#they're in a wasteland outside of time and meaning

[hetchdrive]

I wish I could articulate my earnest and sincere feelings about the usage of "I'll Be Seeing You" in Deadpool and Wolverine but unfortunately I can't take myself seriously long enough to string my thoughts together.

[nukaberries]

Hi! Can I have the non-human companions' reaction to a male sole that is very protective of them? Like if they're at a bar and someone shouts "get out of here freak/bucket of bolts/etc" he's beating the crap out of them immediately and when he's done he just goes back to the said companion and is all caring like "are you ok? Do you need anything?" Djdjfnfnejjr p l e a s e I've had this idea for so long

Non-human companions will always have a special place in my heart (especially Hancock because characters from Goodneighbor will always be superior to me), so this ask is really fun! Besides, I'm pretty sure every Hancock or Valentine fan has sided against the Brotherhood just for this reason. Also I have a feeling I could be missing someone, since I almost forgot Codsworth and Strong, so please let me know if I am, I can just add them on lmao

//

Non-Human Companions React to M!Sole Being Protective (Includes: Curie, Codsworth, Hancock, Nick, Strong and X6-88)

Curie She insists that Sole didn't have to go to all that trouble for her, she understands that some people are bound to dislike her simply based on her appearance and although that can be disheartening, she's come to accept it. She's a little shocked by how Sole reacts, he's never been particularly violent if he can help it, but it's more how quickly his mood changes afterwards when he goes to check on her that catches her more off guard than anything. She can't help but feel touched by the gesture though, it's nice to know that there's someone willing to look out for her.

Codsworth The Commonwealth is a lot different than it was 210 years ago, Codsworth still remembers the days when people would clamour at the opportunity to have their very own Mr. Handy. Now, all he seems to be is target practice or scrap metal to the inhabitants of the wasteland. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean he's immune to how some people tend to treat him. While Sole's act of violence is quite concerning to him, Codsworth does find himself grateful that his old friend is willing to defend him against the abuse he's become accustomed to. Codsworth assures Sole he's fine and insists that he doesn't cause so much ruckus on his behalf, but he will make a point to thank him profusely for caring, even if he is just a robot butler.

Hancock While Goodneighbor is more than welcoming to people from all walks of life, Hancock isn't blind to the treatment of his kind outside the walls. He'd seen it with his own brother in Diamond City and Hancock wishes that he'd fought as hard for the exiled ghouls as Sole had just fought for him. The name calling doesn't bother him, really, he's heard it all before and he can handle himself. What catches him off guard is Sole beating the bigot that had insulted him to a pulp. He does figure that Sole might owe him one, considering Hancock had handled Finn for him the day they'd met. Still, he assures Sole that he's fine and clarifies that he can fight his own battles, not that the show Sole had put on wasn't entertaining to watch.

Nick Valentine Being around as long as Nick has, he knows what people think of his kind and sometimes it can be hard to blame them. The Institute are dangerous and they've taken countless lives for their own selfish gain, even though it's not his fault he has to walk around looking like their poster boy, he can understand why people might take out their frustration on him. Of course, that doesn't mean he isn't quick to bite back to defend himself. On this occasion though, Sole was quicker and much more vicious and Nick had barely managed to comprehend what had just happened before Sole was back at his side asking if he was okay. Nick was fine, as usual, and only might a slightly irritated remark about Sole using his words next time rather than his fists, before thanking him.

Strong He doesn't really understand the insult being thrown at him and, although he definitely will try to join in, he isn't too sure as to why Sole is attacking a random civilian. Once Sole has made sure that Strong is okay - which, of course, he is - and once he's explained what had just happened and why, Strong isn't particularly bothered, he knows Super Mutants are the superior race, the comments of a "puny human" won't change that.

X6-88 A snide remark from a worthless scavenger means absolutely nothing to him, but apparently it means a lot to Sole, who doesn't hesitate to give the scavenger a beatdown and make him apologise to X6. He decides to wait, rather impatiently, for Sole to be done, before asking that he doesn't cause such a scene again for something so meaningless. Deep down though, Sole knows that's his way of saying thank you.

[thesoftboiledegg]

I wasn't sure what to make of "That's Amorte" before it aired. When signs pointed toward "the spaghetti comes from aliens," I wondered if we had a rehash of Futurama's "The Problem with Poppers," where the crew finds a delicious treat on a planet only to learn that the "popplers" are underdeveloped alien offspring.

Rick and Morty's take on Soylent Green also seemed likely. Everyone knows the twist: Soylent Green is people! A dark sci-fi concept like that could be a ripe parody for this series.

However, "That's Amorte" adapted a concept that other shows have referenced a thousand times and took a right turn. No one's angry at the humans for eating their suicide victims: in fact, they love the spaghetti and turn it into a corporate product.

This is an obvious shot at capitalism and how companies will destroy the environment, brutally slaughter animals and turn cities into concrete wastelands just to make a buck. And I mean--chowing down on this spaghetti isn't that different from eating meat. I'm an omnivore, but I kept thinking that at least these pasta producers chose to die.

The suicide element gave this episode a poignant touch instead of turning it into an edgelord slog where the humanoids kill people and throw them in a meat grinder. Admittedly, the clones leaned in that direction, and that scene also shows how Rick struggles to understand the world outside himself. He doesn't react when the clones kill each other, but one of his daughters is a clone, and he'd be horrified if anything happened to her.

On its own, "That's Amorte" is a great episode. However, when you take the whole series into account, the plot retreads the same old Morty narrative: Morty tries to do the right thing, it backfires, Rick dodges responsibility while antagonizing Morty to be petty, Rick gets stuck fixing everything and Morty tries to pretend it never happened.

I keep waiting for something good to happen to Morty. Rick has plenty of episodes where he makes positive changes: going to therapy ("Analyze Piss," "Air Force Wong"), improving his relationship with Jerry ("Final DeSmithation," "The Jerrick Trap"), trying to do right by Beth ("Bethic Twinstinct"), being kinder to Morty ("Full Meta Jackrick"), etc.

Season five doesn't emphasize his character development as much, but plenty of scenes show how much he's changing. Even season four has moments where he's gentler.

Rick's being his petty season-two self in "That's Amorte," but even here, he does the right thing by showing the world exactly what--and who--they're eating. In earlier seasons, he would've done that just to be an asshole. Here, I don't think that he was trying to torment people as much as he just knew that this spaghetti shitshow had to end.

Same with the spaghetti itself. He didn't feed it to the Smiths, then show them the dead body just to torture them. I think he genuinely wanted to share the spaghetti because it was delicious, but he also figured that they don't want to know where it comes from.

On a similar note, I enjoyed Rick's moments of physical gentleness. Great animation detail.

So Rick gets a little character development and saves the day again, and Morty gets...nothing. Just a rehash of old storylines. "Mortynight Run" in particular has almost the same plot, beat-for-beat.

"That's Amorte" touched on Morty's depression and his family's coldness toward him but didn't go further than that. Morty keeps cycling through the same issues with no resolution. He blows up in one episode, then shuts down the next. His attempts to do the right thing go astray. When's this kid going to catch a break?

Again, this episode isn't bad. It's funny, original and well-written and has a lot to say about ethics and capitalism. Still, I don't understand why reviews on other sites keep emphasizing Morty's character development because I didn't see much.

I will say that everyone's horror at where the spaghetti comes from was a great takedown of the meat industry. Everyone loves sausage, but nobody wants to see how it's made!

Still, next time we get a Morty episode, I hope that it says more about him and less about the world outside his cartoon.

[hallofharmony]

ok i've been meaning to make this post for a while bc i haven't seen anyone else do this but

sky: cotl terminology!

sky fandom has a lot of terminology that could be confusing if you're a new player or just don't interact with the fandom that much. below is a list of words you might see around and what they mean. let me know if i missed anything ^-^

Sky kid/skid: the little guy you're playing as.

Moth: New players in sky. usually rock the default look. they're called this because the brown cape kinda makes them look like real moths :3

Butterfly: An advanced moth. usually wear base game cosmetics like plain capes and masks. have figured out the general mechanics but not enough to be considered an advanced player.

Veteran: Someone who's been playing for a while. you "officially" become a vet if a spirit from your first season comes back as a TS.

Chibi: player who wears the base game mask that makes them small, known as the "chibi mask".

Ikemen: players that are subjectively considered "handsome". Usually vets that wear rhythm or fire prohet pants, any of the elders' hair and owl hair, among other things. ikejou is the female equivalent.

Ts/traveling spirit: a spirit from a past season returning after a lengthy period of time (at least a year) where you're able to buy their cosmetics for regular candles while they're at home for 4 days.

