#xcom au

[mwolf0epsilon]

Not me for real having ideas for a Star Wars XCOM AU where clones are still a thing and the Jedi (and a select few clones) are Psi Operatives...

[rollforrandom]

I know the "Canon" is that XCOM failed in the first 1-2 months of the invasion, but does anyone else feel that's not -quite- the case? Hear me out:

The ADVENT mechs look very similar in design to the MEC trooper from EW, minus the actual person in it. This could just be standard mech design/reused assets, but it makes sense if the Elders found that humans had made something useful with MELD, they would take it for their own purposes.

The ADVENT troopers use magnetic weapons, which while not fully Canon to EU/EW (the main one was the railgun for MEC troopers), are rather prominent in Long war, a mod that helped inspire aspects of XCOM 2 and whose development worked with/for the actual game studio when XCOM2 was developed. But why would ADVENT use a weapon like that if they have plasma? Cause XCOM already designed it. It was cheaper, designed for humans, by humans, and coopted by aliens

Bradford's forces are too well organized at the start of XCOM 2. They have a WHOL ALIEN SHIP, with a launchable drops hip? That's not something that just "goes missing" without repercussions. Especially if we get stomped into the dirt with no resistance in 2 months. This feels like an opportunity was taken while the world was still in turmoil, fighting was going on, and XCOM grabbed what it could while the aliens were suppressing major dissonance across the globe. Something that according to the elder, didn't happen. And we all know we can trust them /s

This is all just theory and hypothetical. But I am really into that rn, especially other theories like "The commander/player is actually the Ethereal from the Bureau" level of theory. Tell me if you agree/disagree/want to hear more rambling.

[etherealvoidechoes]

Mobile post ~

Old sketches of Bradford with bonus off model Jynn in the middle. Have to edit them a fair bit before slapping them on the other blog.

[purple-nautilus]

Viper: (I was told that there would be a meeting, wtf)

[becauseplot]

I don't know if you remember her backstory I typed up a while back, but yeah... Tallulah has never in her life been safe or happy, and Chayanne has only just discovered these things, and he wants to give her the universe. That's his brain-friend and little sister! She's been hunted most of her life and he'll stab you if you hurt her! But also he's sharing his dads because sometimes the monsters are too tall. Best Big Brother.

And yeah! Egg classes! They do also have stuff like reading, writing, and maths, but their education is extremely casual and all over. Especially as it doubles up as daycare. Main eggs range from about 11 (Chayanne) to 2 (Trump) in terms of development, and then there's A1/Allie who is in her late teens to look at but only about 3 months old, and because of speed growth both mental and physical development are a mess. So, education is very, very all over. Just whatever the adults fancy teaching. It's the likes of Pac and Mike and Cellbit who insist someone has to teach them maths and reading and writing hardest (AKA the ones who didn't get education themselves...), though everyone shares the burden of unfun subjects.

And writing this I realise this Cellbit probably had an extremely bad reading ability most of his life. He remembers a bit of the skill from before the amnesia, like he does many skills (unlike say Quackity's amnesia where he lost reading and maths and stuff too), but... He still had to piece it all back together. And even then his skill was only that of a 10 year old. It's good now! And he teaches the kids to read and does silly voices when he does storytime for them (Pac e Mike do maths, but also baking powder volcano type science). But... it's a skill he had to fight for. Mostly alone. The prison did force him into some education programs, but it was mostly just them ticking legal requirement boxes not actually helping him with it. Felps almost certainly also helped, but yeeeeeah. I bet for his birthday Pac and Mike are trying to find and steal him a set of literary classics and the sort of stuff you study at school as he never had the chance to do any of those. Those two at least remember the schooling they did, and made it to 13/15 which is more than Cellbit's 10, even if not enough!!!

Sorry got distracted by thoughts of like... the blorbos.

Loving the thoughts about the blorbos!! Give me all of the distracted thoughts about the blorbos!!!!!

