#if this is your first go-around the US propaganda machine

[agonfiles]

another example of why it is important to not cede ground rhetorically from the start. 'from the river to the sea, palestine will be free' was labeled as hate speech because it cannot be as easily co-opted as the term "ceasefire." be clear with what you mean! US empire will always claw your words from you and twist them to suit its own goals. which, in this case, is the continuation of the israeli state and its ongoing genocide and warmongering, with the related bonus of anti-china and anti-russian propaganda.

The U.S. ‘Ceasefire’ Proposal Would Allow Israel to Invade Rafah.

[rosy-crow]

Yeah, about hero!Sephiroth….

Crisis Core and The First Soldier are not tone deaf when it comes to Sephiroth’s writing. At all.

I know they have weak execution in areas, but they have a point they want to make about characters like Zack and Sephiroth and Cloud that you are supposed to understand for a reason.

It’s clear to me that some FF7 fans refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge that the entire point of hero! Sephiroth’s character these days is to show that his fall from grace was literally a fall from grace by standards entirely separate from Shinra. If you go by Shinra’s “morals” or illusions of righteousness, he was never actually a hero at all. He fell from nothing “good” whatsoever.

He was a war machine painted like a great figure by the company’s own propaganda, sent to finish an extermination of the people of Rhadore for his first mission and later sent over to Wutai to fight in the war that Shinra unjustly perpetuated and began when he was a child.

Yes, Shinra called him a hero before he was ever even in the Wutai war. Before he was ever even deployed. He was around 8-9 when it began and Shinra needed plenty of recruits to build an army before they deployed him specifically. He was showing great promise as a boy in training, so what better way to lure in other children than to rely on the image of a young prodigy to inspire them?

That was why FS revealed this almost immediately. Shinra crafted a war hero image for Sephiroth to use as propaganda long before he did anything special on the battlefield, and this was the very image he loathed, resented, and expressed his desire to be free from. He didn’t want to be a “hero” because all he knew was Shinra’s illusion of one. And Shinra’s illusion is what we’re meant to see through when we look at the meaning of a hero as well.

We’re supposed to understand this distinction by now because it was already shown through Zack and Cloud. Both of them became heroes beyond Shinra despite initially falling for the company’s propaganda and being massively screwed over. They came to understand that Shinra’s definition of a hero was warped, and Sephiroth was already aware of this long before them.

But now we have The First Soldier, which is cold canon. And we know a little more about Sephiroth’s true hero status.

It’s Nojima’s explanation for why we could have once called Sephiroth a real hero, because while he was certainly still in the process of attaining the title in truth and sincerity (by way of using his strength to save others instead of kill them), he was taking his first steps towards following his own heart (which was naturally inclined towards kindness and care for others when healthy and tended to).

Yes, the call of Sephiroth’s heart was once pure and he was embracing it in his early 20s, when Shinra’s struggle with Wutai was coming to a halt. Yes, Nibelheim broke that resolve into pieces. But Sephiroth was once trying to be the good person he naturally was inclined to be even beneath Shinra’s endless suppression. He was once trying to be a hero that dodged the hateful battlefield and instead rushed to save others in need.

And this is a miracle, because despite what I have seen others try to say, this was a child born and raised inside Shinra, sent to face the cruelest form of “war” at 14 with the mindset of “kill or die, even when they’re children your age….because like you, they may be trained to murder….”

And before then? Sephiroth was training under Hojo since early childhood. He may not have been on the actual frontlines from before he was ten years like the CC Ultimania/Complete Guide claimed, but he was being readied for it.

Do you really think he gained those skills in battle overnight? That conditioned mindset? Do you think he had memories of limit-breaking pain and dreams of his mother saving him from Hojo’s live tests with monsters for no reason?

Do you really think this child didn’t understand the concept of having fun or that he wasn’t familiar with enjoying the outside world, eating good food with a normal family, learning to socialize with people that didn’t see him as an object, or feeling free to think outside his mission because he was raised well and cared for? By anyone other than Hojo?

He was ruthlessly taught to kill or be killed from early on, and repeatedly lied to about his identity by his own “caretakers” because he was their machine. He was not recruited. The only children that compared to him inside Shinra were those in Deepground, and their fully human psyches/bodies fractured under the endurance of training and trials that Sephiroth was just inhuman enough to survive and grow stronger from.

There is no “sad childhood” to be spoken of in this because there is no childhood to be spoken of at all. Sephiroth’s story goes beyond that.

Sephiroth was a weapon produced inside Hojo’s laboratory. Hojo. The Hojo. Not just some dark and gloomy room with hazard lights. The mad scientist’s lair where Hojo unethically groomed a desired monster that longed to embrace his Shinra-stifled humanity and was finally able to do so the moment he met his first team. Glenn said it himself. He knew Sephiroth had compassion in him and the boy melted on the spot thanks to the smallest bit of affection and kindness. All his previous fear-based violence wilted in the face of the cycle being broken.

After that, Sephiroth helped to properly bury the Rhadorans, he came to understand what they had fought for alongside his team, and then he risked his life to try and save the sole survivor of their race.

Yes, it ended in tragedy and disaster, but that experience shaped Sephiroth for the rest of his sane life. He began to try and spare his enemies, he fought to save his comrades, he became kind at heart, and he was a step away from leaving Shinra.

You want to know why some Turks questioned Shinra for a longer period of time perhaps?

Cissnei, for instance? She was around the same age as Sephiroth when on the field, and like him…trained before then. She was compassionate, empathetic, dreamed of freedom, and eventually left the company. She was just like Sephiroth if he hadn’t lost everything. It’s stated that Cissnei learned to open up and trust others because of her friends in the Turks division. She found her family and began to heal from the cold isolation and detachment that a childhood in Shinra produced. She followed through with that healing inside her heart and ended up free, finding a good life away from Shinra.

Sephiroth was no different when he met Team Glenn. He defied Shinra for them, he bent rules fpr their sake, and he allowed a sweet, soft part of his true childlike personality to blossom when in their presence. For a moment, Sephiroth discovered a glimpse of childhood….something he never knew.

But then he lost those people just as he began to heal and regain innocence.

Yes, he came back to life and once again began to improve after he met Angeal and Genesis. But as FS2 is revealing, this was not easy, because the layers of psychological and familial trauma that were woven into his mind already at the age of 14-15 after an inhumane background and losing his first found family were so brutally devastating, that he was almost lost to madness and delusion long before Nibelheim.

Sephiroth was mentally ill for years and there was a fucking space alien and imperialist megacorp working together to make it ten times worse with lies surrounding his identity on top of his preexisting issues. This development was a different beast from the Turks and…yeah, even Deepground.

Do you wonder why the Deepground soldiers rebelled against Shinra with “villainous rage” some have claimed Sephiroth himself did not “earn?”

It’s because their existences were not swathed in layers of lies and half-truths about their origins that kept them desperate for answers and largely unaware of what they were or where they could potentially belong. It’s because they did not get a chance to see (and be subsequently ripped away from) the other side of life where the grass was greener and hopes for safety, childhood, and innocence could be grasped at like Sephiroth did.

The Deepground soldiers knew their situations were fucked up because they were humans being treated like dogs from day one and they could see that. Their cages were not painted in gold and dressed up to look like glorious arenas. Their cages were not sometimes left open for them to experience hope before being dragged back inside.

The Deepground warriors came to understand that they were prisoners and were literally being restricted as the strongest humans alive. Of course there was conditioning and learned helplessness involved, but they were also a league, often allied, of humans with unique powers that banded together in order to tear down Shinra’s obvious oppression. They became a community of violent rebels working to break free.

But Sephiroth was always a solitary case, always a little too inhuman, a little too special, and different from everyone, even his fellow SOLDIERS and certainly average humans.

He could not connect with others in his environment and was tied down to his hidden origin. Shinra was his prison just as much as it was for the others I mentioned, but he knew it as his only home because of the sinister way in which they crafted his reality.

He saw the inhumanity of his environment and admitted to feelings of dehumanization after apparently growing up in a cell beneath Hojo’s lab, and he dreamt of his mother taking him away from it, he longed for home and family, but where would he find such things in a world that he didn’t fit into because of his unique existence? Why would the inhumanity of his environment not be suited to a modified human weapon like himself? The abuse and isolation would only be unjust if he were not somewhat of a monster. That’s how he reasoned even if his heart ached for normalcy and humanity.

His missing and seemingly human mother was his only hope. His friends and comrades were his only reprieve from being othered. And even then, where others escaped, questioned, healed, and rebelled, Sephiroth lost everything just as he was considering abandoning Shinra. A desire he expressed before Zack or Cloud. A desire that had been growing inside him for a long time. He was so close, and he was truly becoming a hero with his heart in the right place for the first time. He was trying, healing, inching his way towards that sweet escape.

And then Shinra’s legacy dragged him back with more lies to lead him towards their favorite specimen in Jenova and have him finally, truly fall for the complete lie that he was never human at all. Just a monster that couldn’t save or help anyone with its strength. Just a lab creation that had been used for its power for years. Just an othered being striving and longing for things it could never have because they only were granted to real humans. Not him or his equally solitary mother. All hope became despair.

That’s when Sephiroth’s humanity died just as it was coming to life in completion for the first time.

And why the hell do I care so much about this you ask? Why go through all this trouble to yap and defend pre-Nibelheim Sephiroth? Because I think it matters that we treat his writing with the respect we treat Cloud’s, even if it’s not as clearly spelled out or if you gotta read the fine print. YOU HAVE TO READ THE FINE PRINT.

Sephiroth is not the born evil villain you want him to be. He fell from a place of growth and healing that many other characters are shown obtaining after terrible life experiences and identity crises. Sephiroth is the one that loses the battle and it’s the REASON he is the cruel, cold-hearted villain he is. His “cool factor” and his war crimes as a villain are only strengthened in intensity because of who he once was, what he once experienced.

There is no harm in admitting that this villain is a tragic creation and always has been.

[choas232]

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

Part two of Chatty g/n! reader x Steb

Summary:

You’re in love with Steb. Big deal. Your plan? Repression. In which Steb tries to be as obvious as possible and you try to be as oblivious as possible.

No use of Y/N, neutral terms and they/them is used to refer the reader. Set after Jinx’s colour explosion thing (which my friends lovingly refer to as Piltover’s first pride parade.)

CWs: Profanity.

Word count: 3.1k

Part One: G/N Chatty reader x Steb

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

You’re in love with Steb. Big deal. Your plan? Repression.

Denial has aided you in all that it can. For small moments, you allow yourself to believe that you were wrong. There is no admiration to be found, there is no affection, and there is certainly no love. Until he opens a door for you, places a hand over your chair, brushing your shoulder, to peer at your work, offers to grab you a coffee when he sees your eyebags, likely not knowing he is the cause.

