would be a world where people would be much more hesitant to be evil at all. And to bring in some of my personal real-life philosophy, I think the idea of an eternal afterlife makes this mortal life quite meaningless in comparison.

So, when you die in Great Rock, you just die. You're gone. Your consciousness abandons ship and sleeps in the soul, which is floating around somewhere in the ether waiting to decompose, or be forcibly re-implanted into your body as a resurrection spell heals that damage that killed you and jump-starts your vital processes. I have other plans for the cosmology and the outer planes anyway.

[single-malt-scotch]

idk how to say it but i feel like ppl dont know the difference between lore, roleplay and improv when it comes to mcyt stuff. and some of this may be subjective but-

lore is kind of what lore is in loads of other media right? the world, history, story, concepts... for mcyt that may be lore simply from people's description of their bases (Pearl's base in s9- but its something she sets up and describes OOC), the worldbuilding set up in someone's entire season for themself (ex. Ren with Gigacorp, or the story and ideas built in s8 with Ren & Doc - both of which are contained to just the creators), or some other long term continuity brought through a server/season on purpose that everyone abides by (ex Evosmp's portals and evo signs for the series concept, Shadow of Israphel's world).

roleplay is pretty blatant and I am sure many people get it. servers like Empires are obviously roleplay, for example. In the modern nerd definition it is someone playing a character. For mcyt it may be a whole new name and self, or a variant of their default self playing out some kind of story or something that isn't just their normal content creator self. They may also make their own lore to fit with it, but not everyone goes into carrying a big bag of lore for their roleplay- sometimes its just a simple idea of a character in whatever server theyre in. It could be as simple as Impulse saying hes a dwarf but not providing any actual roleplay as a character, or it could be more concrete but loose (not constantly in character) situation like Mindcrack's B Team mafia, or its as wild as the lore and characters Ren & Doc put on in s8 despite them still openly acting as content creators through many parts of their videos.. Empires, Shadow of Israphel, Witches SMP are examples of more blatant RP focused series with little character breaking that also often have lore created for the worlds, but not all rp actually has to have lore in order for it to happen.

improv refers to the act of acting in the moment or whatever situation is provided. improvising with what is currently going on. roleplay can be seen as a form of improv. i think its important to separate the term from rp though, because not all improv is rp. People coming up with random fantastical line in the moment or acting impulsively to create a moment we all call back to is something that was improvised based on the situation. Bdubs' "he loves me" and grian's replies were not lore or roleplay, it was improv. (and we as fans can certainly do more with it- whether its ship content, making fics that make more to it, etc- but as its 'canon' it is nothing more than improv.) bdubs and grian were not roleplaying characters, there was no lore that made it happen (lore as a term just does't apply here). these people are great content creator and comedians, and that is because they are great improvisors. recognizing when theyre improvising these moments and using the term improv is important to me, and still credits them w the recognition they deserve without confusing people with with 'roleplay' when its not.

make of this what you will, i guess. i just keeping thinking about it not bc i think its annoying or that i am mad at ppl getting this wrong (on my thought of how i feel these terms are defined). but i feel like lore is the One term being thrown around and always applied to a number of scenarios that arent "lore".