#shes very attached to being a 'good' android

[eosomit]

HEAVEN IS CORRECT

[rs-hawk]

Love this post by @microsff

You went to a garage sale to see what you could find. You had been working on so many projects that you were hoping to get parts for cheap, when you saw an Andrew the Android. He was sitting on a table, swinging his feel that barely scraped the ground. He was an early version. It was easy to tell by his stocky build, and the way he barely looked humanoid. Newer ones looked more human.

“How much is he?” you asked the man sitting by a lock box, pointing to Andrew.

“You don’t want that one,” the man grinned, showing off all his teeth in a way that made you frown. “It’s a weird one. Sent it up to clean my gutters in a storm, you know, testing out that ‘waterproof’ feature.”

“Uh-huh,” you said unsurely, shifting on your feet slightly.

“And it got struck by lightening. Been odd ever since. Telling me to call it ‘Andy’ and asking me questions. Didn’t think these ones of them were meant to be so annoyingly human.”

“I still want him. How much?” you insisted.

You and the man go back and forth for a bit before you finally handed him a small wad of cash. A giddy feeling fluttered in your chest as you approached him. He looked up at you, a blank look on his expressionless face.

“Hi there. I’m Y/N. I just bought you,” you explained as you offered him your hand. “I’m so excited that I found an early Andrew. You’re one of my favorite androids of all time.”

“Andy, please,” was his response. He held up his hands, no, claws, as if to apologize for not shaking yours. “It’s nice to meet you.”

You brought him home, and he settled in quickly. One day, he greeted you at the door.

“Can you make me hands?” he asked.

“Why? Your claws work better, and you can swap them out with other attachments,” you asked back as you started gathering things for the project you were working on.

“I want to pet your cat.”

“You can’t even feel her fur though.”

“But she can. And I want her to like me petting her.”

You paused, thinking for a moment. “Alright. I can build you hands.”

“I also want to learn guitar. Can you make sure I have good fingers?”

That made a grin crack your face. “Yes, I’ll make you good fingers.”

You two lived in good harmony for awhile, until one day, he showed you a book. “Why is one character being called ‘they’?”

“Oh, because they’re non-binary.”

He nodded as he went back to the book. “I think that fits me better than he.”

You nodded back at them, scrolling through your phone. “Okay.”

Another day, they come to you, holding a book with a picture of a flute. “Can you build me a mouth? And move my port?”

“You want to learn to play the flute?” you asked curiously, looking at the book, their fingers curling around the pages.

“Yes.”

“Alright.”

They took to the flute much better than the guitar, but you don’t say anything. Even when they wake you up in the middle of the night. They’re still not very good, but you enjoy hearing their progress.

Yet again, they come to you, showing you a magazine with synthetic skin and hair on an android. They don’t say anything as they hand it to you, looking down.

“Okay. I’ll take you in and let you pick everything out,” you say as you hand them back the magazine.

“Do you think I’ll really be able to feel?” they asked nervously, rolling the magazine up into a tube.

“Maybe. Why?”

They looked away, and you thought if they were human, they would have blushed. “I want to pet your cat.”

“You pet her all the time.”

“I want to be able to feel it too.”

As always, you nodded. “It’s worth a shot at least then, right?”

Andy went in many times for many more modifications on top of the ones they asked you to make for them. Over the span of months, but in a way that hit you all at once, you fell in love with them. The way they laughed. How excited they were to learn. How excited they were to just be.

“Hey, Y/N! Andy! Welcome in yous guys. I got the room set up. Andy’s got a surprise for you, Y/N. You’re gonna let Andy pick out everything as always, yeah?” the mechanic greeted the two of you as you stepped inside.

You thought it was a little odd she just kept saying “Andy” instead of “they” but you brushed it off. “Yeah Sal. It’s Andy’s body. They can do what they want.”

Andy and Sal shared a grin before you were ushered into the waiting room. A couple hours later, a dark haired woman came out, her hair styled into a neat bun on the top of her head. Her eyes were green, your favorite color. There was a softness to her face and features, as well as a stockiness to her build. She reminded you of Andy, in a way, so you returned her smile.

Sal came up behind you, gesturing to the woman. “What do you think?”

“Oh she’s lovely, perfectly stunning, but you know I’m just waiting on Andy,” you said with a frown and furrow of your brows.

“Hi Y/N,” the woman said shyly, looking down at her feet.

“Andy?”

“I mean, I guess, but I want a new name.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know yet.”

You tilted your head, looking at her curiously. “But you already know every name that there is to know.”

A sweet smile touched her lips as she walked over to you, taking your hands in hers. “I don’t know how they sound when you say them yet.”

[cherrybombfangirlwrites]

Hey, remember how during Pride Month the writeblr community has posts circulating where queer authors are encouraged to promote their books with queer representation?

July is disability pride month, Disabled people are at risk of falling below the poverty line especially and i'd love to help those who are published get paid this month if i can, so...

Let's do the same thing but with Disability Pride Month!!!

Disabled Writers feel free to promote your stuff!

I'll start:

Hello, I'm Anna, I'm an Autistic and ADHD author! Here are my canonically disabled characters in books that will come out in like 50 years because I'm a slow writer:

(I noticed most of these are mental disabilities and disorders, probably because that's where most of my personal experience is, BUT i do have quite a few physical disabilities in there, and there's also quite a bit of intersectionality <333)

Prince Kaye (FSF series): Kaye has OCD! He's also mixed latino and bisexual <3 very sweet scrawny peacemaker prince born to a family of warlords <3

Captain Cassandra (FSF series): Cassandra is mute due to trading her voice and tail for human legs, and partially deaf due to an explosion on the seas during a battle. Due to losing her tail for human legs, she also experiences chronic pain in her feet (the original curse of every step feeling like walking on knives if you will). She's also plus sized, pansexual, and gets a pirate girlfriend

Erica (FSF series): Erica is an amputee pirate with a peg leg. She's also lesbian, polynesian, plus sized, and Cassandra's hopeless romantic pirate girlfriend.

Princess Hestia (FSF series): Hestia has an anxiety disorder! She's also plus sized, South Asian mixed (like her brother), and falls in love with a shy blonde bookworm trans boi named Elliot

Raven (FSF series): Raven is Autistic! He's a morally gray knight charged with being the personal bodyguard of a reckless princess. He's so Latino and bisexual <3

Princess Sapphire (FSF series): Sapphire has ADHD! She's the reckless adventure seeking and impulsive princess that Raven has to protect. She's also a redhead, and demisexual <3

Triveya (FSF series): Triveya is autistic and adhd! She's the resident wizard and magic expert in the cast of FSF, and is a little bit feral with a bubbly and nerdy personality

Kylee (TCIO series): Kylee is autistic and non speaking! She's a superhero with super speed and invisibility powers, and she's the youngest of the team while also being a mischievous and outgoing ball of sunshine

Bryson (TCIO series): Bryson is diabetic! I'm still developing his character so i haven't figured out which type he is yet (leaning towards type 2). He's the superhero team medic with healing powers (can't heal himself or emotional injuries with said powers), and he's also a black guy and the token straight of the team that's on thin ice

Chase (TCIO series): Chase has OCD, a bipolar mood disorder, and chronic depression and anxiety to go with it! He's the tech guy on the team of superheroes, and doesn't have any supernatural abilities, but he's really good with computers and tech. He's cynical and sarcastic (because of the ableism he's experienced in the past) but secretly does care, and he's also Romani American and Jewish!

Corie (Galaxy Des. series): Corie is a cyborg and has prosthetic limbs! She has a prosthetic eye, arm, and leg. The eye does come with a small interface and her arm does have a laser gun attachment. She built and repairs all of her robot parts herself, and is a highly feared and valuable assassin in the galactic underworld. She's also mixed brown and is AroAce!

NOVA (Galaxy Des. series): Nova is epileptic! She is an android who was scrapped due to malfunction, and became a smuggler who is good at her trade. Due to faulty wiring she's epileptic. She's a cynical and grumpy android who accidentally falls in love with a loveable human lesbian rogue. She's bisexual and has shiny chrome skin with cyan lighting in the cracks.

Pandora (Galaxy Des. series): Pandora is a part-time wheelchair user, autistic and adhd, and tourettic! He is a biologist that formerly did morally questionable work for the galactic government, and now does that same work in the criminal underworld and sells it to the highest bidder. She also uses he/she pronouns, is mixed brown, and pansexual!

Ethel (unnamed witchy wip): Ethel has one eye and PTSD! She's a witch in a world where magic has just been outlawed, and a witch hunting cult has been hired by the new king and queen to hunt down and eradicate witches. She's also AroAce and very underdeveloped because this is a backburner wip.

Thanks for reading! Links to my wips are in my pinned post! If you are a disabled writer and or have disabled characters, do share!

Happy Disability Pride Month!

[space-blue]

Prometheus as a TV series

Firstly, I want to specify that I only saw Alien, Alien Romulus, and the prequels. I'm due to watch Aliens this weekend. I've not read ANY comic or novel.

From my POV, Prometheus and Covenant are extremely weird because they are clearly excellent premises for TV series.

This was originally written in reply to someone who thought the Prequels undermined the cosmic horror by leaning too much into sci-fi and genomics around the Engineers. I argued that none of the prequels' content goes against horror and that the films are simply in the wrong format!

They're both currently terrible because people are forced into dumb exposition to cram information on the screen and dumb actions in order to make a monster movie happen inside what is otherwise an ambitious and philosophical sci-fi premise.

There's large casts of very skilled people. Fuck, in Prometheus there's one of the richest and most influential people in the human galaxy secretly aboard the ship. You'd think this would be absolutely great stuff to explore. Perfect opportunity to see how warped someone like Peter Weyland is, and also the sort of bonkers power he wields.

His relationship to his children (his daughter and his android "son") was very intriguing to me in the film, and considering how vital David 8 is to the prequels as a whole, this would have been great drama to explore further.

Focusing on Prometheus here:

A TV series would have given us a smart, not hectic Holloway. His turn to despondency could be more gradual. His difference in reaction to Shaw could, given time, explore different ways people of faith react to having that faith shaken. I think he's the main source of idiotic scenes throughout, and making him less of a wanker and more of a driven and soft spoken nerd would go a very long way.

Our extra time could also give us time to flesh out Shaw. She could reveal her infertility in a more reasonable environment, like while testing prior to the original cryo-sleep.

Starting on Earth and staying there longer would also help build the Engineers and the act of going after them as something spookier.

In general, the prequels massively sanitize space. It's also the case in Romulus. Space is treated as this negative area that is a source of hard vacuum and zero G. It's not treated as something inherently scary, but we all know that's perfectly doable.

Going to look after the "Engineers" sounds silly in the film because the team is honest to goodness just following cave paintings. They would benefit from following a lead, like perhaps finding the star system and studying it, only to detect strange emissions from it.