First of all yes bestest big brother Chayanne! Beloveds <3

The classes thing is so fucking cute holy shit. And makes sense who's advocating for the Essentials the most, given their circumstances (everyone just wants better for the kids than they got themselves I'm ;-;). The ideas about Cellbit, Pac, and Mike's educations pre-everything is just so goddamned *bangs fist on table /pos* (Rrrrr that's what I love about your worldbuilding and character-crafting so much it's those little details!! They mean so much. Love love love this series so much you've no idea.)

I imagine those classes with the kids are also a nice kind of break from the craziness of ykno: alien invasions, dangerous missions, constant threat of death or annihilation or Worse hanging over their heads. Stressed out of your mind about your impending doom? Go wrangle the kids into a lesson about photosynthesis. Do finger painting with them with whatever paints you've got. Demonstrate how to use a socket wrench. Help them bake something nice to eat. Show them how to write their names. Read a book with them and help them sound out the big words. Teach them phrases in your mother tongue, and then teach them about the country you came from, and then teach them about the continents, and then teach them about the planet. Sketch the solar system with a sharpie on the back of an old mission report and draw a little arrow to the circle labeled "Earth" and tell them we are here and this is our home. Answer their million-billion questions and remember what exactly it is you're fighting for.

[elecman108]

me: I can remember the exact intricacies of what frames I can superguard in TTYD and how exactly to consistently do a frame perfect hazard respawn in order to acquire stuff early such as Ms Mowz, a fresh pasta, or put Mario in a train-based purgatory much akin to the Emmet of the Pokemon Legends Arceus timeline where his brother got yoinked into feudal japan out of nowhere by god for shits and giggles.

also me: what fucking movie had the two creepy twins in it (it was The Shining. like. its one of the most famous horror movies. how could I forget.)

ALSO also me: hehe I have (genuinely) over 350 OCs :)

[companionwolf]

in the feedback (day) but it's over a amv of xcom x blaseball crossover/au/whatever where the commander and central are players on the same team...

[rabbit-harpist]

digital painting of mike based on @factorialsotherfandoms’ qsmp xcom au.

feat. robot rat and mysterious stains (paint? chemicals? i like how the colors look)

[echotunes]

🥤🍄❄️ \o/!!

🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

hm. well same hat with that I'd recommend you but you're sending the ask LOL. you already recommended Factorial (@/factorialsotherfandoms) but I will do it again for the benefit of everyone else reading. you mentioned two of my favourites from his XCOM 2 AU (in this post, for everyone else) and I also really love Remind Me How It Feels To Hear Your Voice which is part of the same arc but well. chapter 3. is all I will say. I adore that fic.

other than that - one of my favourite qsmp fics will always be And will we bring the stranger in? (Circle, grow and grow) by WheelCoveredInEyes (@/blocksgame). it does feature forever a decent amount so make your own decisions about reading it I suppose but I can't not adore this fic. it's everything to me. same with if stainless steel could love you back by underoriginal (@/magicalmanhattanproject), albeit for very different reasons. one of the fics of all time. do not take the gore warnings lightly. it's so so good

dead man's float by anonymous is so underrated it's one of my favourite fitpac fics and I never see anyone talk about it and it's SO GOOD. it fucks me up so much I adore it

and last one for now lol but how to (not) deal with asymmetry by Solaneceae is also really good. tazercraft mindlink my love

🍄 ⇢ share a headcanon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

does it count that I like the idea of t4t tazercraft having done each other's top surgery. because I do. I pitched the idea of Pac having bioluminescent top surgery scars to fey feyscape once and they put it in a fic and it's great. tazercraft brand home surgeries: probably not safe and definitely not doctor approved but hey it works!

and I answered ❄️ here!

(ask game)

[omnissaiev]

I has a problem. What I got in writing is about 10% of a kibbutz AU for Naruto (in Hebrew). What I got in my head is about 45% for a slow burn M rated Utena revenge fic, and ideas for an XCom-Amphibia crossover.

What I also got is a demanding full-time job, ADHD. How to make that work?

