#so i'm going to try writing again!

[starcurtain]

I think Alhaitham's views on gods and his dynamic with Nahida in particular is probably one of the most underrated comedic elements to come out of Sumeru.

This guy put together an entire crack squad and master plan to rescue a god while being the Genshin equivalent of an atheist. "Yes, obviously archons exist. But so do sharks. Both of those beings have their place in the ecosystem, and if I had to pick one to piss off--"

Like, does he believe in the dendro archon? Yes. But is he going to listen if she denies his paid vacation request? Absolutely not.

Bro is selected by name to come discuss important matters with his nation's deity in her sanctuary, and he's just like, "Oh, I ran into Nilou there once. That was cool."

Raised to the highest possible position available in his nation's government by the deliberate selection of his god? Resigns.

We know that Nahida still calls on Alhaitham when Sumeru is in need of defending from nefarious parties, and sends him out with Wanderer to kick ass and take names. Now that they've forgotten Rukkhadevata and the Akademiya's ploy to imprison Nahida has been foiled, most of the people of Sumeru would be floored by the honor of being called upon personally to aid the great dendro archon. Staggered by the fact that the lord of wisdom herself finds them worthy! But Alhaitham? He just goes home. Kaveh asks him what he was up to all day. "Hm. Nothing of note."

Everyone else, upon receiving the recognition of a god: My life has been changed forever. I will be telling my great grandchildren of the day I received such a blessing!

But for Alhaitham? It was Tuesday.

Criminally underrated comedic potential. CRIMINAL.

[zivazivc]

my brainrot about these two can be measured in liters

[helimir]

Some top tier Caduceus quotes I've been thinking about in these Downfall times. Something about how so much of Ludinus' position seems to rest on revenge. Showing Bells Hells the squabbling of the gods as they debate what to do about Aeor, and asking 'You can just watch bad people get away with it?'

It doesn't matter if the gods were wrong for their choices. Killing them won't bring back Aeor and it won't stop the violence that Ludinus and the Ruby Vanguard have visited on the world. I just don't see what it's for.

[tblsomedoodles]

The Preferable Alternative - part 12

Start - Previous - next

: )

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

[katsuki-king-of-twinks]

Pierce Brown's ability to believably write from Virginia's perspective will always amaze me.

[scificrows]

i like to make fun of murderbot for being all "i hate everyone, i don't care about anything or anyone, fuck off" while simultaneously caring very much about the people around it and the situations it finds itself in. i love how it "accidentally" ends up caring quite a lot about the friends it makes along the way. but i think something that i tend to forget is that murderbot actively decides to care - at least at some point in its story.

idk, as a person that struggles with depression, this paragraph from artificial condition really resonates with me. prior to all systems red, murderbot had contracts. it had routine and it had protocols. it knew what it had to do to just get by, how to perform so no one would notice it had disabled its governor module. it was deeply depressed, yes, but it was functioning (for lack of a better word). in artificial condition, murderbot's routine is gone. it cannot go on in that state of numbly going-from-contract-to-contract, putting in as little effort as possible, consuming media to cope. that option is gone because it escaped (and note that escaping the company was not an active choice, it kinda happened to it). murderbot has two options now: it can either gather all its energy; actively do something new and difficult and distressing; change something in its life and try. or it can let the numbness and the emptiness take over and stop trying. if murderbot wants to survive as a rogue secunit, it has to try. no matter how difficult that is. the wording in that paragraph really hits home for me. the way the non-caring sees an opportunity to slip in and to take over. does murderbot even care? does anything really matter? is anything really worth the hassle? wouldn't it be so much easier to just let your mind slip away a little, to go numb, to be passive, to watch media and wait for things to happen to you? wouldn't it be nice to stop thinking and struggling and feeling complicated things? to stop making an effort? you've been dealing with a lot lately and maybe it's time to just shut down. maybe you'll just take a little break. just slip deeper into this chair and start the show. time flies when you're not paying attention. trying is exhausting. who cares if you don't do the things you wanted to do, you were supposed to do. it'll be fine. let's just ignore those things for now. just let the non-caring take over. just stop thinking. you can deal with the aftermath later. just watch your shows. who cares. but murderbot cares. it decides to care. it decides to fight with all it has and i think that is so brave. and i think in the later books caring is less of an active decision for murderbot. once you start caring, it's easier to keep going than to stop; and murderbot, for all its "i'm a grumpy rogue secunit, leave me alone" behavior, knows just how important caring is. so it's not that it doesn't know what's happening; rather, it lets itself care. tl;dr: caring is not the default for murderbot, it's just the more difficult of two options. and it decides not to take the soft option. it decides to struggle. it decides to care. and so it does.

