#its his natural environment

[non-binarystarsystem]

love in the time of liches

[hinamie]

alongside someone like you

[ohitslen]

Guess who had a little too much fun with the pathetic reincarnation AU idea :))

To summarize! WW gets reincarnated in a very distant future where humanity is more settled down in the planet. He remembers everything and decides to keep living his life as normally as he is able to. That is until he meets his neighbor when he moved to a new apartment.

(More below the cut)⬇️

He was an absolute weirdo of a guy who looked just like Vash in so many ways yet was so different in many others at the same time.

He pretends that his system isn’t going haywire every time he is around the man, the one that resembles someone he cared for so deeply in a life that wasn’t his but remembers all too well. He decides to pretend he doesn’t know Vash because he really doesn’t, not this one at least.

Meanwhile, Vash is going through a very trippy existential crisis for seeing Wolfwood again after what felt like dozens of centuries. This could clearly not be him however because, well, he knows why. So he pretends not to know him because wouldn’t that be weird if he acted like he did?

They avoid each other like the plague, the beautiful and horrible emotions that swarmed on their insides too much to bear just by the presence of the other. They could slip at any moment so it was better to evade the neighbor.

The thing here is, that life has never gone how they want it since ever.

[identityquest]

oc-tober day 4 complete with iorek, one of my more under-appreciated ocs... underappreciated by me, of course 😭

iorek (pronounced yore-eck) is a iotere (pronounced yo-tare-ay). iotere are a serpent-like folk that live in vast cave systems on a planet with low gravity. their bony masks are the only truly hard parts of their body, and they can squeeze through any space they can fit their heads into. their diet largely consists of shellfish that live in underground aquifers.

iorek lives with my characters romsir, areson, xalei, and eno, but beyond that i haven't developed much of his character... i know he's quiet, stoic, and serves as a paternal figure due to his advanced age. but other than that he's got nothing 😵‍💫 go grandpa! i guess 😭

[bitchthefuck1]

you know what, I actually will talk about this because it's bothering me. The issue with focussing so heavily on syd and carmy's potential for a romantic relationship isn't that there's something inherently unintellectual about romance or whatever, it's that a lot of people seem incapable of doing that without immediately flattening the story and ignoring or intentionally misreading any and all nuance for the sake of that romance. Every scene suddenly becomes about how it impacts their relationship, every analysis is done through a romantic lens, every frame or line of dialogue becomes about finding some easter egg or hint that "proves" these people should start dating. Their dynamic is absolutely a fundamental part of this show, but if you can only see it as a will-they-won't-they, you miss so much of what the story is actually trying to say with these two.

There are good versions of this story where their relationship is romantic and there are good versions of this story where it isn't, but as soon as you decide them being together is "the point," you lose the ability to actually judge the story for what it is, not what you want it to be.

[ratatatastic]

do you also think about every cat that has their paul camp virginity popped years ago being photographed looking distressed and seriously contemplating just walking into the ocean and never resurfacing ever again

meanwhile this maniac is giggle gaggling absolutely overjoyed to be worked to the bone and is given the okay by the coaches to be an annoying dmen again because his hobby is bullying people on the ice and off it

so presented once more: last years training camp day 1 presser where mikksy went camp is tough yeah but i like it so far! because his heart yearns to be overworked and also being legally allowed to bully people does make his heart happy yeah

he loves paul camp so much 2 years in paul camp will not break his spirit he thrives in this environment

[july-19th-club]

one of the best things about senshi (prozd version) is that he's the down-home appalachian folk dwarf that ive always wanted

[rebrandedbard]

Wait you have a real lute??

Even brought it to the woods on my last camping trip!

[mantisgodsdomain]

3,4,15 for any member of team snakemouth!

...how about all three?

(for this ask game)

3. Obscure headcanon

For Kabbu, though we may have noted this before, we think that the North is quite firmly considered a patch of Deadland - and its inhabitants, as a result, tend to be very, very strange from the perspective of the rest of the world. For Kabbu, specifically, this means a variety of things, both biologically and culturally - though Northern beetles are a lot more common in Bugaria, deadlands in general come with a very high rate of mutation and a very high rate of death, and that means a high rate of superstition both in things that actively impact survival and in things that do not - as well as the simple fact that a constantly-changing set of genetics means that what a northern beetle is like is often very, very open to change.

Kabbu is an example of a burrower - a subspecies of sorts primarily identified by claws designed, very specifically, for digging. His claws grow into a sort of broad shovel shape and tend to be much sturdier than an equivalent beetle's - getting underground in moments in soft ground isn't really an exaggeration! Though he can dig through harder ground, it takes time and effort, and he can't go at it with the sheer speed of softer soil - technically, he could burrow through solid rock given enough time, but it would be both hard and extremely painful. It's a trait that's heavily prized in the North for its ability to create shelter and safety - beetles dominate the North's underground, and there's nothing that can really pose a threat to them. Tunnels are safety, and it really surprises and disorients him when things underground attack him, because back home that just kind of doesn't happen unless it's Another Beetle specifically targeting you.

