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steviewashere · 3 months

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Out of Touch

Rating: General CW: None for this one! Tags: Post-Canon, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Getting Together, Touch Starved Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington Has Bad Parents, Steve Harrington Has Self-Esteem Issues, Steve Harrington is a Sweetheart, Eddie Munson is a Sweetheart, Eddie Munson Takes Care of Steve Harrington, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Consensual Touching, Eddie Munson Loves Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington Loves Eddie Munson, Love Confessions

For @steddie-week | July 2nd Prompt: Touch Starved/Hands | WC: 2,703

🫂—————🫂 Steve Harrington is used to touch in the means of getting something. Very rarely is he touched just because; and even then, it’s always so fleeting. He could have sex with the same girl, a new girl, a different girl—a guy, even; he’s not picky—but it always felt so mechanical, so necessary, like it had to happen and then it was over. The skin-to-skin contact was almost like taking an exam; he had to figure this person out, had to find out what made them loud and writhe, and then they’d say he was a good lay, but never return.

He’s sick of it. He just wants the touch to mean something. Or, more accurately, mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. Something simple. Something mundane. Something that said, despite it all, that the person was sticking around.

Because his parents weren’t touchy people—the last time he got a good parental hug had to have been when he was twelve years old. From some championship game won. The trophy in his hand. A slap to his shoulder from his dad and a hug from his mom to say that they were proud. And then…well, the years went by and they weren’t proud of him anymore. He was an embarrassment to their family name, the only kid in the tree incapable of getting into college, the one who had to be taught a lesson. And it’s not like his friends were touchy, either. Tommy liked the touch that pained Steve—fist fights, slap buggy contests, shoving each other around. And Carol would elbow him, rib him for gossip, but nothing else. He didn’t really know what to do when it came to anybody else because nobody else would touch him.

Nancy would when they dated and he remembers that being exceptional. Although, and he never talked about it with her, even her small hands on his skin made him burn alive. Made him hurt. Made him want to die. He thought he could stomach it. And, oddly enough, he sort of could. Because even after she’d step away, turn her back to him as she went to class or left his house, he always wanted her to touch him again. He craved it.

He supposes that he’s always craved it.

But he over-indulged frequently. Or under-indulged. Starved himself from the pleasure of life’s sweet, gentle touches. And when he got his fill, he’d let it fill every last empty crevice within him, and then he came close to throwing up.

Now, after the world doesn’t end for the fourth time, he’s not sure what to do.

He knows how his friends are: Robin’s touch repulsed and will only go out of her way to hold Steve’s hand when it’s detrimental, Dustin overcrowds but doesn’t actually touch except for the Starcourt elevator, Nancy’s still Nancy with her casual sweet touches that Steve gets cavities from, and the others didn’t really do it or didn’t really care to do it or just thought it wasn’t necessary or they were Eddie Munson and he didn’t know what to do with him yet. But Steve was a hungry, hungry, hungry fool. And he needed it. Wanted it. Wanted it so fucking bad, he’d do anything.

Maybe that’s why he finds himself at a lonely house party, somewhere he wasn’t invited. Why he finds himself slinging back cups people hand off, uncaring of the burning thick sugar down his throat. How he gets hands all over his skin, in his unruly hair, down the back of his neck. Lips on his neck and noses in the hollow of his throat. People hugging him as if they know him. Elbows in his side. Fingers dancing up his forearms, making him breakout in goosebumps. He can’t understand it, though, none of this is right. None of it itches that incessant, growling craving he carries. None of it makes him feel good in his skin.

Maybe that’s why he finds himself outside in the front yard of this stranger’s house. Sitting on the freshly cut grass. Autumn dew wetting the seat of his jeans. His eyes far away and unblinking, hands white knuckled and tight around his knees, legs drawn up to his chest, chin digging into his hands, and a wobble to his lips.

“Stevie?” He hears from behind him. And he knows that voice. The rasp. The depth. Can smell the cigarette smoke, even when this person sounds far away. There’s a few, short striding steps. And then there’s a body sitting next to him. “Steve?” Eddie asks softly, “what’re you doing here?”

He grunts. “What are you doing here?” He shoots back.

“Selling,” Eddie answers, “trying to get a little bit of cash for Wayne. You know how it is.” There’s a silence that follows that statement, neither an indulgent one nor a neglectful one. But a pregnant pause nonetheless. “So, Steve, what are you doing here? Thought you didn’t do parties like this anymore.”

Steve sniffs, then. Because Eddie’s unfortunately right. Like he always is because he just is. Maybe that’s why Steve finds it easy to let his heart swell around him; get to that perfect red, shiny balloon within his chest, ready to pop at any moment that Eddie on the off chance rejects him. He swallows, though and finds his voice. “Trying to feel good. Need to feel something.”

Eddie scoffs. “By drinking? Getting in a room full of sweaty, dazed people? Steve, I know you, dude. This isn’t something you enjoy. You don’t ‘feel good’ from this bullshit.” He flinches at that, but seems to have gone unnoticed. “Wouldn’t you like to just be at home right now? You could be watching a movie or something.”

“No,” Steve refuses, shaking his head. “What I want isn’t at my house.”

“Ah,” Eddie sighs. “You’re looking for a person to fill your bed.”

Steve shakes his head again. “Don’t want that,” he mumbles, “want it to mean something.” His face is hot with shame, a curl of sick stretches alive in his stomach, and he thinks he might be trembling. He ducks his red-hot face into his knees.

There’s another silent lull between them. Though, he can feel the weight of this one. The rigid tension between its shoulders and the snap to its spine.

“Baby?” Eddie asks quietly, “you okay?”

Steve meekly shrugs, but doesn’t verbally answer.

Eddie’s palm lands down between Steve’s shoulders. His hand isn’t small, but isn’t big, either. Average in size, warm from the tip of his middle finger to where his palm meets his wrist. It doesn’t move, but it makes Steve tense for a moment. He can’t relax, not yet. Can’t show that he’s been yearning for this.

It sort of—“Hurts,” Steve whimpers.

“Hurts?”

“Your hand,” Steve tries to explain, “it hurts.”

“Oh! Oh…Shit,” Eddie exclaims, drawing his hand away fast as if the touch was repulsive. Maybe it was, Steve realizes. That only makes Steve whine again, louder this time. “Sorry, Steve, I won’t do it—“

Quickly, Steve unfurls himself and reaches out clumsily for Eddie’s left hand again. Fingers tight around his wrist. Drawing him back in. Placing Eddie’s palm over the right side of his neck. His thumb just long enough to skim the underside of Steve’s Adam’s apple. He breathes out a shuttering sigh as the touch finally settles in him.

“You’re burning up under me,” Eddie comments quietly. “You sure you’re okay?”

Steve nods. Bites down on his lip, releases it slowly. “It hurts,” he states again. “Hurts like you’re trying to burn me alive.”

“Shit,” Eddie softly curses, trying to draw away again.

“No, please,” Steve begins to plead, shooting out his hand to lay atop the back of Eddie’s. “Please don’t. I need it—Need—Don’t—“ His breath catches at the base of his throat. Like he’s drowning for this. And, with how careful Eddie’s hand is, with the gentleness of his voice—Steve’s ready to lay down and die for it. If that’s the only way he can be satisfied. He closes his eyes as if that’ll keep Eddie from seeing him. “Please don’t,” he says again, a hesitant moment later, Eddie’s palm still unsettled.

Next to him, Eddie swallows harshly. Sighs sharply through his nose. Scoots a little closer, but doesn’t pull away again. “Okay,” he mutters. “Just—I’m done selling tonight if you wanna hangout at mine. I think you’ll be more comfortable if you have just one set of eyes on you. You wanna?” Steve, without words, agrees.

And roughly thirty minutes later, he’s sitting across from Eddie on his mattress. They’re still in their outfits they wore to the party. Steve in jeans and a maroon polo. Eddie in his usual get-up, minus the vest and leather jacket. He tied his hair up, though, and Steve can’t stop himself from gazing at the few loose strands that fall down to his shoulders.

“How should we do this, Steve? Where shouldn’t I touch you? What shouldn’t I do?”

He tentatively reaches for Eddie’s right hand, clasping it between his own. There aren’t any rings on his fingers. “Don’t be rough,” he states, “and don’t be condescending. Don’t tease me. And…nowhere below the torso, please.”

“M’kay,” Eddie murmurs. “How about I start here?” And he places his palm back where it was at the party, over the right side of Steve’s neck. Steve merely nods. “And if I add both hands? Does that…does that hurt?”

“A little,” Steve admits, “but it’s a good hurt, Eds. Just need this, please.”

His hands shift to Steve’s shoulders. Squeezes. And Steve’s next sigh stutters, gearing up to cry, probably. Then down his arms, to his biceps and the crook of his elbows and his forearms, but not his hands—not yet, at least.

“Can I touch your torso or do you need a break?”

Steve takes a shaking deep breath. Nods. “Give me just a second,” he whispers.

“We have all the time, Stevie. I just want you to…feel good.” They lock stares briefly, both wide-eyed and a little amused. “That sounded weird,” Eddie adds. “I meant like…I mean. Just wanna take care of you, I guess. You deserve to feel good. Have nice things.”

He gives Eddie a knowing little smirk. “You like me,” Steve gently teases, testing the waters.

“So?”

Steve blinks. Surprised. Taken aback. “What like—“

“More than friends? Yeah, thought you’d notice eventually, Stevie. I’m not exactly subtle.” Eddie regards him warily, though. A little bit more guarded than before. “Hopefully that isn’t a problem, though, right?”

“Of course it isn’t,” Steve answers immediately. “Just didn’t think feelings were reciprocated here. Makes me sort of…kinda nervous, if I’m being honest.”

“Mm,” Eddie hums. “Well, they are. And—Just so you know, this isn’t me trying to like get in your pants or whatever. I genuinely like you, Steve. And I do, y’know, want you to be taken care of. For you to enjoy stuff like this without it hurting. Without it burning, I guess.”

“Can we do it again, then? How about—“ And Steve picks up both of Eddie’s hands within his own, but doesn’t hold to them, barely lets the touch linger. Places them both flat against his chest, Eddie’s fingers splayed towards his collarbone and the bottom of his palms in the middle of Steve’s chest. “Just touch me gently there.” He places his own hands on the back of Eddie’s. Shuts his eyes. Breathes as calmly as he can through his nose. Receding tears just as fast as they make themselves known.

Eddie doesn’t move his palms like Steve thought he would. Instead, he sweeps his thumbs up and down over the polo. Fingers curling in slightly before coming back up, almost like he’s carefully scratching at Steve. And it kind of is, Steve supposes, and it feels surprisingly nice. Enough to make something shiver through him, cold and sharp and tingling. It melts away at the ebbing of anxiety that had knotted at the party, where everything felt wrong and incomparable and unsurprisingly mechanical.

The way Eddie touched him was reverent and understanding. It was new. Heartfelt. Woven with a love far deeper than what he just confessed. And Steve leans into it. Pitches forward slightly as Eddie’s hands remain where they’re being held against Steve’s chest.

“Can feel your heart beating,” Eddie comments quietly, “it’s steady, slow, deep.”

Steve hums. “You make me feel calm,” he confesses, “like I don’t have to show you that I’m worthy.”

“Worthy of what?”

“Being touched,” he answers. Hesitates. "Being loved," he adds, hushed.

Eddie’s next breath is tight, through his nose, big.

“You never have to prove yourself to me, sweetheart,” Eddie breathes. “You’re enough.”

Steve’s hands twitch over Eddie’s, clenching over them. He can’t stop his reaction. The tears that fall fast and searing down his cheeks to the underside of his jaw. Or the way his cheeks flush. Or the weight of his stuttering breaths. And especially can’t stifle the just barely wet sobs cracking open from his chest. With heightened clarity, he wonders if Eddie can feel the break in his chest, too.

He carefully withdraws Eddie’s hands from his chest and just rests with them in his grip. Loosely holding on, but not willing to let go. Letting himself soak in what he’s being offered. Not out of fear that it’ll be taken, not this time at least, but knowing he can have it. Knowing that Eddie wouldn’t be so heartless as to take it away right when it’s literally within Steve’s grasp.

Eddie’s thumbs rub firmly in small circles over the backs of Steve’s hands. He’s quiet. Just breathing; a bit nasally, but otherwise smooth. He’s there, though, to keep holding on as Steve breaks down nearly silent.

“God, you overwhelm me sometimes,” Steve admits, though not unkindly, “but in a good way and I don’t understand it.” He squeezes tightly at Eddie’s fingers. “Everybody else makes me feel like I’m going insane. Makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong or that I’m wrong or that they just fucking hate my guts or something. But you touch me and you speak to me and you wait up on me in a way that…I’m burning alive, but it’s not dangerous. It’s not—I’m not explaining this right.”

Gently, Eddie shushes him. Keeps his voce low and measured as he says, “I understand, Steve. I’m hearing you, alright? I take this with whatever pace you set. And I’ll respect that, okay? I ask for nothing; I want nothing back from you; You owe me nothing.”

“But I…I wanna give you the world, Eds. I wanna—You make something different, I don’t—“

“This, Steve,” Eddie says, tugging their hands back and forth between them, “is my world.” He leans in, not close enough to touch noses, but just enough that Steve can smell mint on his breath. “You’re my world, Steve. I take you as-is. I take what you offer. I give back when I can.”