You have done everything you can. ‘Feeling your feelings’ and ‘Changing your mindset’ like the self-help book you borrowed from your local library haven’t helped you, to your avail, leading you to the third and final option; running from your problems and ignoring him.

It’s easy enough.

When you first became an Enforcer, you certainly did not know how much paperwork the work included. Propaganda posters scarcely talk of office hours, and healthcare benefits, you find. Now, you thank whatever cruel gods for the blindness of your youth, holing yourself in your office, hunching over sheet after sheet and ignoring the aching of your heart.

You’re such an idiot.

It’s only on day three of this monotonous cycle, hiding from him, working, working, working, that something snaps you out of your routine.

Flowers.

You emerge from your office, stumbling to the coffee machine, when a cleared throat startles you out of your daze.

In his angular, nice— fuck, normal looking hands, a bouquet. Of wildflowers, you think. Colourful and bright, the kind that grow just outside of Piltover. Daisy-like white flowers, long slender stems with bulbous pink shapes hanging from them, dangling purple bells, and neat blue flowers with heart shaped petals.

“Oh. Hey.” You greet, before somewhere in the haze of your mind— something falls. Flowers. Why does he have flowers? Are they a gift? Who for? You open your mouth to voice this— but no. You must not. Avoidance.

But the flowers.

Okay. Casual time. “Those are pretty. Where’d you get them from?” He blinks, clearly unexpected by this train of conversation, maybe by how casual and suave you’re being right now.

You move past him— turning your back on his big, wide surprised eyes, his rolled up sleeves, his angular, large hands wrapped around the brown paper holding the bouquet—okay,that’s enough of that train of thought— and get to work on precuring some wonderful caffeine. Caffeine to help the fog of your treacherous thoughts, leading you down paths you very much do not want to go down.

“You know, there’s a place near my house, in walking distance, that I go past when I go the shops to pick up groceries. Always smells really good. Maybe I should pick some up for my house?” You turn to gauge his non-verbal reaction, but for whatever reason, he looks mightily distressed.

“What’re they for, anyways?” What. Not, who. ‘Who’ implies you were thinking about him giving them to people, and flowers are typically a sign of romance, and that you care who he gives flowers, and that is not on your brain right now. Definitely not.

His expression moves at a pace you can’t match, going from confused, to disappointed, to pained, his gills fluttering, the monochromatic yellowing light of the office lights hitting them, the glint drawing your betraying eyes.

Almost uncertainly, he points to— what for a second— looks like you.

“The office space? It is getting slightly grim in here.” You, too loudly, laugh, semi-startled from the jolt of your heart. God. Imagine that. You. Him giving you flowers. You try not to.

He, very slowly, nods.

“Great. Well than. I’ll. Uhm. Try to leave you to it?” After a too long pause where he simply unreadably stares at you, you turn on your heels and make a break for your office space.

You, like a fool, assume the last of the issue. A vase appears in the communal office-space, filled with flowers.

The next day however, he invites you to lunch.

It’s late afternoon, and you’re in the midst of packing up your office’s clutter when he raps against the door with his knuckles. Through the blinds you purposely have kept closed, you make out his tall, wiry frame, one hand fixing his, of course, already perfect hair. You quickly try to fix your own appearance, hoping a dull dragging of your fingers through your hair will perhaps make you not look like you’ve been hit by a semi-truck.

“Come in!” You call out, trying not to let him hear the betraying shudder of your vocal cords, dull from misuse. You need to call a friend or something. Talk about anything at all, at least for a couple hours. You feel like you’re going crazy.

He gently pushes the door open, surveying your small, cluttered room. His nose disapprovingly wrinkles at the mess, but he says, or implies, nothing. A small kindness. What are you to say? Sorry boss, I’ve been stuck up on getting over the massive, fat crush I have on you, and your hands, and how gently you cradled my head in the pipe in the ground, and how your finger brushed my lip and how I felt something crawl out of where I had shoved it down.

God, this love is eating you from the inside.

He looks better than usual, a fact you scold yourself from noticing. His shirt is neatly ironed, the sleeves rolled up as if to taunt you. The tightness of his office clothes compared to the bulky, bullet proof frame of his enforcer uniform makes you, for a brief, blinding moment, miss it deeply. Though, you doubt it would make much of a difference. You’re too down bad, a phrase you now understand.

His black tie is perfectly straightened, though he moves to straighten it again as he braces for whatever he is to say, and with surprise, you note the bobbing of his throat as he moves to verbally speak. “Would you like a break from your work? Perhaps get something to eat?” There’s a forced casualness to his tone, adding a clunky layer of misshapenness to his tenor; you have only ever heard him speak in sparse, important moments, yet he tries to be relaxed now.

“…Sure.” Him speaking has thrown you off. Not only is his voice remarkably attractive, it also signifies something you feel you’re missing. You can’t just ask him why he’s speaking though. That would be rude. (You did threaten to eat him last week, in your stint in the underground after you ran out of food, and than thought nothing of it. Your brain is outstandingly good at finding the worst moments to cram you full of social anxiety.)

You can’t deny this offer. You skipped lunch, for starters, or at least, that’s the excuse you tell yourself, when in reality, your heart, from deep within it’s place in your chest, reaches up to puppet the strings of your vocal cords. “Uhm, there’s this really good place close-ish to here? A noodle bar. It’s cheap, relatively good for you, I think, but you know how it is. You never know. I went there last week with Miranda, and they had this really good item on the menu… she ordered it and I ended up probably eating more than her… haha.” You make the noise nervously, more of a phonetic mimicry than a laugh.

He nods, politely.

“Is anyone else going?”

Slowly, he shakes his head, waiting as if to gauge your reaction.

Well. That’s off. Usually Maddie would tag along, or another coworker. One to one… perhaps she’s just occupied? Ever since your stint in the underground ended in disaster, captain Kiramman has been seeing her fairly frequently, or she’s been caught up in other business. (Fuck. You miss the underground. You’d never thought you say it, but you miss Vi, and her terrible Zaunite food, and you miss Loris’s calm, and you miss Maddie and you miss Kiramman, even when she had a stick up her arse about finding the blue-haired Zaunite girl. You haven’t seen Loris since then, and Lord knows where Vi is.)

“Cool. Well. Off we hop, then? Let me just clean this up…” You move to clean, turning so he doesn’t see your flushed cheeks. Cool? Off we hop? OFF WE HOP? Genuinely, what is wrong with you?

He doesn’t care about your verbal failure, nodding again, his hands instinctively resting clasped behind him, shoulders straight.

Picture perfect even as you fall apart.

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

You’ve missed your chats, as it turns out. Well. Is it really chats if only one of you is doing the talking? You think so, because the kind of awareness, care in his eyes, the way he almost hangs off every word, has you stumbling over your tall tales and stories.

The look in his eyes, half-lidded, is worse, devastating to your poor heart. Very rarely do people listen to you, you think, even when you were a sullen, quiet child. That’s fine. They catch every second word, the gist of it, and if you speak thrice as much, they’ll get thrice as much of the little they catch, right?

But he listens, to all of it, for better or for worse.

For worse, you think. Your heart is beating out of your chest. It’s hot in the outside area you’ve chosen to sit at, an ornate bench half cooled by shade on a narrow porch area, decorated with sweet-smelling flowers. The heat is insufferable, in Piltover. The high houses trap it, and it is suffocating, or maybe it just feels that way because every so often he moves to keep his sleeves rolled up, brush strands of hair falling back into his face.

He’s slightly hunched over, across from you, so much so you’re almost eye-level. It’s a very calculated move, from his usual perfect posture. He doesn’t fidget. Just listens. When it comes to ordering, he points to the dish that he wants— inwardly, you wonder about the schematics of him, almost mermaid eating a fish— and order for the both of you, including some water.

“It was nice of you to buy flowers for the office. Everybody’s been on edge recently, with Kiramman’s new job, and the attack, and all that trouble down in the undercity.” You tell him, when it becomes apparent there’s only so much of dodging the topic you can do.

He hums. You swear his eyebrows furrow, just for a second, as he looks away.

“Ah. Sorry to bring it up. Politics and all that can wait, huh?” You heard he was injured at the attack, and misinterpreting his source of discomfort, you change the topic, but in the dizzy mix, stumble into perhaps the worst topic your brain can hurriedly think off. “Soooo…. Our time in the underground, huh?”

He blinks, looking up, and than nods.

“How was it? For you?”

Tugging a notepad out of his pocket, this calms you, the normalcy of it, he writes, quickly, in messily stencilled letters. You threatened to eat me.

“Ah.” Dammit. “I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t remember that.” You awkwardly push out, but he’s writing more.

You almost got yourself killed, than us killed, and lost our supplies.

“Ah. Sorry?” Double dammit. Guilt begins to prickle low in your gut. You did do that.

You also saved us.

He smiles. It’s terrible, the smile, one like you’re in on something together. You do not understand it. He smiles, and it is terrible. He smiles, and you are suddenly co-conspirators, privy to something you are blind to.

Your food comes, and you eat silently, trying not to think about the smile.

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

There’s only so much silence you can pry out of shoving noodles in your mouth before your patience snaps.

The food is delicious, creamy, brothy, the herbs tangy and fragrant, but even that doesn’t stop how suddenly hyperaware you are of how small this table is, how mindful he has to be not to knock his long legs against yours.

Just as you think you’re finally free from it, the suffocating stillness, The waitstaff moves to clean your bowls up. You smile and thank them. They smile at you too, a knowing smile, a smile like they’re in on it. “Enjoy your date.” They say to you both. Steb nods to them as they move back indoors, balancing the bowls in their arms.

Date. Wait.

You feel as if you may be missing something.

Steb doesn’t say anything, which seems like a no-brainer, except now he’s watching you, eyebrows slightly furrowed, pouty lips pressed against one another. Waiting. Waiting for what? You to make a joke, haha, we’re not on a date. How silly, right? You tosay nothing, move on?You to ask about it? Are we on a date? Surely not?

Your options are dwindling as each second ticks by, slowly your gaping mouth and shocked look slowly becoming less and less socially acceptable.

Quick. Think fast.

“So, uhm, how was the food?”

You get the feeling you shouldn’t have said that.

He nods his head non-committedly, reaching up to rest his chin in the palm on his hand. You’re not really sure what to make of the action, except now you can see his forearms, and it’s making you feel a little crazy. “Mine was uhm… good.” You stutter. He nods, something warring in his mind, before he reaches to pick up the neat little notebook, hastily scribbling something down.

You clutch the little scrap of paper he rips out to hand to you. You have a collection of them, in the drawer of your office, reminders and praises and greetings, mundane and simple yet delightful for you. You think you would die if he ever found out, and even though your mission of repression is a strong one, you don’t have the heart to throw them out. (It’s not lovey-dovey. It’s just practical. What if he says something important and you miss it?)

