#the mechanisms backstory

[carmillatism]

everyone keeps asking for the carmilla and drumbot brian hc/lore/theorizing from me so:

i thought a little too hard about brian pre-backstory and i just came to a thought that the morality switch was a little too personal for carmilla to do to him, which made me think that he was her apprentice before she had begun to mechanize anyone, when she was in her beta stages. and they worked very well together and he learned a lot and she saw him a lot like a son and her own protégé. but he started to feel off about what they were doing, seeing through the ways carmilla spun her work as being good even if it wasn't always moral to both herself and him. he questions this which leads to a large fight where she hurts him somehow and causes a large amount of distrust between the two, and ultimately this ends up with them being distant but still together, until brian finally addresses her, telling her that what she's doing is wrong. she may think it'a good, but she is taking advantage of people who can't make their own choices, and she will hurt them even if she is trying to save them. she can't force anyone to be a part of her family through violence and medical malpractice. this makes her snap, causing her to choose to dispose of him. she wipes his memory using the way she learned whilst with loreli and then put him in an escape pod and sent him to the furthest planet from her (that was in reasonable distance for the escape pod), causing him to crash land in the town without his memory (but he has inklings of knowledge that make him remember how to mechanize the priest, however rudimentary it may be). all of this to say that carmilla kept an eye on him the entire time she was mechanizing people, guilt and anger eating away at her the entire time, so she decides that she will make him a part of her family once more (out of guilt) and mechanize him (out of anger and to prove to him that what she's doing is good). and out of spite, she decides to give him a morality switch and says she thinks it's funny because it mirrors his time in the town, but she knows. she knows deep down that she gave him that morality switch because he had always tried to be so moral even whilst hurting her. she could prove to him being moral all the time is never good. she could strip him of the agency she felt was stripped from her when he made his choice against her and left

[theotherpacman]

chilchuck: ok guys ONLY step where I just stepped

dm: everybody roll dexterity

laios: 14

marcille: 17!

senshi: ... 3.

dm: chilchuck roll dex save

chilchuck: ME??? HE'S THE ONE WHO FAILED THE CHECK IN THE FIRST PLACE

[shaylogic]

SIR I NEED to know the story behind this!

When and how did you learn this? With WHOM?

I know comic Charles gets a crush on like every girl he and Edwin meet, so I imagine early in their cases, Charles experimented with flings with people and figured it out?

Honestly need a flashback in an ep of season 2 where Charles goes on his first Ghost/Human Date

Bonus points if it was with a guy!!

[c6jpg]

Hunters fight not for fame, but to aid the people whenever they are summoned.

[seraphinitegames]

Big ol' spoilers for Book 3:

First, my apologies if you have answered this before, I pay attention to the asks but also miss some.

Onto the question: Since MC is getting the promotion, and Tina is to become Wayhaven's detective, does that mean she'll also get the liason position? Or was that position just for MC because of their unique circumstances? OR is it secret spoilers for Book 4?

(P.S. Thank you so much for writing this series. It is absolutely my favorite if series, full stop.)

That was a unique circumstances position just for the MC, yes. It may be a position that Tina is offered at a later stage (if MC already told Tina about the supernatural), but that would be after Pierson has made their assessment of the risk Tina poses to the Agency and supernaturals, etc.

Thank you so much for the ask and lovely message! <3

[bluegiragi]

Would there be dire werewolves, or would they be extinct like dire wolves??

I Imagine dire werewolves would be more tanky with thicker fur and a more aggressive personality and like, when the person wasn't transformed it'd be be kinda obvious cause dire werewolves are larger than regular werewolves like with the real life counterparts, and a not transformed dire werewolf would be taller than your average Joe ifk what I'm saying?

i feel like they definitely still exist, but probably aren't very easy to find...like i'd like to imagine one of soap's great-great-great-grandfathers was a direwolf who's blood's been diluted down through the generations until they got soap (who, like most werewolves now, are a hodge-podge mongrel mix of a ton of different clans/packs).

