#alien: are we sure these are all the same species? because I’m fairly sure they’re all speaking different languages

[femme-enby]

For anyone who isn’t into Doctor Who, or who hasn’t been active in the fandom or really engaging at all online… folks are STILL fussin over Doctor Who “turning liberal” “becoming a part of the left wing media” etc etc.

Now, me, having ADHD, struggling a bit durin the winter months, I decided to start watching doctor who from the beginning. I’d never done that btw, I think in the end I’ve watched just about every episode OF (New) Doctor Who, but not in order. Just went through a time where every single time it was on I’d watch it. Didn’t matter if I sat there for hours watching BBC show Doctor Who reruns, I was watching.

But I digress, a bit, what I’m sayin is I have started watching it, in order, back to back episodes. I work third shift, ain’t much else to do since the world didn’t really go back to having “24 hour” stores and such, so I just gotta chill at home really.

But here’s the thing… the fuck do they mean Doctor Who BECAME liberal/leftist???

I’m watching this show and while sure there have been one or two moments that made me go “ah yeah, definitely still an episode from 2005” where they make a small comment about like, Mickey screaming “like a girl” (I’m seeing a frilly skirt, and pigtails!”)

Doctor Who has still been LARGELY progressive, since the first episodes of “New Who” in 2005.

We got Captain Jack in 2005. A dude who seems fairly masculine, could potentially “pass” as straight at first glance… until he turns that EXACT same charm he’s using on some woman onto the man right next to her. Because as Doc said, humans are… curious creatures. We find out there’s a whole bunch of other sentient species out in the stars, we go out and socialize and… we “dance.” Again, 2005.

Doc directly shut down a controlling misogynistic husband, in the 50s mind you, when that sort of behavior was the norm. Him and Rose even had a bit of fun with needling at him, puttin him down. 2006.

First direct mention of racial issues was 2007, very brief of course but it was still mentioned that Martha had concerns being black at a time where there were indeed enslaved Africans, and she even was like “wtf” when Shakespeare was “complimenting” her with outdated terms for a beautiful black woman.

Then we get to the Great Depression episode, and they’re in a Hooverville, and they have a man mention “they’ve got money to continue building the Empire State Building, while they’ve got hundreds of folks starving in the parks just below.” So still 2007, critiquing how money will go anywhere BUT the folks in need of help.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten in my binging, but let’s skip ahead a bit for now, the eleventh doctor, who btw if anyone has forgotten, thought for a moment he had regenerated into a woman bc his hair was a bit long. So yeah, we knew then it was a possibility for Doc.

2013, The General, (who apparently had supposedly always regenerated into a woman? AFAIK or remember these previous regenerations were unseen) an older bald, seemingly white man, regenerated into a younger black woman.

In 2014, we meet Missy and find out she is The Master’s latest regeneration. A character who was a man regenerated into a woman.

In 2015 Missy mentions having cared for the doctor since “he was a little girl.” So the doctor had been a girl at one point.

This is all “Pre Thirteen,” before the show “went terribly woke” as some folks have said.

Those are folks that clearly just could never get the undercurrent theme of Doctor Who, which was that we, as todays humans, are generally considered “behind the times” by most other planet’s and time’s cultures. Doctor Who has always been about the fact that on these adventures, plenty of times WE are the “aliens” who need to learn and adapt to these new cultures.

Another thing… the companions have always been there as a stand in for viewers. As folks gain rights and are more proud of who they are, yeah, you’re gonna see more marginalized communities represented as companions and human friends of the Doctor… bc they’re SUPPOSED to represent all of us, and new companions are gonna more closely resemble new fans, so they can have their turn traveling with The Doctor.

#ryan rambles #doctor who

[moldspace]

where do you get your sculpt ideas from? i havent made anything in like 2 years and i really want to get back into sculpting but i just dont. have any ideas

Oh man. So this has been sitting in my inbox for a day or two while i chew on it because i’ve realized this is a really hard question to answer!! I asked myself how i’d gotten the ideas for some of my recent work, or the sketches i’m planning out right now, and really… it’s just been me looking at my own work. Copying off my own notes. Asking myself “how can i continue to explore this theme i’ve been working in, with the shape and symbol and color language i’ve already built up?”. And that’s not really helpful advice to anyone else, especially if they don’t have an existing body of work to pull from!

So if a lot of my work right now is inspired by my… past work…. There must be a progenitor, right? An ancestral fish-thing that grew legs and crawled out of the sea? following this train of thought, I realized i really CAN trace my work back through its evolutionary tree. My current polymer clay work, which i classify roughly in my head as my “surrealist-y metaphorical-y tarot-y colorful-y narrative-y stuff” branched off from its great-grandparents at pajamas here, beginning the eventual transformation into what i think of as my real primary “style”, when i decided to give this little human-faced freak bright colors and a star pattern.

But how did HE come about? He was actually a bit of an outlier in his litter, sculpted at the same time as a bunch of little alien creatures. When it came time to paint him, i had gotten bored and was out of ideas, so i decided to rather unthinkingly and spontaneously paint some stars on him, and bam, there it is - the evolution of warm blood, or flight, or a big brain, the one tiny mutation that shapes the rest of the species for all time!

But lets trace it back further. why was i making aliens? Because i was beefing up my creature design skills for a scifi webcomic i had been raising in my head for the past few years. Why scifi? Because my sibling is a huge star trek nerd, and we brainstormed the premise and characters together.

Another example: my current clay work. I can trace most of the forms i’m using right now back to my pit firing days, where the extreme limitations of that medium really informed my work. Pit firing (or MY pit firing, at least) has a high failure rate, and even pottery that makes it through the firing without exploding is still very soft ceramics, and can be broken easily. So i made forms that were simple, sturdy, and that i could make a lot of at a time (so that if i lost a 25% or even 50% of my pieces, it wouldn’t be HOURS of sculpting work down the drain).

But when i was able to start taking pottery classes again and fire in a kiln, some of the limitations of pit firing disappeared. kiln-fired pieces are harder when finished, have a much higher survival chance, and can be glazed. Still, I kept working with the shapes i was familiar with, but with a little more freedom to push them into new things. Those round blobs with faces became slightly more complex blobs with faces, and glazes, and wings and feet!

I’m not sure how much sense i’m making, but i guess what i’m trying to get to is that none of my sculpture ideas come to me “spontaneously”. They’re all a result of an artistic evolution and exploration. Usually, they’re a happy accident that i then decide to run with. And the more work i make, the easier it is the think of the next thing, because i DONT have to make something up out of whole cloth, but continue with the momentum i’ve already built up. This might sound really discouraging, if you don’t have that creative momentum. And it can be hard to build up that momentum! But for me the only way to get ideas has been to make things. At first it might be hard to figure out what to make. What you make at the start might be fairly arbitrary (aliens because your sibling is a fan of star trek) or rooted in the limitations of the medium you’re working with (stout little unglazed faces because you’re pit firing) but if you keep making things, you will start to find these little pathways of inspiration to follow and chase, and before you know it you will be somewhere different. I believe that art always builds on itself. It’s an accumulative thing.

But i can also tell you that i would never be able to put in the time it takes to build up such an evolutionary tree without having fun with it. So that’s my main piece of advice: make sure you’re enjoying yourself! The rest will come :^)

#ask #advice #process #long post #DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE!!! I DONT KNOW!!! #thanks anon tho this has been a very productive line of thought for me at least. even if this answer is incomprehensible to you hglgfkhj #maybe i will explore this idea more in a zine........ ;^)

[bronyinabottle]

Some Preliminary thoughts on MLP Generation 5

I was considering waiting for a Trailer before speaking on this. I assume one will probably come out any day now, heck the way things are coming out I probably won't be surprised if I end up sort of jinxing things and we get our first trailer smack-dab in the middle of tomorrow or something. But I do want to sort of give my current thoughts heading into G5. As we've gotten alot more tidbits then the rather vague details from the first few months since our first look at the new characters back in Feburary. If we do get a trailer, depending what is shown. Maybe I'll make a follow-up post.

I will first say that I do plan on giving both the movie and series a shot, none of the concerns that I express in this post will make me hesitate in at least checking how the movie and show goes on it's own merits. There is a possibility the movie and/or show ends up being fun despite the underlying concerns I'm about to say. Without further adieu, I'll begin.

((More thoughts after the break))

We are now almost 80 days from the premiere of G5. And most information up until recently have been fairly vague on what exactly is the G5 world. With a brand new cast, and even some vastly different design from the G4 pony design we knew it feels like at least from a visual standpoint that this is supposed to be an entirely new generation. The same way G1 or G3 is not the same universe as G4. However, both some vague information and recent information sort of dropped the bombshell that no, G5 is actually supposed to be in the same world that the G4 Equestria is. Which lets get to the general point of this:

Even if the G4 world that we loved in Friendship is Magic is sort of now this ancient past in which for at least thousands of years there was harmony between all the pony races and non-ponies alike as shown in the future of The Last Problem until perhaps some sort of slow collapse later on happened (Presumably long, long, LOOOOOONG after assumingly everyone of the Main 6 sans Twilight have died from old age). It... might be a bitter pill to swallow for any fan of G4 that loved the show's happy ending. Sure, at the very least it doesn't look like they're trying to say that at some point Twilight failed, as heck Sunny is probably sure to look at Twilight as this legendary hero to aspire to be like. But still, it just doesn't feel like a good look when while I get why G5 is having it's premise of Sunny and the others making the world a better place. Upon seeing the initial synopses of the show. It very much feels like it was Hasbro taking note of last year's George Floyd/BLM Protests. Which I will say is potentially a good direction. But it'd help if this was an entirely new universe that is having this divided world problem. Not a long time after G4 itself ended on the positive note on just about every notable species pony or non-pony alike are living in harmony where Sunny's goal had already basically been achieved.

I get the idea behind having G5 mentioned as the same world as G4. It's an attempt to have their cake and eat it too where they're trying quite a bit new and also try to keep many of the fans of G4 that proved to be a lightning in a bottle. It's a big truth that Friendship is Magic is going to be a hard act to follow even if G5 turns out great on it's own merits. Having an entirely new universe from Hasbro's perspective I also get have some risks. You toss away a world so many people love for one that the fans might find it hard to find an interest in flocking to like the previous one. At the same time though, taking G5 as the far future of G4 runs the risk of heavily feeling like everything Twilight and the Mane 6 did eventually fell to ruin and the ponies became divided again anyway despite the very finale showing they may have very well ended it for good. With even non-pony species part of the harmony that exists.

I guess the counterpoint may be that in if they must have G5 a follow-up in some way of G4. Then there must be some sort of conflict as otherwise the show would feel boring without many villains and/or adventures to save the day going on. The cost of G4's massive success is that no matter what direction they take G5, it's going to be a struggle for it to find the same footing. But what's worse: Making a new world which while it may potentially disinterest fans of G4 with a lack of familiar faces, it can have potential to grow in it's own fashion and maybe just maybe you'll get something of a following even if it's alot smaller. Or possibly saying it's in the same world where the world of Equestria has somehow gotten to the point that it got worse then when Celestia was ruling Equestria by herself (Because at least under Celestia even with Luna banished to the moon and Twilight was either not there yet or still training. The three pony races were generally united as they have been for more then a thousand years. Not segregated as they are implied to be in G5.)

And while it's too early to tell and could easily be still very much a part of G5 is the non-ponies that were featured in the later seasons. Will Changelings, Dragons, Kirins, Hippogriffs, etc. still play a role? Or will it only focus on ponies? Because the less there are of the non-pony species, the less it will feel like this truly is supposed to be the same world of Equestria we knew. Unless you want to say in a really dark direction that most non-pony species went extinct ever since G4 happened. Even if they're never going to explain how Equestria collapsed into the G5 world (Which I have something of a suspicion that they might never explain it completely)

And another question that is sure to follow... are all the Alicorns from G4. Whether it be Celestia, Luna, Twilight, Cadence, or Flurry Heart... all dead at this point? We never really got much lore about Alicorns even throughout all of G4. So while it's certainly still possible that the Alicorns are more mortal then the fans have been led to believe. That doesn't mean it's not an important question to think about. As if this supposed to be a follow-up to G4. G5 is well within it's right to tell us that maybe we overestimated the immortality of the Alicorns, though because G4 never gave us a straight answer... it means it's entirely on G5 to tell us it's own interpretation. No matter what they say will alienate some fans because the topic of Alicorns has always been a touchy subject even before Twilight herself became an Alicorn or even arguably before the introduction of Cadence due to the many, many, fan interpretations of Luna until we finally got a look at canon Luna in Luna Eclipsed and the fear of how many headcanons it'd destroy (Didn't turn out as bad as people thought it would, but just that the fear was there sowed the seeds of what discourse the Alicorns in G4 was going to cause)

Before we got the detail from the book that G4 is considered ancient equestria in G5's world. There was speculation on the possibility that G4 is actually fictional in G5 world. In other words, the G5 world is in fact an entirely new world but in a meta sort of way is a TV show that Sunny and others were a fan of. Which would explain both the changes that are much different from Equestria (With stuff like horn and wings being different colors from the coat) and the fact Sunny had Mane 6 figures and merchandise in her room. This in retrospect might of been the smarter decision because even with the slight possibility of making some G4 fans mad that they're entirely tossing out the previous series and only having it being mentioned in a fictional context. It wouldn't run the risk of overriding the happy ending. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if say if they took that direction they'd pull a Daring Do and have it that yes in fact G4 was once G5's past. But in order to show that, they'd have to bring back the G4 Mane 6 in some fashion. Perhaps in a pulled out of limbo-like fashion like they did for the Founders. Though that in itself comes with the problem that they'd want the Mane 6 to be actually recognizable and thus young looking. And if they come out of a limbo while still looking fairly young, it means they weren't around in the past for much long for some odd reason.

That's all I have for now at least on the top of my head. If there's a trailer coming soon I might make another of these as I said. And I'm also open to any responses whether if you want to tell me you have some of the same concerns or do anything that might calm my own concerns about the way G5 might be stepping on G4's toes whilst trying to maintain G4's fandom into the coming generations. Thanks to anyone who bothered to read. I wish good luck on G5, but if concerns aren't addressed and/or they end up correct on some fronts. There's a chance I may have quite the baggage clouding my mind even before the movie and series starts...

