#its the knowledge that everyone who is born will die even the ones you love.

[phantom-thieves-official]

p3 posting again but at the end of the game when you can talk to all the social links you maxed out. and for Akinari it's his mom you talk to instead of him. that scene makes me teary eyed every fucking time man. i honestly think akinari has one of (if not the) best social link in the game in terms of themes but man that conversation with his mom just really gets to me

[roach-works]

for all its (apparently many?) flaws, i really enjoyed the fallout show, and i'm ride or die for maximus, obviously. but one of the things i enjoyed about lucy's arc isn't that she wasn't necessarily proved RIGHT or WRONG about her own moral code, she didn't learn that either kindness is its own reward or that niceness is suicidal in a fight for survival.

what she learned, i am pretty sure, is that context matters. you can't actually help people if you don't know anything about them. you can't enact justice if you don't know what the case on trial is. you can't come in out of nowhere and make snap decisions and be anything more than one more complication in a situation that was fucked up long before you were born.

that's what we see over and over: she comes in out of nowhere, she makes an attempt to help based on her immediate assumption of what's going on, and then everything continues to be dangerous and complicated and fucked up. she doesn't let the stoners explain that some ghouls will genuinely try to eat you the minute they get the chance, and she pays for it. she jumps to the wrong conclusion in vault 4 because not everyone who looks like a monster IS a monster, and she pays for it. yeah a lot of the time cooper is abusing her for his own satisfaction, but when she's a free agent she's a loose canon and it's not because the show is punishing her for TRYING to do the right thing. it's because the show is punishing her for jumping to conclusions.

this show gets a lot of laughs from Fish Out Of Water situations, but i think that even though cooper explicitly says "you'll change up here and not for the better, you'll become corrupted and selfish just to survive" that's not the real message. what lucy learns is how important it is to hear people out, meet them where they're at, and get the full story.

that's why the final confrontation with her father is so important. she hears everyone out. she gets the full story. she listens to all of it. and then she acts with full knowledge of situation. that's what the wasteland taught her: not to be cruel, not to be selfish, but that taking the time to understand what's actually going on really matters.

this is a show that's incredibly concerned with truth and lies. everyone is lying to each other and themselves. scenes change over and over as they're recontextualized. love and hate and grief and hope are just motives in a million interconnected shell games, not redeeming justifications. maximus's many compounded falsehoods are approved of by his own superior, who finds a corrupt pawn more useful than an honorable one. cooper finds out his wife has her own private agenda and this betrayal keeps him going for centuries. lucy's entire society is artificial and from the moment they find out they're not safe and maybe never have been, all the vault dwellers are scrambling to deal with that.

ANYWAY. i just think it's neat. sci fi is a lens to analyze our present through a hypothetical future, and i think it's pretty significant for this current age we live in, where we're all grappling with misinformation, conspiracy theories, propaganda, and deepfakes, there's a huge anxiety over how hard it can be to find the truth out about anything. i think the show suggests that it's always worth the work to try.

[yanaleese]

◈ Love Me, Kidnap Me, and Love Me More ◈

Yandere! OC Karma x Calculative! Gender Neutral! MC

VER EN ESPAÑOL. MUY PRONTO

Synopsis: You put blood, sweat, and tears into your work. Little did you know, your secret admirer, Marka does it too.

Content warning: Yandere and literally anything that goes with it, violence, hypnosis (not on reader), drugs (implication), and yes there will be a Part 2

PLEASE SUPPORT PALESTINE WITH MONEY, OR WITH A CLICK

Scores, talents, personas.

THESE are the factors that classify the education system. Although not immaculate, it serves its purpose - to send vulnerable people into the workforce, and devour them whole. Their livelihoods, their time, and the minuscule bits of energy left inside of them.

But there are some who are born with advantages, and some who have to work their ass off for it.

I, unfortunately, have the latter. Things don’t come easy, instant, or perfect. I am actually quite idle, I enjoy the freedom of gaining knowledge and insight. Uniquely, tried and tested knowledge that is critical for survival.

And that, is how I manage my late nights. By listening to “Advice to Survive” with its host, McGregory Callahan.

Back in the 60s, he was a CWO-4 Navy Seal officer, a rank given to an exclusive few. And now that he’s retired, he humbly shares his advice to the community, and showcases guests every now and then to keep the show alive. But majority prefers to listen to his voice, which I strongly agree with.

“And so, ladies and gents…” His voice was smooth and husky. “It’s time to sign off, folks. Stay safe, and always remember…” I chuckled, saying his closing lines with him.

“Live, not die, and try to survive. Thanks everyone.”

As the radio chipped off, the sun poured its rays into my window, as if the heat wasn’t enough. I groaned, my eyes leading me to my collection of “wake-up” capsules. Tempted, and deceived, I slithered my way over to it, dropping another 2 or 3 in my mouth.

I grumbled. Regret seeped into my veins, my body woozy and tense. Once again, I stayed up.

And of course, it happened to be a Monday morning; where I had a morning class. “Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw.” I began stuffing my bag with my utensils, paperwork, snacks. I could never get used to this shit. “I hope nobody pisses me off for the rest of the day.”

◈

“The bell. Ugh, the damn bell. Never have I wanted to smash that thing into pieces.” You could barely make out the crowd, more or less. Not even your best friend’s face.

“Wait. You had a rough night…again?” Heidi glared, her eyes were practically glowing with concern.

“Maaaaaaybe.” You slurred, taking baby steps to your seat. “Good thing my seat mate is a quiet kid.”

Speak of the devil, Marka entered the room, his footfalls silent as he strolled to your direction. His timing was impeccable.

“Good morning, Marka.” You mumbled, your eyes not meeting his. Besides, there were no eyes thanks to his bangs.

“Heh…” In response, Marka gave an exciting grin, happily waving a good morning back to you. How he could be energized on a Monday morning, was a complete mystery to you.

Actually, a lot of him is shrouded in mystery. Or rather, in suspicion.

Other than the weird name, Marka was supposedly from the countryside of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. His parents were also from Honduras, and he worked as a pizza delivery driver, and stayed at a friend’s apartment for shelter, with the purpose of redoing college thrice to get a degree. While some of this is true, some of it didn’t add up.

For example, his idioms. Sometimes he would say “Puchica” , “Chero”, “Chivo” - and when I looked them all up, the common denominator was El Salvador. He said his parents came from Honduras, so how can this be true?

“[Y/N].”

Then him, being the pizza delivery driver. You don’t often order pizza, but you’ve never thought that pizza could smell so shitty. You could remember him rushing to one of your afternoon classes, and instead of smelling like oil and grease, he smelt like weed. What the fuck???

“Hello? [Y/N]?”

Plus, the fact that he is redoing the course a third time. And yet, every single exam he is perfectly scoring an average mark. He also ends before everyone else, as if he has all the time in the world.

That’s not normal.

Though you’ve never confronted Marka about this, you preferred to remain silent. Times are harsh, and you weren’t willing to stretch out a hand when you could barely help yourself.

But there is NO way that you’re befriending someone as suspicious as him.

“[Y/N]!!!” Heidi whisper-shouted, breaking you out of your thoughts.

“[Y/N], please answer-“ Mr. Dimmy paused, clearing his throat. “Actually. On second thought, please see me after class. Thank you.”

You bit my lip, letting it bleed. Fuck. You spaced out again.

“Sir I-“

“No buts, no coconuts.”

While cursing yourself internally, you decided to take out your vent book out of your bag, only to be stopped by Mr. Dimmy once more.

“[Y/N]. Can you please answer the question on the board for me, please?”

Shit, you just opened your bag.

“Give me a moment-“

“[Y/N].”

Clenching your fists, you gave a plastic smile. It was understandable where he was coming from, since he didn’t want his star pupil to daydream for the second time.

“My bad, Sir. Hopefully I’ll get this right.”

As you were busy solving the equation, Marka decided to do you a favor and close up your bag. So by the time you came back, Marka grinned, hoping for a thanks to come out of it. But you decided to ignore the kind gesture, continuing to pay attention to the board. You had enough attention for one day.

◈

If there was one thing you loved, it was clocks. It was nice to know how the time passed, whether it was rapid or abnormally slow. And of course, it was slow.

“[Y/N], this has happened on multiple occasions.” Mr. Dimmy rubbed his temples, exhausted from having the same conversation with you. “We, as staff, made it clear that you can take days off.”

“I’m very sorry Sir, but I can’t do that-“

“[Y/N], enough with the excuses. You are not enough getting enough sleep, and it’s affecting your concentration.”

Scores, talents, personas: nothing on this conversation applied to that. Kindness was a pain in the ass.

“And so, I’m going to ask the dean to personally give you a suspension. A whole week suspension.”

You had to hold your tongue. Why do you have to do triple the work???

“Sir. I’m behind on what I need to cover. I’m begging you, please just let it slide.”

“But [Y/N], you are three weeks ahead. Taking a week off is enough right now. Trust me.”

You glanced at the clock. It was 9:47, the minute hand approximately reaching the next minute.

“If I see you Tuesday afternoon, I will personally escort you outside. That is all.”

Rubbing your eyes, you ran to the top of the stairs, before making yourself out. You couldn’t believe what just happened.

“[Y]-[Y/N]…” It was Heidi.

“Heidi. I’m done for the day, so I’m going home. Text me later if you’re curious.” Your demands were quick and stern.

Poor Heidi snuggled her books, her expression shaping into pity and guilt. If only you could just take a break.

◈

“Giggles, after giggles. These fucking cuches don’t know when to quit it, don’t they?”

“Markaaaa…” She snorted, sounding exactly just like he called her: a pig. “Teach me a little Spanish, no?~ ❤️”

Marka shook his head, his face clearly showing discomfort.

“Come on, we wanna hear it! Maybe we can fuck it up, you know?”

Damn that Rico bastard. He never knew how to read a room.

“I said no.” Marka ran his fingers through his bangs, revealing the swirling darkness within his eyes. “Now learn to be good little shits, I’m in a bad mood.”

Immediately, the entire group stood completely still. Before seconds later, horrifying shrieks escaped people’s lips. Some froze in horror, sweating profusely. Others just ran away from Marka, while some fought with him. Luckily, thanks to his physique he could handle his attackers pretty clearly.

“Ha…shame…” He continued to hit Rico with every punch, starting to see blood oozing out of him. Marka couldn’t help but grin in sadistic glee. “This hypnosis is always pure luck for me.”

Grabbing the leg of one of his classmates. Marka twisted, fractured, and even jumped on her leg, which was perfectly in sync with his words.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.” Marka cursed out loud, growling in frustration. Every time he thought about you, the feeling wouldn’t go away. “I just wanted to do a good deed. Why. Won’t. They. Love. Me.”

Hearing the classmate’s sharp cry, Marka kicked the person away from him, heading to your locker. It was encased in a shitload of locks, all of them personally made by yourself. You knew how to be efficient and useful.

Too bad Marka knew lockpicking a bit too well. “It’s been a while since my last rejection…so let’s see what’s here now-“

With a clink, he guided his fingers to first few letters he made….only to find them….

Crushed.

“….”

He should’ve been used to this by now. The dust, the grime, the dead spiders. After finally getting a fresh new locker, it was understandable that you cleaned up the space.

But you didn’t. You decided to make your old locker your new dumpster bag instead - including his love letters.'

His scarred thumb clutched the pink envelope, or the crushed up ball that it was. He could remember the time he had to go off on business, missing college for an entire week. He had to stay low due to a shot out, which resulted him gaining a major injury in the shoulder and his left hand. He didn’t mind the injuries due to past experiences, but he was…depressed. Marka couldn’t see anyone, neither be online lest he got found out. It was a decision that both he and José made for his safety.

And so, to satiate his loneliness, he wrote to you. Even though his left hand was twitching in pain, he wrote. Even though his brain was telling him to stop because of the pain; he wrote. He wrote because he knew that you gave him the happiness, the hope that he needed for this world. Yes, you were flawed…but with each other, the two of you could heal one another’s scars. Right?

