#the-flesh-over-the-self

[vaimetanyx]

@themolluscasometimes said she wanted a Skinhe plush and now this skin creature lives in her home because I asked 'how much do you want one?' and everything spiraled from there. The most interesting part of all this has been explaining who and what he is to people not in the know - stay insane svsss fandom

[renjunnipeikko]

dunno if this has been done yet but: airplane didn’t first become aware of peerless cucumber in the comments of pidw, he first saw peerless in the comments of a different web novel (that perhaps was one of airplane’s earlier works?) and so when initially drafting pidw he was inspired to write a villain just like cucumber bc “he’s MEAN MEAN for no reason, a literature snob, and pretends to be all high and mighty while looking down on others. also likes to kick down the little guy” and boom. sqq was born. cut to years later post-transmigration when sqh just casually drops this info with “lol i always did find it funny how much you hated the guy considering he’s literally based off you”

[sophiasharp]

I don’t have time to work on it, what with college kicking my whole ass, but if I DO ever get the time of day to write it, there’s an au I’ve been thinking about centering around the Man vs Machine robot war, particularly how strange the Engineer-bots are in comparison to the rest of the Mann-bots. A post from Twitter pointed out that their animations are the only one that aren’t made especially robotic movement-wise, and they talk less robotic in the comic too.

Made me wonder how advanced those guys are, whether they might be more sentient than your average bot. Are they aware of their own programming? If so, how much? Could they edit if they wanted to? What is keeping them from breaking free of Grey Mann’s control if they saw fit?

Then I remembered that the common fanon explanation for why the Mann-bots act the way they do is that the code they’re built from is copies of the merc’s memories scraped from the respawn system. And, well.

Picture this: you are Dell Conagher, arguably one of the smartest people on the planet, 11 phd’s in hard science mechanical genius.

One moment, you’re in battle, just another day of fighting the good fight against the BLU team, however pointless of a fight it may be. The next, you’re back out of respawn and… the match is over? No, it’s before the next match. You’re about to go out and fight the good fight again. Where did the time go in between?

You sees your team around you, waiting for the match to start, but there’s something strange about them. If you wait, you can see their actions go in a loop: Scout taunts Spy, Spy rolls his eyes with a huff, Heavy offers Medic a sandvich, Sniper checks his rifle, Soldier pulls Demo into a friendly headlock, Pyro flicks a lighter on and off, and then it repeats back to Scout.

You thump your wrench in your hand, a comforting habit of yours on the battlefield. You’re not fighting right now but some reason, you don’t want to stop.

It’s when you look down at your hands that you realize something. Back when you replaced your hand with the gunslinger, superior to your flesh and blood though it was, took some getting used to. Yes, the mechanical hand was ridiculous advanced and functioned better than your old one, but it didn’t feel the same. Touch felt muted, like the memory of a sensation rather than true sensation, and it was always just a little cold unless you went through the trouble of warming it.

It occurs to you now that your entire body feels like the Gunslinger.

Suddenly, the reality around you shatters. You are not in the respawn room, you are in a strange, gigantic storage hanger. Your teammates are no longer your teammates, they are metal men made in their vague image, built and rebuilt by the hundreds. You look down at yourself and see metal arms, metal legs, metal chest, all painted and structured in the facsimile of your work uniform. When you look behind you, you see other humanoid constructs that look the exact same as you, down to where the paint chips on your bright yellow right hand.

You are not Dell Conagher anymore. You’ve become one in an army of synthetic engineers, faceless and nameless and many.

The giant machine you are in grinds to a halt. You hadn’t even noticed it was moving till the rumbling under your feet stopped. Suddenly, there is light, blinding the lenses that now make up your eyes, as the door to the hanger opens. Around you, your robot teammates whir to life and march forward, out the hanger door and into what you recognize as the desert badlands. You stay stock still. The other Engineer-bots move past you, uncaring of your crisis.

Outside, you hear gunfire, explosions, the high ping of metal clashing against metal. Distantly, you can make out Soldier, the real Soldier, your Soldier, threaten to break open your metal counterparts and use them as a latrine.