#MLP #my little pony #my little pony the next generation #g5 #g4 #mlp g5 #mlp g4 #netflix #my little pony movie #generation 5 #generation 4

[erinhime83]

This is – mostly – just a muse indulgence.  After reading @callistochan87’s first chapter of her new Celestial Souls version, my muse was mad.  Mad because it was so much better, more interesting, and more realistic than my opening chapter.  ‘Hey,’ it said, ‘you know what would be great?  If we stole her ideas and tweeked them a little so no one realizes we stole them!’ ��But, ya know, it’s fairly obvious that I did? 

But then again, Celestial Souls and Earthia are completely different stories, so it’s like that ‘I’ll let you copy my homework but make it different’ meme going around.  ;P

But the biggest problem is that I like the differences I came up with while thinking about a new version, so….  Not to mention, I like the designs.  *sigh*  I guess 2021 is going to be another Earthia rewrite year.  ;P

In any case, the idea of redoing the designs smacked me hard enough to actually do them, although, for the most part, I didn’t change much other than outfits and maybe tweeked colors.

Obviously, Kai gets the actual change.  I like her with short hair, don’t get me wrong – I just wanted to go back to the long hair, and given the fact that she’s a hybrid, naturally her hair behaves and she never struggles with it.  ;P That’s how you can tell when my characters Aren’t Human – their hair behaves.  I also wanted to give her more brown-ish hair, so she won’t stand out too much.  I like how she turned out.  And the long wavy hair has nothing to do with Chris having longer wavy hair.  ;P

Gabby gets a pretty dress, because I liked the design, and somehow it really works on her.  Really works.  I like it a lot.  The thing that changes about Gabby, though, is that her aunt doesn’t really change her name, so she’s still Issadora Acadia on Earth, but she does by her middle name because she thinks Issadora is a weird name.

Mickel…yeah.  Just an outfit change.  *shrug*

Dylan looks slightly darker, but that’s because I matched his hair to his skin tone better, and I like it a lot more.  Her and Kai are the main reasons I wanted to do this, because I got the idea of Dylan wearing something more ‘Helian’ in nature, like the fashions sort of mix between cultures sort of thing.  He looks pretty damn good in it, actually, and I like a lot.  He doesn’t have his poofy pants anymore, but I think these look better and make more sense.

Aerona…well, Aerona, I actually changed her hair, because I was like ‘why would she have blond hair’?  Sure, her species have such a wide variety of colors that it would make sense one of them would have blond, but I wanted to give her something different. I had her having violet hair at one point, and it looks good, but thankfully it looks odd enough that I decided to go with a light yellow instead.  Close enough to blond to make it work, but just off enough to make her look more alien.  (Like she needs something to make her look more alien.)  I also like her outfit.  ^^;

Dev is just, you know, Dev. Gave him freckles like his sister, and that’s really about it.

Talia’s outfit is sort of the same concept as Dylan’s, where there is some Helian influence.  But it’s still got that Greek/Roman influence to it. But the change she gets is that I’m thinking about taking wings away from the Aeolians, and make them just, like, not really special?  Like, they’re special on Aethos because they’re just normal people.  Sure, that doesn’t make Kai and Dev all that special, except for the fact that they are hybrids.  Oh, and I made her slightly darker as well.

The next set of designs is random, I know.  The first design is a dress I had designed for Kai for the 3rd book, before I had decided to take them all in a different direction.  But I liked it, and I decided to go ahead and ink it and give it to the new Kai for the time being.  Just a random, pretty, Aeolian dress.

The other design is more important.  One of the reasons I do want to do the rewrite again is because Aerona has a more predominant role in the beginning.  Instead of them just meeting her, she’s been coming to Earth the entire time Dr. Llewellyn’s been there, spending two months each summer hanging out with the group.  So this is her current human appearance, which, of course, is odd because she’s white, but has the slanted Asian eyes, which are entirely too large. But the group is used to it, so they think nothing of it.

I know the biggest things I’m taking from @callistochan87 right now is having the story take place right after they graduated high school but right before they leave for college, because it annoyed me having them miss so much school and then never graduate high school.  This works, because not going to college isn’t as important.  So they’re basically aged up, although Kai and Dev, being the oldest of the humans, aren’t quite eighteen at the very beginning.  

Kinda nervous about posting these, because I have a feeling @callistochan87 will plot to murder me after I do.  ;P

#my characters #my art #designs #earthia #kailyn #gabby #mickel #dylan #aerona #dev #talia

[lotus-baby]

are you insane like me been in pain like me (otsutsuki stuf 😭😔)

disclaimer i don’t think this is what the writers had in mind it’s not rlly theories they’re just funny headcanons, and it's not very interesting or conclusive i just had all this bouncing around in my head. also i dont know any stuff abt physics or biology or anything i just want to babble about alien ideas

ok so under the assumption that the otsutsuki as a species:

have adapted to frequent travel in space and across different dimensions with a large variety of climate and gravity values.

spend most of their time growing and cultivating chakra fruit, farming them as their main energy source

are humanoid*, but physically sturdier than them in an unknown variety of ways. 

(*ok  why are they so humanoid????? humans are NOT designed for their lifestyle... and some of them think they’re soooo superior too like sit down my guy you’re embarassing yourself we aren’t even reproductively isolated. and why is compatibility even a detail they made canon?? who in the writers studio was like, yeah you know. we have some alienfuckers out there lets print it)

this is all the thoughts i have:

kaguya had the ice dimension and the lava dimension, and she wasn’t particularly bothered by the cold or heat, so they’re probably able to regulate body temperature to a much wider scale than humans. if their lifestyle is based on visiting different dimensions and planets with different climates, they’d need to adjust temperature not to freeze or burn. it’s temperature change or lots of layers and they like, never change their clothes. so i'm assuming it's the former

okay i know naruto doesn’t usually make a lot of sense and i know the otsutsuki are an asspull, but for the sake of conversation, i have no idea how they breathe when they travel. there’s no air in space. so hypothetically, let’s assume that they’re anaerobes (and don't need oxygen) who for some reason are structurally similar to humans. what is their nose for?? or maybe they have a nose because do need air, they just hold their breaths for a really long time? like space whales? blood composition can carry more oxygen? or their respiration doesn’t involve oxygen but a different gas????? 

also there isn’t any sound in space (they’re still seen talking though…this is when boruto’s High Quality Worldbuilding really shines through). i don’t think hearing is their most important sense, even if they live in areas with sound, they frequently travel in a soundless environment. unrelated to biology, it would be more convenient if they had a soundless form of communication (some form of sign language?)

their bones are sturdier than the bones of humans/animals on earth. kimimaro’s clan is descended from kaguya, and his bone weapons were strong enough not to break against the metal that kunai were made of. i’m not sure what effect constantly switching between different levels of gravity would have on their bones and muscles though, as they were shown to be affected poorly by high gravity (kaguya’s spiky dimension). may frequently need recuperation time after travel? (inconsistent theory though, urashiki dropped from planet otsutsuki™ to the moon with what i’m assuming is a pretty wack gravity change and was physically ready to beat the shit out of toneri as soon as he landed)

aside from chakra pills or whatever, what can they eat? toneri from the branch family is shown eating human food (where tf did he get it by the way… do they doordash to the interior of the moon...), but his branch is also fairly genetically different from the main family (no horns, exhibits no particular mutations upon absorbing large amounts of energy). It makes sense that their diet needs to sustain the growth of denser bones and maintain their body fat (this is rlly important 4 temperature stuff if you want to live but a lot of them are fairly thin?? where is the energy stored???) but otherwise it would be fun if they could digest things that are like, clearly inedible by human standards, like heavy metals and toxic stuff. or if harmless-to-human foods would make them sick.(maybe acidic stuff :D)

some of the functions they need to perform (space travel, maintaining body functions in varying pressure levels and temperatures, etc.) would require a lot of (non-chakra) energy to complete. would they need to store energy in their bodies somehow? 

(momoshiki not conserving any chakra makes me mad for no reason. you have a finite amount of energy! even if you beat them your dumbass will not be able to fly back!)

more of a cultural question, do they age slowly but continuously eating chakra fruit or do they reach a prime at which they start to eat fruit? is it considered a coming of age ritual? “son one day this will all be yours” but parasitic...

they have a lot of weird magic eye powers but it would make more sense to have a higher range of sight on the light spectrum than people or smth. being limited to the human vision spectrum + human senses would be pretty ass if you needed to see anything in deep space. would’ve been more helpful to sense heat or UV better.

they might be so creepy pale + wear white clothing because white reflects light + heat better than other colors (its the same reason space suits are white)?? 😕 temperature regulation and would stand out against space, which appears dark because there are few objects for light to reflect off of. but i like the idea that they are slightly flourescent for jokes and funnies. (i'm just thinking abt the fashion potential, maybe it's more a statement to wear shiny things? maybe duller colors is their equivalent of camo print? what does their wedding clothes being black have to do with this?)

some of their rinnegan may be shiny + gold because it deflects light the same way reflective sunglasses do, because while there’s not a lot of objects in space, the things that are there appear brighter the closer they are to a light source, and the glare can get irritating to the eyes. im kind of bullshitting though.

how do the transformations work? chakra doesn’t usually have mutagenic properties when it comes from the user themself (it usually only happens with sage/nature chakra, ex. jiraiya turning toadlike, juugo’s curse transformation), but urashiki absorbed his own (eyes?) chakra and turned into a bird monster. maybe they’ve all just been sitting in solar radiation too long…

ohhhhhhhh kay thats all good night <3

#like good morning guys i am TALKING #otsutsuki clan #rambles #headcanons #ik ik fake magic ninja show but if i do not obssess over every detail of this one part i will fuckig die #whenever i play video games i consider myself fucked if my mana and health are below half because im brave and confident like that #and Mr. Otsutsuki's fighting style makes me so mad #BCZ LIKE #IT'S SO STUPID #YOU ARE NOT COOL YOU ARE NOT STRONG #YOU ARE 5'2 IN SHOES WITH 5 IN LIFTS AND YOUR FACE LOOKS LIKE A BARCODE #fake alien makes me feel very real rage

[hgfstreamchats]

Alien

highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:43 PM Well, how is everyone else's evening treating them so far? Also, how is the picture, the audio? Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:44 PM Not too horribly. Audio is good, picture seems fairly good. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:44 PM That's something. There we go. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:46 PM Perfect. I think a little horror is a good compliment to today. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:47 PM Agreed. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:47 PM You yourself are doing well? highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:47 PM Never peachier. You? Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:48 PM As well as can be expected. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:48 PM I think we're all in the same boat. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:48 PM So it seems.

