#pearls of purpose

[tubbytarchia]

@mcyt-yuri-week Day 5, Rose/Thorns I never stop thinking about SL episode 8 never ever

[mxmarsbars]

impulseSV was slain by BdoubleO100

original post by @/sweepswoop_ on twitter !!

[salemoleander]

Double Life is so funny to reflect on

bc at the time it was (given 3L -> LL game mechanics and how each game evolved from the last) clearly intended to help with balancing; assigning random pairs to try to alleviate the skill disparity of his friends. And then we get to see Grian real-time speedrun the 5 Stages of Creator's Grief as he realizes that RNG has somehow striated everyone by skill level

But in retrospect, as a piece of narrative, it is one of the most compelling and enduring seasons to engage with. It resulted in pairs that betrayed deep and fascinating character traits. Without a mechanic literally forcing them together we never would've gotten a season of only pairs; a season where Impulse & Bdubs married via clock, where Cleo & Martyn had so many solo discussions, where Joel & Etho burned together in the end. Their similarities, RNG be damned, were precisely the thing that made the season so fucking good.

[lucywucy126]

I’d be crying if i looked like that too bruh that’s messed up what they did to him

[chirrups]

I feel like I have nothing to ask, I simply would love to hear more about them fucked up mermaid and murderer

And I would absolutely love to tell you about them, Tin.

This AU takes place somewhere vaguely in the Pacific Northwest (circa. 1970s-80s) in an isolated fishing town along a storm-wracked coast.

Fisheries in and around the bay have collapsed due to extreme winter weather patterns + overfishing + an oil spill from a tanker run aground down the coast, leaving most of the bay's inhabitants to live pretty much hand-to-mouth off contaminated fish in recent years.

get ready for LORE (and more drawings but mostly the LORE)

general warning: this is pretty long

The "story" as it were, kicks off when Gem finally gets fed up with another fisherman in the area, Grian, over continued conflict about ownership of fishing grounds in the mouth of the bay.

She orchestrates his death (with the eager assistance of Scott and Impulse) out at sea and passes off his death as a tragic accident in the winter swells with her being the unfortunate finder of his remains.

And it works.

See the thing is: Gem has a history of causing disappearances. It started with some accidents with out-of-town poachers. She would chase these people off and one or two would just slip overboard and happen to drown. It wasn’t her fault and besides they deserve it. But things start to escalate from there. Poachers become outsiders become fellow townspeople. Grian is someone Gem’s known for years, whose friends are tangentially her friends or acquaintances. His death is a cold-blooded murder driven by hatred and frustration. This time something is different about what she's done and Gem knows it.

But Gem is a reputable and well-known person. Her prices are fair, she drives poachers out of the bay and maintains order around the pragmatic fishing ground policy that undoubtedly helps everyone to survive.

She is the type of person to look to for guidance when things get hard because she can make those hard choices. So how on earth could it be her fault?

No one is wiser until Grian's funeral brings an old friend into town who is more than a little suspicious about the circumstances of his death.

Scar was one of Grian's crewmates when they did trawling much further south. They split when Scar took up (illegal) whaling and Grian moved into the bay.

As an outsider, Scar isn't so swayed by the goodwill the town has around Gem's name. He's no detective but for the sake of an old friend, he might as well try.

In this AU, mermaids are social mammals part of the Hominidae family that went back into the ocean similar to Cetaceans. They live in matrilineal family groups or in any other female-led organization of pods and have a very "survival-oriented" global culture (with regional variation).

Pearl is a lone mermaid whose pod lived in the bay until they were starved out by the collapsing fisheries. PNW mermaids are more territorial than other ecotypes and value strength over anything else. Pearl's inability (read: unwillingness) to oust other pods for better fishing grounds and the loss of one of her pod members summarily lead the other two to abandon her.

Without a pod to help her, hunting enough in her dwindling territory has been difficult and lonely, leading her to slowly starve just as the humans in the bay have begun to.

She took to trailing fishing boats to steal from their catch, which is how she met Gem who was mid-throwing some unfortunate soul overboard.

They have an interesting relationship.

Gem is enamored with Pearl at the halfway point between a person and a large apex predator. She loves the way Pearl needs her to live and the way Pearl, as a social creature with no pod, craves her attention. It's thrilling to have a predator at her beck and call like this and, in turn, to be so desperately needed. She also loves the way Pearl doesn't look at her like she's dangerous (the way Scott and Impulse have begun to when they think she doesn't see them). Her interest in Pearl seems to be leaching into something more than just wildlife admiration. She's begun to learn the mermaid language just to talk to her. For what? Who really knows. Meanwhile, Pearl is hungry enough to eat just about anything Gem throws her (including human bodies) and desperate enough that she lets Gem get much closer than many humans in this area have ever been to a mermaid. (They even touch, scandalous for mermaids.)