Eddie’s hands hold more firmly to Steve’s. And that touch alone seals that fracture in Steve’s chest. It melds, it sets, it soothes. Steve can breathe under it. He can sigh and he can relax, so he does.

“You ever been the little spoon, Steve?”

Taken a bit off guard, but welcoming it, Steve chuckles. “No, Eds, I haven’t.”

“Mm, you wanna try it out? Lay down and relax for a little while?”

Steve thinks for a second. Would it overwhelm him beyond what’s felt good? Would it be a make-or-break? Can he just have it? And since Eddie’s offering, he supposes he can. “Yeah, Eds. Sure. Just be careful with me.”

“Never have to ask for that, sweetheart. Comes with the love.”

“You love me?”

“Steve.” Eddie levels him with a look. “I would do illegal shit—“

“You already do illegal shit.”

“I’d do more illegal shit just to make sure you’ve got everything you could ever need.”

Smiling a soft thing, Steve lets himself believe that. Because Eddie, in the time Steve’s known him, is surprisingly honest. “I love you, too.”

🫂—————🫂

#steddieweek2024 #stranger things #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #angst and hurt/comfort

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strangegutz · 5 months

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Hey what’s up, it’s just about midnight, here’s some information on CompanDroids and Eddie under the cut.

HEADS UP! Some mature/NSFW subject matter

Broad scope:

-CompanDroids were manufactured by Ramirez Robotics 83 years ago.

-They were created to be companions and caretakers, making them strong, soft, reliable, and people pleasers.

-There is a model for each letter of the alphabet, 13 male models and 13 females, alternating. For example, Eddie is a model E, his female counterpart would be the model F. Each pair “matches”

-Each model is based on a different celebrity, from actors, to models, to TV show hosts. For example, Eddie’s face-sake was a Mexican heartthrob actor, Navarro Riviera, and model F was a Mexican Miss Universe contestant.

-There were different cosmetic changes available for a handful of models in the form of hair colors or styles, particularly for those based on actors, styled after their various roles.

-ComDro’s were available in “Standard” and “Deluxe,” Deluxe packages allowed for more functionality, like eating, drinking, smoking, and for a few select models, sex.

-The contracts for these celebrities were murky, and many didn’t realize the full scope of how the androids would function or be used.

-Ramirez Robotics went under 20 years after the release of the CompanDroids (63 years before current)

-CompanDroids are extremely rare, as they were already very expensive, and now vintage.

-CompanDroids, as they are now, are more or less integrated into society as independent people, and mostly seen as an unusual novelty, though the greater public tends to only remember more salacious details about their functionality.

-They remain one of the most high tech inventions of all time.

Looking in:

-ComDro’s have their power bank located at the top of their spine. They run on electricity, and need to charge themselves via a port located on the back of their neck. Eddie has had himself outfitted with a nuclear battery, and has spares.

-They can get drunk or high, internal sensors detect the chemical composition of various substances and adjust function accordingly.

-They have a simulated heartbeat in the form of a faint vibration in the chest.

-A diagnostic panel is located in the left forearm, which has a screen, small keyboard, a few ports, and their serial number.

-The visible seam lines on their bodies are cosmetic, there are many more seams for access that are flush and hard to see.

-Standard models can upgrade to Deluxe models with a kit.

-Certain “involuntary” bodily functions, like becoming intoxicated, sweating, blushing, or arousal, can be manually controlled, or turned off all together by the android themself.

Eddie himself:

-Eddie was a pre-order, specifically picked to look like Navarro Riviera’s character, Sheriff DeLeon, in a romantic drama western.

-Eddie was originally a standard CompanDroid, but worked for and paid for his own upgrade kit as a free bot.

-Eddie’s serial number is E-013, he named himself after how his number would have read as a deluxe edition, ED-013

-He painted his eyes black the night he was “let go,” but didn’t swap to LED light eyes until later

-CompanDroids have feeling in their internal mechanics, Eddie finds the sensation pleasurable and erotic, though is very selective about who can touch his internals in any context.

-To avoid any uncomfortable situations, he toggles his “arousal” routines off during repairs or maintenance, but prefers to feel all sensations naturally otherwise.

-Being an old computer, Eddie is a bit “off” in the software, he is twitchy and violent, but is loyal and can be a great caregiver and people pleaser to his friends.

-Eddie’s CPU being overloaded will cause his voice to hitch and stutter like a computer’s audio would, as well as his eye LEDs flickering slightly. This would happen in an extreme stress situation, downloading large files of information, but most often when he climaxes in bed.

-Eddie has a very skewed sense of age, as he doesn’t age at all. He tends to always think of people having the same age and capabilities as when he met them, like continuing to see Zeki as a naive 23 year old.

I did not include every single one of my thoughts here but this is good enough for now I think! And if you have any explicit questions take them over to @strangeorganz !

#heartbreak gulch #eddie ramirez #eddie black eyes #strangetext

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multiverseofmisfits-backup · 9 months

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💥 Interdimensional Smash Brawl 💥

Pre-poll Period for MB-R4 and RB-R4

"Welcome back to the tournament, everyone! As we just entered the new year, we have new matches prepared for our remaining contestants as well.

For a recap, we have 6 teams left. The two of them will be fighting in the Main Bracket's final round while the remaining four teams will be in two matches in the Redemption Bracket.

As for the restrictions, they've all been lifted. That means summons are allowed at any desired number and fusions can be used as well.

Along that, we've also given our hosts in each match more authority in their respective stages. Aside from their own obstacles, we've also prepared additional contraptions that our hosts can use to bring more difficulty in the matches.

Though to our participating hosts, please be reminded not to use these obstacles to kill any of our contestants.

Thus, without any further ado, here are the teams in each match, along with their respective hosts, stage and obstacles that they might encounter during their fights."

Main Bracket - Final Round

Team A: Nanada Maroon and Vegeta (@lawain-dimensional-heroes)

Team B: Mori Calliope and Takanashi Kiara (@cutetubers)

Host: ???

Stage: Aaru's Shut

Additional Mechanism: Petrifying Cannons

There are 2 of these cannons present, set in the opposite sides of the stage, that fire at the same time when activated. When a fighter gets hit, they will be turned into stone momentarily. The host may indicate which are the targeted fighters (up to 2) when used and can only be activated twice.

While the artillery themselves are indestructible, their missiles can be destroyed using great force or similar. In addition, striking the petrified fighter will immediately break them free... but it might hurt them.

Redemption Bracket - Round 4

Match 1

Team A: Brown Bear and Wild Dog (@thesafaribaggirl-returns)

Team B: Baldwin and Sarmenti (@thebreakfastmuses)

Host: Violet (@team-vlts)

Stage: Corrupted Forest

Additional Mechanism: Paralyzing Mines

These mines are planted beneath the soils and will release a paralyzing gas once activated, making the fighters within its perimeter immobilized momentarily. The host may choose if it's towards specific fighters or everyone in the field and can only be used twice.

Match 2

Team A: No. 2 and No. 1 (@musekaiplex)

Team B: Kiana Kaslana and Son Goku (@ancicntforged)

Host: Kotaro (@musekaiplex)

Stage: Wilderness Gravemarker

Additional Mechanism: Get Cage'd

Whoever named this mechanism must've ran out of ideas. But as to how it functions, a claw will appear above the field and will capture a fighter that will be then trapped in an energy bubble for a moment. The host can only use this claw twice.

Once held captive, the fighter won't be able to use certain abilities for escape such as teleportation and portals. While the bubble itself is also indestructible, destroying the claw that holds it will immediately release the trapped fighter.

NOW, LET THE BATTLE BEGIN!"

"With these mechanisms set in these rounds, we'll see if all of our contestants will keep it up. Wish them the best of luck.

#*** former aztec goddess *** (quetzalcoatl / lucoa)#ISB RP Event

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fishing-lesbian-catgirl · 2 years

Note

Arknights asks: 12, 30!

12 Favorite operator of each class?

This is a fun one

Vanguard: my favorite by design is Scavenger, but I only ever actually run Flametail, Saileach, Siege, and Texas

Guard: Lappland without question. I love a girl who can ignore game mechanics with silences, attack enemies from far away, attack flying enemies, and be a feral lesbian

Defender: Asbestos no contest. Although most defenders are very gender, I would love to be the huge woman with a huge shield for my allies. Honorable mention to Hoshiguma, Liskarm, Ashlock, Aurora, and Nearl

Sniper: Meteorite. Ribbed sweater, big naturals, thigh highs, a combat skirt, tactical high heels, adorable horns, and a long range crossbow that fires armor-piercing explosives. She’s everything I want in a woman /want to be and more.

Caster: Eyjafjalla and Click are the ones I use most, but I really like Skyfire’s whole “rain down meteors upon my enemies” thing. Honorable mention to Amiya who I still think looks more like she has donkey ears than rabbit ears and Pudding for seemingly not realizing Closure was flirting with her and using “Pudding” as her actual operative name

Medic: my medic pool is very slim, all my 5 and 6 star medics were given to me by events or through the store, I’ve never pulled any of them. Perfumer is the one I use most, but Gavial is my favorite. Gay ass crocodile with a fat tail gf

Supporter: Glaucus, sea slug with anti-air arts damage that is also Arknights disability rep? Hell yeah. Also I think she and blue poison are gay which makes me like her even more. Also also her gimmick of being a supporter that does the job of some snipers but with arts damage is done that I very much enjoy.

Specialist: there’s too many good options. Spalter, Gladiia, Waai Fu, Kafka, Gravel (kissies), Kafka and a bunch more. Overall my favorite is probably Manticore because her niche is interesting and her gender is enviable

30 favorite skin?

Does Swimsuit Nearl pre-bulge nerf count? If not then I’m going to limit it to skins I actually have so that I don’t get too thirsty about Texas skins and instead go with the skin I kinda of have to say: fishing Vigna

Otherwise lappland with blood on her face

#arknights #ask game

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my-job-is-a-series-of-sidequests · 2 years

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As a certified Elder Geek, I have been exposed to gaming products over a lot of years. Many of them haven't aged well. But there is a special place in my heart for roasting things that someone, somewhere, should have asked some hard questions about before they ever saw print.

Welcome to the first installment of Elder Abominations, a look at old RPG books where they should have known better.

Our first contestant comes from fallen industry titan TSR, and comes with a little backstory. But first:. The cover!

Fuck yeah! Scary dude floating in space and smashing bubble helmets! And that other guy looks like a budget wolfman! I'm fuckin' sold!

So, the origins of the Buck Rogers XXVc roleplaying game are amazingly mercenary. To assist me, I shall call upon the credits to the book. Also, keep in mind that the people below worked on this book, and maybe could have thought things through. I'm not trying to divine their intentions behind the book, and make no claims about that. All I know is what's on the page.

That's 1990, which can only have been about fifteen years ago, right?

Oh, right, I forgot. Never do the math about how old you are.

In 1990, Gary Gygax had been forced out of TSR and Lorraine Williams was the new boss. There's a lot of backstory I'm eliding here because it's not germane to the issue at hand. (Also, there are books you can read! I'm currently reading The Game Wizards.)

Williams is relevant here because of something buried there in the credits. "Buck Rogers and XXVC are trademarks used under license from The Dille Family Trust." The Dille Family Trust owned the rights to Buck Rogers. And you know who one of the major beneficiaries of that trust was?

That's right, Lorraine Williams. She had TSR try to create a franchise so she could double dip on the profits. It was not a smashing success, but Younger Elder Geek me didn't know or care about any of that.

The franchise did spawn an RPG boxed set, a handful of sourcebooks and adventures, and a couple of Gold Box style computer games by SSI. Loved those.

I did (and still do, somewhere) have a copy of the box set, as well as today's victim. Pictures are from a PDF, because it's just easier.

The elevator pitch is great. "What if we did a kinda hard sci-fi version of Rayguns and Rocketships? The aesthetic is all fishbowl helmets and Cadillac fins on spaceships!" Fuckin' rad. And they just lifted the mechanics wholesale from AD&D, with THAC0, descending armor class and all.

But. This book.

Perhaps my fascist sense is a bit overdeveloped, but this book bothered even the Tiny Elder Geek. Let us just say that someone on the design team had opinions.

I will grab our examples from one small section of the book, because synecdoche. Here's a bunch of NPC groups your heroes can interact with!

Huh. The super-virtuous good guys are called the Libertarians. I'm sure that's just a bit of fluff. Let's take a look at this Green Earth group?

Oh, cool. Ecoterrorists. And, no. There is not a group of good guy environmentalists to work with. And these guys don't get along with...

Wait, what? The Sixth Fucking Reich? Okay, so they absolutely have to be bad guys, right? Everyone loves punching or shooting Nazis, right?

Um. "Realm of Earth to come?" They're... Space pirates? Known for... being good at pirating? No acknowledgement in any way that the name might raise eyebrows anywhere, ever? I am utterly baffled as to why anyone would choose to do that, ever, in a published product.

No, I'm sorry. That is a lie. I know pre-fucking-cisely why someone would choose to do that.

Also, behold the art. Good enough, except for the fact that it definitely previously appeared in the core set. You know, the books you would absolutely need to have in order to use this book for your game? And, also, definitely not in line with that raygun aesthetic.

Last picture, I promise. We need a moustache-twirling villain. Dude needs a name. I'm sure it's a very subtle reference that...