Sc/season candles: orange candles that are strictly used to buy seasonal cosmetics from current season spirits. you obtain them from doing dailies during season, as well as getting them from candles scattered around the realm

Cr/candle run: refers to an activity where you go around collecting candles

wl/winged light: The little glowy guys that give you wings, increasing your stars

wl run/winged light run: refers to an activity where you go around collecting winged light

wedges/stars: the pattern on your cape that indicates how many winged lights you have

Owl hair: hair that has 2 tuffs that resemble an owl. like the season of rhythm ult hair or the season of performance ult hair

Ult/Ultimate reward: Cosmetics you receive from the season guide when you buy the season pass. Ults are the only cosmetics that don't return after a season ends.

Chibi fall: A glitch utilizing chibi mask. here's how to do it.

Oob/out of bounds: referring to going outside the wind walls and outside the borders. oobing is a big part of sky culture :)

Piggy rocket: a glitch utilizing the piggyback friendship emote, where when 2 players press the piggyback icon on each other at the same time they shoot in the sky, never seeming to stop.

Wind walls: invisible walls made of wind that prevent players from going outside the level to places they shouldn't be.

Krills: fan given name for the big scary dark creatures that roam in wasteland. As far as im aware, they're only ever strictly referred to as "dark dragons" in game and never as "krill" officially

Tgc/thatgamecompany: the developers behind sky.

sky: The Light Awaits: The beta of sky (before the current beta) where tgc allowed a handful of people on to test the game. thought to include this one as i was confused to what it was when i started playing :)

Elder names: again including these because i was also hella confused about them as a new player. but you might see some people use these names to refer to the elders, all of them being from concept art

Daleth: Isle elder

Ayin: Prarie elder

Teth: Forest elder

Sahmekh: Valley elders (sah being the spiky haired twin and mekh being the other one)

Tsadi: Wasteland elder

Lamed: Vault elder

Alef/Resh: Eden Elder/ The king

that last few are spoilers for the end game.

Ac/ ascended candles: candles you obtain after giving winged light to statues in eden. for every 4 statues you get 1 AC

Orbit: the place you end up in after you die in eden, where you go to be reborn.

Megabird: Giant star swirl thing you see at the end credits and hinted at throughout the game. called "megabird" in concept art and made out to be a god. more info

[togetogetogepi]

Primera sangre; Barrenclan's manuscripts - Asphodelpaw (from Pinepaw and the Forgotten World)

Another awesome read in the works! This time is PATFW, a story written and illustrated by Razmerry, originated from a clan generator challenge. You can read the comic here @barrenclan and watch the very first video here https://youtu.be/PXYqVdXKVx0?si=1q4I_DVbBrzlfWD1 .

Barrenclan is formed by a small group of cats that live together in a desolate wasteland, struggling to survive. Pinepaw, our main character and healer apprentice, feels the need to discover why they're trapped in such a suffocating place, both literally and metaphorically speaking, so he can change his clanmates's future for the better. What's waiting outside their territory? Will Pinepaw be able to find his place in his clan? And who's this mysterious Cormorantpaw?

What I drew is down below. Warnings for: spoilers of issue 32, blood, animal death, throat injury (all in a cartoon style).

I was inspired by Mozarabic art found in manuscripts (very pretty, sadly I didn't come close to recreate it correctly), and I got the idea of the last Barrenclan's survivors trying to recreate their history through a codex, recalling the first deaths that preceded their clash with Defiance. "Primera sangre" means "first blood" and is a term used by hunters to determine who gets the hunted animal based on the first injury it had. I thought it fitted Asphodel in that regard, due to the nature of the Defiance and the fact that, even if other animals harm her corpse, the killer will always be Rainhaze, her own uncle.

It's safe to say that this death hurt me like a brick to the face (in a good way!). Asphodel was my favourite in terms of design and development, and it was so refreshing to see a female character talk about how she simply didn't want to be a mother, even if her surroundings pressured her to it. I wish she was alive to develop further, but that's what happens when you write a cruel story, good characters die. Let's hope that her sister Daffodil is more lucky! I may draw her another time, because she's adorable and her conflicts are so interesting (and harsh, sadly).

[valkyrieromanoff]

Hi! If your talking requests (so sorry to bother u if your not!!) could you do Anakin x Fem! reader based on Baby it’s cold outside? That song is literally the pinnacle of Christmas music

(+ u always eat w/ the fics)

Xoxox

BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE: ANAKIN X READER

Synopsis: you've been sent to Orto Plutonia on a mission, but end up trapped in a frozen canyon. Fortunately, Anakin came to your rescue.

Warning: fluff, kisses

Words: 2.3 k

a/n: I used reinaeiry's cover as inspiration. Thanks for the suggestion, I had fun writing it. I don't know if that's what you were expecting, but I hope you like it ;)

The council sent you on a reconnaissance mission to Orto Plutonia, after reports of suspicious activity on the planet covered in ice wastelands, tors, and snowy canyons, reached the ears of the Republic. On the surface, it was supposed to be a simple mission, just observing movements from afar and reporting anything strange, but the frigid climate disrupted your plans. At the moment, you were inside one of the huge frozen canyons, and the call for help sent to the Council was the last thing your communicator transmitted before it went dead due to the intense cold.

It took long hours for help to arrive, you were sitting on your backpack, your eyes ajar, trying to meditate, when you heard the sound of a lightsaber cutting a way through the thick snow. 

Anakin's heart swells with relief and unabashed joy as he catches sight of you, your form huddled against the cold, your presence a beacon of warmth in the frigid wasteland. He wastes no time, the smile on his lips growing wider as he switches off his lightsaber and rushes towards you.

The moment your eyes meet, a surge of love and longing courses through his veins, fueling his every step. As you jump into his arms, he catches you effortlessly, spinning you in the air with a mix of strength and tenderness that only he possesses.

His laughter rings out, a sound filled with unadulterated happiness and adoration. "I missed you," he whispers, his voice filled with genuine affection as he sets you back on your feet, his hands lingering on your waist. "Are you alright? The cold... it was unbearable."

Your safety is his utmost priority, and the sight of your shivering form sends a pang of guilt through his heart. He takes off his cloak, wrapping it around your shoulders to shield you from the icy winds. "We need to get you warm," he insists, his voice laced with concern.

"I'm fine, I'm just not used to the winter weather." You assured softly, meeting his eyes and holding his gaze for a few seconds. "I think Coruscant spoiled me with that temperate climate.

Anakin's protective instincts kick into overdrive as he holds you close, his gaze searching your face for any signs of distress. He knows that you still have a mission to complete, but at this moment, all that matters is your well-being.

"We'll find a way to finish the mission, but for now, let's focus on getting you back to safety," he murmurs, his voice filled with determination. With a tender touch, he brushes a strand of hair away from your face, his eyes never leaving yours. "I'll always be here to protect you. Always."

"We'd better get out of here before the weather gets any worse," you suggested, picking up your backpack and putting it on your back.

Anakin nodded, taking your hand, he raised a worried eyebrow. "Your hands are like ice, they're so cold" He brought your fingers close to his lips and placed soft kisses on your knuckles, reddened by the cold.

You looked at him as if to say it was nothing, that you'd think about it later when a huge block of ice rolled off one of the walls in the frozen canyon. Anakin's concern deepens as he feels the urgency of their situation. His eyes widen as the massive block of ice crashes down,  effectively sealing off your only means of escape. 

His grip on your hand tightens instinctively, a mixture of protectiveness and determination taking hold.

"We're trapped," Anakin states, his voice firm but tinged with an underlying worry. "But we won't be stuck here for long. We'll find a way out, I promise."

Anakin's mind races, formulating a plan to free you from your icy prison. He reaches for his lightsaber, igniting the vibrant blue blade, ready to cut through the thick ice if necessary. But as he moves to strike, a chilling gust of wind howls through the canyon, causing the walls to creak and groan under the pressure.

"We need to find shelter," he urges, his voice urgent. Anakin looks around, his eyes landing on a small crevice in the wall, just large enough for you to squeeze through. "There, that might be our way out."

"There must be another way," you murmurs, more to yourself than to him, though he can hear the determination in your voice. You reach out with the Force, trying to sense any disturbances or anomalies in your surroundings, hoping for a stroke of luck or a hidden passage you can utilize. But the cold and the density of the ice make it difficult to focus, hindering your connection with the Force.

"Well, until you find out, I'll keep us from freezing," Anakin said, tugging you towards the crevice, his movements fueled by a mixture of adrenaline and determination. With careful precision, he guides you through the narrow opening, making sure you are safe before following suit.

Inside the crevice, the cold is still biting, but at least you are shielded from the brunt of the storm. Anakin wraps his arms around you, pulling you close to share what little warmth you have.

"The Council will start to worry if we can't send a message," you reminded him, biting your lip fearfully.