[rollforrandom]

I just want to point out, XCOM doesn't really play out like we are bunch of veteran soldiers hamd-picked to save humanity. It really feels like we are given the oddball and scraps of various militaries. I mean, if the Skyranger existed, it would be mass produced by the US military industrial complex to replace the Chinook. Odds are, it was a one-off experimental prototype that was overengineered and overcooked, then "gifted" to XCOM when the invasion hit. And the interceptors? Probably just F-15s with fancy upgrades cause they're cheap and can launch from a vertical footprint. All the soldiers are rookies cause they're the ones that volunteered, or got voluntold.

[etherealvoidechoes]

Can either of you learn how to let go?

Sad-ish future scene of that VoidWalker AU.

[purple-nautilus]

the xcom au again, but with snek!76

Hey look I drew viper

[becauseplot]

A gift of a handful (tumblr character limited me) xcomau species notes! Specifically flaws. avians - weak to poison gas, certain broken bones can cause suffocation in people with specific traits. fish-folk - can't get gills dry, wounds there cause big complications. spider - if balance gets fucked, it's super fucked. balance on 2 legs not 8, but don't have as many as 8... cats - prone to overstimulation especially light, reduced depth perception. ~Factorial

ooohohoohhoohhhhh. the whump potential is enormous for this let me tell you.

[softgrungeprophet]

put too much time today into thinking about hormones and a bunch of other stuff including vocal pitch mostly to just reaffirm my gut instinct which is that windowverse Kaine probably sounds like Shohreh Agdashloo but w/ a Queens accent and that Peter, yeah, he has the same vocal pitch as Andrew Garfield—

this is not just because I like TASM (i mean it's related) but because specifically one of the notes I have in windowverse Peter's visual design is his long neck w/ prominent adam's apple and overall lanky build and height being pretty similar to AG's so like... yeah he has a similar vocal range... but also was just listening to an interview game to double-check that reference actually matches what I had decided, which is "Peter has a wide speaking vocal range which can go fairly low but also fairly high" and yup, bro speaks with a prominent vocal fry and can go into much higher pitches at the drop of a hat so that's exactly what I was looking for lol

anyway that for Peter and Ben, compared w/ Kaine more reffing Agdashloo who has a very restricted, very gravelly, very deep voice (which apparently is super polarizing on reddit) (huge shock (sarcasm) but haters can die mad about it, i love her voice)

I actually have other voice notes specifically wrt to accent as well as voice tone, which is that I noted for Peter, he probably shares some similarities with especially young Alan Arkin, but also Adrien Brody and... uh... Christopher Walken a little bit 😂 (more for uncle ben though, but uncle ben is also much more of a peter falk in my head for like, obvious reasons as far as "brain linking together similar-looking old jewish men with (in au) glasses" even though he was from the bronx rather than queens of course) (my main exposure to peter falk has been the princess bride, not columbo lol)

other characters include reed (who is, in the au, a butch woman, as some may already be aware of) being a kind of mix of lauren bacall, cary grant, sally kellerman, with a low and crisp semi-natural midatlantic pattern in general. also yes if you don't know, i'm here to say that when i imagine regular comic book reed richards speaking i do just imagine a mid-century mid-atlantic radio host voice 😂😂😂 it just feels right lmao especially when reading silver age fantastic four comics, so it stuck in my head (i do like ioan gruffudd a lot as a casting choice though)

norman more in the realm of jack cassidy, david rockefeller, alexander scourby, etc... esp jack cassidy a la... also columbo lol

that's all i have. i mean i have a very specific way flash sounds in my head but i don't know an actor to reference for that. one of the american male voices in XCOM 2 is shockingly close to it though.

[companionwolf]

tldr f/o!Central is a multifaceted man slash I have so many AUs for us and that's pretty on brand considering [gestures at my like. At least 30+ non selfship xcom 2 AUs / verses]

in any case the best way I can explain it is some things are specific to various iterations in various verses/AUs and some things are universal to ALL iterations. does that track at all. idfk