#mass cloning event

[bustybounty]

"You have been chosen to become the alien's immortal surrogate," said the president of planet earth. "to prevent destuction of our great planet, we had to offer our most compatible candidate to carry their new generations. Don't worry, with their technology, they are able to safely clone their inseminated eggs directly into your womb after we gave them your DNA sequence. Of course you will be fairly compensated and taken care of for the rest of your... W-what do you mean you're part of a secret clone army?! "

The 'betrayal' had happened, the aliens did not just use this DNA information of her to inseminate their eggs into a massive new broodmother that'd serve as a fertility goddess that'd promote good relations between the humans and the aliens, and diminish any level of confrontation - an offering, a blessing of peace.

Though unfortunately, she was already working for those aliens, and she didn't seem to care about the rest of humanity at all, as she, and all clones of her, could effectively carry colossal broods of alien eggs at one given moment - plus, her immortality also carried over to the clones, thanks to the advanced alien technology mixed with the human genetic information.

The hundreds of clones in the space station had already been impregnated several times over, and in a few days would already be sporting very large pregnant guts, and likely massive milky tits and curvy, child bearing hips that'd match their immense, immortal motherhood.

As much as this felt like a betrayal, in a way, it actually wasn't, not in her eyes. She was given as the most compatible member of humanity, essentially the epitome of female fitness...and so, wouldn't it be perfect if all humans were like her? If she cloned herself over and over again, immortal, perfect to breed goddesses would change the meaning of human forever, across all the cosmos. The power of the human DNA could never have reached such heights without this plan.

Still, there'd be a minority of humans that weren't actually clones of her, as she didn't plan on hurting them or overtaking them, and neither did the aliens. Full on peace, and even some rewards were given to the humans in compensation for the cloned goddess. The deal of getting her as a broodmother was great already, given her hyper fertility for carrying alien eggs, but if there were even more of her, that capacity, the sheer numbers they could reproduce would be tremendously higher, and growing by the days, as more clones of her were made!

Overpopulation be damned, I'm sure they all planned this through, she...WE are immortal after all~ <3

[requinoesis]

do the sharks in your universe go through parthenogenesis? if they do, do they have control over the pregnancy or does it happen at random?

That's a very interesting question! I thought about it and yes, parthenogenesis happens to the sharks in my universe. One of the characters, the zebra shark called Aria, is the fruit of parthenogenesis.

As for the cause, even for our science today, it is still unknown how this works or whether the female shark has control over it in any way. It is not known whether the females trigger the phenomenon or whether it happens spontaneously. I haven't found much information either; it's something very new to us. Recently, a stingray in captivity became pregnant by parthenogenesis, for example. Stingrays belong to the same family as sharks.

As there are few answers at the moment, I decided to take inspiration from a fantasy idea about this. What I'm going to tell you now is a fictional vision of the origin of parthenogenesis:

My shark people theorize that parthenogenesis is a kind of "Shadow of Decline", an ancestral ability inherited by female sharks that withstood mass extinction events in the primordial ages of the planet.

They theorize that there were probably times when the male shark population declined, so the females who were able to adapt to create "backups" of their genes through cloned daughters prevailed, while those who lacked this adaptation became extinct.

In short, they theorize that females, in situations of stress and prolonged absence of male sharks, trigger a clone as a type of genetic reserve. As she gets older, she transfers the responsibility to her cloned daughter, who may have a better chance of finding a partner to pass on her genes and ensure the survival of the species.

In the context of civilization, the conditions for parthenogenesis to take place are still unknown. But my sharks link the phenomenon to a stress response and prolonged life without producing offspring.

Maybe it's not a good comparison, but it would be a kind of menstrual cycle that instead of happening monthly, happens randomly between 10~20 years after sexual maturity. (I used as inspiration a female blacktip reef shark that developed a fetus in her uterus after 10 years of living in an aquarium without the presence of males).

Modern shark society offers full support to females who don't want to go ahead with parthenogenesis and are given full assistance to carry out abortions. But there are also many females who choose to accept the phenomenon, go ahead with the pregnancy and become the mothers of these children, while some females give birth but hand the newborn over to "kindergartens", which act like orphanages/schools/universities that provide full support for the child to grow up and become independent or be adopted.

A reminder that children born from parthenogenesis will always be girls and with identical genes to their mother. Because of this, some females are afraid to go ahead with parthenogenesis, as they fear that their daughters will suffer from the same physical or mental health problems as their mothers.

In the case of zebra shark Aria, her mother has a neurodivergence and she feared that her daughter would suffer as much as she did, but she decided to go ahead with her daughter's parthenogenesis. Despite having the same neurodivergence, she views it with a completely different approach to her mother, which gives her hope and support.

That's it! I'm sorry if I've written too much or if my English is strange, I got carried away, maybe I'm missing more details, but that's what I've thought so far. Any other ideas to enrich this would be welcome!

It's a very interesting creative exercise to imagine how parthenogenesis would be viewed in a civilized society like ours.

[whereserpentswalk]

There have been countless debates on if cloned soldiers count as human or not. Biologically they're completely human, occasionally they modify them to have red eyes, or sharp teeth, or other intimidating features, but they're still basically human. However, there's been almost no evidence that they can be rehabilitated to become anything other then living weapons.

It's kind of horrifying to countries that don't use cloned soldiers to see them. The idea that something human shaped could be basically a living weapon for its entire life. They had no families, no parents, they were never even children. Countries who had moral objections to cloned soldiers tried to rehabilitate captured ones, but it rarely worked well. Some were put in asylums, but no amount of medication or what basically amounted to human dog training made them think of themselves as humans and not weapons, even after the most intense schedules of social scientists experimenting on them. Others were put in prison, but it didn't reform them either, they just rioted, or escaped, or became high ranking members in prison gangs.

After all attempts at rehabilitation failed, almost every country that opposed making cloned soldiers, either kills them when captured, or forces them to join their army. Some would call it hypocritical to force closed soldiers to join you after denouncing them as a violation of human rights, but they sold it as making them repay their debt to society.

There is one case of cloned soldier being reformed though. One who had crash landed on a primitive planet, a human colony who had lost space travel due to an apocalyptic event centuries ago. The cloned soldier was surrounded by people who didn't know what she was. She ended up wandering into a large city, and being taken in by the temple of one of the local gods.

The high priest of the temple had never seen a cloned soldier before, so he didn't know to be afraid of her or to treat her poorly. He just thought she was a traveler who had fallen on hard times. So the temple took her in, and gave her things that she had never had before in her life, they gave her her own room with a comfortable bed, unlike the masses of bunk beds she would have slept in all her life. For the first time she tasted warm meals, with meat and cheese and milk and real coffee unlike the bland rations she would have had her whole life. And for the first time she was allowed privacy, allowed to dress and bathe on her own, and for the first time she was allowed to wear clothing she picked out. And for the first time nobody told her what to do, she was free to spend her days as she pleased. So many things she never experienced as a cloned soldier, and likewise things she never would have experienced in an asylum or a prison.

Nobody in the temple knew how terrifying cloned soldiers were, so they treated her differently then a more technologically advanced civilization would have. She wasn't a prisoner, there were no restrictions on her. Instead of telling her she was a monster and needed to be redeemed, they assumed her belief that she was a living weapon was from some sort of trauma so they treated it like a trauma, they told her that the gods made everyone to be free to enjoy the pleasures of the world, that nobody was created to be a tool for another human to use. And when she had violent urges they let her go out hunting, or fight people in an arena, it's not something a professional would let her do, but it helped calm her down.

