#sftbt ask

[microraptorreactor]

i need beeper to know i love it dearly

"awweeee, thank you!"

This robot is built like a twig. Love it for that lol (I cannot draw weapons to save my life lmao)

[microraptorreactor]

i dunno if you've done this but requiem and point loafing together. stupid creatures... (/aff ofc i just love earthmovers)

This is literally what like 70% of Handle With Care takes place on so I threw in two Neo Eclipse members. Earthmover loaf pile. They are bonding.

[microraptorreactor]

hiii it's me again!! I have come to request a silly Koda doodle (because I am dying for that thing you're cooking up)

Hey, Koda? Why wouldn't V2 come back with you?

"Long story, Nightjar. I'll tell you when you're older."

Thanks for the ask! Have Koda AND Nightjar! Plus, to make up for the fact that the next story is awhile out still, have an excerpt from Koda And The Quiet!

[microraptorreactor]

waiter, waiter! more funny drawings of moments from SftBT, please!!

I don't have anything good except a doodle of this scene from Chapter 19. Yes that is just Baeri/Sleet's rant copy/pasted direct from the fic. The rest of 19 was totally them both signing up for therapy nothing else happened :)

[microraptorreactor]

hey!! silly doodles with baeri, perhaps? so silly love watching them go insane

"oh, digital copy of my dead sibling's corpse, we're really in it now!"

When its by itself, Baeri rants to the bodies in the simulation. I'm sure that's a normal thing to do.

[microraptorreactor]

can i give cerecelle and mirage many blankets and hugs. also how did mirage decide on her name?

Cerecelle makes biscuits. This is what it was made to do, truely.

Mirage always knew something was off with her school years. Nothing quite felt real or finished, like the set of the TV shows she would watch with engineers, but her optics skipped over everything unimportant. There wasn't words in the textbooks, and she never figured out what birds made those calls in the morning. The reason for this was because her simulation couldn't create anything that Mirage hadn't seen or heard about herself, but it was all the world she had ever known.

'Mirage' was the first word that popped into her head when she thought about it. The word clung to her, and as her simulation formed, she forgot why she had thought of it. So surely it must be her name, right?

[microraptorreactor]

How would Crécerelle react to a V unit that wasn't as hostile to other V units as Shrike?

"Are you sure you're fine?" Mirage tilted her head up as the other unit rested its head against her collarbone. "I've never met someone so excited to see me before."

"I haven't met another Viscera unit." It confessed. Mirage bit back a comment on how it was lucky to avoid introductions. Even after repairs, the fuel valves in her chest still didn't feel right.

"well, now you have." Mirage placed her arm around her sibling. Was 'sibling' the right word for it? That was currently the emotions she was feeling towards it right now. She wanted to keep it safe, away from feed attacks or Shrike or any of the dozens of other terrible things it had described.

Oh look! It's Proto-V2/Mirage! I needed a not-hostile V unit so the timeline gets disassembled just a little bit :p

I think Cerecelle would be so so excited to meet another Viscera unit. Especially Mirage, since she's another Viscera Security. Once Cerecelle stopped being borderline hyperactive with happiness they would devolve into cuddles.

[microraptorreactor]

heyy Spire how is sftbt goin'? mind telling us a goofy lore tidbit again

It's going! I'm still chipping away at a bunch of oneshots. With the addition of school things are not finishing easily. When I have a bit more free time I'm hoping playing the new update will bring a bit of the spark that let me write Handle With Care back.

Anyways, today's tidbit is from Mother Patterns! It's a series of extra-short oneshots about the Rykers that will either get sprinkled through a bigger work or posted on their own.

Baeri/Sleet still uses Saria's voice, by the way. It probably doesn't even remember that it's hers, seeing as its memory is so patchy. If you're curious, I imagine they both sound something like Kimiko Glemm.

[microraptorreactor]

any AUs where V1 and V2 are buddies or allies, or is V1 just too feral for that?