[fuwaprince]

👉👈 Hi friends! I have a long, serious post made just for you(!) that isn't full of spoilers, smut or mooning lawn gnomes. Please read if you can, this is a 💥 mutual aid request 💥

It has been a horribly painful and long while as most people following/keeping up with me know. and in a few days I'm going to be down $1500, which is basically all my fucking $

I can't afford Christmas for anybody, which sucks and I'm very sorry. I can't even take care of myself and haven't been, which also sucks and I'm very sorry

Landlords spontaneously raised rent on me more than halfway through this month as punishment for not getting to my house chores and not communicating, to be totally honest with you. I feel ashamed and awful about it but I didn't want to clean the place while multiple ppl living here had tested positive for COVID and kept walking around unmasked... I am not fully vaxxed because I've been too depressed to get any kind of necessary medical care done and I didn't want to catch COVID in the middle of my finals week for the semester. I woke up to being angrily and rudely bitched at first thing after the last of my finals (I passed at least). It wasn't a humanizing text. Fuck the mistreatment though. Rent is now almost doubled and it won't be lowered

There was no room for negotiation and I truly believe they've resorted to pricing me out of living here because the group of renters psychologically tormenting me wasn't effective (actually- putting a picture of my rapist on the fridge rly was super effective in getting me to isolate myself in my room all day and so was outing me as trans to the transphobic ass neighbors.... But I didn't and still don't have any place better to move out to, like the way they were hoping I would. Yes, I have looked and BEGGED btw)

I want out of here NOW, but I can't leave. I tried and had to come back because it was the best option. I can't afford to stay in a motel/hotel/BnB just to get away from them for a day or two during Christmas. I don't have any friends who I can spend the holiday with either. During the semester, I resorted to convincing classmates with keys to locked buildings to let me crash in them while they worked at night and I would leave before anybody showed up. Now that school is out, I can't do that. I don't have any family I can reach out to for support or friends who I can depend on for immediate help. I have been crying day in and day out for weeks. I have records of it posted throughout my blog. Literally crying for days on end. I'm being so fucking transparent

All that lump of text is to explain to whoever is out there, who might be listening and willing and able, to please consider helping me, if and ONLY IF able. I know times are tough and if you'd rather use your $ for other reasons or just don't have any to spare, don't sweat it and take care! 🫂

I've thought about what I could do for a long time and have helped myself how I can. It isn't enough. I've applied for so much assistance. Been approved and been sabotaged by my inhumane mom (who does not love me) via stealing my legal documents and letters and hiding them for months. My mind jumps to grim places but I'm clinging for dear life to whatever hope I have left that says things will get better. I wish I knew somebody with a business that I could work for. Part of me feels so fucking terrible for asking for help because I feel like a waste of all your resources. I feel like I shouldn't ask, like I really do not fucking deserve help, but there are friends online who care, who I know mentioned being interested in helping in whatever ways they can

So to the people who care to seriously me, I'm ready to accept it: please send me nice words to get through this and feel less alone. It feels pathetic to ask but I would love a nice letter. A nice card even. Kind words of any kind would go a long way. It means more to me than food. I have felt so broken and every day feels like a test to figure out how badly I actually want to live

I'm also leaving my cash app and paypal here in case anybody would like to do more than what I'm comfortable asking but probably very likely will inevitably need very very soon. I will be left with fucking nothing and I will have no idea what to do once rent is paid

Thank you to those of you who have sent love, offered to listen and heard me out. I really wish it wasn't so hard to survive. I'm trying to feel better knowing there are people out there who are also without help and hoping the best, but it doesn't make me feel any better or comforted tbh. I just wish the help was there for us. I wish there was a place to go for spare love, care, compassion, empathy, kindness, humanity, generosity... I need that more than I need $. Call me stupid but that's what I live for. I don't live for paying to survive in terrible conditions. I live for love and to smile with friends

I hope to write back to the friends who have already been so kind as to message me soon btw. I'm sorry for not replying sooner. Your overwhelming support is sincerely sweet and sometimes I cry because I can't believe people are so nice (to me???). It'll give me something to do that doesn't make me feel like dying! :') so thank you thank you thank you *fist bump*

Hope you're all doing as well as you can and that somehow things get better. Hope anybody else struggling like me doesn't make the mistake of isolating like a sick and dying animal. You deserve love. You deserve support. Don't be like me. Have the courage to reach out to the people who care about you for help as early on into your emergency as possible. Don't let your situation snowball because you spend so long trying to figure out if you're worth it!!! This Random Tumblr user is here to tell you that YOU ARE. Sending my infinite everlasting unconditional love. Be nice to yourselves. Be nice to each other. Fuck the hateful assholes who wish I would just kill myself already. Tell your friends you love them. Happy Holidays!!!