They were concerned for her more then anything else. At first because of the freedom she was given she just lay down in her bed, and they were worried she would die. They sung her songs and read to her while she was like that. She seemed to just need a lot of rest after the life she had. Eventually she started interacting with people in the temple more, she took up drawing and gardening when given time. Not knowing how dangerous she was, they let her interact with the general population in the temple and the people in the surrounding city, with enough time she started making freinds. After five years on a primitive planet she was able to live on her own, working as a professional artist, eventually having married one of the temple priestesses.

Social scientists are still trying to understand why the cloned soldier taken in by the temple was able to be reformed when no other cloned soldiers have been. It's impossible for a prison or asylum to create conditions similar to that temple, so the case of the temple will forever be written off as an unexplainable fluke. Perhaps given enough time, they'll be able to deny it entirely.

[txttletale]

You've spoken at length about how the Lancer setting is just wildly incongruent with what the authors think it is at length, and I agree wholeheartedly. My question is, largely for the purpose of if I ever want to run a game of it again, how would you make the setting carry that tone the authors think it has without too terribly much rewriting? Say, from the point of 'there was a revolution to overthrow seccom'? I love the 'gallant warriors of liberation in giant robots' and would like it if the game actually was that.

But the more the bureaucratic apparatus is “redistributed” among the various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties , the more keenly aware the oppressed classes, and the proletariat at their head, become of their irreconcilable hostility to the whole of bourgeois society. Hence the need for all bourgeois parties, even for the most democratic and "revolutionary-democratic" among them, to intensify repressive measures against the revolutionary proletariat, to strengthen the apparatus of coercion, i.e., the state machine. This course of events compels the revolution "to concentrate all its forces of destruction" against the state power, and to set itself the aim, not of improving the state machine, but of smashing and destroying it.

-- Vladimir Lenin, The State & Revolution

In the heady days after the revolution, the air buzzed with potential. The future was today. Hazy, gaseous dreams of liberation patiently awaited their turn to be forged into something you could touch. But those days didn't last for long. The coalition was already a fragile thing during the revolution, and now that it was faced with the levers of Union's imperial machine each hairline crack became a chasm. The corporate armies, who had marched under the banner of the enormous profits locked away behind Harrison Armory's legal monopolies, had reached their personal horizons and refused to move an inch further. The moderates and high-class intellectuals saw the wealth that Union funneled from its edges being distributed generously to the citizens of the Core Worlds and declared a new economic paradigm of post-scarcity and mutual wealth. The anarchist cells with their mysterious reality-hacking mechs were the first to come to the only inevitable conclusion: the revolution was not over.

Now that the old order had been surgically deposed, the new order was finding itself fitting comfortably in its throne. Humbled and stripped of its previous privileges, Harrison Armory was welcomed back into the halls of power under the smiling auspices of free enterprise. Groundbreaking legislation was still being written in the halls of ThirdComm--guaranteeing the right of worlds to self-determination, the rights of clones to live freely, even radical and heretofore-unthinkable proposals laying the groundwork for an end to NHP-shackling. But the old revolutionaries had grown weary and cautious (and, of course, had begun to personally experience the economic benefits of Union's vast hegemony). To enforce this legislation, they argued, would be a de facto redeclaration of war against the corpostates, a disaster for the trade networks on which our wealth depends. To those who still harboued the hopes of revolutionary change, this was a loud and clear signal: the war had not ended. The revolution was not over.

The All-Galaxy Revolutionary Front as it exists now is a set of strange bedfellows. The disciplined combat battalions of the Communist Party fly in perfect harmony, distinguishable by their red battle flags, mass-produced in collectivized forges with reverse-engineered corpo tech. The motley individual oddities that the anarchists call their mechs, their open-source physics-bending HORUS peculiarities, strike unpredictably, in and out of ThirdComm's sight. But the one thing which binds them all, as they fight for the liberation of the peripheral worlds, for the wealth of mines and factories to enrich the people of the planets they're built on instead of fueling ever-replenishing consumption in the distant Core, is that they still have those old revolutionary dreams.

This is what it means to be a Lancer: to be willing to struggle. To acknowledge that the revolution is not over.

[sophianightdreamer]

Things that happened in the Official Transformers RPG's lore.

So, I've got my hands on all three rulebooks of the official TF RPG. And also the G. I. Joe RPG, but that's irrelevant right now. My batch did not include the crossover rulebook, sadly.

Therefore, notes on the lore and other details in the "basic" canon, because TFWiki did not go into the details, that grew into this list of odd events mentioned.

First thing first, the general continuity is very close to Cyberverse or G1 Fanon, having the basic outline of G1 cartoon, but with details and chunks of backstory pulled from elsewhere - Optimus is a former archivist/data clerk, Bumblebee is a sportscar, et cetera.

To note, there's a somewhat short introductory "who-is-who" list and basic character sheets with profiles both.

Well, I've already got my whiplash, so it's your turn now.

There's something very funky going on with Devastator. Prowl's introduction blurb directly states that something Combiner Wars-esque/Prowlstator has happened, and reads as implying that Autobots hijacked Devastator. By all accounts, Scrapper is alive, making it a possible genuine canonical instance of Prowlastator with Scrapper alive, but the Constructions as whole are placed with the Decepticons. But, Tergamax mentions that among people that were at any moment replacement parts of Devastator there were five Autobots, Prowl included. What happened?

The "who is who" listing for Autobots includes declarations of jobs/roles/traits. Some of these are notable: 1) Ironhide is a chemist 2) Swerve is in Public Relations 3) Rung is Psy-Ops 4) Perceptor is specifically an engineer 5) Bumblebee is noted as "Hero of the People". Must be popular.

Speaking of roles, monochromatic SIC of the day is Jazz, who is also a strategist now.

All of the people in the introductory list are implied to be the Ark crew, and there are problems regarding space travel for Autobots right now. This means that Anode, Lug, those two kids from IDW2, Elita's team and Glyph are on the crew.

Rattrap is a Decepticon.

Optimus Prime has a thick Iaconian accent in Cybertronian. It turns "Teletraan" into "Teletron".

Character sheets include a list of languages that character speaks. Some of these past the standart English+Cybertronian are completely random. Optimus Prime speaks Dutch. Korean is surprisingly popular. In what could be a nice callback, Slingshot has Arabic. The only two people who know the language of newly-introduced alien species of Catharsians are Ratchet and Wildrider. But the crown is taken by First Aid, who has both ASL and Quileute. Yes, the basically extint language of a small tribe warring legally with Stephanie Meyer.

Speaking of languages, both Megatron and Shockwave are noted passable polyglots, and both lack the Universal Translator perk Soundwave, Blaster and Perceptor have. But while Megatron has vague but limited "languages from across Decepticon territory", Shockwave has "all common languages", implying he knows at least a bit of almost everything manually.

Tracks is a triple changer, apparently.

Decepticons' thing is mass-producing sparkless drone clones of their own members.

There's a general threat level system with lists included, where 0 is a random human civilian, 24 is Optimus and Megatron, and 25 is Omega Supreme and Scorponok. Chosen numbers for some characters are thought-provoking. Jazz is 14. Ratchet is 15. First Aid is 9. Wildrider is 6. Ironhide and Starscream are tied with 17. Lord Zarak by himself is 10.