Oh.

All of that in a mere ten pages of this book. Commies and hippies bad, rugged Libertarians good, and Nazis? Meh, they're okay.

I highlight this because this shit is pernicious. Unlike RPGs of today, this shit was squarely aimed at kids. This is stuff that gets in your head to help form your politics before you have a grasp of what politics even is.

And, while it's among the worst I've seen from TSR, it's not the worst I've ever seen. Perhaps that will be another day.

#XXVc #Elder Abominations #rpgs #antifascism #0/7 do not recommend

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alexthegamingboy · 1 month

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Toonami Weekly Recap 08/17/2024

Rick and Morty: The Anime EP#01 - Girl Who Manipulates Time: The Galatic Federation is about to destroy a planet giving up all means of armed confrontation, but it is interrupted as Summer hacks into their spaceship systems. The story jumps to a timepoint which the Galatic Federation abducts Rick from the Smith family. They are seeking for his new invention that can reduce time entropy and reverse time flow. This Rick turns out to be a dummy arranged with the help of Summer, and the real Rick is at somewhere else tracking down his enemy along with Space Beth. Meanwhile, Morty is using a virtual reality gaming device given by Rick in his room, and enters into simulation of multiple universes all at once. He uses different tactics against his first enemies; may or may not be saved from an attacking monster; encounters a girl named Elle, a man named Frank or a Rick losing his Morty; may or may not be clear that the game world he experiences is fictional; treasures the Nander Dragon's tear gifted from Elle or Frank; lives an ordinary life or serves as the President until his death; and may or may not have a touching reunion with Frank or Elle. As Rick is returning home to pick up Morty, Summer terminates Morty's simulation in the end, while he is reuniting with Elle.

Post-credits scene: Cronenberg versions of Morty and Elle recreates the reunion scene, before they are both hunted down by Jerry Prime as food.

Demon Slayer: Swordsmith Village Arc EP#02 (46) - Yoriichi Type Zero: Tanjiro tries to defend the boy from Muichiro but is knocked unconscious for interfering. The boy, Kotetsu, explains that the "man" he saw is actually a mechanical training doll, built during the Sengoku period. Made by his ancestors, it is his only heirloom. Tanjiro agrees to protect it but they find Muichiro’s training has caused severe damage. After Kotetsu discovers it remains functional, he orders Tanjiro to train with it and surpass the arrogant Muichiro. However, training proves harsh as Kotetsu denies Tanjiro food and water when he fails to improve. When he faints from exhaustion, Tanjiro imagines himself in the afterlife and sees a peculiar stone in the Sanzu River, enabling him to detect attacks pre-emptively. He lands a powerful blow on the doll's head, which reveals a concealed sword.

-Toonami Rewind Shows-

Sailor Moon EP#16 - A Girl's Dream: Usagi Becomes a Bride: Usagi's home economics teacher is getting married, and she and Rei become obsessed with a contest for handmade wedding dresses. Nephrite implants a monster in some fabric purchased by the bride-to-be.

Sailor Moon EP#17 - Usagi's a Model: The Flash of the Monster Camera: A student from Rei's school is an expert photographer. She and others try to become models to attract fame and fortune, but the boy and his camera are under the influence of the Dark Kingdom.

Slightly Damned Page 1129: https://www.sdamned.com/comic/1129

#Toonami #Toonami Weekly Recap #Rick and Morty #Rick and Morty: The Anime #First Episode #Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba #Demon Slayer 2 #Swordsmith Village Arc #Sailor Moon #slightly damned

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nitrosodiumrapidproto · 4 months

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Looking at Bullet Hells

I'm not such a fan of this genre, since the games often lend themselves to high skill levels and punishing gameplay loops. Not only that, but they are often intertwined with the roguelike genre, and the idea of dying over and over with minimal upgrades seems more akin to chiseling my way out of a prison cell rather than a fast-paced adventure. Still, some of them are quite good.

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Ikaruga is a vertical bullet hell with some very interesting ideas. You are in a ship called the Ikaruga, and you face two kinds of enemies: white and black. You can switch the polarities, and you are immune to an enemy if you are the same colour (i.e. a black enemy cannot damage a black Ikaruga). The game is insanely fast, and there are no interludes or stat screens between levels. It just keeps going and going, and I think that constant momentum is a unique point for the game. The designers planned the levels around a "mountain and valley" meta loop where the action would switch between crescendos and building tension. The level backgrounds are these sweeping shots of pre-rendered areas, like gargantuan industrial facilities or forest vistas. Enemy squadrons can appear from below, before moving to the foreground. The actual designs are also very interesting, almost resembling crabshells with a lot of curved and rounded elements. There is also some kind of story, told to the player through brief (and I mean brief) text interludes between areas. From what I understand, you are some sort of freedom fighter, piloting the Ikaruga against a caste of world conquerors armed with the power of the gods. The game is overall very polished, and the unique element would be the polarity-switching mechanic.

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Smash TV is a game I have heard a little of. It was compared to Serious Sam by Civvie 11, and now I can see why. The plot is simple: in the year 1999, there is a game show called Smash TV, and you're the newest contestant. You fight through rooms of enemies who come at you in hordes, from bat-wielding goons to fat guys with bombs strapped to their chests. There are also enemies with guns, and dodging all the projectiles and thugs running your way gets hectic. The game has an interesting aesthetic - you're constantly reminded you're on a game show as you cross backstage areas between each level, crowds cheer when you kill enemies, and the sleazy host pops up in the corner occasionally to goad you on or quote Robocop. The pure chaos of the combat is definitely the unique selling point of the game; enemies explode into gibs when you blast them, and the insurmountable hordes make the game progressively more challenging in the arcade style of ramping difficulty. It's quite an interesting idea for a game and something I would check out in my own time.

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Vampire Survivors is an interesting sort of bullet hell - it's not fast or frantic, rather the skill comes from target prioritization and knowing how to kill off the hordes of bloodsucking legions before they get to you. It takes place in rural Italy, and as the name would suggest, you find yourself besieged by every sort of classical monster, ironically except vampires. Your player attacks automatically, and you get permanent character upgrades to make the fight easier in the vein of a roguelike. Interestingly the "bullets" aren't so much the projectiles as they are the enemies, beelining towards you as they did in Smash TV. Some have called this a "bullet heaven" game since you do most of the gratuitous projectile-slinging, but as I mentioned above, dodging is still a key element in the game so I think it fits. The unique selling point would be the slower gameplay and roguelike focus, since it is less demanding of your reflexes.

Undertale is an RPG foremost, but its combat system lends itself to the bullet hell genre. You have options to FIGHT (just start swinging, which will earn you XP but set you on the Genocide route), ACT (which can lead you to spare a monster for the Pacifist route), ITEM (mostly for healing yourself) or MERCY (options for sparing or running away). Between your turns, you enter the enemy's turn, where you move a heart in a box and avoid oncoming projectiles. Some enemies have unique attacks that require you to be still, and they can change the properties of your heart so it can't move but has a shield, or is affected by gravity, or can only move along set lines. Usually bullet hells priorities the player moving wherever they want to avoid projectiles, but Undertale is interesting in that it literally puts the player in the box, and plays with their abilities to dodge projectiles movement-wise rather than just putting more projectiles in. The unique selling point of Undertale itself is the meta-fictional story elements.

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Touhou is a game I had vaguely heard of before. You play as one of two characters who I believe are some sort of priestesses, and levels consist of linear waves of enemies which throw projectiles at you in rhythmic motions. You are constantly firing, and the game requires incredibly tight precision to dodge between the volleys of bubbles headed your way. Bosses usually have massively intricate projectile patterns, almost resembling mandalas, and you have just enough space to avoid them. The artstyle is curious and somewhat implacable, though it uses an anime-esque style for all the characters. The levels themselves are usually featureless, save for the spirals of magic crystals headed your way. The unique selling point I think is the high level of skill required, and the music, which is very distinctive and unique for each stage.

SUMMARY:

Bullet hell games usually require high skill levels, and as such, have repetitive player death as a common game loop. This is why they go hand-in-hand with the roguelike genre, which treats death not as a factory reset button but an important point of progression where the player goes back to the start with new skills and some new mechanics at their disposal. Undertale is more merciful, as the focus isn't on the fight system mechanically, meanwhile Smash TV revels in its chaos so that you inevitably die and put another quarter into the machine. I like games that use every aspect of the player experience in one cohesive loop (i.e. death/game end not being the end of the meta loop) but the skill required is too much for me usually.

If I had to change one thing about most bullet hells, it would be their difficulty. The constant cycle of death isn't appealing to me, and bullet hells as a whole either attract a more masochistic brand of games who like the difficulty, or hardcore roguelike fans who have invested so much time into the game that death is no longer a setback. I am neither of these, and so it makes the genre frustrating and impenetrable.

#game development #gamedev #nitrosodium #devlog #youtube #indiegamedev

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theseventhoffrostfall · 2 years

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Honestly, while I wasn't really impressed by the Vaults in Fallout 4, I liked the idea of Vault 111 a lot. The idea of someone waking up after what they feel was only a few hours and finding out it's been 200 years since the nukes went off and society is radically different is a fun concept. You could even have a trait or something that gives you bonuses when you're wearing pre-war clothes and eating pre-war food but penalizes you for wearing post-War clothes and eating post-war food, just to name one idea.

In my perfect Fallout 4, you wake up out of the pod same as in-game. You have no Shaun to look for, no dead spouse, it's just you. You're the only one awake out of everyone in the Vault. No one's dead, they're just still asleep and you can't wake them up. Someone or something has overridden the cyropod controls, but has chosen you seemingly at random to wake up.

From there, you're free to leave the Vault and search for answers, or look for a way to reawaken your fellow Pre-War ice buddies, or just try to survive. No matter what, you're suggested to try and head downtown to the "Institute," this super-advanced oasis where these scientists live to see if they can help you.

I'll go on with my rambling later, but what's your thoughts? Also, hope you're doing good, brother

Yeah, I'm doing good, just lost power for a few days there.

Yeah, honestly, I think one of the few things everyone agrees on is that the whole "you have a spouse, find your shithead kid" angle of the story was the worst part (in a story where 'worst part' is highly contested) and kind of overpowers everything else that could be interesting about being a pre-war citizen suddenly living in a burned and wrecked hellworld.

Hell, if we're talking traits, you could also work in a background system. Like yeah, maybe your dude is a military vet who fought at Anchorage or whatever, and that gives you chunky combat bonuses, or maybe you're a mechanical engineer or a chemist or accomplished lawyer/diplomat/assorted talky type; in any case you have some skill that correlates to a playstyle and a reason they'd want you in the vault. I wouldn't honestly have minded if they went full Elder Scrolls with it and your "occupation" was like your race/class, with sizeable stat bonuses, a unique perk, and maybe a piece of decent starting equipment.

If nothing else, it'd make Vault-Tec seem more believable as a scummy, evil company where yes they're doing these cruel experiments but at the same time, if a decent chunk of the vault actually wakes up from cryo, you would indeed have the makings of a functioning colony.

Actually, You could sort of spin that into its own whole B plot, in this general tension between the common wastelanders, the institute (whether shadowy in my idea or a known surface presence in yours) and the encroaching raider armies. Vault 111 was a Talent Fridge for other vaults in the region to access as needed; if one vault needed a decorated NCO to help train their security force and militia into a competent fighting force, or another vault needed a biochemist to help crops grow in the poor soil their new surface settlement had access to. The Protagonist is woken up by someone hoping to unbalance the current spycrafty-secret-treasure-hunt among the various major factions, who are all trying to headhunt some of the Old World's top talent on a large scale

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tittathin · 2 years

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The 1.4.0.1 update, named Journey's End, is a major update that was released on May 16, 2020. The release occurred on Terraria's 9th anniversary, with being the original release date. It has been declared by Re-Logic staff as the final major feature update to Terraria. Until June 10, 2019, the update was announced to be released as 1.3.6. Added Journey Mode, a brand new world and character difficulty mode that offers unprecedented control over the way you play.Added Master Mode, a new highest difficulty surpassing that of Expert.įeatures unique powers such as item duplication, weather control, spawn rate and difficulty sliders, and more.Test your skills against even harder challenges, and be rewarded with some unique rewards from each boss. Added two brand new bosses to seek out and challenge: Queen Slime and Empress of Light.Added the Bestiary, an encyclopedia of the enemies, allies, and critters you encounter on your journey.Added Golf, a new fun pastime for when you want to take a break from all the monster slaying.Added Windy Day weather, along with various ambient effects and even some enemies.Added Town Pylons and NPC Happiness, an expansion on the town system that culminates with the ability to build a teleportation network to towns around the world.Officially adding Texture Pack support, which now has its own option in the main menu.Added RGB Lighting to the game for Razer, Corsair, and Logitech hardware.Added Block Swap, a mechanic that allows the player to replace pre-existing blocks with new ones, without having to mine them up first.