And here's a single picture of a mooning lawn gnome at the very end, as a treat! I told you this post wasn't full of it.... It just ended with it 👉👉

[thedevillionaire]

Chosen

Much shorter than it has any right to be, given how long it's taken me to actually finish. Plot? Uh, no, not really. But anyhow... She's been away. He's been unwell.

---

He looks at her like she’s the most welcome hallucination he’s ever had.

Kia closes the door slowly behind her as she takes in this chaos of a makeshift apothecary, the loungeroom in an utter state of disarray and her beloved not faring much better, red-nosed and unshaven and dressed in a black silken pyjama and robe ensemble which, while inarguably stylish, was very definitely not his usual late afternoon wear.

And not at all what she had been expecting to come home to.

A miscellany of potions and concoctions and gods-know-what-elses lie scattered across the coffee table. A teacup, mostly empty. Two tissue boxes, one apparently even emptier than the teacup. Some sort of book...no, manual. Looks instructional. A wilderness of failed curatives.

Oh my god.

She walks further into the room. The air smells of menthol and embers.

“Babe, what are… Are you… What have you even been doing h…?”

You absolute beautiful total disaster.

“Trying not to… hh-HH …let thi…this-damn-cold…” Cerberus turns from her as his sentence dissolves, the syllables collapsing against one another in a desperate rush to give way to greater need and deep breath of purpose, and he raises a finger in urgent, undeniable pause. "Huh-TSSCH-uu!" Hurriedly claiming a series of tissues in a brief, expectant hiatus, he surrenders completely and sneezes again. "Hh-AATSCHH-uu! *snff-FF!*" A quiet groan in the aftermath. He excuses himself, adds another tissue to the set, blows his nose and immolates the lot. "Pardon me." He sighs. "Trying not to let this godsdamned cold win,” he manages, with an accompanying sharp sniffle. Neither heavy congestion nor the way his voice cracks slightly lessens any of the seething distaste in his tone.

“Oh, honey.” Kia brushes some errant hair back from his face. :Bless you.: She touches a tender kiss to his temple. “You’re getting your ass kicked.”

She offers him a soft smile to hopefully lessen a little bit of truth's sting. "C'mon, shift over," she says gently as she joins her beloved on the couch, nestling up beside him, resolutely ignoring every caution he tries to give her advising against doing so. Notably half-hearted as those cautions are.

Because while it’s true that he very much doesn’t want her to catch this, he’s also well aware it’s more than likely already too late for such concerns. The entire house is probably some sort of incubation epicentre. And, sincerity of expressed warnings aside, the entire sorry vista surely constitutes warning enough. He's fairly certain he couldn't look more biohazardous if he tried.

Cerberus sighs again, sniffling again immediately afterwards, and gives his bonded a look of resignation.

Further elaboration hardly seems necessary.

But also he doesn’t press the issue because in truth the last thing he wants is to send her away. He’s not even sure he has the energy to insist on it, anyway; he’d be infuriated about this entire ridiculous circumstance if he wasn’t so damn exhausted. So, small obligatory protests done, with another damp sniffle Cerberus shifts some disarrayed blanketry out of the way and wraps an arm around Kia’s waist, drawing her close.

Her soft perfume of violet, strawberry and vanilla is lost on him anywhere outside of memory right now, but her presence is more than enough and he closes his eyes for a moment, just appreciating the simple fact of her being here beside him at last; he's missed her immensely, constantly.

“You know, you could’ve just asked me to come back, if you wanted me here,” Kia muses as she nestles further into his heat, adding, “It wouldn't have been a big deal,” without accusation. She leans her head against his shoulder and looks up at him with gentle azure gaze, her unspoken thoughts of I’d always choose you. How do you still not know that? readable despite her not voicing them.

And he does, of course, know that – in fact, it’s the very reason he wouldn’t ask. Cerberus sniffles thickly, wiping his nose. “Ah, love. I'd hardly ask you to put yourself anywhere near this—" He gestures around the room in a general presentation of contempt for the whole situation. "—vortex of infectious absurdity,” he concludes, thick congestion lacing his words. He clears his throat but it doesn’t make any notable impact against the wreckery his voice has become. "And it's about your... *SNFF!* ...your autodoby."

Kia peers at him. “My…what?”

“Your au…” Cerberus, all too aware that several critical consonants are unequivocally not working for him, rolls his eyes at himself. Honestly. Taking another fresh succession of tissues from a very rapidly depleting supply, he blows his nose forcefully but completely ineffectively.

He excuses himself once more and tries again; it goes equally badly.

Kia, baffled, raises her hands in a friendly but very clear nope sorry babe no idea expression, accompanied by a gentle little laugh that she just can’t help.