How fortunate that we can traverse space without the horrible space garments. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:51 PM In the comfort of knowing organic parasites want nothing to do with us. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:52 PM Though it might be interesting to encounter one, one day. Just to see how they react to a species they cannot eat nor inhabit. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:54 PM You just know there's someone out there who'd leap at the chance to keep a few as pets. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:55 PM I feel as though I know several Soundwaves who would deeply enjoy keeping them. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:56 PM Soundwaves are to xenomorphs as variants of me are to automobiles. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:57 PM There are worse things to enjoy, I suppose. They take up less room than Shockwave's drillers. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:57 PM Better personalities, too. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:57 PM Indeed... highglossfinish — Yesterday at 9:58 PM I always forget how slowly this movie begins. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 9:59 PM Yes, quite a bit more scene setting than the subsequent ones. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:01 PM Yes, we certainly are in space. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:01 PM Their drop ship is pretty delicate if they cannot land in a wind without getting a hull breech. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:02 PM Isn't it though? Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:04 PM Ah yes, their very futuristic readouts that make absolutely no sense at all. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:05 PM I love human notions of how space works. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:08 PM It's remarkably silly. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:09 PM "Let's walk heedlessly onto it." Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:09 PM Even without knowing that the ship is full of parasites, they should probably know better than to go in there. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:10 PM Always better to err on the side of caution and avoid ships surrounded by dramatic music and ominous mist. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:11 PM 'I don't know what it is, let's all crawl right in'. If they could have, the humans would have crawled right into the wreck of the Nemesis, I wager. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:12 PM And stood around gaping, slack-jawed. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:13 PM Poking at the dead. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:14 PM "Mangled corpses, warning signals? Let's not leave!" Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:15 PM No, they surely must investigate further! Curiousity never comes back to bite humans. Oh yes. Touch it. No one could have seen that coming. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:18 PM Shock. Shock. Aghast. There's no better time to take risks and indulge curiosities than the nakedness of space, with a damaged ship. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:19 PM The only one with sense. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:20 PM "We could all die." "That probably won't happen." Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:21 PM They are not even trying to prevent catching every weird alien disease there might be. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:22 PM They're doing everything shy of licking it. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:23 PM If only this could have been prevented. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:25 PM If only, if only. If only there were some interval where someone might have made a different choice. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:27 PM Alas, there was nothing else that could have been done. They had to crawl into the derelict ship, and play with the room full of obviously dangerous eggs, and then break quarantine procedure. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:28 PM "Oh well, too late to pop him out the airlock now." "Also too late to freeze him. Quarantine him. Really, anything that might contain whatever's coming next." Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:29 PM No no, they have to leave him out. Unattended. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:30 PM Unrestrained, obviously incubating something. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:31 PM Leave the door open while you look, that's always good form. No chance a creature could escape further into the ship. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:31 PM Might want to take all your guns and weapons and throw them into the waste disposal units, just for good measure. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:32 PM Because he knows so much about it, to know it's dead now. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:33 PM "Let's hover with our faces directly over it." Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:34 PM I would be entirely unsurprised if they decided to lick it. For 'science'. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:34 PM Concurred. A very sensible suggestion, better to ignore it for the second time. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:37 PM If they don't ignore it, then more bad things cannot happen. And who wants that? Sure, let him cough on you. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:38 PM Cough on you, breathe on you, share food with you. Why not let him spit in your mouths just to see what will happen? Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:39 PM And why not freeze him? From the perspective of the company who wants the xenomorph, it would be much neater if they froze him with the embryo, rather than lose the whole ship and payload, and still fail to get their prize. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:39 PM Listen I'm not subjecting myself to what would surely give me nightmares, but I need y'all to know that from where I sit it looks like you're discussing last year. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:40 PM We very well could be. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:40 PM ....or. at least. Where I am. I certainly hope you're not bothered with similar problems wherever you are. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:41 PM Of all the issues I am plagued with, fortunately respiratory viruses are not one of them. Or hostile aliens, as the case may be. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:42 PM None of the problems that plague organic chests. From viruses to this. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:42 PM Should we question why they have a cattle prod aboard their mining hauler? Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:50 PM ...Huh. I wonder if they're endangered. They certainly seem good at endangering jsjgjjsf Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:51 PM There was still a whole host of eggs back on the original ship. So, likely not endangered at this point. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:52 PM Oh! There are eggs that don't need a host? Ohhhhhh wait Are the hosts like Incubators basically highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:52 PM Exactly. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:52 PM Yes, precisely. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:52 PM Makes sense ....oh ew, now I'm thinking of that very specific wasp I had managed to block from my memory. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:53 PM Egg hatches facehugger that impregnates host that incubates tiny alien. That bursts out of chest. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:54 PM If I recall correctly, the shape of the host does influence the shape of the final creature. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:54 PM Okay, so is the facehugger, like, a separate living organism? Something in the egg that has only the purpose to leap, lay eggs, and die? Is that the baby parasite's true mother? It can't be, it was inside an egg with the baby... remind me not to become a xenobiologist, my head would explode. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:55 PM In a philosophical sense, maybe, but for all practical purposes the true mother is the creature that laid the eggs. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:56 PM I am still extremely baffled by the existence of this terrible turducken of eat-your-insides. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:56 PM Organic biology is messy like that. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:56 PM They can tell the difference between a host that's resisting and one that isn't. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:57 PM Wh-- how do you resist THAT?? Do you mean the facehugger part, or the growing baby highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:57 PM Facehugger. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:57 PM Oh well yeah you can resist that Do they leave if you try to pull it off? highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:57 PM You can certainly try. No, they tighten their tails around the host's neck and if you try to cut them, they spray acidic blood every which way. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:58 PM They do not abandon an attempt at a host unless slain. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 10:58 PM And they're very strong. And fast. And if you manage to take out one, there's usually an entire room full of backup eggs. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 10:59 PM Well That's Gross. What does it matter if they can tell the difference between a resistant host and a (placid? dead?) one? Only that they won't spray things or tighten, or does it effect how they reproduce? ...I can see why most of them died tbh. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 10:59 PM They need the host alive. Otherwise it makes a poor incubator. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:00 PM So it's definitely a warmth thing then? Why exactly could they not just find somewhere warm that ISN'T a person Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:00 PM They do seem to have a preference for mammals as hosts... But the embryo is taking nutrients from the host body, as well as heat. A warm, moist room would not suffice. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:01 PM Ohhh... like... like an egg sac highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:01 PM The egg sac in this case is a live organic. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:02 PM As a live organic, I feel the only appropriate response to that is   :( Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:02 PM Such is the nature of parasites. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:03 PM Fair Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:03 PM And you are unlikely to encounter this variety. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:03 PM Now I just need to avoid every variety in my vicinity, thank you very much highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:03 PM You don't have to worry about scraplets. It all balances out in the end. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:04 PM Ok GOOD POINT I can't imagine if termites liked to eat people. uggghh Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:04 PM In the interest of not traumatizing you, I will not elaborate on the many common parasitic species humans do encounter. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:05 PM We're all made of something someone eats. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:05 PM I'm aware of several and have had nightmares about nonexistent ones. That's mostly why I'm not actually watching this movie. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:05 PM And in the end, Unicron may get us all, metal or meat. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:06 PM Time to hang that on a wall at the newbuild complex. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:06 PM That's true... it's just that I might prefer to be eaten from the outside than the inside, if I had to choose... maybe. Which would be quicker? Do i really want to know? I'm sure there are ghost stories scarier than the passage of time and encroaching entropy. Maybe. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:08 PM It is usually the size of who is doing the eating that determines quickness, rather than the direction they eat you from. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:08 PM If I could get philosophical, most stories about immediate personal danger are more frightening to me, because then there's still things left to do, y'know? I'm leaving things behind if I go! If we're all going via Unicron, at least I know I made it as far as I could. Ahh, good point, good point. Though numbers do come into account. I've heard things about ants. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:10 PM ... Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:11 PM Waste of fuel and oxygen they cannot afford to spare. As for ants, much like scraplets, they are too small to efficiently eat you. Which is why it is unpleasant. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:12 PM It's the venom, too... highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:12 PM At least scraplets in large numbers do the job quickly. No more than a few blindingly excruciating seconds. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:12 PM Ants would not. Thankfully they don't take on humans much. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:14 PM What little I have seen of scraplets, they did not do a quick enough job on a decently armored mech. If given the choice, I would prefer something quicker. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:14 PM Understandable Hey how bad are the humans onscreen screwing up? Or are they mostly dead by now Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:15 PM There are only three left, one is looking for a cat, and the other two are making enough racket to attract any predator on the ship. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:16 PM Oh, I've heard about the cat! Glad it didn't get facehugged highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:16 PM It's the survivors of scraplet attacks that keep me up at night. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:17 PM ... Yes, just stand there while it menaces you. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:17 PM Lot of standing still and letting things happen in this movie. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:17 PM .....I get the feeling they're, ah. Not all there. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:18 PM Well, now they are there... and there, and over there... highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:18 PM Hah! Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:18 PM I want to laugh but I feel like that would be mean of me:laughing: Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:18 PM Ah, but it is fun to be mean. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:19 PM Well, whatever floats your goat *boat Please don't float any goats Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:20 PM I will not make a habit of it. And of course the cat is unafraid of it. Their ship is just the worst. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:23 PM If the creature didn't get it, something else would have. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:26 PM One minute for pre-flight systems checks... That would be pushing it. If only their space ships did not include so much tubing, the creatures would not be able to so easily hide. Pity she would immediately be suspected of murdering everyone on board, and blowing the main ship to cover her actions. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:38 PM And the company would be only too eager to push this narrative. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:38 PM Of course! Now then, what horror of gaming do you have in mind? How every automobile drive goes. highglossfinish — Yesterday at 11:44 PM Every automobile drive worth having. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:47 PM Glorious. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:50 PM I tried joining-- is the sound skippy/staticky to you, or is that on my end? I believe Discord calls on my phone have given me trouble before, so I have a hunch it's on my end. Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:52 PM The sound is fine for me. Sharpwing — Yesterday at 11:52 PM ...and now I have almost no sound at all oh no:joy: Ah, well. I tried. It was fun to be here in text form, anyway :blush: Starscreamapillar — Yesterday at 11:55 PM Mammal liquid... Jazz blend... Oh dear. I cannot have a stroke.. but I feel like these commercials are what having a stroke is like. highglossfinish — Today at 12:00 AM It certainly is a feeling. Of some description. And that's all I've got for tonight. Starscreamapillar — Today at 12:01 AM Thank you for the high quality entertainment Knock Out. I always enjoy the nonsense and Bad Decisions you choose to stream. highglossfinish — Today at 12:01 AM And you always make them enjoyable/bearable! Starscreamapillar — Today at 12:02 AM Until next time, farewell! highglossfinish — Today at 12:02 AM Farewell and good night! Sharpwing — Today at 12:04 AM Goodnight! I hope the future treats you both gently♡ highglossfinish — Today at 12:04 AM Here's to that.

[rosecorcoranwrites]

When a Plot Hole is Not a Plot Hole (or, at Least, When It Doesn't Matter)

Much like 45 million other people, I have recently viewed Bird Box. I also watched The Ritual and re-watched A Quiet Place. All of this got me thinking about the horror genre, yet again, but it’s too soon for another “Thoughts on Horror” post. Thankfully I also watched a Youtube video about world building in the Divergent series, which gave me an idea for a more far-reaching analysis not just of horror, but of genre and plot holes in general.

A Matter of Genre

The fact of the matter is that Bird Box, A Quiet Place, and Divergent have gaping plot holes (The Ritual doesn’t. The Ritual is great… but freaking horrifying, so watch with caution). These plot holes, however, are only a problem in one of those stories, and this is due to genre, and I will climb onto my genre-soapbox for as long as it takes for people to realize that different genres work differently, and need to be read or watched differently.

Let’s step back a minute, and I'll explain what I mean. In my senior year of high school, we read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. My class loved it, not least because it was a welcome break from all the depressing literature foisted on us throughout our high school career. I was also a student aid in another class that read the same book and got to eavesdrop on their class discussions. I sat in the back, filing papers, and heard the students say they didn't like the book because, quote, "It was so unrealistic." The Little Prince? Unrealistic? You don't say! I'm not sure I have ever heard a more idiotic critique of a book. Yes, The Little Prince is unrealistic. It's a children's-book-esque fantasy/fairytale about a prince from another (tiny) planet who's in love with a rose. It's not supposed to be realistic!

A similar phenomenon happens when people—both Christians and atheists—treat the entire Bible as one genre. It's not! It contains poetry, myth, history, genealogy, letters, biography, parables, apocalyptic visions, and law codes. If you read poetry like you would read a law code, or a letter the way you read a myth, you're probably going to miss out on most of the meaning.

Back to my point, different genres require different ways of being read or watched. There are varying amounts of belief one should be required to suspend. Fantasy requires more suspension of disbelief than sci-fi, because the audience needs to accept that magic and magical creatures exist, whereas sci-fi only needs them to accept that humans have advanced to some future scientific point. Both genres, however, need internally consistent world building, no matter what other wonders we are shown. Otherwise, the audience will be taken out of the story, and the point of these genres is to immerse the readers or viewers into a believable, if fantastic, world. If magic works a certain way, it always needs to work that way. If smaller spaceships can’t use FTL, then no little ships should be shown using FTL unless you make a point of saying they have some new type of FTL drive. There is some wiggle-room in this, since "fantasy" and "sci-fi" are big labels that cover a lot of things. Fairytales or magical-realism stories tend to be a little looser about what is and isn’t allowed. These stories still shouldn't break their own rules, but they also don't have to explain themselves as much as other fantasies. Sci-fi that bleeds into fantasy, such as that which incorporates time-travel, other dimensions, or robots with kokoro still needs internal consistency, but don't need to be as scientifically accurate as hard sci-fi.

On the other hand, genres which rely on audience reaction can get by with much less in the way of tight world building and well-thought-out backstory. The two genres to which I am referring are comedy and horror. Obviously, these can intersect with fantasy/sci-fi, but taken as their own thing, they are a different species of genre altogether. They rely not on immersing the audience into a believable world, but on eliciting a reaction from the audience. A comedy is only a comedy if it's funny and horror is only horror if it's scary. Those are the requirements. Thus, a comedy or horror doesn't need unassailable world building to be a successful comedy or horror. Comedy, in particular, often relies on pointing out or playing with plot holes in whatever genre it's in. Horror, on the other hand, often focuses on the scary situation at the expense of backstory and world building.

Plot Holes in Horror

Thus, we come to Bird Box, or A Quiet Place, or Signs, or any other horror that, frankly, doesn't hold up if you think too much about it. People critique these movies by asking things like, “Why doesn't everyone in the world just blind themselves to be immune to the phantoms?”, “Did no one else in all of society think to use sound against the creatures?”, and “Why don't the aliens wear waterproof suits?”. These are valid criticisms for sci-fi or fantasy stories, but… these stories aren’t really meant to be sci-fi or fantasy. They are meant to be horror. Specifically, survival horror. For this genre, backstory is utterly irrelevant. In survival horror, a person or group of people are put into a deadly situation and need to use their wits and whatever they can find to survive it. The end. That's it. Are Sandra Bullock, the family in The Quiet Place, and the family in Signs put into a deadly situation? Check. Do they attempt to survive it? Check. Is it scary for the audience to watch? Check. All three movies pass the survival horror test. They aren’t trying to be good sci-fi/fantasy; they’re trying to be good horror, and do a pretty good job.

As a side note, I’m not some Bird Box apologist. Of the four horror movies I’ve mentioned in this post, it’s my least favorite. But the issues I take with it are not with the world-building (unlike some critics, I thought the rules regarding the phantoms were fairly well spelled out), but with the choices on how to induce horror. (SPOILERS INCOMING: SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU CARE) From the beginning, we know the rest of the people in the house don’t survive because only Sandra Bullock and the two kids are alive in the current time; that undercuts most of the tension in the house. Also, I thought the first phantom-acolyte they encounter, at the supermarket, was horrifying, as he appeared to be stuck forever in his place, doomed to coax unsuspecting souls to their death. One character even commented, “How is that guy still alive?”, so I wondered if he even was, or if he was sort of an undead thing controlled by the phantoms. Scary! Unfortunately, the rest of the acolytes (aside from the one in the house, who we knew John Malkovich would kill because how else would Sandra Bullock and the kids be alive in the future? The structure of the narrative seriously undercut the tension!) are pretty much your run-of-the-mill murderers in any post-apocalyptic movie. Not scary! Finally, I took issue with the last few minutes, after their boat capsized; I felt it was unnecessary for them to run around in the woods. It would have been scarier if she reached out of the water to feel a person’s foot, making the audience think it’s an acolyte, until he taps a cane on the ground and it’s revealed he’s blind. But, I digress. I don’t mind that the story has a few plot holes; I do mind that it wasn’t as scary as it could have been.

Plot Holes in Dystopia

Where, then, on this spectrum of genre does dystopia fall, and why do so many YA dystopian novels seem to fail? Could not "dystopia" be a sort of parable, requiring little explanation and thus little scrutiny, in the same way that comedy and horror and fairytales can get by on little to no explanations of what, exactly, is going on? Yes. I'll say it again, yes. I think dystopias absolutely could get a pass on world building... if they wanted to. The problem with books like Divergent or Hunger Games is not that they explain too little, but that they explain too much. If they simply set up their messed-up situations—everyone is sorted into a Hogwarts House faction, innocents must fight to the death for the enjoyment of the rich—and left it at that, I think it would be fine. The problem arises when these authors, usually in subsequent books, attempt to hash out the reasoning behind these horrible societies which... kind of couldn't arise for any real reason, or if they did, wouldn’t last very long. The explanations we are given don't make sense, or are at least are very, very full of holes and inconsistencies.

To be fair, other dystopias also offer explanations for why the world is the way it is, but they don’t dwell on it. 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 offer lip service for how society got so bad—whether that’s due to government rule or human complacency—but then move on. We don’t need to think too hard about how Eastasia or Eurasia were formed; we need to care that the government keeps switching which one we’ve “always” been at war with. We don’t need to know who’s running the world in Fahrenheit 451, because they’re not the ones who caused Montag’s wife to O.D. or who hit Clarisse with a car or who made Beatty hate books; the society of that book is twisted because individual people are twisted. Though they contain sci-fi elements, these stories are not sci-fi books. They are much closer to horror, in that their events are supposed to provoke a sort of cautious fear in the audience. The idea is that this could happen here, and maybe it’s already happening.

