#it's a colony lmao

[meowmeowmeowmeow4x]

Dark Blue Moon and the Suffering Sun Part 7

reblog and comment plz <3 i read every one of them and love them all

also here's the masterpost

Damian knew Phantom used echolocation to locate this ravine in the first place, but the question was whether Damian could try the same thing. Damian hugged the walls of the cliff face, keeping his body flush against the surface, and lurking around corners and behind obstacles. The coast was clear.

Clearing his throat, he let out a high-pitched click, projecting it as far as his voice could carry. Immediately, his sensitive ears picked up the echoes coming back in layers. While the sound he sent was singular, the echoes came back in staggered waves, with layers of different pitches and tones and brief silent spells over the course of a millisecond.

This echolocation was useless!

Damian weighed his options. He could approach the surface, but there was no telling if Skulker had a vessel nearby where he could lick his wounds. The worst thing he could do was just hand himself on a silver platter to the creep. On the other hand, he doubted a flashlight would be very useful at the very depths of the ocean.

He still had to try.

Damian’s backside tingled with a light pressure, a feeling he’d come to associate with his lateral line. He armed the wrist ray on his left hand, and grabbed the Anti-Creep Stick with the other. Scanning the ravine revealed no other sirens or fish, but a slight stirring caught his eye.

Damian squinted at the crevice on the opposite side of the bark, not quite sure of what he was supposed to be looking at, until his nose caught the smell. There was definitely something there, but it didn’t smell like another siren the way Phantom and the teenage girls did.

An octopus then?

Octopodes were intelligent creatures, beautiful examples of the ocean’s biodiversity.

But Phantom needed sustenance, and he couldn’t afford for Damian to be picky. However, he put away the bat regardless. He wasn’t so cruel as to bash its head in to death. No, he would make it quick.

Damian unsheathed his claws, and coiled up his tail. Hopefully it wasn’t one of the poisonous varieties. He truly did not want to test Phantom’s immunities at the moment. Like a tiger waiting to leap, Damian kept his body still, and scrutinised the rock for the slightest deviation in colour…

There! Damian pounced. The octopus’s colour returned to its natural yellow pallor. His hands wrapped around its bulbous head. Score! Now to kill it. Sorry octopus, your sacrifice will not be in vain.

However, the mollusk was not about to give up without a fight. Suckered tentacles slapped at Damian’s face. The slimy skin of its head allowed it to slip out of its grasp. As Damian went to activate the wrist ray, a cloud of ink spurted right into his face, and he lost track of it.

Dammit! Damian let out some uncouth words under his breath, and banged his hand on the rock.

Hunting for food was difficult. Theoretically it should’ve been simple. Find something edible, kill it, bring it back, but everything Damian found was either too small to be worth the effort, or too big to risk his life. Multiple times Damian was forced to dive around corners or into claustrophobic cracks as ocean behemoths crossed his path. He couldn’t even find a patch of seaweed or algae this deep into the trench.

He was running out of options as the sun began to set above. Damian was starving himself, and it was getting frustrating. His body was not adapted to thrive in these waters, or maybe it was, and he just didn’t know how.

Either way, the exhaustion of the hunt began to take its toll on him. Far from providing for Phantom’s recovery, he had only wasted his own energy for nothing. Each failed kill, each accumulated bruise left him more and more anxious. That was why when he spotted a lone anglerfish creeping up from the depths, Damian decided to challenge it.

She, for male anglerfish were absolutely tiny satellites to the females, drifted into the twilight zone where Damian caught sight of her. She was almost half his size, and her teeth seemed as big as his fingers Her lure glowed brightly against the darkness of the deep ocean, as little fish wandered closer to the ‘sun’ and got chomped for their troubles. She was truly beautiful.

Hiding behind a small shelf, Damian aimed the wrist ray. The gills should allow him to subdue her quickly. Then securing the kill should be easy.

Damian waited. Just a little closer…

Then he fired.

The light of the shot was almost blinding. When the glare faded, Damian saw not a dead anglerfish, but a very much alive one dashing away. No! Damian sprung into a sprint after her. This may well be his last chance to get anything edible. He had to give chase.

Thankfully he’d gotten a lot of practice the last few others. As the anglerfish tried to round a corner, Damian grabbed its tailfin with his claws, digging in to try and slow it down.

Instead, the angler swerved to the side. Its powerful muscles slammed Damian against the rocky wall. Damian cried out in pain, and his grip loosened enough for the angler to get away.

Damian groaned. Not another one.

Damian lay there, dizzy from pain and exhaustion, watching morosely as the scraped scales healed themselves before his eyes, taking up valuable energy that he did not have to spare. Night fell. Without light, the next few quarries would be even more difficult, if not impossible. What he would do for Alfred’s cooking right about now. He would never make trouble at the dinner table again, if he ever got out of this alive.