A long-suffering and immensely frustrated look comes her way, followed by a resigned, defeated sigh as her beloved entirely gives up. “Free will.”

For a moment, this makes even less sense to Kia. “Why would…” she begins, but cuts herself off in triumphant realisation. “Oh, autonomy!” She laughs. "Oh, sweetheart."

“That’s what I s… hh-hh! I...” And even this is hijacked, and the Demon king capitulates entirely, doubling over desperate into crooked elbow, “Huh-TSCHH-uu! Ah-HEHTSCHuu!” 

He takes some moments of bleary recovery, Kia's heartrate spiking alongside the :Gods, forgive me: Cerberus Mindsends her.

"Oh, bless you, babe." Kia doesn't try to fight the thrill that flashes through her and she wraps herself around her bonded to kiss him again; a kiss deeper, more needful, than is probably wise. But wisdom isn't what she's craving right now.

“You know what? You’re going to stop talking and let me make my own choices.” She brushes a stray lock of hair from his eyes, touches the softest of lingering kisses to his forehead and meets his gaze. :Talking really isn't working out for you anyway.: "And besides—" Another kiss, deeper again, and she presses her arousal against his, salacious, wanton.

:—you know we both want the same thing.:

---

[necromeowncy]

♡♡♡

[acommonanomaly]

Maglor for @feanorianweek.

Inspired by a scene from my fic, What Fades Away.

Excerpt:

...Now he made his way toward his brother’s room, and he let his anger from the day before rise up again to burn away his regret at having fought with the younger brother who was also one of his closest friends.

Makalaurë was careless, so often lost in his own thoughts that he gave no thought to others, or to anything around him. It was something that Maitimo found endearing at times, but just now he resented his brother for his eagerness to escape into his music, leaving everything else behind. Though he would never dare to say so out loud, he felt that Amil gave her second-born too much leeway in this regard.

Coming to Makalaurë’s room, Maitimo balanced the tray with one hand and flung the door open, his recent bitter thoughts easing his shame over the spitefulness that made him want to startle his brother.

The door came to rest silently against a small pile of laundry—something Amil would certainly have scolded him for—and any noise Maitimo did make was lost beneath the waves of music that washed over him.

Maitimo came to a stop.

Caught despite himself, he quietly closed the door and moved deeper into the room. He set the tray down on the chest of drawers against the wall, cringing at the tinkle of glassware despite his attempt at noise a few moments before. He walked on light feet around the bed to the spot near the window where his brother sat with his harp.

He felt a pressure building in his chest at the poignant tenderness of the melody, earnest notes that tumbled forth in a hopeful spill. It was wistful, light, and so beautiful that at first Maitimo could not reconcile the sound of such moving music with the sight of his disheveled younger brother. But then Maitimo’s eyes began to really see, and his heart skipped a beat. The thick, dusty drapes had been thrown open, and the golden light of Laurelin had set his brother aglow. 

Makalaurë’s partially unlaced blouse hung off one thin shoulder, and his silky dark hair was a tangle down his back, carelessly tied at the nape of his neck with a stray bit of ribbon. Maitimo’s eyes lingered on the slender fingers that danced over the strings, but then his gaze lifted to Makalaurë’s face. 

The pressure in Maitimo’s chest squeezed around his heart in a painful grip.

Makalaurë did not tend to fuss over his appearance when he was at home, as caught up as he often was in his creative pursuits, so that Maitimo’s impression of him was most often of frayed braids, an expression too often pinched in thoughtfulness, and gangly limbs swimming in awkwardly fitting garments. Maitimo had allowed himself to forget the ethereal beauty of his brother when consumed by music. He studied Makalaurë’s face now and was filled with love for him.  

Makalaurë’s eyes gazed somewhere beyond the confines of the room, and the ugly bruise that had formed over his pale, high cheekbone made something dark and fearful stir in Maitimo. 

Maitimo suddenly had the inexplicable urge to keep his brother close at his side so that he might guard him against harm, and he moved nearer. He stopped though, surprised at himself for such strange thoughts, for what possible danger would they ever encounter here in the safety of the Blessed Realm?

