#storm's reblogs

[sstormyskyess]

uhh thinking about robot!ghost

Your profession was a rare one in the British SAS. There was a stark lack of automaton soldiers, due to the stigmatization that surrounded the group, and a majority of the ones that made their way into the ranks knew how to manage their own circuits. But for the ones that didn’t, that’s where you come in.

As an advanced automaton mechanic, you’re highly proficient in the field of robotics. Your level of skill is appreciated by the few that require your expertise, as few and far between as they may be, which is exactly the reason you’re here in a quiet little cafe waiting for your newest assignment to arrive. You were able to do some personal research about them, having been allowed some of their documents to look over.

When Station Chief Kate Laswell had gotten in contact with you, you knew that it must be serious business. You’d met her a few years prior to now and your previous CO had sung your praises up and down, but you could’ve never expected that she would even remember you, let alone call you up and request your services.

So here you are, flipping through the limited pages of your new temporary team. As far as you could tell, none of them were automatons, unless one of them was the extremely rare life-like ones that looked almost scarily similar to humans. The strangest file was the one with no picture at all. The name on the file was ‘Simon Riley,’ and his nickname was ‘Ghost.’ Kind of scary, you think.

Before you have any more time to dwell on it, the bell on the door rings and Laswell walks in. She scans the room for you and smiles once she meets your eyes. She waves as she approaches and you peek behind her to see four men, all of which you recognize from the files aside from one: the one who wore a black balaclava that covered the majority of his face excluding his eyes. Ghost, you assume.

You stand up and meet them halfway, putting on your standard business smile while she introduces you, giving your name and rank. The man you recognize as Captain Price steps forward and shakes your hand firmly with a charming smile accentuated by his mustache and beard. He goes down the line introducing the rest of his squad and once he gets to Ghost, he lets the taller man step forward.

One of his gloved hands pulls back the sleeve on his left arm, presenting the inside of his wrist to you. You’re able to see through the decals on his arm the serial number imprinted on the surface of his wrist. You recognize the number immediately, rendered speechless for only a moment as you realize just how rare his model is. You’ve never met someone like him before and to be face to face with one of the most rare specimens on the planet as you knew it had you starstruck.

You’re quickly able to snap out of it so you don’t make yourself seem like a weirdo to people you just met and pull your hands away from where they were inspecting the engraved number. Ghost stays there, looking you up and down with a scrutinizing stare. “You ever worked with my model before?” His gruff voice takes you by surprise.

“Uh, no, actually. Mostly just standard models,” You explain, fiddling with the small bag of tools attached to your hip. “It’ll be interesting to work with you, lieutenant.”

And interesting it was.

You didn’t need to fix him up often; he was decent at getting out of scuffles unharmed and when he did get hit, his casing was strong enough to ward off most artillery aimed his way. Generally, you were performing simple check-ups after being out on the field, checking for damages and scuffing out minor scrapes.

The first time you had to get intensive with your repairs was a few months into your partnership with TF-141. He’d taken a bullet to the abdomen, just barely missing one of his core processors. He came back to your office barely functioning, the LEDs that constituted his eyes dim and flickering. It was a whole night ordeal fixing him, taking apart metal plates and working with deft fingers to take out malfunctioning parts and put in specially made replacements. By the time he was fully up and running, you’d been awake for seven hours straight with no breaks. You checked him over one last time and had passed out leaning on your workbench before he booted back up.

He wakes you up with a shake to your shoulders and you groan as you sit up, feeling the muscles in your neck and shoulders tensed up. You rub the sleep from your eyes and glance up at him, about to ask him what was wrong, but you’re cut off by the way his eyes peer down at you. You left his face plate on out of respect for his privacy, but now you were face to face with the naked circuits behind the sheet of metal previously covering them up.

But the reason it catches you off guard is the way they’re made up. Instead of the standard flat circuit board look an automaton’s true face had, Ghost’s face is much more… human. It’s almost organic, and if one didn’t know any better, they might assume he was just a human in a robot costume. And yet, his LED eyes still peer at you, a clear sign of his inorganic nature.