His lateral line spiked up again, but Damian just felt tired. Sighing, he readied himself for another beating. How the might have fallen…

He noticed a beam of light shining from around a corner. Hushed voices followed. They were speaking Atlantean! Damian’s heart soared. He didn’t know they were this close to Aquaman’s territory! He knew there were a small number of settlements in the Pacific, but he never expected to stumble into one of them!

“Over here, I require assistance!” He called out.

The whispers rose into rushed conversation he couldn’t make out. Soon he found a light being shined on him, and two Atlantean soldiers, a man and a woman, pointing their spears at him. What?

“State your business here, siren.”  The venom in the woman’s voice was palpable. Belatedly, Damian realised it was hasty of him to assume good relations between the two ocean peoples. However, this was his last shot.

“Please, my companion is injured and requires medical assistance. I swear on my name that we do not mean you harm.” Damian pleaded, with complete earnestness. He even added a whimper at the end to make himself look more vulnerable, more childlike and unthreatening, even if it was beneath him.

The man laughed. “Hah! I’ve heard that one before, punk. But if you think you’re gonna pull one over us easily, you’re shit outa luck. Your kind’s not welcome in these waters, now scram.”

Damian’s mouth gaped open. Did these people have not the slightest compassion? He often criticised his father’s habit of picking up strays, but deep down he knew that that trait was a quality of his character, and not a flaw. These Atlanteans could not even be bothered to spare him a glance outside of telling him to leave. Their eyes did not hold compassion, or sympathy, or even pity, only hardened wariness, and contempt.

“Please, I beg of you.”

The soldiers bared their spears at him. “I said scram, siren! Go back to your pod and stay there.”

Damian gave them his best glare as he turned tail and swam.

Only, he stopped once he turned a corner, but was still in earshot.

“Damn sirens, sinking to new lows. What next, a baby?” The male soldier muttered, his voice trailing off as the two returned to their patrol.

Patrolling soldiers meant an outpost, maybe even a settlement. And that meant food, medical supplies, and weapons. Damian knew a golden opportunity when he saw one. If these miscreants would not grant him the aid requested, then who was Damian to decide he didn’t need permission?

And so Damian stalked them closely. He trailed behind the duo of soldiers a dozen or so metres away, using his lateral line and nose to keep close track of their movements. A sense of calm quelled the ever present instinctual fear of being out in the open, as the familiarity of stalking targets washed over him. He almost didn’t have to try, with how terrible their situational awareness. If he were in king of the ocean’s shoes, he’d be very disappointed with his underlings’ performance.

Perhaps he’d have to snitch on them to Aquaman once this was all over. That would be suitable revenge.

The soldiers unwittingly guided him through the ravine, finally ascending. Above the cliff shelf, about two hundred metres away, stood an Atlantean settlement. Looks like he managed to catch them at the end of their route. Excellent.

Damian estimated the town’s circumference to be around ten kilometres, judging by parallax. He could just spot scores of Atlanteans going about their day, kicking their legs about to swim in a way that seemed so clumsy after seeing Phantom zip through the waves. The buildings stretched out from the flat sandy planes to jutting out from the sides of cliffs.

What was more important was the fields. Huge fields full of leafy plants he had never seen before. Along the cliff face, vines weaved between stone supports bearing strange fruits.

Damian grinned.

Now, all he needed to do was infiltrate.

[whiskeysorrows]

the implications of the show possibly making armand muslim are devastating. marius renames arun 'amadeo' meaning 'lover or beloved of god' which was ALREADY gross in the books since it places him as this godlike figure armand had to worship. and then later on, with the cult in rome and santino, he was forced into worshipping satan which caused a whole crisis for him even when book armand was christian. but if show armand is muslim everything gets a whole lot worse. in islam the biggest most unforgivable sin (if you don't repent) is shirk, or idol worship. by fashioning himself as armand's god, marius not only removed armand's cultural identity from him, he has tainted his faith which is arguably one of the only things armand could've held onto. marius essentially damns armand in one of the most irreversible ways possible by grooming him the way he did with religion as a weapon. and it gets even worse with the cult since armand is not only forced to commit shirk but to reject allah, one of the last ties he has to his cultural identity, completely. armand therefore becomes a metaphor and an example of what colonialism inflicts upon the colonised

[nartothelar]

You have all of Ingo and Emmet's pokemon named when they are talking about them. Have you ever made like a guide to each pokemon and their name?

I have!

[sneeplerbeepler]

Hindu girls: remember that our ancestors didn't do purdah. our goddesses don't do purdah. Does Saraswati cover her hair? Does Lakshmi cover every inch of her body? No. So why should you? Seeing the female body as something sexual to be covered up is the mindset of our colonizers, and they've sadly colonized a lot of our minds. Decolonize!