(Just in case you forgot, looking at a star is looking at how it was in the past. You look at a star 30,000 light years away and see how it was 30,000 years ago, when those photons left it. Which means we could reasonably pick up sus stuff that motivates a visit, but also means Holloway would understand the concept of being late to the fucking party lmao).

This entire idea, going on a very distant trip to an unknown system, could use time to have anxiety built around it. People could push with serious argument, highlight in universe disasters that happened during similar blind trips, etc. The emptiness and harshness of space are very easy to capitalise on, and going to an unknown system without sending probes first could help frame this as a risky venture, having us on edge and also showing the depth of faith of Shaw and Holloway. BUT ALSO the depth of wicked corporate slavery Weyland can go to, with the rest of the crew hired without any information that would let them make an informed choice on this job.

The arrival around the planet could be spent scanning and being professional. If we spend actual time scanning the surface and following reasonable protocols, the audience won't be poking fun at your show/film for showcasing scientists doing unsafe/idiotic stuff, and also have time to get attached to the red shirts! So it'll hurt when they begin dying!

I think the fans of alien would also appreciate a show that takes its time with the alien world discovery aspect? I feel like these films have neither the time nor the inclination to lean into the science and discovery aspect. Like it happens, but it's not indulged in or treated seriously. Yet aren't we also fans of Arrival? Of Annihilation? Or JC's Avatar?

There are scifi films out there that expect us to be invested in the discovery process, and we are! But Alien isn't one of those franchises. Every film I've seen so far has the science kept secret (Ash), already ruined (Romulus), aborted or discarded in the face of action, but also entirely handwaved or ignored (Prometheus and Covenant)

Like honest to god, you have an Android who is the only one paying attention to ALIEN WRITING and immediately knows HOW TO USE IT and nobody gives a shit, asks about it, is curious about annotating it or even learning it. It's never even mentioned? Like What the Actual Fuck? And in a film where the main goal is to find the aliens in question to have a chat to them, nobody is interested in decrypting the language??

Going back to our timeline, since we have time for the exploration process, we can begin ramping up the anxiety. We can make up some fun new stuff, like this:

What if we were blocked from communications? We could have the characters make incredible discoveries (that the buildings are made by real aliens would be exciting enough, but writing on the walls??) and promptly our crew realises that all communications are being jammed. Not between them, but between the main ship and anywhere else in the galaxy. Maybe the entire system is shrouded somehow and they have literally no idea how. Can't figure the tech behind it or its source. You can start having the one security/military guy announce they should retreat. After all, the planet is there, the buildings have been there for a very long time, they should go and come back later. It'd be more secure to figure out the range of this jamming and maybe call in reinforcement.

We can start dividing the crew! With all the scientists basically too over the moon to mind, and Weyland a silent driving force who doesn't give a shit!!

I think that Holloway sticking to protocol and not removing his helmet at all would help making the confusion and angst greater if he started showing symptoms like his wormy eyes. When did it happen? Was bringing the head aboard a mistake? Was that all it took? ((David grinning in the background))

We could then enjoy an entire episode of mounting paranoia and terror as the show splits between the geologist and biologist stranded in the building and the Prometheus crew growing paranoid and further divided: what if the team was split between the science crew and the ship crew? The scientists are containing Holloway and getting absolutely horrified by what they see happening to him, while the workers are being kept in the dark and told nothing.

A downtrodden and disrespected Wey-yu worker POV wouldn't hurt!

I personally think that Holloway basically morphing/dissolving/losing himself in front of the scientists while they all fail to understand what's happening to him and are completely incapable of stabilising him would be far more horrifying than his suicide by immolation at the hands of a neurotic billionaire. It would also make David's jab about Shaw's dad dying of Ebola more impactful. Rewatched the movie recently and was like "what, her dad died burnt alive before her too??? Oh..."

By the time David finds an Engineer alive, tensions could be high enough that the ship would be on the cusp of mutiny. A good writer could make us really feel 50-50 on "value of answers from a live engineer" vs. "getting the fuck away from this planet".

Also "the engineers are us, we have the same DNA" bit is flat out stupid and leaves a million more questions than it answers, and zero mystery besides. This concept could be much better explored for angst. There are so many directions we could go!

Their DNA could contain every human genome and then more. It could change while it's observed. It could be related to us without being a perfect match. Better yet: it could refuse observation, making every machine bug out and return invalid results. Just stuff to keep us on our toes while David does his parallel observations on the black goo.

Even if we go in depth in the genomics, explaining the thing doesn't have to destroy the appeal of the thing.

I think in particular that we could explain the engineers themselves as our creators and users of the goo, only to thicken the plot as we realise they have no fucking clue what they're doing with it and we're a stray experiment left to run wild in a forgotten petri dish. The idea that the engineers used but did not understand the goo, that it was a tool they inherited themselves from fucking around darker, deeper corners of the galaxy, would be cool.

WORSE yet, it would be interesting to discover they themselves were made by some other culture/force/entity/creation process, and we are like... a by-product. What if we are the David 8 of the engineers, who are the David 8's of something else yet? Or that the Engineers aren't even "made in the image of" their creators? Maybe the whole likeness (between them, us, and our androids) is just a recent tendency we're showing, but not something the Engineers have to share with their own creators.

We could come seeking answers, and realise the Engineers didn't even have any themselves. We could be left to realise we are just the mold on the rind of a cheese, far from understanding the intricacies of 5-star dining. That's how far removed we are from understanding the forces at play.

This would be plenty cosmic horror.

God is a well polished concept, but we have a very narrow and human centric understanding of it, and it may be meaningless. Imagine if you saw Shaw lose faith only to regain it with a streak of madness? Imagine if we had the time to explore what a cosmic horror on the scale of "At the mountains of madness" would do to a religious modern person who has come searching answers and found more than she could take?

If Shaw were a Lovecraft protag, she'd say stuff like the black goo being the blood of the gods that made the Engineers, all bled dry now. Weird poetic shit should come back xD

Also. Close your eyes for a second and imagine the scene of David speaking to the Engineer. And for the lolz, let's say that the Engineer speaks back, and David adjusts, and they end up having what looks like a meaningful exchange of a few words.

Then the Engineer pats his head and wrenches him apart, and the ending comes around, only for David to staunchly refuse to ever elaborate on what the Engineer told him. Certainly another great reason to keep him around...

I hope I've made my point. If more than 50 people lose their shit on this post, I'll make a Covenant TV show post too, though it's more of a fixer-upper.

Bonus for reaching the end, a happy David:

The ultimate argument, of course, is that given 16-18 episodes of great Prometheus TV, we would have had so much more David...

[cellarspider]

12/30 Things come to a head

(Previous) | (Index) | (Next)

⛬

We return to that shambling mass of a film, Prometheus.

Content warnings for body horror, contagion-y stuff, something that loosely be described as medical horror, It’s Been 0 Days Since Our Last Incident, and me, going on a ramble about movie gore to distract myself from The Madness.

There's a lady in this scene who's had a number of speaking lines so far–the maybe-chemist. She has a name, but it doesn’t matter.

But I'm going to call her Doctor Frankenstein.

They have just got the helmet off the head, revealing that it’s truly, unmistakably humanoid. They have noted that there are “new cells” on the head. In the business, we call that “decomposition”, but Doctor Frankenstein is not concerned with this. In fact, she immediately proposes a new plan.

Doctor Frankenstein has had the brilliant idea to plug a big cable into the head like it’s a guitar amp, and zap it with electricity to wake it up.

Yes. This is what the movie goes with.

You know, Alien included a similarly shambolic first examination of an alien subject, but it was performed because said alien was attached to a man’s face, and all they had to try and fix that was the contents of a cargo ship’s medbay, with the only qualified personnel being the corporate android who had been ordered to consider the crew expendable. The crew of the Prometheus has no such excuse.

Well, except for David, he has precisely the same excuse, but he’s not trying to poke wires in anybody’s ears.

Doctor Frankenstein calls for enough amperage to run three electric kettles (cite 3), then all the way up to two Titan RTX graphics cards before the head starts to get what appears to be a massive migraine. 

I know this expression well, migraines can feel very much like someone is subjecting me to unnatural horrors.

This is getting a little extreme, though. Yes, when the head starts pulsing, they realize they may have made a mistake. 

I’d say this was inexplicable behavior on their part, unbelievably hasty and foolish–and I will say it, actually, it deserves to be said. But in context, this is the team that did so little prep for entering the alien structure that they didn’t notice the giant fuckoff skull carved into the outside of it.

Knowing how much Shaw and Holloway read into the intentions of the Engineers from the depictions they found on Earth, they probably would’ve interpreted this as a good sign, somehow.

Anyway, they put a sneezeguard down over the head before it explodes.

Good job everyone. This is like what would’ve happened if Napoleon’s savants took one look at the Rosetta Stone and decided “maybe we should try hitting it with hammers. Surely that’ll make the knowledge fall out.”

From a horror perspective, this scene only works in two contexts: First, gross-out. Generally found in schlock, exploitation, and outsider art flicks, the tone of gross-out content can be highly variable, but there are two general trends I'd mention, which are of relevance to this movie.

First, gross-out tends to exist in that weird alternate space where lots of comedy movies do: characters will behave in unreasonable ways for no apparent reason. Within the film, this is treated as the universal norm, besides maybe a straight man character who highlights the absurdity. Gross-out is often like that, but pushes different boundaries of acceptable behavior than a traditional comedy.

This is, bafflingly, what Prometheus increasingly feels like. It feels like it's transitioning into gross-out schlock, and yet it never goes all the way.

Second: the audience for gross-out is largely self-selecting. If you're watching John Waters' Pink Flamingos, you expect things to get messy. You are looking forward to things getting messy. A head exploding is perfectly par for the course in gross-out horror. One might even be disappointed if there wasn't an exploding head.

But again, this movie was not marketed on gross-out. It was marketed as a tense, Alien-esque horror movie. If you followed that premise like I did, you're not in the theater to view a debauched spectacle, you're there for the movie to put a well-paced squeeze on the characters and your nerves, where half the horror comes from having the room to really think about how frightening the core concepts of the series are.

Does Alien involve some shocking gore? Sure does! But in Alien, Kane's fate is not there to make you laugh and exclaim "ewww!" at how far the film's gone, the film tries to make you very aware of how horrifying his demise is.

So, there's an alternate way this scene works, if you're coming in from that perspective. I don't think the movie intended this as much as the gross-out, but it's what I drew from it at the time: the scene works if you decide not to focus your sympathies on the human characters at all, or even David, and think about it from the perspective of the head. 

It’s patently impossible that what they did actually “woke up” the brain inside that skull. But if we sink to the movie’s level and entertain the idea for a moment, what in the hell have they just done to this Engineer? The last thing the head would’ve remembered was running, falling, decapitation, and then this. They just tortured this poor bastard for no adequately explained reason. There’s none! “I think we can trick the nervous system into thinking it's still alive” is the entirety of the explanation. It makes about as much sense and seems as thoughtlessly violent as anything in Mad God (2021, content warning for body horror). 