Transformers The Movie sort-of happened, with no apparent notable casualties except for Megatron, who got Galvatroned, but there is a chance that Cyclonus, while a minion of Unicron, predates those events. He is also in an odd position of formally being a part of Decepticons and not the followers of Unicron, who are technically a separate faction.

Scorponok and Deathsaurus are member of Decepticon High Command/Conclave along with Shockwave and Soundwave. Nobody trusts Starscream, so he is not there, but he has the air force.

Mindwipe is, once again, a sorcerer.

Predacons, the combiner team, somehow adopted a sharkticon.

The evil plan du jour of, apparently, pre-Unicron era is converting Earth into the second Cybertron via several colony sites.

[fionajames]

Christmas with the Clone Wars

A/N: HEYY GUYSSS! This is basically some headcanons about Christmas for the Clones in my fix-it au on and about Nay Mets!!!! So sorry for being so horrible and slow about updating :/ Enjoy, and send some requests please! And ofc, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!! (from Australia!!!)

Ahsoka

Ahsoka is Christmas crazy.

Basically reverts back to how she was at fourteen years old.

Obsessed with everything, proper Christmas fanatic.

Spends hours and hours in Kmart or Target or whatever looking through stuff for Christmas presents. Buys most people soft toys and ends up stealing the one she buys Anakin a lot.

Badly singing Christmas songs.

Woke Anakin up on December 1st (I know that's not true really, because the dates are different, but imagine it that way anywhere) by blasting ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ at 6am.

Literally a ball of absolutely chaotic excitement on Christmas days. 

Anakin

Threw the cup of water usually by his bedside table on Ahsoka when she woke him up with Mariah Carey.

Badly sings Christmas songs with Ahsoka, and gets all up in Obi-Wan’s face when he does.

Super excited for Christmas, but forgets to do anything for it and ends up at the local retail store at 8pm buying random shit.

Wraps everything at 11pm on Christmas Eve.

Cheap supermarket christmas cards with weird cartoons on them for EVERYONE. Inside is messily scribbled ‘To {INSERT NAME},’ the printed, ‘Merry Christmas and Season's Greetings!’ message and then, even messier ‘From Anakin.’

Very happy though, just joyful because there were holidays like this on Tatooine, but he never really got to appreciate them because of being enslaved.

Obi-Wan

Needs a coffee. So bad.

He is so organised though. Had everyone's gifts and wrapped like a week before Christmas, and all of them are actually good, thoughtful and all.

Did most of the decorating, and all the event organising.

He’s not upset though, he’s pleased.

Goes to church for Midnight Mass alone and thinks Qui-Gon would have loved it, and Christmas overall.

Tries to make everything as amazing as possible for the others, especially Ahsoka and Anakin.

Rex

Does a lot of the Christmas cooking and baking. Absolutely menace in the kitchen, creates masterpieces but is also hitting people with wooden spoons and spatulas to get out of his way.

Insists on helping Obi-Wan, does all the lighting, and does it so wonderfully it’s shocking.

Decently prepared, buys good gifts, and wraps them on the 23rd.

Writes every short and sweet cards.

Cries. You know he does. Too bloody happy.

Takes great joy in seeing how happy Ahsoka is.

Cody

Another normal gift giver, thankfully.

Loves the actually good-quality Christmas films.

Helps a lot with all the organising. Very calming for when Obi-Wan gets too stressed.

Makes huge batches of hot chocolate that taste so bloody good, and everyone loves it.

Enjoys Christmas, loves the way everyone comes together for it.

Keeps the fire stocked and amazing, just contently enjoying everything.

A/N: TYSM, I HOPE YOU ENJOYED, I LOVE YOU ALL!!! AND MERRY CHRISTMASSSSSSSSSSSS

(taglist: @techs-goggles9902, @skellymom)

[msunitedstatesjames]

A few years ago, I played through the Dragon Age games. Now I'm playing through Mass Effect, and I find it kind of hilarious that in both DA2 and ME2 Bioware was like, "Okay, these games are pretty combat heavy, so we've got to figure out who the protagonists are going to be fighting the whole game." And in both games, they were like, "How about various gangs, each with a gimmick, whose members will ceaselessly throw themselves into the deadly path of the protagonist?"

I've written about this before for DA2, but it's just as funny in ME2.

You've gotta imagine the conversations happening in the mercenary gang headquarters throughout the events of this game. The leaders have gotta be like, "Okay, why are our members dropping like flies all of the sudden?" And then they get a little intel and they're like, "Oh."

So they gather their crews around and they're like, "So guys, we just want to let you know to keep an eye out on any jobs coming up because we've been taking some hits."

And the crew members are like, "Okay, who are we looking out for?"

And the leaders go, "Well, first of all, Commander Shepard. You know that human who saved the Citadel from the Geth and that rogue Spectre a couple of years ago?"

And one of the dudes is like, "I heard it was actually a Reaper she defeated."

And the rest of the crew laugh at that crazy conspiracy theory and are like, "One human? Big deal."

And the leaders are like, "Well...not exactly. She tends to run with a crew."

And then the leaders have to tell them about Shepard's crew, consisting of:

Some human lady who always wears a hood (Kasumi is actually good at her job, so I assume they wouldn't have reliable intel on her)

A Quarian tech expert

A former Alliance marine who survived Eden Prime and the attack of the Citadel

A lady who's pretty much a clone designed to be physically and mentally perfect

A Salarian who helped redesign the genophage and was also a member of the Special Forces

The galaxy's top bounty hunter and also co-founder of the Blue Suns

Some Drell dude who may or may not be the most successful assassin in the galaxy

A biotic prodigy who has broken out of more than one high security containment facility

Weirdly, another clone designed to be physically and mentally perfect, but this time they're a Krogan

An Asari Justicar (or her even more murderous progeny)

A Geth who can talk, apparently

And a Turian who looks like, sounds like, and shoots exactly like that guy Archangel, who took out large swaths of merc crews almost singlehandedly before mysteriously disappearing (or dying?) on Omega

And at first the crew isn't that impressed. They're like, "Sounds like a bunch of weaklings to me." And then somewhere around Zaeed they start to be like, "Okay, we'll keep a lookout." And then somewhere around like Samara they start to be like, "Well, shit." And then they get to Garrus and they're like, "Please don't let it be that asshole again."

And the merc Commanders are like, "Good luck to you guys. Make sure to wear a helmet or you might be getting your head crushed through some mixture of pure biotic force, a Krogan bodyslam, and/or a headshot from the guy who's definitely not Archangel!"

And then after the guys leave the Commander thinks to himself, "I'm glad I made it up through the ranks before all this bullshit."

[bustybounty]

Two extremely competitive (and extremely horny) girls race to see which of them can fill reality faster: One by pure reproductive ability, the other by cloning herself exponentially.

(up to you who wins...or, if anyone truly loses~)

Well, technically they're both filling reality at the same time, together, so it doesn't count as a pure win...so in their fighting for space, as they get cramped, there's a fusion... and boom. Now you have a hyper pregnant, constantly breeding, infinitely sized girl cloning herself faster than the speed of light.

Now what? Is there even an existence to speak of? Is there even a winner? You tell me!