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Terraria now has a brand new series of intro splash screens and an intro sequence.Īs a bonus, this also allows you to swap Chests and Dressers, while keeping the chest inventory intact!.Added a variety of Fruits that can be found from hitting trees.Īdded a Hardmode Desert Chest and Biome Key.Updated the Ocean biome with some new variations.Added seaweed plants, which can grow at the bottom of the Ocean.Added a unique underground layer background when in the Ocean.Added some new rare shell variants, as well as Shell Piles.Added several new moon appearance variations.Added several new glowing moss biome variants.Added a substantial number of new mapscreen backgrounds.Added a variety of new structure changes to the Dungeon.Added flower patches, ore veins and a few other surface microbiomes.Added natural flowers to the Jungle, Crimson, Corruption, and Hallow.Added new Granite, Marble, Living Tree and Desert rubble piles to those biomes.Added new paintings to Underground Desert houses, done by the testers!.The Underground Desert now has some structural changes, new loot, and a variety of new threats.Added the ability for the player character to blink, close their eyes, or squint, as circumstances call for it.Added new falling star animations in the sky.Added a chance for meteor showers, which dramatically increase falling star rates.Added uncommon thunderstorm ambient weather.Added a new celebratory event after defeating a boss or invasion for the first time.Added a variety of ambient background objects in the sky.Added a new achievement to craft a workbench.Added a Recommended Achievement icon to guide the player.Added a number of new minimap border options.Added two new Health/Mana Bar style options.Adding loading screen informative help text when generating worlds.Added completely overhauled character and world creation menus.Added an entirely new title theme, Journey's End.Added music boxes for all of the newly introduced tracks.Added themes from the cancelled Terraria: Otherworld.Long overdue, the winning track of Terraria's music contest by Xenon and DJ Sniper has been implemented as a music box!.Added two new hardmode bosses, Empress of Light and the Queen Slime.Added two new mini bosses, the Blood Eel and the Dreadnautilus.Added several Blood Moon fishing enemies.Added a few other enemies to several different biomes, such as Mushroom and Underground.Added wild friendly Fairies, as well as fairy logs.Added Gold Goldfish and several other Gold Critters.Added the NPC Happiness system based on where and who they live with.Added Town Pylons, an easy method of transport between established towns.Added Cat, Dog, and Bunny Town Pet NPCs.Added new dialogue and names and removed some possible NPC names.Added Blood Moon fishing, a dangerous pastime filled with new enemies and new rewards.Added Oasis fishing and a number of new items from it, such as a fishing rod.

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inventors-fair · 2 years

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Focused Brews: Words of Power Winners ~

Raucous and uproarious applause for this week's winners, @casualcranium, @railway-covidae, and @yd12k!

Pitlord's Banquet - @casualcranium

Now *this* is a concoction. There's just something that feels right about this interpretation of Brew, as a sort of joyous offspring of Exploit and Delirium. It very much captures this sort of Mad-Scientist-Throwing-Everything-Into-a-Pot-To-See-What-Works energy that just feels like precisely the thing I'd want out of a mechanic with such a name. The card itself being this delightful tutor effect which requires you to toss out similar components to get new ones only helps further cement the flavor here. If there was ever a Magic card equivalent of a home run, this is probably just about it. I want this card to exist, so that I can play it, and I think that is more endorsement than anything else I could possibly say on this matter. Excellent work all around.

Gilded Cavalier - @railway-covidae

Initially I was reticent to give this submission too much love, but it gradually grew on me. While memory issues are certainly a thing one might need to worry about when considering an effect like this, which could potentially have you looking back several turns to determine a value, I think it just kind of works? If you're playing this card in your deck, you're probably going to be prepared to track your Order number anyway, and you don't really have to start worrying about that until you play a card which cares about Order, and that card is almost certainly going to furnish you with a new Order Number regardless. Waning concerns about memory issues aside, I love the actual effect here. Caring specifically about casting spells in descending order of mana value is precisely the sort of twist on standard Magic gameplay that I like to see, and I love that it gives a sort of natural cap to the amount of chaining spells together you can do, before you Play A Big Thing and start the whole process over again. The only thing that really feels out of place on this card is the 'during your turn' constraint, seems a bit of a strange inclusion on a card with two colors with the highest density of flash creatures, but that feels at worst like a very small blemish on an otherwise pristine knight in shining armor.

Binding Ropes - @yd12k

This may be a bit of a self-indulgent selection, but frankly, culling the winners and runners-up down from twenty-six entries to just six this week was an absolutely arduous process (Y’all did not make my life easy this week), so I think allowing myself a little treat isn't too out of the question. Not that this card and mechanic don't do plenty to hold their own. The upkeep-sacrifice trigger feels like a far more elegant solution to the Armor of Thorns problem than anything Armor of Thorns ever did, and I feel like that's worth commending if nothing else. The fact that it also potentially inadvertently opened new design space, by allowing this Claustrophobia to also just be a small freeze, feels like icing on a delicious Magic card flavored cake*. While I do have some mild mechanic density concerns, given that this ability only seems to go on enchantments, and because noncreature slots in a Magic set are very frequently a constricting factor, I feel you've more than adequately demonstrated the range of effects this mechanic could theoretically go on, and all it really requires of a set is a higher-than-average enchantment density, so it definitely gets a pass from me. Overall, a very solid entry in a contest with a very stiff level of competition

*The Inventors Fair neither endorses nor recommends eating the delicious cards.

That's about all I have to say about the winners, I think. Runners will arrive at some indeterminate point in the very near future, followed by general commentary, which will occur at an slightly less determinate but still not especially far off point in the future. See you all then! -@starch255

#mtg #magic the gathering #Inventor's Fair #custom magic card #pre-named mechanics contest #winners #commentary

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choosepiner · 2 years

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It doesn’t have the deepest city building mechanic, and the simplified combat leaves something to be desired, but when put together the two halves make for a largely enjoyable experience. Only now you have to deal with training troops and defending your territory as well. You still build up a city, harvest resources, and create goods. In a lot of ways it’s Trade Nations with turn-based combat. And with Battle Nations, developer Z2Live has done something very similar. With Empires & Allies, Zynga essentially took the CityVille template and added combat to it. The lush landscape of the fantasy world of Teyvat combine with the anime influences popular in Japanese mobile games to create a unique fusion of the two styles.Īs the developers have explored the story and world of the game heavily in pre-release contents, we're excited to see more of the lore and complete layout of the world upon the game's release.Battle Nations adds guns to Trade Nations, but removes the personality Genshin Impact received substantial press with a label of “Breath of the Wild but anime”, but this is not necessarily a drawback. For those who love Anime and Beautiful Graphics

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Now, with Genshin Impact, miHoYo expands to a new level with a PS4 release and fully-open world game design. Although these titles weren't marketed as strongly overseas, miHoYo has already made a name for themselves with the Japanese gaming public. Genshin Impact is the newest release from miHoYo, creators of popular mobile gacha titles “Honkai Gakuen” and “Honkai Impact 3rd”. Geo Resonance and Zhongli Buff AnnouncementĪbout Genshin Impact From the Creators of Honkai Impact Survey with 30,000 Mora Reward (October 22, 2020)

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Update 2.8 Release Date & Patch Notes Past Version Updates and News Gensin Impact Past Version Updates and News Latest News & Game Info List of Game Info Guides Genshin Impact 3.1 Updates and News Genshin Impact Game Info All News and Game Info Genshin Impact Message Boards All Message BoardsĪll Message Boards List of Message Boards Discussion Board List of Artifacts List of Artifact Sets Deepwood Memories List of Weapons by Type All Weapons by Type List of Weapons List of Weapons by Rarity All Weapons by Rarity Wanderlust Invocation Wanderlust Invocation Wish DetailsĪll Gacha Guides Genshin Impact Weapons All Weapons List of Current Gachas All Current WishesĪdrift in the Harbor Adrift in the Harbor Wish Details Spiral Abyss Guide Spiral Abyss Floor Guides Spiral Abyss Floors Genshin Impact Spiral Abyss Spiral Abyss Guides List of Domains Domain Walkthroughs & Guides Mondstadt Domains List of Bosses Weekly Bosses Stormterror DvalinĪll Quests and Quest Types List of Quest Types Quests Genshin Impact Bosses All Boss Fights Guides

What to Spend Genesis Crystals On | Currency Guide.

Which Main Character Should You Choose?.

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How to Change the Main Character's Name.How to Increase Friendship Level | Companionship EXP.How to Solve the Luhua Pool Fire Puzzle.Secrets, Exploits, and Tricks to Make Your Life Easier.Artifact Farming Routes and Artifact Leveling Guide.Which Fate Item Should You Trade Primogems For?.How to Get More Acquaint Fate and Intertwined Fate.How to Get the Best Artifact Stats and Substats.List of Current & Upcoming Events Genshin Impact Hot Articles Latest Genshin Impact Updates Tune into our list of Genshin Impact events to know all the current and upcoming in-game events, web events, and contests! New and Upcoming Characters All Current Event Guides "Plenilune Gaze" Ganyu Fan Art Contest Alhaitham, Dehya, and Nahida aren't confirmed as playable yet, but they already play a big part in the Sumeru storyline. New and Upcoming Characters More Sumeru Characters Coming Click to view Character Guides!ĭori will be released in Phase 2 of Version 3.0 while Candace, Cyno, and Nilou will be released in Version 3.1. Stay on top of all character news with our guide! Graven Innocence Event Guide More Sumeru Characters Coming Click to view Character Guides!Ĭandace, Cyno, and Nilou will be released in Version 3.1.

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Play through the event for Primogems and a free Collei! Graven Innocence is a new event that takes place in Genshin Impact's new Sumeru region.

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adobe-outdesign · 3 years

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Reviews of All Scrapped Spaceword Betas

Exactly what it says in the title. This is also for my reference, as I might redesign some of these later for funsies.

I’m only including Pokemon that were 100% scrapped (we’re not here to argue what might have become what) and aren’t evos/pre-evos of existing Pokemon. Also, I’m using the English fan-translations for the names because I don’t speak Japanese.

Flambear/Volbear/Dynabear

Our original fire starter, and yeah, I can see why this was scrapped. For starters (heh), it looks more like a rodent that evolves into a lion than anything resembling a bear. And secondly... it doesn’t really have a clear focus, nor a memorable design. It’s just kind of a rodent-bear thing with flames tacked onto it.

The best Pokes usually have a "catch” to them, and these guys lack that. For example, this got replaced by Cyndaquil, which has the concept of flaming spikes that form out of its back. That’s memorable. This, well, isn’t.

Possible reason for being scrapped: Lack of focus/interesting design

Pokes to fill the void: Teddiursa and Ursaring are probably the closest in terms of being bears. Something about it also reminds me of Growlithe/Arcanine, probably because it’s a fluffy fire thing that evolves into a bigger fluffy fire thing with a mane and black markings.

Cruz/Aqua/Aquaria

This has the same problem as the Flambear line, just less extreme. It’s okay, being a little plesiosaur that evolves into a bigger plesiosaur, but it also lacks an interesting catch to it. The pearls are maybe something, but they’re not really emphasized, just kind of tacked on. Plus Dragonair kind of has the crystal neck ornaments on lock. And the horn. And the underbelly. And the water theme...

Whoops.

I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to a plesiosaur water starter in the future, but it would probably have to be completely redesigned.

Possible reason for being scrapped: Lack of focus/interesting design; too similar to Dragonair

Pokes to fill the void: Dragonair, as mentioned above. If you want a plesiosaur, Lapras is always a thing.

Putting the rest under the cut for length.

Sunmola1/Anchorage/Grotess

This is one of the most chaotic beta evolutions out there, aside from beta Girafarig. I can see the resemblance between Sunmola1 and Anchorage to some extent--counter-shaded blue fish with two fins and a short body--but the anchor part of the evolution comes out of nowhere. Then it sporadically turns into a gulper eel, which has nothing to do with the previous two evolutions at all.

I’ve heard some people suggest that Sunmola1 basically gets dragged into the depths and turns into a deep-sea creature due to its anchor, which is a fantastic idea. However, if that’s what they were going for here it’s not really clear, and I think it could be executed much better.

Individually, Sumola1 is a little plain. Not terrible, but I think they could do something more interesting with the little head thing. Anchorage is memorable, but there’s something very un-Pokemonish about it. I think it’s just the fact that it’s basically cut in half--I keep expecting the backsprite to show its organs or something. Grotess is also a bit too plain.

It’s also worth noting that at some point, this was the evolutionary line, which is more consistent but much less interesting (save for the middle evo’s eyes, which are pretty great).

Possible reason for being scrapped: Lack of evolutionary consistency; some designs plain or not very fitting for Pokemon

Pokes to fill the void: Alomomola is a sunfish Pokemon. Sharpedo is a shark crossed with an object, and Grotess almost certainly became Huntail and Gorebyss.

Rinring/Bellboyant

These two... are pretty good. They have a simple catch--black cats with bells--and the designs are nicely executed and memorable.

If I had one complaint, it’s that they maybe seems a tad unfocused in the backend of things. They’re dark types, but have a bunch of “cutesy” moves, and it’s not clear why’d they be dark apart from being black cats. They seem to have a magical girl vibe (Bellboyant looks a bit like Luna from Sailor Moon, which is probably not a coincidence), which also has nothing to do with the bells or the dark theme. I do think that the designs themselves are fine though, and that if you just focused on the sound concept a hair more you’d have a pretty great Pokemon.

Possible reason for being scrapped: Not entirely sure, these definitely would’ve been popular. Might’ve just been a balancing thing, or it lost the dev popularity contest.

Pokes to fill the void: Skitty kind of has the same vibe as Rinring. They also remind me a bit of the Meowth line, being cat Pokemon with metal attached to them. The Purrloin line takes over the “dark-type cat” aspect.