Again, YA dystopia’s could do this, but that’s clearly not what they’re going for. If Hunger Games was only a nod to the dangers of media and decadence, I could get behind it. Instead, it decided to become a story about revolution, with a somewhat Chosen-One-esque figure. It went the sci-fi-fantasy route, following the epic story of a hero who attempts to save society. If Divergent only concerned itself with the idea that humans are sorted into groups based on a single personality trait… well, I would still think that was pretty silly, but I could see a skilled writer making it work. It goes beyond this, though, into this whole backstory involving genetic engineering and human experimentation. It’s a sci-fi. And because both of these stories have decided to be sci-fi, rather than only dystopias, they fail. Because sci-fi stories require a somewhat believable backstory and set-up and current world building, and the worlds of Divergent and Hunger Games could not happen, or at least would not happen like that, even if there were rebellions and mutations and human experimentation. There are too many inconsistencies and plot holes that strain belief, and sci-fi needs to be somewhat believable.

With that, I hoped I’ve converted some of you to my genre-focused cause. Before you criticize a story for having a plot hole or being unrealistic, first consider the genre. Consider what the story is trying to do, and if it does it well or not. The plot holes might not be as big of a problem as you thought.

#dystopian fiction #horror fiction #writelr #writeblr #writing analysis #plot holes #writing #genre #bird box #divergent #dystopias #a quiet place #hunger games #writing critique #world building #worldbuilding #writing problems #plot hole #plotholes #long post

[lefthanded-sans]

A concept: Left Handed Mordin!

Bless. Those five words are magic.

And I admit: I’ve always displayed my Mordin action figure with his gun in his left hand. Intentionally. Because Mordin’s my fave, I’m a lefty, I have left-handed needs, and I can do that.

It’s not that I have a canonical base for it, but it’s that I like the concept.

First: Mass Effect games fail to show squadmates as distinct in their handedness preferences. I probably don’t need to get into this, but fuck it, I will because I can.

I’ve noticed that no character in the Mass Effect games displays left-handedness, beyond the fact Ryder can change weapon positioning from right to left hands. Now. I haven’t peered intently at everyone. I haven’t documented every cutscene and screencapped each time someone picks something up left-handed. There’s a chance I’m missing something. There’s always that chance. Buuuuut. I tend to notice people being left-handed in 0.005 seconds, I haven’t seen anyone else in the ME fandom talk about canonical instances of handedness, and I know how media depiction of left-handedness tends to go: they forget about it. 

And the way the game is programmed shows strong right handed bias, and it blankets every squadmate in the series.

We can’t determine handedness in many cutscenes because squadmates are meant to be interchangeable. Sure, there are some dialogue and action differences depending who you pick for your party, but the games aren’t going to customize everything. Squadmates’ positions and movements will be mostly the same, whether you took Kaidan and Ashley, or Tali and Wrex. And because everyone’s going to be interchangeable like that, that means that how they’re positioned and animated - hand preference choices - don’t get individualized.

To take the example of one scene - the start of Jack’s dossier mission - the variation that you see is characters with two-handed weapons facing more forward than to the side, and Jacob getting a special crouching animation if you take him. But the characters with one handed weapons always have the same position, and characters with two handed weapons always have the same position, and it’s clear that people weren’t given individual attention. Most peoples’ reactions are generic, and then there’s a squadmate who’s more likely to be in the scene - Jacob, since he’s a starter - with an occasional special “something.”

The very nature of these cutscenes means a character won’t get attention to being differently handed. Makes sense. I get the logistics of that. But we could try to look at special cutscenes for each character, and how the squadmate holds their weapon in game, to see if there’s handedness “variation” elsewhere.

We don’t have that, as far as I’ve noticed. Every squadmate in gameplay, when they draw their weapons, holds their firearm with the right hand. 

Individual cutscenes show the same right handed gun wielding.

Everyone puts their omnitools on their left arm so they can access it with their right.

Characters are almost always animated holding items in their right hand, or gesturing with a preference to their right, even for their special cutscenes. And there haven’t been standout instances of characters doing things with left hands. Like, the most we can say with Mordin is… his thinking pose is sometimes with his right hand propping up the left. And like, that doesn’t overrule how he’s animated throughout the franchise, and every individual has some mixed lateralization traits.

Even in the comics, I see lots and lots and lots and lots of right handed actions in every species. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Paragon Lost, but I’d eat that DVD disc myself if there was a clearly left-handed character in that.

I think it’s safe enough to suggest everyone was animated with a right handed bias, and that’s why Shepard and all her squadmates appear to be right hand dominant. I’m not here to talk about how simple it is to program someone with different handedness in a video game, I’m just observing… everyone’s depicted as righties in the Mass Effect world.

Which has frankly always tickled me, because we’re dealing with aliens and robots and humans in all their diversity.

I know there’s scientific discussion on lateralization of limb usage from evoluationary perspectives, how most individuals using the same dominant hand could play into cooperative benefits within a population. Or, there’s preference arising from prior brain lateralization of tasks. Yada yada yada. All this means, potentially, is that some alien species in the ME universe could display the same phenomenon humans do: most individuals having the same hand dominant. But this is also aliens we are talking about, from different planets. There’s infinite possibilities! Their brains will be organized differently, for crying out loud; if they have a hand dominance, there’s nothing saying it has to be the right hand, and on and on and on. I don’t need to talk about all the handedness and evolutionary possibilities because there’s so many of them, and I’m sure you can creatively generate enough ideas on your own without me saying anything more.

Point is: there’s no good reason for every individual of every species in Mass Effect to be right hand dominant. I’m someone who’s extremely stickler to canon. I’ll acknowledge a character for everything down to the canonical hand dominance they display on screen. But from a realism perspective? From a perspective of ignoring game mechanics that plop people into a righty template? Chances are Shep’s got some lefties or ambidextrous babes on board.

So why not Grunt? Why not Garrus? Why not Javik? Why not Mordin? Why not 86% of the salarian species and 54% of the asari? I reject the game’s implicitly suggested canon of handedness and substitute it with my own.

Left-handed Mordin ALL the way! Give me ALL the lefty Mordin!!! It’s a little thing, but I feel like it adds more… flavor… as it were?

I don’t want to analyze Mordin’s personality and abilities as to whether he’s more stereotypically “righty” or “lefty”. That’d be applicable if we were talking human characters. But again: aliens are going to be wired differently, so I don’t feel there’s a need to sit back and say, “Lefties are usually pegged as more creative - does this apply to Mordin?”

It’s fun enough to accept Mordin, as he is, without any thought, and just scream, “Lefty Mordin!” Fly with that. Draw him like that. Pose his action figure like that. And be content.

If I had my way with handedness headcanons completely ignoring canon implications, I think I’d pick… [contemplates]

Righties: Kaidan Alenko, Suvi Anwar, Gil Brodie, EDI (just to mimic humans), Kasumi Goto, Cora Harper, Jack, Kallo Jath, Nyreen Kandros, Liam Kosta, Miranda Lawson, Jeff Moreau, Samara, Shepard, Jacob Taylor, Aria T’Loak, Liara T’Soni, Urdnot Grunt, Garrus Vakarian, Ashley Wilson

Ambidextrous: Thane Krios (born left at birth but has since trained to be indistinguishable - he’s a fucking assassin guys), Legion (a fucking inorganic, guys, why would inorganics have hand dominance?), Tali’Zorah vas Normandy (let’s just declare quarians are non-hand-dominant because why not?)

Lefties: Pelessaria B’Sayle, Nakmor Drack, Jaal Ama Darav (I feel like his species are lefty-heavy), Javik, Zaeed Massani, Morinth, Vetra Nyx, Ryder (come on she’s the closest we’ve got), Mordin Solus, Urdnot Wrex, James Vega, Reyes Vidal

People with italics are individuals I’m fairly sold on them being that handedness, for whatever reason. Others I might rethink. I haven’t headcanoned deeply for everyone!

#sjokohama #long post #was this necessary rambling? #no #am I extremely happy to talk with a fellow ME friend over this? #YES #Mass Effect #ME #ME2 #ME 2 #Mass Effect 2 #ME3 #Mass Effect 3 #Mass Effect Andromeda #Mass Effect: Andromeda #ME:A #analysis #my analysis #ask #ask me #:D :D :D :D :D #Mordin Solus #yes the Andromeda squad is that lefty handed heavy we're awesome like that

[shadowsong26fic]

Because Roommate and I think we’re funny...

...here’s another excerpt from our Epic Crossover RP of DOOM!

For those of you who don’t know, this started life...yeesh, three years ago...anyway, it started life as a Star Wars/Marvel crossover (primarily rooted in MCU, but with a fair amount of comics canon drawn in; and using Precipice for the Star Wars side).

It has been going for, as I said, three years, probably a good 250-300k words long at least, and now includes ten fandoms (though one is mostly in the background and the other has yet to actually appear on page but will fairly soon). It is delightfully cracky and wonderfully self-indulgent, involving a boatload of OCs because Why Not.

This bit is from fairly early on. As a note, neither of us had seen Rebels when we wrote it, which means that some backstories are not necessarily consistent to canon. Also, if this scene seems to end rather abruptly, it’s because it’s about to veer off into Major Spoilers for a future Precipice arc.

And so, without further ado, behind the cut is an excerpt which focuses on certain Avengers meeting Hondo Ohnaka. Enjoy!

   Tony was actually kind of proud of himself that it had only taken about three hours between "my kids are nowhere to be found" and "rescue party assembled and through the portal." Under ordinary circumstances that would have been quite a bit longer than he liked, but he'd been waylaid into believing Emily used "Coruscant" as a code and it took him a couple of hours to realize she was serious. The remaining hour had been been roughly half and half between recruiting helpers and suiting up, and deciphering Addie's handwriting to figure out the coordinates she'd left. But now they were there, ready to go, him and Steve (of course) and Thor (who adored the girls and had since immediately after he met them, it was weird) and Natasha, silent and deadly. Clint and Bruce had agreed to stay behind, stall Fury and Coulson (and Pepper) and take care of anything that popped up in the meantime. So… here they went… he took a deep breath, and launched himself in full armor through the portal.

   They did not land on Coruscant, or in any other city. But they were on what was probably some kind of spaceship--a cluttered, dirty spaceship, with a trio of aliens playing some sort of dice game on a crate.

   Or, that's what they were doing, until Tony and the others came through the portal. Then they jumped up and started shooting.

   Tony didn't feel entirely comfortable repulsoring the shit out of them, so it was probably a good thing that Steve came through next, and took them all out with a single shield throw. Thor actually looked disappointed, which would have been hilarious if he hadn't been so worried about his kids. He picked a random groaning pirate and hoisted him up, shaking him. Where are my kids?"

   "Kids?" the pirate said. "Dunno what the hell you're talking about. We don't got no kids on board." He somehow dragged a holdout blaster from his boot and tried firing it into Tony's abdomen.

   Oh, hey, the armor deflected blasters too. Tony sometimes amazed himself with how good he was. "They're adults," he said. "But they're my kids, so tell me where they are or else."

   "Dunno what the hell you're talking about," the pirate insisted. "We ain't got no hostages on board at all."

   "Well, well, well, what is going on here?" A fourth pirate had joined them, same species, one with dark goggles and a weird sort of monkey-parrot-thing hovering on his shoulder.

   Natasha was behind him. On the off-chance (or, okay, fairly good chance) that he hadn't noticed her, Tony wasn't planning on drawing his attention to her. "My kids came here, they didn't come back, so where the hell are they?" he asked, without dropping the pirate he had. Thor was swinging his hammer and looking sufficiently ominous even without Steve glaring at the guy.

   "Kids?" The pirate tilted his head and tapped his chin. "No, no children here. I haven't kidnapped anyone's children in almost a year, have I? And let me tell you, Hondo Ohnaka is not a man who lies!"

   "Sure," Tony said, then did a double-take. "Wait, the wiseass pirate?"

   Hondo laughed uproariously. "I like you! Come, come, put down my men and I will help you find your children. I am in a generous mood today!"

   "Are you really," Tony said, more than asked, "or are you just angling for a payday? 'Cause don't get me wrong, I'm happy to pay to get my kids back, but I don't think you accept credit cards."

   Behind Hondo, Natasha raised an eyebrow at him.

   Hondo waved a hand. "We can work out all those details later. Right now, there are children in danger, and I have just finished a very profitable deal--very profitable indeed!"

   Tony hesitantly put the pirate down, and glanced at Steve, who was frowning, but when wasn't he when the kids were in danger. "Technically they're not children," he said. Emily, after all, was an adult. "Well, Addie is."

   "Ah, yes, but daughters are always children, are they not?" Hondo said. "Come, come. You say your children came here? How do you know? You're the first stowaways on my ship, unless that crazy horned man got to my men again."

   "No, Hondo," the pirate Tony had dropped said, rubbing his neck and glaring not-so-subtly in Tony's direction. "We learned our lesson."

   "So! No stowaways, until you came here. Only me, my men, and my new business partner."

   Whoever that was. "My kids are geniuses," Tony said. Thor nodded, and boomed out an, "Indeed!" Tony ignored him, and continued, "One of them built a portal generator and left me these coordinates, which means they came here."

   Natasha, from behind Hondo, inquired, "Where is here?"

   "Deep space," Hondo said. "You are very lucky, I think, that I was here to catch you!"

   "No," Tony said, "because I thought of that and I was going to go back and keep them from coming through if there wasn't anything here." Which he totally would have done, if he'd thought of it. And judging from Natasha's expression, she knew it. He didn't dare look at Steve.

   "I see, I see." Hondo frowned. "Well, we will just have to try and find which ships passed through here in the--whenever your daughters passed through. We find the right ship, we find your children, everyone goes home happy. I like this plan!"

   "So do I," Tony said.

   "Me too," Steve said. "What do you get out of?" He pinned Hondo with his all-American-gung-ho-GI-man glare.

   "I don't think I like you as much as your shiny metal friend," Hondo said thoughtfully. He then shook his head, and completely and totally did not answer Steve's question. "Come! I will show you my scanners, we will find your mystery ship!"

   "Yeah, you didn't answer my question," Steve said.

   "You're going to want to answer his question," Natasha said, sweetly. Since she was pants-wettingly terrifying when she was sweet, Tony wasn't sure how Hondo could hold it together.