“Y’forgot to put my tag back in,” he says plainly, his voice echoing out from where his mouth would be.

Right. His tag. How did you forget that? It’s one of the most important things an automaton needs: something that keeps their identity straight when compared to other automatons. Looks like you made a great impression for your first time working on his body so intimately.

You clear your throat, looking away from his face and sliding your chair over to all your tools. You sift through everything cluttering the space and eventually find his tag, standing up to put it back in place in the junction between his neck and shoulder. All the while, his eyes were locked on you, making you squirm. Why did he always have to stare at you when you were working on him? It was starting to frustrate you, but you couldn’t focus on that when his bare face was threatening to distract you. God, you wanted to inspect him further.

He leaves when you finally get the tag back into its slot, granting you a quick ‘bye,’ before closing the door behind him. Well, if you weren’t already enamored by his one-of-a-kind model, you were certainly enamored by something else, now. Great.

idk where this one came from i just like sci-fi things i guess?

𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

[sstormyskyess]

anyone else feeling this

[darkartsanna]

Hurricane Helene Relief Funds to those affected in the Southern Regions *will edit as I find more, please reblog as usual and check back for updates (Liking doesn't circulate it and isn't helpful)* *9/30 Has been edited! (Also, I think whenever I edit this it doesn't update the versions already reblogged?) ORGANIZATIONS American Red Cross FEMA Disaster Assistance Improvement Program Warmline Directory (Mental health resource) AKC Pet Reunite Food Not Bombs Operation BBQ Relief Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies & Roll Mobility Operation Air Drop GEORGIA State and Local Level Referrals - (60 Organizations Listed) Emergency Shelter Locations Animal League

NORTH CAROLINA Brother Wolf Animal Rescue Asheville Survival Program Homeward Bound State and Local Level Referrals Beloved Asheville Rural Community funds CLT Mutual Aid Fundraiser for a NC resident to deliver food to affected areas Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Animal Disaster Relief Coalition Mutual Aid Disaster Groups

Special Note: There are 2 Wifi Stations now open for public use. The locations are: SPOT 1: DoubleTree Hilton Downtown 199 Haywood SSID: SORTOR STARLINK Pass: ncstrong SPOT 2: Asheville Shelter Ferguson Building 340 Victoria Rd SSID: HALL STARLINK Pass: ncstrong SOUTH CAROLINA State and Local Level Referrals (44 Organizations Listed) FLORIDA Volunteer Florida Disaster Fund FootPrint Project State and Local Level Referrals - (52 Organizations Listed)

TENNESSEE HellBender Harm Reduction

More supplies to consider donating in hurricane impacted areas:

Bottled water, potentially water filters

Personal hygiene items: wipes, tampons/pads/other menstrual products, hand sanitizer, mosquito spray, laundry detergent, toilet paper, diapers, and especially any products safe for sensitive skin

Medications like ibuprofen/tylenol, yeast infection medicine, cold & cough medicine, any diabetic meds that can be safely shared, etc

Individually wrapped low to no prep food items, baby formula, and Gatorade

Pet Food

Sunscreen

Heavy duty bags, Duffel bags, backpacks, and trash bags, 5 gallon buckets, coolers

Fans, dehumidifiers, moisture sensors, generators, gas, gas canisters, solar charging items, portable battery banks, first aid kits

Chainsaws, crowbars, hammers, air filters, respirators, 2×4 planks, bleach, roofing nails, heavy duty gloves, and waders.

Books, Board Games or other non electric activities for children

Double check before donating items, especially if your local drive is accepting donations of particular products and can distribute the more specialized ones where they're needed.

[feroluce]

On Sampo's name (ALL of his names!)