Do you think we fight every universe?

I would hope so.

[microraptorreactor]

is there perhaps an alternate universe where V2 is happy forever and doesn't die

In another universe, V2's injuries in Greed are less severe. Archangel Gabriel stumbles upon it and decides he has a new child now. Also god decides he's poggers again for adopting a robot in need and everyone lives happily ever after. (This was a cut version of Bathed in Blood, lmao)

[microraptorreactor]

wanna ask abt the Ryker family !! escecially Zav, Mirah, and Mrs. Ryker, we haven't heard anything abt them beyond like 1-2 chapters

(also I just realized almost a lot of your sftbt asks are from me lo)

Unfortunately no doodles for this ask, as Julyen and Baeri/Sleet are the only Rykers with designs.

But yeah, those three don't really show up much! Mrs. Ryker's first name is Adlynne, and she used to be a British matanance person! She had a biological focus. Adlynne decided to tag along with Julyen when he brought his scrap fleet to Finland, where they then got married.

Adlynne worked on the scrap fleet for awhile until she had kids. She was familiar with Sleet/Baeri, but her view of it was heavily influenced by British culture and rhetoric around machines. Primarily the idea that machines are typically short-lived and should be scrapped as soon as it would be more work to keep fixing them then to get a replacment. Because of this, by the time Handle With Care occurs shes convinced that Baeri is a very old machine at the end of its life. She wouldnt trust any other military or industrial machine around her kids, though. As far as she's concerned, orphan robots are harmless things that are too damaged to pose any real risk.

Of course, the second that 'harmless old thing' turned around and bit someone, she wasn't going to hesitate in replacing it. Ashe (the assistant bot V2 kills in ch. 19) was her idea, Julyen didn't want another robot.

Her kids are. Uh. Kids. They exist to help establish Baeri early on and raise the stakes in later chapters. Mirah and Zav are kinda sheltered and maladjusted, Mirah moreso then Zav. When talking to them it's pretty clear that they spend more time with the family robot then their parents. They do things like chirp under their breath when they are thinking. Mirah might occasionally growl.

In the future both kids are alive. They live with a foster family on Neo Eclipse. Zav (who is thirteen by Electric Sleep) intentionally tries to avoid robots due them. Yknow. Killing their parents. Mirah (who's 10 at this point) is still interested in machines, and is currently under observation as a potential earthmover handler. Neither are particularly fond of the Viscera project. One time Zav wrote and sent Koda hatemail.

[microraptorreactor]

worlds itty bittiest kitty SNIFF v2. snfsnfsnfsnfsnfsnfsnf

"awwee... Little friend"

[microraptorreactor]

ooo your sftbt wips are calling..... ooohhh you must work on them /not forced

Great timing on your part! I'm working on more sftbt as you sent that.

Edit: adding more context about how I keep working on it but never posting anything. My brain can't decide if this is a collection of one-shots or a multi-chapter. The one-shots can be tied together as either. Both have their advantages and limitations for what I want to do.

[microraptorreactor]

Hiiiiii!! I just wanna say I spedran your fic If Loved, Handle With Care and all the other parts after that (well, not really speedrun. It took Shortly After breakfast to- OH CRAP ITS MIDNIGHT?! to go through it all) and I just wanna say;

RGRGRHRHRHRHGRHRHRGGRGRHRHRVRGGRGRHRGRGRHRVGRGRGRHRVHRGRGRHRVHRRGGRGRGRGRGGGRGRGRGGRRGRHRGRGGH

I already loved Earthmovers so much conceptually and the whole “city on their backs” and the way you wrote it scratched such an itch in my brain oh my gosh oh my goooosh I love earthmovers so much like they’re really big n scary and can obliterate things and leave nothing behind in an instant but like. what if they were gentle. And this. This was exactly that. It was everything I ever needed. Thank you. Everything else was good too i guess /silly

I will be thinking about this for the next 5 days. Rgrgrgh. I’m normal. Thank you for the food.