"I know, darling, but be patient. We'll find a way out of here," Anakin whispers, his voice filled with unwavering determination. "We always do. We just have to stay strong and wait for the right opportunity."

His gaze meets yours, a flicker of concern and unwavering love shining in his eyes. "I won't let anything happen to you. We'll make it through this, together."

You sit in silence for a few minutes, warming yourself in Anakin's embrace, your head resting against his chest, as you begin to think of alternatives.

"What if we use a speeder?" You suggest thoughtfully.

"Speeders don't work out there," Anakin reminded you. "Besides, that block of snow fell on top of our speeders"

You sigh softly, your mind racing for a solution. Anakin's words ring true in your ears, reminding you of the dire situation you both find yourselves in. The cold seeps into your bones, causing a shiver to run through your body.

"Right," you mutter, your voice laced with frustration. "We need to come up with another plan then."

Anakin's arms tighten around you, his warmth providing a small respite from the biting cold. His voice is filled with determination as he speaks. "We have to stay calm and think this through. There's no point in going out if you're going to be frozen."

Anakin's mind races, searching for any other possibilities. He casts a quick glance around your surroundings, hoping to spot something that could aid your escape. And then, his eyes land on a glimmer of hope.

"What about our lightsabers?" he suggests, a spark of excitement igniting in his eyes. "We could use them to melt the ice and create a pathway out. It'll take time, but it might just work."

"We'll work together, melting the ice little by little until we can make a hole big enough to crawl through." You agreed, your hope renewed as you picked up your lightsaber.

He knows that it will be a tedious and time-consuming task, but the prospect of freedom fuels his determination. Anakin's gaze locks with you, his eyes filled with unwavering resolve.

"It won't be easy, but we can do this," he says, his voice laced with conviction. "We've faced greater challenges before, and we've always found a way to overcome them. Together, we can make it out of here."

Anakin takes a deep breath, ready to embark on your mission of melting the ice, knowing that their unwavering determination and shared strength will lead you to victory. The ice was thick, making it difficult even for the lightsabers, it was almost as if the layer of snow repelled the heat. It took long hours for them to make a small hole, just enough to look out of, but not to get through.

"We're almost there, Ani," you said, trying to keep yourself motivated, even if the outlook wasn't the best.

"Look at the blizzard outside," Anakin said, his blue eyes narrowing as he heard the sound of the cutting wind. "'Honey, you're going to freeze out there'

Anakin's eyes flicker with a mix of determination and concern as he gazes out at the raging blizzard beyond your icy prison. He knows that time is of the essence, with the freezing temperatures and harsh winds threatening their very survival.

Anakin examines his limited surroundings, looking for materials he can use to create a makeshift shelter. His eyes land on a pile of snow-covered stones, partially buried under the ice.

"There," he points, his voice full of determination. "We can use those stones to build a small barricade against the wind. It won't be much, but it should offer some protection."

With renewed purpose, Anakin and you gather the stones, working together to stack them in a way that creates a barrier against the cutting winds. It's a slow process, made more difficult by the cold and dwindling energy, but you persevere, fueled by love and the determination to survive.

Finally, you finish building the makeshift shelter, a small alcove that protects you from the worst of the blizzard. Anakin steps back to admire your work, a sense of satisfaction taking over him.

"It's not much, but it's something," he says, his voice filled with a mixture of exhaustion and relief. "At least we won't be completely exposed to the cold now."

"I don't think we should give up on the exit, not yet." You insisted, still determined to finish the mission.

"What if you get pneumonia and die? I’m not gonna let that happen.” Anakin exclaimed in frustration, running his fingers through his hair, sighing heavily. “Please, let's wait here until the storm passes. And when the blizzard calms down, we'll find a way to get to safety."

Anakin takes your hand, leading you towards the cave with determined steps. As they enter the protected space, he can already feel the biting cold beginning to subside. The cave offers respite from the elements, a temporary sanctuary from the heavy snow.

Anakin pulls you close, wrapping you in his arms as you huddle together inside the rocky cave. Despite the dire circumstances, a feeling of warmth and comfort envelops you, and your united strength provides solace in the face of adversity.

"We'll get through this, darling," Anakin murmurs, his voice full of unwavering determination. "We've faced worse things together and we've always come out stronger. As long as we have each other, we can weather any storm."

You smile gently, raising your eyes to look at him. "I must confess, it's not so bad being held by you" 

Anakin's lips curl into a playful grin, his eyes twinkling with mischief and affection. He pulls you closer, his arms wrapping around you protectively.

"Is that so?" he teases, his voice laced with playful affection. "Well, I must say, I quite enjoy holding you too."

Anakin leans in, his lips brushing against your forehead in a tender kiss. The warmth of his touch and the love in his actions provide a sense of comfort in the midst of your current predicament.

"We'll find a way out of here, my love," he says, his voice steady and determined. "We'll face whatever comes our way, together."

You move into his arms so that your faces are close, the intensity of the gaze you lock is enough to warm your cheeks and your heart. The closeness is intimate and gentle, just a centimeter more than your lips are together.

Anakin's breath hitches as he feels the proximity between you, the air crackling with an electric charge. His gaze locks with yours, a mix of desire and adoration shining in his eyes. The intensity of the moment sends a shiver down his spine, his heart racing with a mixture of anticipation and longing.

His hand gently cups your cheek, his touch feather-light yet filled with an undeniable passion. Anakin's voice drops to a low, husky whisper, barely audible amidst the howling winds outside.

"You have no idea how much I want to kiss you right now," he confesses, his voice laced with an intoxicating mix of desire and love. "To feel your lips against mine, to taste the sweetness of your kiss."

Anakin's eyes flicker to your lips, his own slightly parted in anticipation. The air between you feels charged, the tension thick with unspoken desires. The world around you fades away, leaving only the two of you in this suspended moment of intimacy.

As the intensity of the moment builds, Anakin's heart races with a mixture of desire and love. His lips meet yours in a passionate kiss, a burst of warmth and electricity surging through his veins.

The kiss deepens, a testament to the depth of your connection. Anakin's arms tighten around you, pulling you even closer, as if trying to merge your souls together. In this moment, nothing else matters but the overwhelming love you share.

His lips move against yours with a mix of tenderness and hunger, his kiss conveying the depth of his emotions. Anakin's touch is both possessive and gentle, his fingertips tracing delicate patterns along your skin.

In this stolen moment, amidst the chaos and uncertainty, Anakin is reminded of the power of your love. It is a force that transcends time and space, anchoring you to one another, providing solace and strength.

As the kiss lingers, Anakin's heart swells with love and devotion. He cherishes every second, savoring the connection he shares with you. In this frozen landscape, your love is a beacon of warmth, a reminder of the strength you possess together.

When the kiss finally breaks, Anakin rests his forehead against yours, his breathing slightly ragged. His eyes meet yours, filled with a mix of desire and adoration.

"I love you, darling," he whispers, his voice filled with sincerity. "No matter where we are or what challenges we face, my love for you will never waver. Together, we can overcome anything."

Anakin presses a gentle kiss against your lips once more, before pulling you into a tight embrace. In this moment of vulnerability and strength, you find solace in one another.

[witchofthesouls]

I've had prime predacons on the brain, do they have mating habits? Do they lay eggs? Since predaking is the leader of the last 3 predacons does that mean he gets first dibs if a lady dragon/predacon shows up or would it be a battle of suitors? Do predacons make good parents even with the fact they're technically clones and only have vague genetic memories of their culture to pass on?

I got sooooooo many thoughts about Predacons and their influence on Cybertron's modern-day frame-schematics, especially with that throw-away line about Seekers. Like I'm running away with it~!! 🏃‍♀️

Seekerkin can trace their frame and coding quirks back to the Predacon species that delved into the Rust Sea. Unlike their exclusive land and air kith, the sea hunters were able to escape the catastrophic radiation by diving down into the depths.

These particular subspecies of Predacon passed many traits to their descendants, including but not limited to: the sexual dimorphism of larger, powerful femmes to agile, brightly-colored mechs, the trine-protocols and flocking mechanisms, multiples in carriage, prey-drives, and superior senses akin to beastformers and mechanimals.

The Wilder tribes still use vocalizations and have behaviors that can be traced back to their ancient kin and kith via oral traditions from Keepers. This leads to a lot of tension with the Seekerkin city-states that try to erase and rewrite the history of their frames.

While Vos is framed for their trine-protocols and being a strange breed of aerials onto itself, Praxus refined the hunting tactics and flocking behavior, and Polyhex's wetlands and underground labyrinths kept polished the traits that made them formidable sea predators.

The Predacons eschewed Prima's Call and his Guiding Hand for the established city-states to remain in the Wilds. Capable of speech and sharp intelligence, Predaking's kith were the apex predators of the sky, hunting down others for food, and were terrors to the young mecha prior to T-cogs.