The message, this time, isn’t delightful.

I’m sorry if I am making you feel uncomfortable.

“No? What do you mean?”

I didn’t know whether you understood the flowers were for you or you were implying you were uncomfortable with receiving them. If so, I’m sorry I pressured you to come out with me.

“Sorry? What?” He gives you a moment to rub your brain cells together, rereading the note, looking up at him, and than looking back down.

“The flowers were for me?”

He nods.

Calm down. Flowers don’t need to be romantic. He probably just noticed you were acting stressed and got them to calm you down! This isn’t special! “Uhm. Thank you. Sorry for… you know.”

He blinks, once. He blinks again. He ears jerk, up, than down, his lips falling open to reveal a narrow slit of flesh, his front teeth. It’s not quite a pained grimace, he’s far too reserved in his actions for that, but you think it’s the closest you’ll get.

He moves forward suddenly, grappling for the notepad, and you flinch at the sudden movement.

This is what I mean. I can never tell what you’re thinking. Just say the words, and I’ll cool any and all advances on you at once. He has underlined at once, several times.

He must think of you illiterate with the amount of time you spend rereading the words. Advances is a word that implies… but surely not? Maybe he’s worried about being pushy. But you like it when he’s pushy, berating you for your recklessness, your injuries, his careful orders when you find yourself stationed under him, how much he cares. That sounded a little too down-bad, but you like it when people are clear with you! Yeah. Why are you thinking about that, right now? You should stop. You should reply.

This conversation would probably be easier if you weren’t constantly at war with yourself.

“Oh. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it, ahaha…”

He looks vaguely annoyed, now for a brief flash, his ears sliding down, before he quickly pushes the expression down. His ears do not follow.

I am trying to court you. He writes, a hand stressedly messing through his neatly slicked back hair.

Words escape you.

“What?” You say, dumbly.

“I am trying to… romance you.” He says, out loud, and now he well and truly must think you can’t read. You hate to make him think of you deaf too, because the pained look he expresses as he hastily scribbles down, Please don’t make me repeat that, is perhaps the only think keeping you from short circuiting.

“Oh.” You say, instead. “Uhm… thank you.”

Fuck. “I mean. Not thank you. Yay?” You hope, very deeply, the waitstaff comes back and smashes your head in with the noodle bowls.

His expression is less agonized, but only just. Yay? He writes. Is that good?

“Yeah.” Oh God. Why can’t you speak? Why can’t you think of something to say? Aren’t love confessions supposed to be easy, ish, once you’ve gotten past the confession bit? Isn’t this the part where you start making out or something? That was a terrible train of thought to go down, because now you’re thinking about making out with Steb, and it’s just—

“I uhm. Like you too. Were the flowers, like, to… confess to me?” Why would you say that? That was not suave. Thatwas not cool. You probably shouldn’t have said anything.

Yes. Steb writes.

“Woah.” He relaxes, maybe only because you’re so hard to take seriously it’s hard not to. His hair is still slightly messed up from how he had been gripping it, a fact you would have probably taken pride in, any other trouble-making day, but not this one. “I— sorry. I’m processing this information. Very slowly.”

He hums. Take your time. You get the feeling he is teasing you, and you get the feeling you might be smiling, a fact which is mortifying, and means you probably are smiling, giddily, like a fool. You’re smiling, and you’re not saying anything. You’re smiling, and you’re silent. In comparison, he’s been more talkative in the last three days than he is in perhaps a month.

You soak it in.

𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼

Notes:

Maybe it really is Piltover’s first pride parade…

People who asked to be tagged in part two (tell me if you’re uncomfortable with this and I will apologise profusely and remove you) ; @nixxie15 @flooftoof @mintballoons thank you for the kind comments!!

[heliosphera]

My personal Sonic the Hedgehog Headcanons!

feel free to add your own!

Sonic

Sonic doesn't have an actual house, he simply sleeps wherever is most comfortable. He does, however, have his own corner in Tail's Workshop with a hammoc and other stuff he's found in his adventures

Sonic is forbidden from ever drinking coffee

Sonic often visits Soleanna, but isn't sure why

He & Big have a yearly fishing trip

Both him and Shadow would love deadpool, but for extremely different reasons

Sonic & Mighty see eachother as bestfriends after Tails and Ray respectively. Unfortunately, they're both horrible at coordinating get-togethers

While Shadow may be stronger than Sonic, Sonic is far more creative with his powers, as Shadow is over-reliant on his powers. This leads to Sonic being able to tie and even beat Shadow sometimes

Tails

Tails has a house in West-side island, which is currently being used as a storage depot

He is seen as a local hero there, and is embarrassed to go there on his own

He is the group's tech support fox, helping whenever someone has issues with machines or technology (more specifically, Knuckles)

Knuckles

Knuckles quit the Chaotix somewhen before the events of Sonic Heroes. Nowadays, he, Shadow and Omega are unofficial members of the agency. Their team is called "Team Knuckles" after he won an arm-wrestling competition against Shadow and Omega combined

Knuckles refuses to use technology most of the time, but he does have a shatter-resistant phone made by Tails that is charged with the Master Emerald

He once accidentally shattered the master emerald because he was bored, it became a whole thing.

Amy

Amy wears weighted rings for training and to stabilise herself when using a hammer, Sonic and Tails are scared of what she could do if she ever removed them, since she can already double jump.

When she was younger, Amy considered herself a practicing witch and even had voodoo dolls of everyone. She made sure to properly dispose of (most) them

Unrelated, but Eggman has constant back pains that can only be described as "if a giant book was constantly pressing against him"

Amy has self-made plushies of every single one of her friends, it's the first thing she does when she meets someone new

Shadow

Shadow is technically faster than Sonic, but he can't maintain those speeds due to his inhibitor rings, so his air shoes help him reach high speeds without risking his stamina.

Shadow hasn't actually killed any human/mobian/earthling, even before he remembered Maria's promise or regained his memories. Whenever he was about to, a mental block prevented him from following through with it.

He is extremely competitive with tabletop games, Team Dark game nights have been postponed until he learns to "chill out"

Rouge once took him out drinking, she decided to not do it again because Shadow is a sobby drunk

On that note, Shadow is, weirdly enough, a total lightweight

Shadow has a secret stash of pop music dvds and other similar types of music. Only Rouge and Amy know where it is. Rouge because she's a treasure hunter and Amy is his supplier.

Shadow is often invited to girls' nights with Amy, Rouge and Cream at Vanilla's house (Blaze is also invited whenever she's around). He usually refuses but has gone once or twice because it reminds him of spending time with Maria. He's been made to wear makeup every single time.

Eggman

While Eggman does have the tech to give Metal a fully organic body, he secretly has hopes that one day metal will realise he's his own person

Ever since Sage, he's seen both her and metal as his children

The first time Eggman ever cried is when Sage and Metal gave him an incredibly botches Father's day present.

After Sonic Adventure, Sonic and Tails went on a full on propaganda campaign to make sure Robotnik was known as Eggman globally. He decided to just roll with it because it was free publicity

Bonus: Surge!

She eats cables and batteries, it's a genuine issue

[shadowmaat]

Jedi Service Corps

The Legends-fueled propaganda of "bad students get sent to the Agricorp/Services" has always bothered me. First of all, forcing kids into a career not of their choosing isn't the best way to encourage them to perform well.

The Services in general seem to get a bad rap, and TBH it's kind of bizarre to assume that every kid who winds up being taken in by the Jedi wants to grow up to be a cop. LOL!

There is so much untapped potential being ignored, and even within the four pseudo-canon branches there's a lot to explore.

Agriculture. Farmers Without Borders. LOL! It isn't just about growing plants, it's about analyzing trends, understanding ecosystems, geology, climatology, politics, etc. There's mechanical engineering so you know how to fix the machines that do the hardest labor (often illegally, given corporate software locks and so forth). Probably a lot of fiddly stuff with plant genetics, too, given similar issues with seed corporations.

Being Jedi, I'm sure they're also aware of the need to include "ornamental" plants to help with the emotional welfare of hurting/devastated populations.

Education. This field must be fucking wild. Sure, you have your future creche masters and archivists, but I imagine there are those who do public outreach, too, and go to schools to teach kids about what the Jedi do beyond waving laser swords. There's probably also a need for teachers in isolated/rural areas to help with basic things like reading, writing, and maths. Ditto areas devastated by wars and natural disasters, where kids need a safe distraction from trauma. I bet Educorp and Agricorp team up more often than people might think.

There's also the sheer variety of topics. Even something basic like history will have a wide net. Galactic history, region-specific, planetary, etc. And then there's the arts. Music, singing, dance, physical media, holo media, theatre, and so much more. There will be differences between species, understanding what they need to know, how they learn best, and what their aging process is like. Teachers to cover the full range of mortal maturity, from teaching toddlers to old-timers. And don't get me started on teaching "forbidden" topics in repressive communities.

Medical. LOL. Every. Single. Species. And often subtypes between them. So many specialists needed. And again, you probably have a number that specialize in helping in disaster areas. Hello, Educorp, let's help teach these people how to best care for themselves. Maybe Agricorp can help with showing folks how to purify their air and water. There must be SO many diseases, some of which have inoculations and so that don't. And again, figuring ways to smuggle medicine and supplies to those who need it despite the extortionist rates corporations charge. Repairing faulty equipment, finding work-arounds when the parts aren't there. Triage. Using the Force to help heal is all well and good, but sometimes they still have to get hands-on.

Even with non-emergency stuff, I imagine they're still kept busy. The idea of a Jedi "country doctor" settled in some remote area sounds delightful. Communities that get "lost" in the shuffle or otherwise overlooked. Veterinary medicine as a sub-specialty.

Jedi having a special "knack" for determining what's wrong with someone, finding early warning signs before it's too late, etc. Comforting the dying. Comforting the survivors. ALL the mental health stuff and neurodivergence.

Exploration. Jedi Starfleet. LOL! It isn't all about discovering new worlds, though. Sometimes it's rediscovering planets and cultures that have been forgotten. Charting new hyperlane routes and hoping the end doesn't pop you out in the middle of a star.

I betcha you could fold so many things into this one. Botany. Archaeology. Xenoanthropology. Medicine, of course, since new worlds/people means new poisons, venoms, and diseases. New or ancient languages? It'd help to have someone around who could work on translating. Diplomats to help you talk to people. Geologists. Zoologists. A bit of everything.

Sure, there'd be room for solo missions, but I imagine there'd be bigger ships that they'd launch from. A place to come back to so the brains can pore over everything you brought back and see what they can determine from it. And big ships (or any ships really) means pilots, engineers, general crew, logistics, and all those fun things.

Anyway, I can see plenty of room for additional corps, too, but of the ones that get mentioned in Legends there's still a huge playing field.