I already spent all my anger about desecrating bodies in the name of shambolic pseudoscience, I have no more rage to give for now. And similarly in the theater, I hit my limit. I’d already hit a different limit back when they landed the Prometheus on top of some archaeology, but now I’d fully given up on this movie being what I’d hoped it would be. 

The maddening thing that keeps me obsessed with it is that it keeps throwing random scraps of that hypothetical movie into the mix anyway, bouncing me like a yo-yo between scenes. 

But for right now, the yo-yo is still on the descent. Having exploded the first sample of alien biology ever touched by science, they apparently stuck some of it in a generic, science-y DNA machine. What does the DNA machine tell them? 

“DNA match”. 

The movie does not actually explain what this means. It thinks it does, but in a very vague and handwave-y way that ends up being even more hilarious than if they’d just been out-and-out wrong. Because this is what I do for a living, I want to science at this for a bit. 

But I’ve written enough about it for an entire post on its own, so that will wait until next time.

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(Previous) | (Index) | (Next)

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Citations for alt-text rambles, as well as some text-text rambles:

1. https://www.behance.net/gallery/78297841/Semiotic-Standard (contains a high-quality download for the symbols, should ye wish them for yourselves)

2. https://www.sculpturedepot.net/clay-wax-tools/product.asp?Steel_Tools 

3. Doctor Frankenstein calls for 30 amps first, then 40, then 50 in the space of several seconds. According to wikipedia, an electric kettle is about 16.6A, and a 288W high-performance graphics card would require 24A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(current) That graphics card isn’t mentioned by name, but it matches up with the wattage reported by Tom’s Hardware for a Titan RTX (cite 4). Running with two of these things, you might be able to run 4k Ultra settings on some games without tanking your framerate. They could’ve been playing video games and seen way more exploding heads.

4. https://www.tomshardware.com/features/graphics-card-power-consumption-tested 

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)#Design

6. https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/f4rf63/for_the_chestburster_scene_in_alien_1979_the/

7. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/8e/2f/9b/8e2f9b0716746aac7ce5b2f369bf4082--aliens--scene.jpg

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karyotype#Human_karyogram 

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centromere 

10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centromere#Telocentric 

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_banding 

12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteinogenic_amino_acid 

13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hula_language

[the-lark-ascending69]

Android Robin thoughts:

As an emotional support android, designed as a therapeutical tool for mental health patients, she was always programmed to easily imitate human emotion. Nancy assumes this is why she always seemed so sensitive and emotional.

The first time Nancy thought there was something more going on was the first time she made Robin cry. It's common knowledge that the only robots who could cry are ones designed to pass as human (ex. as spies, for example), or... adult activities robots, something Nancy found distasteful. She has two concerns now: one, that Steve got her one such android, and two, that someone had attempted to illegally turn Robin into one.

She's not way off on that one - Robin did run away from a previous owner because she learned he planned to have such illegal alterations done to her. He didn't get to go any further than artificial tear ducts, but even that was one of the most traumatic experiences in her life.

Robin can't eat (her hardware is not made for that and it could cause serious damage), but she does drink water to keep her system from overheating, especially while photosynthesizing. That's where the tear ducts get water from.

Nancy gets emotionally attached to Robin surprisingly fast. It's in her nature - she's empathetic and sensitive and she can't help but believe her when Robin is sobbing and wildly gesticulating with her hands and loudly begging Nancy to understand that she exists, she's real, she feels, she thinks, she's a living being who's concious and self-aware and she's so, so scared because her reality feels like the most terrifying form of existential horror, and she feels so alone.

Robin's system isn't designed to lose water quickly by crying, so she often gets weak, tired and dehydrated when she cries (which happens often). Nancy always helps her lay down on the couch or bed before she falls and hits her head, and is always quick to get her water.

Robin's body is as soft and warm as a human being's. It's completely indestinguishable from one. She even has an artificial heartbeat, meant to help patients calm down.

After realizing Robin is self-aware and concious, Nancy cleans up the spare room in her apartment she used for storage (she threw inside whatever thing she didn't need atm and let it gather dust there for months). She used to keep Robin there whenever she didn't need her, with a few books to keep her quiet whenver she turned herself on randomly (another technical problem). Now, she begins to think of her as a roommate and not as a more complex form of one of those circular vacuum cleaners that roll around on their own. That means she needs an actual bedroom, decorated however Robin wants, and a comfortable bed, with bookshelves on every wall and a closet with clothes of her own.

Robin has a lot of trauma responses when she's reminded of the abuse she suffered. Men raising their voices, people grabbing her or raising their hands or hitting walls and furniture always make her go still and quiet. Nancy always tries to be extra careful with her.

She hates being turned off by other people. Nancy used to do it a lot, whenever she got tired of hearing her talk, and Robin always let her because she didn't want to make her mad, but it instilled a great feeling of fear and powerlessness in her. Nancy doesn't do it anymore.

She introduces her to her friends as her new (totally human) rommate. The only people who know the truth are Steve and Dustin. They both have... a lot of conflicting feelings about Nancy's weird relationship with Robin, but Steve eventually comes around, understands that Robin is sentient and actually becomes very good friends with her. Dustin still has his doubts. It shouldn't be physically possible.

Robin is scared Nancy will one day realize just how broken she is and get rid of her, like everyone else before.

Robin gets a job at the local movie theater. She wants to help pay rent, as well as save up some money for herself. Nancy supports this, but she's terrified someone will learn she's a robot and report her to the authorities.

Nancy is the first person Robin comes out to as a lesbian. It's another one of Robin's beautiful surprises.

Nancy likes to read for Robin, whenever Robin's battery is low and she's too weak and tired to do it herself.

Robin's battery is charged faster when she's turned off (similar to being asleep, or unconcious). It takes her 12 full hours to get fully charged (while turned off), and her battery will last for two days until it's depleted. She usually photosynthesizes in the balcony. She very rarely turns back on right after finishing charging - it will usually take a few more hours, but never more than 6. Nancy could turn her on manually, so she could get back inside, but she prefers to carry her to bed. It's not an easy task because Robin is taller and heavier, but Nancy always manages one way to another. She likes to place a soft kiss on her head before leaving her to rest.

Nancy falls first, Robin falls harder.

[duhragonball]

In all honesty, while I do miss Super Saiyan "first times" being emotional beats, a lot of fans forget Goten did it by accident and Trunks did it because he felt like it. Like what, was Goten that angry at Chi Chi during their sparing match? Was Trunks' jealousy of Goten going super saiyan equal to Vegeta's self-loathing during the time skip before the Androids Saga? At least with Caulifla there's an in-universe explanation that honestly makes sense for her character. She's not the type to explode with rage and Cabba's not the type to antagonize her. Rather, she's adept enough at fighting to recognize that all she has to do is emulate the feeling of the transformation to attain it and skilled enough to do it by force. She basically skips the awakening part to get right to the "do it at will" stage which is perfect buildup for her as a rival of sorts for Goku.

I think what really bothered the Caulifla haters (besides their misogyny) was that she said the quiet part out loud.

The dirty little secret about the Super Saiyan form was that it was never this ancient and mystic power of destiny, but a quirk of Saiyan biology that almost anyone could replicate if they knew what steps to follow. The reason Vegeta, Trunks, and Gohan all pulled it off in such a short span of time was that they had a living Super Saiyan as a reference, and they had the motivation to work at it.

By the time Cabba showed up, it was considered a big twist that he couldn't turn Super Saiyan. That's how cliche the form had become. So when Cabba learns it very quickly, it's mostly because we need him to get "caught up" in a hurry. And Caulifla and Kale were even stronger than he was before he learned the form, so it only makes sense that they would get the hang of it quickly as well.

But their transformations weren't treated like this big dramatic moment that turns the tide of the story. That's because Super Saiyan was no longer a major milestone, but also because we'd already seen it done several times by several other characters. The gimmick with Caulifla and Kale was that they were prodigies, diamonds in the rough who were suddenly tapping into their hidden potential. Could they improve enough, quickly enough, to become a threat in the tournament?

The thing fans have to accept is that Super Saiyan isn't the be-all and end-all of this franchise. That's why we have Super Saiyan 2, 3, 4, God, and Blue, along with Ultra Intinct, Beast, and all of the other advanced forms that have cropped up along the way. And the bad guys have always been able to keep pace, so calling each new level "unearned" is pointless.

We could say that Caulifla deconstructed the whole concept, except Vegeta already did it when he first transformed in 1991.

One page. One page is all it takes to undermine whatever legend or superstition is still attached to the Super Saiyan form. This is the third character we've seen use the form, but Krillin still hung onto the idea that a Super Saiyan had to at least be a good guy. But Vegeta informs him that he simply trained and trained until he hit a wall and his frustration pushed his body over the threshold. But Vegeta still clings to the idea of a "Saiyan Messiah", even though he just demonstrated that there's nothing special about this. You don't need to be a mythical hero, or a man of destiny, or even a nice person. You just need talent and effort, and maybe some luck.

The U6 Saiyans just did a speedrun of Vegeta's process, and that may irritate fans, except that the U6 Saiyans were far, far more powerful than Vegeta was in the Androids Saga. Cabba and Vegeta fought evenly in their base forms, and that was the same "Saiyan Beyond God" level seen in Resurrection F. They were already capable of the transformation; they just needed someone to tell them it was a thing.

[zombiezonurlawn]

Casey and Pershing are so cute! They've seriously caught my attention, I really like that Pershing doesn't need to sleep but still cuddles with Casey and watches her, that is absolutely adorable!! Can you tell me more about them? I'm really curious!

AHH i will take any opportunity to infodump about my ocs tbh THANKYOU!!

I have really crazy lore just rolling around in my head for fun, but Ill just condense it down to Casey and Pershing because I love them so much!!

Casey and Pershing are just awkward teens trying to figure out their little path in life (very much inspired by a lot of my highschool experiences/figuring myself out). They are pretty much opposites of one another, kind of general nerd x jock trope to be honest

casey has had most of life handed to her, to be honest. She's the only heir of an extremely innovative, successful tech company (Branningco.) and her father is literally a supermodel. She is in her school's rocketry club and varsity flight team(kind of like futuristic cross country, how its treated at school). Despite this, she largely rejects the life thats been given to her. Her mother is an extremely paranoid transhumanist who believes in mechanical systems and hard schedule more than anything else, a woman who simply had a child to produce an heir to her massive wealth and was more fanatically in love with her own creations rather than her husband or child. When Casey was very young and ended up to be farsighted, her mother forced her to have cybernetic goggles attached which can't be taken off (they have an extreme magnetic attraction from the base of the goggles to a thin metal fiber which is embedded around the face and eye area), her mother would have preferred to have her eyes replaced altogether, but the treatment was considered too invasive, especially since Casey did not consent to any treatment whatsoever. Due to this trauma and just simply living with her mother, constantly falling short of her expectations, Casey deeply opposes any type of cybernetic upgrades or the development of conscious androids/robots and works as kind of a figurehead against the transhumanist movement (kind of a hot political topic in the story), although she hardly understands the true effect of exploitative businesses like her mother's simply because she has spent the majority of her life benefitting from it, class-wise. She's extremely extroverted, but often struggles with listening to others as deeply as she should.