This is due to claims of superiority. Unlike the other frames, they didn't require the immediate protection of the Primes. On top of their massive size and strength, flight and fire capabilities, advanced nanite colonies, thick armor, and heightened senses, the Predacons have a very unique quirk: collective unconscious.

Predacons are proud of their closeness to nature and beastly frames. In their opinion, they are the second closest to Primus, outside of the Thirteen, because of it. "A gift," they decree, by the Creator to give them such wild frames suited to the planet with the capabilities to shape it.

In the oral traditions of the Wilders, it's said some of their ancient kith could bend "cold fire" aka lightning. And that's why certain landmarks in the Wastelands still stand in defiance of Time and Prima's "Forceful" Hand. It was also said that they often crossed with "the Shadow of the Light" and the "Lord of Beasts."

Out of all the Primes, they respect the inescapable strength and spirit of Megatronus, Solus' forging and might, and Onyx for his understanding of their kind as he, too, ventured to the edges of extremes. "Lord of Beasts," indeed. They are creatures suited to an untamed Cybertron.

The social structures of the land hunters are very loose and minimal. Adults are mainly solitary creatures with exceptions to mating season, child-rearing, and seasonal gatherings to collectively mine volcanoes for minerals and guide massive storms to ignite new Energon nodes- preparations for the lean portion of the vorn.

The sea hunters are smaller and slimmer than their land-counterparts, so they have strong social ties of multiple generations to maximize the survival of their young, resource efficiency, and hunting tactics.

The mating behaviors of Predacons differ by their type, but there are similarities. Do they do not feel shame over cycles; heats and ruts are simply a fact of life. Much like beastformers, Predacons have reproductive heats.

There's courting gifts of fresh kills, raw ores, and chunks of minerals as well as showing off skills.

If there's an uncourted or unclaimed female in heat, then a Dance or a Mating Hunt will occur after competition has been bullied to back down. Females in heat are highly temperamental and incredibly aggressive, so those who wish to remain single and unmated would either cripple or kill persistent hunters.

Among the sea hunters, males show off their bright colors and hues to demonstrate health and virility as well as attempt to groom or nuzzle a female of a different pod/flock. It's common for a binary or triad of males to mate-nap a female from elsewhere: proving their tactics against her and her extended kin.

Whereas the males of the land hunters will show off strength by battling other males in the vicinity to prove their worthiness among his nearby neighbors before battling her for breeding rights.

If a female Predacon (or Seekerkin) was discovered, then Predaking would bully the other males to establish dominance before stepping up to plate to fight her.

Child-rearing is a shared responsibility. Nest building and bulking it with supplies. Keeping out intruders since baby Predacons cannot properly fly until they reach near mechling stage (adolescence).

Males can't produce sparkling-grade, so females are stuck in the nest until the newsparks gain their sight and actually climb out.

Mechs do help with a special tank in their frames that reguitates a melted slag of nutrients that helps boost the newsparks' systems.

Once the sparklings can eat more solid, the sire and carrier will take turns hunting and caring the nest.

Sea hunters have an easier time as child-rearing is more communal. Newsparks and sparklings are defended and supported by well-established adults guarding the shallow nursery reef, while hunters support the pod with an influx of food.

[emcapi-gaming]

Intro: Arkose (they/them)

Basic info:

9th reflection shard of Arkadios (Azem)

23 years old

Pansexual & nonbinary

Born and raised in Everkeep

Cousins with Erenville

Disabled/chronic pain: mild form of levin sickness, manifests as nerve pain and numbness in hands and feet. Varies depending on the day from minor tingles to full numbness past mid-shin/forearm, usually falling somewhere in the middle.

Uses mobility aids (platform crutches and boots with built-in ankle/foot braces)

Does some work for Oblivion, but isn't one of the more hardcore members

Can go outside the city with relative safety, as most monsters ignore them

(Personality, background, likes, and dislikes under the cut)

Personality/Background:

Arkose is a Traveler who can't travel, because they're stuck in an impenetrable lightning dome. While everything Solution Nine had to offer was enough to satisfy them when they were younger, there is a deep unhappiness that's been growing more and more every year.

For the most part, they operate on the philosophy of "but we stay silly." They cope with the existential dread with humor. Most people's impression of them is "cheerful, hyperactive, sometimes a bit annoying." They do have a bit of a temper and will get snappy if pushed too far.

Their other main coping mechanism is going on camping and fishing trips in the wasteland outside Everkeep. Because they refuse to wear a regulator, everyone, even most members of Oblivion, think this is incredibly stupid. Most monsters ignore them because of being levin aspected, they've learned the basics of Gatherer Sneak to avoid the few who don't, and they always set up portable lightning rods at the campsite to deal with the perpetual storm. Despite this, most people think that they're taking a pointless risk by going on these trips with no regulator and very little ability to fight.

Arkose is able to get most of these people to shut up by reminding them what happens when they stay in the city for too long. It results in both the approximate lifestyle/energy mismatch level of a husky in a high-rise apartment, and increasing levels of Staying Silly to counteract the growing existential dread from being stuck in one place which is distinctly artificial. The end result is an Arkose who is bouncing off the walls and driving everyone around them up the walls, to the point where most people they know are practically begging them to go camping.

Their life is a perpetual balancing act between inside and outside Everkeep. If they stay outside for too long, the uncontained ambient aether causes the levin sickness symptoms start trending more heavily towards the 'severe' side of the scale - they can sometimes push through it, but it will mean more bad days and a longer recovery period when they get home. But if they stay inside too long, as mentioned, they start losing their mind. They've settled on spending a 3 to 4 day block each month out camping.

They grew up wearing a regulator, and listening to Aunt Cahciua's stories about Tural. When they happened to meet her again after getting her memory erased, and realized what they had lost, they were extremely upset and swore off regulator use. They feel that the memories were stolen from them.

They also missed the vast majority of the events of MSQ because they dropped their phone during a camping trip, the local legendary fish ate it, and they got stuck trying to fish it back up. Everyone was surprised when they showed up again, because the logical assumption after being late coming back and radio silent in the middle of a war was that they were dead.

Arkose and Ardwin meet for the first time a little while after MSQ and (as most Arkadios shards tend to do) immediately get along like a house on fire. They asked her to take them with her; she agreed to do so, as much as possible, and as of post-7.0, the two of them are now slowly working their way through a long travel itinerary/The Great Etheirys Roadtrip.

Ardwin had previously discovered that shards of the same soul have an osmosis effect with imbalanced aether through skin contact, as Ardbert was able to siphon some of the Light poisoning from her in Shadowbringers before they fused (which was still necessary, as it was roughly the difference between bailing out a leaky boat with a bucket, and patching the hole). (Also, this only works for partial aether corruption, and has no effect on her reaper avatar.) She has the same effect with Arkose, which is how she discovers they're another Azem shard.

Although the siphoning effect is helpful for Arkose, it's more of a therapy than a cure; it improves symptoms significantly, but the strongest effects only last for a couple of days before starting to taper off, and it takes around a week until Ardwin and Arkose's aether levels return to their natural state of balance/imbalance, respectively, to meet the relative threshold to trigger the effect again.

Likes (pre-MSQ):

Wasteland camping/fishing trips!

Bringing Genolt energy drinks and/or rare materials from outside in exchange for lessons on fabrication

Underground raves (and loves mosh pits if they're having a really good nerve day!)

Stories from Aunt Cahciua about Tural

Simulation games that try to replicate the world outside the dome

Fighting games

Watching Arcadion matches

Likes (post-MSQ):

Other Arkadios shards!!! <3

GOING OUTSIDE THE DOME!!!!!!!!