In terms of more social things, he has a lot of trouble getting used to the concept of mimics. This is mostly due to the fact that mimics as a whole don't really... exist in the north, at least not in the means of gaining benefit from mimicking anything else. If you can talk to them as any other awakened bug, they're usually exactly what they say they are, and species mimicking normal geological features and plants haven't found any success, unless you're willing to get extremely generous with describing the snow-bank camouflage of a Northern Silk Moth's topcoat.

Though sand wasps or "white bees" still exist, the thing they're mimicking no longer exists in the same area. Any Hive that once was in the North is long dead, overly-large groups of bugs tend to die out quickly thanks to the handful of large predators that may decide the benefits outweigh the consequences when enough tasty beetles gather in the same place, and when the enemy you're dealing with is both too heavily armoured to be really deterred by most weaponry and capable and intelligent enough to stalk your group through the snow until the cost outweighs the benefit of eating you... well, the sort of small groups generally sent to start a new colony of social bugs really don't stand a chance.

It is, occasionally, very hard to get used to the fact that southern silk moths only grow a few heads taller than him. He's used to them presenting a lot more of a threat.

For Leif... we think he's completely, 100% blind. His eyes are frozen over due to quirk of his biology - the thing about his integration that makes him a failure, specifically. With any of the Snakemouth cordyceps, they do not naturally transfer the immunity to their own magic that any other variety of mage would have, and so need to alter their hosts in order to get the appropriate biology across. With Leif, that protection is not sufficient to protect the host, much less to preserve valuable organs - eyes, especially, are fragile, after all. The cold he naturally generates exceeds the host adaptations he provides, resulting in, even beyond the blindness, unusually brittle chitin, extremely stiff and easy-to-damage tissue, organic food processing efficiency appropriate for a bug currently freezing to death...

Well, you get the idea. Functionally, if alive, a host body would be in a state of perpetual hypothermia, prone to breaking down over time and needing persistent repair that his strain of cordyceps cannot provide, as any repair he could offer that's not within his host's natural healing capabilities requires manually breaking down and reconstructing any parts, which... is inconvenient at best. As he is, he gets around most of these issues by simply replacing his host body's soft tissue with cordyceps, but that has its own issues, mainly in making him look and move incredibly uncanny. Injuries take a very long time to repair, relatively, though the less tissue damage is done the easier it is to fix - being cleanly sliced in two, for example, might be easier to handle than any sort of crushing damage. As far as his eyes go... eyes of any sort are delicate, and the slightest damage can permanently blind someone. Any of Snakemouth Den's cordyceps tend to go blind anyways as the fungus burrows into ocular nerves - if anything, this is better for hiding, since the frost over his eyeballs conceals any mycelium in the eyes themselves. In theory, it can be repaired... in practice, it would be far too much of a pain for work that will be undone the moment he overtaxes his ice magic again.

...also, he doesn't really care. Sight is not the most important sense a moth has and his scent and ability to sense pheromones is fine, along with a general sensitivity to things like vibrations in the air. More than fine, even, since he's now kind of hybridized with both Ant and Bee and the number of pheromones he's sensitive enough to sense has shot through the roof. This on top of the "magic sense" he has means he has absolutely no trouble getting around, though reading books requires more or less sticking an antenna or fungal tendril over them and parsing out where the ink is by scent and texture. He full-on didn't notice he was blind until after the cordyceps reveal.

For Vi, while this might be one we've mentioned before, we headcanon that she's got a bit of minor mutation throwing her antenna... maybe 2% more towards a non-social relative, which gears her just slightly more towards being able to detect "foreign" scents - predators, prey, and any pollen or nectar in the area. Unfortunately, this slight shift in what scents she's made to pick up comes with a reduced sensitivity to pheromones and pheromone communication within the hive, along with loss of the general innate understanding that an average bee would have of how she's meant to "fit in" to a structure that utterly cripples her communication and social life in the hive.

It's minor enough of a mutation that she's never been flagged - she's a mutation of a social bee, not a normal variant of a solitary - but she smells weird, and she doesn't pick up on pheromones quite enough, and the variation in signals she puts off means that she both fails the communication to get across what she might need and fumbles the communication conveyed back to her about what she should do. Subtle things build up over time, and within the Hive, the negatives far outweigh the benefits - the Hive is only built with bees that fit to a standard in mind, and even minor deviations can get you dragged far, far behind.

This is getting very long so, uhh. Here's a cut. Everything else is below it. We enjoy getting very long-winded. There's a lot in here.