Idk if you know this anon, but i kinda explained how the werewolf dynamic works in the monster au and how they're a bit different from normal shifter-type monsters (although they're still classified as one).

although werewolves are classified as a shifter-type monster (same as Horangi or the cockatrice) they're actually unique in a hidden way. Horangi is a hybrid whose lineology originates from the first pureblood haetaes, which had zero human in them. In comparison, werewolves originated AS a human-wolf monster, which results in an interesting relationship between the human and shifted 'full-wolf' form. While Horangi is the same in his human and haetae form, Soap juggles two souls in one body - one belonging to human side, and the other to his wolf. They are both still implicitly him - the souls run parallel with one another throughout his life - but being a werewolf is very much like maintaining a life-long partnership. Soap and his wolf are a great example of a success story, but some werewolves have difficult relationships with their wolf, resulting in only transforming during full moons when they have to.

anyway the reason why i bring it up is because i think the main way direwolves and current werewolves differ is how conjoined their two souls are. while current werewolves' dominant souls are their human side, direwolves' dominant souls would probably be their wolf side. So that means that for direwolves, they'd spend most of their lives fully living as a wolf, and only becoming human for very short periods of time.

(also i think they'd be massive too)

[tiredqueermushroom]

Thinking about Dorian immediately shutting down after Orym snapped at him. Thinking about earlier in the episode Dorian revealing that his father was often hypercritical of Dorian and his actions. Thinking about Robbie saying Dorian is a master compartmentaliser and always has been.

[time-is-restored]

do you guys every think abt death vs immortality as a thoroughline in like. literally all of the mechs albums.

old king cole is explicitly warped by immortality (never to forgive he would eternal live, his hands dyed red by gore - can be read a few ways depending on where u place the emphasis, but at the very least communicates that his wrath is facilitated By his immortality), and the olympians commit attrocities in order to hold onto their wealth and the immortality that it grants them (murdering arachne, yanking heracles' chain the second he tries to go freelance, having a monopoly on the acheron etc). the value they put on immortality and living forever, and the fear they have of ever possibly losing it, has completely warped their morals and priorities.

and while it comes up less in tbi, there's still significant emphasis placed on how odin has been in power for a century (both thor + the narrator bring it up, and there's also an emphasis on how long ago the bifrost project was started, and how 'no one left living' can explain its science). her villain monologue in rangarok iv places the extinction of asgard as an honour - a ruin that no one can possibly rebuild from is called 'apotheosis'. and as she says at the end, the idea that no one can possibly outlive her is a key draw for odin. asgard dies with her.

in hnoc, the only really immortal character is brian (and we only really know that bc of knowledge we get from outside the album), but the axis of life and death as a privilege vs a curse is still very present. 'mordred's gift to Arthur could be love in his own eyes / fating him alone to keep the life to which he clings', not only posits that the gift of survival isn't inherently good + kind (which the audience would immediately recognise as love, not possibly love), but places emphasis on the fact that arthur is now utterly alone. the station's death at the hands of mordred is hardly a happy one ('Its people damned, doomed by a man who's lost all his regrets'), but arthur's fate is arguably worse. severed from the finality and closure of death, what does he become? [insert that one cool theory abt hnoc arthur becoming old king cole here]

it's like. on a meta level, the reason we as fans don't put much emphasis on the depravity + cruelty of the mechs is bc the people portraying the mechs are all charismatic + skilled performers. in live gigs they're all portraying the fun side of their characters - roasting each other, bantering with the audience, making fun of the characters they're singing about, referencing off-screen violence - bc if they portrayed their lore too literally they'd be comitting felonies LMAOOO

but narratively, its like. literally every album is a meditation on the ways that the glorification of immortality can ruin civilisations - can ruin galaxies. whether its rooted in the fear of you specifically dying, or of being outlived, or overpowered or forgotten, or if its done for the sake of someone else's survival... it's all corrosive. if u refuse to accept the indisputable impermanence of life, you lose the ability to value it, and u numb urself to the reality of just how fucked up it is to cut another person's life short for any reason.

like. i do think some of the mechs started as good people, and some of them even might still have ethical standards, but i REALLY cannot stop thinking about how fucking. fascinating it is that this group of immortals who are KNOWN for basically considering nothing but how fun and/or violent any given activity will be, have basically filled their entire discography with songs about how their continued existence is corrosive and brings tragedy + ruin wherever they go.

so how self-aware are they? do you think those old morals + ethics still linger in their mind, when they're writing down these tragedies? they willingly self identify as liars + thieves + bastards, etc etc, and they seem to have no trouble identifying the 'bad guys' in the various albums (ie: humanising snow + cinders + rose, but not king cole), but do those concepts actually mean anything emotionally, or even theoretically, for them all beyond their dramatic potential? do they remember their lives before they were mechanised as it actually happened, or do they remember it as lyrics to a song? is it possible to be entirely self aware abt ur own capacity for violence (as jonny in paticular claims to be), if you no longer relate to violence as anything other than a narrative device - a means to an end, whether comedic or dramatic?