[havocdream]

Unheard and Unseen

AO3 link -> Unheard and Unseen AO3

Summary: In the heart of the Republic Senate on Coruscant, a young senator shakes the stability of the government by presenting a bill that threatens the plans of hundreds of powerful individuals in the galaxy. Given the risk on her life while the bill remains in dispute, the bad batch is assigned as the new team in charge of the senator's security. And despite the political differences between the squad sergeant and the senator, which fill their working relationship with tension and complications, soon they will realize that in a galaxy full of injustices and horrors, the existence of the other can offer a little light to the most powerless. And, perhaps, even for each other.

Pairing: Hunter x Original Female Character

Warnings/tags: Graphic violence | Mentions of genocide or mass murders | Government corruption and manipulation | Attempted murder | Graphic language | Anxiety and panick attacks | Gun violence | PTSD | Mentions of refugees of war | Terrorism | War and Violence | War crimes | Sexual harassment | Sleep disorders | Intrusive thoughts | Descriptions of death (including children and animals) | Blackmail | Explosions | Gang violence | Kidnapping | Military service and deployment | Riots | Enemies to lovers | Slowburn | Bodyguard romance | Overprotective Hunter

Set during the events of The Clone Wars (Echo is not included as member of Clone Force 99 during most part of this story)

PRELUDE | CHAPTER ONE: YOU WON'T FIND A BETTER SQUADRON | CHAPTER TWO: NAIVE IDEALS | CHAPTER THREE: A BAD FEELING ABOUT IT | CHAPTER FOUR: I WANT TO KEEP YOU FROM BEING NECESSARY | CHAPTER FIVE: NO SAFE PLACE | CHAPTER SIX: WORTH MORE DEAD | CHAPTER SEVEN: UNHOLY TO DEMOCRACY | CHAPTER EIGHT: DAGGER TO THE NECK | CHAPTER NINE: SUNRAYS OF BLOOD | CHAPTER TEN: A WORLD ALIVE | CHAPTER ELEVEN: A TYRANT'S VICTORY | CHAPTER TWELVE: JAWA-BRAINED ANIMAL | CHAPTER THIRTEEN: HALF-TRUTHS | CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE ANTICIPATION OF AN OUTBURST | ONGOING

[himiko-yumehellno]

Kodaka very obviously wants to make Danganronpa 4, but as many people have pointed out already, this would conflict with the ending of V3. I thought I would make things easier on our resident murder mystery writer who appears to really like making mascots that remind me of Whisper from Yo-Kai Watch, and come up with some solutions to this problem! Organized in approximate order of increasing silliness and grasping at straws, with some additional director's notes from ✨me✨!!

So, how can Kodaka make a new Danganronpa game that works with the ending of Danganronpa V3?:

Danganronpa isn't actually a killing game franchise loved around the world; Tsumugi either lied or was lied to herself (probably with the use of a Flashback Light to make her believe she was a willing ringleader). Allows for some interesting angst if it's the second option.

Despair made a sudden comeback and took over a good portion of the world. Tsumugi fudged some details, but it's true that a lot of the world now enjoys killing games, because normal life is just boring to them (a life without despair and death?! Ugh! Who'd want that, am I right?). We find out in a later installment that the survivors joined with other forces fighting against despair. Danganronpa 4 explores a separate killing game also put on in the name of this new global wave of despair.

Danganronpa 4 turns out to be a prequel (possibly featuring a killing game that the in-game franchise was inspired by, possibly just being one of the numerous previous installments Tsumugi threw out there in her exposition monologue, possibly some secret third option), and ends up with some ridiculous name so fans don't get confused on the sequence of events. Personally, I hope the name is Danganronpa Negative Four.

As so many postgame fics have taken to declaring, the entire game was a simulation. Except to make this work, it probably wouldn't be a simulation designed by Team Danganronpa – no, no, no! Perhaps this killing game was put on by Remnants of Despair or – *exaggerated gasp* – the Future Foundation themselves, hm?

Danganronpa V3 was a really fucked up social experiment and none of the "reality TV" backstory was real. No one knows how it got past the ethics committee, so don't ask.

It was all an alternate dimension/timeline. ... Look, if all it takes to brainwash someone into mass murder is forcing them to come to anime night, they can throw in a little time or dimension travel!

To piggyback on that last idea, the "reality TV" backstory was true; Danganronpa V3 and all the previous installments in this series were fiction... in the Rain Code universe. Or some other video game setting made by Kodaka. Nothing of the sort happened in the actual Danganronpa continuity, however.

Danganronpa V3 was Junko Enoshima's idea of heaven. Of course, it wouldn't have been complete without the despair of her ideal world being destroyed, hence the survivor trio shutting down her killing game show. Danganronpa 4, therefore, takes place in the living world, continuing off vaguely where the Danganronpa 3 anime left off. Notably, all questions about how Junko's heaven works and why she even got to go to heaven in the first place are not solved until a separate anime series, where we find out it was originally supposed to be her hell until she made the demon in charge of looking after her quit and give her full range of the place. It's never answered whether the participants of the killing game were other dead souls or just beings she created.

The entire thing was just the Monokuma Children playing with dolls. ... Or, knowing them, dead bodies.

Before V3 came out my brother had this whole theory that all of the characters were in a pseudo time loop where every time a killing game concluded, they'd just roll out a set of clones of everyone and start all over again, presumably killing off the survivors of the last game. I have no idea how this would solve Kodaka's issue but I want to see if they could find a way to make it work.

I'm excited to see what becomes of Kodaka's newest works, but apparently by his own admission he's interested in returning to Danganronpa at some point, so I thought I'd do the hard part for him. Feel free to take any of these ideas and run with them, Kodaka!

(feel free to add your own suggestions on how to make the ending of V3 work with a new Danganronpa game!)

[captainkirkk]

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes. Please look at tags and warnings on ao3 before reading.

Stranger Things

Where the 20 Chain Links Lead by fandsart

Steve has always known he’s stupid. While it wasn’t exactly something he took pride in, it hadn’t really ever bothered him until he started socializing with what could probably be described as some of the smartest people in Hawkins. It doesn’t help that most of those people were so much younger than him.

A character study of one Steve Harrington, and a glacial slowburn Steddie fix-it fic

chat with you, baby (flirt a little, maybe) by desiccatedwithering (acornsofthemind) (+ podfic)

"Hey, shitheads!” Steve “the hair” Harrington barks, looming in the doorway like a monster from the Abyss. “What the fuck are you doing in here? Get your asses down to the gym right fucking now.”

Eddie gapes. First of all, the audacity— Second, he’s never been much for physical fights, but if this douchebag thinks he can bully any of Eddie’s kids, he’ll have to go through Eddie first.

“Let’s go! Move it!” Harrington snaps, making an impatient gesture down the hall.

SVSSS

Achievement Unlocked by The Feels Whale (miscellea)

One day, after five years of reasonably peaceful marriage with only a few kidnappings and sex pollen incidents, Shen Yuan is sent back to his old body without warning. Luo Binghe makes a deal with an alien entity calling itself the System to perform a mission in exchange for the ability to bring his husband home.

The mission is simple; [Uncover secret transmigrator plotline and flesh out the character wiki!]

At least it will be once he figures out what the words ‘transmigrator’ and ‘wiki’ mean.

Or: That one where Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe don’t realize they’re in a domestic fluff bonus chapter.

