#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!

[boo-cool-robot]

Hieron Zine Comic: The Violence of Its Maintenance

[Read the left side as one storyline, the right side as another]

"For every inside, an outside." / "Every border implies the violence of its maintenance."

For me and @wellnoe's piece for the Hieron Zine, we were excited to tell a story about Hella’s semi-involuntary status as a mascot of Ordennan empire and borders as a literal technology of death that played with comic borders and formatting! The title is, of course, from the Ayesha A. Siddiqi quote.

Script for the comic below the cut, which also serves as a rough image description:

Layout note: Panels are small relative to the page and “float” in the gutter space. Adelaide swims freely between them and speaks to Hella inside the panels’ borders. The comic is laid out vertically, mostly in two columns. Panels on the left are labeled L, the center labeled M, and right labeled R. Panel numbers denote which row of the overall page they’re on.

Page 1: 3 Rows 

Panel M.1.A: Adaire hunched over a map of Hieron in a dimming twilight room.

Panel M.1.B: Close up of the map having Nacre added to it near the shore, and an outline sketched of its border, the pencil in Adaire’s hand. 

Panel M.1.C: Adaire’s hand in close-up, partially erasing the border around Nacre. 

Panel L.2: Hella outside the Ordennan border, at a tall gate. A guard looks at her suspiciously from the other side. 

Adelaide to Panel L.2: Adelaide looks at Hella condescendingly. 

Adelaide: Do you imagine that walls will keep Nacre’s gift out? 

Panel R.2: Hella and Hadrian ride in a halfling-driven cart through the refugee camp towards the Ordennan military camp. Hadrian watches Hella for her reaction to seeing the refugees. 

Panel L.3: Hella displays the emblem of the Tristes to a crowd of cheering soldiers, brandishing her sword in a stabbing gesture. 

Soldiers: Is that– From the cleansing of Nacre– She killed the queen! 

Adelaide to panel L.3: For every inside…

Panel R.3: Stornras Glasseye shows Hella and Hadrian a map of Ordenna’s planned invasion of Velas. 

Adelaide to panel R.3: …an outside. 

Page 2: 4 Rows

Panel L.1: Hella reads the book about her family being a line of traitors, inside the undersea cave. She is hunched over awkwardly, wet from swimming in, and visibly perturbed. 

Adelaide to Panel L.1: Adelaide reads over Hella’s shoulder. She’s draped over the panel like a cat, one hand dangling inside and the other holding an apple to her mouth.  

Adelaide: Our dear father did like that ancestor of yours, only for her to betray Nacre and then Ordenna. Varals love to hang people out to dry.  

Panel R.1: Hadrian and Hella interrogating Iduna Fel. Hella holds a torch up. Iduna, seated and hands bound, looks up at them and snarls at the torch, speaking of how Quintrona should burn Rosemerrow to stop the undead. 

Iduna Fel: We should be burning every place–every person–the curse has touched. 

Adelaide to Panel R.1: A family of traitors fits right in with the Tristes.

Panel L.2.A: Hella is on tour of Ordenna. She looks out distantly at the countryside. A clothesline with clothing hanging from them forming figures like people separates Hella in the panel from a mine like the ones her father worked.

Panel L.3.B: Hella on tour in an urban center, looking lost. Train tracks separate Hella from a guard station. 

Ordennan soldiers: Queenkiller! It’s the Queenkiller! 

Adelaide to panels L.2: Adelaide’s teeth are bared, her lazy demeanor dropping for one vicious moment. 

Adelaide:At least I remember that you should be called Kingkiller as well. 

Panel R.2: Hella and Hadrian walking back through the refugee camp. Refugees do laundry, multiple clotheslines crossing the panel, the clothes partially obscuring Hella and Hadrian. 

Adelaide to panel R.2: Do you believe your people to be better than me? They decide who dies to expand the borders of Ordenna. 

Panel L.3: Hella marching in front of a company of Anchor in a square formation, Ordennan soldiers crowding around them. Hella is smiling stiffly, uncomfortable. She is wearing a shiny new uniform. 

Panel R.3: Hella standing equally stiffly in front of a line of Pala-din that guard the Ordennan camp from the refugees. She watches a circle of refugees cooking and crafting, going about the business of their survival. Some are visibly undead. Two of the refugees are a Nacreite young Black sibling pair with an older boy and younger girl, invoking Calhoun and Adelaide.  Hadrian in the background examines a pala-din, his stance mirroring theirs. 

Adelaide to panel R.3: Adelaide looks at the siblings in panel R.3 but speaks over her shoulder to Hella on the left. 

Adelaide: Is it so monstrous that Nacre grows so that more may live after death? 

Panel L.4: Hella alone in a lavish Ordennan bedroom, looking out of place and small. Maybe in plain underclothes and curled up on a chair, looking angry.

Hella: Yes! 