[quixtrix]

dolph was always meant to be doomed; something of an analysis

i'm on my third rewatch of captain laserhawk, and on this one i've been focusing more on the little details that you don't get on your first or even second time watching it. i've noticed little things, such as pey'j helping and then going on to shield a hybrid who's dressed similarly to jade in the third episode. but i've also noticed bigger things, such as alex and dolph.

keep in mind that this show is just filled to the brim with political messaging, it was purposefully designed that way. so when someone mentioned on here that alex was an accelerationist, it explained a lot. we don't know much about alex in terms of his backstory, we only know he helped dolph after dolph attempted to mug him and they ended up falling in love. it's also implied that alex and dolph have been repeatedly reported on the news as terrorists more than we've seen, with rayman referring to them as being the usual suspects when the kaiju attack happened, despite dolph literally not even being there when alex did that shit. they're known to do this shit, and we know alex is a charismatic guy. it's not too far fetched to say once or while dolph was falling in love with this gayass white saviour saint that alex talked him into this shit for alex's own purposes. because yes, he has a cause, but he's also a bit in over his head, maybe with power. he's aware of the power he has over dolph, how he actively uses the 'i love you' card multiple times when they're together and when they're not together. he just had a bit too much confidence in his hold over dolph, but to be fair, alex, you were topping some indulgent mob boss for your cause (because let's be honest of course your sources would be tight if they were being fucked for it) then continued fucking said mob boss and got caught with your dick out by your ex who you think you can get back with. alex uses people as tools, he just doesn't put his shit in the right places at the right times.

i'm getting off track, but the point i'm getting to is that alex most definitely saw dolph, a man who clearly has some jacked up eden tech smacked onto his twink ass, at his lowest, and picked him up like a shiny new toy. he was always going to use dolph. but how come dolph is so easy to use? he's starved for kindness. he's the stray dog that comes up to you at restaurants to act all nonchalant because 95% of the time he gets neglected, but the second he gets offered scraps, he shows how hungry he is. we don't know much about his childhood, and what we do know is under the lenses of literal eden propaganda. we do however know how people get like underneath the hand of eden.

everyone say thanks to rayman, who concidentally, is dolph's foil. both of them worked under eden as their lap dogs, one as a propagandist and the other as military, but dolph had gotten out of the hold the propaganda had on him while rayman's barely shaking it off. both of them are also portrayed as poor little tragic immigrants and the impoverished stand ins both in universe and story wise. they're the feel good picking yourself up american dream stories that people can feel inspired by or feel proud about the country with. dolph had a photo with a kid holding a doll of him. before he became ex military, he was definitely the guy they paraded around as a previous lost cause that eden helped. red, who's as political as his assigned colour, bitches about identity politics in that one off line for a reason. he also jus hates brown people fr he kicked me down a flight of stairs

now we can assume that dolph had picked himself up out of the propaganda machine somehow. he realised he was used and he didn't want that shit. he's attempting to get himself his own life, for fucks sake. he jus happened to get lead on by the wrong guy, which then lead him to get used by eden AGAIN. this time not only in a physical way via soldier work, but emotionally too, with sarah easily manipulating him with what? a sob story and helping him out, maybe being friendly with him along the way.

he wants a normal life. he wants a goddamn normal life. he jus continues to be selected as a tool.

you can see how fucking starved he is for kindness. you ever think about the fact that in his dream life, he sees jade and pey'j? he knew these people for less than a week, yet they get a place in his dream life. most notably, jade gets a speaking role in his dream life. the only other person who speaks, besides marcus, is alex, someone who had known him and shown kindness to him. jade has also shown kindness to dolph. she's the friendliest face there in the ghosts, being the first one to check on dolph when he wakes up, offers an explanation to him, and also makes an effort to include him in her little shenanigans with the video and all!! dolph was all emo alpha wolf and all, but despite his constant cold shoulder, she was kind!!

there was someone who was more than kind though; bullfrog. because bullfrog actively looked out for dolph, despite his constant pushback against bullfrogs advice whenever they weren't separated. and in the end, it's bullfrogs kindness and compassion that hits dolph the deepest. dolph gets out of his depressive state to go back for bullfrog. he cares about people, he goes out of his way to do shit for the people who show him the slightest bit of kindness. he backed up sarah after one good conversation with her to marcus for fucks sake. dolph is just a guy who keeps getting used though. he's so loyal to anyone who looks his way that it's a fatal flaw that ends up with his head blown up. he's a shakespearean tragedy at the moment. i hope in the potential season 2 that he gets to have more moments where he gets to be his own person. not defined by an organisation or a person or a cause, but what he chooses to define himself by. he's on his way there. he jus deserves to be allowed to live for himself. after all, he has already met his end of that story. he can make a new one.

anyways if u reached the end of this im down to discuss this :D i also did get a few points from other people on here, but let me know what u think nd all

[milgram-tournament]

MILGRAM Best Song Tournament, Round 1, Match 9 CAT vs. THE PURGE MARCH

Propaganda for both options under the cut!

Propaganda for CAT:

"You like jazz? Jazz is chaos within order. Got to love the whole band. Vibraphone, saxophone, trumpet, flute, piano, guitar, drums, bass… Go, rhythm section, go! The song sounds tender at times and aggressive at others as different instruments pop up at different times. Sometimes they follow Kazui’s voice (“follow the king of the masquerade”). Sometimes they get to be the focus. You have the chill piano one moment and the screaming guitar in the next.

You’ve got a lovely “jingle” (“Lie until it gets better…”) which occurs at the beginning, middle, and end. It fits the “newspaper ad” style of the video really well. Also at the very end, there’s one more line that gives the jingle an upward contour, giving a sense of finality. “Until you can meet the king of the masquerade.” You’re there now.

The two verses start off differently before they take on a similar melody. It feels like Kazui is talking to a different person in each verse.

The chorus is a beautiful façade the first time and a sinister truth the second time.

The opening for solos shows that this jazz song means business. I love how the saxophone and trumpet especially get in your face. And with the tacet on vocals, the walking bass really shines if you lend it your ear.

And the smoke break! Silence is golden. Glass click. Lighter. Huff.

As always, Kazui’s voice is super deep. He hits even lower notes this time around. He’s a fifth lower than the next lowest singers (Haruka and Shidou)."

---

-Great instrumental choice. Kazui and jazz is *chefs kiss*

-Symbolism. THE SYMBOLISM. I can’t type out all my thoughts but ifykyk

-The almost comic like style of the MV is really appealing.

-Lyrics!! There is so much to unpack but it’s really cool.

-Kazui eating the dove… fricken iconic.

---

FIRST OF ALL the vocals????? BEAUTIFUL. His va put his whole pussy into this song and you can tell!! The way he sings the chorus is so damn addicting I'm so in love with him. His voice is more or less stable throughout the entire thing until the final chorus but you can hear the emotion peaking out which fits perfectly with Kazui keeping everything hidden. The way his voice turns into a sort of whisper during "all the things I wanna do that I can't say outloud"??? The way his voice starts trembling during "this feeling it's yearning to be satisfied"???? The way his voice turns into a sort of whisper AND starts trembling during "hey, if I said I liked-liked you, what would you?"?????? HEAVENLY! You can really feel how afraid Kazui is under his disguise and my heart breaks a little everytime I listen. Not to mention how absolutely powerful his voice gets at the climax!!!!!! It's insane!!!!!!! It's genius!!!!!! It makes me wild makes me crazy makes me eat my walls!!!!!!!!!!

THE SMOKE BREAK?????? What other song has something as powerful as that huh???? This isn't just a song produced by the milgram machine using his memories, this is HIS song and he is OWNING IT! The music builds up so much and gets so intense right before it, I can literally feel myself get tense and starting holding my breath right before he takes the break and everything relaxs… it's not just a break for him, but a break for the viewer. The song is spiralling out of control just like his life and his lies and he has no choice but to put it to a quick stop before its too much to handle.

THE IMAGERY IS WILD!!!!! He's a magician!!! Little magic guy!!!! Using tricks and lies to amaze and captivate the people around him! Trying desperately to magic his own feelings into something else! But it's all fake! It's all tricks and no matter how hard he tries he can never actually change himself into what he wants! But he's trying to convince himself the same way he's convinced his audience!! And when you're watching a magic act, are you there for the magician themself or are you there to watch the show?? The people in his life only cared for him when he performed for them, but they didn't give a drop of love to who he was a person! ALSO the transformation of the wedding ring to a cigarette to the dove at the end??? Makes me wild every single time! Right infront of his wife, he showed her that their marriage was something unhealthy for him that was slowly killing him from the inside. AND THEN he uses it to harm himself???? And then he turns that cigarette into a dove- a representation of love and literally TEARS INTO IT. He tears his marriage apart with his mouth!!! AKA HIS WORDS. makes me wild. Also fun fact Kazui says he started smoking because when he was younger it was "just natural for everyone to smoke" and that lines up with his reasons for marriage perfectly.

Kazui looks really hot in it. You should vote for Cat because Kazui is insanely attractive. What other reason do you need huh? Hot gay middle aged man.

Propaganda for THE PURGE MARCH:

"Despite the shorter length, the Purge March has several distinct sections in its structure.

It starts with a rolloff, and then… they don’t follow it. Amane isn’t here to follow the beat.

There’s the spoken-word intro and the upbeat first verse listing the tenets. The prechorus (“dou shiyou mo nai…”) has an amen break. The most-sampled four-bar drum beat. Well, there’s half of it. Is it supposed to mean something? Can I get an amen?

The chorus is so, so cheerful… unless you’re actually listening to the lyrics (“I’ll crush your throat too”) or watching the video. And it’s super catchy. 

The second part of the verse dials things back. Now we’re in reality. This is how Amane breaks her tenets. All the while, those tenets are spoken into both ears over the singing. Get some good headphones. She sounds different in each ear.

The music picks up again with the amen break as Amane happily strolls back home, and then-

Oh.

The somber second chorus, with Amane’s lower singing voice and mournful spoken words, leads into the final chorus, with new lyrics and a more forceful tone. The once-meaningless chanting now has real words. “You’re sorry? I don’t care! Please go ahead and die already.” You can hear Amane’s anger despite the cheerful melody. She harmonizes in the final phrase, as if to say “we’re in this together, me and my little color guard troop.” And finally, it’s just her. Speaking. "Oboetemasuka?" Accompanied by only a single drum.

She is both Amane Momose and not. She upholds the doctrines that she was raised with, but she can’t."