Written for the 2021 MXTX Big Bang with art created by Ataratah

The Witcher

The Footsteps We Follow by thiswildheart

Look, Jaskier's got a lot going on. He's painfully aware that there are cataclysmic events happening and that the troubled teenager he knows might save the world or speed along the end of days. He's also in love with a man who's never even admitted that they're friends, which is almost as bad.

Oh, and he's still working as the Sandpiper, only now a terrifying eldritch creature has entrusted him with the Song of the Seven to give hope to the elves and help them fight back against their oppression. It's probably the bravest thing he's ever done, but not everyone sees it that way.

Luckily he knows some people who excel at last minute rescues.

... then he just has to figure out how to tell Geralt why so many people are trying to kill him. This is going to go great.

Clone Wars

Every Shadow by Kenobster (kenobster)

The days on Kadavo were long, but the nights moved quickly. Hundreds of pairs of wide, sleepless eyes haunted the space of the holding cells. Droves of terror clogged the heavy, sweaty air, and every sound, however faint, was like a physical ripple across the crowd. Every sound. The jingling of keys, the clicking of locks, the thudding of boots, and that’s how the nights on Kadavo started—with a gradual increase in the degree of quiet.

OR—during the mass casualty event following Kadavo and Zygerria, Obi-Wan and Anakin seek ways to cope with trauma.

Shadowhunters

We All Want (to Change the World) by opalish

It starts with Simon, which explains why the entire process is such an unrelenting headache.

or, Alec's startlingly quick journey from Head of the New York Institute to Inquisitor.

[astro-vision-au]

Wait, so demons have babies by holding hands??? UNPROTECTED HAND HOLDING????

AHSHDHSJEBDJSU NO BUT ALSO YEAH PRETTY MUCH TBH LMAO

Okay so I'm going to use this ask as an excuse to blab about Demon lore and how they work in Astro-vision, what they are and how that applies to the Puzzles.

Of course, to answer your question first, hand holding was just an example [a really bad one but still] its basically any act of affection. This can include hand holding, but can also include other acts such as hugging, kissing, cuddling etc. More *ahem* intimate actions will also work but are not required

Of course as stated previously it's very rare for this to actually happen, for 2 reasons

In universe reason: population control. Demons are functionally immortal under the right conditions, so having kids really isn't a necessity, but we'll talk more about that in a moment.

Deeper reason/personal reason: it's ment to be a ironic joke that beings of evil can only have kids by partaking in acts of affection.

Going into more detail for in universe. So Demons are immortal because of two reasons, worship, and hosts. The act of being worshiped or taking on a new host gives them the energy they need to survive, if given infinite worship or hosts they could live forever. Unfortunately because of this Demons were so greedy and power hungry for worship that they refused to share it with their spawn, this led to Demons being nearly extinct by the time Astro-vision starts, as people simply no longer worship Demons like they once did. It was their own desire to live that led to their downfall.

Going into more detail about how worship and hosts work. As stated before, this is how a demon gets its power. Worship can be in any form, so long as your acknowledging the demon in some positive form, praise, affection, devotion, etc, it counts, and gives them energy. They can also gain energy by taking hosts and adding it to their mass. This is an extremely inefficient way to get energy, so most Demons will only do this when in a life or death situation, or if the person has a power or something the demon wants. [We'll talk more about this later]

This is why most Demons, including the one that merged with Puzzles, look like horrific amalgamations of eyes, limbs, wings, heads, and other body parts, they are physically comprised of hundreds if not thousands of bodies and souls, all controlled by the demon.

You might be thinking "man, this whole worship thing sounds familiar." And it should! Why do you think Puzzles was so obsessed with his five stars? Or why he got more powerful the more he had? Yeah, that counts as worship! However, it wasn't the demon within Puzzles that made him do that, oh no, that was all him. Between the demon and Puzzles, it's Puzzles who's in control. The demon was very well aware of this when it made the deal with Puzzles.

Why didn't the demon take over Puzzles like a demon would with a normal host? The demon Puzzles summoned was ancient, in other words, it was BALLS old and basically was about to die. Even if it wanted to take over Puzzles it was to weak to do so [it was by no means powerless, by human standards it was still extremely strong, but by demon standards it really wasn't much.] It merged with Puzzles knowing it would cease to exist in the way it did then, it saw this as a chance to essentially be reborn in a way. This is why Puzzles remains in control but his memory prior to that event is a bit fried.

Does this apply to the Clones? It does! All of them have their own ways of obtaining worship, even if it's not intentional.

Pez with his game streams

Mr. Park with his amusement park

Nill through helping others fall asleep

Cardinal and Chonkzzles from Sag5

For Park and Cardinal their forms of worship are more so goals they are working towards. As of right now in the story they are getting their worship through other means.

In addition to this, all Clones have some sort of demon form [Chonkzzles just has his creepy screen, he's a exeption to a lot of this demon stuff going on] and display demonic traits. Some of these traits however can be suppressed or changed based on who made them and how they were intended to be made for example, Cardinal and Park exhibit more demonic traits then Pez or Nill because Sag5 knows more about Puzzles demonic form/powers then Smg4 or Smg3.

With all of that said, this means one major thing. It means that the Puzzles are all single handedly some of the most dangerous Demons out there depending on how you want to look at it. Since they retain their humanity they are less likely to actively cause harm [obviously Cardinal is an exception.] However, since they are more capable of love and affection, they can single handedly bring back the entire demon population. Of course, their kids would be the same situation, with their humanity in tact its less likely they would cause harm, but it's not impossible. This can easily become a good thing, or a very very VERY bad thing In the long term. [When I say long term I mean thousands of years, not something that would be explored in the story.] However what could become an issue in the story is if a certain Cosmic guardian sees this as a potiontal threat to her galaxy 👁👁

Now, there is one thing I haven't mentioned, and that no one else has asked or point out, so I'll call myself out and then elaborate.

"If Demons don't need to reproduce sexually, then why do they have genders?"

Excellent question! It's simple really, as a demon takes more and more hosts, it will gain more attributes from the hosts they absorb. Overtime, it's assumed they started to take on more Gender defining features. Meaning if you go back far enough to when Demons first formed, they most likely didn't have Genders at all.

Because of this they could theoretically reproduce sexually but again, Demons have no interest in having spawn nor would they make good parents. Plus the baby probably wouldn't live long anyways.

Anyways thats all, thank you for coming to my Ted talk

[cienie-isengardu]

If anyone wonders about my lack of star wars activity in favor of Mortal Kombat, here is the explanation:

Current Mortal Kombat franchise took an unfair approach to my favorite characters, in some cases giving them a serious damage to intelligence just to push the storyline from point A to point B. And yet no matter how frustrating or annoying MK is right now, the story still engages me on a personal level. I want to draw silly ideas, I want to write ambitious metas, I created a whole AU series just to have what I didn’t get from official sources. And mind you, MK1 Behind the Scenes AU is still an ongoing project after almost a whole year.

With Star Wars the difference is… Disney’s star wars is just meh.

It is not that all new content is bad to the point I lost interest in interacting with the franchise. It's rather its mediocrity that simply doesn’t make me feel anything intensive about it enough to bother in the first place. I lowkey hate The Clone Wars for how it changed Star Wars and fandom’s perception of certain characters and events, but it also pushed me to talk in great length about various matters, like the chip in brain nonsense, or Mandalorian culture, or how Legends sources presented the relationship of Anakin & clone troopers. Currently though? I have little to no exceptions and yet even then there is barely anything out there to break my indifference. Disney is mass producing star wars content - we have so many TV series in a relatively short time, there are various comics series, but none of those make me excited the way Legends did. Hell, those don’t even make me curious about star wars which is pretty fucked up on its own. 