Her dialogue fills up the panel, crowding her. 

Panel R.4: The refugees notice Hella and Hadrian and look at them warily. The boy steps in front of his sister. Hella looks small in the crowd of people. She holds a hand out to the boy. 

Page 3: 3 Rows

Panel L.1: Hella in a lavish Ordennan ceremonial chamber, on a stage. She is dressed in fine clothing given to her. A pearl-studded brooch with an Ordennan motif is being pinned on her by some military-uniformed functionary. 

Military functionary: For you, the spoils of our first battle. 

Gathered soldiers and civilians: Queenkiller! Queenkiller! Queenkiller! 

Panel R.1: Hella makes an awkward ‘open your hand’ gesture to the boy, who warily opens his hand. 

Refugees: Isn’t she….That’s the Queenkiller. The Queenkiller?

Panel L2: Hella, with her head bowed, has her arms and shoulders draped with garlands of gems and pearls looted from Nacre. The ends of the strands run down out of the bottom and side of the panel. 

Military functionary: May you always bear the fruits of our holy empire. 

Panel R.2: The boy has a handful of apple candies poured into his palm. He looks up, defiantly. A few candies fall down outside the panel. 

Adelaide, to both panels L.2 and R.2: She holds the end of a pearl garland in one hand and an apple candy in another 

Adelaide: Then tell me…What are you going to do about it, Hella Varal? 

Panel M.3.A: Adaire’s hand drawing the refugee camp in Knoll Hollow into a map of Rosemerrow. 

Panel M.3.B: The Ordennan military camp being drawn outside the refugee camp. 

Panel M.3.C: The wall around Rosemerrow being drawn between the refugee and Ordennan camps as a border. 

Title Text: The Violence of Its Maintenance 

Subtitle: Story and words by Will Xia (boo-cool-robot)

Art and lettering by Brenna (wellnoe)

[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.

First | Next | Previous

[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.

[bloodfire09]

I finally drew my cowboy character for @drizzledrawings Cowbians contest. He's a pansexual I shot with the Australian beam.

He's a bit of a reference to actual bushrangers like the one who took hostages in a hotel and the hostages thought he was nice and he did it just to make the cops look stupid. and a bit of a reference to family members and just shit I like lmao. Enjoy, I finally drew him and it's an AU lol I chose Dingo because they are alone, only meeting to mate and are capable of travelling large distances. (They can also open doors because their wrists are capable of turning knobs but that's unrelated)

Lore under the cut

Jesse was born to Irish convicts who were sent to Australia, having served their time and living as free they had Jesse, a Shearer travels from station to station in the summer, following the work and sending money back to his folks. As a young man he was on his way to his next job he crossed through gold rush territory which typically was dangerous due to bushrangers and others keen to rob the newly rich but he was young and dumb and it was quicker to cut through the newly discovered gold area. Unfortunately he came upon some unfortunate individuals who beat him when he had nothing really worth stealing, causing him to shift for the first time. The problem was people heard the commotion and went to help, witnessing this shift and setting him up on a path outside the law as shifters were something to eradicate, especially since they would pose a threat to law since it's harder to imprison someone who can shift and flee.

He's pansexual and wears a feather of a red tailed black Cockatoo, a boyfriend he used to have until he was killed, just hunted for fun with no knowledge he was a shifter. He took one of his tail feathers when he couldn't carry him with him anymore so he always has a part of him and a reminder never to get that close to people again.

Now at 35 Jesse is a Bushranger, with skills of survival he was taught by his father who feared the English would revoke his new freedom and wanted to prepare his son for the it, He now lives alone, travelling across Australia with his horse: Bandit, a Blue Roan Australian Stock horse and weapons from coppers. His crimes are robbery and sometimes schemes designed to publicly humiliate police's failures since he hold anger for being forced to into this life and how his parents were treated for their crimes of petty theft.

[ceasarslegion]

Just saw an accelerationist call Obama a settler colonist for retiring in Hawaii. Isn't he like, FROM Hawaii? 😭

[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

[pushing500]

You almost inspire me to play Rimworld OFF peaceful mode. But the raids. Oh the raids are always a bit much. I don’t know how Killboxes work! How’d you figure them out?

I confess, I am only playing on 'Adventure Story' mode, and the Mechanitor's Message colony is the first time I've actually attempted using a killbox. I don't really think I have figured them out, as I am not very good at building them, but most of my ideas come from watching other people play the game, either on YouTube or just by hovering over my brother's shoulder and annoying him.

Usually, my tactics are different!

It could be "use the 'summon pack' psycast and let the animals do the hard work, with our tank and his sentient zeushammer as emergency backup" tactic that the Animist Alliance used...

...the "just fuck off and leave, starting a new colony is easier than dealing with this shit" tactic the Children of Ecthuctu used...

...and, if all else fails, "send in the French" is a fun last resort.