---

"Purge March is geniunaly one of my favorite pieces of fiction both in and out of the context of trauma. Its fantastically directed and composed. The batton twirling is spetacular and energetic, the set and character design of Amane conveys a lot about the world she’s in and the story she’s telling. Purge March contextulizes a lot of Magic in both expected and unexpected ways (insert the entire cat symbolism thesis here) Purge March casts Amane in the role of a scary child. The glowing eyes, the framing of Amane as Above the viewer, the brutality and catharsis of it all. It seems tailored made to make you Scared of her. It’s a continuation of the cycle of abuse that we the audience repeated in T1 when we gave her that verdict. A red flashing warning sign about the Inhumanity and Monsterous qualities of Amane Momose. But Amane as a monster is fufilling and freeing. Again, its deeply cathartic. I would write more if I wasnt so sleepy at the moment but its just some Fantastic work overall. Purge March is also just fantasitic vocally and also hids electricity sounds in the instrumental which I think is evil and awesome."

---

-Amane’s vocals and how they slowly get more and more off the deep end is both really sad and cool to watch.

-The symbolism of the marching band and the flags. Ifykyk

-The beginning where it sounds like a propaganda TV show… really shows just how far Amane’s thinking is rooted in her cult and how that’s shaped her perception.

-The LYRICS. They work so well but it’s also creepy AF considering it’s a child who’s singing it.

-“So there is no second time, I’ll give back the judgment that you gave to me!”

-The overlapping part… gives me chills everytime.

-Building off the last point, the last “I’ll crush your throat too.” Ouch.

-“Remember MY cries, MY repents, MY words of “I’m sorry” that I said to you?”

-The song also does a great job of showing how much the guilty verdict messed with her.

[lintwriting]

i think i really love how visceral the politics of signalis is. not just in the in-your-face propaganda aspects. but like, the way it dooms the narrative.

the whole plot of signalis is based around two entirely disconnected settings -- the Penrose ship and the Sierpinski prison. They are so disconnected from each other across time and space that you spend the whole first half of the game disoriented by the whiplash these two locations give you.

and personally? I stayed confused until I realized what connected them:

they're the two branching paths of Ariane's future.

after her military service, she gets a state letter informing her that if she's not accepted into the Penrose program, she'll be sent to Sierpinski, a "re-education" camp that's actually just a prison mine.

And, to her luck, she "somehow did end up joining the Nation's Penrose Program, the same one on the posters she had seen years prior."

I love and hate the way the wiki frames it, because yes the Penrose space expedition program seemed preferable to the prison camp.Yes, she had seen posters of it and glamorized it as a new start for her. After all, she was an art-obsessed outsider in a world where people molded into being unfeeling machines, where art is frivolous and degenerate except for how it serves as propaganda. Why not dream of a new planet?

But it's all a lie. The Penrose program sounds too good to be true for Ariane-- how can this under-qualified, ostracized freak get accepted into such a prestigious program? -- because it IS too good to be true.

The truth of the program is that it's a glorified propaganda tool, and a useful way to get rid of political enemies. Just send them off into space and tell them it's for the good of the empire, to find new planets to colonize. Then, after 7.74 years of loyal service to the program, tell them:

If you have not found a suitable world for landing by this point, accept that you will not. Find solace in the thought that others might be successful where you failed.

Remenber, you will die having served your Nation by partaking in a glorious demonstration of our power. --- End of decrypted transmission ---

As you are probably aware, your ship's spare parts and rations will soon be depleted.

Penrose is ostensibly about founding new colonies on different planets, but the reality is that these vessels seem to have very little planning put into them, like throwing darts at the wall and hoping one of them will stick. Some people wonder about the efficacy of wasting ships of supplies for this seemingly useless endeavor, but they're missing the point and buying into the propaganda.

The truth is that Ariane was just a pawn for their political power play, quite literally a demonstration of their power, like a horrifying version of The Tallest sending Invader Zim on a useless quest to conquer Earth to keep him out of their hair, like Ozai banishing Zuko off to chase a hundred year old myth. And it cost Ariane her future.

And like, that means no matter what, Ariane never had a future. Penrose is death by space, and Sierpinski is death by mines. She never had a choice, only the illusion of one, because she was doomed by the political reality of living in under an authoritarian state that would never value her.

And like, it's so impossible to ignore the similarities of this to the Cultural Revolution in China. I think the retro aesthetic of the nation references that, along with the Chinese characters littering all the walls.

Ariane's story reminds me a lot of Ye Wenjie's story from the 3 Body Problem, as a similarly powerful woman who also dooms the whole world because of the ANGUISH of the Cultural Revolution destroying her future.

Except, unlike Ye Wenjie, we're not going to get a bunch of assholes calling her an Eve, doomer of mankind. Instead, the story actually succeeds at portraying Ariane as a tragedy doomed by the narrative.

[degeneracygenerator]

Wait, I'm just curious: what specifically are your least favorite AC6 takes?

I generally see pretty diverse 'wrongness' in a way that doesnt form a list of memorable takes. Most posts are perfectly fine, with a little detail nestled inside of it, like something that mischaracterizes Walter or misreads the Coral Release ending. If I had to pick one though, it'd be dubiously fan-canonized C4 "world's okayest lobotomite" 621.

Being a Raven is, at all times, in every game, about making your own decisions. So many Armored Core games have multiple routes to reflect this, and it even explicitly states it in several of them, including AC6.

Furthermore, the Gen-4 Augmentation procedure we see in that one video does not immobilize 621, or fuse them to the machine. It is, just like human+ in the first game, a dehumanizing procedure that tries to turn you into as much a tool of your employers as your AC. There are other Gen-4 pilots in AC6, who definitely are just guys who can walk around. they aren't lobotomized and fused with their cockpit. honestly, the fact that you see your mech while in the vaguely diagetic drydock menu should be evidence enough that you can move around as an autonomous person.

i love seeing artists come up with their own depictions of AC6 characters, and their own wildly different concepts for 621, and those folks are generally drawing A Person with varying design elements. But I've run into so many other people that mistake the dehumanizing language used for their protagonist as literal confirmation that they are not playing as a whole ass human being.

I suppose the thing that really frustrates me is taking fictional propaganda as fact, even though especially this game is built on the uncertainty that very propaganda generates. You don't KNOW who is right, in the end. You never see the long term consequences of your actions. You have to believe in something, in someone, and decide that the decisions you made were right or wrong. You have to come to your own conclusions, and make your own decisions. You have to listen to what Rusty's telling you. You have to be a fucking Raven. And you're not going to do any of that if you believe corporations when they tell you that you're just a brainless tool that can't think or act for yourself.

[mexicanpadfoot]

🐓Marauders in Stardew Valley 🐓

I went off the deep end again, friends! This is my take on who the marauders would be! Obviously some ages don’t align and such, it’s just for funsies.

Alex-Sirius: sporty, crushed dreams, asshole to women but surprising character development when it turns out they’re fruity. Doesn’t live with their parents. Wanted to go pro but was sent to Azkaban Stardew Valley.

Sam-James: aloof kid with no worries, loves his sport accoutrement (skateboard), relative,y easy life.

Harvey-Remus: canon Harvey: I basically live in the hospital, wash your hands! Don’t go die in the mines! I had to fix you up after you ran head first into danger! Fanon Harvey: GRRRRR IM HOT, A-WOOOOOO

Elliot-Gilderoy: I’m such a grandiose writer, come on my boat that totally won’t sink, I think I’m really important but live in this shack? Also my cologne is totally not fish musk!

Sam-Regulus: sad emo boy who hates his parent and has issues-nonissues with a sibling. Why do they love them more than me? Stuck in his cave. Friends usually come to him. Probably doesn’t know how to swim either. Stole the bike from Sirius and picked up his smoking habit too.

Shane-Benjy: douchey, sometimes in the story but you kinda have to seek him out, I can fix him and make him into anything I want!

Pierre-Lucius: I have a wife I treat like shit and don’t deserve, money money money money

Kent: Remus after October 31st, need I say more?

Gus-Peter: I’m kinda doing my thing but also I’m incredibly charismatic and kind, I’ve got the good foods, sometimes overlooked but integral.

Maru-Lily: smart science gurl, boss bitch, single mom who works two jobs, who loves her kids and never stops,

Abigail-Marlene: I want to go into the mines! I want to swing a sword! I’ll beat everyone at egg hunting! Dyed hair lesbian. Could also be Panda because she eats rocks?

Emily-Pandora: ritualistic drugs and imaginary non-native animals

Haley-Mary: hot girl who seems shallow but is more than meets the eye, strangely talented.

Leah-Hope: cottagecore living in the woods woooo

Pam-Druella: sad angry drunk old woman I guess

Jodie-Alice: she just gives me warm mom vibes and I’m sure she could kick my ass if she wanted.

Caroline:Effie: GIVE ME TEA AND HUG ME, LEAVE MONTY PIERRE AND MARRY ME

Marnie-Rosemerta: this woman would eat serving drinks, if she were ever at the bar when I needed her

Morris-Snape: stop spewing propaganda and take a hit please, I’m sure you have a tragic backstory and want to “help the town” somehow but Voldemort capitalism isn’t the answer.

Governor-Arcturus Black: drops in, passes judgement that makes you scrape by or fucks you up, then leaves.

Henchperson-Walburga: evil propaganda machine that’s all

Leo-Teddy: half feral kid with no parents

Mr Qi-Voldy: weird skin lurky dude that’s behind a lot of suspicious things, knows insider information about town, runs a gambling den

Krobus-Evan: dark, lovely, can and will fuck you up, likely ace

Dwarf-Barty: feral little goblin that sells you explosives

Lewis-Dumbledore: I hate this mf so much he is definitely embezzling funds and using other people to do his job. Has a statue of himself

Willy-Madeye: I look a little rough around the edges and as if I should’ve been out of commission a long time ago but I’m still kicking and I’ve got a ship that’ll take you far, kid

Demetrius-Orion: shitty father figure, doing his thing mostly and just being a bother to his family

Robin-Minerva: everyone loves her, highly competent, cutting but nice, lesbian I will not be taking questions

Vincent-Harry: happy wild haired kid

Jas-Luna: airheaded insightful cutie

Sandy-Dorcas: I’m hot, sexy, I can and will fuck you up, bring me roses

Wizard-Alphard: funny comphet past man who fucked off from his family and lives happily in the woods

Marlon-Lyall: hit monster hunter daddy

What do you think, who did I miss?

@toburnawitch this is entirely your fault btw

[sol-consort]

Good god imagine helldivers and cyberpunk humanity merging together when the council takes measures against them. I’m not familiar with helldivers but theres no way humans aren’t winning💀💀

Imagine helldiver soldiers that have gone into cyber psychosis, not even human anymore, just killing machines designed to do as much destruction as possible. Without the cognition to question orders.

Oh god, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of Helldivers!

Do you see all of these cool planets <3

They're ours. Belongs to humanity ONLY.

Don't let the map trick you. Each of those planets are far away in its own star system, each located at different clusters.