Pershing has lived a mostly opposite life. Her mother is a worker at a humble start-up alongside a few family friends (they mostly work in inventing satellite and rocket travel safety mechanisms) and her father harvests metal scrap and trash from Venus's orbit (its kind of like a more intense version of arctic fishing-- massive ships with massive crews grab metal and trash slightly above the dense atmosphere and suffocating clouds of the planet, trash which they recycle and sell back to those on earth), typically the 'harvest season' happens in the summertime. Neither of these careers are particularly profitable, but they get by well enough and take very good care of their only daughter, Pershing, who they love more than life itself.

Pershing, obviously, isn't an 'ordinary' human daughter, despite both of her parents being human. I won't get into all of it how it works, just because its a LOT to explain, but Pershing isn't an ordinary domestic robot, while its not unheard of for human parents to raise androids (and rarely, full on robots) its certainly rare and usually prevalent with upper-crust society, not a lower-middle class family like Pershing's. Not only that, domestic robots look and operate extremely different, their inner systems being similar to personal AI (I guess the most similar thing I could compare it to is like, ChatGPT) with prepackaged parts for each life stage. Pershing is not any of that. Her origins are extremely mysterious. She was a primitive computer found by her father in Venus's orbit(somehow), when her father found her, she was deactivated and simply just her little head, alongside the mysterious jacket she wears throughout her life. Nobody quite understands HOW she learns, she doesn't possess the learning AI of conventional bots and more closely resembles, software wise, a military computer built purely for human function. Despite this, she learns, she persists, and she feels extremely deeply. Every physical part of her was built by herself, with the help of her mother along the way, from scrap copper on earth and from Venus. She isn't legally recognized as the child of her parents, but since they lived in a small town and her mother had good standing in the community, Pershing was able to attend public school and live a relatively normal life, despite othering from her classmates. In the summer, Pershing lived on the massive Venusian harvesting ships alongside her father, although she rarely did any of the dangerous harvesting and preferred to spend most of her time reading and writing (which she formed a real skill for). Pershing is generally extremely awkward and though she finds herself squarely in the robotics and rocketry groups at school(due to a slight talent for it simply due to years of repairing and building herself) she doesn't find any real joy in that trade, or real connection with the group, and is deeply artistic, intuitive, and introverted.

Pershing and Casey met in sophomore year of high school. Both of them go to prestigious school called Clearwater High, which is uniquely found on Jupiter's moon, Europa. Casey was bound to go there since elementary school, Pershing, however, was let in through a writing contest the school had in her freshman year, to cultivate more of a humanities culture within the science and robotics-centric school. They met through the school's rocketry club, which Pershing was hardly enthusiastic to be a part of but joined anyway for the sake of getting the 'most' out of her rare opportunity to be at such a prestigious institution. Although they initially didn't get along, they kept meeting through the concerts of the indie band "48 Hottake" (Annika, the lead guitar, being Casey's idol as she is the captain of the varsity flight team and Milly, the lead singer and bass, being Pershing's childhood friend who had won the student position much like Pershing but through her music). They realized they had a lot more in common: feeling isolated, a complicated relationship with conforming to their gender, and just a general appreciation for art. Its a lot deeper than that, of course, but this is already MASSIVE so I won't get into it too much. Pershing and Casey find each other deeply beautiful. Pershing, because she isn't a typical domestic android, doesn't have the software to imitate sleep patterns like some other bots. She doesn't sleep, doesn't feel tired, and doesn't WANT to sleep, she likes the extra time (although she is curious about it, and would fake sleeping at sleepovers when she was younger in an attempt to fit in). She usually spends the night quietly writing, drawing, or playing video games. The few times she has been able to sleep over with Casey, she doesn't do any of that, she just simply looks at her girlfriend, one of her favorite things to do.

[cloudjumpervalka]

really surprised i haven't posted these?

the first is a lineup of my apprentice for the arcana game in their various outfits. they have since become a big inspiration for my new book project

the second is a lineup of all my ttrpg characters over the years. more info about them below (this is so long i apologize but i love my blorbos)

Dagny - half wood elf druid. he lives alone in a swamp after running away from home. he doesn't much care for people after growing up in a toxic environment. he dedicates himself to preserving the wildlife he's found solace in. Notably has a pet seagull named Gordon and a coral snake named Alton

Beryl Frozenfire (ft. Sapphire Frozenfire) - mountain dwarf barbarian. beryl and sapphire grew up as siblings born into a wealthy mining family (all of their family is named after blue gemstones) beryl grew up more interested in fighting to protect her home while sapphire grew up interested in becoming a powerful wizard. they grew up as the best of friends but long story short, beryl accidentally kills sapphire during a raid on her family's mine. beryl leaves her family home to atone for this, only to return years later with her new traveling party against her wishes. while saving her family's mine which had fell apart after the disappearance of their two children, she finds herself now magically attached to an ax holding the angry soul of her dead sister.

Morgana Thales - dusk elf death cleric. (yes i used Mor for a like month long side campaign i dont remember the exact details but bear with me) morgana loses her wife in a raid against their village. she then makes a deal with the followers of (i dont remember the deity oops but i think?? it was Shar?) to resurrect her wife in exchange of her service

Jullian - fey eladrin bard. he plays the hurdy gurdy. he's a traveling musician that relies on his constant traveling to refrain from forming any good relationships. (and honestly i've tried playing him in two different campaigns but i just can't rp as him lmao so me leaving those campaigns early is very in character actually)

Nanjo - human... doomed superhero... "vape ghost". she was born with powers that allow her to turn her body into vapor to "teleport" (similar to reaper/moira ovw) however every time that she uses her powers, she loses a part of her physical body. she currently does not have either of her arms intact, instead she moves her hands around with clouds of vapor she forms to create "smoky arms". she does not want people to know she is essentially disintegrating for multiple reasons. but the main reason is she is a retired jpop idol. it was too hard to keep her secret on stage so she left her other two group members to be a duo. while she cannot continue performing on stage, she uses her abilities in a modified cosplay of her favorite idol to fight crime

Olive Alberich - android on the run from being disassembled. she was built as a product of a corrupt company. she was purchased by a wealthy family that used her to act as a nanny for their child. she acted essentially as the kid's sole caretaker as well as her homeschool teacher as she had infinite knowledge in her head. one day the kid asks to do a science experiment as her homework for the day, but things go wrong and results in the kid dying from a explosion/fire that burns down that wing of the mansion. this event triggers an empathy chip in olive's brain that was not meant to be installed. olive distraught in that moment can recall her years raising this kid in new light while watching her body burn. her owners after seeing olive's new attitude, call for her recall as they believe she intentionally killed their child. she believes this is unjust and is now on the run. she has since acquired a new "cool girl" look by cutting her hair, changing her wardrobe, and replacing one of her eyes. if anyone asks, she's human

the last one is cheating because its beryl again but from when i tried bringing her back for a new campaign that was abandoned quickly lol

[linabirb]

[PJSK OC Unit Introduction #01] Pain Killer

THE GIRLS!! ARE HERE!! YAY!! please be nicey to them...

more information about them under the cut!

(note: when it comes to their designs, their names are written in "first name, last name" order, but in their profiles their names are written in "last name, first name" order. also, about everyone's covers, at this point i feel like pjsk has so many covers, i can type literally any vocaloid song title and i will be able to find a pjsk cover of it, so if i say that a unit could cover a song that already has a canon cover, simply nod and agree with me 👍 also also, even if someone has "vocalist" as their position, obviously others sing too. also also ALSO, this takes place in the original timeline and not the brand new world one.)

(warnings for descriptions of physical and mental health problems, mentions of death, self-harm, toxic relationships and suicide, also this unit overall has a hospital/medical theme, so if you're not comfortable with that. yeah)

SEKAI Info.

Unit name: Pain Killer (i thought this would be a fun name for a unit with a medical theme! and it also has a deeper meaning, like, all of these girls' lives are painful in their own ways and they're tired of dealing with it, so they're going to KILL IT. but it also can be interpreted as them trying to get rid of this pain not in the most healthy way and getting addicted to it..)

Members (names are written in the "first name, last name" order): Yuuki Satou, Sae Chou, Kanami Nagai, Inori Watabe

Virtual singers (i've said this before, i'll be going with different vocaloids, but i'll still keep at least one "standard" virtual singer in every unit): Hatsune Miku, Oliver, Flower, Kaito, Utatane Piko, Mayu

Virtual singers' roles:

This SEKAI's Miku is a nurse and she seems to be very kind, thoughtful and soft-spoken. She cares a lot about the patients and the unit members and tries her best to give them good advice. It still feels like she's hiding something though.. When it comes to her design, her pigtails are more wavy and the tips of her hair are soft pink. She has two-colored eyes as well and they are both pink and teal.

Oliver is one of the patients. He's a very shy and kind-hearted boy who cares about the unit members and other patients' health and needs more than his own. Maybe it's because he enjoys the attention he gets as a patient with the most severe condition a little too much? His design is overall pretty similar to his original one minus the outfit and he wears a hospital gown similar to the ones Pain Killer members wear.

Flower is one of the patients as well. She clearly hates being here and she wishes she could just heal from all her pain already. Despite her cold and intimidating personality, she seems to be getting along with Oliver. Her design is very similar to her V4 standard one, she wears a hospital gown and there are some bandaids on her body and she has an eyepatch as well.

Kaito is the doctor that takes care of everyone and checks up on them. He seems to be very similar to WxS!Kaito as he gives off this older brother/father figure vibe, but he can be strict when needed, for example, when the unit members are refusing to take a break and rest. His design isn't that different from the original one minus the outfit, but he also wears glasses and has a hair gradient that goes from a darker shade of blue to the lighter one. If you remove his glasses, you can see that he actually has dark circles under his eyes.

Utatane Piko is an android who helps with detecting the patients and the unit members' health issues. He looks a lot like a human and you can notice the robot-like elements of his design only if you look closer. He seems to be only doing his job at first and not really having any feelings about it, but he actually takes it very seriously and gets attached to everyone in the process.

Mayu is a nurse as well, just like Miku, and she seems to be very overprotective when it comes to the patients. She always feels like they're still too sick and she doesn't trust them when they say that they're feeling better. It's possible for her to start feeling this way about the unit members too. Outside of that, she's a very cheerful and talkative person who is definitely the most extroverted one out of all Hospital SEKAI's virtual singers.