THE SKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dislikes:

Regulator-induced memory loss

Strangers fussing over them

Being patronized

Feeling trapped in the city

How everything in the city feels artificial

(To a lesser degree) Feeling trapped in the dome

People trying to talk them into wearing a regulator

People trying to talk them out of going camping

It's Complicated:

Queen Sphene (were actual friends for a time, but had a nasty falling-out)

[oldworldwidgets]

the brotherhood, at least under lyons, was the only faction in fo3 that wanted to help the wastelanders. no one else wanted to do that and i liked that they did.

the way they are towards ghouls is fucked up, but since they have enough goodness in them to care about the wastelanders, i'd like to believe they could change and that could extend to ghouls and such in the future too.

i understand they're evil in other games, but i haven't played those. you guys should learn to be less mean and gatekeep-y. i've played one game and i'm new to the fandom and in the one game i played, they were the closest thing to good guys.

you shouldn't be so gatekeep-y just because some of us are new to the series.

girl literally no one is being gatekeep-y because you're "new to the series." no one is yelling At You for kinda thinking the lyons pride is cool in your own brain. you came here onto god's internet, saw a post that said "the fascist regimes in fallout are fascist, actually!" and decided to insult the op directly when he, instead, was making a general statement about disliking fascists. you were experiencing this cognitive dissonance of "hey! i like the BoS but I'M not fascist!!" and decided to yell at SOMEONE ELSE about it rather than just do some critical thinking.

what i meant by my comment on his post was that i find it very, very difficult to like even the lyons pride because all they do in 3 is cause problems. they "want" to help the wastelanders sure but all they do is start conflict in the area and leave ashes in their wake. the capital wasteland simply doesnt need them. they "want" to help wastelanders but there are slim examples of them actually doing it. instead, all you see them do is hunting all super mutants with no regard for sentience, hoarding pre-war tech, keeping wastelanders OUT of their cushy home in the citadel, and shooting at ghouls just for existing. straight up the only positive thing i see about the lyons pride is that sometimes, when they shoot at ghouls just hanging out outside of THEIR OWN HOME (the underworld) they SOMETIMES "have the decency to miss."

all of this information was gleaned by me just. playing the game and critically thinking about it. it was the only fallout game i played for a Long Time because when i played it, 4 and nv didnt even exist! and i still didnt like the BoS! so you can anonymously come in quinn's and my asks and holler like a hit dog, claiming we're gatekeeping something for calling fascists dorks, but truly it's not our fault you cant see the destruction the BoS caused in the capital wasteland solely in the name of imperialism. and if you're willing to look past allllll of that just because they have cool armor and lie about being the wasteland's white knights, well, you're a dork.

[pink-tiled-bathroom]

angels don't fly in december, 09/12/2024, 09:39

angels were made for roaming highways. angels were made to breathe dew upon the grass when the nights hit below zero.

it's gotten cold here without you. i wonder if you ever got any of my letters, or if they got intercepted halfway by the choke of "no, not yet".

i don't know if i ever got a silver platter. maybe god gave me one someday long ago, but i tucked it under my wings in some spin of fury for not answering prayers.

sometimes being a teenager means abandoning any faith of being a child again. sometimes being an adult means abandoning any faith at all--

red wings furled out across the span of a three lane county highway, half dead with the breath of americana fogging up the night breeze;

you can't find a love like mine across the midwest. you can't find spite, spitting flames in the face of a god like mine across the north.

michigan came a close second but i'd be damned if i let another god try to chisel a blade into an already-open wound, clawed-up hands gripping the hilt.

bloodshot eyes staring at me from across an old fucked-up toyota camry, the angel of a truck bed sitting atop the roof of the fading red paint--

your name is chiseled into my bones; my insides are guts, red-black blood, and runes. i have all it takes to encompass divinity in its rawest form.

but the pastor says i'll always be a fallen angel. the priests all say i'm beyond help. maybe this is some fucked up attempt at redemption, self-saving.

maybe this is all some fucked up joke only told in alleyways behind bars at 3am, too drunk to think and not sober enough to hold back.

there is no solace in this december snow. all it brings is cold. the wind bites, and all the scars peppered across my shoulders open up in blooming carmine streaks.

it comes as no surprise that my name rhymes with heaven. but what happens when the pillars holding up the ivory gates come crumbling down?

defiance comes as the definition of early december, no matter how much you try to fight it. the fight is all you have left in you this time of year.

my wings are bitten and bruised, plumes coming out in bundles. there's not much left of me but fire, fight, and spitting in the face of god.

your god has never been benevolent to me. i was three years old, already praying for the fear to go away. i was three years old, prayers unanswered.

i was fifteen when i knew god was dead. i was fifteen when i figured gabriel would hide his trumpet beneath his wing upon locking eyes with me.

these buckeyes and milkweeds have always reviled in disdain in secret whispers behind the bushes. ain't no pride in this americana.

bruised conscience painted purple across the city skyline--the city don't take away from the fact that it's still all grassland and hometowns here.

her eyes got lighter. they're the lake frozen over, the cold january ice creeping up on your front porch, covering the grass in a layer of steel blue verglas.

starlings carry your voice outside my windows. i wake up to endless cries of what that fated november night must've sounded like.

there ain't no rest for the damned in the silence, only evening in and evening out of choked-up sobs of purity taken and lost by now-strangers.

gold glimmering in the only sunlight left of the season, salty glass teardrops splattering down on the still-warm pavement--

the blood on my thighs runs down my legs in some pathetic attempt of discouraging another stab of taking away whatever innocence i have left.

cure this malady with your divinity. cure my bloodlust with the ferrous touch of your sacreligious breath.

angels were made for leaving god. angels were made to fall from grace, to roam this desolate wasteland wondering if there's any salvation in the whiskey at the bottom of a glass.

[stesierra]

WIP INTRO-CAST OUT

Title: CAST OUT

Genre: YA fantasy

Setting: the wastelands beyond the Plenary Cities

Tropes: deaf MC, chaste teenage romance, sapphic, plague, hallucinogens, prophets, human dowsing rods, secrets and lies, a beloved animal dies (I'M SORRY!), religious fanatics, pilgrims, almost everyone is disabled or different, plot-relevant allergies, one trans side character, disability is not cured

Story:

On her sixteenth birthday, the Plenary Cities cast Zisha out for the crime of being born deaf. Also exiled is Thesil, a depressed and bitter young Imperfecta. Zisha wants nothing to do with her negativity— until she sees Thesil's face in a vision.

Everyone has visions when they consume Oracle Ore. But they're not supposed to mean anything. Zisha persuades Thesil to stay with her. As long as she's helping someone else, she can't give up. She can't let the despair get her. But the visions get worse. They show her pyres burning outside the cities.

Before Zisha can figure out her visions, or confess her growing feelings for Thesil, a man dies of the plague. The same plague that the Plenary Cities blamed the Imperfectas for, decades ago, and exiled thousands to stop. This time, it's unstoppable, and no one can blame the Imperfectas because it strikes at the heart of the cities, where everyone is perfect.

Nothing will stop it, unless Zisha finds an answer through her visions. But the only way to control them is through use of oracle ore. And every hit of that destructive drug would take her a step closer to losing her personality — and no longer caring whether Thesil lives or dies.

The Characters:

Zisha- a young painter born to hearing parents and taught to hide her disability as best she could. But she couldn't fool the Justry.

Thesil- a young woman who had everything in the world, until an allergic reaction to Oracle Ore took it all away.

Grandmother- Zisha's grandma, who is deaf and was exiled decades ago. The way she was shaped by the plague and the hatred of Perfectas has left little room to love Zisha.

Worst Comment from a Beta Reader: No one has read it, really.

Status Check: Fifth draft (101k words.)

Now being serialized here!

Credit for (modified) WIP intro format @sleepyowlwrites

@anonymousfoz

@moremysteriesthantragedies

@elizababie

@sm-writes-chaos

@bellascarousel

@palebdot

@da-na-hae

@macabremoons

@the-dragon-chronicler

@teacupsandstarlight

@vorskra

@wrenofthewords

@amostdelectablescribbler

@savvy-minnow

[karizard-ao3]

Aaaaah. Coffee shop au but make it post EoE

Oooh, post-apocalyptic coffee shop! I don't read a lot of coffee shop aus, so please forgive me if I miss any tropes I'm supposed to hit upon.

So I'm thinking post-third impact, everything in the blast area must be a wasteland like the antarctic, even if an appreciable amount of people did decide to come back from goop (which, by the way, is the ocean meant to be all the consciousnesses now? Where did they go? Did they disappear to the quantum plane or whatever like Shinji did that one time?), there is no way they can survive that close to the wrecked ocean. Maybe not even in that hemisphere. Not without subsisting on canned foods and finding other ways to farm and stuff, because I'll bet the land is absolutely barren at this point. So if Asuka and Shinji were to stay there, they would have to be part of the resettlement efforts. Maybe other countries who were outside the damage zone are sending aid and stuff. I'm not sure how the city's infrastructure fared, especially with part of it being underground, but I'm going to go with they have electricity, but it's spotty, and you can't always trust the water, maybe?

Anyway, Asuka and Shinji need money and there are tourists and stuff that want to see the site of the third impact- wait. Can they both work at the coffee shop in a coffee shop au, or does one have to be the customer? Whatever. They both work there. Shinji is the barista and baker, Asuka is the waitress and acts as security, since I'm sure the government is a shadow of its former self.

Anyway, they build the coffee shop themselves from the wreckage of NERV HQ, where they holed up for a while during the early days, because I am indeed assuming NERV would have had supply stores in the case that they had to lock down for an unknown period of time.