   His eyes narrowed behind his glasses. "No, no, I didn't." He sighed, then put back on his carefree persona. "Why must you make things so difficult? Very well, fine. What I get out of it all depends on what ship we find, yes? If they're friends of mine, that's one thing, but if they're not my friends, well. That's something different, isn't it?"

   Which made absolutely no sense to Tony, but Steve's eyes narrowed. "We won't kill anyone for you," he said, flatly.

   "Excuse me," Tony said. "If someone is hurting my kids I absolutely will kill them."

   "Well, yeah," Steve said, momentarily distracted, "but, I mean, that's for the girls, not for him. We're not mercenaries."

   "Technically," Tony started.

   "Tony," Natasha said, still sweetly. "Shut up." He shut up.

   "For me, for them, what does it matter?" Hondo shrugged. "Trust me, my not-friends are very unreasonable people. You won't like them, either."

   "Yeah, you don't seem like the kind of person who'd be friends with the Empire," Tony said. "Wait, are they around yet? When is this?"

   "Ah, the Empire." Hondo tutted and shook his head. "Bad for business, bad for business. Except when they're good for business--more profit, but sadly more risk. This is no game for an old man like me. It's why I'm branching out--new deals, new partners. Legal businesses! Or, well, mostly legal, anyway."

   "Oh," Natasha said, and smiled, sharp and unfairly beautiful. "You two should get along wonderfully, then."

   "Hey, fuck you," Tony said, but not very loudly, in case she heard him. "My business has always been legal. Just not, you know, super ethical sometimes."

   Steve coughed. It sounded like "Stane." Tony gave him the evil eye and said, "I said my business."

   Hondo laughed again. "I knew I liked you, shiny metal man! So, are we going to look at my scanners, or not?"

   Tony wondered if he ought to mention that he wasn't actually metal, and decided that wasn't really an illusion he was interested in dispelling. "Sure, let's go."

   He could hear Steve roll his eyes, but at least Cap got it. "Thor, you're behind Tony. Natasha and I will have the rear. If anyone tries anything, hammer them."

   Thor hefted Mjolnir, and grinned a feral Viking grin at the nearest pirate. "I look forward to any hammering."

   Tony choked at that, but managed to keep his voice steady. "Lead on, weird pirate man."

   The pirates glared back at Thor, and Hondo turned and led them through the cluttered, narrow hallways of his ship.

   They made their way to the bridge without anyone trying anything--Mjolnir seemed to be an effective deterrent.

   On the bridge were another couple Weequay pirates, who Hondo nudged out of the way as they headed to a viewscreen, and someone who looked an awful lot like Lando Calrissian.

   Tony pointed at him and yelled something incoherent. Again, he heard Steve roll his eyes, but screw Steve anyway, he'd seen Empire Strikes Back on opening night and it was formative, all right. "You!"

    Lando blinked, and turned to face the group with one eyebrow raised. "Last I checked, yes. I don't think we've met, though. I'm pretty sure I'd remember the four of you." He flashed a particularly wide grin at Natasha. "Lando Calrissian, at your service."

   Natasha smiled back at him, her unnerving, terrifying smile. "Charmed."

   "Steve Rogers," Steve said, and offered his hand, because Steve was like that. "These are my teammates, Natasha Romanava, Thor, and Tony Stark. We're here looking for our daughters."

   Steve and his "no relationships while in uniform" policy. Ah well.

   At first, Lando had seemed only encouraged by Natasha's terrifying smile--then again, he'd been pretty flirty with Leia at her most antagonistic, so that wasn't all that surprising. But that smile slipped when he heard Steve. He shook his hand firmly. "I'm so sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help?"

   "They were in this part of space sometime recently," Hondo called. "I'm finding the ship they may have landed on for my new friends here."

   "They're smart, they're resourceful, and you shouldn't fuck with either one of them," Tony said, "so I know they're fine, they're just having trouble getting home. So I am here to retrieve them." Or so he was going to continue to tell himself, anyway.

   "As far as we can tell,” Steve continued, "they came here about five hours ago."

   "Good, good," Hondo said. "That will make it easier to find the ship, yes?"

   "Hondo, I've got some time. I'd like to stick around and help, if you don't mind my company a little longer," Lando said.

   "Of course, of course," Hondo said. "Anything for my new friends."

   Steve narrowed his eyes again, although Tony wasn't sure why since he'd seen Empire Strikes Back too. "And… no offense. Mr. Calrissian, but what's in it for you?"

   "I don't like it when people hurt kids," he said quietly.

   "Okay," Tony said, "I'm just gonna reiterate that Emily's not a kid. I mean, she's my baby, she'll always be my baby, but she's twenty-five and she can kick you in the face from a standing start."

   "I taught her that," Natasha said, rather smugly. "She could also break a man's neck with her thighs. At least theoretically."

   "See?" Tony gestured at Natasha. "See? Also, Addie will just fuck you up."

   Thor nodded, solemnly. "Indeed, the Miss Starks are intimidating."

   "Still," Lando said. "At least one kid is in danger, even if she can hit back. I may be a lot of things, but I'm not a monster. That satisfy you, Rogers?"

   Thor straightened up to his considerable height and glared. "Captain Rogers," he said, "is worthy of being addressed by his title."

   Tony was ninety, ninety-five percent sure that Thor was just fucking with Lando, but he wasn't completely sure, so he was glad when Steve said, "It's fine. And sure, why not."

   "Sorry about that," Lando said, with an apologetic shrug. "I would've used it if I'd known it. Any luck, Hondo?"

   "Three ships came by around the right time," the pirate said. "One at about six hours, one at five, and one at four and a half."

   Thor settled down into a glare, but… no, the corner of his mouth was twitching a little. Yeah, he was fucking with the guy. Anyway, Tony had other things to worry about.

   "What kind of ships?" Tony asked, walking over to the scanners. He didn't know what he was looking at but he could guess. "Who do they belong to?"

   "Well, this first one--they are not my friends. Star Destroyer. The...Chimaera, I think."

   Tony frowned. He knew that name… right, Zahn. "When is this again?" he asked. "What's blown up most recently?"

   "I love that you track timelines through explosions," Steve murmured. Disturbingly, he sounded sincere, but Steve had weird taste in men, obviously.

   "There was a big one out near Yavin earlier," Hondo said. "I don't know what it is yet, I'm hoping my friends will tell me. This second one here--ah, false ID. It may take us some time to identify."

   "I'll work on that," Lando said. "I can at least figure out who made the fake transponder for you."

   The big one near Yavin was probably the Death Star, which meant the Emperor was still around, which meant it probably wasn't Grand Admiral Thrawn or Captain Pellaeon, which meant Tony really hoped his girls weren't on the Star Destroyer. "What kind of ship?" he asked.

   "Midsized freighter," Lando answered. "Looks like it's--"

   "Aha!" Hondo said, jabbing a finger at the third ship. "I know that ship! That is the Waterfall! They are my friends! Or, well, my friend's brother, who is almost my friend."

   Tony snorted. Steve choked. Thor looked vaguely hunted, and even Natasha looked vaguely amused. "Emphasis on almost," he said. "Who's your friend?"

   "Why, Kenobi, of course. I should call him, we haven't spoken in months--"

   "He's been trying to call you for an hour, Captain," one of the other Weequay said. "Our comms haven't been working too well since--"

   "Yes, yes, fine," he said, waving his hand in annoyance.

   "Uh," Tony said, because if Kenobi was who he thought he was… "Maybe you better call him back." Because he was like, 95% sure that Kenobi had died on the Death Star earlier.

   Judging from Steve's expression he'd just figured that out too. Thor just looked blank— Tony made a mental note to pick Star Wars for the next movie night— and Natasha kept her poker face as per usual.

   "He's hailing us again, Captain," the same Weequay said.

   "Kenobi has always had the best timing," Hondo said, and wandered over to the comm system. He pushed a few buttons and a grainy, wavery hologram of a bearded man appeared. He could very well have been Obi-Wan, but it was low-quality and hard to tell. "Kenobi, my friend! It has been too long."

   "Hond--I need--headed to--" There was some kind of interference or bad connection, but that was definitely Obi-Wan Kenobi's voice.

   "Huh," Tony said, intelligently.

   "Huh," Steve agreed, making Tony feel better about himself.

   "Kenobi, Kenobi, I can't hear you," Hondo said, gesturing dramatically at his ears. "Call me later." He hung up. "Anyway. If Kenobi and Skywalker picked up your girls, they're fine. I know those two almost as well as I know my men. The adventures we've had! Twenty years and more of them!"

   Tony stared at him for a moment before he remembered that the faceplate was down and thus it wasn't having the effect he wanted. "So… you didn't ask him if he had my girls because...."

   "I couldn't hear him anyway," Hondo said. "But he said 'need' and 'headed to,' so I think he needs a favor from Hondo, and is coming here. These conversations are much better face to face, yes?"

   "No," Tony said, "they're better when I know if my kids are okay," but there wasn't much he could do about it now. Not yet, anyway. "When's he going to get here?"

   "Hmmm, well..." Hondo glanced at the pirate manning the comm station.

   "Signal didn't come from far," she said. "Looks like he just dropped out of hyperspace. Should be here in a half-hour or so, on the outside. Depending on which ship he borrowed."

   "Fine," Tony said, and because he was a scientist and an impatient bastard, started a clock running inside his HUD because why not. "Half an hour."

   "In the meantime," Natasha said, "may I suggest contingency plans? How might one take down a Star Destroyer, for example?"

   Somehow Tony suspected she wasn't asking out of idle curiosity. It was something to do with the glee on her face.

   "I have never tried," Hondo admitted. "Shame, such a shame. But you can ask Kenobi when he gets here! He's done such things."

   "Are you taking it out from the outside or from inside?" Lando asked absently, still working on the fake ID for the third ship.

   "Either," Natasha said, and moved over to him. "Explain."

   Tony would have been intimidated by her looming, but then, Lando hadn't seen what she could do. Yet. He did anticipate Natasha beating up someone, if only because she was bored and hadn't been able to.

   "From outside, depends on what kind of firepower you're packing, and whether or not you're alone," Lando said. "From inside..." He looked over at her, and quirked a smile. "I'm guessing you're used to infiltration tactics. So, I'd get the specs and then sneak on board in a stolen uniform--you're too short to pass as a stormtrooper, but if you get a low-level army or navy officer uniform, you could probably bluff your way into the engine room and disable the hyperdrive. You'd probably only get to one vital system before you got caught, and that's where you'd want to start. That or the shields, but there are fewer redundancies on the hyperdrive. You'd still need someone on the outside to finish the job, and probably an extraction team, but you could do it. Corporal or something similar would probably be best for your cover. High enough that no one bothers you, low enough that people don't actually look to you for commands."

   Natasha thought about it for a moment. "Clint and I could do it in an hour," she said, after a minute. "Less if we had a lightsaber or repulsors, more if we were working with just his arrows and my knives."

   "A whole hour?" Tony asked, not quite joking. "You're slipping."

   "It's an unfamiliar ship," Natasha said, serenely.

   "Plus, those things are big," Lando said. "And your best infiltration points aren't all that close to the engine room, because the Empire's stupid about some things, but that ain't one of them. And if the rumors about the Super Star Destroyers they're building are true, those'll be even harder."

   "God<i>damn</i> I want one of those," Tony said.

   "No," Steve said, without looking around. He'd been taking lessons from Pepper, clearly.

   "All right," Lando said. "I know the guy who made this ID. He works all over the map, but given they were meeting up with the Waterfall, I'm guessing they're Alliance. Either that, or Skywalker's got an underworld contact that isn't you," he added, nodding to Hondo.

   The pirate looked scandalized. "Such a betrayal! I would never think it of him! But, then again, it is good business. On the other hand, Skywalker has never had a good business sense..."

   "Skywalker?" Steve asked, frowning. "Wait a minute..."

   "No," Tony interrupted, quickly. "I don't care. I don't care yet. Let's find the girls first and then we can care, okay?"

   "Okay," Steve said, "but I will care."

   "Fine," Tony said, waving a hand. "We can absolutely care then."

   Lando shrugged, and turned back to the third ship. "I'll keep working on this, see if I can confirm it's Alliance or not."

   "And if it is, we can make a deal with them!" Hondo said. "I like making deals with the Alliance. Nice people. Not much money, though."

   "Money I got," Tony said. "Money is not really a problem here."

   "Well," Steve said, thoughtfully, but he cut himself off almost immediately. "Hey, what's that?" He gestured at the scopes.

   "Looks like an X-wing," Lando said.

   "Might be Kenobi," Hondo added. "Is he hailing us again?"

   "Trying to, Captain," the pirate monitoring the comms said. "It's all choppy, though."

   Did Obi-Wan Kenobi fly an X-wing? Tony honestly couldn't remember because at that point in the movie he'd been yelling about the problems of fires in space until Emily kicked him in the ankle. "What's wrong with the comms?"

   "Oh, they keep breaking, ever since that mess last year on Ordo Plutonia," Hondo said, waving a hand.

   Gah, it was driving him nuts. Tony got down on his knees and peered under the console for a minute, before he held a hand out and said, "Screwdriver. Did anyone look at this? The wiring's all fucked up and crossways but I can fix it." Something else to think about beside his children, missing… yeah, okay, wiring.

   "Better do it," Steve advised Hondo. "He'll just tear it apart otherwise."

   Hondo paused for a second. "Well, all right then." He clapped his hands twice. "Come, come, get the shiny metal man a screwdriver!"

   One of the pirates complied, dropping one into Tony's outstretched hand.

   "Thanks," Tony said absently, already poking around the wiring. Oh, yeah, some of them were just cross-plugged. It looked like… "Did this get thrown around or something? Because it looks like somebody just plugged these back in any which way."

   "Uh, more or less?" Hondo said. "Why, did we do it wrong?"

   "Way wrong," Tony said. It might have come out really muffled, he wasn't sure. "It's like you screwed up the whole AC/DC circuit except that's not what's going on at all."

   He barely heard Steve tell Hondo, "He's like this. Just nod and smile."

   "Ah, I'm good at that!" Hondo said, then laughed again.

   "X-wing transponder matches Alliance codes," the pirate on comms said. "Odds are good it's Kenobi. Should I let him land, boss?"

   "Yes, yes," Hondo said. "Let him come!"