SEKAI creator: All unit members

SEKAI name: Hospital SEKAI

SEKAI description: This SEKAI is able to change its appearance based on the unit members' physical and mental health state. When at least one of them is suffering, the SEKAI will look like some kind of abandoned hospital that you would see in a horror game and if all members are doing okay, the hospital will look completely fine. The patients (Oliver and Flower)' physical and mental state is also directly connected to certain members. Of course, they can't actually die, but they can still feel pain.

Characters Info.

Satou Yuuki.

Name: Satou Yuuki (佐藤優希) (her last name means "assistance, help, aid" and "wisteria", her first name means "gentleness, kindness" and "rare, hope, beg for") 

Age: 17 years old

Unit: Pain Killer

Position: Vocalist and guitarist

Gender: Female (She/her)

Birthday: July 1st (Cancer)

Height: 168 cm

Family: Father, mother, grandmother

School: Miyamasuzaka Girls Academy (Class 2-A)

Club/committee: Health committee

Hobbies: Learning history of medicine, helping out at an animal shelter

Talents: Making people and animals trust her

Favorite food: Green apples

Least favorite food: Red apples

Dislikes: Seeing someone in pain

Appellations:

"Satou" (Sae)

"Yuuki-san" (Kanami)

"Yuuyuu" (Inori)

Image color: #F1C5FC

Character description: Yuuki is a rather shy and clumsy girl who finds it hard to socialize and make friends, but there's just something about her that makes people like her anyway. Because someone who was very important to her passed away recently due to illness, she became even more quiet and started to think about isolating herself from others, but after meeting a new student who seems to be having health problems as well, Yuuki changed her mind and decided to become friends with her, hoping that she can make her life better and at least a bit easier. Yuuki overall seems to have some kind of savior complex and she's obsessed with helping others and it's hard to say if she does so because she's genuinely that kind or because she wants those people to feel like they owe her.. or because her self-esteem is so low that she needs at least some kind of "proof" that she's still needed and she still can be useful.

Trivia:

She doesn't like red apples because she thinks they aren't as "juicy" as green ones.

Even though she's a huge scaredy cat, she's not afraid of needles at all and actually seems to have some kind of weird fascination with them.

Her favorite animals are dogs, especially big ones.

She's a bit jealous of Ichika and Saki's relationship and wishes to have something similar.

Interestingly, she actually doesn't remember that "important person" that well and she can't even remember if it was a family member, a friend or a significant other. It's possible that her memories related to that person became blurry because of trauma. She doubts that it was a family member though since she's sure her family would've told her about it and she would've noticed something different about their behavior.

Her hair is dyed and her natural hair color is lavender. She dyed it shortly after that "important person"'s death and she thinks it's possible that these two colors were that person's favorite.

Her personality is the reason why she's wearing an outfit more similar to doctor's rather than a hospital gown when performing in the Hospital SEKAI. She sees herself as a doctor and not a patient unlike the other members.

Chou Sae.

Name: Chou Sae (姚咲) (her last name means "beautiful, good-looking" and her first name means "blossom, flourish")

Age: 17 years old

Unit: Pain Killer

Position: Keyboardist

Gender: Female (She/her)

Birthday: January 16th (Capricorn)

Height: 172 cm

Family: Father, mother

School: Miyamasuzaka Girls Academy (2-A)

Club/committee: Library committee

Hobbies: Reading horror novels, playing piano

Talents: Not getting scared easily

Favorite food: Cheese buns

Least favorite food: Hamburger

Dislikes: Crowded places, forgetting her cane

Appellations:

"Sae-san" (Yuuki, Kanami)

"Sae-chan" (Inori)

Image color: #E9BD79

Character description: Sae is a new student and obviously it's hard for her to get used to her new school and her new classmates. She is a quiet person who often scares people away because of how blunt she is and because of her refusing to sugarcoat things, but she is actually just very.. tired. She can't find energy for socializing, so she often ends up saying something completely different from what she wanted to say. It may seem like she treats Yuuki just as coldly as she treats everyone else, but she actually appreciates her company and even finds her cute in some way. She also.. really likes the attention she gets from her.

Trivia:

Sae and Yuuki are classmates.

Sae shares a lot of similarities with Saki, such as being "the new student who couldn't attend school for some time because of illness", having a lot of yellows and oranges in their designs, being keyboardists of their respective units and their names starting with the same two letters. Their personalities are very different though.

When Sae mentioned that she doesn't like hamburgers, Inori stared at her and after a minute of silence asked "What do you have against America?"

Sae has to use a cane because she recently got a knee surgery. It may sound like something that isn't that serious, but Sae actually had to go through quite a lot of surgeries in her life which definitely had a negative impact on her mental health.

Inori decorated her cane to make her feel better. Sae is grateful to her for that.

She particularly enjoys body horror and psychological horror.

Interestingly, she doesn't just see herself as a patient in Hospital SEKAI, she sees herself as a zombie. Meaning that she sees herself as someone who's already dead or she thinks that with all the surgeries she's had, it would probably be better for her to die.

She's the only unit member who Inori couldn't come up with a nickname for, simply because she thought Sae's name is too short.

Nagai Kanami.

Name: Nagai Kanami (永居叶望) (her last name means "eternity, permanence" and "to stay, to be present" and her first name means "fulfill, satisfy" and "hope, wish, desire") 

Age: 18 years old

Unit: Pain Killer

Position: Bassist

Gender: Female (She/her)

Birthday: April 23rd (Taurus)

Height: 173 cm

Family: Father, mother, little brother (15 years old), little sister (10 years old)

School: Miyamasuzaka Girls Academy (3-A)

Club/committee: Tea ceremony club

Hobbies: Collecting cute hairclips, learning lore of mascot characters

Talents: Lying

Favorite food: Matcha-flavored pocky

Least favorite food: Egg dishes

Dislikes: Getting up early, paper

Appellations:

"Nagai-senpai" (Yuuki, Sae)

"Kana-senpai" (Inori)

Image color: #E4A1C1

Character description: Kanami is one of the most popular students and she's very respected for being so helpful and kind to everyone. She always has the best grades too. Sadly, she gets sick very often, so she has to skip classes and club activities because of that, but she always tries her best to catch up. She seems to have really bad health anxiety because of that, so you can often see her wearing a mask, gloves or simply using hand sanitizer every few seconds. Some people actually think that Kanami is faking her illness to skip classes, but most people believe that Kanami is the most responsible person you'll ever meet. Except.. those people who think she's faking are right.

Trivia:

Her hair is just like that. It's not a weird haircut, her hair really is just like that. Inori said it looks like wet paper. Kanami was not amused.

Speaking of paper, she actually has an extreme fear of papercuts, so she tries to avoid it.. which is hard to do at school.

Her favorite tea is matcha.

She's the only third year in Pain Killer, so she's often forced to do "adult stuff" such as promoting their group, posting their music, etc. She's not happy about it.

The reason why she's faking her health problems is because she's tired of the pressure she receives from her family and the lack of attention due to her being the oldest child. She knows it's not the smartest decision, but she can't come up with anything else.

She sees herself as a patient in the Hospital SEKAI because she wishes to be one so that she could stop feeling bad about faking her illness. She actually wants to be in pain.

Watabe Inori.

Name: Watabe Inori (渡邉以愛) (her last name means "to cross, to pass over" and her first name means "by means of, because of" and "love, affection")

Age: 17 years old

Unit: Pain Killer

Position: Drummer

Gender: Female (Any pronouns)

Birthday: June 2nd (Gemini)

Height: 166 cm

Family: Mother, older brother (20 years old)

School: Miyamasuzaka Girls Academy (Class 2-B)

Club/committee: Swimming club

Hobbies: Sitting on the rooftop of her house, knife throwing

Talents: Telling ghost stories

Favorite food: Salty popcorn

Least favorite food: Carrots 

Dislikes: Relaxing music, bandaids that are "not cute"

Appellations:

"Inori-san" (Yuuki)

"Watabe" (Sae)

"Inori-chan" (Kanami)

Image color: #75C7C0

Character description: Inori never knows when to stop. She laughs too much. Cries too much. Loves too much. So obviously he's not a type of person to take a breakup well. Especially a breakup with a guy who enjoyed seeing her in pain. She still hopes he will come back one day, so for now, she will continue to do horrible things to herself to make him pay attentiom to her. They don't even go to the same school, but it's okay, he can just pay him a visit later. Hanging out with Pain Killer members is fun though.. Maybe even more fun than whatever Inori and that guy had.

Trivia:

Most people refer to Inori by she/her pronouns, but Sae also uses they/them pronouns and Kanami uses he/him pronouns for them.

Inori and that guy were childhood friends and dated for three years.

Yuuki often takes care of Inori's scars and wounds. Inori wasn't happy about it at first since she does so to make their ex-boyfriend come back, but later, he actually started to like the attention they get from Yuuki.

Inori often jokes about looking a lot like Miku (the "classic" one and not their SEKAI one).

She's in the same class as Mafuyu.

Inori finds swimming relaxing.

Unit info.

Unit description: I imagine them being somewhat of a mix of L/N and N25, they're posting their music online and they don't really perform irl and Yuuki created the unit, hoping that they can help people "heal" from their pain with their music.

Unit leader: Yuuki

Original songs info: They mostly play rock (a particularly sad kind) with some elements of electronic music.

Vocaloid covers: I imagine them covering songs like Accomplice by Misumi, Sayoko by Mikito-P, Crier by Scop and Apocalypse Now by Pinocchio-P.

(Bonus) Milgram cover: Even though Throw Down and Triage seem like the obvious choice, I think Weakness would fit their style and their characters much better.