[cluescorner]

I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

[hanzajesthanza]

it is absolutely so weird to me to try to imagine a version of geralt that is like, my age. like, no. get back to being an old man

[ruvviks]

it's been a hot sec since i've talked about cyberpunk and i was initially working on a fic that would tell the story of this whole thing, but i've abandoned it many months ago and cannot say when i'll be picking it up again SO! i've decided to instead make this timeline. sorry in advance for how much information is in this thing the cyberpunk extended blorboverse essentially refers to the story parallel to the in-game events of cyberpunk 2077 that @mojaves and i came up with. we don't really have a better name for it but at this point the term has been used so many times that i feel like everyone here knows what it is by now, but at the same time we've never really explained the full scope of what the story is by now (it's a lot sorry). so in an attempt to get you guys a little bit more up to date with it all, here's a semi coherent timeline that describes the core events of the story and every branching story that came out of it! for additional background information, you can check out the following posts (timeline 1 / timeline 2 / timeline 3) to catch up with the continuation of the in-game storyline that's referenced in this timeline, but it's mostly irrelevant to everything here save for a couple of referenced events that cross over between the stories. it all ties together very intricately sorry about that. don't worry too much about it i've included my taglist down below to make sure people who are interested won't miss this post, but feel free to skip over this if it's not your thing! won't be doing a lot of this kind of stuff in the future but i'm trying to get back to the cyberpunk roots so this is kind of like, a good starting point and reference point for later posts!

The story starts in early 2077 and is centered around Sebastian Vidal, gang leader of the Cobras and previous test subject of Arasaka Special Programs (the linked page is a lot of information but gives the most coherent overview of what the branch actually is). The current director of the SERPENT projects, Andrew Colton, and Dr. Alana Cartier, both want him dead, to tie up their last loose end before the rest of Arasaka can find out and shut down Special Programs once and for all.

Over the past months they’ve been hiring various assassins in secret, to try and get Seb killed; however, these assassins keep failing, and their latest attempt lies in the hands of Cassidy Shaffer, an ex-corpo turned assassin with a strong moral code and plenty of experience to his name. With little to work with, as his mysterious client doesn’t give out much information, Cassidy starts with what he thinks is gonna be a quick and easy job– but he ends up hunting after Seb for essentially a year.

During this year, the two men have a series of wild encounters that get more and more insane the longer it goes on; it includes, but is unfortunately not limited to, Cassidy biting off a chunk of Seb’s ear, the two of them running over the highway, the two of them getting handcuffed together and chased by the NCPD then hit by a car right in front of the hospital, and Seb sensually licking blood off Cassidy’s face after having stabbed him when Cassidy wanted to strike at a concert Seb is visiting.

All of it comes to a sudden stop when Cassidy learns his client has been lying to him the whole time, and since he does not appreciate lying clients he ends up jumping sides and teams up with the Cobras to do some cleanup duty in Arasaka Special Programs. He and Seb work together to go after a list of targets to get the still ongoing projects mostly to a halt, while remaining in the shadows themselves as to not draw too much attention their way; and during this collaboration they meet several people from their past, bringing back both good and bad memories.

One of these people is Hanan Chisaka, the Head of Security at Special Programs. She ends up becoming the next test subject of Project Cobra after the last successful subjects, Xavier and Gabriel Mason, end up escaping in the midst of the chaos of Hanako Arasaka’s capture in mid-2077. Once Seb’s best friend and Cassidy’s mentor, she’s now forced to hunt the both of them down; but in their final confrontation she snaps out of the controlled mode Arasaka keeps her in and runs away with them, effectively leaving Special Programs without any test subjects. Another one of these people is Reid Bennett, Cassidy’s ex and ex-coworker back at MaxTac. He still works for the corporation and has been on an ongoing investigation into Arasaka Special Programs; seeing Cassidy alive and well, working together with Seb no less, piques his interest and he continues to look further into the case, which will cause him to make a very big mistake later on in the timeline.

By September 2078, Seb and Cassidy have successfully taken down all their planned targets and retreat back into the shadows, leaving Special Programs with many losses and no test subjects. With the APEX program discontinued a month earlier (incident discussed in this fic, which is a continuation of the in-game events), and Hanako Arasaka recovered and ready to take the corporation back from the hands of her corrupt brother, Special Programs ends up having to retreat for the time being, and cook up a new plan in the background.

Special Programs by this point is run by Andrew Colton, Alana Cartier, and Kaida Akiyama, three players who have been in the game for a long time already in the SERPENT projects’ runtime. Colton and Cartier are married– Cartier used to be married to Seb and cheated on him for a good amount of time when he was still at Arasaka– but their marriage is starting to fall apart. Akiyama has had to watch over Special Ops agent Ambrose Hawthorne for a while during his chase after the Mason twins, which ended up with the twins dead and Hawthorne going into early retirement (Arasaka doesn’t know the twins faked their death and Ambrose is now dating one of them lol), and xe is now determined to help Colton and Cartier get Seb back into Arasaka so the projects can continue.

Cassidy’s initial plan was to leave as soon as the collaboration would come to an end, but he has found his place with the Cobras and instead ends up officially joining them.The next chapter in the story is a more laid-back and easygoing chapter, in which Cassidy learns to be part of real life again, and in which Seb learns to let people get close to him again after spending years trying to convince himself he doesn’t need any help. Over the course of a little over a year (all the way to November 2079), the two grow even closer than they had already done, going on gigs together and, you guessed it, slowly but surely falling in love until they inevitably end up together at the end of it.