   Tony tweaked a couple of wires, swapped another pair, screwed one loose nut back into place and then came out again. "Okay, try it now, should be good." He absently stuck the screwdriver in his gauntlet sleeve.

   Hondo pushed a couple of buttons, and a much-clearer hologram appeared. It was definitely Obi-Wan Kenobi--but he looked younger than he should have, if the Death Star just blew, by at least a decade. "Hondo. I'm just coming into your docking bay. Shall we hold off until I can see you face-to-face?"

   Interesting, Tony thought, staring at the hologram. Amazing what twenty years of not being on a desert planet would do to a man.

   "Yes, yes," Hondo said. "I was just making sure the shiny metal man fixed my comms. I will see you soon!"

   "...Hondo--"

   He flipped a switch, cutting the connection.

   "Am I going to be shiny metal man forever?" Tony asked. "I ask purely out of curiosity, since I do have a name and you can use it, weird pirate man."

   "You are as soon as I tell Clint about it," Natasha said, sounding annoyingly pleased. Tony flipped her off and then hid behind Steve.

   "Well, you are a shiny metal man," Hondo said. "And I am a weird pirate man, too!"

   "So everyone is pleased!" boomed Thor. Tony jumped, having either forgotten that Thor was there or lost track of him or SOMETHING. "This is excellent! You may call me mighty lightning man."

   "Mighty lightning man?" Hondo asked. "Why are you the mighty lightning man, eh?"

   Thor grinned, and raised Mjolnir, but then apparently thought better of it before anyone said anything. "Alas, I cannot demonstrate in here."

   "He'd fry us all," Tony said. "Well. You all. I'm grounded."

   Steve choked at that, and then said, "No you're not."

   Tony flipped him off too.

   Hondo looked almost as disappointed as Thor did. "Some other time, then, yes?"

   "When we are not surrounded by metal," Thor said, and bowed. "It would be my pleasure, Weird Pirate Man."

   Tony could hear the capitals.

   "I look forward to it, Mighty Lightning Man," Hondo said, with an extravagant bow of his own. His monkey-parrot thing chittered and danced a little bit on his shoulder.

   "Oh, my God," Tony said, to no one in particular. "Thor's made a friend."

#epic crossover rp OF DOOM #shadowsong writes star wars #shadowsong writes crossovers #shadowsong cowrites stuff #tigerkat24

[darthkvznblogs]

I wrote a Voltron: Legendary Defender X Steven Universe oneshot!

It was supposed to be, like, a 1k word cute little blurb, but it ended up at over 5k because I have absolutely no self-control. Also posted over at:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17733932

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13203652/1/Close-Encounters-of-the-Gem-Kind

Also, this is technically part of a larger gamut of crossovers, but this isn’t really connected to those, so feel free to enjoy this on its own!

It’s kind of funny, how much of a backwater the Milky Way is considered to be. Pidge likes to think so, at least - how many humans throughout history have proclaimed Earth to be the center of the universe? It couldn’t be further from the truth, of course, but that certainly didn’t stop them.

The reality is that galactic civilization is practically nonexistent around these parts. There’s nothing like the ancient Alteans, and certainly not like the universe-spanning Galra Empire here, and it shows; the Milky Way lacks any kind of hub worlds, or even designated hyperlanes. It’s the Wild West out here - or, more accurately, the galactic equivalent of an empty Denny’s parking lot at two a.m.

Still, it’s nice to almost be home again. She didn’t expect to be headed back so soon - heck, part of her didn’t expect to return to Earth at all - but it seems Allura found herself a heart, and is allowing the Paladins of Voltron a brief, week-long window before they really take the fight to the Galra for them to let their families know they’re, y’know, still alive.

For how much longer, Pidge has no idea. They’re Public Enemy No. 1, but like, on an intergalactic level. That certainly doesn’t bode well for their continued well-being.

In any case, they’re a few thousand light years out - they’re doing short jumps, so as to avoid leading the Galra back to Earth - when they catch an urgent sounding alien communication, one that makes Allura frown, and summon the other Paladins to the bridge.

“What’s wrong, Princess?” -Shiro asks once he gets there, all armored up - first as always, if not for the fact that Pidge was already there, analyzing star maps with Princess Allura - confused at her expression.

“The Castle’s short range sensors have picked up what appears to be a repeating distress signal. The language is...familiar, but I can’t quite place it.” -she admits.

Shiro crosses his arms. “Familiar how?”

“Yeah, we’re super far away from ancient Altean space.” -Pidge points out.

“Altean civilization became space-faring almost a hundred-thousand years ago. We explored most of the universe.” -she says, as if it should be obvious. “We may not have colonized much, but we did visit.”

Pidge deals with this mind-boggling fact the same way she deals with most things regarding Altea or the Galra. “...oh.”

Allura looks smug, but only for a second, because Coran pipes up after only absently following their conversation. “Oh! That’s Gem code, Princess.”

Allura raises an eyebrow. “‘Gem’ code?” -she asks, on the verge of recognition.

“Yes! I guess it makes sense that they’d still be around.” -he says, eager. “Gems are inorganic life forms - they don’t eat, sleep, or drink, so they are effectively immortal. They were one of the last intelligent species we discovered before the war.”

The Princess snaps her fingers - a gesture picked up from Pidge herself. “That’s right! I remember my father leaving to meet with their diplomats.”

Shiro interrupts the nostalgia train. “Then let’s take a detour and see if we can help them out. Earth can wait just a little longer.”

Allura doesn’t seem like she appreciates the commanding tone, but she clearly agrees, immediately bringing up the Castle’s controls. “Generating wormhole now.”

Lance, Keith, and Hunk come together into the bridge as the starship accelerates into the rift. Seconds later, they re-enter realspace, only to find themselves staring at an ongoing space battle some two thousand kilometers in the distance.

“Well, that can’t be good.” -Lance says, helmet under his arm. He doesn’t sound particularly worried.

“What the hell are the Galra doing so close to Earth again?” -Keith asks, crossing his arms. He, in turn, does. Angry-worried, at any rate.

Lance cringes. Pidge is fairly certain he didn’t put two and two together. “Oh, yeah, that too.”

Allura immediately takes command. “Coran, jam their comms. Paladins, to your Lions.”

The five of them grimly fall into place, taking the chute to their respective giant mechanical familiars. The Paladins burst out into the void, supernatural roars audible even in the oppressive silence of vacuum.

“What are we looking at, here?” -Shiro asks everyone.

“Hands, mostly.” -Hunk says drily. “It’s not just me, right? Everybody else can see the multi-colored giant hands shooting at the Galra fleet?”

Hunk has a knack for summing up the crazy situations Team Voltron usually encounters, and this is no exception. Indeed, a fleet of massive, human-accurate, hand-shaped warships is trading blasts with a Galra dreadnought and about a dozen cruisers. They’re about half the size of the Castle of Lions each, which means they’re all dwarfed by the Galra capital ships. Pidge can make out green and yellow ones, mostly, but there’s a couple blue ones in there, too. She also notices that, while they’ve obviously suffered some damage, the hand ships are all still more or less intact, while a couple Galra cruisers have already become superheated chunks, slowly falling towards the planet, caught in its gravity well.

Judging by the fleets’ positions - the Galra are sandwiched between the planet and the Gem warships - the Galra got here first, and the hands are reinforcements for the Gems below.

“It doesn’t matter what they’re shaped like. They’re outnumbered and we’re here to even those odds.” -Shiro finally says. “Allura, can you contact the Gems? We don’t need them shooting us, too.”

“I will try. I’m not sure the Castle’s translator software includes Gem language.”

“It included human, didn’t it?” -Lance asks rhetorically. “Er, I mean English.”

“No, it did not. English was just relatively easy to decipher. Gem language, on the other hand, seems to be a combination of computer code and spoken word. We’ll whip up a message, but there’s no telling if they can even recognize it for what it is.”

“It’ll have to do.” -Shiro says as they enter firing range for the Lions’ main cannons. “Lance, Keith, focus on the fighters - try to draw them away from the Gem fleet. The rest of us will take out the Ion Cannons. Stay on your toes, everyone.”

The Paladins split into their respective groups - Pidge feels a bit awkward going with the heavy hitters, but her and Green are probably second worst at dog-fighting, so she gets it - and get to work. The Galra immediately begin attacking them instead, completely ignoring the Gem warships, likely overcome by their desire to please ol’ Zarkon with a nice, Voltron-themed gift basket.

Pidge is pleasantly surprised; they’ve only been at this for about a month - just last week, they saved the Balmera and its rocky inhabitants - but they already fight like a coherent unit. Part of it is the Garrison’s training, sure, but this newfound success is largely owed to the mystical link they all share as Paladins. She’s aware that Keith just melted down a squad chasing Lance, that Shiro just took a Jaw Blade to the dreadnought’s main battery, and that Hunk just spotted a cruiser’s Ion Cannon targeting her. Pidge simply dodges out of the way at the last second, letting the overwhelmingly powerful blast tear through the cruiser behind her and Green.

With the final Ion Cannon disabled, the Castle of Lions moves in. Particle blasts pepper the Galra fleet, which wastes no time in retaliating, but these bolts come from point-defense cannons - they’re meant to take down fighters and other such small ships, like the Lions technically are. The Castle’s barrier holds steady against this attack.

“I am detecting a significant Galra field presence on the planet.” -Allura says. “Several hundred Sentries, at the very least, possibly some Galra officers. They seem to be attacking a major Gem installation.”

“Then we better finish this up quick.” -Shiro says. “Everyone, regroup! Let’s form Voltron!”

The Lions roar in unison, flying towards a relatively safe point in space, and begin the morphing process. Pidge has studied it before from the Castle’s recordings, frame by frame, but in the heat of the moment, she can’t quite tell what’s going on - only that she’s now not quite just Pidge Gunderson, or Katie Holt, but a vital component of the immensely powerful whole that is Voltron. There are no longer five Lions and their respective pilots, there is the titanic warrior and their collectively melded minds.

Well, that’s what it’s supposed to be like, she instinctively knows. Eventually. But they’re all still rather new at it, so they still speak up like they’re separate individuals.

“Form Shoulder Cannon!” -Shiro commands, and Hunk immediately complies. The Cannon materializes, targets the remaining cruisers, and fires, swirling ribbons of deadly light tracing wild paths for a second or two before reaching their marks, burning through thick hulls and the decks within. Cataclysmic explosions tear some of the vessels apart, while those that survive are left like wounded beasts, venting atmosphere and spitting out plasma.

The dreadnought is mostly undamaged still, and its repair crews have managed to get the Ion Cannon somewhat operational again - they probably should’ve ripped it off instead of just slicing at it - and so it fires at them.

Before Shiro can call it out, Pidge is already forming the shield. It’s just in time, too, snapping into place as the beam reaches Voltron. Purple energy flares out around them, dissipating into harmless, free-floating ions a couple dozen miles out.

Voltron’s wings return to their original position, and Shiro bellows: “Form Sword!”

“Wait!” -Allura calls out. “Incoming energy signature!”

They turn, and sure enough, a massive shape warps into the battlefield. It’s a complete yellow right arm, a little longer than the Galra dreadnought, and its fist is clenched. It zips past Voltron at ramming speed, completely heedless of the fact that the dreadnought is charging another shot.

“Why aren’t they dodging?” -Lance asks the question on everyone’s mind.

The answer is apparent as soon as the beam washes over the yellow hull, and does absolutely no damage.

“Jesus.” -Hunk says. “What the heck is that arm made of?”

The arm then smashes into the bow of the dreadnought, sending it backwards in spite of its powerful engines trying to compensate. Voltron boosts towards the two warships, but stops in its tracks just as they’re about to reach them, as what looks like a large, yellow bubble - about the size of Black’s protective particle barrier - sprouts from the arm’s surface.

“Is that a woman?” -Lance asks, dumbstruck, as the bubble disappears, leaving behind its single occupant.

Pidge is not as impressed by the person’s apparent gender, as she is by their sheer size - they’re about as tall as the Black Lion while sat on its haunches. Their skin and helmet-shaped hair is the same yellow shade as the arm ship, and they’re wearing what looks like a short tailcoat, olive pants, and brown boots. A square, equally yellow gemstone about as tall as Shiro protrudes from their chest - and, strangely enough, it’s the only part of their body showing up on Green’s sensors.

“I...I guess that’s a Gem.” -Shiro says, his usual stoic composure broken up a bit by the sheer awe this being provokes. Judging by the off-the-charts telemetry Green can make out on them, Pidge is more inclined to label them as some kind of pseudo-divine being.

The giant person spares a brief look for the stunned Voltron, before becoming enveloped in a crackling electric aura, raising their left hand, and blasting the Ion Cannon.

The superweapon briefly becomes incandescent, then explodes, and so does the superstructure beneath it. The Gem then leaps, seemingly unaffected by the lack of gravity, and smashes into the burning wreckage of the Cannon, plunging into the dreadnought’s innards.

“Should we help?” -Keith asks, uncertain.

Lance scoffs. “Help!? Let’s throw her at Zarkon!”

Shiro shakes his head as small, fiery holes begin to violently blow through the warship’s hull. “Let’s leave them to it. I know for a fact the Galra don’t have anything inside that can actually put up a fight. Split up and head to the surface, instead.”

Voltron breaks apart into its constituent Lions, which begin the descent into the Gem world. Pidge notes, somewhat uncomfortably, that the hand ships have moved in, literally grabbing onto the wrecked Galra warships. It reminds her of Facehuggers, which, now that she’s an intergalactic traveller on the regular, she can only hope exist solely in movies.

The planet below isn’t really one to write home about; it’s a lifeless rocky world, not unlike a large Mercury, its thin atmosphere is primarily nitrogen-based - but the mixture is unbreathable for most life forms, humans included - and its soil is rich with aluminum oxides. Why the Gems would choose to settle here, Pidge has no clue. Maybe they like inhospitable worlds? They’re inorganic, so...maybe they’re not all that bothered by them?

The atmospheric burn doesn’t last long, even with the added challenge of dodging the falling debris caused by the battle above, and soon they’re diving through the thin cloud layer. Several artificial structures dot the landscape on the way to the battlefield - enormous columns beaming with light, intricate spires reaching towards space, and colosseum-like buildings floating between the clouds. The ground battle is taking place near a massive canyon network, inlaid with Gem machinery. This is where most of the Gems on the planet are concentrated, if sensor data is to be believed. Then again, their sensors can only pick up the individual gemstones on their bodies, so it’s really anyone’s guess.