And that is the point. I’m so high on the Mortal Kombat phase not because the writing is so amazing or my fav characters are treated with respect, but because it makes me emotionally invested in a way Star Wars hasn't for years.

[ktechnicolour]

Yoglabs: Behind Closed Doors - Mass Spoiler Post

General Outline

So the general outline for the plot revolved around my OC Subject K, and her rose tinted perspective on the state of yoglabs before slowly uncovering the truth of her own purpose as well as the underlying secrets the lab holds.

The story is set after the events of Shadow of Israphel and Yoglabs with the series like Blackrock, Flux buddies, Flux Baddies and Sipsco all being cannon to the universe.

Character Plots

Since the story is so heavily character focused and thats kinda the layout in my head, ill breakdown events via characters and important points.

Subject K

The main character of the story. She was born on a boat to an archaeologist couple, however her mother died in childbirth. Her father treasured her dearly, and brought her along for alot of his studdies, teaching her to draw and gifting her the sketchbook she has. During studies into the lost 4th dimension, (the aether, the nether and the errebus are all cannon with the lost 4th dimension being oceanus) their boat is attacked by a greater elder guardian and destroyed. This gives her a deep fear of the sea and anything tentacle-y. K washes up on a beach and walks aimlessly for days in search of any kind of civilization to help her. She finally comes across a town of people who rather than help her, drive her out as an ill omen saying she'll only bring destruction. Tired and close to giving up on everything, she hides away in a nearby cave for shelter and decides she's better off alone. She ends up stealing what she needs from the village to survive, surviving but never really making anything of herself. One night, during a usual raid on the village, it also gets raided by yoglabs, capturing the villagers and herself in the process. She is then used as the 11th subject in project divinity, a project aiming to recreate Ridgedog. she's spliced with his DNA and given a secondary heart and circulatory system, and though she survives, she doesn't manifest any of the power or abilities of her predecessor. The fact that her second heart doesn't work is actually what saves her life. in a desperate attempt to kickstart her 2nd heart and her magic, Xephos decides to use what they have left of Ridges Ichor, essentially, liquified magic that pumps through the secondary circulatory system of a demigod fuelling their power. This kickstarts her magic, but she cant control it properly. Her body just keeps generating energy with no limit. her outburst of power on the village, destroying it entirely stops her from burning out and overloading herself by venting some of the excess power. When she's brought back to the labs, she's fitted with her collar and told by Xephos its to keep her alive. while not entirely a lie, what she isn't told is that it slowly siphons her energy to fuel a secret project at the labs Site B. more on that later. She's thankful for a proper home and a second chance at life and through her interactions with Xephos, she comes to understand him as a very conflicted and troubled man. At one point she finds him late at night passed out with a bottle of gin next to Honeydew's clone vat. at that point she develops a sense of sympathy for the lonely spaceman as a kindred spirit. She knows herself how devastating loss can be. Once her magic awakens, she has dreams that are flashbacks to Ridge's life including time spent with his brother, who always refers to him as "pup". (i had some ideas with coming up with a fun anagram for his brothers name, but the best i could do was Earlship)

Xephos

Originally an alien who crash lands, leading into the events of Shadow of Israphel, they face off with the man himself deep in the heart of one of his facilities (heehoo site B) where Israphel is attempting to rebuild one of the huge robots (remember the hand in the sand?) and has been using a cloning system to create workers and versions of himself. He is also using Ridgedog as a generator to fuel the energy needed for the giant robot. The original Israphel is hooked up to what seems to be a large life support machine. they stop Israphel's plan, but Xephos receives a fatal blow. To save his best friends life, Honeydew hooks him up to the life support system granting him control of the facility. They rebuild the Yoglabs main site, originally using it for good, but Xephos becomes obsessed with the cloning systems. after loosing Knight Peculiar, he cant bare the thought of loosing Honeydew and through extensive testing develops a strange desensitization to the meaning of loss. After the Clone Labs Takeover Honeydew's current clone replaces the original master version. (yes I know that's not exactly how it goes in the episode, but CREATIVE LICENCE) however, since cloning at this point is still imperfect, this new Master Clone slowly deteriorates, loosing memories, cognitive functions. imagine immense dementia. until the point Xephos stops cloning him, not wanting to make the situation any worse. Xephos thows himself even deeper into perfecting cloning to save his best friend, but begins loosing sight of his reasoning through obsession. When he begins trying to clone Ridgedog despite ridge's warnings, the first attempt ends in a catastrophic failure, destroying a large portion of the labs in the process. Ridgedog confronts him on this to which Xephos challenges him to a duel. Ridge begrudgingly accepts, and the swordfight takes place on the cliff above the main door of the lab. Ridge easily beats Xephos and begins lecturing xeph on the danger of what he's messing with. as ridge turns to look out over the cliff face, Xephos strikes, running him through and leaning close revealing himself to be controlled by israphel; "you always were too trusting, Pup." before kicking him off the top of the labs. Ridge falls landing in a huge explosion of light. While Xephos is being controlled by Israphel, most of the time its rather subtle, twisting xephos' beliefs and desires into his own. With the original Ridgedog now gone, Xephos dives even deeper into project divinity, driven by Xephos' regret and Israphels need for a replacement power source for the giant robot project; Sentinel. Thus, K is created being the first surviving subject.

Lalnable Hector

Lalnable is one of 3 active Lalnas in the universe. the others being Lalna, the Flux Buds Variant and LividCoffee the original from the Duncan's lab series. Lalnable plays the biggest part in the story of the 3 being Yoglabs' clone. while defective, Lalnable is all yoglabs is left with in terms of lalna since Livid left destroying any record of his original DNA in the process. Lalnable does leave yoglabs before subject Ks creation to investigate the flux buddies and the events of Flux Baddies takes place. However, Specimen 5s Flux corruption quickly grows out of control and rather than deal with the mess and fast spreading flux corruption, he cuts his losses and flees back to yoglabs. The magical corruption however gains the attention of a certain endermage, Rythian, who tracks Lalnable back to the labs, breaking in to confront the scientist about his actions. Rather than kicking rythian out, Xephos takes the opportunity to make a deal with the mage, if yoglabs offers its resources to deal with the flux, rythian would offer his understanding of magic to help subject K better control her powers. Xephos orders Lalnable to assist and capture specimen 5. Subject K begs to go along, and against Xephos' wishes and through Rythians persuasion, she's granted leave under the exception that she wears a special system, in the form of a backpack that connects to her collar, since the system isnt designed to work outside the labs. I was planning some rather fun interactions between the 3 of them with Rythian taking a begrudging liking to K because of her resemblance to Zoeya.

Specimen 5

In an attempt to better understand Lalna, Lalnable creates his own version of Nano. However, since 5 is created from already corrupted material, 5s corruption spreads abnormally fast turning her into an abomination of tentacles and claws that spreads flux wherever she goes. Lalnable, although having developed feelings for 5, is a reckless coward who flees rather than facing his responsibilities. The magical corruption created by 5 gets the attention of Rythian, since due to his background, is rather sensitive to magic in the world. Due to this sensitivity however, he is unable to deal with the flux alone since it would very quickly corrupt him if infected.