Oh my gosh thank you! I'm so glad that you enjoyed SFTBT. While there's so much going on in that series I'm always happy that the Earthmovers stood out so much to so many readers. They were almost a background aspect for awhile with only two originally planned Earthmover segments and far fewer bits of worldbuilding (Nayea, Midnight Point, and a whole bunch of other things got added when I rewrote the outline around the time chapter 5 was written). but I decided to go out on a limb and get weird with it, and I'm glad I did. New Requiem and Midnight Point have stuck into people's brains I guess XD

[microraptorreactor]

I love the tales for the blood thirsty series, and I've been dying to see more, any updates on the future or are you taking a break from ultrakill stuff?

Hello Anon!

For starters, you can always send me asks for the characters! I am more then happy to doodle them in silly situations.

Short version: for now Stories For The Blood Thirsty is on hiatus. While I'd like to come back to it at some point, the place I ended the series on is complete enough to be enjoyable.

Long version:

SFTBT built to be as cannon-compliant as possible, while still having fun with the setting. The biggest change I made to cannon text was keeping Earthmovers around, done because not including them felt wrong. It's meant to be worldbuilding for the skimmed over aspects of Ultrakill's lore. Which is exactly why it isn't updating.

I have plenty of ideas for how to continue the story. My main problem is I don't want my post-cannon plot to get canceled out by whatever direction the Ultrakill story goes. Currently, the post-canon plotline revolves around a mechanized Gabriel and Caladrius, but could go any number of directions. I want to know which direction is least explored when the game finishes.

I can basically only write pre- or tangential to cannon works at the moment. And since I don't want the concepts around the BA-31 squad and Caladrius to outstay their welcome, I'm waiting until I have a solid direction for the sequel.

The characters still occupy a special space in my brain. I love them to death. There's so many things I have left to say about them (especially Koda, Sleet/Baeri/BA-31, and Kaine), I'm just waiting to see what there is to work off of in cannon.

Sorry if this is a disappointing answer, lol. But again, I'm always happy to talk about the series! There's plenty about BA-31 (group & individual) that I never got to talk about in Handle With Care lol. Plus Koda And The Quiet is still in the works! Which is still a WIP despite being at the top of my WIP pile since whenever Electric Sleep was finished. Might go work on that now lol.

[microraptorreactor]

hii harro !!! i finally got around to getting time to yoink new requiem and midnight point for a silly fic involving them and i would like to know their personalities if you have time !! :D

ooooo! It'll be cool to see what you end up makeing!

These two live in my brain rent-free and there hasn't been an Earthmover chapter in awhile so they've bubbled straight to the top. So warhorse lovers infodump for you.

New Requiem is larger, slightly older, and more cranky. It loves its city's robots but is mostly indifferent towards the humans. It views the humans as something it has to tolerate, although its opinion of them has softened as time goes on. It has a couple joint problems from the war, preferring cold, clear weather because of this. Requiem is an introvert, and often moody. Other Earthmovers know it for getting way to invested in the lives of the people on its back and dropping the latest tea during rest periods. Requiem is very specific about when it has these rest periods and who it rests with, occasionally refusing to get up/lay down if it doesn't agree with its handlers. Total drama queen, love it for that.

Midnight Point is slightly smaller then Requiem, along with having fewer scars and an unusually dark paintjob. Its v friendly towards other Earthmovers, although it does talk shit about them it its handlers and very favorite other earthmovers. Point thinks of the city on its back as an honor. During the war it developed an unusual rest/fight cycle, where it would charge up its batteries as much as possible during the day and ambush other Earthmovers at night. It's still nocturnal, even after the fighting's over. Point is energetic and polite, sometimes coming off as a little overbearing to other Earthmovers. It also lives for the drama, so Point and Requiem will insist to rest/travel together as long as possible. Also because they are in love.

Hope this helps! Love these '''''little''''''' scrunklys.