“So, what’s the plan? A bombing run, maybe?” -Lance suggests.

“Negative. Some of the Gems seem to be fighting hand-to-hand with the Galra.” -Shiro says. “We’d be risking hitting them, too.”

“So, let’s join them. Let’s fight on foot.” -Keith says. Of course he does.

Hunk groans. Pidge winces to herself, too. Neither of them are too into the pedestrian portion of Paladinhood. “Let’s land nearby and try to find their commanding officer. They’ll probably know where we’ll be the most useful.” -Shiro says, finally.

The Lions come in hot, dust blowing as the massive mechs trot to a stop. Pidge readies herself, manifesting her bayard and hoping against hope that she won’t have to use it.

She runs out of Green’s mouth, meeting up with the others. All their weapons are out already. Shiro leads the way, approaching a small outpost from which a dozen Gems seem to be observing the nearby battle. None of them have anything she can identify as a gun; she spots some spears, a warhammer, several swords, and a bow and arrow. The weapon selection seems highly paradoxical, given their apparent technological prowess, but, then again, Keith’s bayard turns into a sword, too, and that’s über-advanced Altean techno-sorcery.

The next thing she notices is that the Gems are...eerily similar. Even the Balmorans were easier to tell apart; there are three types, all completely different from the last. The smallest are a head shorter than her, all colored in similar shades of red, with thick but stubby arms and legs, and a sort of blocky afro for hair. Their gemstones are all over the place - back of the hand, knee, chest, forehead, nose. Same goes for the other two kinds; one is about as tall as a full grown Galra, their stone an upright rectangle in the middle of their chest, with a poofy head of cheddar-colored hair, orange skin, a red jumpsuit, white gloves and boots, and a glittery yellow-red cape, and a green colored Gem with a triangular gemstone for an eye, a perfectly square head of light yellow hair, and odd, free-floating fingers manipulating some kind of hard-light screen.

“Greetings. We are the Paladins of Voltron.” -Shiro announces, following protocol because he’s, well, Shiro. “We picked up your distress signal, and have come to help.”

Pidge half expects to hear gibberish back from the Gems, but when the tall, orange one replies, it’s in perfect english. “Oh? Is that so?”

Their tone takes all of them aback. It’s the condescending ‘it’s cute that you think you know better than me’ kind of voice Pidge knows very well from years of...overachieving in academic endeavors. It’s also far from the way you’d expect a Commander in trouble to sound like. “Uh...yes? We’re at your service. Where do you need us?”

They languidly turn to the green Gem. “Peridot, where do we need the Paladins of Voltron?”

Pidge vaguely remembers something about the mineral peridotite coming from the Earth’s mantle. Peridot’s voice is kinda nasal, and she sounds...bored. “Ruby squadron theta is requesting assistance, my Hessonite.”

Judging by the way the small, red Gems worriedly fidget at the mention, they’re Rubies, too. Now the colony makes sense; aluminum oxide forms corundum, a mineral real life rubies - and sapphires, which Pidge is guessing is another type of Gem - are found in.

Hessonite hums. “Well, there you go. Go, go! I’d love to watch.”

The Paladins look at each other in confusion, but silently decide not to think about it too much. They rush towards the nearest fight, which is definitely going in the Gems’ favor.

The Rubies may lack any sort of projectile weaponry, but they don’t seem to be fazed much by the Galra Sentries’ laser blasts. They wince and yelp when hit, but otherwise continue charging. They’re also surprisingly strong, taking down the drones in a single punch more often than not. Still, the Paladins join in, blasting and slicing away at the robots. Again, their teamwork has experienced a marked improvement. They’re hardly commandos, but they cover for each other’s weaknesses fairly well. Most of the Rubies ignore them, but a couple of them cheerfully greet and thank them - with the absolute cutest voice ever - before moving on to the next skirmish.

That’s when the first Galra tank pops up over a nearby ridge, points at the departing Rubies, and shoots.

The plasma burst explodes at their feet, and when the smoke clears, one lays groaning face-down, while only a circular, soot-covered gemstone remains of the other. “Lance, Hunk, cover fire!” -Shiro barks out. He dives to cover the Ruby with his body, while the Paladins distract the tank. Pidge and Keith follow suit, bringing up their particle shields, since a squad of Sentries has taken aim at them.

“I’m...sorry about your friend.” -Shiro says, gravely. A large, striped, yellow-orange Gem with a mane of white hair roars past them, and absolutely demolishes the Sentries shooting at them. It’d be funny, if someone hadn’t just died before her eyes.

The Ruby - her gemstone is on her right knee - seems very confused. “What? She’s fine, she’s right there! Not even chipped or anything.” -she says, all earnest and adorable, pointing at the gemstone on the ground. “Haven’t you guys ever seen a Gem poof before? It happens to us Rubies all the time…”

Ah. Pidge thinks she gets it, now. That’s why Green’s sensors and her armor’s onboard systems can’t make out anything but the actual gemstone: the humanoid body is some kind of light construct. The gem is the Gem.

The Gem blanks out for a second, then looks at them with guilt. “Um, listen, I have to go.” -she say. “We’ve been ordered to defend the western entrance to the Kindergarten.”

Keith balks. “You have children here!?”

The Ruby doesn’t seem to understand that word. “No? We have a vein of potential Sapphires, though, so we can’t let the organics anywhere near there.” -she explains, then grabs the other Ruby’s gemstone from the ground and hands it to a very surprised Shiro. “We’re supposed to leave poofed soldiers behind, but...she’s my friend. Just...take care of her until she reforms, please?” -she pleads.

Knee Ruby doesn’t wait for an answer, just bolting - well, more like hup-hup-hup-ing - towards the western side of the canyon network. Hunk and Lance return, fresh from taking out the Galra tank. “Oh cool!” -Lance says, catching the glint of the scarlet gemstone. “That’s gotta be worth like, a cool million.”

“This is, apparently, a person.” -Pidge says, rolling her eyes.

“Wait, what? I thought they were just really into body mods.”

Keith shakes his head. “Were you not paying attention to your Lion’s sensors?”

Lance scowls. “Don’t sass me, Kogane. I’ve got Earth on my brain right now and not much else.”

Shiro puts his flesh and blood hand on Lance’s right pauldron. “We all do, but we need to focus for now.” -he says, understanding, rising as he cautiously pockets the gemstone. “Let’s try to find the Galra commander.”

Pidge pipes up. “Oh, let me.” -she says, then closed her eyes. She finds that thread in the back of her mind and pulls on it, grabbing Green’s attention. Their connection is nowhere near as good as it could be, one day, but this is more than enough for now.

Green is more in tune with life than any of the other Lions - as in, she can sense living organisms better than any of the others - so Pidge asks her to scan the horizon for living Galra combatants. Green roars, and a quick scan later, the actual Galra on this world are marked, and their location relayed to the Paladins. Disturbingly, Green detects none in orbit.

Shiro takes a moment to strategize. “Okay. There’s three groups of Galra soldiers. One seems to be established at their FOB, and lightly guarded - Pidge and Lance, you take those out, and see if you can figure out why the Galra are so close to Earth in the first place. Another squad is establishing static defenses nearby - Keith and Hunk, that’s you. I’ll join the Gems in taking down the ones fighting alongside the remaining Sentries.”

Pidge grimaces. She’s no stranger to taking lives by now - Galra warships may be mostly crewed and defended by robots, but there’s still an organic element in command, and she’s taken down several - but killing up close is an entirely different matter. Something tells her that her mantra of ‘one less Galra is one less obstacle between me and my family’ probably won’t cut it this time around.

Goddamn it, she’s fifteen.

Lance winks at her. Pidge doesn’t think much of it, considering he flirts with pretty much every being that could be argued to be sapient. “Think you can keep up, Pidge?”

“Doesn’t sound like I have much of a choice.” -she replies, deadpan. Pidge turns to Shiro. “I might not be able to interface with their tech without your arm, just so you know.”

“Try it anyway. If you can’t, just destroy their outpost.” -he says.

They split up, and head towards their targets. It’s a short hike, made only a bit sluggish by the debris from the battle. Pidge spots several dormant gemstones among the broken Sentries.

“So, why do you think they all look like girls?” -Lance asks.

“Let’s not assume their gender.” -she says. “We don’t even know if they have one.”

“No, I get that. I’m just saying, they do present themselves as feminine, more or less.”

“Well, it’s not like we’ve met them all. Maybe those Sapphires the Ruby talked about look different.”

Lance hums. “And the big one? What kind of Gem do you think she is?”

Pidge jet-boosts past a Galra hovertank that looks like it’s been physically crushed. “A Topaz, maybe? I don’t know that many yellow gemstones. Could be a Yellow Diamond too, I guess.”

“Yeah, that sounds pretty regal.” -he says. “She’s gotta be like, their queen or something, right?”

“If they’re the leader of Gemkind, fighting on the front lines would be a very poor judgement call. There’s a reason Zarkon’s lived to rule ten thousand years. He just spits out orders from his throne room.”

“Well, that plus magic, right?”

She sighs. As much as she’d love to say that ‘magic is just really fancy tech they don’t understand yet’, she’s seen enough weird Altean and Galra bull to recognize that the phrase is worthless in reality.

“...yeah, that too.”

Her HUD flashes red in warning, just as they’re about to crest the hill overlooking their target. She looks up, and sees a fragment of burning Galra hull falling towards their general vicinity.

“Uh...Pidge? Is that headed for…?”

“Us, yeah!” -she screams, grabbing his arm and punching her thruster pack to the max. They zoom away just in time, as the artificial meteor slams into the hill, the shockwave sending both of them careening across the landscape. The come to a tumbling stop a couple hundred feet away, groaning. The Paladin armor takes the worst of it, for sure, but Pidge is already dreading the bruises she’ll find when she hits the showers later today.

“Are you okay?” -Lance asks.

She shakes her head, more to check for concussions than to say no. “I’m alive.”

He steps into her field of view, offering a hand. She takes it and rises. “Are we still keeping score after this? I’m pretty sure the save is worth a lot.”

Lance smirks. “No, no, I’m pretty sure this just makes us even.”

“What? For what?”

“Sendak, remember?”

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that’s true.” -she says. If not for his clutch save, the cyborg might’ve taken them out, instead of the other way around. “I’m pretty sure the game is over anyway, they’re probably all dead by now.”

Lance raises an eyebrow. “What makes you say that?”

“The fragment that almost hit us, it exploded in midair. The other piece should’ve landed right on top of the Galra base.”

As if to confirm her hypothesis, an explosion shakes the ground on the other side of the hill. Lance winces. “Alright, let’s go check it out.”

They nearly crest the ridge, before they’re stopped in their tracks. A Galra soldier pops over the hill, running towards them. Pidge brings her bayard to bear, but it’s ultimately unnecessary. It’s the briefest of moments, and the most terrifying sequence of events she’s witnessed in this little space opera she’s on: a blinding light appears behind the Galra, catches up to him, and consumes him. As in, when the glow subsides, the alien has completely vanished. Disintegrated, presumably.

“Oh my God.” -Lance says. Funny, Pidge didn’t peg him for a God-fearing man. Teenager. Yikes, she’s already rambling.

The Galra’s killer soon becomes apparent, as the massive yellow Gem they’d seen in space nonchalantly walks toward them, each step shaking the ground beneath their feet. Pidge can’t quite nail why it’s so different from staring up at the Lions; the height is similar after all, but the approaching Gem is so much more intimidating. Maybe it’s the humanoid shape. Maybe it’s their irritated frown.

It’s probably the fact that their electric aura still crackles as they approach.

“I had not realized that humanity had achieved spaceflight.” -they say. Their voice is definitely feminine, their tone that of someone who knows themselves to be superior. There’s an undercurrent of weariness, too, but Pidge is all but certain it’s not of the physical kind - they move like they’re on a leisurely stroll, as if they hadn’t just dropped from orbit and atomized someone. “With the amount of technology Homeworld left behind, it’s a wonder it took so long.”

The being squints at them. Pidge notices that their irises - yellow, of course - have diamond-shaped pupils.

Ah. Yellow Diamond, then.

“Then again, that armor is hardly of Gem make. Too...flimsy. Much like the rest of you organics.”

Well, that certainly sounds like an insult.

“Not just any organics.” -Lance says. He’s afraid, and covering it up with bravado. Classic Lance. “We’re the Paladins of Voltron, ma’am.”

Yellow Diamond seems...unimpressed. “Is that what you call the waste of quintessence I saw in orbit, Blue Paladin?”

“What do you mean waste? Voltron is like, the most powerful weapon in the universe!” -Pidge says. So she’s feeling defensive of Green and her little found family. So fear makes her lash out a bit. Sue her.

“I mean that the amount of quintessence powering your so-called Voltron would create enough Gems to conquer every planet in every galaxy. And yet, its makers chose to concentrate all that power into five vulnerable little puzzle pieces, and then put them in the hands of humans.”

“Jesus, lady. Calm it down, will you? We wouldn’t even be here if not for your distress signal. We came here to save you from the Galra.” -Lance says. Pidge isn’t sure if it’s intentional, but he’s protectively stepped in front of her. Not that it’ll do much good once Yellow Diamond tires of this conversation and vaporizes them, but it's, y’know, a nice gesture.

“I assure you, your assistance was neither needed nor wanted. These Galra may be a threat to your kind, but as you can plainly see, they are mere annoyances for Gemkind.”

Pidge grabs Lance’s arm. “It’s okay, Lance. Maybe we should just go back to Shiro and the others.” -she suggests, rather urgently. “We’re obviously not welcome here.”

“Good. I thought perhaps I was being too subtle.” -Yellow Diamond says, disdainful. “Take your mechanical pets and leave my world, Paladins of Voltron. Return to that doomed mudball you call the Earth.”

The Gem’s aura subsides, and they turn to leave. Pidge breathes a sigh of relief because yeah, Yellow Diamond was definitely considering offing them. Green and Blue fly towards them as the massive arm ship pokes through the clouds above. The Gem matriarch leaps onto its palm, and disappears into its depths. The ship then points towards the sky, elongates impossibly, and disappears in a vortex of warped space-time.

“Yikes.” -Lance says.

“Yup.”

“That could’ve gone better.”

“Could’ve gone worse, too.” -she points out. “We’re not exactly great at diplomacy.”

“True.” -he says, as their two Lions land beside them. “Hey, what do you think she meant by calling Earth doomed?”