Not long after the two get together, Reid returns into Cassidy’s life. He wants to try and be friends again and Cassidy gives him a second chance, though this soon enough turns out to have been a mistake, with Reid trying to create distance between Seb and Cassidy and then going as far as trying to sell Cassidy to Kang Tao (one of the few corporations that have been hunting Cassidy down for a while now) in exchange for his own freedom from MaxTac (where he would have otherwise been stuck at for probably the rest of his life). Naturally, Reid can’t watch Cassidy get tortured for long and leaks his location to the Cobras, who find and free Cassidy and take Reid into captivity instead– he does not get killed, but instead has to sit out some time at a safehouse somewhere in solitude, where he gets to decide what kind of person he wants to be in the future.

This brings us to Elysium; a gorgeous spaceship which was supposed to be a relatively cheap escape from reality for everyone who wanted a refreshing break from Earth, but through Arasaka sponsorship has become just another cash-grab project to compete with the Crystal Palace– and considering the megacorporation has its greasy hands all over it, the secret labs in the spaceship are used for a series of very unethical experiments. Naturally so, it would be the perfect place for Colton to continue his SERPENT projects without the risk of Hanako Arasaka finding out and shutting the place down. He sends forces up to Elysium (obviously after his other attempts at relocating the project to space have failed tremendously, having lost contact with every single crew in the smaller Arasaka stations in orbit around the planet), but since he’s not there himself his cousin (one of the CEOs of Elysium), Maxwell Crane, unbeknownst to Colton, takes control of the SERPENT projects in space instead. From the earlier linked Special Programs page: “Project Eryx used the technology of previous projects, but took a completely new approach in the hosts it used; rather than focusing on the human psyche it attempted to create a new type of cyborg which would lack the humanity that caused previous projects to fail. The Cobra chips were no longer used and the software was instead installed directly onto the host’s mainframe. The flexibility of the new hosts– more robot than human, and in some cases the entire human aspect was lacking altogether– allowed for experimentation with highly advanced cybernetic enhancements and military grade tech and upgrades, turning the test subjects– dubbed ‘prototypes’– into dangerous, unstoppable killing machines.”

Things settle down for Seb and Cassidy, but this moment of peace does not last long. In January 2081 the two find themselves traveling to the spaceship Elysium, to investigate a curious situation in the laboratories– they’ve been hired by Arasaka without their knowledge and it’s a setup to get Cassidy killed and Seb back in Cartier’s control.

While in space, they learn that the secret labs have suffered an outbreak of the above mentioned prototypes. They quickly connect the dots and realize Special Programs is back in the game, and they work together with security guards Aubrey Valentine and Leon dello Russo to try and fix the situation before it gets out of hand. Obviously this fails tremendously and Elysium ends up on a complete lockdown after a ship-wide outbreak, which is eventually contained in late March of that year, with CEO Maxwell Crane dead, leaving only his wife Kinsley Osborn behind.

Elysium continues to exist and is rebuilt after the crisis, and Kinsley Osborn can now finally turn it into the retreat it was always meant to be. Previously, most Elysium employees were to be stuck in space for the rest of their lives; however, with Arasaka out of the picture they are free to leave as they please, which results in a gigantic cut in total employee count in the months that follow.

Seb and Cassidy return to Night City and take Aubrey and Leon with them. Aubrey reunites with his sisters; Becca, James, and Rikki, and soon after his return to the city he opens an LGBTQ+ nightclub called Bodytalk with them, found Downtown, City Center, in June 2081. Not only is it a fun place to hang out at, it’s also his main hub as a fixer, and he starts a collaboration with the Cobras to get business going between the gang and the club; and soon enough it grows into a large and powerful network of connections, which is the foundation on which the rest of the stories are built.

After this point in time, many many more things happen but it would take me another hour or ten to go into full detail of all of that, so instead here’s a quick rundown of some of the other things that Bodytalk gets involved in:

Reid Bennett is handed over to Aubrey and he starts working at the club, and he becomes a very valued employee as well as a good friend to many now that he’s no longer fucking insane

Kaida Akiyama returns from Elysium and shows up to Hanan’s doorstep, to ask for her help with getting out of Arasaka for good; much later on, xe starts working for Bodytalk as well, in an attempt to put xyr past behind xem and become a better person

Urban Dynamite starts performing at the club regularly, and it becomes their home base

Luna Serratos, Cassidy’s ripperdoc friend from all the way back to killing era, gets involved in the Harbinger case from Maelstrom (one of the gang’s most feared members); turns out the Harbinger is in fact Reuben de la Rosa, a by then 22-year-old kid who has ended up in Luna’s care with his friend Noah Telavera after the two got caught up in an explosion. She requests the Cobras’ help with getting Maelstrom to let Reuben go