It's only drawn this way to ensure that Super Earth stays in the middle of the map, to remind its loyal citizen of their priorities.

To get a perspective on this alternative timeline of humanity's great galactic expansion—where any review on government military equipment with less than 5 stars gets removed and the reviewer is charged with treason—let's take a view on how our first contact went!

When humanity met a peaceful bunch of cuddly gaint bugs on one planet, we naturally harvested them and mushed them into paste to see how they may be of use to us. Turns out, we can make rocket fuel out of them! This is in great demand since in this universe, every ship has its own built-in Mass Relay. Yes, you heard that right. No more traffic jams at the nearest relay. Why bother when you can just install the relay into your own personal ship and teleport around the galaxy at 1000× the cost of energy?

So we bred those alien bugs, genetic engineering style, to make fuel. And they are gaint, let me tell you. Also, it turns out they are very intelligent and self-aware. Basically, the Rachni, oppsies. So now they repelled :( and now we have to go to war to kill them and get back the farm planets we used to farm them :(

But the war is just ugh so costly and we need fuel to power our ships to win! So we should kill more bugs to make more fuel to kill more bugs to make more fuel to—

You get it. Most of these planets are barren and beyond what humans can survive on. Some of them are under 24/7 meteor showers. Yet we still chase the bugs there to massacre to get that tasty fuel for our ships, under the name of liberty and propaganda that paints the bugs at the evil settlers stealing our precious cushy planets away!

Then, there is the other first contact with aliens.

One day, we stumbled upon an entire civilisation made out of sophisticated beings that valued peace. They lived in harmony so much so they didn't need an army. When they saw us, they welcomed us with open arms and were very eager to help and trade culture&knowledge.

So :) Humanity :) Wiped them off of the face of the galaxy :)

Who cares that they have mind control powers and natural biotics like the asari? Fuck those peace loving squids! The illuminate will rot in hell. Not human = can't trust em! And now, parents tell their children scary stories of what happens to people who don't vote! They get eaten by the squids!

Then, surprise surprise, in helldivers 2, the squids remerge from their hiding. A very very small fraction of their entire civilisation survived, and now they're out for revenge for what the humans did without justification or cause.

To twist our arm, they used their powers to mindwash our soldiers onto their foot soldier fodder to use against us! Research shows that the humans under their control are still aware, alive, and themselves, but are being puppeted by one squid souvenir.

So what did the great Super Earth do when met with hordes of their own loyal civilians who gave their all for liberty?

Call them the voteless and disown them from our species. Like, duh, they lost their right to vote in all elections. Who cares what species they are. If they don't have a voter's card, then they're as good as dirt in Super Earth's eyes! Kill them all.

And it stunned the illumnate so much how willing humans were to kill their own. Their cruel master plan that they stepped over their own moral code to enact, completely falling flat on its face.

-

Helldivers soldiers who go into cyberpsychosis would actually be celebrated. A thousand propaganda ads would be made to encourage soldiers to go into cyberpsychosis.

Because the thing is, even the still-stable and mentally well human soldiers are treated as replacable tools at best. A Helldiver is frozen in cryo sleep until it's time for their mission, then they're shot down through a bullet-like escape pod into the planet orbit, no pilot or anything.

And if they're a second late to evacuation? The pilot leaves without them and considers them as good as dead. If they accidentally walk outside the bounds of their mission to say explore the planet a bit? A barrage of missles falls upon them to execute them for treason.

not even human anymore, just killing machines designed to do as much destruction as possible. Without the cognition to question orders.

The thing is, this is already how Helldivers are literally treated with zero cyberware to boot. The amount of propaganda embedded within them since birth are stronger than any brainwashing machine. They cackle like maniacs in battle as they slaughter hoards of enemies.

They don't give them med kits or anything. They give them steroids, stimulations that block the pain receptiors, and fill the body with adrenaline. Helldivers willingly inject themselves with stims midst battle to force themselves to continue on and ignore any less than fatal injuries.

They already treat the fully organic humans as less than human. A helldiver is a glofied killing machine through and through. Even the lowest ranking member of the ship crew gets more rest time and real food than you.

The only difference is that they never say it outright. You get treated with immense respect and reverence that feeds into your ego... as long as you stay obedient and follow orders. It's a mind game.

You barely need to alter anything in this routine before integrating cyberpsychos into it.

There is minimal human contact allowed for helldivers. All you need to do is remove the leftover seconds of the Helldiver talking to their crew, and now the entire ship is cyberpsycho proof!

They'll herald cyberpsycho helldivers at the planet until it the enemy is eradicated, then they'll simply sedate those frenzied soldiers and toss them back in the freezer until it's time for the next mission.

At least a cyberpsycho won't ask for silly things like shore leave, food, entertainment, or any frivolous expenses that could've gone into the war effort.

Plus, all Helldivers' ships already have a large screen that plays government propaganda on loop, max volume, too. They won't be forgetting their prioritise anytime with a loud voice reminding them of how great Super Earth is and how it's your duty to sacrifice yourself to defend its citizen, how it's an honour to die in the name of lady liberty.

It's a fascism game, marry it to the capitalist hellscape of Cyberpunk and you get mindless slaves of all-powerful soldiers who can't wait to throw their life away just to increase a decimal point of the planet's liberation percentage. Endless loyalty gives way to constant surveillance as every prisoner becomes the warden to their inmate men in arms.

It's protheans on steroids, so much worse than what they did to the other species, so much more unforgiving than their methods. Full of corruption and propaganda.

But yes, that humanity will win the war against the entirety of Mass Effect species. That humanity won't play fair, even when it comes to fellow humans, that humanity will burn itself out and be its own end eventually.

Because that humanity would rather everyone lose than let the enemy win.

There was this planet where the bugs kept mutating into larger, faster, and more powerful versions of themselves. Helldivers rushed to it, did everything they could, but sadly, lost the fight.

So what did Super Earth do? Rather than surrender a planet full of rich resources and invaluable scientific research to the bugs who can't even read, they nuked the shit out of it.

Creating a blackhole in the process.

That used to be a planet you could hop to on Helldivers and walk around :)

Now it's a blackhole :)

Never mind the consequence for creating one so close by in our galaxy. Who cares what those nerd scientists have to say? We showed the aliens who's boss ! Woo! One point for humanity, baby!

Like as much as Mass Effect's humanity sucked, when you look at the alternative, you can't help but feel grateful for Udina's miniscule crimes in comparison to these other timelines.

[happymetalgirl]

Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere

Blood Incantation is not the only band or the first band to make death metal progressive and spacy and cerebral, but across their now four-album discography they definitely have developed a signature style and ethos within that already niche sub-subgenre, an ethos of imaginative existential musing on the biggest fundamental questions of our species: the nature of the universe, the origin of life, the extent of the cosmos, the possibility of other life, etc. This existential speculation the band engages in is not done super self-seriously, as was exemplified by their widely lauded 2019 LP, Hidden History of the Human Race, which dabbled playfully (I hope) in the idea of humanity being placed on Earth by another species. Ancient Aliens death metal. The record even came with a little pamphlet on opening your third eye and discovering the truth of the universe and all.

I've never got the sense from the band that they're super true believers in this kind conspiratorial thinking, at least not in a committed way; I didn't get the vibe from Hidden History that they were actually trying to evangelize some flat-Earth-level type of alternative theory of human existence of whatever, even with the pamphlet. If anything, the pamphlet seemed like a tongue-in-cheek touch and an adjunctive component to the imaginative world-building the band was engaging in. It seemed more about building an immersive fantasy and stimulating grandiose speculating than about pushing some specific hairbrained conspiracy theory. That said, even most conspiracy theorists don't hold their wacky beliefs with such confidence that they dare express them publicly outside forums and comment sections, because those beliefs are more of an emotional crutch for not understanding the massive and complicated world around us and validating whatever biases they have, like what religion is functionally for most people who subscribe to one.

And somehow (ownership of new media and legacy media being gradually consolidated in the hands of a disparately wealthy few who actively thumb the scales of algorithms to favor the spread of anti-class-conscious information like right-wing propaganda and conspiracy theories to prevent any type of threat to their wealth and power that working class solidarity might pose, capitalism) conspiracy theories are a real actual sociopolitical ill that we have to contend with seriously now, with actual batshit true believers like Marjorie Taylor-Greene and RFK Jr. and more than a handful who've unironically pondered "the Jewish question" now holding higher office and shaping policy in the federal government of the most economically and militarily powerful country in the world. It's so awesome that we have to take fucking "globalists starting wildfires to promote 15-minute cities" type bullshit seriously now.

Mark Bankston, the lawyer prosecuting Alex Jones for his defamation of the parents of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting, lamented frustratedly that conspiracy theories used to be fun, benign little thought experiments in the fantastical and absurd that he felt like people back in his day could engage with in good fun and not actually become so seriously sucked into, and now in the age of the internet consolidated onto a handful of social media platforms they're a weapon of anti-progressive propaganda. This has been a slow-building phenomenon, and it's not like InfoWars wasn't a major cog of the right-wing misinformation machine back in 2019. But it's so much worse now, and with the trajectory the U.S. is on in the wake of the election and the cabinet nominees being assembled, it's likely going to become an unprecedently severe problem.

All this is to say, do I think Blood Incantation (or anyone) dabbling in the mushroom-tripping vibes of space-alien existentialism with a flair of mystical thinking is worsening a serious problem of anti-intellectualism with this kind of artistry or even just doing so in bad taste? I would say no. Sure, satire is dead in an era in which it's indistinguishable from the genuine expression it satirizes, but I don't think in the context of a genre of music (death metal) that has always held ties to the cartoonish and fantastical and made very clear its fictional nature, that what Blood Incantation is doing is really normalizing or legitimizing "Jewish space laser" horseshit. Old songs with (at the time) relatively innocuous lyrics about Trump being a rich and brash public figure as more of a character archetype than anything he is now have soured more than I think Hidden History of the Human Race ever will to my ears. And that IS definitely in part due to the TYPE of conspiracy theory being toyed with, which is just the silly ancient aliens stuff that's kinda too esoteric to be tied into sociopolitical conspiracy and weaponized like holocaust denialism or something. The band stick firmly to the realm of discussions held while hot-boxing in pizza delivery vehicles after shift ends, and five years after Hidden History, they're still focused mainly on what's going on in the stars and beyond.