Anyway, using what they filched from there and then the humanitarian aid crates and whatnot, they are able to set up a coffee shop. Asuka thinks Shinji's idea is absolute ass at first because who wants to go to a coffee shop when they're struggling to survive? But it turns out that a lot of people crave the normalcy, just like Shinji does. So he's happily bustling around, boiling contaminated water and finding ways to make treats out of the supplies they get. Not sure if people have money or if they trade other things, but they're getting by. Shinji becomes more confident in himself because everyone praises his culinary skills and Asuka doesn't have to compete with Shinji anymore because they have different jobs, which allows her to start to appreciate what a rare and precious blossom he is.

Maybe a customer can show up and throw a wrench in their love story until eventually Asuka takes them out. But who could this vile person be? Gendo wouldn't come back. He wants to be slime with Yui. Maybe Ritsuko? She's kind of mean-spirited and bitter. Maybe she wants to carry on the work with the Evas, as some kind of desperate bid to find meaning in life again? She's really fucking with Shinji's head, trying to force him into it. Maybe she decides the only way is to get the coffee shop shut down!!! So they have to save the coffee shop!

I don't know! I feel like there are a lot of possibilities!

[mindsmade]

[SHIMMER] viNCE AND SO MI 😌✨️

meme

Of all places they could've wound up in, a small lake that isn't a toxic dump has to be the most pleasant. There's not a landfill, factory or other polluter in sight — they're well and truly alone with the water. In fact, as he takes his sights beyond the far edge, he can trace its origins up the slope of one of the mountains encasing them and the side of the road they'd parked on a way's back.

To think that just days ago, they'd set out from the miserable wasteland outside of NC, a ways south of where they are now. It's almost like he'd forgotten where those endless roads could actually take him.

Now, it can't take more than half an hour for the sun to sink behind the ragged shoulders of the mountains ahead ...

Tracing the reflection across the water surface back to where they stand, his gaze – as it so often does – effortlessly finds its way to So Mi; and just as their eyes lock on to each other, he smiles. She grins, and he somehow, against his expectations, knows what it means.

Or maybe he's projecting; making it mean what he wants it to mean.

Either way, he throws caution to the wind — his black shirt comes off, and just as he gets to kicking off his shoes, So Mi's jacket piles on top of it. A grin splits his features, teeth flashing in unadulterated excitement; amusement. He feels like a child again; like the eleven-year-old that would later get in trouble for diving into a river downstream from a power plant, or the thirteen-year-old that ended his day grounded for using the family's vehicles for an unfriendly race against the Wraiths.

But this is so much more innocent. It has to be in the face of this total lack of risk. The water looks crisp, clean, and all too inviting to be left unstirred by them!

No one here to tan their hide for disturbing the peace with their unbridled joy while it lasts, anyway.

V laughs and a small flock of birds thrusts up from one of the trees, and he's briefly left to wonder if this is all a dream. He wouldn't be surprised if it was — the setting's almost too idyllic to be real, and his company even more so.

Dream or not, he intends to make the most of it.

Once down to his shorts, he looks So Mi's way again, and the frantic chaos of his glee somehow subsides. It simmers down into something calmer; something centred on his appreciation of their surroundings, of them against this verdant, painting-like backdrop, in fact.

He stands still a moment longer, marvelling at the sight of her — not the amount of revealed skin, but most of all how her gold-streaked eyes catch the citrine light, and how it in turn casts an orange highlight across her purple hair. It could bring a tear to his eye if only he'd let it.

Instead he swallows and approaches, his expression bespeaking the tenderness of his feelings for her. His slow pace concludes about half a step away from her, placing him close enough to her to necessitate the angling of his chin to hold her gaze. His mind's set on keeping them moving, however, so he takes her by the hand ( skin against RealSkinn ), and nods towards the lake.

He saves his words, leading her to gently lapping water, pausing only to process the biting cold at his feet upon first touch. A breathy 'whoo!' escapes him as he stops momentarily. He looks over his shoulder again, finding her ... unflinching.

He doesn't speculate as to the reasoning behind it for too long ( maybe RealSkinn doesn't need to perceive it so accutely; maybe this isn't the first time she's taking a dive into a lake of glacial water ... ). Rather, he sucks in a breath and carry on, walking backwards just to continue facing her — farther, farther; deeper and deeper, until his toes are hardly touching the pebbles below his feet.

Laboured breathing for the first twenty seconds or so aside, he feels fine — alive and energized, in fact. So much so, his former smirk makes a return as he shifts his weight to float on his back, holding on to her hand still.

Coasting by in front of her, an airy chuckle leaves him as he looks skywards.

❛  You seen those videos of otters holdin' hands while they sleep in the water?  ❜

[sketching-shark]

PLEASE I NEED TO KNOW—

How were the Huagou monkeys doing when SWK returned? And what happened to them, their home, after SWK became a Buddha (the other too?)

OKAY @sunny-days-and-warm-mournings so the story actually ends pretty much right after the pilgrims complete the journey and receive their new religious designations, so there's no word on what happens to the Mt. Huaguoshan troop afterwards. From what little I know of the 17th century fan sequel Journey to the South, however, one imagination is that Sun Wukong went back to live with them presumably as their guardian and king, and even had at least three kids (Quidou, Luohou, and Yuebei Xingjun).

In Journey to the West itself, however, the Mt. Huaguoshan monkey yao go through one tragedy after another. The first time we see what happened to the troop was right after Sun Wukong returns home after being banished for the first time from the pilgrim group. Here he sees the devastation that the war with heaven left in its wake even 500 years later, which basically left Flower-Fruit Mountain a withered and barren wasteland since Erlang Shen and his sworn brothers had burned it "to total ruin" after Sun Wukong was captured.

While he's grieving the state of his home, a few little monkeys run out and after excitedly greeting SWK tell him that in addition to living in a wasteland they're also being relentlessly hunted by humans. SWK furthermore learns that between the heaven's fire, migration to hopefully more fecund lands, starvation, and the hunters, the Mt. Huaguoshan troop was reduced to "no more than a thousand" from a population of 47,000 monkeys in Mt. Huaguoshan's heyday.

The monkeys beg SWK "'to take care of us,'" and the Monkey King starts this by slaughtering about a thousand of the hunters persecuting his "little ones," along with their horses. He then tells the monkeys to strip the human corpses of their clothes and weapons before dumping the bodies in a lake so that they can "ward off the cold" and start up military drills to learn how to protect themselves again. He also orders the horse corpses to be stripped of their hides to be made into boots and for their meat to be cured for consumption. After this, Sun Wukong "gathered together more fiends and beasts by the day, and he stored up all kinds of foodstuff...As he enjoyed wide friendship and great power, he had no trouble in borrowing some sweet, divine water from the Dragon Kings of the Four Oceans to wash his mountain and make it green again. He next planted elms and willows in front, pines and cedars in the back; peach, pear, date, and plum--he had them all. He then settled down to enjoy life without a care."

Soon after Sun Wukong restores Mt. Huaguoshan to something close to its former fecundity and violently ensures the safety of his "little ones" for a time, of course, he's called back to the pilgrimage. The monkeys beg him not to go, but Sun Wukong tells them: "Little ones, watch what you are saying. My accompaniment of the Tang Monk is no private matter, for Heaven and Earth know that Sun Wukong is his disciple [and therefore he's compelled to resume the journey]...You all must take good care of our property and don't fail to plant to willows and the pines in due seasons. Wait till I finish accompanying the Tang Monk and taking the scriptures back to the Land of the East. After that merit is achieved, I'll return to enjoy the joys to nature with you." So SWK does leave the monkeys in much better shape with both lots of food and the means to protect themselves, and seems sincere in his promise to to come back.

BUT NO ONE EXPECTS THE SIX-EARED MACAQUE. The second time SWK returns to Mt. Huaguoshan he finds an imposter on his throne who he describes as having "take[n] my descendants [the monkeys] captive," and indeed before they meet Xiyouji made it abundantly clear that LEMH doesn't care about the Mt. Huaguoshan monkeys outside of how he can use them as tools to achieve his own journey. Hell, after Sha Wujing kills the monkey that was impersonating him, LEMH instructs the others to "have the dead monkey skinned. Then his meat was taken to be fried and served as food along with coconut and grape wines. After their meal, that Pilgrim selected another monkey monster who knew transformation to change into a Sha Monk. He again gave them instructions on how to go to the West..."

So yes, not many fun times for the Mt. Huaguoshan monkeys after the war with heaven. Even so, their love for Sun Wukong and Sun Wukong's love for them is consistent.

[applestorms]

i'm in a bit of a john mood atm, so i wanted to write a post about some of the things that i think fanon gets wrong about him. the biggest thing is that imo a lot of people flatten john a ton in considering him the poster child for Homestuck™ as a story, which sucks because i think it should go the opposite way around. he's the prototype kid, yes, but that just means his unique traits have interesting implications for the rest of the story and homestuck's core themes, not that he doesnt have any unique traits to begin with. john informs homestuck of its themes, the story doesn't inform him of his character traits; sburb gives him the kernelsprite, but he & his friends are the ones doing the prototyping.

so, then, what are those character traits? who is john as a person and how does that inform the story as a whole?