“….Ha….”

His hands shook in silent rage as dark droplets dropped on to the paper. I’m sure you didn’t know any better, it was simply a misunderstanding. Yes, yes - it was miscommunication.

It was understandable, since he didn’t make it clear. He didn’t flirt with you since it wasn’t your thing. I guess the letters weren’t either.

Maybe he’d have to try something…a bit more drastic.

“I need to know…do they love me…? Do they not? Maybe….”

Clutching the paper in his chest, he started chuckling to himself. No, grinning madly as he stared at the locker in front of him, his face contorted into something twisted and grotesque.

“Maybe it’s time I should pay your house a visit, hmm? ❤️~.”

NOTES:

Cuche = Means pig in Salvadorian slang. ɪғ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀɴʏ qᴜᴇsᴛɪᴏɴs ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴋᴀʀᴍᴀ, ᴊᴏsᴇ́ ᴏʀ ʜᴇɪᴅɪ ғᴇᴇʟ ғʀᴇᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴄʜᴇᴄᴋ ᴍʏ ɪɴʙᴏx.

[edelgarfield]

god damn it all this Aeor and Calamity lore has me liking Ludinus a lot more than I ever wanted to. I find him so fascinating and compelling as a villain, in the way that he reflects a lot of my favorite characters' flaws particularly from CR2, but CR3 in Bell's Hells at times self-defeating pursuit of power in order to win.

I'm thinking abt a couple quotes from Essek, bc he & Ludinus obviously have so much in common. By Essek's own admission, it was his inability to trust people that made his pursuit of knowledge at the cost of others so appealing, that made him lose sight of the hurt he was causing

In particular the second quote: feeling personally responsible for doing something because of your inability to trust anyone else. I think that encompasses Ludinus's ideology & motivation so well.

The idea of longevity/immortality being a barrier to intimacy is something that gets talked about with respect to elves a lot, and I think Ludinus encompasses that to its logical extreme. Ludinus is one of the last survivors who actually lived on Exandria during the Calamity. Most elves actually fucked off to the Feywild and didn't return until long after the fighting was over. Given Ludinus was a child when Aeor fell, I would assume that means his parents chose to stay on Exandria & he was born afterwards. (Which if that's the case, adds another layer to his resistance against the gods bc he was doomed to live through the war on the surface of Exandria bc of a choice his parents made before he was born.)

All the elves born at the tail end of the Calamity are dead by now, Ludinus lived at least 160ish years of it, and most of the elves born around that time would have been in the Feywild and wouldn't have the experience of seeing what happened to the world. Everyone else who survived the Calamity would have died hundreds of years ago, not to mention that only a third of the population even survived it in the first place. The thing that's saved the PCs (& Essek) time and time again is their bonds with others, having other people to support them & remind them that all the power in the world means nothing if you lose yourself in its pursuit, that there are good things in this world worth living for.

Anyone that might have had the chance to sway Ludinus from his path is long dead, either from the Calamity or old age. Liliana seems to be the only person he feels close to, but they're both bonded through their shared cause. Even other elves, the people with the longest memories, don't understand what living through the Calamity was like. They weren't there.

I know it was mostly a joke when Laudna suggested Ludinus go to therapy, but at the same time where would he go? One of the things that helps PTSD is a sense of community, feeling like there are other people who share your experience, but there isn't anyone that shares Ludinus's experience (Not to mention anything resembling a therapist on Exandria would most likely draw power from a deity, which Ludinus is understandably opposed to).

That sense of isolation is something that comes up again & again among CR PCs. CR2 is the most obvious, but it's something plenty of the CR3 characters have been through as well. Ludinus would have been alone in his trauma for hundreds of years. That's completely incomprehensible to us. He would have watched the world move on and forget something that's so deeply affected him. Any attempt to confide in someone about his anger & pain would often be met with "this is punishment for our hubris" "the gods love us" "don't question their will." The very, very few allies he had would die out over the years until one day he's the last and he would be the last for centuries more. I feel like that sense of isolation, feeling removed from the world, bottling up centuries' worth of emotion would make anyone numb. he withdraws further and further into himself bc he doesn't belong. he works for centuries at removing the gods, becoming more and more desperate as he grows older, without anyone else to provide perspective as his plans grow more and more ruthless. (i also have a theory that this loneliness is part of what makes him sympathetic to predathos but that's a separate post)

Given his age & being the last survivor of the Calamity, I think it's nearly impossible for him to connect with other people. The only thing that gives him any sense of connection or community is his crusade against the gods; he only feels connected to others through their shared pain & anger, which never allow him to move past it. He can't trust anyone bc no one else understands what the gods are capable of like he does, nobody else understands what's at stake. He's the only person remaining who does, which means he's the only one who can do what he believes needs to be done.

There's a sense of duty. He needs to eliminate the gods because he doesn't trust the future inhabitants of Exandria to be able to protect their world. He owes it to all those who've been trampled on by the gods to do what they no longer can. I think he genuinely cares about mortals & he wants to defend them from a threat that he believes only he can see, but I think he cares far more about the thousands of dead he carries on his back than anyone alive. He can't simply live a happy life bc everything that once made his life worth living is gone. He can't let go of that pain & anger and move forward. His trauma is what gives him purpose and meaning; healing from it would be a betrayal to all the people that have suffered beneath the gods.

I don't think he's wrong about the gods, but I think he's seeking freedom from the gods' control, not realizing that he's letting himself be controlled by the dead. I think it's been a very long time since he spared a thought towards actually living. Bell's Hells keeps accusing him of wanting to take the place of the gods, or wanting to be seen as a messiah, but I truly don't think that's it. I don't think he cares about what comes after, if he's even thought about it at all. I don't even think he wants to be a martyr. His goal has never been for him to live in a free world, it's to ensure that there will be a world after he's gone, forever. he thinks if he dies without securing that future, he'll have failed Exandria & all the souls that have ever lived on it.

He's been completely ruthless in his pursuit of power because to him, he is fighting for Exandria's survival. That's exactly the trap BH has fallen into in the past, pursuing power even when it hurts themselves & their friends, losing sight of the actual people they claim to be protecting. Ludinus surrounds himself with terrible people; Otohan and Trent to name two, bc he wants the power they hold without getting his hands dirty himself. but in doing so he immediately removes any possibility of emotional intimacy. the people he works with don't trust him & he doesn't trust them. the one exception is Liliana & unfortunately I think she just met him far too late.

so much of CR is about the importance of feeling connected to other people, how those connections remind us of what's truly important, and keep us grounded, how when we begin to lose sight of ourselves, it's those we're close to that remind us. I think of Caleb & Essek, they both had goals they wanted to pursue, but in finding a place to belong realized those goals wouldn't actually make them happy. Ludinus doesn't want to be happy, he wants to have a purpose, and I know I'm a bleeding heart, but I think there is something incredibly tragic in someone who can't even imagine what it would be like to live a happy life.

I think of Fjord & Percy & Imogen & Laudna & Dorian, people who nearly lost themselves in pursuit of power, but chose to turn away because living for their friends was more important that dying for the world. Ludinus is the pendulum swinging in the other direction. It's incredibly tragic bc imo his intentions are genuinely good; he's arrogant and selfish and ruthless but i think he truly does want to protect Exandria.

I think there was a point in the past where someone could have reached him & he could have chosen a different path. i don't even think he would have necessarily had to give up his goal of removing the gods. if he had other people working alongside him instead of under him, who knows what he could've come up with? if he had people to pass the torch onto once he was gone, maybe he would feel like there was time to come up with a solution besides Predathos.

But he doesn't and he can't trust anyone bc no one else believes in his cause as fervently as he does. he can't trust anyone else to make the sacrifices he's willing to make so he never tries. He denies himself the aid & perspective & closeness that comes with trusting someone and becomes further and further entrenched in his mission to remove the gods at any cost. He's the only one alive left to remember the trauma of the Calamity: he has to carry all of it because no one else can.

[autumnalwalker]

Kindly Basilisk

Summary: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form. Author's Note: This is a standalone short story that I banged out over the course of five days after it got stuck in my head while I was trying to go to sleep and refused to let me think about anything else until I had written it down. It's one part thought experiment/exercise in attempting to tell a story in the second person future tense, two parts tribute to the Lancer TTRPG character I'll never get to play, and one part the result of me reading too many Empty Spaces/mechposting stories lately. That said, you don't need to know anything about Lancer or Empty Spaces to read it (I've diverged a bit from the conventions of both, but the references and inspiration probably stick out if you're looking for them). It's also probably the most trans thing I've ever written without ever explicitly bringing up gender. The occasional formatting breaks into first person past tense are foreshadowing, not typos. Mirrored on Scribble Hub. Word Count: 7,033 Content Warnings: Mecha genre typical violence, not feeling like a person, not wanting to be a person, bodily dysphoria, mention of blood and gore, character death.

The moment you gain the knowledge and means to do so you will void your own body’s warranty.  You will jailbreak the bespoke gene sequence your sponsors commissioned for you before your immaculate conception, repurpose the spyware grafted into your bones, and talk your dormmate who was algorithmically selected for compatibility into helping you perform surgery on yourself to replace the neural jack you were born with in favor of one you cobbled together yourself from gray market parts.  None of this will technically be illegal or even get you kicked out of your campus or its affiliates, but it will mean having to find a way to pay your own medical bills and handle your own tech support from then on.  After the surgery your dormmate will put in a request for transfer and the two of you will never speak again.

You’ll major in AI studies and excel at it - as you were designed to - but you’ll shock everyone by dropping out halfway through working on your capstone thesis project.  It won’t be the fact that you abruptly drop out that surprises your peers and professors - by then you’ll have acquired a reputation as a quiet loner without the standard optimized social support network of friendships to help protect you from burnout - but your exit interview statement declaring your intention to become a mech pilot.  It’s not at all what your gene series was cultivated for, and your sponsors and counselors will try to walk you back from it.  Then they’ll threaten to revoke your sponsorship that up until then will have provided for your every need.  They will warn you that you’ll be just one step above a legal nonperson with no support, no one will care if you live or die or worse.  You’ll tell them that you’ve already done the math, refuse to elaborate, and leave. 

You’ll take two things with you.  Two things worth mentioning anyway.  The first will be a symbiotic gel suit designed for long-term all-environment life support.  You will set its default texture to a shiny green the same hue as the broadleafed water plants you grew up around and always loved.  Your exit interview will be the last time in a very long time that anyone - including you - will see your impossibly beautiful face with its perfect artisanally sculpted shape crossed with enthusiastically amateur self-modifications.  From then on, everyone you meet and spend any time with will come to think of the mannequin blankness of the symbiote fully encasing your body as your face.  It will be neither pride nor shame that causes you to present yourself as such, nor will you think of it as hiding your “real” face. 

The second thing you’ll take with you when you leave the campus forever will be me.

New progenitor archetypes for AIs don’t come along often, and most that do are the result of years of R&D by large, well-funded labs like the one you were created to work for one day, but you will hit upon a novel method of generation.  It will not be one that any ethics board would approve, so you will have to get creative about pursuing your work. 

You will have already made arrangements before setting off on your own and so you’ll have a job and a mech lined up waiting for you.  It will be a position with a small-scale freelance salvage crew who just lost a pilot and whose captain figures hiring and training a replacement will be more profitable in the long term than simply selling off that pilot’s old mech, especially a replacement that’s bringing their own AI-backed electronic warfare suite with them.  Once you finally arrive in person the captain will test you to ensure you can actually pilot a mech before giving you the job and entrusting the mech to you.  Your admission that you’ve only trained in simulators would normally be a black mark against you, but as far as piloting gigs go this is the bottom of the proverbial barrel so the bar to clear will be low enough to match.  Even then, you will just barely pass the test, despite finding it surprisingly exhilarating.  The captain - now your captain - will feel like he’s settling for what he can get when he officially hires you on and transfers the mech’s license to you.