Bomseel

I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, it’s a very plain looking Pokemon. The idea of it balancing a fireball/bomb on its nose instead of a ball is clever and memorable enough... except that it’s dependent on it being on that pose. It can’t balance that 24/7, and once it stops all you’re left with is a plain sea lion with dark points.

However, it’s fire/water. The only fire/water we have right now is a legendary, so it would be sweet to have one that’s just a regular poke. So it’s not that the concept itself is bad, using a water-based animal and adding a fire type; it’s just more that the execution is lackluster. Give this guy a hook not related to the fireball and make the seal itself more interesting and I think you’d have something here.

Possible reason for being scrapped: Lack of interesting design

Pokes to fill the void: Volcanion is our only fire/water Pokemon for now. In terms of seals/sea lions with a circus theme, Popplio is a decent enough match.

Tigrette/Electiger

Someone at Gamefreak hates tigerballs, because this line was planned for Gen 1, scrapped, then planned for Gen 2 and scrapped again. Which is strange, because while it’s not the best design it’s not bad either. It’s very very cute, and could definitely find an audience.

However, I’m not really sure what the premise is here. If it’s based on tiger clay bells, then it doesn’t really play into the bell theme much at all. And if it’s not... why is it so round? It’s not that the roundness is bad, but it would usually form the hook for this Pokemon, like it collects static electricity in its fur that makes it puff out or something. Maybe some dex descriptions would’ve made this clearer, who knows.

Also, Electiger is literally the exact same design as Tigrette, just bigger. It would either need a completely new final evolution or would need to show up as a single evo.

While that sounds harsh, I do really like this design. Fix the evo, figure out/build on the hook of it being round or bell like, and maybe refine the markings a touch and it would be pretty perfect.

Possible reason for being scrapped: Not sure. Might’ve been too similar to Pikachu (both being yellow round electric type Pokemon with zig-zag tails, and og fat Pikachu was also very round). The need to rework the evolution also might’ve turned GameFreak off of it.

Pokes to fill the void: Spheal and Rowlet are both pleasantly round. Pikachu is cute and electric themed in a similar way. In terms of tigers, Raikou is also electric-type. The exact way the stripes are done here is also very similar to Litten.

Kurstraw/Pangshi

GameFreak. GameFreak, you are telling me that we almost had a voodoo-doll Pokemon based off of Ushi-no-Toki-Mairi that evolves into a fucking jiangshi panda?? You are killing me here.

A few interesting things to note here:

Kurstraw evolves at level 1. How? Why? No idea. It could just be a placeholder, but...

The fact that Kurstraw was set to have Curse as its signature move (then called “nail”) and that it only learned this move at level 100 makes it evolving at level 1 seem intentional.

To make things more confusing, it almost seems like (and this is speculation on my part) GameFreak’s intention was to encourage players to not evolve this thing. Stats are comparable, Kurstraw only gets its signature move if you level it up to where it can’t evolve, and Kurstraw has the better moveset (getting frigging destiny bond at lv. 16, while Pangshi gets... splash (which. makes more sense when you consider it’s called “hop” in Japan but it’s still useless). If that was what they were aiming for, then that’s a really unique mechanic that would really make this poke stand out.

Design wise, Kurstraw is... well, it’s a doll with a nail rammed through it. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not very Pokemon-ish. Meanwhile, Pangshi is maybe a little too much like a Jianshi rather than being reminiscent of one, right down to the little hat. The pose, fangs, and panda colors (which resemble Jiangshi mandarin robes) are more than enough to get the hook across.

What I really love about these two are the expressions. They are just like, so dissonantly happy. Kurstraw is literally like

and Pangshi has the dead-eyed thousand-yard stare of Espurr, except unlike Espurr it looks completely and utter deranged. It looks like if this Pokemon ended up in Mystery Dungeon, it would respond to every question with “my favorite color is blood”. Amazing.

Possible reason for being scrapped: I think these two might’ve been scrapped just because they were too scary. I mean, it’s a voodoo doll impaled on a giant nail that evolves into a literal actual corpse. The implied violence was probably just a bit much for GameFreak.

The reason I think this is, beside the fact that they have fairly solid designs, good hooks, and all of their stats and moves in place, most beta Pokemon have had their premises revisited at some point. But we’ve really never gotten a voodoo doll Pokemon since this, and we definitely haven’t gotten any jiangshi Pokemon either, which suggests the problem lied in the very concept rather than the execution.

Pokes to fill the void: People say that Kurstraw was reworked into Banette, but if anyone Pokemon resembles it to be, it would actually be Mimikyu. They both have cloth bodies with drawn-on smiley faces that resemble something cuter than them and they both want to curse you for existing.

For Pangshi... well, there’s Pancham if you’re looking for tiny pandas. If you’re after a jiangshi though, you’re out of luck.

Wolfman/Warwolf

This Pokemon has a great hook. I mean, a Pokemon that wears a pelt that transforms it into a werewolf? Hell yeah. Not to mention it might be a reference to an obscure Nordic tale about people donning wolf pelts to turn into wolves for ten days.

Design wise, it... well, Wolfman looks almost exactly like Venonat. I’m not the only one who sees this, right?

That aside, I think the idea could be played up a little more. Wolfman is fine, save for its Venonat-ishness, but Warwolf doesn’t do much for me, basically just being a larger version with claws and fangs. If the idea is that it turns into a werewolf by wearing the pelt, what if its evolution looked somewhat like a wolf? Or better yet, the actually body of the thing changes to fill the wolf skin more, so it looks like its a part of it? That would really elevate this Pokemon to a new level.

Possible reason for being scrapped: I’d guess that it’s the same problem as Kurstraw and Pangshi--too scary. I mean, that is a dead pelt of some kind, which means that it killed and skinned some kind of Pokemon, and that’s not getting into questions of what Pokemon they got that from.

It’s also worth noting that when we did finally get a werewolf Pokemon via Lycanroc, it was minus the pelt concept.

Pokes to fill the void: Lycanroc as our werewolf Pokemon. In terms of design, Venonat is very similar as noted above. And something about it really reminds me of Snorunt, being little critters with glowing eyes that wear a cloak of some kind and live in the cold (this line was ice-type).

#pokemon #pkmn #beta pokemon #pokemon gold and silver #pokemon gen 2 #outdesign posts things #god this ended up a lot longer than I intended it to #anyway I hope you enjoyed me rambling about concept art for 2k words

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laurelnose · 3 years

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Very New to your blog and the posts are probably way old but I saw you do Witcher Biology (??) rants sometimes and Id love to hear your take, if you have one, on what monsters (namely "naturally occurring" ones like draconids and insectoids) contribute to the ecosystem if anything and whether or not they should be hunted into extinction. I was discussing it w/ a friend last night after dealing with Iocaste, the last silver basilisk, and now its smthn I'm Invested in

re monster ecosystems: I just figure theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans but because theyve got no natural predators aside from eachother and arent hunted by anything but witchers , monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ? Ive little knowledge on the subject as a whole but the whole thing intrigues me

hi & extremely belated welcome, anon! my apologies for the length of time you’ve been waiting for this answer; I had to think carefully about how I wanted to respond to this ask, because: there’s a lot going on here. also, because I am a disaster, I ended up posting it to ao3 first while I was avoiding tumblr for a spell and then completely forgot to come back. oops. i’m sorry!! This one’s about 5000 words long, which is a lot for tumblr, so reading on AO3 may be preferable.

The two main thrusts of your first ask (how do monsters interact with the ecosystem and should they be eradicated from the Continent) are questions of invasion ecology, the study of non-native/invasive species and their effects on the environment. Monsters, having arrived on the Continent about 1200 years ago during the Conjunction of Spheres from entirely alien dimensions, are indeed technically non-native species!

However, invasion ecology is…somewhat controversial, to say the least—there are a lot of invasive species, who have a lot of different & complex impacts, and a lot of different ideas about what we might do about any of this, and it’s basically all arguing all the time, so I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to approach the topic. Not to mention that for reasons I couldn’t initially put my finger on, it seemed wrong to apply theories of invasion ecology to the Witcher monsters. We’ll get into it! There are also a couple of common misconceptions/oversimplifications of how ecology works in your second ask which I want to unpack. Hopefully I pulled this together into something that makes sense, and feel free to ask me for clarification!

Some important background facts:

Species have always been moving to and “invading” new places on their own; humans and globalization have accelerated this process into a Big Problem, as the sheer number of invasive species being introduced all over the globe strains ecosystems already under pressure, but “native ranges” are always shifting, sometimes more dramatically than you might expect. If you go far enough back in time, all species are “non-native”.

Because of this, the very definition of “invasive species” is hotly contested. This is why you’ll hear dozens of terms like introduced species, injurious species, naturalized species, non-native species, etc.; these all have slightly different connotations, but all refer to a species that did not originate in a particular location.

An introduced species is usually classified as “invasive” as opposed to “non-native” or “naturalized” if its presence significantly alters the ecosystem it invades; some people define this more narrowly as a species that causes harm to an ecosystem. “Harm” can take a lot of different forms, as every non-native species interacts differently with the ecosystem they were introduced to.

Aside from various potential impacts to human economic activity, most forms of ecological harm by introduced species involve the decline of native species, by a variety of mechanisms; invaders might eat natives, outcompete them for food, interbreed with them, carry novel pathogens, etc. Invasive species are primarily a threat to biodiversity.

Now, here’s my Hot Take:

The Conjunction of Spheres is analogous to real-life ecological cataclysms such as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, and thus monsters are not invasive species.

The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event saw the extinction of 75% of all species on Earth after the Chicxulub asteroid hit, including the non-avian dinosaurs. The Earth has had several disasters like this, of varying severity—the Great Oxidation Event killed almost literally everything on Earth except for the cyanobacteria who caused it. These cataclysmic extinction events completely upended existing ecosystems, altering habitats beyond recognition and leaving swathes of niches emptied of life that the survivors could evolve to exploit.

The most recent Conjunction of Spheres on the Continent is supposed to have thrown everyone living on the planet at the time into chaos and darkness; it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the interpenetration of multiple spheres caused mass extinction of species living in the pre-Conjunction environment, similar to Chicxulub or the GOE!

But Socks, you might say, evolution works on a massive timescale! It took millions of years to fill the niches left open by Chicxulub, but it’s only been 1200 years since the Conjunction of Spheres! And you are absolutely right*, but the Conjunction of Spheres canonically came pre-loaded with new species. We actually have no proof that any of the animals we see originated on the Continent: if humans are a post-Conjunction phenomenon, why not also dogs? Why not bears? Who’s to say any of those were actually there before-hand? (The elves, I guess, but as they have not, actually, said so, there’s no proof!!)

* FTR, 1200 years is a shockingly short period of time to go from cataclysm that plunged the world into darkness and chaos to functioning medieval-era society considering how long it actually took humanity to build 13 century Europe (horses had been domesticated for at least 3000 years by that time), even if we’re not assuming that most of the ecosystem was destroyed, so, my timeline concerns here are minimal, lmfao. TIMELINE WHAT TIMELINE.

…and actually now that I think about it the three options for the origin of dogs are a) elves or dwarves domesticated them, b) humans brought dogs with them during the Conjunction, or c) dogs have existed for less than 1200 years, and I refuse to accept that dogs are practically a new invention in the witcherverse, wtf.

Anyways: we really have no idea which species are truly “native” to the Continent, or what the physical environment was like prior to the Conjunction. While monsters are not native to the Continent, monsters are also not invasive—there cannot be decline of pre-Conjunction biodiversity or harm to the pre-Conjunction ecosystem because there is no pre-Conjunction ecosystem anymore.

should monsters be hunted to extinction?

So, the thing is, I think we should try to eradicate invasive species from non-native ranges if we can; the biggest problem with that is feasibility, not morality. It’s much more difficult than one might think to eradicate an invasive species once it’s established, and we have to be very careful that the methods we choose don’t have other impacts, but invasive species are a huge threat to the biodiversity of Earth! If monsters are invasive species, then the answer is yes, they should be eradicated from the places they are not native to.

(Notably, on Earth this kind of eradication is not the same thing as extinction; it would be a local extinction, or extirpation, where the species is totally wiped out in the places it invaded but still exists in its native range. This does get way more complicated if the invasive is already extinct in its native range.)

However, I have just outlined a possibility that would make it plausible for monsters not to be invasive species. Let me also outline why I prefer this interpretation. Here is a book conversation between the sorcerer Dorregaray of Vole and Geralt:

“Our world is in equilibrium. The annihilation, the killing, of any creatures that inhabit this world upsets that equilibrium. And a lack of equilibrium brings closer extinction; extinction and the end of the world as we know it. … Every species has its own natural enemies, every one is the natural enemy of other species. That also includes humans. The extermination of the natural enemies of humans, which you dedicate yourself to, and which one can begin to observe, threatens the degeneration of the race.”

“Do you know what, sorcerer?” Geralt said, annoyed. “One day, take yourself to a mother whose child has been devoured by a basilisk, and tell her she ought to be glad, because thanks to that the human race has escaped degeneration. See what she says to you.”

–The Bounds of Reason, ch. 6

This is a, uh, incredibly unsubtle reference to a debate that has been ongoing for decades; Geralt’s stance here is one of the key arguments in opposition to wolf and bear reintroduction. What do we do about large predators that may pose a threat to humans? How do we balance preservation of the ecosystem with the safety of people who have to coexist with these predators?