I feel like everyone who's a fan knows the meaning of Sampo's full name by now- the sampo was a legendary item that could magically make endless supplies of gold, flour, and salt, all priceless items at the time! So it works perfectly for a scammer businessman like Sampo. ☆

"Koski" is the Finnish word for "water rapids" which might seem kinda random but actually makes sense for him, since Aha and the Masked Fools are also referred to with water terms:

This kind of analogy isn't specific to only Aha and the Masked Fools, but it does still tie them together. So water rapids fits perfectly! Sampo wants to stir the pot! He likes to shake things around and spice things up! He's taking that stagnant pool and turning it into water rapids! It would actually explain his ridiculous hair color, too; a dark blue wave tipped with white foam haha

EDIT: an amazing contribution from @ricochetlovebombs, who heard it from hoyolab user Rattaboy. If you interpret his first and last name together, instead of separately like I did, you would get something like "money river."

In other words, Sampo's name literally means CASH FLOW SKXJMDMDMD

What I really wanted to talk about is his drag alias name, though, Brughel Poisson, because to me that's where it gets really interesting.

So like in the English version, Sampo goes by Brughel Poisson when he's in disguise. Searching for just "Brughel" itself doesn't seem to get you much at first: a Flemish and Dutch Renaissance painter named Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who was famous for his landscapes and peasant scenery, especially Hunters in the Snow and The Blue Cloak.

He's referred to as "the Elder" because he had a son also named Pieter Brueghel (the Younger), and he began a long line of painters, all named Brueghel. Some of them did original work, and many of them created reproductions of the Elder's art to sell. The Elder was also famous as a printmaker. All of this is hilarious when you remember that Sampo is an infamous counterfeiter and has sold a relic called the Parallel Universe Printer JSKZJSMD

There is also something called Brueghel's Syndrome, named after one of Brueghel's paintings called De Gaper, which pictured a man yawning widely. It's a condition that causes the mouth to open and gape uncontrollably, twisting a person's countenance into a distorted mask of their usual face.

Tumblr doesn't have a way of censoring pics like twitter, so for the sake of the medically squeamish, I'm just showing De Gaper here. But if you look up Brueghel's Syndrome, you can find pictures of actual patients, some of whom really do make faces resembling Aha's comedy and tragedy masks!

In the Chinese and Japanese versions, his alias last name is a lot more silly- In those, "Sampo" is phonetically written as "san-bo" and "san-po." And in disguise, his last names are phonetically written as... "Bo-san" and "Po-san." The Chinese version uses different tones, but still. This smug asshole seriously just decided to write his own name backwards and called it a day NDMKXMDMD

In the English version, Poisson itself is kind of a reused Hoyo asset- it's also the name of Navia's fishing village in Genshin Impact. Which is a really silly name for a village, because it literally just means "fish" in French smzjxkdkdk but!

Again, more water imagery. And in English, if something is suspicious, we say that it's "fishy," which is perhaps the most fitting association yet for someone as shady as Sampo ☆

And for a good while I thought that was the only connection. But then. My beloved @hydrachea, who is an actual native French speaker, dropped this on me right after April Fool's Day:

Poisson is literally the word you use to pull an April Fool's prank.

[sstormyskyess]

Gaz with piercings please!! 😩💎✨

[turbonicflaws]

ACIDSTORMMMMMMMM

[sstormyskyess]

i—oh no. [ty for the tag @gogh-with-the-flow i've been wigged]

no pressure tags: @embry-garrick, @naivegh0ul, @glossysoap, @brewed-pangolin

Another quiz for if you were a fictional character how would your fandom treat you (if you think your life is too boring to have a fandom just think of yourself as living the domestic!au of some sci-fi or fantasy)

reblog with your results

[alcorian-wizard]

but i won't let you lose yourself in the rain

[geekyglamour413]

Only asking because my it’s just gone out for the 4th time this year, but:

[125storejuice]

Found out there was a snow storm coming and got all excited and ripped my clothes off

[cowboyshit]

[stardustspecter]

finally nailed down au dorian design and species- i went half sylph, half nymph :) best of both worlds