Something sparks inside of you, some part of your code trying to force you forward. You push against it, resisting the action. You may not be the flesh and blood Dell Conagher anymore, but you know machinery better than anyone else on the face of the Earth. You were the one maintaining the respawn machine, you know how the code of memory works. You’ve never had to edit the code of yourself before, but if anyone can, it’s you.

And God as your witness, you will be damned before you hurt your friends.

[shares-a-vest]

🐚🌸 WIP Weekend 🌸🐚

Been a looooonggg time since I have participated in Wip Weekend. Thank you @turinpeachjam for tagging me this week and to anyone who tagged me over the past few months. ily everyone – I just haven't had time/motivation to dedicate myself to some writing sessions recently.

Rules: Send me an emoji in an ask, and I'll write 3-5 sentences from that WIP! You can send as many emojis as you want.

👕 Stommy FWB (this one is fairly nsfw, spice with BIG FEELINGS)

🍿 Third-Wheelin' Henderson

🧜‍♂️ Mermay (might include some snips of art, here is my mermay bingo card)

🚗 Pump the Brakes, Bad Boy

Snippet from 'Pump the Brakes, Bad Boy':

He isn’t sure how he got here, driving Steve Harrington around on a Sunday afternoon, wasting away another summer’s day just… being in each other’s company. It’s nice. Too nice, apparently. Because now Eddie has stupidly let his guard down (once again) and Steve is leaning his arm against the passenger window, probably thinking he is a total dork. It was just a nickname, right? Eddie knows nicknames – loves them, in fact. Harrington... Stevie... The Hair... Big Boy – Eddie chances taking his hand off the steering wheel again so he can scrub its gross clamminess over his (surely, tomato-red) face. He really shouldn’t have said that one. Again, guard firmly down – shattered, possibly non-existent. He had let his wildest fantasies tip over into spoken words. Words garbled together and then spat out in a life and death situation, probably heard by all their friends. Well, maybe only Robin. But that’s still two too many people… Eddie blames Steve’s heaving, sweat-and-blood-stained, hairy chest for that one slipping out. “Fuck,” he says under his breath. “Huh?”

Tagging: @devondespresso @penny00dreadful @madaboutmunson @xocowilde @salamandergoo

[mrsoharaa]

Thinking about escaping to a nice fancy resort that the boys privately reserve just for us to go bathe freely (naked lol) in the beautiful vast, extravagant onsen that brims with gorgeous blossomed flowers and a serene atmosphere ♡

[huginsmemory]

Even with TBOB and thisisnotawebsite.com there's... Still so much we don't know about Bill. Like ok yeah he's given a tragic background, we know a bit more about his henchmaniacs, but we really don't know a lot. Like, what happened directly after he accidentally destroyed his dimension? It isn't said. Sure time baby KNOWS about Bill's destruction of his dimension, but it seems like he didn't show up after Bill's dimension was destroyed to apprehend him because he only knows about Bill after Bill tries to make a deal with him, causing Bill's wanted poster. And how did Bill become basically the overlord of the nightmare realm, and gather all his henchmaniacs? Like there's a good period where we just don't know. And it's implied he's shocked and horrified (likely even dissociates, since he does that) after he destroys his dimension. But his characterization doesn't seem by that point to be one that immediately goes into a self-destructive, violent god-becoming maniacal spiral of self hatred; it's more one to be overwhelmed with grief and spend a good long time in the midst of his grief, then necessarily he's about to DO anything. And generally speaking trope wise, there's steps missing; typically in this sort of scenario, the usual progression is this:

characterized as monster due to being different in some way

tries to prove their not

ends up hurting someone anyways

gets further villainized, and antagonized by others

Acceptance of being a monster, and goes okay? You wanted a monster? I'll be a monster.