[definitelysapphic]

Knowing kipperlilly is fictional makes her deal so interesting in a meta sense bc irl of course you don’t want bad things to happen to you but in fiction, especially fantasy, the main characters are typically motivated by/made relevant bc of their tragic backstories (and they often get resources/mechanical bonuses from them too). She’s an NPC in fantasy setting and she knows she’s never getting a PC storyline so she metagames

[dropitdoeeyes]

I HAVE GIVEN OUR PEOPLE APOTHEOSIS

mechtober day 5 - backstory

id in alt text

[seraphinitegames]

How did you go about naming characters? Did you have versions of them in your head before you named characters? And especially with the UB did you come up with female or make names first for some of them?

Just asking out of curiosity. Thank you!

Wayhaven was actually supposed to be a novel originally and the vampires were all male, and the love triangle between N and A was the only romance (which is why it's in the game, as I spent too many years planning it to not include it, hehe!)

All the names were set except Adam was originally called Bane, but Bane's character was too...well, not right. So it was changed to Adam.

But then I discovered interactive fiction, fell in love with the potential of it, and that was that, hehe! :D

Thank you so much for the ask! :)

[fahbev]

hello yes I have just finished reading Red Robin can you tell who my favorite character is?

Where are my Tam Fox enjoyers?

[sailing-ever-west]

peak concerning comedy to me is that sanji has been smoking since he was like 10 and this is sooo far down the list of his problems that fanon doesn't even use it for angst we just joke about it

[the-dashing-miss-ollandre]

On Mechanisation, Identity, And (Origin) Stories

My central point is this:

With the possible exceptions of Ashes (seemingly consented to mechanisation knowing what would happen) and Raphaella (there is so little knowledge about her in general), none of the mechanisms are in any way the people they were pre-mechanisation.

Gunpowder Tim is not Tim the soldier, Bertie’s friend.

‘Baron’ ‘Doctor’ Marius von Raum is not Byron von Raum.

Nastya Rasputina is not Princess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova of Cyberia.

DrumBot Brian is not Brian the necromancer, not Brian the stranded, not even the Brian of flesh and bone.

The Toy Soldier didn’t exist pre-mechanisation (and doesn’t ever exist, really).

Ivy Alexandria is not the librarian who died in the lunar war, she doesn’t even remember being there.

And by all that is holy, Jonny D’Ville is not, in any way, Jonathan Vangelis.

(And of course, the Aurora is not the Aurora is not the Aurora)

All the people they used to be (or may have used to be, i wouldn’t trust anything they say as fact) took up so little of the millennia-long lifetimes of the crew of the Aurora. Reader, imagine the first one-tenth of your lifetime. Then know that when the mechanisms were halfway through their life, the first one-tenth of their lifetime was about 5 centuries. It’s unfathomable. It cannot be fathomed.

And this is what’s so interesting to me about the ‘origin story’ songs and tracks. Take, for example, Gunpowder Tim vs The Moon Kaiser. While it is about a true historical event (in mechs canon), it’s much more of a dramatisation that happens to be told by people who were there, than it is a memoir. Just like how Once Upon a Time (In Space), or The Bifrost Incident are dramatisations. And that’s the thing: Gunpowder Tim isn’t the Tim of the lunar war much more than he is (say) Loki, and it’s the same with the other mechs and their roles (both vocal and instrumental).

They made their past into tales to be told and made themselves the narrators, and in doing so became detached from themselves, like they’re detached from everything else. I don’t think Jonny remembers where he was really from or how he first died, i don’t think Raphaella remembers her past, and i think the actual details of Bertie’s death are long forgotten. None of these things matter, because none of them need to matter for the story to be told.

And in the end, the mechanisms, trapped by their own narratives, out of stories to tell, bite the hands that feed them and recoil in horror at the bloody toothmarks on their palms.

[sysig]

Finally made a Parapluesch OC, introducing Mama Oz ♥ (Patreon)

[saym0-0]

toy soldier is like that one post about the guy in a polycule who isnt dating anyone but is just there send tweet