Rythian Enderborn

After the events of Blackrock, a space fairing bounty hunter, Fiona crash lands at their castle. through helping repair her ship, Zoeya develops feelings for the bounty hunter. torn between Rythian and her new love, Rythian makes the difficult choice to encourage her to leave. Left with fishton and a painful goodbye, Rythian is once again alone. Living with the regret of loosing the girl he loved and never telling her the truth of how he feels, he shuts himself away, endlessly studying and taking up a deep interest in alchemy. While out on a material gathering trip, he comes across the huge amounts of flux quickly spreading through the lands and the horrifying creature causing it. with further investigation, he spots a fleeing Lalnable who he decides to trail all the way back to the labs. He confronts Lalnable on his recklessness before Xephos walks in on them, K in tow. after getting the whole story Xephos sees the opportunity to gain a magic expert and a monstrous weapon in one go and tells them to capture the creature, promising Lalnable they'll help Five any way they can. (a blatant lie) and in return for Yoglabs' resources, Rythian would help K with controlling her magic, Xephos hoping she'll make a more useful asset in the future. Rythian agrees to help, intending to sneak away once the flux is cleared. however, through traveling with subject K and Lalnable, he grows a fondness for K. she reminds him of Zoeya. When they finally confront Five, K freezes, terrified by the tentacles, reminding her of the night she lost her father. Rythian manages to get her out of harms way before working begrudgingly with Lalnable to secure Five. Back at the labs K is excited to have a new friend to show around. after a few days of working together, she decides they should take a break so K can show rythian her favourite part of the labs. She takes him to the botanical conservatory, excitedly showing him all the generating flora she's been working on in her spare time. Its a very sweet moment of downtime before the sprinkler system kicks in to water everything. Rythian's skin burns and blisters in the downpour and K panics to get him somewhere safe. This is when her healing magic manifests as she apologizes profusely, healing the burns, much to rythians surprise and awe. Rythian vaguely explains his enderborn origin, though not going into much detail about his past. After some reminiscing he mistakingly calls K zoeya, leading into a conversation about his relationship and regrets. K sympathises, but also tells rythian he should never have let her go. understandably, rythian becomes rather upset and leaves the labs later that night.

Dr. Riviera, Epsilon and Grimm

Sometime after rythian leaves, K is wandering the labs upset and mulling over her conversation with rythian, when she notices something watching her out the corner of her eye. She chases it, managing to corner the strange creature which huddles in the corner chewing on a book. K realises this is her Sketchbook and become extremely irate. Riviera comes across the two, attempting to diffuse the situation, slowly convincing Epsilon to part with the sketchbook in return for a bag of jellybeans. Riviera takes the two back to Bio-engineering, getting Epi to apologize, though her words are broken and childlike, explaining that Epsilon isnt supposed to leave this section of the labs and that if Xephos knew about her, Riviera would be in trouble. K finds herself unable to stay mad at the adorable creature and promises to keep her secret just as they realise Xephos standing in the doorway. Xephos lectures Riviera on his purpose in the labs, that he should be creating bio-weapons, not kids show mascots. he threatens Riviera with cutting his med supply, which Riviera sadly agrees to, promising he'll fix epsilon soon. K tries to ask Riv about the purpose of his meds and why he seems so scared of Xephos. She promises to come by again soon and bring epsilon some less sketchbooky snacks. When K returns a few days later Rivieras mannerisms are off and he seems strangely excited to show K his work on epsilon. Epi is completely unrecognizable, having been reworked into a monster, he mouth dripping with acidic poison. K is horrified by his inhumane treatment of the creature he showed so much care for, calling him a monster. Riviera seems to argue with himself about this before K flees in disgust and just generally being creeped out. Epsilon breaks out of containment, creeping into Ks quarters during the night. K manages to wake up and notice before Epsilon destroys her sketchbook snatching it away just in time. K is furious with her sketchbook almost being destroyed and what Epsilon has become. She kicks Epi out into the hallway against the wall when Riviera runs over blocking Ks way. She confronts him on how he could do this to herm getting very mixed and confusing responses. This is when she finds out about Grimm, who manifests threatening Riviera. Grimm essentially appears as a phantom of smoke escaping from Riviera's missing eye socket. imagine a Jekyll and Hyde kind of deal. Riviera gives in to Grimms threats promising to keep working on Epsilon. Riviera explains Grimm to K and apologizes for what he's done, telling her about the meds that keep Grimm in check. K promises she'll help him find another way and that Epi doesn't deserve this.

The True Nature of the Collar

K attempts to confront Xephos on the matter with Riviera and sees a side of xephos she never has before. he threatens her, telling her to know her place since she belongs to him. he reminds K that she's nothing without the labs and that everything she has was given to her by him. K, unable to stand against xephos attempts to flee the labs, but as she crosses the threshold of the main doors exit her collar overloads, electrocuting her and shorting out the labs systems. Xephos comes running and K expects the worst, but instead his mannerisms are forgiving and concerned. He reminds K that the collar is keeping her alive and cant work outside the labs. he apologizes for his previous comments, telling K he only wants to keep her safe. He sends her to the med bay to have her and her collar checked over for damages. (aka, turning up the amps to knock her out next time) As Xephos leaves, he muses over the power of the shock the collar delivers not being high enough to knock her unconscious, revealing the true nature of the collar; Keeping K bound and loyal.

Dr. Riviera, Epsilon and Grimm (.Cont)

K returns to Riviera explaining what happened, and Riviera reveals he's working to change epi back to her adorable self. K advises Riviera to appeal to Xephos' better nature, and Riviera explains the fate of his previous experiment, Delta. Delta was an extremely smart and powerful creation. essentially, similar to the endo rex from Jurassic world, but far more intelligent. Riviera reveals that Delta was created with a human brain, which although caused it to be intelligent, introduced issues of free will and was inevitably destroyed. Riviera was warned against using human brains to create creatures, but reveals that he broke this rule when creating epsilon. Epsilon, rather than being created to be a bio-weapon, was intended to be a secret project for Riviera to create a companion, purely for company. Were Xephos to find out about her origins, or Grimm to finish his work on her, both would be disastrous. Lalnable, being bored and poking his nose around find out about epsilon, and realises straight away she's far too intelligent not to have a human brain and uses this info to barter for info on the flux buddies. Naturally, Xephos is pretty pissed at this and confronts Riviera, telling him he was only hired because of Grimm. Epsilon manages to sneak away in the heated argument and seek aid from K, who confronts Xephos on what the labs stand for meanwhile Grimm sees an opportunity in Riviera's emotional state to attempt full control. in the struggle, Riviera manages to take the corrupted missing eye out of his pocket but cant bring himself to destroy it, so K does instead, destroying Grimm. Xephos' response is to fire Riviera before storming out of the bio-engineering lab.