[katabay]

THE JETSET LIFE IS GONNA KILL YOU, ERIC CARTER!

my laptop charger uhhhhhh. met its end in a very permanent, very fire hazardy kind of way last week. while waiting for a replacement I decided to try and get some work done at the library and was asking around for some urban fantasy (extra points for a mystery plot of some kind) recommendations to check out while I was there

the eric carter series was mentioned a couple of times, AND had the added bonus of having a necromancer for a main character. I love necromancers. someday I'm gonna play one in a game instead of immediately defaulting to vampires.

Fire Season, Stephen Blackmoore

[aru-art]

happy 2nd anniversary to what continues to be the game of all time!! 🪐

[mushroominaforest]

This is sort of how it went when Hunter first woke up in the colony, with no idea where he was or who these people were.

[homophyte]

people keep bringing up eugenics in my evolutionary bio class

[pushing500]

Our (soon to be Arwell's) newest recruit, a faun named Ibter, needs to be converted away from all that nature-loving, "save the planet" nonsense and learn to believe in our superior ways of ocean-polluting, robot-building badassery.

Our path MUST be the right path if Kwahu can pull off a ✨masterful✨ conversion with a social skill of, like... two, I think? Maybe three?

Oh, dear... Alistair is highly vulnerable to solar flares, so he's going to endure a Victorian-lady-style fainting spell until this passes. It's alright. He'll be okay.

Mechi, babe, I'm so glad you're in a good mood, but we don't even have a kitchen in this colony. Also, the android could use a hand?? Read the room.

I get that you're a reclusive asshole, but c'mon, man, you like Alistair.

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[hussyknee]

Every single person not taking the time to find actual Syrians to listen to, every person who isn't a Syrian weighing in— you are stealing voices of the colonized, suppressed and tortured and doing the work of imperialism and colonization. Your voice is not needed.

Here are some twitter accounts to follow:

Leila Al-Shami

Aymenn J Al-Tamimi

Iyad El-Bhagdhadi

Lina Sergie Attar

Zaina Erhaim

Rasha Al-Aqeedi

Sara Hunaidi

If you know the handles of Syrian Tumblrs, please add them.

Do not boost anything that doesn't come from Syrians or endorsed by Syrians— not even any other Arabs or people who happen to be Muslim. If the accounts and perspectives of Syrians are conflicting themselves then that's good because they aren't a monolith. They simply deserve to be heard with their own voices. This is how you decolonize.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

on “Zutara is a colonizer x colonized ship”

“Colonizer” is not an ontological category. It’s a role within a specific geopolitical power dynamic, and therefore it can change — or even cease to exist — when these geopolitical power dynamics change (like when, idk, a Gaang of teenagers overthrow a genocidal imperialist colonial regime to install a new monarch who vows to stop the genocide and imperialism and colonization and bring about an era of love and peace)

I know it’s a bad faith anti argument, but it bothers me more than most anti Zutara arguments because I think it is indicative of a very pessimistic, defeatist attitude about power relations in general. Any type of oppressor is not a fixed role. It’s subject to change, and indeed ATLA’s message is that it’s your obligation — and your right, your power — to fight for that change, even if you’re just a ragtag group of kids against a whole empire. Calling Zuko a colonizer is not only a baffling misunderstanding of what colonization is, it also implies that even when you successfully challenge and restructure oppressive power dynamics, old sins cast long enough shadows that there is nothing you can do to be free of them. It’s one thing to acknowledge the complexities of a close relationship with someone who used to benefit from your oppression (indeed that’s kind of the whole arc of The Southern Raiders where Katara confronts the ways in which she has projected the trauma of her mother’s murder at the hands of the Fire Nation onto Zuko, who is now a valued ally). It’s quite another to claim that neither of you can ever escape the ontological categories of oppressor vs victim even if you’ve both changed the world.

[disguisedcheezed]

Alpha Beta kids headcanons.

They're all Filipino.🇵🇭🇵🇭

[opal-owl-flight]

I CANT BELIEVE IT AUSTRALIA IS REAL IN SPLATOON

[fanfenomenon]

the “you’re gay?” meme but it’s with the colonial brotherhood

[melrosing]

ok. so was anyone gonna tell me that Babel is actively bad

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

A Tempest of Tea

first in a YA fantasy duology

follows a young immigrant woman in a fantasy Victorian city who runs a tearoom that doubles as an illegal bloodhouse for vampires at night

when their business is threatened, she gets a chance to save it by teaming up with her best friend, a rich girl with a talent for forgery, a vampire artist, and a mysterious city guard to do a heist to infiltrate high society and collect a logbook that may reveal the extent of the corruption in the city

fantasy city with a masked ruler, arthurian elements, themes of colonialism