[kafus]

i said i wanted to talk about my SV trainer a little bit and i have decided to write a post about this now while waiting for dinner because i am bored lol

i do not have art of her atm so you'll have to take these images for now. i also have no idea what the fuck to name her i somehow haven't been able to decide so we're just gonna call her Kafu even though that is not her name that's just the name i use for online play LMAO. oh and he uses he And she pronouns so if u see me alternating that's why. anyway. this is going to be long i'm putting it under the cut. no pressure to read it i'm just rambling

basically when i started playing violet i had avoided spoilers/leaks and stuff and i had no idea what was going to happen except for what was in trailers, and i knew about the robotic paradox mons so my robot obsessed ass decided okay. you know what. kafu is also a robot and somehow comes from the same place these paradox mons r coming from. i went thru the game with this in mind, this is why kafu wears sunglasses to cover her really inhuman colorful robot eyes, it makes them less jarring and doesn't instantly give her away to strangers. him being a robot is actually a secret (he appears very human/realistic) that the cast of SV finds out about as trust builds throughout the journey. for what it's worth this is also why his sunglasses are off in the credits pic for the main story, he took them off while in area zero where literally no one was around and it didn't matter lol

this is all well and good and gave me an extra point of attachment to sv's cast during the main story but the dlc makes this really interesting in particular because of the crystal pool scene. not only is the time machine and the story of SV a paradox but kafu herself is a paradox. the way i'm handling this is subject to change but my current idea is the following:

there is a prior timeline before any of sv's plot, where turo got the idea for the time machine of his own accord. heath and paradox mon sightings still exist regardless and so does terapagos, who is not pulling the paradox mons literally from the future of sv's world but the future in another dimension (it has both time and space abilities). in this timeline, turo finds terapagos himself and actually owns it and is able to weaponize its powers to make a much MUCH more potent machine than what we see in violet, because instead of drawing on terapagos' inadvertent abilities that it doesn't have much control over, he is controlling its abilities directly. essentially this future realm with the robot paradoxes and the paldea we know are mashed together and this creates an ecological apocalypse. terapagos, in emotional desperation, thru its desire to fix what has happened, calls upon kafu who is one of the few remaining sentient androids from the robot mon world (he has an intrinsic connection with terapagos because reasons i'm still developing) to save everyone. and kafu does, and smth similar to the crystal pool scene happens in which she is the one to give turo the idea for the time machine, instead of terapagos being the cause. this prevents the sort of ecological apocalypse that happened before, since the machine is much less powerful, and now the timeline is in a cyclical paradox where he is the one who gives turo the idea for the machine and is always there at the end to be the one giving him the idea, essentially patching up the apocalypse timeline and making sure it never happens.

SV, then, is a representation of what the timeline looks like AFTER kafu has prevented the apocalypse. she's not really in a time loop? she is in her own continuum and actually unaware of the apocalypse timeline, completely amnesiac, until the ID plotline (by the way the literal indigo disk is a remnant of the original apocalypse timeline when turo had direct access to terapagos lol) in which capturing terapagos again allows it to share this information with her. and even then it's not like she's reliving the same plot over and over, it's more like she is in every timeline at once to always save it but my oc is just the one in this one timeline.

to be clear i've never worked this in depth with time shenanigans before so there may be holes or other things i need to work out here but that's the GENERAL idea. ANYWAY here's a list of kafu's relationships with everyone that i made on discord the other day :)

my trainer's relationship with everyone (i'm saying "my trainer" here because i was talking on discord and i'm too lazy to fix it):

nemona: really close friends, nemona was the first person to find out about his robot shit and accepted him with an almost concerning lack of distrust or complaint. my trainer is just as into the rivalry as nemona is and because my trainer has protag energy and cares a lot about being strong, they spar a lot. i think they're qpps in spirit even though they wouldn't call it that

arven: he's definitely more attached to my trainer than my trainer is to him but they are still good friends. i think my trainer has some trauma with turo and she has a hard time dealing with seeing him when with arven, and arven has a lot of heavy shit going on with that that can be hard to handle. but when they get along they really do get along

penny: my trainer and penny are not emotionally close in particular but penny and nemona are dating and so my trainer sees her a lot and they get on just fine LMAO. i think penny has interest in general tech stuff, not just on the software end, and so my trainer might awkwardly go to her if having a bodily function issue or question and penny's always willing to figure that out for the sake of her gf's bestie

carmine: while distrusting at first, carmine and my trainer ended up forming a really good friendship by the end of teal mask. it's a little complicated since my trainer feels terrible for hurting kieran the way that she did, and carmine was a part of that, and for a while my trainer's very bitter about it but they're able to make up and proceed

kieran: BOYFRIEND!! my trainer empathized with kieran's situation from the start. they have some sort of intrinsic connection because kieran's story might not be so disconnected from my trainer's after all… the ending of indigo disk brings them very close together because kieran sees my trainer's shit firsthand and you know. everything that happens in general

also for what it's worth i made a new team for both DLCs and of course i had my initial tam of 6 from the base game so kafu canonically owns 18 pokemon throughout the journey, these guys:

main story: meowscarada/clodsire/rotom heat (shiny)/dragonite/slowbro/tinkaton teal mask: mightyena/ribombee/ninetales/kommo-o/quagsire/yanmega (shiny) indigo disk: flygon/galvantula/meowstic/scrafty/cinccino/metagross <- all shiny

his favorites are meowscarada, yanmega, and flygon though :)

anyways yeah gaming i need to elaborate on my made up kieran lore and draw weird angst art of my oc who i still need to give a proper name and him LOL

[maddsmallow]

10, 17, 20 for the dbh ask!

10. Least favorite trope?

i dont know if i would say it's my least favorite, but it's the first one that popped into my head as a brainrotted hankcon shipper lmao—when connor is portrayed as a lil helpless baby uwu bean who suddenly becomes essentially hank's maid post-revolution, and when hank is suddenly completely cured of his alcohol dependence once connor moves in/they get together. i want that man to WORK FOR IT, "it" being a healthier life and actual coping skills with his grief. and i'm a big believer in connor being a badass "adult man" who really doesnt need anyone's help but just likes hank with him because of what they went thru together, and they grow from there into something more.

granted, i do understand that we're all just. having fun with fictional characters and slapping these barbies together in whatever ways makes us happiest. so i could sit here and go off on how incorrect it feels to their characters, but i dunno. it doesnt really matter how "canon" it is, it's all just for funsies, so. kind of a weird thing to toe the line between 😅

17. Favorite moments of each playable character?

ooo this is a good one. again, im a brainrotted hankcon shipper, so it's gonna be hard to choose just one with hank and connor haha. probably my favorite with connor is when he's dragging hank to the bathroom to "sober him up" just because they're both such ASSHOLES to each other LMAO, just completely fed up with the other's shit. hank is just a grumpy bitch who wants to wallow in self pity, so even when drunk off his ass he's still putting up a fight with connor by grabbing the doorway to stop connor from taking him further into the bathroom and then straight up trying to walk away from the bathtub. connor is so done with hank holding him back from doing his goddamn all important mission, so when he finally gets the (probably freezing) water going, he deadass just stands there and watches hank flail around for an extra second. JUST to be an ass to hank for being an ass to him. it's SO funny how the two of them are constantly butting heads and then end up basically trauma bonded anyways by the end of the game lmao

if it counts, my favorite kara moment would probably be her realizing she's merchandise in that one short video back in like,, what was it, 2012? 2014? that was sort of the first rendition of an idea for the dbh universe. just, her realizing she's a product and not a person and then begging for her life was REALLY moving, valorie curry's acting there was fuckin top notch. but that's not really part of the game itself, so. hmm. i really love when they're at the amusement park and finally find a place to stay to ride out the storm, but the door is covered in wooden planks that have been nailed in, and (ignoring the fact that there's no reason to assume kara wouldnt have standard android strength and find this action quite easy) kara's this tiny little android trying to rip off the planks, and then big ass luther is just like. allow me. im literally made for this shit. and yoinks em off like they're nothin LMAO. that was the very specific moment i fell in love with luther and wanted him and kara and alice to stay together FOREVER

and for markus, i mean, i GOTTA go with the scene where he goes through the passageway of hands and other android parts in the junkyard. or really just the first scene in it where you take off your bad leg and find another compatible one and the realization sets in that you're in a massive landfill of body parts, and markus has been dumped into a situation where he has to dig through dead and dying people of his own species and take their parts to save himself. the first time i watched it, i literally gasped and covered my mouth with my hand and teared up. it's HORRIFIC, the idea of being in a giant pile of half alive creatures to be forgotten about as you have to take bits of those half alive creatures to attach to your own self to survive. you're now made up of multiple other dead people. it's fucking nightmarish, and the first half of that level is such a punch in the gut. fantastic story telling there

20. What were the hardest decisions/actions in each character's story for you?

oh man so TECHNICALLY i have never actually played the game myself LMAO. i'm just not a gamer, i'm in this for the characters and the shit they have to endure in the story. but i imagine the answer is the same for all of them with being mean to the companions in each story haha. getting hank to the point where he finally uses his gun on himself, making kara leave alice at the "recycling" camp, and i guess markus doing peaceful protests even tho that means soooo many more androids die from his inaction.

thanks for the ask!!

[arledrone]

Arledrone appeals to me in a way of Arlecchino's facade of cordiality and grace being something Sandrone is well-aware of, and how it's used to stay on 'good terms' with others around her, but indulging in it anyway and using it to her advantage just to have Arlecchino's attention. And then you have the whole angle of Arlecchino supposedly being capable of 'betraying' the Tsaritsa.

Sandrone with machine inventions easily capable of surveillance and Arlecchino "would probably betray the Tsaritsa" like. Ultimately Sandrone doesn't care. If she doesn't end up a traitor that's a longer excuse to Keep An Eye On Her(tm).

(Sandrone's tech being very helpful for the Hearth's dealings, why wouldn't Arle feign cordiality with her).

But also Sandrone knows this is all a mask Arlecchino wears and gooood a part of her is perfectly fine with the idea of Arlecchino going rogue against the Harbingers.

If she does then the sheer possibility of Arlecchino getting her shit wrecked is all the excuse Sandrone needs to make a fucking living doll/android of her with the added perks of it not talking shit if Sandrone doesn't want her to because she too is a control freak.

And combined with Arlecchino possibly having ties to a phenomena similar to Caterpillar's and "Sandrone is the unrecorded project Alain worked on in his grief over Mary-Ann" theories? God it's so fun.

Your wife is possibly the byproduct of a brother's obsessive grief over his sister's fate and her tricked out ruin guard may or may not have his own consciousness attached to it Alphonse Elric style. None of this explains your wife's awful personality btw. Wyd?

It's so unwell it's so obsessive it's so toxic I love it.

[igneouswyvern]

I wouldn't normally be making a post like this but I'm having major withdrawals after having completed Nier Automata and I need to process it somehow so here I am

MAJOR spoilers for all three chapters of Nier Automata under the cut, seriously if you have any slight intention of playing the game do not read

Some of the game's major themes are loss and hopelessness, but the thing I find most interesting is the game's emphasis on partnership, usually just with two people but it occasionally features more than that.

The first time we see this partnership in action is with Adam and Eve right in the very first chapter. And it makes sense. Their namesakes are literally from the story involving the Christian god creating Eve for Adam, the two becoming "one flesh," and essentially being linked up for life. And in the game it is no different. Adam imparts his knowledge onto Eve, and he also "plays with" him. They're shown as two sides of the same coin from the second time you fight them. They're linked. They're inseparable. Imagine what were to happen if something did cause them to be separated? Well, when 2B kills Adam, Eve flies into a blind rage. He can't think. He can't see straight. All he can think to do is to destroy the entire world. And realistically, from his perspective, it makes sense. Adam was his world. Adam was the reason he went on, the driving force to keep him going. Without Adam, who was he? What would he do with himself? His only options were to kill himself, or to kill everyone else. Revenge is a reason to keep going. So he chose revenge.