Confrontation

K tails after Xephos, demanding explanation and telling xeph hes being unreasonable, and Xephs facade with her drops. he's cold and harsh to her, telling her she's nothing more than a means to an end. she looses her temper, but before she can loose control of her powers, Xephos activates her collar shocking her unconscious. She then awakes to find herself in a dark and unknown part of the labs with her collar hooked up to a bunch of glowing pipes and systems trailing off into the dark. (yall remember the flashback on page 15?) Unlike ridge she manages to overpower the system, partially because her body creates more energy than the system was built for originally but also because ridge never tried to break out of it for backstory reasons~ She finds her way into the deeper parts of site B, finding the original xephos hooked up to some kind of life support system. She's discovered by the imposter Xephos who reveals his plans for reviving a giant sentinel. (remember that hand in the sand?) After some big bad guy monologuing, Israphel/xephos reveals himself and his real reasoning for trying to remake ridgedog. They have an epic giant robot boss battle showdown, and K realizes that he's dependent on Xephos. She pulls Xephos from the system, but he wont wake up. She pours so much healing magic into him that she burns out her magic entirely and collapses just as he wakes up. She finally comes to in the med bay with xephos looking over her and they go over what happened.

Wrap Up

Essentially, this was the end of the first arc. I had some rough ideas for a Grimm focused spin off dealing with what happened to Epi and why Riviera is troubled by Grimm.

I also had plans for K going off to find Ridge to restore her magic and a whole story that involved Kirin too. But that was more self indulgent and a little more creatively licensed in terms of what the characters were like. This also included a scene with K standing between Ridge and Kirin mid fight which causes the giant scar on her back thats been shown in a few of my arts.

So that's kinda the whole deal. Lord knows i've probably missed a bunch of details and little things, but generally that's the whole story.it would've been cool to finish the whole thing but personal health and mental stability just didn't allow for it. That said, the story is still very much alive in my heart and I'm always happy to talk to people about the setting for behind closed doors. If anyone has any queries or questions about anything that I've missed or not covered properly, feel free to drop something in my ask box anytime :) Footnote: This ended up taking a lot longer that I intended since I've recently had a lot of mental health struggles so please be kind ;u;

[ageless-aislynn]

Mass Effect 2 update of randomness!

Look, it's Shiala from ME1! But...

Yeah, I went ahead and asked that, despite hearing, "OMG, Shep, you can't just ask people why they're green!" in my head, lol!

But this was Shiala previously

so I felt like that was a fair question, lol. (It was because of her exposure to the Thorian from ME1. Her clones at that time were also green, so I thought that was an interesting and believable change.)

Speaking of green...

*incoherent flailing* Let me just say that I now completely understand why people romance Thane, despite knowing it's going to end in tragedy. Seriously, I keep feeling like Shep is two seconds away from telling Mr. Krios that his body is ready, lol!

(Can't romance him as male!Shep, though, so no worries, we're still staying true to Tali! 😜)

Though that resolve actually came back to bite me when Shep and I were trying to hype Miranda up that she was more than her genetic modifications and looks and biotics and then the game gave me ONLY TWO DIALOGUE OPTIONS: tell her how much we appreciate her body or tell her to stop whining.

Garrus: "C'mon, Shepard, you can't just lead her on!"

Jack: "Wait, I'm running upstairs right now because I want to watch you tell the Cerberus cheerleader to stop whining!"

I told her we appreciated her body, then when she flirted back, I told her I wasn't interested. I felt small, friends. Very small. 🥺

Yep, about that small, as a matter of fact! (I love the "spam" emails we start getting like that, lol! What a realistic touch! 😂)

Anyway, I'm choosing to believe that at some point, Miranda and Jack have this very intense enemies-to-friends-to-lovers thing that happens, so... *waves hands in Jackanda and tries not to feel like such a jerk*

Lastly! Oh yeah, Samara is 🔥🔥🔥 but I was able to spot the dialogue option that would've presumably led to Shep trying to get a romance going. I remember that it's difficult to have enough Paragon points for her to actually agree to that and even if she does, it's still a pretty non-eventful romance (maybe a kiss or even just an interrupted one? Can't remember the exact details). But still! I also remember hearing somewhere that Zaeed develops a crush on her and so I keep pairing them on missions just for RP reasons that amuse me. 😂

I mean, if there was ever somebody that the Justicar would obliterate for not being "just," it would be Zaeed and yet I can see him thinking that's a very attractive trait, lol!

I love that they're alllllmost standing side-by-side in the squad line-up, what can I say? Also, yay, almost got the entire squad! Everybody's loyal except for Tali and I just got her loyalty mission.

OH and I got the conversation from Mordin about how he understands that humans often find him attractive but he's really not interested in Shep that way. But if he was going to try a human, he would try us, lol! That was the funniest thing that I'd totally forgotten could occur and I had to stop to just laugh for a bit over that, lol!

I also got him to sing, yay! I wish that the game would've given me the option to applaud or something other than just standing there, awkwardly staring!

And that's all for now, friends! Hope you had a great weekend and this next week is awesome for you! 🤗🤗🤗

[garnettfox]

Miracubots: Miraculous Holders (Bots)

New day new post, and yup, if you read to the end of the last part you where probably looking forward to this XD

As this is an alternate version of season 4, the invasion where the Bot's finally reveal themselves, doesn't occur meaning the Bot's are having to hide longer with the family bluffing that the bots where upgraded with a 'Defence mode' to cover up when the bots work to help deal with an Akuma attack.

Though, things can't stay secret forever, especally not with a villain who target's negitive emotion, and some bots who are less able to express themselves freely.

The reveal to the town that the bots are alive, happens when Heatwave reaches a breaking point with Kade's glory hog ways (Which he'd been slipping back into just a bit, especally after he got to use a Miraculous) And he ends up becoming the first Bot Akumatized.

This has pretty much everyone reeling as the bots and the Burns family had started to assume the Bots being alien where immune to Akumatization. But the revelation gives Cody an idea.

If a bot can be Akumatized, surely they can wield a Miraculous as well. And with a little nudge from a Luck charm on which to pick. Boulder is chosen to use the Pig Miraculous becoming Porcine Punch. The name was off the top of his head and he likes it too much to change it.

Porcine Punch with help from Beetletron and Felidae is able to stop Glory Hog in his tracks and calm him down with the use of his Gift to be deakumatized.

Two things about the Bot's as Miraculous holders:

Their altmodes change when their transformed to the animal of their Miraculous with their root form adjusting to the new altmode.

They may use different names as heros, but there's no secret identities going on, everyones knows who's who in regards to the bots. As Cody points out when giving Boulder his Miraculous infront of his brothers, people will figure it out within five minutes so why both trying to hide it.

Sadly the next Bot picked to become a Miraculous holder happens because of another Bot getting Akumatized as well. This time Poor Chase, struggling silently after the public reveal and getting treated poorly by a few towns folk struggling with the transition, becomes the horrorfying Akuma Emperata.

IDW fans are now screaming at me for inflicting that on Chase.

Heatwave this time is the one entrusted with a Miraculous becoming the Hero Tigereye with the....Well Tiger Miraculous. He also get's let in on Chief being Ranger as Beetletron asks his father for help as well to get them past the army Emperata is creating.

He's not even the only Bot to find out a humans secret ahead of the mass reveal as Blades accidentally reveals Dani revealed she's Hornet to him when their both called on to deal with a replicating Akuma. Hornet to sting the clones and keep them still. And Kitsune the new Fox hero to use his illusions to control and confuse the clones.

Blades is BEYOND happy to finally have a grounded alt mode.

Last but not least of the Bots to get a Miraculous is Chase, we haven't fully settled on the events surrounding when he get's it. But Chase out of the four arguabley get's the most powerful as he's entrusted with the Snake Miraculous becoming Aposis at Sass's suggestion for his hero name,

And yes. People do make the 'Theres a Snake in my Boot!' refrence regarding him and Chief XD