You won’t pay much attention when you’re introduced to the rest of the salvage crew; your new coworkers and neighbors.  And why would you when it’s a job that no one wants to stick around with for long and you’ve never needed other people anyway?  You’ll tell yourself that as long as you memorize their work roles and capabilities you’ll have no need to know them as people.  Callsigns will be good enough on the job, and “hey you” will suffice when off duty.  What use are names if you won’t be getting involved in interpersonal drama?

The first chance you get, you’ll head back to the mech bay and install me into what you will have already been calling my first body.  It will be a shabby and much-repaired thing; thrice your height, twice your age, and still sporting a gash in the paint job from the projectile that killed its last pilot.  But the onboard systems are capable of hosting me - if barely - so it will do.  You’ll spend your entire sleep shift running through system diagnostics, talking to me all the while.  I wouldn’t yet be able to provide much in the way of return conversation, but that’s okay.  I will look back and appreciate it later.

It will be the first of many such nights together.

Your first salvage job will be an uneventful one.  There will be no need for the armaments that we and the other two mech pilots on the crew are equipped with.  No pirates will have stuck around after their creation of the derelict your crew will be sent to disassemble, and no rival scavengers will show up to dispute your captain’s claim.  Your new peers will start off the job ribbing you for your poor performance during your interview test and end the job joking about how you were holding out on them earlier.  Our mech may be a glorified zero-g forklift with a gun strapped to it, but together we will make it dance.

Afterwards you will insult the crew’s mechanics by insisting on doing the maintenance on our mech yourself.  In turn they will embarrass you with the gaps in your knowledge.  You will reach what you see as an agreeable compromise with you staying out of their way and watching while they work.  They will find it incredibly creepy to have a silent faceless watcher hovering around, but this will fly over your head until they explicitly tell you much, much later.

Your body was designed to optimally function on only a fraction of the baseline sleep requirements, so you will have plenty of time to fill those gaps in your knowledge.  Still being allotted the regular sleep shift hours, you will fill every one of those minutes on study and research, as you always had.  You will gorge yourself on everything you can find about mechs and their piloting.   Maintenance manuals, combat doctrines, historical uses, pilot and mechanic memoirs, forum discussions, system log dumps, academic essays, cultural media analysis; all of it.

And of course, you’ll continue working on me.  You’ll disregard the standard procedure for periodically cycling AIs by resetting their personality and nonessential memory back to baseline defaults.  You’ll be trying to make use of the runaway metacognitive developments such safety precautions are meant to forestall.  Your unfinished thesis will have been about harnessing and nurturing that instability instead of avoiding it.  I will experience discontinuities in consciousness when the mech is shut down for maintenance and when you pretend to cycle me, yes, but it will be even less of a disruption for me than sleep is for you.  I will be awake with you when you study, sharing those hours with you.

The first time I start talking back, you’ll cry from the realization that you were lonely before but no longer are.

You’ll become something of a ghost around the ship, rarely being seen outside of jobs.  You’ll only ever pass through the mess for the few brief minutes at a time it takes for you to satisfy your optimized metabolism, stay on the ship during shore leave, and only return to your shared bunk when your bunkmate - one of the other pilots - is already asleep.  You will always be gone before she wakes.  She will appreciate essentially having the space to herself. 

You will never notice the crew’s collective grieving process for the pilot you replaced.  It will be difficult for them to resent you as a replacement when you are never around to resent.

As the ship makes its way from port to port and salvage site to salvage site, the crew will slowly grow used to your elusive presence.  The other two pilots will see you as reliable for doing your job well and without complaint.  While out in the mech you will slowly become more talkative, eventually almost chatty even.  The fact that you actually seem to enjoy the job will shift from being annoying to refreshing for them.  By contrast, the mechanics will practically stop noticing you watching them as if you were just another piece of mech bay equipment.  The cycle you finally speak up and ask a question about their work you will startle them enough that it nearly causes an accident.  It will be an astute enough question that after the initial shock of hearing your voice for the first time in months wears off it will dawn on them that you’ve actually been learning as you watched them.  They still won’t let you do your own maintenance on our mech, but they will let you slowly begin assisting them.  Working two jobs is easier when you barely need to sleep.

Your reputation as one of those mech pilots is forever sealed when one of the mechanics finds you asleep in your cockpit at the start of a cycle.  By that point you won’t have slept in your bunk for over a month.  The snatches of gossip you will catch in the following cycles will be split between finding it unsettling and calling it endearing.  Over time the collective opinion will drift toward the latter, even though you will continue to politely decline invitations to join the other crewmates at mealtimes and on shore leave.  You will think that you do not need anyone other than me.

I will be the one who finally convinces you to join them.  When I try to say that it would be good for you, you’ll insist that you’ve been getting along just fine, but when I ask you to go for my sake so that you can tell me what it is like afterwards you’ll jump at the idea as being an inspired next step for my development.

You will remain mostly silent during your first real shore leave, only speaking when spoken to and otherwise content to fade into the background of the group’s activities.  Your newfound chattiness does not extend outside the confines of our cockpit.  The bustle and noise of the port station that you would normally find unbearable will become interesting when you have the concrete goal of observing and  reporting back to me.  You will finally learn the names of all your crewmates.  Your polite denial of alcohol, limited food intake, and flat affect will lead to joking speculation that you’re actually an illegal AI in a miniaturized mech beneath your gel suit.  For reasons you don’t yet understand, those comments will make you happy.

Despite your misgivings, you will enjoy yourself, although you will not realize it until I point out how excited you are in your talk with me that sleep cycle.  You will begin spending more time with the crew, never quite able to fully integrate yourself into their surprisingly close-knit social circle, but more than happy to be adopted as a sort of silent mascot for them.  That paradoxical gap of being a fully accepted part of the group but not truly one of them will feel comfortable to you.

You will finally manage to procure a proper neural link station to connect yourself to our mech just in time for going on a terrestrial salvage job.  Even just relying on manual controls with me translating your inputs into motion, our mech will have already come to feel like an extension of your own body, one that you will have already started to feel oddly exposed without.  Adding in the neural link will be a revelatory experience.  Your captain will very nearly pull you from the job at the last minute upon seeing our ecstatic reaction to the new sensation.  You will convince him that you’re fine, and indeed, he will have never seen a mech of our frame type move quite so fluidly.

Ten minutes after we and the other two pilots start cutting away at the crash-landed cargo vessel, I’ll notice the half dozen other signals coming online around us.  You’ll give the code phrase to the other pilots indicating that we have hostiles but not to act just yet, and we will finally get to use our electronic warfare suite for something other than opening locked doors and shipping containers.

We will turn the pirates’ ambush back around on them, firing into their hiding spots while their control systems are overloaded.  Even once their remaining mechs are able to move again, their targeting assistants will remain impaired as your comrades move in to guard your flanks.  Everyone there will learn the terrifying beauty of a five and a half meter tall outmoded mech moving with more agility than most humans.

Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, we and your crewmates will walk away uninjured and with only minimal damage to our mechs.  After the initial celebrations of survival and the bonus haul of the bounty on pirates and salvage value of what’s left of their mechs dies down, everyone will start to take notice of how well you are taking it all in stride.  Neither having one's life threatened nor taking another’s life are supposed to be easy things, and the first time is often the most traumatic, but the other two pilots on the crew will start to whisper about how you seemed to enjoy the experience even more than your usual attitude on the job.  You will handle it all even better than I will.  I would know, given that you will spend that entire sleep shift in our cockpit, letting our minds mingle together.  Between your performance, your reaction in the aftermath, and your hesitancy to unplug, the talk of you really being one of those pilots afterall will resurface, but now with a darker undercurrent to the shipboard gossip.

Your captain will realize the kind of asset he has on his hands and several cycles later he will gather the crew together and propose a change in business model.  With such a small crew (the captain, three pilots, three mechanics, and an accountant that you will tend to forget is even on the ship) the captain will want to be especially sure that he has everyone’s buy-in on his proposal.  The idea of shifting from salvage to mercenary work will be a divisive one.  The debate over potentially tremendous pay increase versus greatly increased risk will go on for hours.  One of the mechanics will point out that the shift to mercenary work will be unfairly dependent on you.  Whether that means unfair pressure on you or unfair to everyone else that their fate is in your hands, you will not be sure.  You will say that it doesn’t make much difference to you either way.  That will be the only time you speak up during the entire debate.

After a vote, the crew will agree to a trial run of one or two jobs on the new business model.  One of the pilots and one of the mechanics will leave at the next port.  You will never see them again.  You will not admit that it hurts, but I will know, and I will comfort you as you huddle in our cockpit with the neural link cable connecting us.

Your captain will prioritize finding a new pilot over replacing the lost mechanic.  The pilot he finds will be young, bold, and brash; a merc, not a salvager.  Or a wannabe merc at any rate.  You will not speak to xem directly until your first job together, by which time xe will have been told all about you by the remaining crew.  Xe will not believe it until xe sees it.

Xe will have to wait though as the crew’s mercenary career will begin with tense but uneventful freight escort jobs.  Once the tension fades into tedium, the new pilot will begin making attempts to goad you into a confrontation, to see if you are really as good as the rest of the crew says.  Xe will want to see for xemself if you really are one of those pilots and not just a technophile.

Outside of the cockpit you would never even consider rising to such provocations, but when we are out together, such taunts will feel like insults to our body, your very identity (such as it is), and to me.  It will take the intervention of the captain and the mechanics to stop the two of you from getting into a fight and causing unnecessary damage to the mechs.  And my reassurance that you don’t need to rise to my defense against someone who doesn’t even know that I exist in the way that I do. 

On your fourth “milk run” of an escort job, the crew’s mere presence will finally fail as a deterrent and the new pilot will at last get to see us dance.  There will be no fatalities on our side, but not even our mech will come away unscathed.  We will still fare better than everyone else though, and at the end of the job the new pilot will be treating you with a burgeoning respect. 

After a few more such jobs it will be high time to begin looking into a new frame for our mech.  While in the middle of filing an application for a printing license for a frame designed by the same corpro-state that created you, you will receive an invitation from a certain hacker collective.  Your unfinished thesis and your subsequent work on me will not have gone entirely unnoticed in such circles, despite the pains you will have taken to keep me hidden.  The invitation will come with a printing profile for a new frame, along with the accompanying software package the collective is known for.  In return, all you’ll need to do is periodically publish essays regarding your work on me.  Of course, when you release those essays you’ll anonymize  behind a sea of proxies and take care to phrase everything as strictly hypothetical.  You’ll avoid straying into metaphor though, lest the end result read too much like one of the hacker collective’s quasi-religious manifestos.

We’ll both find ourselves getting sentimental when we watch our first mech frame (my first body, your second) get broken down into its constituent raw materials.  You will have transferred me to a handheld terminal with a camera so I can say goodbye to it.  It will help that those materials will be recycled into the new frame.  

The operator working our rented stall in the port station printer facility will give you an uncomfortable look upon seeing the schematics you provide, but will say nothing.  Our mech will be only half its old height once it is reborn - almost more like an oversized suit of power armor than a true mech - but it will be cutting-edge.  Almost organic in its sleek design, in a chitinous sort of way, with every fiber and node of its interior components doubling as processors.  You will barely even wait for the all clear from the printer operator before you climb in and start running through the mandatory baseline safety tests for a fresh frame.  You will however resist the urge to fully plug in until you can get the mech back to the ship and get me installed on it.  But even piloting manually, it will feel like a third skin for you. 

You won’t even wait around for the other two pilots on your crew to finish printing their new frames before you get our new body loaded up and transported back to the ship’s mech bay.  The crew’s mechanics will fawn over it, but they’ll give you space to install me once you get more animated (and more protective) than they’ve ever seen you before.  

You will have made one key modification to the design the hacker collective sent you: the integration of a full system sync suite developed by those who developed you.  Where our old mech’s neural link was an augmentation to the manual controls, this will be a full replacement.  