TL;DR: if jade's overarching story arc is about the struggle of loneliness & isolation, john's is about the feeling of falling behind your peers, which is why i think his ending the story depressed works so well

trapped in the s(u)burbs

okay, argument: SBURB is clearly pronounced "sss-burb," like suburb but skipping over the first u. when the kids enter the session they are basically trapped in the world of the game until they can beat it and make the new universe -> they are trapped in the s(u)burbs -> they are home, stuck.

this is a weird line of thought but it's kinda interesting to go through the ways that the (human) kids are trapped in their homes, both physically and emotionally. rose is stuck in that she lives seemingly in the middle of fuckin' nowhere surrounded by a forest, dave is stuck in his apartment due to being watched by an abusive parent, and jade, jake, roxy, & dirk are all stuck in the middle of the ocean. john (and jane) however? they're just in the suburbs.

idk how much this cultural context translates to people living in other countries, but john & jane's original neighborhood is the fucking Epitome of modern american suburbia. i cannot emphasize enough just how much i fucking despise neighborhoods like this: sprawling and empty, they are a modern labyrinth to navigate. every single house looks like it was copy and pasted one spot over, the streets are all named the same thing but with slight differences ("Bluejay Road" vs. "Bluejay Lane" vs "Bluebird Court" HELL), driving through them is agony and walking is impossible. my dad pointed out to me one time that every single house looks like it was painted with a different shade of baby shit and he was correct. and this is not even mentioning the people that live there: i don't want to overgeneralize too much, but these houses are usually pretty big and the fact that they're supposed to be a "safer" place to raise kids makes them decently expensive, so these places are generally very white, very upper-middle class, and you can just. Feel It in the air

so this is where john starts his story. the page (A1:82) was one of the first things that caught my eye when reading homestuck originally, even as a dumb little preteen the age of the characters themselves with barely any greater social consciousness. john starts the story fucking around in his room, talking to all of his friends online, and who could ever blame him when it's such an american wasteland outside. not to get too far into my opinions on american architecture, but if you live anywhere in the united states and ESPECIALLY the suburbs you are basically trapped in the house until you can get your license at 16, transportation entirely at the whims of where your parents can/want to drive you. it makes sense, then, that john's aspect is breath and so heavily tied to transportation, a desire to get out and moving and interacting with the world. the sick irony of sburb, imo, is how that desire is later twisted against him.

when john first enters the session, meteors are beginning to destroy the world and the rest of the entire human population of earth. but to a kid for whom the entire world feels so far away and empty, how much does that really matter? especially when your internet friends, the few people you actually care about, are just going to enter the same game and escape along with you. speaking of,

2. social anxiety & internet friends

one thing i really like about the alpha kids is the fact that you can kinda reverse engineer them and their core character traits from the beta kids, which actually still works within the logic of canon if you consider their biological relationships. not only do the alphas and betas share chumhandle initials, but the person they share with is also the person they are most similar to across generational lines:

rose & dirk are both anal retentive motherfuckers + rose's interest in psychology informs dirk's interest in philosophy/old greek dudes, roxy & dave care about their friends to a fault and serve their needs constantly (emotionally vs. practically, maybe; and also maybe are in love with all their friends to some degree or another too?), jane & jade both have ties with their respective universe-iteration's first guardian and are mentally separated from everyone else at the start of their arcs (jane by not believing roxy and jade by getting prospit visions).

imo rose & dirk have the strongest connection and jade & jane the weakest, and each kid is also pretty unique on their own + informed by their more direct familial relationship too, but i think the chumhandle connection is key in understanding how the characters were initially created in terms of basic personalities, likes, dislikes, etc. since it fits with the stacking nature of how homestuck as a whole functions, both as a story and a world.

so: john & jake. i think fandom has actually done a good job with learning how to appreciate jake better in recent years by figuring out just how much of a persona he puts on to hide his intelligence, but since this is a john post, what's really interesting to me is how that might inform the way we view john.

to start, there are some really obvious connections between john & jake that are as clear as jake's first letter to john (A4:1955): both like pretty shitty movies, are allergic to peanuts, and they're practically identical in terms of appearance. what i see as the key connection however, which informs the entirety of homestuck's medium, is their shared social anxiety.

jake is a very socially anxious dude. all of the alphas are characterized by their inability to communicate and navigate interpersonal relationships, but this is especially true for jake, and i think the most obvious evidence for this is in the specific kind of character that he creates for himself. while realistically we know that jake spends most of his time (pre-brobot, at least) watching movies alone in his room, he specifically likes to take on the persona of an adventurous, extroverted action hero, charming and gentlemanly and generally a dumb jock. it's the dumb part that's important here: jake pretends to be a dumbass himbo so that when he fucks up and hurts people when he manipulates them into doing what he wants, he doesn't have to shoulder as much guilt/blame. he plays up being stupid specifically to avoid the agony of people being mad at him, caring way too much about other people's opinions (A6A2:4587). it's why the trickster arc is so painful for him, and also why he is so non-confrontational.

john is also pretty socially anxious, though i think it's a lot more subtle for him since john's upbeat personality isn't entirely a facade in the way that it is for jake. the most obvious evidence for this is again the fact that he only talks to, like, three people online and his dad. despite being 13, none of these kids ever mention jack shit about school or the other members of humanity about to be murdered by meteors from their own game, and i think that's more than just a necessity of the story considering how much homestuck seems to value realism (at least in terms of characters' emotional reactions & arc). john's dad (as pipefan413) clearly knows the neighbors since in the serious business chatting app you can see fedorafreak & the others also talking about escaping meteors, but the existence of any other kids in the neighborhood is unknown, though i would think likely considering john's early arc is set up to be as normal as possible to set up for the crazy bullshit later. (there's also the whole thing about john's peanut allergy + fear of the "peanut gallery" so)

since homestuck tells almost its entire story through the chatlogs of awkward teenagers, this is one key place where i think john's personality informs homestuck: namely, in its focus on isolation, loneliness, and growing up. SPEAKING OF,

3. childhood ignorance

jake isn't dumb, john isn't dumb, but why do so many people think that they are? for jake it's pretty clearly cause he wants it that way, but for john... i think it's cause he kind of. is? but also, he isn't. let me explain:

john often comes across to me as the most 13 year old 13 year old in the cast of homestuck. he's a sweet kid and intelligent enough for his age, but when that age is 13, there's not necessarily a lot there. john has also had the closest (closest. there's still a lot of weird shit there) thing to a Normal™ childhood out of the entire cast of homestuck (and yes that includes jane, she was the heiress to a corporate empire avoiding assassination attempts at 16, please don't call that shit normal), meaning that, in my opinion, a lot of his (lack of) maturity can be attributed to growing up pretty sheltered. where dave and rose had to contend with overt childhood abuse through toxic/neglectful parents, and even jade had to deal with a dog-parent & dead grandpa, john got a dad that actually cared about him.

this is not a bad thing in and of itself, but john being sheltered does mean that by the time they are actually entering the game and interacting with all these other worlds & alien peoples, he is imbued with a certain distinct ignorance of the greater world that becomes a very significant weakness in a story fucking dripping with semi-omniscient narrators that live to make you suffer. and, from the way he scribbles on the walls (A3:1049), this is something john is both aware of and frustrated with, calling himself a FOOL, tying to the tarot card (#1, his role as protagonist), the harlequin thing (clowns & their incredible pull on the meta of homestuck), & his anxieties (feeling ignorant & out of your depth stepping out of childhood into a world much broader and more complex and cruel than you're prepared for)

4. not a homosexual

i think i'm gonna run out of space here, so i'm just gonna copy & paste some hussie commentary here & maybe reblog this w/ some analysis of john & karkat's dynamic/parallels as "leaders" later (and maybe some june thoughts too):

5. successfully saved the world: the hero is depressed

okay, so earlier in part 1 i ended with a question:

but to a kid for whom the entire world feels so far away and empty, how much does that really matter?

i mostly left the answer to this implied earlier since it made more sense for the transition, but i think homestuck proper does give us an answer to this: it does matter! it just isn't until the end of the story, after they've won the game and finished the session, that it really starts to set in the extent of what they've lost.

so this entire post was largely motivated by another post i read earlier, which questioned why john in the snapchat credits didn't just go to live with the crockers. i gave a long ass commentary in the notes on that post, but my conclusion was basically this: john is depressed (!!!) and depression makes you apathetic & lose all motivation to do anything.

i've focused a lot on john's early life and the beginning of the story in this post, which is maybe in part because i've been rereading from the beginning recently, but also because john kind of loses touch with everyone else in the story as soon as he enters the session.