Officer Michele Diaz from Militech (who used to be Cassidy’s boss) is demoted following the lawsuits after the Elysium incident, and her investigation into the incident in hopes to get her job back leads her to Bodytalk; she begins threatening them and sends the whole club and their allies into uncertain times

Many people get married. There’s so many fucking guys here we went a little insane with the numbers but there’s several weddings and there’s a whole polycule going on too feel free to send asks about this if you’re interested

Cobra Cybernetics releases a new line of cyberware, which is incredibly buggy and dangerous to the public; it’s brought to the club’s attention and it makes them realize that Luiza Vidal (Seb’s sister), who not that long ago asked them to kill her husband (William Colton (Andrew’s brother), CEO of Cobra Cybernetics), has gone missing; they now need to get involved without getting the news out that they actually didn’t kill William and that he is still alive somewhere, while also balancing out dynamics between Biotechnica (angry at Cobra Cybernetics for stealing their designs) and Arasaka (the actual reason why Cobra Cybernetics’ designs look like Biotechnica’s designs, because William stole designs from Special Programs after halting their partnership after the Elysium incident, but these designs had been stolen by Arthur Jenkins from Biotechnica even BEFORE that to be able to hijack the European Space Council’s cybernetics following the Frankfurt incident. Are you still with me)

Vitali Dobrynin (fixer and main character from the in-game events storyline and the continuation of it; Vincent “V” Mayer’s boyfriend) ends up visiting Bodytalk after meeting Aubrey at a Fixer Council meeting, which happens in late 2083; this essentially ties the two main storylines together, which means that yes, a lot of the characters from the two separate storylines end up meeting :]

Officer Ulysses Dimakos (used to work with Reid at MaxTac) is sent to investigate Bodytalk following the Cobra Cybernetics scandal, and ends up teaming up with the club to get MaxTac on a dead trail in exchange for his freedom of the corporation

On top of the Bodytalk / Cobras centered storyline, there’s a couple of side stories that are still connected to the whole thing but are more of a standalone thing with only a few touching points to the rest of it all:

This obviously takes place a lot earlier because it’s already mentioned above, but Special Ops agent Ambrose Hawthorne is tasked with chasing after the escaped Mason twins; naturally he lets them go and ends up going into retirement, and Xavier Mason later on ends up becoming Bodytalk’s part-time repair guy on account of knowing Kaida

Gabriel Mason ends up in a car crash with retired security specialist Ames Ortega, who was also in Elysium during the incidents there, and the two end up babysitting Ambrose and Xavier’s kids together while those two are helping Hanan with getting Kaida out of Arasaka (Are you still with me. Blink if you can hear me)

Mercenary Frankie Sayyad gets a promotion from his fixer, Vulture (real name Diana Crane, Maxwell Crane’s older sister and cousin of the Coltons), and becomes one of her Bloodhounds; he works together with Evelyn Harris, Nimue Nkuna, and Beckett Rydel, the latter being one of the very first test subjects of Arasaka Special Programs, and the four accidentally get themselves mixed into a mystery concerning their secretive fixer

Caleb Harris, ex-security at Biotechnica, ends up back at Club Bodytalk not long after the conclusion of the Cobra Cybernetics scandal, and starts working for Aubrey; he is partnered up with Ramiel Al-Masri, a mercenary who has been working for Vitali Dobrynin for a while and has recently joined Aubrey’s mercenary roster too, and together they dive into a series of gigs neither of them had expected

Journalist Bodhi Shankar has finally found more evidence and information surrounding the mysterious cult gang Umbra and its so-called Prophet, Thiago Salazar; however, his antics have led to him accidentally becoming part of the gang himself, and he has to figure out a way to get Thiago to stop listening to the supposed deity that the gang worships known as Scintilla, before she makes him do things that will get many people killed

taglist (opt in/out)

@velocitic, @deadrlngers, @euryalex, @ordinarymaine, @gurathins;

@mojaves, @shellibisshe, @dickytwister, @mnwlk, @rindemption;

@ncytiri, @calenhads, @noirapocalypto, @florbelles, @radioactiveshitstorm;

@strafethesesinners, @fashionablyfyrdraaca, @aemondtargeryen, @radioactive-synth, @katsigian;