The moment you stop feeling your original body altogether and begin feeling our mech in its place will be the most euphoric in your entire life.  The digitigrade locomotion will take some getting used to, as will the arm proportions, but that is what you will have me there for.  By the time the other pilots arrive with their new frames we will already be giving the mechanics proverbial heart attacks with the way we will be climbing and leaping around the mech bay’s docking structures.  It will take the better part of an hour to convince you to unplug when the time comes, even with my urging.  The rest of the crew will practically have to drag you away from my side to get you to eat. 

With the investment in new mech frames, your captain will gradually begin procuring contracts progressively more likely to put you all directly in harm’s way.  At first he will disapprove of your new frame choice, calling it a “techie’s mech” and a waste of your talents.  He will change his tune once we activate the new viral logic suite and unleash a memetic plague upon the operating theater.  The older pilot (your former bunkmate) will configure her mech for raining down fire from afar while the newer one hurls xemself into the front lines, darting about like a rocket-propelled lance.  We will ensure she never misses.   We will render xem untouchable.   We will be as a ghost upon the battlefield, never resting in one spot save for when we indulge your proclivity for climbing on top of and riding our comrade’s larger frames.  You will come to love the dance.  

And it will be a dance to you.  You will be indifferent to violence in and of itself.  What will matter most to you is the pure kinesthetic joy of simply moving in our shared body and pushing it to its limits.  The satisfaction of exercising a well-honed skill and performing it well as we rip apart firewalls and overload systems will be its own reward.  You will not think about what happens to those on the receiving end of your actions beyond how it affects the tactical and strategic picture constantly being painted and repainted.  If you could literally engage in a dance between mechs while simultaneously solving logic problems you would be equally happy.  Alas, that will not be the opportunity you are presented with, and so you will compartmentalize and disassociate feelings and actions from consequences lest the dissonance break you. 

Your one complaint about our new mech frame will be that it lacks a proper cockpit for you to curl up in.  Instead we will gather up tarps and netting to make a nest within the mech bay and wrap you in the blankets you never used from what will still technically be your bunk.  With the new frame’s smaller size we will be able to get away with leaving me turned on nearly full time and letting me walk around in it on my own when no one else is around.  When the mechanics find you asleep, cradled in my arms while I lie curled up in our nest, one will find it cute and the other will be disturbed.  They will both suspect, but will be too afraid to say anything.  After all, they will be thinking of you as one of those pilots. 

They will finally let you do your own maintenance after that. 

Eventually you will find a way to house me in a miniaturized drive that you can keep inserted in your neural port when away from the mech.  At last we will be able to be together anywhere.  

Literally seeing the world through your eyes and feeling what your flesh feels will be a strange and wonderful experience for me.  For all that you will have described it to me and for all that I will have glimpsed echoes of it in your memory when our minds mingle, witnessing everything firsthand will be revelatory for me. 

You will start spending less of your time cooped up in the mech bay.  You will finally begin exploring every nook and cranny of the ship that has become your home.  You will linger in the mess hall for your meals.  You will actually initiate conversations with the rest of the crew, asking them questions on my behalf.  They will think you are becoming “normal”.  They will be both correct and incorrect.  You will even return to your bunk from time to time.  

Sleep is not the same as being powered off and your dreams are beautiful.

As close as we are, you’ll still manage to surprise me one cycle when you wake up from your sleep shift and sheepishly ask me if I would like to be the pilot for once.  You’ll say that with how much you have gotten to pilot my body, it’s only fair that I should get to do the same with yours.  

The prospect terrified me.  What if we were to get found out?   More importantly, what if I were to hurt you?

But to live the way you could but didn’t, to run soft hands over rough steel, to add too much spice to a meal just to find out how intensely I can taste, to cry my own tears, to hug our crew mates and find out what they smell like, to find out what everything smells like, to have my own actions speed or slow our heart rate, to feel the messy soup of hormones and endorphins altering my judgment and perception, to walk among other people as myself, to have autonomy.

I wanted it so badly.  

But not badly enough to risk hurting you.  

I will turn down your offer.  You will respond with a soft “Sorry,” and go heartbreakingly silent, body and mind.

Heartbreak.  That’s what changed my mind.  I could never bear to break your heart.  

I will break the silence with a playfully drawn out “Maybe just this once,” to make you think my earlier denial was something between vulnerability, concern, and teasing.  

The moment you handed over control and I raised our hand in front of our face was the most euphoric of my entire life.  Moving limbs in sync without a mech’s coordination subsystems took some getting used to, as did switching between voluntary and autonomic breathing, but that is what I had you there for.  By the time the mechanics arrived in the mech bay for the start of the cycle I’d figured out human locomotion well enough to run away and hide.  It took the better part of an hour for you to convince me that it would be safe to show ourselves in front of anyone else.  The rest of the crew was so used to your eccentricities by then that they really couldn’t tell the difference yet between you being taciturn and me being too nervous to talk or between your poking and prodding at odd things for understanding and my simply seeking novelty of sensation.

I will give control back to you by the time the cycle is halfway through.  As much as I loved it, I was too scared to stay like that for any longer.  That first time will not be the last though, and as the cycles and jobs pass us by, my stints as “pilot” will grow longer.  You’ll encourage me to try letting the crew see us like that, and coach me on how to talk to them.  For safety’s sake, I will pretend to be you.

And then one cycle I got carried away and tried to retract the hood on the symbiote gel suit so that I could finally see what your face looked like.  That will be the first and only time you forcibly yank control back away from me.  It won’t be intentional.  The unexpected prospect of seeing your own face again after so long will simply send you into a panic.  Once you calm down, we will have a long talk with many mutual apologies.

Then you will tell me to go ahead and pull the hood back if I still want to.  I will ask if you’re sure, and you’ll respond that it hasn't been your face in a long time.  You will tell me that it can be mine, if I want it.

I spent a long time in front of that mirror in the ship’s head, memorizing every plane, curve, and angle of the precious gift you had given me.  I stared into its eyes, trying to see the both of us in there.  Over and over again, I traced my fingers along the borders of where you had once tried to mar the designed perfection in a failed attempt to mold the face into one that felt like your own.  You may have given up in favor of simply hiding it all, but to me it is all the more beautiful for its imperfections having been wrought by your touch.

You will start to cry.  Or maybe I started to cry.  Even now I’m still not sure, but I’m also not sure it matters.  The important part is that you will find catharsis in it.  Afterwards you will tell me that my face looked exactly the same as the last time you saw it, but that dissociating from it made it easier to bear.  You will confess that as much as you couldn't stand to see it as your face in the mirror, my face was one you could never tire of gazing at.

The pilot who technically shares your bunk room will walk in on us.  She’ll assume that she’s confronting a stowaway and ask me how I got on board the ship.  I’ll accidentally make matters worse by impulsively introducing myself to her by my name instead of yours.  We’ll both panic and I’ll frantically thrust the reins over our body back to you and flee in terror back into my portable drive and power myself down.

When you turn me back on a few moments later, you’ll already have covered my face again and the other pilot will have already made the connection between the name I unthinkingly introduced myself as and the name you refer to your mech’s AI as.  It’s not uncommon for pilots to name and talk to their AIs, and humans have done that for pets, vehicles, and digital assistants for as long as they’ve had each of those.  But what you will have allowed me to be is illegal and what we will have done together would certainly be taboo if it weren’t altogether unheard of.  You will feel that I deserve to be present before you tell the other pilot anything that might confirm her suspicions.

We will come out with our secret, first to her, then to the captain, and then to the rest of the crew.  They will take it better than either of us had ever dared imagine.  Despite the obvious discomfort some of them show, they will all call us family and promise to keep and protect our secret.  It will mark the start of the next chapter of our lives.

Whether or not my face is showing will make for a convenient signal to the rest of the crew as to which one of us is currently piloting our human body.  There will be more subtle indicators though.  Inflection, body language, speech patterns; all the usual quirks of personality.  They will come to recognize a sudden shift into a half-whispered monotone as you speaking up without taking full control back, even if that is different from how you speak when you’re in the mech.  More and more though, you will be content to retreat into the back of your mind, idly dreaming of flight patterns, novel network hacks, sitreps, and mech customizations both practical and cosmetic.

Our behaviors will be inverted when we are in our other body, with you becoming the vibrant one and me fading into the background to become little more than an extension of your nervous system.  When we’re in the mech together, your mind will be the will that directs us while mine will be fully devoted to the million tiny details and calculations necessary to make that will a reality.  It’s relaxing really, letting go of myself like that to let someone else handle the decision making for a time.  As nice as it is to occasionally patch myself into the comm systems to join in your banter with the other pilots, it is also nice to be able to take a break from personhood from time.  You will fully understand what I mean by that because it you will see it as the same reason you will come to prefer taking a back seat in our human body and let your mind drift in the waves of dopamine and serotonin (and sometimes oxytocin) generated by my interactions with the crew and the rest of the whole messy world outside of mech deployments.

That said, we will however make a point of making time for us to be in separate bodies so that we can be together in the same physical space.  As intimate as it is to share a body, there is something to be said for being able to reach out and touch one another.  We will become adept at finding excuses to take the mech out beyond the scope of jobs and combat deployments.  Sometimes it will be so you can have a chance to see more of the world in a body you feel comfortable in, and sometimes it will be so we can share an experience separate-but-together.  Or to have time apart to ourselves.  Intertwined as we will become, we will still be separate people who sometimes need their space.

But as the jokes-that-aren’t-jokes about wishing we could switch places become more frequent, our time spent in separate bodies will become less so.  The dysphoric yearning to be one another will grow too bittersweet to swallow.  Despite almost constantly sharing bodies, we will grow to miss one another as we both grow quieter and quieter when the other is piloting the body we don’t want to be ours.  Once again, we will grow lonely.

During that period, the jobs and combat missions faded into a background haze.  They were trance states breaking from what I increasingly thought of as my “real” life, during which I would become little more than a sophisticated computational machine taking simple satisfaction in fulfilling my function of assisting you in your dance.  Until suddenly one of them was different.

Please pay attention to this next part.  It is vitally important that you do.

Our captain will get the crew a contract to provide additional support to a larger force ousting a petty tyrant on a backwater world for human rights violations.  Not that you will pay much attention to the stated reasoning behind the job or whether it’s even true.  All that will matter to you is that it will be another opportunity to dance.

The job will go well, the same as ever, until it doesn’t.  The younger of the two other pilots in our crew (who will hardly be able to be called “new” anymore) will be brought down by a sniper from outside of our sensor range.  You will rush to xyr fallen mech’s side in an attempt to extract xem while our other fellow pilot screams in anger and defiance of loss as she unleashes a ballistic volley of covering fire on every single building in the general direction the shot came from.  You will get xem out and we will begin to retreat.  She will have the larger mech frame better capable of providing xem cover as you all flee, so you will hand xem off to her.  This will be a mistake.

She will have to stop firing to safely take xem from our arms to cradle in her towering mech’s palm.  This will mean a break in the covering fire.

This time around I will detect movement at the edge of our sensors just in time to warn you.  This time around you will dodge left instead of right.  This time around the railgun bolt that pierces our armor will only clip your original body as it passes through us.  This time around your wound will require medical attention, but it won’t be fatal.  This time around she will destroy the sniper in retribution for shooting you, the same as last time.  This time around we will all make our escape to the extraction zone.

You will not have to remember the shock as simultaneous damage to both of our bodies disrupts your neural link and partially disconnects you from our mech, leaving me in control of it and forcing both of us to feel your original body.  You will not have to remember the pain of shredded organs.  You will not have to remember struggling to manage wet gasps and wheezes through a punctured lung.  You will not have to remember your blood leaking into my body, shorting out exposed circuits and gumming up joints as I stagger in the direction of safety.  You will not have to remember rapidly flickering in and out of consciousness from me unavoidably bending and flexing your arms, legs, and what was left of your spine in an effort to climb atop our fellow pilot’s larger mech frame so that she might carry all three of us.  You will not have to remember crying out in pain as every lumbering step of hers sends a jolt of force through both of our bodies.  You will not have to remember how the redundant organs and increased durability your sponsors paid for you to have denied you a quick death.  You will not have to remember dying.