I can’t fully agree with Geralt, because large predators are integral to the ecosystem, which I value for its own sake and because humans depend on healthy ecosystems. But I can’t fully agree with Dorregaray either, because Geralt is right: human life is valuable and worthy of protecting. This is an issue that India has been running into in the past ten years; as their tiger conservation efforts yield fruit, people become more likely to encounter tigers, and thus more likely to have a bad encounter with a tiger. It’s become a political struggle as rural people who have to actually live with the possibility of a tiger attack come into conflict with urban conservationists who just really want to preserve tigers (& in some incidents, some of those conservationists have been Western, which is a whole additional level of fuckery). The fact is, there isn’t a good answer to this yet! We certainly should not drive tigers, wolves, or any other large predator to extinction, but we also have to figure out a way to keep people safe. It’s something humanity still has to wrestle with.

Under this framing, which CDPR reinforced when they chose to have the Count di Salvaress defend Iocaste as an endangered species while making significant provisions to minimize the damage she could do to human life, there’s far too much baggage attached for me to say yes, monsters should be hunted into extinction. If you’re going to make monsters analogous to wolves, of course I do not think we should get rid of monsters entirely!

And frankly, Geralt doesn’t think so either, despite his hardline stance about monsters that eat humans. Sapkowski isn’t exactly an anti-conservationist; though Dorregaray is shown as out of touch in this passage, at another point the narrative sides with him calling Philippa out on exterminating a species of ermine for her fur collar, and it’s consistently put forth that Geralt’s best quality is that he doesn’t want to perform violence for the sake of it or destroy things without cause, and one of the representations of that is that he refuses to kill endangered species even at cost to himself:

“What should I say about you, who rejects a lucrative proposition every other day? You won’t kill hirikkas, because they’re an endangered species, or mecopterans, because they’re harmless, or night spirits, because they’re sweet, or dragons, because your code forbids it.”

–Eternal Flame, ch. 2

If monsters and other post-Conjunction creatures are invasive species, the nuance in this conversation is flattened, and Geralt’s refusal to kill mecopterans and hirikkas becomes a flaw rather than a virtue. Boring! I also think that one of the strongest themes in the witcherverse is the idea of all monsters being human ills; wraiths are manifestations of hatred, necrophages multiply because of human bloodshed, cursed ones are created out of malice, mages like Alzur and Idarran of Ulivo go out of their way to straight-up create monsters from scratch*, etc. Iocaste attacks humans and takes livestock because the traditional prey of the silver basilisk, roe deer, has been extirpated by human destruction of their habitat. The aeschna in Blood of Elves attacks humans because humans have altered and polluted the flow of the Pontar, hunting the aeschna’s previous food (seals) to extinction. The true monster is the actions of humans. Monsters that appeared unbidden from another dimension into a previously functional ecosystem to invade and cause problems undermines this theme; monsters that are integrated into the ecosystem and subject to the same social and ecological forces as other animals supports it.

* Idarran’s “idr” monsters from Season of Storms absolutely should be eradicated. Did the world not have enough man-eating arthropods, Idarran? Did you really have to mutate horrible new ones and release them in populated areas?? Mages are a scourge, lmfao

Additionally, one of the biggest reasons I felt like I couldn’t actually apply invasion ecology to monsters was that, whether you accept my Conjunction theory as sufficient biological justification for this or not, monsters just don’t really behave like invasive species. It’s hard to explain this because the setting is pretty brief about its ecological details, but aside from the fact that the narrative frames them like just part of the ecosystem of the world, there are never any details like “that type of flower doesn’t exist anymore because giant centipede tunneling destroyed the soil they needed to grow in.” When monsters are the aggressors, their victims are always humans, not the environment or other animals, and again monsters are themselves often treated as victims of human actions.

So I say monsters aren’t invasive species!

Which means that monsters are, regardless of their strange origins, now a part of the Continent’s ecosystem just as much as bears and wolves.

So let’s talk monster ecology.

what do monsters contribute to the ecosystem, if anything?

So, the phrase “contributing to the ecosystem” is actually super loaded, and I want to unpack that before we go anywhere else. Ecosystems are made up of organisms, and organisms interact with and impact ecosystems, but they don’t necessarily contribute to ecosystems! The implication of “contribute” is that it is possible for an organism to not contribute, and it follows from there that some organisms are not useful. This is functionally nonsensical, and also dangerous.

Conservationists talk a lot about “intrinsic value,” which in this context is the idea that we should want to keep species around just because their existence is valuable! Biodiversity is intrinsically valuable. This is important, firstly because I do believe that all species are intrinsically valuable, but also: ecosystems are so enormously complicated that we do not know the full extent of any species or individual organism’s impact, and we can’t predict what the consequences of removing any given species might be. Treating all species as intrinsically valuable is hedging our bets. All organisms affect the ecosystem, because it’s impossible for them not to, and while some species definitely have outsize impact, none of them are “not contributing,” and frankly even if some of them weren’t, it would be the absolute height of human arrogance for us to decide we could tell which ones were useless when we barely even know what most species eat. Mosquitoes are the base of the entire goddamn food chain, and you still get assholes claiming they don’t “contribute anything.” Of course, most people don’t really mean all of these implications when they use the phrase, but I don’t find it useful to talk about what species “contribute,” and avoid using that language if I can!

What I assume you mean by “what do monsters contribute” is a combination of “what roles might monsters play in the ecosystem” and “are monsters actively harmful to the ecosystem, i.e. do they cause loss of biodiversity?”

And this is difficult to answer! As I’ve said, I don’t think monsters are invasive species, and thus don’t harm the ecosystem, though we know that monsters can be harmful to humans. However, when it comes to the role they do play in the ecosystem, there isn’t enough in canon for me to do more than wildly speculate! Also, there are so so many of them, and the role of a hirikka is going to be wildly different from that of a draconid.

Just offhandedly, most of the big predatory monsters can be assumed to fill the same roles as Earth’s big predators, one of the big ones being overpopulation of prey species, which has ramifications throughout the ecosystem. Some of them are canonically ecosystem engineers, or animals that physically alter their environment (think beavers); for instance, shaelmaar and nekker tunneling. Additionally, the big insectoid colonies can’t be relying solely on naturally-occurring caves for their homes; they’ve gotta be constructing some stuff themselves. These tunnels can be repurposed as habitat for other organisms, from giant centipedes to sewant mushrooms. Necrophages, like corpse-eaters in our world, likely limit the spread of diseases from decomposing flesh (and really wouldn’t be as much of an issue if everyone would stop, you know, doing war and mass murder, lmfao). Arachasae use tree trunks and organic plant material to conceal themselves, which is likely contributing to plant reproduction in a few different ways—but the arachasae decorating essay is a different topic that I swear I will finish one day oh my god—

…anyways, feel free to ask about any specific monsters or niches if you’re curious, but if I tried to go into detail with every single potential niche/ecosystem service all of the monsters we know of might fill, we would be here all day!

Let’s talk about a couple specific things you brought up in your second ask.

> theyve probably found a niche in the world by now and can eat anything smaller incl. humans

I mean…maybe! That is, yeah, they’ve definitely settled into niches by now, but feeding is way more complicated and interesting than that.

For instance: orcas can eat basically whatever the fuck they want—orcas are fully capable of bringing down everything from fish to seals to gray whales to great white sharks. But they don’t. In the Pacific Northwest, the resident orca pods almost exclusively eat salmon, while the transient pods largely feed on seals. Orcas are kind of an extreme example, but this is something called resource partitioning and it’s a big part of how animals limit competition with one another and what enables lots of predators to coexist in one place!

We see a big fuck-off dragon thing and we assume that it’ll eat anything it can fit in its mouth, and definitely some predators work like that. But just because an animal is technically capable of eating something and deriving nutrition from it doesn’t mean that it will. Silver basilisks made roe deer the staple of their diet before the destruction of beech forests meant they had to turn to humans—which is a pretty specific dietary restriction when there should be multiple species of deer running around, not to mention everything else a draconid could be killing! And given how many types of draconid there are…I have to assume there’s some kind of resource partitioning going on to prevent them all from conflicting with each other! For instance, if basilisks prefer roe deer, maybe forktails prefer wild goats, while wyverns are mostly kleptoparasitic (stealing other predators’ kills).

And of course, not all monsters eat humans at all; harpies steal from and attack humans, so they’re a dangerous nuisance, but they don’t seem to eat them. And in the books Geralt mentions plenty of monsters which are totally harmless.

So yes, there are lots of things monsters could be eating, but it would strongly depend, and there’s a lot of interesting places one can take monster diets! Netflix decided their strigas only eat specific organs, leaving the rest of the body untouche, & I love that for her. More monsters that need a particular kind of nutrition that leads them to take only specific body parts from some kills!

> because theyve got no natural predators aside from each other and arent hunted by anything but witchers, monsters are just breeding and eating and wldnt that damage the land? or have they made their own like, circle of life or whatever ?

Absolutely—invasive species whose populations rapidly increase once they’re away from their natural predators cause the decline of native species, often by eating natives directly or competing with natives for resources. And in fact, even native species who become overpopulated can seriously damage the ecosystem (see: white-tailed deer in the United States, whose overpopulation has such negative ecological effects that some people argue we should classify them as invasive, even though they have definitely been here this whole time).

However, even if we grant that monsters are invasive, it’s a little more complicated than that for a few reasons!

Despite the apparent preponderance of them in the witcher games, most monsters are supposed to be strongly on the decline, like witchers themselves. Geralt’s profession is falling out of necessity; human development of the Continent is going to be the biggest suppressing factor in monster populations in the future. Monster overpopulation is just canonically not a problem in this universe! But even in the scenario where the Inevitable March Of Civilization isn’t threatening monster populations, there are a lot of factors that could and would limit monster populations.

(TL;DR for this next part: yeah I definitely think they’ve figured out their own little circle of life—the term you’re looking for is ecosystem equilibrium, btw!—& I’m going to take the next 1.2k to talk about how.)

For starters, predation is only one among many limiting factors that affect populations & prevent them from ballooning out of control:

food availability: If there’s not enough food, there’s not enough food! It also matters how adaptable the animal’s diet is—silver basilisks moved from deer to humans, but if the eucalyptus went extinct koalas would not switch to eating cycads.

illness and parasites: Some people argue these are more important than direct predation for limiting populations, and I am often inclined to agree. Basically, if a population becomes very dense, illness and parasites spread more quickly, creating a natural limiter on how many animals can live in any one place. The greater susceptibility of some individuals to illness or parasites also winnows down populations. Non-native species often escape a good portion of their native diseases by moving to a new range—however, given how fast bacteria and viruses evolve, 1,200 years is a pretty decent amount of time for new diseases to arise. Also, just going to drop a link to my treatise on monster parasites here. It’s gross, mind the warning at the start of the post.

mate availability: If only a certain percentage of the population is actually able to reproduce, that’ll eventually bring the total number down. RIP Iocaste’s boyfriend 😔

territory/shelter availability: Animals need a certain amount of space and certain types of spaces to survive, and space isn’t infinite! It again depends on how adaptable an animal is; rats find ways to thrive nearly everywhere, but pandas can only live where there’s bamboo. If there’s not enough space to hide from predators, reproduce safely, store food, and avoid adverse weather, the population again limits itself naturally.

natural disasters: Wildfires, drought, flooding, tsunamis, storms, etc. pick off significant portions of wildlife populations. Disasters are sporadic rather than directly linked to population like most of the other factors but these periodic blows to population and the other impacts of fire or flooding are often integral to the ecosystem (see especially: fire regimes and fire ecology.)

Now let’s talk predation & monsters! (Genuinely, I think predation is one of the most interesting things in ecology; people tend to simplify it down to things eat other things, which—yeah, but there’s so much more going on there!)

First, I wouldn’t underestimate the effects of monsters eating other monsters! Even if it’s rare for a draconid to snatch up a nekker and carry it off, the threat of a draconid doing so can have dramatic impacts; researchers found that just playing the sound of dog barks on a beach stopped raccoons from foraging for crabs for over a month after the barking stopped, leading to an increase in crab populations, even though no raccoons ever encountered a dog. This is called the ecosystem of fear (which as a term is metal as hell) and it theorizes that just the fear of predators can lead to chronic stress for prey animals, decreasing reproduction and making them more susceptible to disease. Maybe draconids in Toussaint eat only a few dozen nekkers a year, but that might cause thousands of nekkers to have fewer offspring or fall to disease. When it comes to ecosystems the direct effect is usually only a small part of the story!

Second, when we talk about a species not having natural predators, we’re usually talking about an animal that would have a predator back in its home range—lionfish, for instance, have plenty of predators in their natural range (the Indo-Pacific), but no natural predators in their invasive range (the Caribbean), so invasive lionfish, suddenly freed of a limiting factor, can run amok. However, a great white shark has, aside from orcas (who do not actually eat white sharks, they’re just assholes sometimes) and occasionally other white sharks, more or less no natural predators anywhere once it reaches maturity, and that’s fine! Lack of predation of great white sharks did not cause their populations to explode and consume the ocean. White sharks are limited by other factors.

So: it is possible that wherever draconids originated (and it’s entirely possible that “draconids” came from multiple different places, tbh) there was something bigger that preyed on them, but it’s not unreasonable to assume they were also apex predators in their previous dimension (I mean…look at them), and that adult draconids were never really preyed on by anything else! It isn’t necessarily an issue for there not to be predators of certain monsters on the Continent.