@estevnys, @elgaravel, @aezyrraeshh, @carlosoliveiraa

[xxplastic-cubexx]

what is your favorite thing about charles and your favorite thing about erik? separately, as in what you like most about their characters :]

a devious question this one is, my friend!!! it's hard enough for me to explain my thoughts cohesively, but having to pick ONE thing i particularly love is difficult. with characters like charles and erik, theres been so much done with their characters over the decades and so they have so many components to them that make them so interesting and fun to observe. BUT I TRY FOR YOU TODAY. under the cut i kinda ramble and the size of this text box makin me anxious

i think if i were to be simple and broad, what i enjoy most about charles is his determination to help others, even if he isn't really thanked and/or if people don't even like him. ofc, this isn't to say he hasn't done wrong- to be honest, the fact he does wrong/questionable things at times is another aspect of him i really enjoy, maybe because- broadly speaking- he's meant to be altruistic (intent vs outcome and all that). i don't know if that's super exciting to most people, but it is for me

as for erik, my reason for liking him is easier to explain tbh. To Be Simple And Broad, his progression from villain to antihero over the decades has been fun to observe (as much as i have so far anyhow) and analyze. i think to be a bit more specific, him using his rage and pain as justifications for his villainous actions is definitely what compels me the most: hurt people hurt and the sort, an idea i've always found interesting (something something vicious cycles and the like). yet now, he recognizes this wasn't really. A Just Thing To Do and is beginning to change that, which i enjoy

[zukkaoru]

could you tell me more about why you dislike femskk?

okay disclaimer before i begin: this is not meant to be a dig on every person who enjoys femskk. the biggest reason i don't like it is honestly because it's just not my cup of tea and honestly it really makes no difference to me if other people like it. but beyond that my biggest issues with it are

1. the phenomenon of fans "yuri-ifying" the most popular m/m ship and then using that to prove they like female characters and f/f ships. this is not a bsd-exclusive thing; it happens with stsg too and i don't like femstsg for the same reason. but there's a big difference between actually liking female characters and just genderbending (or even making transfem) the big m/m ship. i literally went to the f/f category in bsd on ao3 the other day looking for fics and about half of them are skk fics instead of fics about like. the actual female characters in bsd. who i was looking for fics of. similarly, there have been some redraw trends going around twitter - specifically the i prefer girls cover redraw - and i have seen. i don't even know how many femskk redraws of that (along with a couple femfyolais and a femrimlaine) but only one redraw with actual female characters from bsd. same with the scene 14 redraw that was going around, and while that one wasn't originally two female characters, i have still seen significantly more femskk (and femsigzai, femsigchuu, femfyolai, etc) than i have ships with even one character who is female in the source material.

and imo this phenomenon is made even worse in the bsd fandom bc so many fans just see bsd as the skk show. so of course they're writing off the actual female characters; they literally don't care about anything besides skk. and obviously i can't do anything to force anyone to care about other characters but like.... bsd has so many other wonderful characters and dynamics (both romantic and platonic) that a good half of the fanbase won't even glance at because they're not skk. i do like skk, but bsd is about so much more than just them. they are, objectively, only one small part of it. like if you only care about skk, then just be outright about it and don't pretend you're "proving" you like female characters and sapphic ships bc you like femskk too

2. of the fans who only like skk and nothing else about bsd, most of them. don't even characterize dazai and chuuya correctly? i think the some of the best skk characterizations i've seen have been from people who actually like other characters and ships too, and some of the worst skk characterization i've seen has come from people who literally don't care about any other ships or characters. this isn't a hard and fast rule obviously but even with 30k skk fics on ao3, i have struggled to find ones that actually feel true to their characters. and the characterization seems to only get worse when it's femskk. if you're just going to turn femdazai and femchuuya into two completely different people, what's the point in it even being skk? why not write k.ousano or h.igugin or even a ship with one canonically female character? if you have to change the core characteristics of both dazai and chuuya... do you even really like them?

3. about femdazai: i actually don't mind the transfem dazai headcanon in general but most fans get her wrong. i made a post about it here but basically so many times i see femdazais that are just. completely unrecognizable as dazai. you can't strip away core aspects of dazai like idk the fact that dazai doesn't show any skin from neck to toe just because you made her a girl. i have seen some femdazai that's good! but i have seen so much that is just fundamentally wrong for dazai's character as a whole. mostly on twitter.

4. about femchuuya: i really truly just don't get femchuuya. i THINK the hype here is probably bc lesbians seem to get attached to chuuya (which. valid. i am also a lesbian chuuya fan.) and so they want to draw a chuuya they can be attracted to (i.e. femchuuya) which like. cool whatever i'm not here to judge. but looking at it from a "would this character actually identify as female" perspective, i don't actually think i can picture that for chuuya. maybe it's just because i so strongly hc them as nonbinary? idk. this one is honestly just a neutral "i don't see that but you do you"

tl;dr: from what i've seen, femskk is often mischaracterized, and genderbending the big m/m ships in a fandom is often a way fans "prove" they like the female characters and f/f ships while not actually caring about anything other than their main m/m ship