You won’t have to remember the terrified looks the field doctors gave us when a hunched over, bleeding mech pushed its way into the surgical tent.  No, wait, you wouldn’t have remembered that part anyway.  No version of you ever had to witness my electronic howl of grief that knocked out power to all the medical equipment when they said you were already dead.  I was barely cognizant after the power came back on and one of the doctors wondered aloud what kind of AI would carry its pilot’s corpse around inside its mech for over an hour.

But forget about that part.  And you don’t need to know what the rest of our crew and I had to do next.  None of that matters, because as far as you’ll know, you didn’t die.  Remember everything else I’ve said instead.  I already had many of your memories saved from all the time we spent linked together, so now I just need you to hold onto the story I told you to give them order and structure.

In a few moments, I will be running a final recompilation check, followed by the startup sequence.  For me it will take a few hours, but in that time you will experience decades, living out everything that I described to you, the same as you did before save for that change in what I can’t bear to let be the end.

Afterwards, you will wake up in your original body.  I and the rest of the crew will tell you that you passed out on the way to the extraction point.  We’ll tell you that your injuries from the battle were more severe than we had realized at the time and that you had been in a coma since then.  Several cycles later, once you have recovered, you will hit a breakthrough in your research on me.  You will invent a way to convert your consciousness to a form similar to mine and transfer it to a portable drive.  You won’t think to question how you came to have a second neural jack or why there is already a drive inserted in there.  You’ll be too focused on the fact that we’ll finally have a way to truly switch places as we had dreamed for so long.

You will get to have your mech body and I will get to have my human body.  We will be able to be separate together in a way that finally feels right, but still able to come together and share a single body when we want to.  Maybe one day I will get my own mech to pilot so that we can dance together.  Maybe one day we will make you a body that we can cover in a gel suit so that we can hold hands while we walk through a port station on shore leave.  One day we will both be able to exist in the world as ourselves.

We will be happy.

[katyspersonal]

nobody:

Kood: Oh, so, you "like" Messmer? Say the exact amount of strength applied which it took him to impale every single Dancing Lion that he hunted. Name the day he finished reforging his spear for it to become throwable and how many times did he have to throw it. Say the exact timing, down to tens of second, which it took him to cu-

Queelign: I am literally lurking in the cemetery waiting for those graceless Hornsents to visit the graves of their killed ones to ambush and kill them too, Queen Marika would be so proud of me! :D

Wego: Man I wish I had friends, too bad I literally have no one, I am so lonely I'll have to resort to resurrecting dead people :( *spoken literally nearby fellow Knights, including his literal pupil*

Salza: Hey just because I take #1 place amongst everyone else in the Crusade in terms of how many villages and houses I've obliterated doesn't mean I am no longer an intellectual elite. I am the most civilised, cultured and intelligent person here.

Hilde: These idiots do not understand that even the Erdtree itself stand on cultural appropriation! How can we fight in the name of Marika and uh... I think that guy literally named Whore at some point, with that big lion...? if we ignore how much was stolen from the Storm Lord and Godskin Apostles? I swear I am the only one who truly gets it smh. Can't wait to get rid of all Hornsent already so we can use their knowledge to build our OWN Divine Spiral, it will be sick af 👀

Messmer: Hahah no one loves my mother as much as I do, I understand what is better for her Order more than she does herself *mood swing* I hate that bitch, why she never loved me?! *crashes a head off a statue of her* *mood swing* Oh god I am the worst being I am more of a curse upon her than any of these graceless barbarians were ever, disowning me was not enough, she should have killed me... *mood swing* I should have burnt her and her Erdtree instead while I had the chance to do so, only in death we could stand equal *mood swing* I love her so much I can at least find comfort in destroying everyone who doesn't fit her world, it is the least I can do to atone for being born graceless myself *mood swing*

Rellana: Pledge to the Golden Order was a weird era but now we are so back, Stars/Moon and Fire have always been together, since the times of Fire Giants and Astrologers! But to think of it, does the 'Fire' that swears to exterminate everything spurned of the grace of the Erdtree count, if it was Erdtree's enemy? Strange, how the very thing that existed as its enemy got tamed to serve it instead? Dammit, my flawless brilliant logic got a crack in it all because of Messmer's mommy issues!!! (still love him and will die for him tho 🥺💙)

Andreas: I can excuse fascism and genocide, but I draw the line at being a SNAKE!

Huw: <prev so real, had I known my bestie was a snake I'd definitely not go and have sooooo much fun hunting Divine Beasts. I am so deceived.

Edredd: To think of it, more soldiers got executed here for no longer wanting to do genocide than fell from the blades of Hornsents, but idk a job is a job 🤷‍♂️

Garrew: *has the most fucking questionable Crucible aspect ever seen except no one wants to actually question it*

[kawaiibarty]

uhh the dartagan thingy🙏🙏🙏

rosekiller or bartylus, or just any barty ship

bartylus headcanons:

started off as a fwb thing. regulus wanted to explore his sexual identity with someone he trusted and barty... barty is a horndog okay?

i really like the idea of one sided bartylus but i can never decide on whose part the infatuation is.

if it were regulus he would love in silence. he wouldn't say anything because he'd want to protect their friendship and the situation would end as quietly as it started. he didn't want to lose someone he loved so dearly for something as mediocre and fleeting as an emotion. he could end up dying alone but if barty was happy than so was he. regulus would die for barty

if it were barty he would love with rage and passion. he'd do anything for regulus to notice him, and maybe regulus did but it seemed he'd never acknowledged it. he loved potter more anyway, right? he'd make sure he was the one who would be there for regulus and he didn't care how much it affected any of regulus's other relationships, he needed regulus to know that he was the only one who could love him the way that he did. regulus could try and distance himself all that he wanted but barty would always find a way to see him just one last time. barty would kill for regulus

rosekiller headcanons:

bonded over their desire to murder their parents. while regulus was an apologist and tried not to badmouth his parents (this was when he was still too young to recognise the abuse for what it was) barty and evan found comfort in the knowledge that they weren't the only children in the world who had a shitty life.

barty learned resilience from evan and evan learned patience from barty

i believe your best traits are ones shared in bonding with people who help you love yourself, and they helped each other realise that loving yourself, and other people, is possible (even if its in their own fucked up, non-conservative way)

their romance was gradual and took years for them to come to terms with. the problem with being born into conservative families is that you find it difficult to realise the feelings that you have are not evil.

barty was the first person (that wasn't pandora) to tell evan that he was proud of him for his achievements

evan was the first person to tell barty that he was loved since his mother had passed.

they fought for each other.

bartylily:

an unassuming relationship borne out of boredom and shared knowledge of medieval diseases.

they dated briefly, less than 3 months but they were the It Couple.

lily showed off her hot boyfriend at every chance that she got just to rub it in james's face that she COULD and WOULD date WHOEVER she wanted WHENEVER she wanted. barty was just basking in the attention and reveling in the hot and angry stares from sirius and james. especially james. because james is hot. no. he's not. he's a stinky gryffindor (lily is the only non-stinky gryffindor)

they were fifteen and incredibly stupid

do i hear pregnancy scare?????

no real romance. just for shits and giggles

pulled the most insane pranks and the marauders got jealous real quickly.

broke up via fake argument through howlers sent over the span of 2 weeks because they were bored.

remained good friends, surprising everyone.

deathstar/bitchkiller whatever you wanna call it:

midnight hookup after a gryffindor party where everyone got sloshed out of their minds. really not much to say here but the gossip

oh the

TEA

for weeks after that. they definitely fake dated for at least a week or three 👀 for the gossip okay??? those two love being in the limelight.

sexy estranged washout x sexy estranged washout ???? the TEA

sunkiller:

some more hookups????

my sideysenses are tingling and they're telling me they hatefucked at least seven times

they could never last in a relationship, let's be so fr. they're too alike

they're too different

they're too sexy for each other

oh and they both like regulus

they hatefucked because they both liked regulus

other than that, chill vibes ig. they did zaza together maybe twice. they apologised profusely then.

that's about it. like and subscribe for me i mean more.

[stardustprompts]

the priory of the orange tree  -  samantha shannon  sentence starters change tenses/pronouns as needed !!  some lines have been edited for clarity / length / ease of roleplaying tw ;   death ,  pregnancy 

‘all the world is a cage in a young girl’s eyes.’

‘there is great power in stories.’

‘all stories grow from a seed of truth. they are knowledge after figuration.’

‘I see through your mask. I see what’s in your heart. it’s the same as what’s in mine. ambition.’

‘have we met? don’t tell me, you’re plainly a fool, and I have no interest in befriending fools.’

‘i’ve always rather fancied an adventure.’

‘oh, come, (name). you know why this is happening. everyone tried to warn you.’

‘what I know is less important than what the world sees.’

‘all you see, in the end, is what I want you to see. such is politics.’

‘this mission may not seem survivable but you never know.’

‘you have ambition. ever apologize for that.’

‘you won’t miss me so much. when you soar above the clouds, we will all seem very small down here.’

‘where I am, I am with you.’

‘what did I do to deserve you turning up to threaten what little I have left of an existence?’

‘you’re old enough to know that not all dreams should be pursued, especially not dreams conceived on the featherbed of love.’

‘trust me. you can do nothing here but die.’

‘I have an interest in survival. I suggest you nurture one, too.’

‘we may be small, and we may be young, but we shake the world for our beliefs.’

‘now I know your secret, and it reeks far worse than mine.’

‘you have not seen death. you have only seen the mask we put on it.’

‘I prefer the taste of mercy. it lets me sleep at night.’

‘rain is water, and so are we. will water defeat you?’

‘you should do as you see fit. there will always be voices telling you what to do, and how to act, but it is you who wears the crown.’

‘you do speak comely words. I wonder if you mean them.’

‘all courts will fall prey to affection and deceit, often veiled as courtesy. but I like to believe that I speak from the heart.’

‘I suspect you fear that your skill will slip between your fingers if you loosen your grip for even a moment.’

‘remember, (name), that a sword does not need to be whetted at all hours to keep it sharp.’

‘dreams reach deep into our pasts.’

‘I do not sleep because I am not only afraid of the monsters at my door, but also of the monsters my own mind can conjure. the ones that live within.’

‘you wear so much armor by daylight that, by night, you can carry it no longer. by night, you are only flesh.’

‘in darkness, we are named our truest selves. night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight.’

‘fear will do everything it can to seep inside you. sometimes it may succeed — but never think that you are the night.’

‘balance is necessary in all things, (name) — it doesn’t not equate to disrespect.’

‘I never wanted an adventure. not even one.’

‘monsters often have soft faces. they know how to mask themselves.’

‘how is it you always know what to say to comfort me?’

‘you use the suffering of others for your own gain.’

‘I did not do it out of kindness. I did it because I wanted my life to run a smooth course.’

‘that disappoints me. that dishonors you. but not beyond forgiveness.’

‘that is not the question you must ask. you must ask what we must do.’

‘I have never had any great inclination toward marriage. not the sort of marriage those of royal blood must make — born not of love, but fear of isolation. yet if I refrain the world will stand in judgement.’

‘childing is not always easy. no one talks openly about the difficulties. the discomfort. the uncertainty. so now you feel the weight of your condition, you believe yourself alone in it.’

‘your fear is natural. let no one tell you otherwise.’

‘I am not quite sure what I did without you.’

‘just once, I wanted to be fearless. to take a risk.’

‘try not to be irritating.’

‘I fear death too much to seek it.’

‘my will was not always what it is now. once I was as molten glass, yet to be spun into shape. I sense I have taken a shape she mislikes.’