The cover of Absolute Elsewhere hints at a continuation of the same alien historicism, with a clearing of the crater-riddled surface of some mysterious planet with two moons in its starlit sky somehow decorated with two of the same types of pyramids of Giza. Comprised of two central compositions each divided into three tracks, it really is an album of two halves in the thematic sense though. While "The Stargate" picks up right where "Awakening from the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul)" left off in terms of grand celestial projection, the lyrics of the album's second hemisphere are surprisingly grounded, at least in the sense that the grandiose existentialism is turned inward. It's actually surprising how direct the message of "The Message" is in the album's last 23 minutes in its humanism. The band don't break the fourth wall or anything, but even in mystical character the answers they give to the age-old questions on the meaning of life and consciousness and humanity are not the least bit cryptic. "To create." "To give." "generosity". "sow peace through deeds." "To grow beyond the animal instinct to fight." I don't know if the concerns I laid out earlier about conspiracy and anti-intellectualism taking hold of power had anything to do with their rationale or thought process for doing so, but I am glad that Blood Incantation did decide make a concrete statement at least about the purpose of the types of intergalactic thought experiments they engage in, which is not to uncover ancient secrets or expose the lizard people or any of those other harmful distractions from our obligation to support our fellow human and cherish the possibly rare and unique life present on the Earth.

As for the music... the scope of the subject matter of Absolute Elsewhere is matched in breadth with the scope of the style and composition of the instrumentals behind it. It's not just that the band employ these spacier psychedelic passages inspired by 70's prog rock between careening passages of death metal, and it's not just that they manage to tap Tangerine Dream for the second "tablet" of "The Stargate", it's the intentionality of the long-winding compositions and the way these elements are woven so thoughtfully together, with wonderful little memorable motifs of guitar and orchestral synth builds making it more than just the novelty of the combination of ingredients at play here. That said, more than any individual riff or sweet clean guitar passage, the tight symbiosis of death metal with 70's new age music and space rock is the real masterclass here that really brings the extraterrestrial introspection home. There's not really a way to easily get into the highlights of finer details of such a seamless album without it becoming tedious or spoiling, but I can at least heap massive praise on the accomplishment made here in the immersiveness into the huge scope of the subject matter here made possible by the meticulous and crisp production of each piece of the album, whose varied individual components must have been a real puzzle to mix and master.

I remember when I was hearing so much hype about Blood Incantation before Hidden History and then hearing that album and becoming a believer; I think Absolute Elsewhere could easily be that album for the unconverted because it really is a masterpiece of a progressive and grandiose compositional approach to death metal with some of the most natural integration of disparate styles ever. I love this album, and as impressive as it is from Blood Incantation, it's no surprise that they could reach even higher than Hidden History of the Human Race and that they could make so many diverse sounds work so well together. If you're not a believer all I can really say is look into it yourself, open your third eye.

9/10

[pauliusthemad-blog]

The Children of The Machine Mother and The Emperor's Warriors

Two examples of the two wacky 40k factions I made up over the years. First one is representative of the lost forgeworld Palumarshus, more well known as the heart of the heretic by adeptus mechanicus standards cult of the Machine Mother, figure of ancient times who supposedly rebuilt the destroyed world as it's last survivor via cloning of new species of abhuman..mixing genetics and species to create something that would be able to reclaim the swampy death world....

By now the world is alive, however it's inhabitants are far from the norm as horns, hooves, scales and claws are common, genetics are mixed up, new species of monsters roam the world and reside on it...and in recent centuries they been able to leave the world as warpstorms surrounding the world subsided.... Trained and armored and augmented on a moon in a different system, this, one of the children of the machine mother roams the galaxy in warbands, seeking to explore the galaxy, find other "pure" humans (even by their standard imperiums standard template is considered mutants) and spread the warm embrace of the Machine-Mother.... The other is the worst space marines ever, creatures of the cursed founding they are the Emperor's Warriors (due to them finding and reading the wrong line in their founders documents, reading the title and thinking it's their name), created from parts of chimeric geneseed experiments that were considered too poor to use elsewhere, they have geneseed flaws of many chapters, often combining into wonderfully horrifying combinations - Such as slowly turning into beasts, craving blood, being on fire, growing bone spines and spikes, being extremely short, getting bouts of rage or deep sadness or even having entire organs work at random....They are small for marines, not all that well organised, lacking actual chapter structure, instead being roaming bands of "mutant gangers" as described by local Imperial Cult hunters of the mutants and while they do posses geneseed, they are not made...propertly, often most implants are done on the spot, to terminally ill children and with little to no psycho conditioning...meaning these marines lack many of fearless qualities of proper marines and even your usual inability to feel love or hatered of Xenos! But...there is a weirdness to them, their genesseed despite mutating and changing, rarely rejects it's recruits...thus terminally ill children rarely die from implantation, some would just grow up and think they are normal people, some join the gangs...and some go and seek out those who saved them and join the chapter....

They do not follow codex astartes, not due to some warped sense of it being wrong, they...just don't own a copy. Most of their chapter traditions are random, rebuilt from stories, account and propaganda found by the chapter's head librarian (who is not a psyker, but rather a rather well known and mostly liked worker in a library of the hive city), and entire chapter is known for petty thievery, lacking proper armor or equipment they improvise, forging plate armour to mimic that of space marines, or repairing ancient suits of power armour aquiring from their "founding days" that now float in the bowls of the black markets, often rebuilding one suit from parts of 40 different ones. By now chapter owns around 25 suits of power armour, none of them compelte or in one place at all times. They use bionics stolen from servitors and weapons either stolen, bought or made by themselves, often mutations due to their geneseed flaws are seen as a blessing, allowing some competence to these poor souls...

If any marines were to meet them...well, they might be deemed traitors or perhaps adorable little lost children....

But do be warned, while under armed, mostly incompetent and made wrong, they come in all shapes and sizes...and if you got them angry enough you will be swarmed by them! And frankly, probably survive....

P.S. for some reason their geneseed does in fact work on female children as well....for they aren't aware such limitations existed

[sasiaucompetition]

Round 1 Side B

2. Plea for my New Self -@/VoidDragons (ao3) vs. 35. Pick A Side (i love you and everything is beautiful) - @/arealsword (ao3)

Propaganda:

Plea for my New Self:

Image ID: A screenshot that reads: Gay Vampires. In collage. And only one has a braincells and he uses it for evil. OP Virgil and it's relatable and hella fun to read. I recommend it to everyone who loves goofy stuff and the supernatural

End Image ID

Pick A Side (i love you and everything is beautiful):

Image ID: A screenshot that reads: okay so, i'm sure and i hope this author's amazing long fics are gonna be recommended to hell and back (hey, they wrote a fic about thomas going to hell, too!). but. BUT. I need to highlight the one shot collection. And one specific part of it in particular. Pick a Side has some amazing one shots, but there's an underrated three-parter in there that grabs you by the chin, looks deep into your eyes, and anakin-memes you while there's blood pouring from its mouth. you go 'this is just a normal coffee shop au, right?' and the story winks at you with three eyes and goes 'yeah. don't worry about.' 'don't worry about what?' you ask, while thomas spends the entire first chapter freaking out and the entire second chapter gaslighting himself into being a functional pawn of customer service while the universe unravels around him and he refuses to acknowledge it. it's also a queer coffee shop they all work at, and roman's and virgil's dynamic is particularly wholesome in this one. there's a super funny bit where they try to fix a coffee machine in which a nokia got stuck and virgil suggests finding out if it's actually indestructible. there's like, fifteen other items also jamming that machine. don't worry about it.

okay, i'm just rambling, so in short: the prose is absolutely fucking excellent. it's a funny and creative take on a coffee shop au with underlying and not really subtle existential horror thrown in the mix, because the fluffiest coffee shop au in the world won't keep thomas sanders from having a mental health crisis in the middle of his living room. it's an amazing fic and i love it and everyone should read it.

End Image ID

[strangedreamings]

S2E5 (spoilers abound)

The credits sequence hasn't changed, as far as I can tell.

Driftmark. Corlys limping to the Driftwood Throne. He's weeping over the death of his wife. As far as he knows, he's lost everyone now -- both of his children and his wife. (It's even money whether the writers even remember that Laenor is still alive.)

There's a fucking famine and all the Greens care about is parading Meleys' head through the streets. Guys, reminding the people that dragons CAN BE KILLED probably isn't the wisest thing to do right now. How many of them have lost livestock to feed the dragons' stomachs?

The Targaryen family literally spent YEARS convincing the people of Westeros that being dragonriders made them superior, now you're showing them that a dragon is really just a giant, flying horse. This is going to bite you in the ass so damn hard very soon.

"It's just meat." EXACTLY!

If Rhaenys' body is on that wagon, they need to have the Silent Sisters escort it to Driftmark, it's the only decent thing to do.

Aemond is still so damn pretty.

To be fucking honest, I don't know if that's Rhaenys' corpse or Aegon II's almost-corpse in that box. I wouldn't put it past Cole to have Aegon II transported in a way that no one can see how mangled he is.

So it was Aegon. He must be in a coma to have not made a sound this entire time. As fucked up as he is, he still didn't deserve this.

Alicent, you don't want to see this. And when did you suddenly decide you give a damn about Aegon anyway?

Ugh, they have to cut his armor off him and honestly, he looks like barbecued meat. Aemond's got a lot to answer for but the only person who can accuse him is currently comatose.

The burns make him look like he has greyscale, it's that bad.

I'm not crazy about this Grand Maester but he does seem to know what he's doing.

Oh, his broken legs. Poor guy, he'll never be able to walk properly again, if at all.

Aemond sniffing around, wanting someone, anyone, to name him Prince Regent. Sadly, he's the best option. God knows Alicent and Helaena aren't in the right frame of mind right now to rule.

But really, if the monarch can't rule, it's supposed to be the Hand who fills in. Criston, stop cleaning your sword (are you having a Lady MacBeth moment?) and do your job.

Wait, Sunfyre is dead? I thought Sunfyre is the one that eats Rhaenyra. *side-eyes the writers* What the fuck?

"He who has left us after some marital spat." I really want this guy dead. Can someone just shank him, please? Again, someone calls him Ser Alfred, but what's his surname? I can't look this asshole up without a surname.

Excusing your misogyny isn't going to get you out of this, dude.

"You've seen no more battles than I have." God, I love you, Rhaenyra.

Jace and Baela. Honestly, Baela is the more mature of the two. Jace going behind Rhaenyra's back? To be honest, the Battle of the Gullet can't come soon enough, I'm sick of him. He's too immature, too hotheaded, and he listens to no one. He may be half-Targaryen but he's no prince.

Daemon involving himself in the Blackwood-Bracken feud. This is pointless.

I like Willem but I don't think Daemon can trust him, not when it comes to the Brackens.

The Eyrie. So this is the famous Lady Jeyne Arryn. She's upset that the dragons Rhaenyra sent with Rhaena are hatchlings.

"Will you goad me, child?" Honey, you're barely old enough to be her mother, shush.

I don't like Jeyne. I can understand her rage but I don't know, she's aiming it at the wrong target. Please tell me her offering her sympathy was not how Rhaena found out Rhaenys is dead.