It's skewed for sure. From Gem's perspective, they've got something special going on. From Pearl's... not so much.

This being Secret-Life based, you can imagine how this story ends...

Bonus piece: Pearl and her old pod.

IN GENERAL, Biological females are generally larger with a set of rotated tusks protruding from their lower jaw for dominance displays. Biological males are commonly smaller and more agile, with more dexterous hands due to decreased adipose tissue distribution over their bodies. (They actually have 3 biological sexes and tons of social gender variation but that's a talk for another time). Pre-cultural awakening, these pods would form around a biological female and their harem for reproductive purposes. That female would then protect the harem from other females looking to "steal them" or their territories (like horses but reverse-style). In modern times, these pods are often composed of groups of friends/related family members as sort of "platonic life partners" and stealing other pod members is seen as a very archaic sort of thing. Territory stealing, however, is still up for grabs.

[dogerbooger]

Some Hermit gals………..what more can I say

[jesncin]

Does John Jones have a day job? Something other than a classic police detective?

As John Jones, J'onn is a private detective unaffiliated with the cops because he doesn't like the system of oppression cops uphold. Other than that, as Amrit, J'onn works as a child psychologist.

Think Theo from The Haunting of Hill House mixed with the protagonist of The Children Under the House analog horror film. Using a mix of telepathy and detective-ing, J'onn operates through Amrit as a means of protecting children of all sorts.

[evil-gadgeteer]

uhhh i wanted to make like... cool drawings with real effort put into them for this au but, idk, i guess i'm experincing some sort of art block that only affects me when i want to do a good digital piece or something.

BUUUUUUT since i did do a doodle dump related to this au, i did wanna show off all the designs in full so you get the (slightly height inaccurate) sketches

yeah, feel free to ask me questions or whatever

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

The fans: Ugh Sonic was just so preachy. I mean obviously he's supposed to be the good guy, so any uncomfortableness I feel here and any way I feel like Sonic's choices are framed as being why some other people have shitty lives is just bad writing because he is obviously supposed to be right always, but this characterization makes no sense. Isn't he right for the things he did?

Ian Flynn, using Kitsunami to say the (barely even at this point) quiet part even louder: Hey it's almost like ever since the Mr. Tinker event we've been purposely running with the critique of Sonic as being more selfish than he appears. Sonic is upholding a system of Eggman v Sonic that currently benefits him and shuts down talk of how to improve the current system because he likes his own personal enjoyment and he's attached enough to Eggman that he'd rather Eggman pretend to be a good person than be stuck in prison for life. He doesn't even quite practice what he preaches. We are trying to show that the current hero v villain system and Sonic's recklessness currently affects some people poorly and that Sonic isn't a perfect hero.

[iphigeniacomplex]

breaking my silence on chess the musical to say that i would literally not give a fuck about this show if i thought it was good or fully successful at what it is saying. SORRY! i love how messy she is. i love how since 1984 and continuing to this very day people with entirely different perceptions of and opinions on the musical have attempted in their own ways to "make it good" by creating all these different versions with like notably different plots, characterization, and song order, and i love how fucking bad the vast majority of these are despite it all. i hope people keep trying to fix chess the musical forever and until the end of time. i hope no one ever figures it out. i want every currently living theatre director in existence to make their own version and for all these versions to come out on broadway at the same time, making that year's musical season entirely comprised of various different versions of the cold war chess musical by tim rice and half of abba. i want not only our greatest minds but also our middlest-of-the-road and worst minds to come up with their own conclusions as to why chess does not entirely work in its original form or any subsequent forms like to really think about it and yes i do want someone to dedicate their entire life to perfecting chess by releasing version after version after version until they die peacefully but still, as always, in the grips of obsession. i want marriages to be broken up. i want mental states to be shattered. i dream of this world

[thecoolerliauditore]

beauty of the divorce quartet actually is that no matter where you draw the relationship lines you get a fun and fucked up dynamic to think about

[puppppppppy]

oooh wait so the plot hole of “why doesnt a spirit medium just channel the victims spirit” is literally bc the DL-6 spirit channeling cant be repeated huh

[kiwinatorwaffles]

a collection of various unposted ace attorney doodles and shitposts (featuring poultry man and welsknight from hermitcraft)

[qpr-widowsalliance]

I love the new Pearl skin and the general idea of her slowly getting closer to her Scarlet Pearl skin, but also, the idea of Pearl slowly getting more and more covered in blood. It staining her jacket and shirt, and it’s unclear if it’s her blood or someone else’s. And her one red eye looks alot like a black eye, and it seems much more reminiscent of a fight than a fall.

Just. Pearls new skin being more than just her loss of lives, it being more her descent into red life. Which is neither graceful or preventable.

[real-dead-girls]

This has to be a reference right???

[fishdiva]

feeling nostalgic