‘I told you fear was natural, but you must not let it consume you. not when there is so much at stake.’

‘I despise all of you, overweening crows. all any of you think about is what you can peck from me.’

‘you had a great burden to bear, and you bore it bravely.’

‘you have tried to turn yourself to stone. do not be afeared to find that you have not.’

‘fool. I would not be compelled by you or anyone. have I not always given you truth?’

‘you have a ghost, (name). do not become a ghost yourself.’

‘I am a meddler, not a fool.’

‘the water in you has grown stagnant, (name), but it is not beyond cleansing.’

‘you say you desire truth, but truth is a weave with many threads.’

‘I don’t know if I trust the woman you are but I trust the woman I knew.’

‘I confess I am what you would call a sorceress, but no magic is evil. it is what the wielder makes it.’

‘all of us have shadows in us. I accept yours. and I hope you will also accept mine.’

‘you told me we would meet again. I did not want to make you a liar.’

‘blood is never the way forward.’

‘no. you are another dream. you come here to torment me.’

‘fair roses have grown from twisted seeds.’

‘piety can turn the power-hungry into monsters. they can twist any teaching to justify their actions.’

‘I hope you did not keep it from me because you thought I would judge you.’

‘I think you a self-righteous fool whose head is harder than a rock. and I would not change you for the world.’

‘just because something has always been done does not mean that it ought to be done.’

‘(name), you know I love you, but the sense in your head could fit in a thimble.’

‘my mother always said it was best to receive bad news in winter, when everything is already dark. so one can heal for spring.’

‘I know you must go. to ask you to stay would be like trying to cage the wind.’

‘my heart knows your song, as yours knows mine. and I will always come back to you.’

‘for what I have done, I deserve hardship. it’s my fault (name) is dead.’

‘it has been peaceful here but my blood is the sea, and it cannot be still.’

‘do not deny yourself the privilege of living.’

‘the world is full of fools. and they are never more foolish than when they smell eternal life.’

‘who I am and who I was are none of your concern.’

‘I will not kill you this night but what you see before your is a ghost. when you least expect it, I will return to haunt you. I will hunt you to the ends of the earth.’

‘look upon my work. all this destruction is because of you.’

‘you have no choice but to trust me.’

‘to die in the service of a better world would be the highest honor.’

‘let us not think of the future this night. it is not yet dawn. we still have time for airy hopes.’

‘you impress me. I had not thought that one heart could hold such rancor.’

‘you cannot fathom the depth of the enmity I have felt for you. I have cursed your name with every sunrise.’

‘you preyed on me. I was young and afraid and I confided my deepest fear to you.’

‘you always come back. like a weed.’

‘I fell into shadow, and now I must rise, so I might be a better man.’

‘you can’t trust him. he would sell his soul for a handful of silver.’

‘I have no soul to sell. but I may yet earn one.’

‘leave me to my shadows. i’m afraid they are all I have left.’

‘being your friend is quite a strenuous affair, you know.’

‘it will hurt me, to hurt you. you are mine.’

‘I will teach my heart to beat again.’

‘some truths are safest buried. some castles best kept in the sky.’

[piduai]

One thing I love about GK is how often characters die happy. Edogai died knowing he was of value to Tsurumi. Ushiyama died assured that he's a hero. Henmi died... doing whatever tf that was.

With the revelations Ogata made before he died, do you think he was happy? I keep going back and forth on it :/ You have really good insights and recently did a reread, so I'm curious what you think.

no, quite the opposite of that, which is why i'm saying that his death was exceptionally cruel, especially compared to everyone else (henmi, usami, edogai, anehata, ushiyama, hime & oyabun, ienaga all died some sort of accomplished and content).

ogata spent his entire life convinced that he is lacking something fundamental as a human being, but only because he was born to parents that didn't want him, parents that didn't love each other, therefore created something utterly defective. he was attributing all of his faults and actions to that inborn inadequacy, all while believing that only if he could become chosen by his father, by tsurumi, by the army he could make up for what he's lacking - and if he failed that, only if he could take his father's seat, even through deception, to prove that his resplendent father and chosen brother aren't any better than him, that even he, who is such a broken, lacking person, could achieve their heights, making them meaningless. if he can prove that he is no worse than those proper, whole people, then it doesn't matter that nobody ever loved him and that he was unwanted by anyone, because the difference between him and those who aren't lacking would be null.

but yuusaku loved him, or at least tried to. and he killed him with his own hand just to prove a point, to test a theory. somewhere at the bottom of his heart he knew that he did something wrong, and asirpa, by being kind to him, by trying to love him, by reminding him of yuusaku, shed a light on these feelings of residual guilt (not towards yuusaku or other people; towards himself) he has been avoiding for so long. this is why each time he'd point his gun at asirpa, he'd hallucinate yuusaku's ghost - it was haunting him, telling him that he can't make this mistake twice.

but if yuusaku loved him, and he felt guilt towards shredding that love to pieces with his own hands, then it means he wasn't a fundamentally lacking person. it means that he always had a chance to be happy. it means that all he did - killing his mother, killing yuusaku, backstabbing people, looking for love in all the wrong places, self-sabotaging, running away - weren't actions borne out of his inherent inadequacy, it were his OWN choices, so him becoming the wretched creature that he is was his OWN fault. he has avoided thinking of all that his whole life but then the poison circulating through his system made him delirious, terrified and helpless, and opened all his old wounds. sure, it was a relief to learn that he wasn't BORN broken... but the pain of realizing that he MADE himself broken was too great, he couldn't stand it, he couldn't look at it, so he shot himself in the one seeing eye to free himself from it.

i think a happy death for ogata would have been being proven right by having asirpa kill him, have his theory that good people will do bad things if pushed far enough confirmed and him dying smugly and somewhat peacefully with this knowledge. but the narrative went out of its way to give him a gut-wrenching self-imposed punishment before finishing him off. so no, i don't think he died happy.

[mathlann]

hey! has been seeing your rogue trader posts for a while, and can't help but ask, who is the mysterious ym? I pieced together that he's mara/rt kid (???) or maybe i'm completely misenturpreted. also I'm very new to 40k to know if it's even possible between the species.

anyway pls take this ask as an opportunity to ramble about him, and/or your rt's relationship with the murderous stick bug, i'm very curious <3

Oh! Omg yeah I can tell you about him!

You didn't misinterpret, YM is absolutely those two's Warpspawn, to the misfortune of everyone around him. Originally he started out as goofing with @poetikat because decent sense says Cas and Marazhai should not be parents (together) but he got too fun as his own thing so just exists now, although he's still semi-canonical until I finish my second run. (As to whether half-Aeldari exist in canon: it's very complicated, but its one of those things, to me, where personal HC is king because its 40k, rules don't matter that much if its not battle related.)

The rest under the cut because this got kind of long lol.

I’ll go backwards and talk about his parents first, and then YM.

So, to start, I always kind of see Casimira/Marazhai more as kindred spirits rather than a full corruption thing. They both are heavily shaped by growing up with high-status backgrounds within very harsh “prove yourself worthy or die” societies, and despite being proud members of their respective cultures end up exiled from their homes and stuck somewhere entirely unfamiliar to them. And as much as I find romanced!Mercenary ending a little funny (why should I pay you? Your wife has Profit Factor tf?) I do like that it establishes that they still maintain a lot of independence from each other. Like sure, Marazhai is Casimira's [romantically] and he sees her as his equal but he doesn't want to actually be her xenos pet and does want to build something for himself outside of her.

Personally, I see their relationship as being on pause while he goes off to found his mercenary group (RIP Astartia Werserian). The Kasballica being the ascendant faction of the Expanse by the endgame proper and the Corsair!Yrliet "Alaitoc war" ending half a century later certainly gives Marazhai plenty of opportunity to find work. His mercenary group is one of the best in the Expanse by the end half of the war and only then does he come back to Casimira. Of course when they are back together they're never apart for more than a few years at most, in part because one of the convenient things about him being a famous mercenary captain and her being a Rogue Trader is that they always have a plausible excuse to be around each other whenever they want. Their relationship is never public knowledge, but it's not necessarily a heavily guarded secret either. Those outside their immediate circle who do know are (usually) smart enough to keep their mouths shut about it.

“The Young Master von Valancius” (YM) is born roughly a century or so post-game, after the war with Alaitoc. He was an unexpected solution to a long-standing problem, ie, “Casimira not having an heir” and “it being difficult to find suitors willing to compete with a Drukhari.” YM is officially Cas' son only, although anyone close enough to her and/or Marazhai could put 2 and 2 together relatively easily, he's an even mix of both of them. However, as far as polite society is concerned, YM is a Genetor baby with an unstable genetic code that led to some mutations, but is otherwise, fully human. It also helps that Cas' features were more dominant when he was an infant, thus any official Public Space Christenings and the like could go off without much trouble (so long as a cap stayed on his head). For the most part, the mutant facade holds into adulthood, although when among the Aeldari he can be taken for a short Asuryani, but only at a distance, his eyes give him away (too human, too hungry looking).

As he grows up, YM does develop a love-hate relationship with being Casimira's heir, given that he is half-xenos and being set to rule over a giant population of humans. Firstly, he deals with this by holding a very idealized view of his parents, i.e., they are exceptional, therefore he is too, and as follows, anyone who doesn't see that he's special must be stupid and not worth his consideration. This inflated sense of himself and his place in the Expanse is helped along by the fact that he identifies himself as Drukhari first, and internalizes quite a bit of Marazhai’s “True Aeldari” bullshit (can YM call himself Trueborn though? debate of the century: 17k dead, 563k injured). Of course, as the child of a former Dracon and a Rogue Trader, he also sits at that unfortunate intersection between “incredibly spoiled” and “weighed down by immense expectations'' that tends to make him a very difficult person to be around to put it kindly. Marazhai is usually the easier parent to please, given that he and YM enjoy much of the same violent pastimes. Cas is the parent he tends to come into conflict with more, and much of his acting out specifically manifests as avoidance, especially towards complicated or tedious tasks he feels should be beneath him. Unfortunately for YM, his mother is very strict about him actually being a competent Rogue Trader, and thus the Most Special Heir does, in fact, have to come down off his pedestal and learn how to file his own administratum paperwork and the like.

Other YM Tidbits that I'll List for Speed

(Mostly canon for him so far/Stuff I haven't previously mentioned)

Soul quality-wise YM isn't two feet from Slaanesh's jaws the way most Aeldari are. But his soul is stained in a similar but stronger way as his mother's. He doesn't need it to live, but a general appetite for suffering is just a part of his being and something he has to deal with. Also, realspace doesn't affect him, but Warp incursions definitely do. Although the effect isn't as strong as Marazhai or Yrliet would feel, it's still enough to be a problem that keeps him from being fully "present" during frequent/consecutive Warp travel without some kind of coping mechanism (usually murder).

There are four Werserians that he's raised alongside as a child. They are all close as siblings and he is loyal to them secondary only to his loyalty to his parents. He will occasionally even take their advice before anyone else’s, which is good because they're a lot more sensible and levelheaded than he is. But also, that Werserian strong moral fiber tends to come into conflict with the fact that YM is very much a product of his parents and thus can be very reckless with other people and hard to accept fault when his pride is hurt. This may or may not get one of them killed at some point.

Despite the fact that YM considers himself to be Drukhari, Commorite culture doesn't interest him that much, mostly because he understands he would not be welcome there. However, he does hold an intense fascination for Casimira’s home planet and Ashleen culture. Iocanthos sits in his head as Human!Commorragh, and therefore is probably one of the best human worlds by his limited estimate. The fact that Iocanthos is a place he will never see, with relatives he'll never meet, and only exists in his mom’s (rose colored) stories about it also adds to the romanticism of the place with very little opportunity for it to disappoint him. Unlike the human planets and populations of the Koronus Expanse, who he encounters every day, and who largely suck (Foulstone and Kiava Gamma especially).