And at first this seems absurd and childish, but we see this immediately mirrored in the third chapter with 2B and 9S. 2B's death unfortunately comes right after 9S learns that the humans are extinct and everything he's been fighting for is a lie. But it's okay, because as long as he's fighting side-by-side with 2B everything will be okay, won't it? And then he witnesses 2B die, and his entire world is shattered. His response is understandable, really. He has nothing left to live for. He could kill himself, or he could kill everyone else. Revenge gave him a reason to keep going. So he made his goal to destroy every last machine that did this to 2B, and then kill A2, the android who ultimately dealt the final blow to her. It doesn't matter what her reasons were. It only matters that she's dead. And what will 9S do once he accomplishes this goal? Who knows. He certainly doesn't care. And then, at the very end of the final chapter, A2 reveals the truth to 9S. She reveals that 9S was always destined to learn the secret about YoRHa. And she reveals that the only reason he was paired up with 2B was because 2B was destined to kill him once he got too close to the information. They weren't joined by some red string of fate wishing them good fortune. But they weren't joined by accident either. They were joined so that one could kill the other. They were doomed from the start. How foolish of 9S to get so attached.

We don't learn much about A2 in the game proper (unless I missed side lore, which is entirely possible). But it's pretty clear from the hints we picked up that she too had a friend in YoRHa who died. This is presumably why she left YoRHa--why keep fighting for them anyway? Her friend is dead and there's nothing left. A2 too chooses the path of revenge, but somewhere along the way she keeps her sanity, separating her from Eve and 9S. Yet her ways are seemingly aimless. The best explanation she can provide for her intentions to 042 is to kill every last machine lifeform, yet she doesn't really have a plan for accomplishing this at all. Throughout her quest, she wanders aimlessly, going to the desert because of a goliath signal 042 detected, then going to the Resistance Camp because she damaged her fuel part, then going to Pascal's village for the part, and finally wandering into the tower because 042 told her it had been opened. What is she really living for anyway? I doubt she can really say for sure herself.

Speaking of the Pods, these two are also connected. They begin connected by 2B and 9S's connection, but once 2B dies, they shouldn't have any reason to be connected anymore. And yet they still are, sharing data routinely and coming to conclusions. And thus, they continue to be bound, this time by 9S and A2, although it is imperative that they do not come into contact with one another in this instance, because A2 and 9S are highly hostile to one another. And through all the AI nonsense, Pods 042 and 153 do form a bond unrelated to their androids. It makes you wonder what might happen if one were to die.

The theme continues with Devola and Popola. Designed to be twin androids, their sisterly connection is unmatched. They would not be able to keep going without the other. They were ostracized, hated, and attacked, but it doesn't matter, because they had each other. In the end, they both die for the sake of letting 9S enter the tower. 153 points out that one could have survived, but they stayed together and both perished. 9S shuts her down, because he knows exactly why they wished to stay together. Perhaps he wishes he too had died with 2B.

Pascal is one of the few characters to not feature a pair. His duty is rather to the entire village. He imparts knowledge to the children and teaches them how to be peaceful, how to survive. He would risk everything to save even one member of the village. So imagine his despair when the battle is over and he finds that every last one of the children killed themselves out of fear, fear that he taught them. They were his reason to keep on living, and they're dead because of him. He immediately recognizes that he can't live with this reality. He asks A2 to either kill him or delete his memories, because he just can't go on.

While barely relevant to the plot at all, both 2B and 9S's operators show a desire to form a partnership. 2B's operator asks a fellow operator out, and is devastated when she is rejected. 9S's operator expresses a strong desire to start a family. Both missed out on this opportunity.

The commander doesn't come in a pair, but she too is linked up with other individuals. When all of YoRHa is going down, she rejects the chance to escape. What is the purpose of going on when everything you've ever worked for is crashing down around you? Without her soldiers at YoRHa, she has nothing left to live for. She goes down with the ship.

The theme goes even deeper when you look at the side quests. Rescuing the machine's younger sister. Protecting the mother machine's son. Helping a resistance member recover her memories about a deceased loved one. Confirming another resistance member's loved one is dead. Following the wandering couple and helping them survive together. The android who repaired a fallen YoRHa member and pretended he was his own son, because he needed to take care of another person to have a reason to go on. The pair of YoRHa betrayers, one becoming enraged when the other dies, and the captain coming to avenge them both.

The boss of the amusement park, doing anything she can to get the attention of the male machine lifeform, desperate to form a partnership, destroying herself to please him.

The machines in the forest rallying themselves to protect, and then to get revenge for, their king.

Perhaps what really makes both androids and machines human is their need for connection. They can't go on without connection. They will do anything they can to find one other person that they can rely and codepend on. One person that they can protect at all costs. One person they can focus on to strive to keep going. If they have that, they can do anything. But take that away...and what's left is despair and hopelessness. The world can be bleak and desolate and utterly hopeless, but as long as you've got your Person, there's always a reason to keep going. But on the other hand, the world can be beautiful and full of life, but if you don't have a Person, you don't have anything.

This game deals with a lot of themes, but I think the social aspect of the characters in the story is what hit me the hardest.

This got...long...if a single human being has read this, thanks for coming to my TED talk I guess

[phosphophillight]

talk about lenore THIS INSTANT (please)

LENORE!!!! everyone say thank you red … again…

Lenore Caester is the general branch manager of the Verus Technologies Corp, the company behind the Safe Haven Project🙏 She commonly speaks in the royal we. She appears and disappears at the blink of an eye if you’re not actively looking at her. She’s got the kind of voice and diction you’d find in advertisements. (If u wanna get super specific her current voice claim is the fax machine in dhmis s2 ep1.)

In classic VTCO fashion she denies time (the concept).

In one of my first artworks of Lenore ever (the old ones….) she’s holding a pen with a butterfly charm! In my last reference sheet of Lenore it only has one wing. The full butterfly is usually used to symbolize the actual CEO, while the single wing is for SUGAR (the CEO).

Lenore “adopts” Axl after the finale of genesis part 2. Axl runs into Lenore in the elevator and shes like “Hey You wanna go to school?” n hes like. omg yay. school⁉️⁉️⁉️

Lenore is like an android of sorts! She’s either a dead woman put back together or simply based on a woman previously alive. She either doesn’t remember or simply no longer feels attached to anything regarding her “past life” or “identity”. To stay true to her detachment from her past I likely won’t write her origins/mention it.

She’s shown to possess a lot of admiration for the actual CEO and speaks very highly of her.

Lenore isn’t super fond of most of the characters around her relevance level in the story. Main one being Edgar Reynaud! Obv. She doesn’t like him much. She also has a negative relationship with Azimuth! Azimuth has more of an upper hand there as their source of tension is Az’s unwillingness to cooperate. This leads to her getting dragged to mundane activities and hangouts with Az that she has to sit through in the hopes that he comes around eventually. Neither Lenore or Az are open about it when they dislike someone! So while they r both aware that the other person doesn’t like them either, from a 3rd person view they have a fun dynamic i think ^_^ Lenore is generally passive aggressive in a very artificially warm corporate way, while Az likes to fashion his distaste as something more flattering… so hes VERY nice. Hes very nice about it ^_^

Lenore’s dynamic with Morgaine is also interesting to me! It’s quite common for Morgaine to be the person getting the short end of the stick. I feel like she’s always the character who simply doesn’t know background information characters around her know. I feel like it’s a very cruel way to put it but she does end up being the laughingstock very frequently… n it’s not really her fault that this happens. This kind of continues with Lenore. Lenore is her boss. But also not really, because she never actually signs a contract to work with the company. There’s stuff Morgaine confines in Lenore, simply because she has to talk to SOMEBODY and theres not a lot of options. Ok apologies for the morgaine rant i love morgaine can u tell shes one of my favorite characters lmao . She’s still an outsider in the new world that’s been established. For many reasons. It’s kind of when you learn how a magic trick works and it just ruins the magic for you. She was there when a good chunk of the new world was being built, and she knows enough of it is false to be able to ignore it and live a “normal” life. Her normalcy isn’t whatever this is. Therefore she has to confine in people who are also outside this “normalcy”. Lenore is a good candidate for this very reason. For Morgaine, Lenore is the closest thing she can get to talking with a real person who’s also not going to invalidate every second thing she says. Lenore is semi-aware of this. She’s also aware of how horrified Morgaine was to learn the guy she thought she murdered was actually a robot. N there’s a little humor in it for Lenore. Because she’s also a robot.

On a less lore related note, I initially designed Lenore based on a random oc generator prompt thing i got from a website bc I was bored 🤧

Lenore also briefly shows up in a prequel story titled UO! She accompanies Una Hearthelow (creator of The quantum computer / edgar) to a vcto owned skyscraper.

If you remember The Umbrella ™ cycle, Lenore holds an umbrella over Morgaine at the finale of World’s End.

More character design details wise… She’s blue! Obviously because she’s a textbook #BC (aspect type). But she also has some pinks. Who are the pinks associated with? The CEO!!!!! Yippeee!!!! She also has very organic shapes throughout her design, with her dress somewhat resembling waves or water. These are also stuff associated with the actual CEO. She does have my statement square/rectangle shaped irises I give most of my robot-ai-any sorta techy characters! (It’s mostly a stylistic choice, her eyes likely just look. “normal” to everyone else) Her pupils are the 2 triangle hourglass-like shape that’s the vtco logo! Her eyes are a more purple color, i think mainly bc i just like it that way. But u could read into it with knowledge of what purple is associated with in my character designs/worldbuilding.

I’ll call it a day for now…. Feel free to ask me more specific details like dynamics with other characters yada yada.. either here or on discord 🫡

[kalakilo]

ranking nightmare time episodes

under the cut because this is gonna be a long post and it is only for me and no one else<3

i recently finished all the nmt episodes and now that i have no more new hatchetfield content to consume i need to dish out feelings and opinions and i like ranking things i like. this is based on vibes mostly. and my attachment to these characters. i love all of these episodes and the entire cast and nick & matt lang for giving me so much lore to chew on. here is the brutal order of ranking my children

13. daddy

somebody had to be last......first of all i just wanna say jaime lyn beatty is a literal god for performing the double role of sherman and sheila young here, she IS versatility in human form. however young at heart just isn't one of my favourite songs and sherman & frank really aren't as compelling characters to me as some other ones in the hatchetverse and i feel like it doesn't offer that much more lore to me.

i do find that there is a lot to be said about the way sheila holds frank & toy zone hostage with her money and it's yet another case of characters using their money for power and glory in hatchetfield and how those characters eventually become victims of the lords in black and characters that abuse their power. i still had so much to say about this even though it's last on this list and that also speaks to how GOOD this series is okay

12. perky's buds

this one is just absurd????? i truly think perky's buds, jane's a car and hey melissa are the holy trinity of batshit nmt episodes.

this is essentially the most we ever learn about the hatchetmen and their descendants (the metzgers) which makes me a little sad, that lore i am still a bit lost on and honestly the amount of lore (and this being grace chasity's first appearance in canon) is mostly the only reason i prefer this one over daddy. also the fact that joey richter plays a monotone talking bird + emma finally gets her pot farm (even if it all burns down in the end</3). this one is just a little silly to me and the song isn't my favourite either, it's a taste of characters (like the metzgers and ziggs) and lore about the history of hatchetfield and i just wish we knew more

11. forever and always

this is my official apology to paulkins nation for having this ep so low lmao sorry guys

if i'm being honest my favourite part about this episode is how it weaves together with time bastard. idk if i'm allowed to say this out loud because i fear i'll get crucified by starkid / hatchetverse people but honestly i'm not *that* invested in paulkins as a ship.......i love that in this iteration they are just so fucked up and weird, i remember in the hotel scene thinking there is NO way paul wouldn't kill emdroid here. she is an EVIL ANDROID!!!! and then the reveal that he's actually paul 23 made so much sense. anyway i like this one and i REALLY like the song!! it's so fun having such a heartfelt sounding song at the top of the episode and then it actually being so fucked up by the end.