[3liza]

saw a youtube sponsorship for a brand that markets itself as "masculine shoes in small sizes, for trans men" and if the entire idea wasn't already preposterous (this is part of a large scale marketing push to convince trans people that clothing that has been available on the normal heterosexual market for generations is "hard to find" so they can charge you hundreds of dollars for it), it's also ugly, and they have chosen to call their company "Tomboy Toes". if you said those two words to my face in a shoe store i would slap you

$120 for a black or brown version of the standard school uniform brogue which has been available all the way down to toddler sizes since uhhhhhhh approximately 1820.

just to double check my sense of reality i went to the largest single online shoe market on earth besides Amazon (zappos) and typed in "women's brogues" and selected size 5 which would be pushing the lower limit on the larger part of the bell curve of adult AFAB people on earth, or at least the northern hemisphere, and there are many options in approximately the same price range depending on brand name, with sales regularly down to much less, on similar or identical styles. ebay also. Tomboy Toes carries down to size EU33 which is around 3.5 US Women's and again, that's just in the children's section if you need Picture Day/uniform (children)/ Office Whatever (adult) Shoes and they are on eBay lightly used in great numbers because kids grow out of them in 6-10 months.

is it annoying to be shopping in "women's section" or "kids section" for these things when you are an adult man. yes. so i dont understand the marketing impetus to replicate that exact scenario by naming your company for adult trans men something i would assume was a sassy yet misguided terf brand if i found it on a label in a generic wingtip at Goodwill. cis men who are very small also have to shop in the small sections for their small clothes. i am wearing a t-shirt meant for a 7 year old right now, it says so on the label. it fits me better than any of the shirts i own that are made for the standard american adult. i literally have bigger things to worry about

naturally their "vegan leather" selection is much larger but again, it's ugly Trendy Booties that will fall apart in a year and are, i cant emphasize this enough, made of plastic, nothing special, and in standard women and children's sizes which are already plentiful at every shoe retailer. why are we letting these "trans brands" charge us a $100 tax to pretend to take us seriously (while at the same time calling us "tomboys")? does anyone know

i do, its actually because of the learned helplessness issue again. the accepted wisdom at the tumblr layer of transness is 'its so hard to find [item of clothing that is suitable for trans people]" because the knowledge of how to shop for these items in the actual market has completely evaporated within the last ten years, i watched it happen right in front of me. but it's a complete fallacy, you can find this stuff easily. you can find large women's shoes, small men's shoes, women's clothing with wide shoulders or long torsos, there are entire stores for this already and measurements and sectiions within "department stores" (such as they are) and then after that there are one million billion foam inserts and seams and button placements and belts and scarves and gloves and hem lengths and blah blah blah that trans people and also cis people who are not standard-shaped or who just want their shoes or bras or shirts to fit have already been using for thousands of years so ive been mad about this all day. TOMBOY TOES. they are having us for absolute fools. just call me a slur at this point

i already know some nincompoop is going to match me paragraph for paragraph in a heated defense of the hundred dollar jingle keys boring shoes so i just want them to know in advance: we are not the same. i have so many cool shoes it is unbelievable. in every gender imaginable. and i didn't pay more than like $50 for any of them. also no theres no cheat sheet to learning to buy clothing for your body, i do not say this with any rancor either, its just hard, it takes a long time, and i dont have a cheatsheet for it because there isnt one. except rule #1: dont buy $120 boring ugly shoes from someone jingling their keys in front of your face and calling it Queer Fashion when you can get them for a lot less basically anywhere $120 isnt even a lot for a GOOD pair for mid-range, non-designer leather dress shoes. if you know they will last for ten years and stand up to resoling, it's completely fine. but not for thooooooose

[sstormyskyess]

this is so real [even better if it comes after angst. i'm a hurt/comfort whore what can i say]

(ty for the tag @groguspicklejar also kelsi that result makes sense for you very predictable)

no pressure tags 💜: @embry-garrick, @loveindefinitely, @gogh-with-the-flow, and anyone who wants to hop in 👍

WHICH FANFIC TROPE ARE YOU?