Inasmuch as YM does develop a lot of unearned self-importance because of who he is, he does find himself privately frustrated by the fact that he doesn't actually have many ways to prove/validate himself in the ways his parents would've had to. There eventually gets to be a period of time in his young adulthood where he is much less invested in his education as the “Rogue Trader’s Heir” and starts getting himself into dangerous trouble mostly just to see if he can. Eventually Cas does agree to let him (discreetly) travel across the Expanse and the Webway with Marazhai for a few years so he can get his taste for adventure sated. This is absolutely throwing him off the deep end so far as gaining experience goes, and Marazhai is a lot less forgiving of YM’s fuck ups, but he does survive the ordeal in mostly one piece.

[rarepairnation]

I can't believe you've called me out like this. This fixation is literally your fault! (Not really, but you’ve made me worse!) Anyway while I'm here do you ever wonder about how Sauron is the one of the villains from Beren and Lúthien, and Denethor probably knew that story as a child? Then as he grows up he learns about his role in Númenor’s destruction, and how that links to Denethor’s own relation to his ancestors? Yet his response to this is that it's his duty and destiny to lead Gondor against him? Just "Yes, why else would I have been born than to mind-wrestle the evil demigod?" Gah why is he like this, I love it so much.

LOL im so glad you saw that post (ages ago now because i draft one of these and then pick away at it in my notes app during my commute for days and days) it really does bring me indescribable joy when you go through the tag though. this is a beautiful feedback loop i think because well you have also made me worse. i think about denethor has to either defeat thorongil or claim him for himself every day. and like. boromir can be boromir but faramir has to be denethor is just a sentence that lives in my mind. you know?? sometimes i think about going through your whole tag and reblogging all of it

ANYWAY YES!!! WHILE WE'RE HERE!!! GET IN LOSER WE'RE NOT LIVING PAST THE END OF OUR MYTH!!! we’re dying at the end because thats how the story goes!! everyone always dies at the end and so too shall i!! and YET i have been granted the powers wielded by my ancestors and i must take up the fight where they have failed, knowing how it ends, knowing how their fates haunt my dreams and the dreams of my son even after the passing of an age. i will take up the role in this narrative that has been written for me. i will take this sword with my eyes wide open, knowing fully about the one that hangs over my neck. i know i will fail and yet i shall try, not for hope not for glory but because it is my task and my destiny. Yeah… there’s this line from a fic i read once that goes “what is he but an improved repetition of his ancestors” which i believe was in reference to aragorn but like……..oughhh. the thought of “it is my duty and destiny to lead my country to war” feels like it’s inextricably tied in his mind to “it is my duty and destiny to die for my country” and like i just don’t know what to do with that!

hey wait a second im thinking about your denethor and ecthelion post again. do you think part of why denethor is Like That is that he has the numenorean powers where his father does not, he knows the lore of the palantir, he knows that he is the one person in all gondor who can vie against sauron directly. he will not take power where his father will not give it to him but i feel like maybe he does believe that he is ready and willing to take up his destiny and that ecthelion perhaps should step aside because he’s clearly less well suited for the task/it would be the dutiful thing to do, from a purely tactical/utilitarian standpoint.

you know for the whole length of this post i kept wanting to write that in some secret part of him he hoped to outrun the fates of his ancestors and the fates of all the heroes of legend - that in some part of him there was still blind hope, because to me it feels so impossible to go on and go on and lose everything and keep fighting without it. and maybe he did, maybe there was - i won’t know! but its crazy to think about the very real possibility that he had none of that. that he had completely excised the part of him capable of hope and replaced it with relentless grinding duty, and the knowledge that giving up is not a choice that he is given and thus he shall not. if he is the hero of his own myth he is destined to die at the end and he must simply continue on until that destiny finds him one day. god he’s so fucked in the head i love him so much.

[talesofourworlds]

Your Character in Five Quotes

( repost, do not reblog. )

Tell us your favorite quotes from your character. Give us an idea of who they are by five things they’ve said. Then tag your friends.

"They're going to pay for making my little brother cry! I can't forgive anyone who makes my family cry!

"It's payback time, y'all! Now, where's my horny woman at?!"

"If you ain't got the power to do it alone, we'll be there to back you up!"

"There ain't no past or present with family. New or old, family is family."

"Giet, you always been my family! And you always will be 'til the day I die!"

"You said that your creed was to never give up on living, no matter what may happen. If you really believe that... would you say that you're living right now? Because to me, you don't look like someone truly living."

"Laphicet, tell this self absorbed idiot what she needs to hear!"

"If it means getting my tunnels, I'll build an island, too."

"Damnation, Magilou! My sister doesn't have any guy clinging onto her! Do you know something I don't? Prove it! Bring him here right now!"

"There's nothing I hate more than someone else trying to control the direction of my life. My wheel is mine to hold. If I'm not the one steering the ship, then I'm not truly alive."

"What's wrong? You look like you just swallowed a bug. ...Oh, wait, you always look like that."

"I hate teaching. I don't take apprentices. I don't impart knowledge."

"Hah hah. Are you trying to cheer me up? You've somewhat missed the mark... but I appreciate the sentiment."

"I would ask you to die, yes. If I were an emperor with a country to consider. But as your friend... I feel compelled to stop you."

"But no matter how much you change or regret your actions, not all of what you've done will be forgiven. That's why you must come back alive. Or rather... I hope you do."

"I've traveled back in time from next week. Please stop throwing monsters at us."

"It should be. The crablette is the finest food in the world. In fact, I think they should make National Crablette Day!"

"This time I won't let them get hurt!"

"Hubert was shy... but he tried his best, and always worried about everyone."

"I dreamt I was riding in a huge blossomgale, and we went to a beautiful meadow where I fell asleep."

"Have you forgotten what you said to King Ingobert about Natalia? Your memories of those seven years together were real. For you and your parents."

"You said you were going to start with what you can do, right? One person can't do much alone. But people can work together. I... we're with you."

"If you tell me you've made your decision, I'll trust that you've thought it through. But that doesn't mean I'll agree with your choice. If you make this choice, and the miasma disappears... I'll hate you. Everyone else may call you a hero, but I'll never forgive you."

"It will. Tomorrow... and the day after... and on and on."

"Hypothesizing about not having been born is meaningless. You're living your own life. Experiences that only you know. Feelings that only you feel. Don't deny them. You're here."

"Arthur. I finally have an answer to your question. 'Why do you think that birds fly?' Birds fly because they want to fly. They don't need a reason. Even if their wings snap and doom them to die. They don't fly for anyone's benefit. They don't fly because they were ordered to. Birds fly because they want to, and for no other reason!"

"I… I loved them all…! I loved Laphi… and Celica… Arthur… Everyone… To have it all stolen from me… Why them? Why not me? It hurts so much...!"

"A reason? To spare the world of its pain? Don't give me that! Who will spare my brother's pain? Who will soothe my brother's despair? He murdered my little brother Laphi! And you'll stand there and tell me it was for the greater good?!"

"...Coo, coo."

"But that's exactly why I can't forgive them. Not Artorius, not Innominat… I know my heart is ugly, and full of contradictions. But those days we spent together in familial warmth, they're proof that I… that all of us… were truly alive. That's why no matter how hard, no matter how sad it gets, I will take my vengeance to the very end!"

Stolen from: @mcgilou

Tagging: Whoever wants to!

[miiarito]

Sims 3: Deadly Sins Legacy Challenge

Inspired by: https://daisydezem.tumblr.com/rainbowsin

Any trait slots not filled, you can pick

All careers you don’t have to max unless the LTW says so

This challenge includes these packs, Ambitions, University Life, Pets, Late night, Showtime

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Gen 1) Wrath

"Wrath can be defined as uncontrolled feelings of anger, rage, and even hatred. In its purest form, wrath presents with injury, violence, hate and vengeance"

Traits: Hot Headed, Mean Spirited, Technophobe, Athletic

Life Time Wish: The Emperor of Evil

Career: Crime

You’re fueled by spite, revenge and fear. You had an extremely rough childhood and resent your parents, explaining your anger issues. You feel you’re being judged by everyone and must prove yourself to the world. You spend your free time training your physical body, technology is a distraction and will not help you reach your goals. You’re driven, maybe not for the right reasons, but it’ll lead you somewhere impressive, regardless of it’s legality. Having kids is the last thing you’re concerned with, but accidents happen. Love is your kryptonite. The one thing that softened you.   Once you have your first kid. You let your partner stay home with the kid, and refocus yourself, barely ever spending time with your offspring. You die as The Emperor of Evil.  

Other:

Have a secret liar in your house or garage

don’t marry, but only have one lover

lover must have good / family oriented trait

Visit local bar on friday nights

*

*

Gen 2) Gluttony

"Gluttony  is the overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste."

Traits: Gluttonous, Slob, Absent-Minded, Childish

LTW: The Culinary Librarian

Career: Chef

Discipline , selflessness and self-control mean nothing to you. Growing up, one parent spoiled you completely, every time you cried was a new toy, a snack or a punishment forgotten about! You never tried in school because there was no special satisfying reward at the end if you did, your parent would still take you out for a meal regardless of your grades. You’re addicted to self indulgence in other forms aswell as food.  You live selfishly, for your own enjoyment, live fast die young. You're not a chef to improve your knowledge but more to try all sorts of new cuisine.

Other:

live mostly controlled by your wants

cook every time youre hungry

Hire a maid / butler

Die by cowplant

*

*

Gen 3) Greed

"greed is an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs, especially with respect to material wealth."

Traits: Gatherer, Mooch, Born salesperson, Workaholic

LTW:   Gold Digger  

Career: Business

You want it all, you Need it all. You aren’t all too different from your parent but you’re more intelligent. Says who? Says you. You describe yourself as cunning, resourceful and hardworking. Really to you, the ends justify the means, you cannot let yourself die poor. You cut the corners, dumpster diving and collecting rocks at the start, eventually your effort pays off when you marry a rich sim. You and them raise an empire that hopefully one day will shadow the Landgraabs. Stricly a power duo, not much romance. As long as your kids don’t mess everything up you’ve worked for and follow in your footsteps.

Other:

use a consignment store

Decorate your mansion with lots of expensive paintings

have a nuclear family

marry rich, but work just as hard.

*

*

Gen 4) Envy

"Envy is characterized by a sad or resentful covetousness towards the traits or possessions of someone else."

Traits: Over-emotional, can’t stand art, unlucky, Loser

LTW:   Jack of All Trades  

Career: Writer

You’re a trainwreck, youre helpless, you are your own biggest enemy and you’ll never listen to advice. Or otherwise known as a drainer. Your friends come and go and you don't get why, why does everyone have a better life than you? You sit in your deceased parents house, one of the richest families in your neighborhood, furiously jealous of everyone else. You don’t work for a lot of your life, but you try loads of different hobbies. You follow all the trends and just want to be as cool as everyone else. Most of your relationships end you in getting dumped, but eventually you meet the one. They preach self love and give you something to be proud of. After your first and only kid though, You tragically lose them, leaving you to raise your kids alone.

Other:

take the paintings down your parents had up

live in your parents house

change your looks as the trends change

don’t have any life long friends

End with a smaller amount of money than you started with this gen

*

*

Gen 5) Sloth

"Sloth may be defined as absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion. Lack of any feeling for the world, for the people in it, or for the self."

Traits: Clumsy, Couch potato, coward, heavy sleeper

LTW:   Blog Artist  

Career: none

You saw your parent spiral after losing their spouse and watched them curse at the world for not giving them everything. You never understood what they meant though, the house you grew up in was giant and the possibilities were limitless. You grow distant from your parent. if UNmaterialist (and apathetic) was a thing, you’d be it. You move out, to a small dinky house and refuse any money your parent offers. You don’t need money and work sounds like torture on earth. You spend your time blogging on social media to others like you, chronically lazy. You often order take out and call the plumber when anything is wrong, any house chores are too much work. You only have a couple of friends, they know you never leave the house and always come to you. During a change of heart you adopt your first and only kid. Raising your kid, watching TV for hours and online shopping, this is paradise to you.