10. hey, melissa!

tbh i wanted this one to be higher because it was SO absurd in a way perky's buds could never even fucking dream of, i truly want to know what possessed nick & matt lang to think that the side character who has maybe four lines in tgwdlm likes dehumanizing men and turning them into her pets???

all this being said i think hey melissa gets a bit of a bad rep in the fandom. i actually think it's a very interesting episode, i will never ever stop thinking about WHY paul makes the decision at the end as he does? i think there is so much to dissect there and in general about paul as a character in this episode. we really don't learn a lot about paul in tgwdlm and in contrast, in the timeline of hey melissa we hear an entire story from his childhood that clearly impacted him a lot? and it's something he thinks about to this day!

i also really wonder the question of if he hadn't told that story, would melissa still have him held captive?? obviously melissa is not a very reliable character in the early part of the story, but paul's memory clearly affects her a lot? does she actually lose faith in him in that moment? and that's why she decides to keep him as her dog (of course he doesn't end up being one lmao) ? i just think there's a lot to be said about this episode! still, i am def forever haunted by this and can't never hear it the same when humans say bark or meow. also what do you MEAN you'd have to NEUTER him to let him OUTSIDE

9. the hatchetfield ape-man

this one has such a special place in my heart for whatever reason<33 full disclosure angela as lucy stockworth is also maybe 80% of why this is higher than the others so far, it's just so fun seeing her play a character who seemingly is just so innocent and sweet and has such a big heart but then who's also very aware of what she's doing and schemes a bit herself. i can't believe this is the only iteration of lucy stockworth what is she doing in the other timelines. i want to know.

also idk why but the reveal that ted was just playing konk fucked me UP!!! like that was insane. also as the first episode that has the cast and nick & matt still figuring everything out it's just very sweet and heartwarming which you cant say about a lot of hatchetfield content<33 honestly no real explanations for this one i just love angela giarratana and also jamie lyn beatty for singing HERE'S A LITTLE STORY BOUT THE HATCHETFIELD APE-MAN

8. watcher world

the scenes with the sniggles???? genuinely horrifying. the idea in itself that someone is always watching is so creepy, i think blinky is maybe actually the most terrifying lord in black. at least he manages to have the most terrifying nmt episode. the fact that he somehow makes a father and daughter almost kill each other and wants to watch for his own enjoyment like........this one actually haunts me sm!!!! wtf is that scene with alice and the blinky mascot!!!!!!

it's also one of the only hatchetfield stories with a genuinely happy ending with basically no catch. and after bill and alice's tragic fate in tgwdlm i'm so glad they also get a good ending<33 it's also just so lovely to see them actually bond in this story and we learn a lot about alice !

this one also has so many songs and i am of the opinion that snoozle town is genuinely heartbreaking and the way angela can just do that while singing the most insane shit like "and we'll have two snoozles that can snozzle / our own bayou where the boogle boggles flow with goo" is beautiful

7. jane's a car

GOT MY FOOT ON THE GAS ok im SORRY im sorry its just. funny

tbh i am a little sad this gets reduced to the car sex episode, i think it does have a lot to say about navigating grief when you feel like you've finally been able to move on and live life again and suddenly the person you lost is back in your life. and they're also a car.

not to mention the ending???? is fucking terrifying????? poor becky quite literally dies and the "mommy's home" paired with the way the script narrates the moment as "becky sits down and jane smiles". like that's. cunt

anyway just to conclude i really wish more people understood the more compelling parts of this episode and not just tom fucks a car!!!! dont overstimulate the cupholders!!!!!

6. honey queen

i was GAGGED seeing the editing quality step up from nmt 1. this is truly the cuntiest nmt episode because we pit two beautiful queens each other and BOTH just fucking perish lmao (that editing step up also contributed so much to the final scene being so terrifying. it's an incredible introduction to nibbly and the scene being followed by the nibbly ditty is just SO gooooooooooooooood)

something i did already mention when talking about daddy is the continued sort of "motif" that rich people either still always lose to the lords in black or (something that i didn't bring up last time) they themselves are corrupt and have essentially sold their souls to the lords in black. like gerald & linda lie, cheat, steal and kill their way to win this pageant and yet. they still both die.

also also!!!!! i love that we learn how linda ended up so incredibly cold and uncaring. like it's not just from being rich as fuck, it's also trauma from being mocked, ridiculed and ignored throughout your entire childhood. i think roman murray might genuinely be the most evil character in hatchetfield and i loooove how jon matteson plays him. king shit

i also just love. gerald and linda. they are so fucked up and so perfect for each other. the way gerald helps her so much to sabotage the pageant and is her BIGGEST cheerleader, knows that deep down linda does not like her father and is afraid of him and literally gets himself killed essentially in support of her.............i love them.

5. time bastard

i'm gonna be honest i wasn't ted's biggest fan after tgwdlm so i didn't reaaaally understand the love i saw for him in the fandom, but after time bastard i really got it. time bastard actually fleshes out ted as a character and even though by the end he kind of is still a dumbass we do still learn a lot about him!! tinky and his little box are both objectively terrifying and being stuck in his box honestly sounds like a worse fate than hell. i feel bad for ted ngl

the reveal that homeless guy is ted spankoffski is also so insane. like the fact that these two exist in the same timeline a lot of the time is so interesting and also brings up the question of did the homeless guy ever try to go into ccrp and try to take his job back??? or did he just resign to his fate. we dont know. speaking of ccrp also learning more lore about what a fucked company it actually is super interesting, especially knowing they too tried to harness tinky's power.

my one and only gripe with time bastard is that it gets a little too complicated for me at some points but that's more a me problem, it just feels slightly hard to wrap my head around it while also connecting it to the events of forever and always. i do love complicated lore but this one fucks w my head sometimes

4. abstinence camp

as a grace chasity girl it is illegal for me to have this episode any lower than in the top 5. these top 4 episodes truly expose my favourite hatchetfield characters so bad lmao

god abstinence camp is SO funny!! the writing here is hilarious, just grace's first appearance is so silly and angela does such a stellar job. i love her in this role so much. along w her i'm so glad this story introduced us to boy jerry and girl jeri who i am begging to see again in another timeline like i need to see their backstory!! how did they find each other the first time and how did they end up abandoning their faith to have a child!!!! jon matteson and kim whalen are so good in these roles

we also cant talk about abstinence camp without mentioning that virginity rocks is objectively the BEST nmt song. jon and kim are serving absolute vocals it is such a banger and the fact that they paired it with axe man is so fucking sick

3. killer track

killer track is the only nmt episode so far that's made me actually cry. god. he was watching the fireworks.

to be completely honest i. don't even know what to comment on for this episode i'm just stuck in never ending holloweane brainrot. god he's so in love with her. AND SO AM I!!! miss holloway is such a compelling character and this nmt episode especially teases a lot about how she ended up the way she is. we also learn about her past and just like everything about her is so interesting to me, i love her protective nature but also that she's so calculated in her every move. and somehow always knows exactly what to do. also i love duke keane i can't leave him out of this

the concept of this episode is also just so viscerally horrifying, it's essentially something i used to have nightmares about like something scary that's ringing so loudly in your ears that nothing can block it out so this genuinely hit like a sort of irrational fear that i pretty much used to have as a kid. it's not so bad that i can't watch but still hit me in a sort of way that reminded me of my own fears. maybe that's also why i love miss holloway she would save me if i ever ended up in that situation

2. the witch in the web

i feel like witch in the web is very underrated?? i don't see a lot of people talking about it compared to some other episodes which i think is such a shame because it's so incredible

the scene where hannah thinks she's seeing lex and then it turns out to be the witch was SO spooky watching it the first time, seeing angela play out this sort of over-excited version of lex and it slooowly becoming more and more sinister is so insane especially with her pulling out the dolls of the lords in black. it's such a great scene!!

also the lore we learn about the witchwood forest and what originally happened to willabella muckwab and how the black book came to be is so integral to the entire lore, and i love the way it's told with hannah & miss holloway sort of walking in this old dreamlike world. plus the confrontation with wilbur cross in the starlight GOD this episode has so many cool moments and it can do so much because they're in nightmare time and not in actual hatchetfield most of the time. i do, however, despise the idea that lex foster is serving what FOUR years in prison in this timeline. dont do that to my girl

1. yellow jacket

the scene where hannah & ethan come home and lex is waiting for them, so disappointed in herself not only for forgetting hannah's birthday but also for failing the test, angry at ethan for not reminding her about hannah's birthday.....that scene is probably my favourite moment in the entire hatchetverse? angela just fucking blew me away she plays it so well and not to mention joey richter ethan just. kills

yellow jacket just had to be first here, i'm so invested in these relationships and their past and how it led them to where they are here, the way this episode portrays how hard it is for lex and ethan because they're just trying to survive on what little resources they have while lex is also taking care of hannah: she cares for her so much that she's wanted to move them out of their mom's trailer. of course hannah would feel responsible and maybe guilty because lex has so much to worry about, of course hannah wants to take the first opportunity she gets to make them copious amounts of money, of course she's willing to put herself in terrible danger, all to help lex.

i love seeing this perspective on hannah, especially since in black friday we mostly see lex (and ethan) protecting and saving hannah when she's in trouble (although she definitely can fend for herself a little!). in yellow jacket we really see how responsible hannah must feel. when her and ethan see the ipad as a possible prize, her first thought isn't all the fun things you could use the ipad for, it's how much money they could get selling it. she doesn't understand the sheer danger of fighting pokey, which makes sense since she doesn't know that that is quite literally an eldritch god, she just wants to support lex.

this episode is just incredible in its every element: the portrayal of the characters, the story and the way it talks about the influence that money has on people's lives. not to mention watching literal children fight each other for entertainment. it's brutal but the core relationships are what eventually survive despite the circumstances

well. this was long