"There is more than one way to fight a war." Let's get the propaganda machine churning! Again, I like Mysaria, but I don't know if Rhaenyra (or anyone) can trust her.

Where are they sending Elinda? This woman needs hazard pay.

Rhaenyra and Baela sharing memories of Rhaenys, this is what this episode needed.

Daemon's dreaming again but is that Aemma, Viserys' first wife?! Did Daemon have an affair with his sister-in-law or is he just straight tripping right now? At this point, we've seen every woman in his life in these dreams except for Rhea, his first wife. Blood on his hands again.

"My favorite son"? Is she supposed to be his mom Alyssa now? Daemon, your head is a fascinating place, I swear. You need to get out of Harrenhal with whatever sanity you have left.

Daemon's chair is as broken as his psyche.

Lord God Almighty, Daemon, you're not the fucking monarch. Saying anything otherwise is treason.

Grand Maester reporting on Aegon's prognosis and Aemond is over there smirking. Boy, you need a better poker face if you want the world to believe you didn't do it.

Alicent is made to see exactly how valuable a woman's voice is in a world ruled by men. Honey, I hate to say it, but you deserve this. Like Larys said, if they're saying Rhaenyra can't rule, then they can't have a female Regent.

Prince Regent Aemond. God help the realm.

"We should make for Tumbleton." Absolutely fucking not! You're not going to a town that's going to see TWO battles.

Cheese's dog following the cart with his body, so sad.

The woman who fucked the man who was supposed to be guarding her grandson is talking about temperance? Fuck you, you hypocrite.

"I did not give you leave to speak my name." Honey, you gave him leave to eat you out, the two kinda go together. :P

Their child's skin is GRAY, this kid is either dead or almost there.

Why are the Freys using a door as a table?

"Dragons cannot be in two places at once." These Freys do realize the Blacks have multiple dragons, right?

Fuck yes, give the Freys Harrenhal, that'll end that House right there and they won't be a problem for future generations.

"Bent knees." Yeah, Jace just woke up the whole fandom.

Secret pacts with the Freys never end well.

Daemon and Alys. I thought she was supposed to be Aemond's lover, not his.

Daemon's plotting to take KL himself. Yeah, keep dreaming. You're never leaving the Riverlands.

"The Blackwoods will be feted in these halls." With what money, Daemon?

Corlys doesn't want to be Hand but he does want to make Baela his heir, but she turns him down. Honestly, Baela should be Hand.

So I found out this guy's name is Ser Alfred Broome, and he becomes a turncloak. Raise your hand if you're at all surprised.

"Not while I live, Your Grace." Liar.

Hour of the wolf, the "blackest part of the night." So, something like four in the morning.

Ser Simon has the thankless task of keeping Daemon on target, poor guy.

Laena's back to remind Daemon that he has two daughters.

I have to love that this thunderstorm is big enough to cover Harrenhal, KL, and Driftmark.

Helaena knows what Aemond did. Is it bad that I still ship them? (Don't @ me, they're Targaryens.)

Alicent, you know you can put Aegon out of his misery, right? I'm sure there are plenty of pillows around. Just saying.

"Mummy." Aww. Go back to sleep, Aegon.

For the uninitiated, Vermithor was the dragon of Jaehaerys I (Viserys I's predecessor) and Silverwing was the dragon of Alysanne, Jaehaerys' sister-wife and queen.

So, they're going with Targ cousins instead of the dragonseed bastards to ride the remaining dragons? Interesting.

They're ending the episode there? Boo. Still no Ser Harrold.

Watching the credits. I love that the two units are named "Fire" and "Blood."

Next week's episode is gonna be gory, calling it now.

[tinyinvadr]

Guys I was in the zone tonight and I wrote this I’m so happy!

Psychoborrower

Chapter 6

Kochamara grabbed me before I could make any move to escape. Under any other circumstances, I would have been wildly flailing around in fear for my life, but I was too fed up to be afraid. My mind was overcome with hopelessness and frustration.

“What do you even want from me? I’m useless.”

“Yes, you are. But you could be so much more! Everyone around you is in your way, holding you back, trying to keep you from getting what’s rightfully yours. I understand how you feel, kid. I’ve been through it all. But you know what you do? Fight back! Take what’s yours and leave the ones who doubted you in the dust! Now tell me… are you really about to let the Psychonauts tell you what you can and can’t do just because they’re taller than you?”

I paused. What even was this argument?

“I… it’s a lot more complicated than that. And anyway… they’re right about me.”

“Come on, where’s that fighting spirit? A good soldier never backs down! If you join me, all the power you’ve ever wanted will be yours!“

I glared at him. “Look, I might be depressed beyond belief right now, but I still have the common sense to not listen to you. You’re kidnapping children, stealing their brains, and using them to build weapons of mass destruction. There’s nothing you can say to make that sound justified.”

It was hard to read his expression with the superhero mask covering his face, but I could tell he was angered by my back talk. Mainly due to the fact that his grip on me was tightening like he was about to crush me. To my relief, he had enough restraint to stop before breaking my last astral layer.

“Well, it’s a good thing I had a backup plan in case you decided not to cooperate! Hope you like being used as a supercharged mental battery, kid!”

He flew up to the top of the broadcast tower, where there was already a mechanism in place for a tiny person to be hooked up to it.

Right. Ford said the entire staff knew about me, so of course that included Coach. He planned ahead for me.

After placing me in the machine, Kochamara sent out another broadcast. But as they traveled up the tower, the waves of mental energy shot through my head, amplifying them to a stronger intensity while also causing me extreme pain.

“The good people of Lungfishopolis will be pleased to hear that the former monster known as Stompy has not only been captured, but has also decided to atone for his previous crimes! This selfless citizen volunteered himself to power Kochamara Tower, allowing our broadcasts to reach everyone faster than ever before and keep our city safe from threats like Goggalor! Unfortunately, the tower was not built to run on a biological battery, so the boy will surely die. But his noble sacrifice will not be forgotten! StompysayskillGoggaloratallcosts.”

I could feel the energy slowly draining from my body. Even though I couldn’t actually be killed in the mental world, this was still a humiliating way to go out. Captured as a result of my own insecurities, used to spread propaganda and lies, and indirectly hurting the closest thing I ever had to a friend.

I just wanted it to end. I wanted out. I wasn’t supposed to be involved in any of this, and I wasn’t sure it was possible for me to ever go back to the life I had before Whispering Rock. I could’ve had a chance at life, and I threw everything away for my selfish, childish dreams. There was nothing left.

As I felt myself fading further, memories began to flash in my head. Memories of when I first arrived at camp.

I was so naïve then. I was scared out of my mind, but at the same time, filled with boundless optimism. Mostly because I was fully under the impression that I was getting away with my plan to sneak in undetected.

It felt like I was already a Psychonaut. I was on a super secret mission to go undercover at this camp and learn to use my powers. I had them all fooled.

The counselors saw my potential and trained me every single day. It was a long and bumpy road, but I could feel myself getting stronger. Every punch, every blast, every new technique that I mastered made me feel like I was truly going somewhere.

And the way they looked at me whenever I overcame a challenge… Sasha, Milla, even Coach Oleander, they looked like they were so proud of me. Like they saw a real Psychonaut in me.

Was any of it real?

Then, a sudden vision hit me. A memory that I didn’t think was important.

It was my first summer at camp, and I’d just finished Milla’s course for the first time.

“Congratulations, Flint! You’ve just earned your levitation merit badge! Now, let’s dance!”

“Oh, uh… I’ve never done that before.”

She frowned for a split second, then took my hands.

“It’s easy, darling! Just follow the beat, okay? You’ll do fine!”

I followed her lead at first, and then, as I got into the rhythm, she let go, and soon, I was dancing on my own.

It never seemed important. Borrowers don’t have time to dance and throw parties. Just survive.

But I had fun.

Another memory hit as I could feel myself regaining strength. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I went with it. It was helping.

I remembered finishing up my daily training session with Sasha. I made major improvements that day, so he offered to get me ice cream.

“I’ve never had that. Also, I wanna stay invisible.”

He chuckled softly as a park bench and an ice cream stand suddenly appeared.

“One of the perks of the mental world. Of course, it’s not quite the same as real ice cream, but I think you’ll appreciate it nonetheless.”

I took an ice cream cone and sat down on the bench next to him. Even in the mind, it felt unreal that I was able to have any sort of sweets. They were unnecessary to borrowers as they had no nutritional value. Ice cream is also difficult to borrow since it melts.

I took a small, hesitant bite, and immediately felt a cold rush zap through my brain.

“Ah! What was that?”

“That would be brain freeze. Give it a second, it should pass.”

Sure enough, after the initial shock of how cold the ice cream was, I had no problem eating the rest of it.

It was light, and sweet, and not very filling. But I liked it.

More energy returned to me, and I finally understood what the memories meant.

From the moment I learned that the counselors knew I was a borrower, I had myself convinced that they didn’t care about me. I thought they were only training me because I was persistent and they felt guilty kicking me out.

But those memories proved that wasn’t true. They weren’t just training me. They were trying to make me happy. They just wanted to let me be a kid for once.

I couldn’t let Oleander tear them away from me.

My aggression built up, overpowering Kochamara’s broadcast, and I released it one huge blast, blowing up the tower.

I shut my eyes as I plummeted towards the ground. This hit would knock me back into the physical world, but I didn’t mind. I stopped Kochamara. Even if it was just one little step in the grand scheme of things, I did something. That was enough.

I braced for impact, but instead, I landed on something soft. I opened my eyes to see that Raz caught me.

“Whew! That was close! Wow… you just saved me a whole battle! I owe you one.”

“Heh… Don’t worry about it. C’mon, let’s get outta here and save your girlfriend.”

“Hey, hold on-”

By that point, we were already on our way out so he couldn’t argue further.

We were back in the air bubble beneath the lake, and it was then that it hit me: we were stuck.

While the monster was chasing us before, it pushed the bubble along with it, leaving the bathysphere submerged in water. With Raz’s curse, we couldn’t get back to it.

Suddenly, a mysterious voice spoke to us.

“Tiny child, you have freed me. Thank you.”

I turned back to look at the monster. Surely it didn’t just talk.

“Ah- Yes, that was me talking just now. Thank you, both of you. I know that I’ve done horrible things, but now, I no longer have to answer to the voices that once controlled me. I am indebted to you. However you wish to be repaid, consider it done.”

I was at a loss for words. Apparently the giant mutant fish could talk. Shouldn’t have been that surprising, and yet, I wasn’t sure how to respond.

Raz noticed this, and decided to speak up.

“Could you show us where you brought Lili?”

“By the drowned spirit of Oblongata, it is done!”

Then, to my horror, the monster latched its lure onto Raz’s head, lifting us up and shoving us into its mouth like it did with Lili.

“RAZ WHAT THE FU-”