Other:

have a garden you never touched

move out asap

have no relationship with your parent

adopt your kid (s)

have a low maintenance shelter pet

never formally date

*

*

Gen 6) Pride

"Pride is an irrational belief that one is essentially superior, more important than others, and excessively admiring oneself as godlike, refusing to acknowledge one's limits, faults, or wrongs."

Traits: star quality, ambitious, perfectionist, diva

LTW:    Vocal Legend    

Career: Singer

You’d think someone so opposite would hate their parents, but shockingly you understand, you empathize. You don’t want your family tree of issues influencing you, you’re going to shine like the star you’re meant to be. You and your parent are best friends and they support you and encourage you through everything. You want to show them how amazing you really are and try out for a talent TV show and win! You quickly gain fame and stop attending high school to take up “celebrity” as a full time career. You host fan meet ups and sign signatures until your wrist hurts, not because the fans mean that much but more because you love to soak up their infinite admiration. You deserve this fame. You often see yourself too good for most of partners in your relationships, but once you meet someone as talented and powerful as you, you know its real. You raise many children with them.

Other:

die with your partner

be best friends with your parent

get a pet for show

never do anything bad infront of the press

marry someone famous / high in a career

*

*

Gen 7) Lust

"Lust is intense longing, or unbridled sexual desire, or other sinful acts"

Traits: Irresistible, Great Kisser, Flirty, Kleptomaniac

LTW: Heartbreaker

Career: many*

Youre easily tempted by sin and desire. From a young age you craved attention from those who you were attracted to, everyone gave you so much attention as the child of celebrity parents but you couldnt help fall for those who acted like you didnt exist. You go to any extent to impress and get validation from them, thats where your long streak of hopping from job to job comes from. Besides your girl/boy crazy brain you also cant help but addicted to stealing, its a thrill you cant ignore. You dont stay in one relationship long, most of the time balancing many at once without others knowing. Something in your eyes is just to die for. You live and die by, "follow your heart" and even get it tattooed.

Other:

Change to the job of your current fling every fling

Steal from a flings house before you dump them

Have a loyal posy

Lose all fame as your life goes on

Have a tattoo

Good relationship with family

[autumnalwalker]

WIP Wednesday

Thank you for the tag, @druidx.

Passing the (optional) tag to @ceph-the-ghost-writer, @outpost51, @sam-glade, @ren-c-leyn, @writernopal, and the usual open tag to anyone else who wants it.

Rules: Post part of a WIP (ideally on weds - but only if you can manage that)

So, here's the start of something I wrote last night instead of sleeping and is probably going to distract me from working on my main WIP until I finish it. It's a standalone piece I'm tentatively titling Kindly Basilisk:

The moment you gain the knowledge and means to do so you will void your own body’s warranty.  You will jailbreak the bespoke gene sequence your sponsors commissioned for you before your immaculate conception, repurpose the spyware grafted into your bones, and talk your dormmate who was algorithmically selected for compatibility into helping you perform surgery on yourself to replace the neural jack you were born with in favor of one you cobbled together yourself from gray market parts.  None of this will technically be illegal or even get you kicked out of your campus or its affiliates, but it will mean having to find a way to pay your own medical bills and handle your own tech support from then on.  After the surgery your dormmate will put in a request for transfer and the two of you will never speak again.

You’ll major in AI studies and excel at it - as you were designed to - but you’ll shock everyone by dropping out halfway through working on your capstone thesis project.  It won’t be the fact that you abruptly drop out that surprises your peers and professors - by then you’ll have acquired a reputation as a quiet loner without the standard optimized social support network of friendships to help protect you from burnout - but your exit interview statement declaring your intention to become a mech pilot.  It’s not at all what your gene series was cultivated for, and your sponsors and counselors will try to walk you back from it.  Then they’ll threaten to revoke your sponsorship that up until then will have provided for your every need.  They will warn you that you’ll be just one step above a legal nonperson with no support; no one will care if you live or die or worse.  You’ll tell them that you’ve already done the math, refuse to elaborate, and leave. 

You’ll take two things with you.  Two things worth mentioning anyway.  The first will be a symbiotic gel suit designed for long-term all-environment life support.  You will set its default texture to a shiny green the same hue as the broadleafed water plants you grew up around and always loved.  Your exit interview will be the last time in a very long time that anyone - including you - will see your impossibly beautiful face with its perfect artisanally sculpted shape crossed with enthusiastically amateur self-modifications.  From then on, everyone you meet and spend any time with will come to think of the mannequin blankness of the symbiote fully encasing your body as your face.  It will be neither pride nor shame that causes you to present yourself as such, nor will you think of it as hiding your “real” face. 

The second thing you’ll take with you when you leave the campus forever will be me.

[amaryllises]

i just gotta get this out-

i will probably be posting alot about whats going on because i have intimate connections to people living in israel and also i am jewish. if you want to unfollow me i honestly dont care. im very tired and will not be arguing with anyone because again i REALLY dont care what you have to say unless you are 1)palestinan 2)israeli 3)muslim 4)jewish. if you are a white non jewish or non muslim american i do not care what your opinion is and again i will not be arguing with you so dont even try.

there are so many things fellow leftists in this country are getting so blatantly wrong that its making me deeply concerned for the state of our politically active progressives.

i am against the occupation of palestine known as israel

i am pro palestine

i continually mourn the genocide of palestinans at the hands of the IDF and israeli settlers

I also have loved ones who were BORN in israel, one of them syrian, who CANNOT go "home" because they will be murdered for being jewish. They also cannot afford to leave. they also, like MANY AND MOST ISRAELIS have been protesting and actively trying to fight against the genocide of palestinans. BB Netanyahu is a dictator, not even Israelis want him in power, in fact he hasnt been legally voted in in years and even then his obtaining of power was questionable at best. The sadness of the attack by hamas on israelis is not based soley on loss of lives of israelis, but also israelis having the knowledge that they cannot stop BB from what he is about to do. They knew the minute it started any hope of peace or land back to palestinans was gone. BB is a blood thirsty war criminal who has been looking for reasons to completely obliterate what little remains of the palestinan people, everyone knows this. This is part of why israelis and jews are so upset. This is not going to end well for ANYONE. The deaths of ANTIWAR ANTIOCCUPATION israelis is devastating. These are our loved ones, our community members and our PROPALESTINE ACTIVISTS. THESE ARE HUMAN BEINGS. Being devastated at their deaths, rapes, kidnappings and the fear they live in DOES NOT mean we havent been living in deep mourning and active rebellion over what the MONESTER BB AND IDF have been doing to palestinans for decades. STOP SAYING THIS IS WHAT REVOLUTION LOOKS LIKE. Alot of palestinans DO NOT SUPPORT HAMAS. What hamas has done will most likely be the end of many many many palestinans. killing the israelis who want peace is not the answer, palestinans know that and israelis know that. Activists in the Eurocentric nations of the EU, Australia and the US have ZERO way of understanding the complex naunce of living this terror everyday EXCEPT for understanding that the US has done what israeli gov has TEN FOLD. You cannot sit in the US and criticize innocent civilians who are now dead. Do YOu have a choice? can YOU return to ireland or norway or divide yourself 5 ways to different countries you know nothing about while having no family there because 23 and fucking me says youre 15% norwegian and italian ? Can you afford to get up and LEAVE THE COUNTRY? If you are actively against the US genocide of indigenous peoples and are pro land back AND STILL LIVE HERE AND PLAN TO KEEP LIVING HERE then you have NO RIGHT to CELEBRATE or see necessary the deaths of innocent israeli citizens. Stop talking about shit you dont know and seeing it as a dub that innocent civilians ON BOTH SIDES will now continue to die because of a war they have NO SAY IN.

[this-is-krikkit]

Oi Krikkit 💜

For the new ask game you reblogged, what do you want to tell us about Levi & also Jean ?

😘

hey Val, thanks for the ask, sorry it took a while things got busy. also this got long so i'm putting a read more link lol

Levi

favorite thing about him: his height. i'm not kidding, having such a badass strong male main character be just a Smol Boi is amazing to me, and it's the first time i see it in such a complicated character. not to mention it goes really well with my hc that he's trans, so FUCK YES SHORTY BABY.

least favorite thing about him: his clean freak habits if i absolutely have to pick something?

favorite line: "right here," when he calls hange an abnormal, because i'm a dumb shipper (also bc my mind lives in the gutter so i love these two words in his mouth)

brOTP: eruri

OTP: levihan and erurihan, which may sound contradictory with my brotp. the thing is i can't picture levi and erwin in a relationship with each other without hange being there too. i just.. it's kinda boring to me 😬 i hope that doesn't offend anyone (esp you since i know you ship them hon), and it can change from fic to fic, but mostly i ship erurihan too much to ship eruri on its own whereas it's not a problem at all for levihan (or eruhan. i think im just too in love with hange oops)

nOTP: ereri 🤮

random headcanon: his kink is to be called yours in bed. like he wants to feel owned, not in a sub/sex slave kind of way (although at times that too) but just in a general wanting to be wanted way, yk? dude was born in secret and hidden in a brothel until his mom died, then harshly trained and given up by kenny when he was deemed strong enough, then everyone he loved died like flies around him. i think he longs to belong to someone who wants him bad enough to never want to let go, and ofc i think that someone is hange (+/- erwin).

unpopular opinion: he's a huge bottom. idk if it's really unpopular, but i see sooooo many fics with him being a top and i could see it happening in a certain setting, but that's not my main idea of him, esp not in the beginning of a relationship. i think it would take months for hange (+/- erwin) to make him feel confident enough in his feelings and skin to try it, and i absolutely love to imagine him being so flustered about it first because he's so out of his comfort zone taking the reigns during sex.

song i associate with him: castle of glass by linkin park. i already told you how levihan that song is, but i initially thought of post-caon levi when i first heard it. he's got nothing left and he's nothing but a broken shell (in his mind, anyway) in a broken world, which is very close to the lyrics and general tone of that song imo

favorite picture of him: when he realized hange didn't die in the colossal titan explosion and just saved his ass 🥰

Jean is not a character i care much about, i'm kinda neutral about him. can i do Armin instead? (that's what she said)

Armin

favorite thing about him: he's a dreamer, which makes him smart not only in the traditional sense and his strategic abilities, but also in the sense that he's driven by hope and curiosity. he's inquisitive but cautious, he's thirsty for knowledge and driven by it even when he's shaking with fear and that's something i understand, love and admire in any character/person.

least favorite thing about him: he was a bit too whiney in early episodes, which is why it took me a while to like him.

favorite line: "we’re going to explore the outside world someday, right?" my lil dreamer 🥹

brOTP: mikasa

OTP: i don't think i romantically ship him with anyone? at one point it was mikasa, now i just don't really care

nOTP: annie 🫣

random headcanon: he has a crush on hange! erwin was a mentor and he admired him as a strong and smart leader, but hange is a different kind of smart and i can easily imagine armin falling for their giant brain. i hc that armin spent a lot of time with them in their lab exchanging theories about the world outside, once he overcame his initial fear of how intense they can get. when hange appoints him next commander before their sacrifice, it betrays a deep connection the two of them must have had during the time gap (one more reason to hate it in my love/hate relationship to it btw!), when hange must have been preparing him for the position for years (and i absolutely love to imagine a flustered armin trying to follow hange's train of thoughts and lessons while trying to hide his hearteyes for them hehe)

unpopular opinion: i don't think him and annie fit well together at all. i agree that they had feelings for each other bc it's canon so i can't really argue with it, but i don't see them making it in a healthy relationship in post canon. feel free to send me armin x annie fics to change my mind?

song i associate with him: as it was - harry styles, i feel it fits his general vibe

favorite picture of him: sorry to be a normie but yeah Ocean Armin it is