15. Worst thing they’ve ever done

Well, this one will depend on if it's "in general" or "by their standards". Putting any sort of objective moral judgement on just about anything is ridiculously difficult, especially with how values vary by culture or individual.

There is no such thing as objective worst, and we absolutely don't guarantee these would line up with your idea of worse, and so we'll offer two options here - what we believe they would think of first if posed with the question, and an alternative answer that would likely crop up.

For Kabbu, his own response would be easy - abandoning his teammates to The Beast. It haunts him to this day - really, what sort of beetle abandons their swarm to a fate like that? If he was a little faster, a little braver, a little less of a coward - but no. He abandoned those he was meant to care most for, and they died because of it.

For the other...

There are some things that are necessary, to survive somewhere as harsh as the Deadlands. Not everyone can be saved. Not everything can be helped. Not everyone can be taken in. Tradition and law is the heart and soul of the North - rules that everyone must comply to, if not for the sake of themselves, than for the sake of those they may interact with. To break a law, for any reason, is to be shunned by the community, most likely to your eventual death.

She broke a law. It could have been for understandable reasons, or not - it doesn't matter. She put the community at risk, and for that, she couldn't stay. She was put out in the cold, despite her pleading to the contrary. She was allowed to beg and plead and bang on the door, and yet, it meant nothing. The beast she would have lead to them caught up, eventually. He would still believe it was justified.

For Leif, his first response would be... exactly what you expect of him, really. The body he took without a care. The life he stole. He might vary on whether it's the action of stealing it or the lies he's told with that body, but the answer would be the same.

For the one he wouldn't think of... He could have spoken up. He didn't. He met their eye, slated for execution on crimes that he could parlay them on if he implicated himself, and he said nothing.

The look on their face still haunts him sometimes. It hurts more now that he's two, rather than one. It's what was needed to protect his family.

For Vi... a fault in a machine. The instructions were boring, and confusing, and hard to read. She tried to do whatever she thought might work, instead of following the manual. There was an injury. Then another one. It was her fault, really, for rigging it wrong, but she was tired and angry and she argued instead of just sucking it up and fixing it when confronted on it, and it went unfixed for days more. A minor fault can very well lead to deaths, and though this one didn't, it came close - one more inch, a slightly looser bolt, and it would have cracked a bug's shell clean open. It's a miracle it turned out as well as it did. It's a miracle that no one connected it to her enough, even when it was fixed. Someone else was punished, and she was old enough to know not to step forward - she's not stupid, after all.

The guilt still haunts her. The "what-if". The possibility of it. If someone died of her own stupid negligence, if she made someone else take the fall - she would let them, really, her sense of self-preservation isn't that bad, but she's not sure she could live with it after.

With the one she wouldn't think of personally... considering the background she's got, the journey to the Ant Kingdom, and the fact that it's already stated she took jobs before canon? We think there's a fairly good chance that Vi's off jobs got... shady. It's not like she has much in the way of morals when it comes to money, and "will do just about anything for enough cash" is a decent market. If you're willing to forsake your morals, you can get more money than your heart desires - at the cost of just a bit of risk, at that!

She doesn't think about it, really. It wasn't something she needed to think about. They were threatening her, they were a risk to her team, they were the price she had to pay to eat, the specifics of what happened don't matter much at this point. Put in the position again, would she choose their life, or hers? It doesn't matter. They're dead, anyways. She should know. She was the one to take the payment for it.

4. Favorite line?

We're copy-pasting these straight from the game! These Direct Quotes are all sourced from @aquilamage's Bug Fables Transcript project, which we highly recommend checking out! It's an excellent resource for double-checking dialogue without having to replay the game first, and a repository for just about all the dialogue in the game (provided it wasn't taken out by previous patches, of course).

We will be honest: there's a lot of dialogue in this game. This might not be our absolute favorites, as a result of a general poor memory as well as Too Much Game. Also, we have blatant favoritism towards Vi in all ways. Most of these are favorite interactions, rather than anything else, so...

For Leif:

Kabbu: Leif. If you need to take a break, let us know. Vi will carry you. Vi: That is not happening. Leif: Oh, the fatigue, it kicks in... Vi: I said it's not happening!

...and for Vi, we're fond of this dialogue, specifically because the first time we encountered it we misread "exploring" as "exploding".

Leif: Science looks like a lot of hard work. Vi: It's like uh...the thinking version of exploring!

But of course, our favorite Vi Dialogue as well as our personal favorite dialogue in the game in general would be the Bee Guard overworld spy.

Leif: Vi, you're the only Bee explorer, right? Vi: Huh? Uh, yeah! That I know of... Leif: We've been thinking it's a bit weird, to see so many Bee guards, but only one explorer... Vi: Look, they're not guards because they want to or anything, okay? Vi: They were born to be guards, so they guard. That's it. Kabbu: That's a bit somber... Vi: ...That's just how the Hive is sometimes.