(Though, of course, we also shouldn’t forget that most apex predators are prey when they’re young—baby white sharks are snack-sized for a lot of fishes, and bear cubs and wolf pups are similarly vulnerable. Based on the size of the eggs you see in TW3 draconid nests, a basilisk is hatched around the size of a little dog, which is the perfect size for small, ballsy predators such as wolverines to sneak into a nest and snap them up—predators such as more wolverines or raptors like eagles and hawks might also come directly for the eggs.)

When it comes to smaller monsters such as nekkers, who likely weren’t apex predators in their original dimensions and would thus be subject to that lack of natural predators—there are usually specific reasons why prey species manage to avoid predation in their introduced range. Lionfish confound Caribbean predators because lionfish are covered with huge poisonous spines that Caribbean predators don’t know how to deal with.

Drowners, on the other hand, are basically just man-shaped fish; they don’t have any adaptations or defenses that would really stump a bear or a wolf. Again, bigger monsters are still probably checking the populations of smaller monsters no matter what, but there’s really no reason a bear couldn’t figure out how to eat a drowner! Unless a monster has a unique defense (e.g. scurver spines), is actively distasteful to eat (rotfiends, probably), or is just difficult to take down (nekkers in packs), most of the non-monster predators* on the Continent will have incorporated various monsters into their diet by now, or suppressed monster populations indirectly with the threat of predation or by competing with them for food. It has been over a thousand years, which is nothing evolutionarily but is still a decent period of time for mammals, who pass hunting techniques down to their babies, to figure out how to eat ghouls—especially if we’re considering that the Continent’s mammals may also be a result of the Conjunction and would thus have to have been just as adaptable as the monsters to establish themselves. And I’ve also actually talked before about how wolves specifically might be preying on necrophages!

* For reference, the non-monster predators are, considering the Continent is more or less Europe, most likely lynxes, brown bears/polar bears (in Skellige), wolverines, foxes, badgers, and a variety of large birds of prey.

So—yes, if monsters were truly overpopulating, then that would damage the ecosystem. However, canon tells us they are definitely not doing that, and there are also many factors that would prevent that from happening!

(Though I will say that some of the reasons white-tailed deer are overpopulated are that we got rid of cougars and wolves and human development creates a lot of extra habitat of the type that deer like. Given that we know many of draconids are for sure in significant danger of going extinct, and the trajectory that Europe’s wolf and bear populations followed in real life, it is possible that the Continent will have to contend with an overpopulation of some of the smaller monsters at some point as they continue to try to eradicate the larger predators, both monster and non-monsters—you think the drowner problem is bad now, wait until the bears are gone and city development has tripled the number of sewers. Yet another of those humans-make-monster-problems-worse things I am fond of in the Witcherverse!)

…whew. that was a lot of words. In conclusion: ecology is really cool & there’s a bunch of ways monsters can fit into it!!

#kaer morhen biology of monsters 101 #and a bit of #witcher book blogging #asks #anonymous

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exeggcute · 3 years

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'"La Culte du Prochain Train," often translated as "The Cult of the Next Train," is known to have originated at least a decade prior to Reconfiguration among the male offspring of asbestos, nickel and zinc miners in the desolate Papineau region of what was then extreme southwest Quebec. The chilling game's competition and its upspringing cult soon spread throughout the network of non-ionized and pre-Interdependent railroad lines which carried raw minerals south to Ottawa and the United States' Great Lake Ports.' Over Struck's little desk hangs a model airplane made entirely from different parts of beer cans. While Inc was keen on the whole lurid mirror-across-highway terrorism thing of early O.N.A.N., and Schacht's paper's focus was the violent French-Catholic protests against municipal fluoridation under Mulroney, Struck had picked the A.F.R.-and-Russian-Roulettish-train-jumping-cult-thing connection, and was sticking to it with the same tenacity that kept him on the 18's A-squad despite a serve that deLint described as resembling a debutante's curtsy. The plane's got flattened cans for wings, smunched-flat cans for wheels, part of a tallboy for fuselage and snout.

'As with many games, Le Jeu du Prochain Train was itself substantially simpler than the organization of the competition.' A cool smile from Struck. 'It was played after sunset at specified sites, specifically les passages a niveau de vote ferrée that marked every rural Quebecker road's intersection with a railroad track. In the Year of the Whopper, there were over two thousand (2,000) such intersections in the Papineau region alone, though not all saw heavy enough flow to accommodate the complexities of true competition.

'Six boys, miners' sons, ages ten to roughly sixteen, Quebecois French speaking boys, line up on six railroad ties' juts just outside the track. Two hundred sixteen (216) boys—never either more nor less—are involved in a night's opening rounds, organized into sixes, each group of six taking its turn with a different train, standing on consecutive juts just outside one track, waiting, doubtless tense, awaiting the procession of a fearsome bride, indeed. The night's heavily travelled crossing's schedule of trains is known to Le Jeu du Prochain Train's episcopate of les directeurs de jeu—older, post-adolescent boys, veterans of previous les jeux, many of them legless and in wheelchairs or—for the sons of asbestos miners, many orphaned and desperately poor—on crude rolling boards. No timepieces are permitted the players, who are under the absolute discretion of the game's directeurs, whose decisions are final and often brutally enforced. They all are silent, listening for the sound of the engine's whistle, a sound which is sad and cruel at the same time, as the sound approaches and begins to subtly undergo Doppler Effects. They tense palely muscled legs beneath hand me down corduroys as the next train's one white eye rounds the track's curve and bears down on the game's waiting boys.’

Struck keeps bogging down in these parts where it seems like the guy just totally abandons a scholarly tone, and even probably starts making up or hallucinating details which there's no way Jim Struck could represent himself as having been there to see, and he's blue-delete-looping all over the place, plus grinding his eye and picking at his forehead, his two more or less constant responses to creative stress.

'Le Jeu du Prochain Train itself is simplicity in motion. The object: Be the last of your round's six to jump from one side of the tracks to the other—that is, across the tracks—before the train passes. Your only real opponents are your six's other five. Never is the train itself regarded as an opponent. The speeding, screaming train is regarded rather as le jeu's boundary, arena, and reason. Its size, its speed down the extremely gradual north-to-south grade of what was then southwestern Quebec, and the precise mechanical specifications of each scheduled train—these are known to the directeurs, they comprise the constants in a game the variables of which are the respective wills of the six ranged along the track, and their estimates of one another's will to risk all to win.’

Struck transposes clearly nonadolescent uptown material like this into: 'The variable of the game isn't so much a matter of the train, but the player's courage and will.’

'The last few instants, vanishingly small, when the player may hurl himself athwart the expanse of track, across timber ties, creosote stench, gravel and scarred iron, amid the ear splitting scream of the whistle almost overhead, able to feel the huge push of terrible air from the transport's cow catcher or express train's rounded nose, to go sprawling in the gravel past the tracks' other side and roll to see wheels and flanges, couplings and driving rods, the furious back and forth of transverse axles, feeling the whistle's steam condense to drizzle all around—these few seconds are known, familiar as their own pulse, to the boys who assemble and play.' Struck's now progressed to grinding the whole heel of his hand into his eyesocket, producing a kind of ectoplasmic pinwheel of red in there. Did like even pre-bullet railroad engines have flanges and cowcatchers and whistles that steamed?

In a disastrous lapse, Struck copies hurl himself athwart, a decidedly un-Struckish-sounding verb phrase, verbatim into his text.

'...that the true variable which renders le Jeu du Prochain Train a contest and not merely a game involves the nerve and heart and willingness to risk all of any or all of the five waiting beside you at the track. How long can they wait? When will they choose? Their lives and limb worth how much Queen-headed coin this night? More radical by far than the American youth automobile game of "Chicken" to which its principle is frequently compared (five, not one, different wills to comparatively gauge, in addition to your own will's resolve, and no motion or action to distract you from the tension of waiting motionlessly to move, waiting as one by one the other five quail and save themselves, leap to beat the train...' and then the sentence just ends, without even a close to the parenthesis, though Struck, with a canny sense for this sort of thing, knows the analogy to Chicken'll ring just the right bell, term-paper-wise.

'Le Jeu's historic best, reportedly, however, ignore their five competitors completely, concentrating their entire attention on determining the last viable instant in which to leap, regarding the last, final, and only true opponent in the game to be their own will, mettle, and intuition about the last viable instant in which to leap. These nerveless few, le Jeu's finest—many of whom will go on to directeur future jeux (if not, often, to membership in Les Assassins or its stelliform offshoots)—these nerveless and self-contained virtuosi never see their opponents' flinches or tics or the darkenings at corduroys' crotches, none of the normal signs of will faltering which lesser players scan for—for the game's finest players frequently close their eyes entirely as they wait, trusting the railroad ties' vibration and the whistle's pitch, as well as intuition, and fate, and whatever numinous influences lie just beyond fate.' Struck at certain points imagines himself gathering this Wild Conceits guy's lapels together with one hand and savagely and repeatedly slapping him with the other—forehand, backhand, forehand.

'The cult's game's principle is simple. The last of the six to jump before the train and land intact wins the round. The fifth through the second to leap have lost, but acquitted themselves.

'The first in a round to quail and jump walks home from there, alone under the moon, disgraced and ashamed.

'But even the first to quail and jump has jumped. Far beyond prohibited, not to jump at all is regarded as impossible. To "perdre son coeur" and not jump at all is outside le Jeu's limit. The possibility simply does not exist. It is unthinkable. Only once, in le Jeu du Prochain Train's extensive oral history, has a miner's son not jumped, lost his heart and frozen, remaining on his jut as the round's train passed. This player later drowned. "Perdre son coeur," when it is mentioned at all, is known also as "Faire un Bernard Wayne," in dubious honor of this lone unjumping asbestos miner's son, about whom little beyond his subsequent drowning in the Baskatong Reservoir is known, his name denoting a figure of ridicule and disgust among speakers of the Papineau Region vulgate.' Disastrously, Struck blithely transposes this stuff too, with not even a miniature appliance-size bulb flickering anywhere over his head.

'The game's object is to jump last and land still fully limbed upon the opposite embankment.

'Expresses are 30 k.p.h. faster than conventional transports, but a transport's cow catcher mangles. A boy struck head on by a moving train is shot as from a cannon, knocked out of his shoes, describes a towering, flailing arc, and is transported home in a burlap sack. A player caught beneath a wheel and run over is frequently spread out along a hundred red meters or more of reddened track, and is transported home in a number of ceremonial asbestos and nickel mining shovels provided by the Jeu's older and frequently dismembered directeurs.

'As happens more often, purportedly, a boy who has dived more than half way across the tracks when he is struck and hit, loses one or more legs—either there on the spot, if lucky, or later, under surgical gas and orthopedic saws applied to what are customarily violently angled masses of unrecognizably contuded meat.' The paradox here for Struck as plagiarist, who needs something with sufficient detail to be able to basically just rehash, is that this thing here has almost too much detail, much of it purple; it doesn't even seem all that scholarly; it seems more like the Wild Conceits Bayside C.C. guy seemed to get more and more tipsy as the thing went on until he felt free to make a lot of it up, like e.g. the contuded meat bits, etc.

What's interesting to Hal Incandenza about his take on Struck, sometimes Pemulis, Evan Ingersoll, et al. is that congenital plagiarists put so much more work into camouflaging their plagiarism than it would take just to write up an assignment from conceptual scratch. It usually seems like plagiarists aren't lazy so much as kind of navigationally insecure. They have trouble navigating without a detailed map's assurance that somebody has been this way before them. About this incredible painstaking care to hide and camouflage the plagiarism—whether it's dishonesty or a kind of kleptomaniacal thrill-seeking or what—Hal hasn't developed much of any sort of take.

'It is frightfully simple and straightforward. Sometimes the last of the six to jump is struck; then the second to last leaper becomes the last and victor, and advances, each winner literally "surviving" into the game's next round, a sort of sextupled semi final, six rounds of six Canadian boys each: the, quote, "Les Trente-Six" for the evening. the initial rounds' boys—those who have been neither the last nor the disgraceful first to leap—are permitted to stay at the le passage a niveau de vote ferree, assembled to become the semi finals' silent audience. The entire Le Jeu du Prochain Train is customarily conducted in silence.' In a disastrous and maybe unconsciously self-destructive set of lapses, Struck rehabilitates the prose but keeps a lot of the hallucinatory specific descriptive stuff in, unfootnoted, though there's obviously no way he could pretend to have been there.

'The surviving losers from among the Les Trente-Six then swell the ranks of the silent gallery as the six nerveless winners—the finalists, this night's "attendants longtemps ses tours"—some bleeding or gray with shock, survivors already of two separate long delayed leaps and hairbreadth escapes, eyes blank or closed, mouths working in savored distaste, await the nightly 2359 Express, the ultra ionized "Le Train de la Foudre" from Mont Tremblant to Ottawa. They will jump athwart the tracks in front of its high speed nose at the final moment, each trying to be the last to leap and live. It is not rare for several of the le Jeu's finalists to be struck.' Struck tries to decide whether it'd be unrealistic or unselfconsciously realistic to keep using his own name as a verb—would a man with anything to camouflage use his own name as a verb?