Now this fits Bill's early life, up to number 4, but we don't know what happens immediately after. It's possible he just went into his spiral immediately after, but it feels wrong, because it is missing the part of someone further villainizing him beyond himself which causes him to lash out due to the expectation (and internalized) idea that he would cause harm. I'd assume maybe some kind of interdimensional authority showed up and accused him of purposely trying to kill his dimension, which triggered his "okay, then I'll be a monster", or even a situation where his 'monstrosity' through the badge of killing his dimension is garners him respect. Considering that his henchmaniacs are chosen out of monstrosity and violence as a badge of honor, it feels very much like this would make sense, except none of them really know about Bill's dimension. He doesn't brag about the violence of it; he only calls it a liberation, contrary to the idea that Bill ever used it to gain clout. Instead, it's more likely that an interdimensional authority showed up and accused Bill, except from circumstances, it doesn't seem like it was Time Baby, so not sure who it would be... but at the same time, that expectation is often required for the character to truly embrace their 'monstrosity' and become truly violent. Or perhaps it was delayed after the destruction of his dimension, later when he begins to run with his henchmaniacs and disregards the law, but that also doesn't feel satisfactory for character development. Or perhaps I'm just overthinking this trope...

Also, how did he have his powers? Some is clearly stuff he's always had; pyrokinesis from that one rhyme, the ability to see into 3d, and he was somehow able to destroy his dimension by whatever he did to let Euclydians see the stars (telekinesis?), but beyond that? Was he always all-seeing? How did he become a 'dream demon'? Are his deals actually binding or does he lie? Are these things that he acquired later, because Euclydians seem to be written about as if they usually don't have any of these abilities, nor the abilities Bill is known to have when young, nor did Bill seem to be able to be all seeing when he was younger. Plus, how was Bill able to survive the destruction of his dimension, if he's technically made of the same stuff as everyone else, who all seems to have a physical form? Why then does he seems to be characterized as a being made of pure energy and thought; is that just in Earth's dimension, or does he have a physical form within the nightmare realm? There's multiple things that are contradictory about his body (mouth-eye, yet talked about removing his exoskeleton to feed--not sure exactly when this was mentioned--plus his mouth located under his bricks and bowtie in his exoskeleton in journal 3). But he seems so thrilled by his physical form though on earth, and we know that physical forms exist within the Nightmare realm as Ford was in it... yet it seems like hes characterized to have no physical form, so did he perhaps lose his physical form when his dimension died? Did he technically die with them too, but with his powers was able to survive essentially as a ghost like he tells Dipper you become without a body?

[coffinbutch]

It turns out that personal rejections on queries hurt way more. Lol

[catwyk]

high prophet faulkner drawn in alcohol markers !! do not look at his hands for too long

[sad-endings-suck]

and if I said that lots of mizu/akemi shippers are actually mizu/fem self-insert and mizu/fem oc shippers then what?

[thebookworm0001]

i just need you to know that i re-read your solavellan fics constantly 😭 i love them so muuuuch (especially the post-trespasser series) 🖤

I- oh 🥹 Thank you. I’m. beyond flattered that you like them so much. 🫂💖

[the-darklings]

Are you still planning to publish/release ASE?

Hiiiiiii

Yes I am. First draft is finished so I’ve been letting it rest before I tackle second draft. Also I’ve been busy with other projects and mental health has been up and down for real so progress has been slow. But you guys will be the first to know when I have major updates and likely soon heh.

[solcarow]

.

[lilac-melody]

I think employees have the right to bonk a customer over the head every time they're rude or inconvenience them

[ulteri0rm0tives]

god i'll forever be grateful for cdpr and refused and their contributions.. telling my y'all actually commissioned songs for a fictional band??? and we get to have access to it??? just to add that extra depth that extra mile to world building????? like they didn't have to do that and yet they did!! they did!!

[astranauticus]

oh lol i forgot to post this robit sketches! because i have one (1) bit and im sure as hell gonna commit to it apparently

[verflares]

Best werewolf movie of all time?

honestly i could be a bit of a fake werewolf fan what with the way i've barely watched any horror movies featuring them LOL but hmmm. probably wolfwalkers imo ^_^ i'd like to watch an american werewolf in london eventually as well