"I'm allergic to bouncers" is a close second, of course. In terms of story implications, we pull on her Jaune interactions and especially the point just after getting kicked out of the studio for the first time during Jaune's request, but that's... it's less we "like" it, per se, and more that the implications are fun to toy with. In terms of the actual dialogue, it just... makes us feel sad. Sad, [], and maybe a bit angry on her behalf. We've been there more than we care to admit, after all.

We... wouldn't wish something similar on anyone. And no matter how good the good gets with Jaune, it still can't really outweigh the fact that the bad starts ticking boxes about emotional abuse in a way that makes relationships like Mothiva & Zasp that more people are willing to try and call out pale in comparison. We probably need to finish that essay some time...

Anyways, we like it when Kabbu gets mad enough to yell at people.

Kabbu: This is ridiculous! You realize you could be dooming us all!? Kabbu: What if the Termite King loses trust in the Queen!? Kabbu: What if you lose to the Wasp King without our help!? Kabbu: Have you gone completely, utterly insane!? Have you lost all intelligence! Mothiva: Yikes. You're overthinking this WAY too much. Mothiva: The Ant Kingdom's way better in our hands than with you LOSERS. Kabbu: We have SAVED YOUR LIFE BEFORE, you WITCH!

[i-mean-technically]

#some of these words are just so???#''still believes in the system even after getting fucked with no lube by it'' is 100% a metal as hell line#tfa#maccadam#also your tags???#tfa megop is so hilarious when done right#And Optimus manages to beat his aft Several times even if he's just ''maintenance prime''#that's more times than fucking Sentinel has won against a Decepticon#Tfp au Optimus is honestly based a bit on tfa Optimus because i say so#and another fucked up bit is how fast things went downhill after Sentinel became magnus#that boy went full 100 with his paranoia

@transingthoseformers making another post bc i'm about to rant

first of all i'm gald you find my phrasing humorous XDDD life's too short not to enjoy it and since i wouldn't make it in prison unique phrasing will have to do lmao

and TFA megop!!!!! i think it has some of the most written for it but most of it is Not for me ya know? no shade, but Optimus is almost always made into some uwu baby when he's a GREMLIN and would sell Megatron's soul for one corn chip. (also Primus and Unicron apparently don't exist in TFA which has me 👀👀👀 bc that has some interesting connotations)

Optimus manages to make peace with an alien race, keep the Allspark out of Decepticon hands, regularly kicks their asses, while also basically raising an alien child that he got surprise custody of. and that's just season 1. Sentinel had his paranoia fanned and abused by Ultra Magnus, given power he wasn't ready for, and possibly also mind fucked to make him more compliant, bc it was Sentinel's idea to go down on Arachna 9.

both Optimus and Sentinel questioned things, and once Optimus was cut at the knees and thought to be neutered they turned their sights on Sentinel and made him into exactly what they wanted.

then he got a position that he never should have in the first place. bc his paranoia is so severe, imo, he shouldn't be in a position of power like that. he would be GREAT in an advisory setting tho.

and things shouldn't have gone to shit so fast when Sentinel became Magnus unless it was already that bad and his incompetence just brought the curtain down.

[crowempress]

Not to Alien Stage post but gonna be real I do not think Till and Ivan are a good relationship and the tragedy is that they both would never and SHOULD never be together. I like both characters but it's so unrequited and frankly toxic <3

[wellnoe]

i really like the design of xpider jean's suit in some ways...i think its fun. i know the mask is a reference to her marvel girl mask but combined with the spider-man eyes it also looks very wolverine to me...which is maybe fun as a design/story-telling detail. i also like scott's design in a lot of ways, especially the visor/mask. anyway the point is i am stymied in drawing those versions of the characters by having exactly 0 ideas about how to make scott and jean into characters who fit into spider-man stories.

[stackslip]

someone said that the plants nayuta and denji have in their flat are aloe vera which needs v little to thrive and too much attention actually kills it. i know nothing about botany but if true it means nayuta fusses over her plant and tries hard to keep it alive to the point of inadvertently killing it. hhruuguuuahhhhhahhhahhahaurutg

[jfkisonthemoon]

taking him out on a walk like he's a dog

bro why are you taking your fucking bug on a walk

[snekdood]

idk who needs to hear this but growing native plants is not hard at all, at all

[barnbridges]

not to sexualize that dead autistic man but... the undertone of sex in bunny corcoran is very clearly maladapative and dysfunctional (methinks intentionally so) but not in the "is hiding in plain sight" sort of way, in the "is so fucking detached off reality that he has no idea what real people talk and behave like during relationships" (see: autism)