'...that several among the La Culte du Prochain Train's survivors and organizational directorate went on to found and comprise Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents is beyond sociohistorical dispute, though the precise ideological relation between the B.S. era's simultaneously chivalric and nihilistic Cult of the Train's savage tournaments and the present's limbless cell of anti-O.N.A.N. extremists remains the subject of the same scholarly debate that surrounds the evolution of northern Quebec's La Culte de Baiser Sans Fin into the not particularly dreaded but media savvy Fils de Montcalm cell credited with the helicoptered dropping of the 12 meter, human waste filled, pie shell onto the rostrum of U.S. President Gentle's second Inaugural.

#infinite jest #I will be humane and put the bulk of this under a readmore so you don't all come at me with pitchforks #but it's worth your while. open that readmore.

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mythgirlimagines · 3 years

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The latest in a line of therapeutic robotic assistants, here is the latest in her lineage, in the circuits and metal herself: MY-3, the Former Ultimate Robot!

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BACKSTORY AND TALENT

MY-3 (nicknamed “Mythie”, and eventually “Myth) was the third and most recent creation created by a pair of robotic engineering geniuses. MY-3 was created to become a therapeutic robot, with her adorable appearance, personality, and voice, that makes her a massive success with both children, and even many adults, who find MY-3’s various adorable qualities to be calming and soothing. Many functions, such as a built-in oven, and a built-in musical speaker and TV, can offer different coping mechanisms, for all sorts of patients. All of those qualities resulted in a massive recovery success rate at the mental treatment facility that she currently works at, when not attending Hope’s Peak and learning more about humans and their behaviors. There otherwise isn’t that much backstory on MY-3, for she was only created about 3 or 4 years ago. Myth is currently working in Ward #137, helping Anons recover mentally from anxiety attacks and/or assorted mental trauma, and this story would center on Myth helping these Anons through their mental pain and trauma.

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RELATIONSHIPS

Wyre Anon, Former Ultimate Entomologist

Wyre’s parents and Myth’s parents have been scientific business partners for a long time, and regularly collaborate on many projects together, namely studying bugs, in order to figure out how their robotic bugs are supposed to move. Despite Wyre’s rough demeanor and equally as dirty and gritty talent, Myth can’t deny that Wyre was only the bestest friend that she could ever ask for. As long as Wyre’s insects didn’t make their way into her circuits, Myth always found the various insects Wyre brings over to her fascinating. But for now, many of the now-fragile patients would rather not witness their much-cherished insect companions, much to the entomologist’s anger and dismay.

Outfit: A tan safari outfit with a red tie and an off-white pith helmet, off-white socks and brown shoes, regularly carries a butterfly net, the glasses from their original design.

Anon Scar, Ultimate Aikido Master

Growing up with severe emotional and self-esteem issues, Scar’s parents sent her off to a temple and had an old master teach her all about using aikido (or the Art of the Demons, as the old master called it) to maintain emotional control. Scar’s skill in aikido gave her both something to be proud of and something to control her overflowing emotions. Unfortunately, her old master eventually passed away, and she more-or-less regressed into her old pre-aikido behavior. MY-3‘s tranquil presence and reassuring words regularly calmed the aikido master down, during her emotional highs, and allowed her true maternal side to show, especially when it came to teaching younger Anons about aikido.

Outfit: Hair in a ponytail held by a purple bow, a black coat slung over her shoulders like a cape over a white robe with purple hakama pants, bandaged arms, white ankle socks.

Fusion Anon, Ultimate Pianist

Revered by many classical music enthusiasts for being a piano-playing prodigy ever since he was a little boy, no one can deny that Fusion is both passionate in playing the piano and composing his own piano music. Unfortunately, the stress that came from being a musical wunderkind and his strict and overbearing parents repeatedly entering him in contests and forcing him to practice endlessly, in order to win prize money, caused Fusion to suffer a mental breakdown on stage, and, in humiliation and shame, ran away to never play on stage again. Fusion loves to teach those willing to learn about music, but Myth couldn’t help but detect pain hidden by that cheery and food-stuffed grin.

Outfit: A blue jacket with golden music note shaped buttons and black and white stripes on the sleeves, over a red hoodie, black and white fingerless gloves, yellow and blue headphones around his neck, glasses, pants, and shoes from his original design.

Fusion II, Ultimate Detective

Born to a police commissioner father and a criminal prosecutor mother, Fusion II always wanted to pursue a career in justice, and managed to get her wish, when she became a prodigy detective in her preteen years. Unfortunately, in her first major murder case (which she managed to solve in under a day), when she managed to expose the culprit, the insane and enraged culprit pulled out a knife and gouged one of Fusion II’s eyes out, which gave her severe trauma, and encouraged her to never pursue another murder case again. While Fusion II‘s knowledge on memes helps educate MY-3 on human internet culture, it’s clear to MY-3 that her sarcasm and meme references are hiding some severe past pain.

Outfit: A black and blue fedora, a black eyepatch that hides her gouged-out eye, a blue trench coat over a white button up shirt and a red necktie, black gloves, a black and blue skirt, long white socks and black heeled boots.

Just Anon, Ultimate Tennis Pro

Similar to Fusion, Janon is a prodigy that is well-renowned by both his adoring fans from his highly-prestigious private boarding school and tennis enthusiasts everywhere. Being raised to uphold his family’s legacy, ever since he was a toddler, Janon wants nothing more than to leave his family and actually get a chance to relax between etiquette lessons and constant tennis matches that come with autograph sessions. Janon’s cramped schedules eventually lead to burn-out and mental roadblock, earning him a spot in the ward. MY-3‘s overly affectionate attitude definitely rubbed the athlete the wrong way, and would much rather either take a long nap or dote on the Jr. Ultimates.

Outfit: The bunny hoodie and mask from his original design over a pink and blue tennis uniform.

Sparkle Anon, Former Ultimate Supreme Leader

With a love for the histrionics and a 30-person group at her fingertips, Sparkle doesn’t seem to like divulging into the specifics of her talent, for all she was willing to reveal about her organisation was that it, “SEEKS TO MAKE SHINING DIAMONDS OUT OF INSIGNIFICANT LUMPS OF COAL“. Ever since this theatrical self-proclaimed dictator arrived at the ward, she’s been trying to get people to join her group. Not even MY-3 seems to know what Sparkle is even doing at this ward, for she wasn’t scheduled for this (or any, for that matter) wards at the psychological ward. But that doesn’t mean MY-3 wouldn’t try to crack the rhinestone-covered enigma that is Supreme Leader Sparkle.

Outfit: A pink sparkly captain’s cap, hair in a sideplait, a blue suit and matching pants, a rainbow colored necktie, the cape and boots from her original design, always carries her sceptre.

Egg Anon, Former Ultimate Cosplayer/Assassin, and Wet Sock Anon, Former Ultimate Magician

The genius combination of the twin’s talents, with Wet Sock‘s brilliant magic shows and Egg’s ability to disguise themselves and blend in with the crowd, allows Egg’s true talent to shine and Egg to shank their targets from the shadows. They also regularly pull the classic “twin switch” in both their operations and their prison escapes, and nobody could even tell the difference. It’s very clear that their parentless and tragic lives on the streets took a toll on their psyche, and once the cops found the twins, they hauled them over to the ward and left them in the care of the therapists and MY-3. Egg and Wet Sock always love to mess with MY-3 and her functions, but they’re secretly thankful for her help.

Both Outfits: Standard stage magician tuxedo, cape, and hat.

Curious Anon, Jr. Ultimate Inventor

Born and raised in a war-torn territory and underneath a cruel and exploitative government, upon finding out their gift in mechanics and coming up with plans, Curious was raised to be both an inventor and a test subject for said inventions, and Curious, being the passive soul that they are, never stood up against the cruel government that they lived under, even after the constant experiments gave them both physical and mental scars. Eventually, after the war ceased, somebody found Curious, and hauled them off to the psych ward. Curious’s kind and passive nature made them really great friend with the equally kind robot, but MY-3 knew that no one can handle what was thrown at the inventor, without consequences.

Outfit: Sickly green skin with stitches and scars all over their body and bolts in their neck, an off-white jumpsuit with black and yellow gloves, and matching boots and goggles, long messy hair.

Anon Nerd, Former Ultimate Butler

In order to step above all of the other more desirable kids residing in the orphanage alongside him, young Nerd quickly practiced crafts of cleanliness and order (namely cooking and cleaning living spaces). Eventually, those skills managed to get him picked up by a family that only uses him as a personal butler (and occasional bodyguard, why else would a butler carry around a volatile scouter, and a temper twice as large?), and never as their actual child. Eventually, after shouldering their abuse into his adult years, Nerd snapped and set fire to the mansion with his scouter, earning him a spot in the ward’s roster. MY-3 considers Nerd to be one of the tougher cookies to crack, due to his temper.

Outfit: Literally the exact same outfit but with gloves and longer coattails.

Eldritch Anon, Ultimate Artist

Desperately yearning for the “sheep” of the world to ”wake up”, Eldritch channels his pessimistic and paranoid mindset into traditional art (never digital, he doesn’t want to contribute to the robot uprising), and wants everyone who views his artwork (detailing apocalyptic settings and themes of distrust, misanthropy, and all the secretly-disgusting citizens of the world) to frown and spread scowls and distrust amongst the general population. Concerned about his paranoia, Eldritch’s parents sent him off to the ward, to many protests from the tiny artist. Eldritch hates MY-3‘s metallic guts, and always tries to destroy her, before she becomes the leader of the machine uprising.

Outfit: A paint splattered version of his hoodie over a black shirt with a creepy white face design on the front, brown overalls, and yellow and black rainboots.

Dream Anon, Ultimate Anthropologist

Expressing a love of humanity and the varied cultures of them, Dream travels all over the world with grit and determination to learn more about this particular interest of hers. Despite coming off to others as a ditzy jock, Dream is actually a respected figure in the field of anthropology and her anthropology journals are well-known by all in the field. Unfortunately, the reckless anthropologist stumbled into uncharted territory, one day, and got attacked by the territorial natives. It took her several days before her fellow explorers found her again, but the damage has already been done, both physically and mentally. Dream likes to claim she’s fine, but MY-3’s lie detector can see right through Dream.

Outfit: Hair that looks awkwardly lobbed off and scars all across her face and body, a pink cardigan over a tan button-up shirt, a dark brown skirt, black leggings, dark brown Uggs, the sidebag from her original design.

Iris Anon, Jr. Ultimate Adventurer

Not wanted to stay confided in a stuffy orphanage forever, Iris packed a simple backpack, and set off on a world tour, to see all of the fascinating and exotic things that the world has to offer. Despite being a preteen (and a really clumsy one, at that), the sheer reach that Iris had in her travels and her contagious optimism, she has garnered fame all over the world, and gave her the title of Ultimate Adventurer. Iris loves going to hospitals and psych wards and tell stories about her travels, and Ward #137 is definitely no exception. MY-3 loves learning about humans from around the world, but considering Iris’s past, MY-3 can’t help but feel like part of Iris’s optimism is all a facade.

Outfit: Hair cut to her shoulders, a brown leather parka with off-white fluff over a blue tanktop, bright pink pants and glow-in-the-dark sneakers, bandages all over her body, the glasses from her original design.

Purple Anon, Ultimate Astronaut

Raised by two influential pioneers of the scientific industry, Purple showed a promising career as an astronaut, for both her massive knowledge in astronomy and cosmology for someone of her age, and her oddly sturdy body that can take on the hideous vacuum of space, makes her the prime candidate for becoming astronaut. Unfortunately, despite aceing the astronaut exams, various technical difficulties with the spacecraft that she boarded ended up causing both the spacecraft and Purple’s hopes and dreams to crash and burn. Purple’s heavily scientific terms don’t detour the kindly robot from befriending the timid and solemn astronaut, or helping said astronaut to cope with depression and survivor’s guilt.

Outfit: Some hair held up in a small sidetail with a star hairclip, a black overcoat with white star-shaped buttons over a purple sweater, a black skirt with small white dots on them, grey stockings and black Mary Janes.

Getting things out of the way, this non-Kibo-Con AU is far more angsty and hurt-comfort, compared to the standard talentswap AU, for just about everybody has trauma of varying degrees. ——————————————————-

PERSONALITY

Despite her relatively seasoned (read: 4 years old) AI, MY-3 still shows a childlike fascination for humans and how different they are from her, and the eyes on her screen simply sparkle, when she learns more and more about the inner machinations of the very people that created her. Because she is supposed to be a therapeutic robot, MY-3 is determined to use whatever functions she can, to get her patients to open up to her, and finding the root of their problems. So far, MY-3’s therapy was shown to have positive results for just about every client that she interacted with, which proves that she has empathy and understanding of humans way beyond any other robot of her time period, including MY-1 and MY-2.

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APPEARANCE

MY-3 has a screen for a face that has different emoticons for different emotions, and a pink and white chassis. MY-3 has brown synthetic hairs dyed purple at the ends and an ahoge that functions much like a satellite dish. Instead of hands and arms, MY-3 has extendable arms with pink oven mitts on the end of them. As for clothes, MY-3 wears simple blue overalls and a bi pride bandana around her neck, with purple and blue rain boots on her feet.

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I’m sorry for all the trauma and angst I put on you, but I hope you like this AU! I’d love to hear what you think about this AU!

-Fusion Anon

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