i think this is often read as just being a product of john's classpect, heir of breath. john doesn't just inherit breath when he godtiers, he also becomes it in a very literal sense (can't fucking find the page where he transforms into wind but ugh, whatever), so he when he literally loses touch with the reality of the story after gaining his retcon powers, it follows with the thematic concept of him being breath. this isn't bad, but i think it also goes further, again connecting with that idea that john is basically the "main character" of homestuck, which is actually a very unfortunate title as it means john in particular gets very wrapped up sburb & the story as a whole in a very literal sense. again: retcon powers.

for all my frustrations with the execution of the retcon, i can't deny that it makes a shit ton of sense for john to get those kinds of powers, since his character and position as the starting kid has always been so closely entwined with the story of homestuck as a whole (see: the entire rest of this post). it also ties back to that idea of john being particularly vulnerable as a naive kid in a world of maliciously omniscient characters (e.g. doc scratch, but also vriska/terezi & all of the trolls to some degree), puppetted around by the story and slowly losing all connections with "reality" and the rest of the cast (his friends!!)

you know all those scenes where john starts interacting w/ the shittily-drawn caliborn versions of all his friends? (or this page: (A6I5:6207)) that has always come across as kind of sad to me, because it feels representative of john's (lack of) connections to his friends by that point in the story. he gets so swept up in Plot Bullshit that he basically loses most of the contact he has w/ the people that were his closest friends for years (ik people hate inversion theory but he & karkat really are complementary in some ways), and that loss of connection just exacerbates his previous anxieties about being ignorant. the conversation between him, dave, & karkat on the meteor is really revealing of this (A6A6I5:7487). where dave & karkat & everyone else got three years to sort through their shit together, john was getting dragged off to make the story make sense again, technically completely losing everyone he had known and grown up with. it's not just that dad crocker is different: everyone is different.

(this also has the kind of even more depressing alternate implication that john doesn't even really get the chance to feel that difference outside of jade, since he wasn't able to connect with "his" original dave, rose, etc. in the pre-retcon timeline regardless. great!)

john's depression has always been one of my favorite parts of his character arc tbh, which ig is a weird thing to say, but it just makes so much sense to me as the next step in his story, if not the true conclusion. it's only after winning the game that john really starts to catch up with everyone else in terms of maturity and understanding, and by that point, when everyone already feels so far ahead, how could he possibly catch up? (the answer is that he can, just not alone, but it is that exact feeling of not being able to that makes him isolate in the first place. depression is a fucking shithole)

so much of homestuck is about loneliness, but in turn so much of homestuck is also about social connections, about the people around you that you love and care about and change your life. where karkat is able to heal the connections of the people around him by helping them through their interpersonal relationship bullshit, john gets caught in the wind of the plot and loses his connections, thus losing his ability to really mature as a person at the same rate as everyone else (not to mention how he might've felt behind in the first place). but still, even w/ john's arc ending on a heavy, perhaps unsatisfying note at the end of homestuck proper, i like to think there's still a lot of hope for him: after all, his dearest friends and family are all right there. he just needs to get off his ass and start talking to them.

(sidenote: while editing this part of the post, i suddenly realized just how sad it is that karkat and john talk so goddamn little in all of the post-canon shit. which fucking sucks actually because karkat would be the perfect person to yell at someone until they finally get off their ass and start trying to be a person again, exactly what john needs after the game imho. pumpkin route you are forming in my mind)

uhh anyways, i don't know how good of a job i did at tying this post back to my original goal, but if you read this far, thank you. i have been typing nonstop for like four straight hours (ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʰᶦʳᵗᵉᵉⁿ ᵐᶦⁿᵘᵗᵉˢˀ) and i think my right ring finger is about to fall off.

bonus: 6. john is hussie???

OKAY, actual finale, this is quick and dumb but this idea comes pretty much entirely from a couple random lines of hussie commentary from a john & dave conversation on (A2:324):

John makes some pretty sassy quips here. I like the "15th day in a row" line, which makes sense since I was the one who actually said it in a real conversation about this.

most people make the connection between hussie & dave (& dirk, i suppose) since dave's sense of humor is basically just unfiltered hussie, but this comment makes me wonder what was put into john too (though i suppose you could consider all fictional characters imbued with some aspect of their author). i'm not super into psychoanalyzing hussie as a person through homestuck itself, but if you're into that, here ya go.

[radioactivepeasant]

Fic Prompts: Snippet Monday

Some weeks ago, @sparguscityangel and I were discussing the world map in Jak 2, and it occurred to me that at least one character refers to the northeastern area of the main continent as The Wasteland as well as the island to the west. And in the Jak and Daxter franchise, plot holes are just writer worldbuilding opportunities. So we started tossing around the idea of there being two or three separate communities of Wastelanders, all in different environments, because "wasteland" doesn't automatically mean "desert". And we thought "maybe they're all loosely affiliated and the leaders of the clans meet up every once in a while". For context, my idea of the other clans was Longstump Clan, down where the swamp used to be in TPL, and Foothills Clan, which lives around what used to be the Spider Caves and the base of Snowy Mountain. All this then got incorporated into Adopted Dadmas au with a pinch of Spy Tess. (That bit comes tomorrow)

"Fine young gun you've got there, Wolf."

The chief of the Longstump settlement took a drag on his intricately carved pipe and nodded to where Jak was climbing up one of the old pillars to watch for Marauder activity below. The old man snorted as the boy turned an unnecessarily elaborate flip to make it to the top.

"What is he now, eighteen? Nineteen?"

"Sixteen, by count of his last physical," Damas answered, sparing the boy a glance. A faint smile tugged at his cheek. "Sixteen, impudent, and always climbing, that one."

Sal puffed out a smoky chuckle. "No wonder the Foothills band likes him."

He leaned back and shook out the soft hide vest and tunic common to the inland Wastelanders, rattling with wooden beads and Precursor metal. His hands were wrinkled, and his face creased; Sal was old enough to be Damas’s father, but his hair was the same deep teak it was in his youth, tied back in neat plaits.

"At the rate he's going, he'll have no trouble when it's time for his Proving," Sal observed.

"Hm."

The Proving. That was what the Wastelanders of Longstump called the trials to usher newcomers into their ranks: a three day test of strength against metalheads in the basin, with an amulet awarded for each day survived.

The Foothill Wastelanders called their test Running the Spire. Young warriors or outsiders wishing to join had to race up a dangerous trail on the border of the Marauder homelands, without being caught by Marauders or dangerous wildlife, and infiltrate Snowy Mountain to bring back a piece of Marauder armor.

By comparison, the Arena was a far more controlled environment, with more rules. There was a strange irony in that.

Damas couldn't have said why the swell of pride he felt was so overwhelmingly strong, but he didn't bother to hide it.

"Jak has already passed the first two trials of his Proving," he corrected the Longstump chief with a full smile.

"I predict that before winter, he will join the warriors' councils as an equal."

Sal took another puff of his pipe and shook his head in wonder. "Two amulets and he's sixteen. Shee-oo! You dune-wolves don't do anything by halves, do you? You must be so proud."

Damas looked up. "I am," he murmured, smiling.

From the top of the pillar, Jak seemed to feel his stare. He looked down and made a questioning face. Damas snorted and signed up at him, "No moncaw-business! I'm not stealing light eco from the temple if you fall down and break both your arms!"

Sal laughed out loud beside him. "Ah! I remember telling my daughters that all the time!"

Yvelle, matriarch of the Foothills Clan finally looked up from the trade agreements the three had been exchanging. "Sometimes you just have to let them learn the hard way," she offered.

Damas made a face. "Can't. He convinced an Oracle in Haven city to teach him how to battle-shift -- like the Sages used to in the history books -- and now half the time he just regenerates whatever damage he's done to himself. I tell you, if my hair wasn't already white..."

"Your boy is a War Sage?" Sal sputtered, choking on smoke.

Yvelle's eyes glittered with interest. "No wonder he's half done with his Proving already. Hey, if you need a break, just send him up to the Caves. We'll tire him out."

"In your dreams, Yvelle," Damas scoffed. "Get your own kid: Jak's mine!"

"Worth a shot," the woman joked. "But seriously, my Lurker Wastelanders are asking about taking back their ancestral city in Frosthold. Loooooot of Marauders up there. We could use a War Sage."

Damas leaned back and searched the sky for a moment before his eyes landed on the Day-Star. He frowned. "Let's deal with subverting the apocalypse first. Then we'll see how far I'm willing to let my boy travel unaccompanied."

Of course, Jak would likely have all three amulets by then, and thus be considered old enough to go where he wanted. But Damas wasn't fond of the idea. He'd lost one son, why tempt fate by letting another wander far from home without supervision?