Pidge shrugs. Her nerves are a bit too frayed to really think about it. “Global warming? I dunno, Lance. I just hope we never get to ask her. At least, not in person.”

“Yeah, no argument here.”

They board the Lions, and head towards their fellow Paladins. They’re already taking off, and it’s not hard to figure out why.

“Gems are nuts, you guys.” -Hunk says when they join them. “Like, not even the fact that even their tiny Ruby guys could toss me around like I weigh about half a Pidge…”

“Hey!”

“...they turned on us the moment the Galra were done! We didn’t even have a chance to give them their buddy back!”

Pidge’s eyebrows shoot up. “You kept the Ruby!?”

“I did.” -Shiro says, gravely. “Which means this won’t be the last time we deal with the Gems. We’ll have to figure out a way to approach them safely, now that we know that they aren’t exactly friendly.”

“Earth first though, right?” -Lance asks, hopeful, then amends himself. “I mean, I don’t know about you, but I desperately need some strictly human comforts. Pizza, videogames, beautiful human women…”

Pidge laughs to herself. Trust Lance to ruin a somber moment, even if it’s his own. The internal laugh is, admittedly, a little hysterical - they did just meet a space goddess, after all.

Shiro smiles. “Earth first, Lance.”

#voltron #VLD #steven universe #ruby #hessonite #peridot #jasper #(but not our jasper) #squaridot #lance mcclain #takashi shirogane #keith kogane #pidge gunderson #katie holt #allura #coran hieronymus wimbleton smythe #fanfic #crossover #yellow diamond

[ilosttrackofthings]

shiver

Not what that last anon asked for, but kiiiiind of Jemma/Robbie-ish?

It’s a strangestate of mind Jemma’s in. She knows what’s happening—she’sbeen on the Lighthouse long enough to recognize the exchange of currency for oneof the controllers—and yet she’s refusing to acknowledge itwithin her own mind. Doing so would mean facing the reality thatshe’ll never see her team again or find a way back to a whole andliving Earth to undo this wretched timeline.

Her body, on theother hand, has learned well how to operate without her mind’sinput. To stand and serve and bend and scrape at the slightestcommand while her mind remains locked away behind a veneer of passiveobedience. And so, without Jemma to guide it, her body follows theman who just moments ago bought her from Kasius.

If she werethinking about her circumstances, she might hope he would be a bettermaster than Kasius was. And then she might resign herself to the facthe’s unlikely to be any better; perhaps he might even be worsesince he hasn’t bothered to speak to her since taking ownership ofher. He gestured for her to follow and she, like the dutiful littleslave she’s become, did as she was bid. At least Kasius did her thedignity of speaking to her.

She bites her lips,holding back a sound she would not be able to hear. No matter how farshe’s fallen to think fondlyof that monster, it isn’t cause to make a poor impression on hernew owner so soon. She focuses on the dark leather of his coat andkeeping pace with him without crowding him.

Shewishes she’d paid more attention to him while he was dealing withKasius. She barely glanced at him long enough to recognize he wasneither human nor Kree and now can’t even remember how she knew.Were his eyes overlarge? Sunken in? His head was bald, that she’sfairly certain of.

Shebites her lip again, this time to push away the mental image of atall, spindly grey alien, the type that so often featured in clichéinvasion films. And, now she thinks of it, abduction stories. Perhapsthey weren’t so far off the mark after all.

Lightflares in her dim peripheral vision but she pays it no mind, sofocused on following that it’s not until he stops ahead of her thatshe registers the cold. Beneath her slippered feet, snow crunches andmelts into the thin fabric. She hugs her already shivering arms toher body, looking around at a forest dominated by a species that shecould almost mistake for a typical north american pine.

Painand a high pitched whine spark in her head, only to be replaced amoment later by the sound of birdsong.

“Better?”

Jemmawhirls at the sound of the voice. She knows it, she’s positive. Andsure enough, Robbie Reyes is shrugging off his jacket only a few feetaway.

“Yeah,I thought so.” He settles it around her shoulders.

“You-you’re alive?” she asks. She doesn’t know why she’s sosurprised. He was—supposedly—possessed by a demon and gifted withimmortality so long as the two were joined together. Living a fewextra decades in the prime of his life is hardly fanciful once onehas accepted all the rest.

Hedoesn’t respond, not that there’s much need to as the answer isobvious. Cold seeps in along with embarrassment and she looksaround at their surroundings once more. Nothing but trees and snow as far as she can see

“Didyou have to bring us to a planet where it’s snowing? I’m notexactly dressed for it.”

Hesmiles and, though she didn’t spend much time around him during thehunt for his uncle, the sharpness in the expression strikes her asout of character. “There’s a shelter deeper in the valley. Thisbody prefers protection from the elements.”

Andthat is most certainlyout of character. “‘This body’?” she echoes and attributesthe shaking in her voice to the cold.

“You humans are so fragile. Hurry up, I’d hate to see my investmentfreeze to death.” Even as he speaks she remembers what he said whenlast he aided the team about his companion being the one in control.

Whileit seems highly unwise to follow a literal demon deeper into thewoods, she has little choice andhurries towards the promise of warm toes.

“Soyou freed me,” she says, hoping to prompt answers out of him.

“Boughtyou,” he corrects. “And that was Reyes’ idea. He wasn’t toohappy to see someone he recognized serving one of the ‘blueangels.’” The sing-song mockery churns Jemma’s gut. It’sso far from anything she’d expect Robbie to say, she can’t helpbut be reminded of Hive.

Butif he was willing to rescue (more or less) her, then perhaps…

“Therest of the team,” she says, rushing to walk alongside him as thetrees begin to open up, “they’re back there as well. We were attacked and stranded there.”

Hestops, tipping his head to one side as though listening to something.“Hm. Maybe. If they can be of use to me.”

“Isthat why you got me out of there?” she asks, hating herself for thecuriosity that demands she ask. “Because you have ‘use’ of me?”

Hegrins. “You always were a clever one.”

Consideringthat she only knew Robbie and, by extension, the demon inside him fora few days, she doesn’t like his choice of words.

“Comeon,” he says. “You’re looking nearly as blue as the Kree. We’llwarm you up and then you can get to work.”

Heturns to go, but she remains where she is, despite the worrying numbness in her toes. “On what?”

Hestops, turns, comes so closeshe can almost imagine she feels the hellfire in his veins.Cold as she is, it’s astruggle not to lean into him to soak up as much as she can and onlythe way he looms over her cautions her against doing so.She considers, briefly, that antagonizing a demon might be an evenworse idea than following one.

“Onwhatever I tell you to,” he says. Then his mouth turns up in afriendly smile. “Kasiustold me you were one of his most obedientservants. I’m sure you’ll be just the same for me. If youaren’t, well, I might be too busy to go back to the Lighthouse inthis lifetime. Wouldn’t that be a shame.”

Hewaits a moment, allowing the threat to land, before he resumes hisjourney. Jemma tugs thejacket tighter around her shoulders as she follows. It’sa good thing she didn’t allow herself to hope before; her new owneris just as bad as the last one.

#jemma x robbie #reyes x simmons #aosfic #my fic #*td #ask fic #anonymous

[jessikahathaway]

Cornfields

Holy shit, an update. Sorry it’s not Owner guys, I swear I’m working on it! But for now, enjoy Yoongi as an awkward as fuck alien. 

DON’T OWN THE PHOTO

Traveling through space with an alien was weird.

Like, being a human aboard a spaceship was unheard of in these times, but it happened...

It started like any other, dark and kinda cold. You lay in bed, contemplating what the following months would bring. Dreading the day you’d pick your marriage partner. The human species was slowly going stagnant. If the race did nothing, humans were going to die out, and that apparently wasn’t an option.

So now, you had multiple tests done and fertility clinics were all the rage. People were chosen for one another based on successful impregnation statistics and compatibility of gene pools.

Was this to be the rest of your life? Living with a man you didn’t really know, just to produce more people for a dying race? Some found it noble and accepted their new fates with big shoulders to rest their burden upon. You?

The idea of being stuck on this planet for the rest of your meagre life seemed a bit dull, to be completely honest. Ever since new lives and new species started coming to Earth, many of humanity had left the planet, rathering to travel the stars in search of a better tomorrow or some shit.

A loud crash and a bright light encased your room. You bolted from bed and looked at the scene before you. A ship, lodged into the cornfield next to your house. This felt like a cheap old movie from the early 2000’s, almost two thousand years ago ironically. However, enticed by the cliche you ran down the stairs to find an alien staring at his ship in distaste.

He was something to behold. Looking almost humanoid, except his eyes were bright green and his hair a naturally occuring royal blue. He also had body markings over his slightly gray tinged skin. He was a sight to behold in this boring world.

“Well this is, what do the humans call it? Unfortunate,” he said, staring at the crumpled piece of metal with mused interest.

“Hi,” you said lamely, trying to figure out how to keep this person’s interest. Slowly, he turned and looked to you.

“Are you human?” He questioned, coming slightly closer. You backed up slightly, but held a firm stance.

“Yes, why?” you confirmed.

“Just wondering if the stupid GPS got me to the right planet, and it didn’t. I typed in Humanix, stupid thing took me to the closest planets with humans instead. Great,” he huffed, annoyed.

“Are you hurt?” you asked, looking at the state of his vessel, then to him. He shook his head and pointed to an escape pod a few hundred meters down the field.

“Ditched it before it crumpled under the pressure difference of your atmosphere. Stupid thing really wasn’t worth the credits I spent on it.”

You spent the night speaking with whom you found out to be Min Yoongi. A Uzmanic from the planet Utheridian. They were fairly close to humans, however they didn’t die as quickly nor were they a favorite amongst the people of the universe. They had been known to worm their way into politics and cause chaos and throw the worlds into disarray for the short handed amusement it would create. They don’t particularly care for much. However, they are truly beautiful to behold.

Yoongi, as you discovered, didn’t really like a majority of his kin and ditched them. Rathering to research the stars and the people they harbored.

It was a noble enough cause, so you naturally wanted in.

He had stayed with you for three weeks, working on his ship everyday and carving his way into your heart. The morning he was supposed to leave, you walked out with him, in the same field where you’d met.

“Yoongi, I’m going to miss you,” you said, biting your lip as he ran a few more diagnostic tests.

“Well, seeing as how I have become a constant in your life. Now that I am going to depart, sadness is to be expected,” he announced, not looking up from his device.

“Are you going to miss me?” you asked, feeling human emotions of possessiveness and the need to be wanted running rampant.

“For a bit I guess, but I’m young and I’m sure I’ll forget you one day,” he said, the sharpness of his words cutting you like a knife.

In the time you’d known Yoongi, you’d quickly figured out words were not his forefront. He often said things without thinking about the consequences they’d have on more emotionally fueled species, humans being the main example.

“Ah, I see,” you said, tears beginning to well up in your eyes. Yoongi’s head lifted at the waver in your tone. He hadn’t heard that sound from you before. The wetness in your eyes confused him. What were you doing that for? It seemed inconvenient after you had painted your face with ‘cosmetics’ as he noticed your eyelashes looked clumpier.

“What are you doing?” he asked, coming closer. You pushed him away and rubbed your eyes in frustration.

“Crying you idiot, it’s what humans do when they’re hurt or sad,” you explained, trying to save your makeup with a tissue.

“I know you’re sad ‘cause I’m leaving, but it’ll be alright. You’ll meet that marriage partner you were telling me about, have someone to be with,” he tried to make you feel better. But that only made the crying continue, at a much more alarming rate.

Sobs echoed through the field, birds going silent for fear of the unknown sound. Yoongi watched as your face turned red and your eyes produced an astonishing amount of liquid. He’d seen other creatures do something similar to this crying, but it wasn’t as hideous as this. Your nose was running as you fell to your knees. Yoongi, now worried for your safety followed you down and tried to see where the injury was.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, wondering if sadness truly was the cause of this outburst.

“Yes,” you whimpered, unable to really speak through the mess of snot and tears. Yoongi’s heart rate jumped. You were injured! He had to help you! The human race was rare enough as it was in the cosmos, and even more so on their home planet. To hell he’d let such a species die right before him.

“Where? Where does it hurt, what happened?” he asked. You pointed to your chest, right where the human heart should sit.

“My heart hurts,” you said, a tear falling from your eyelashes and hitting the ground below. Yoongi reached forward, touching your chest in a hurry. An unexpected pain hit his face and he held his cheek in astonishment.

“You hit me,” he said, his tone incredulous.

“Don’t touch my chest you weirdo! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” you screeched, tears stopping and face turning less red, a more pinkish color now, focused mainly in the cheeks.

“You said your heart hurts, I’m trying to save your life! And now my face hurts, you jerk,” he said, rubbing his tender flesh.

It was deathly quiet, before a snort erupted from your throat. Suddenly, you were laughing. The sound reached Yoongi’s ears and the familiarity of it soothed his worried mind. Yoongi offered a cock eyed grimace with no real malice inside. Just pure wonderment at a species that could literally change emotions with two or three seconds.

Once your laughter died down, you gave him a smile. Yoongi felt confusion sweep over him again. You still had tears of sadness in your eyes. But a smile generally meant humans were happy, did it not? How could you hold two emotions on your face? Humans truly were incredible.

“I really am going to miss you,” you said, reaching out to touch his face. Yoongi flinched, but then relaxed into the warmth of your palm. Uzmanics general run ten or twenty degrees lower than humans. Helping them adapt to the heat of their planet.

Yoongi felt a pang inside of his chest. An emotion unfamiliar to him.

Sadness.

He was sad that he was leaving also. But he knew there was much to do out in the universe. It was vast and unexplored and there was much to see. He couldn’t live here with you...

Uzmanics had a telepathic ability. If touched on the skin, they were able to see what the other was thinking. Generally, they had to get the person to relax and open up allowing them to see inside their mind. However, he didn’t have to search for your thoughts. They were there, almost pushing their way into his mind.

Yoongi’s face smiled back at him. The corn in full bloom. Your hands outstretched before him, reaching for his form. He came running back, taking your hand and leading you out into the blazing field, drenched in the afternoon sun. He watched as the two of you played in the field of corn, running amongst the stalks and laughing. When the night became dark, Yoongi saw himself in your bed next to you, sleeping soundly. Next he saw you looking down at your stomach, a wide bulbous mass in front of you. Yoongi was on his knees before you, placing his mouth against your skin. Then there was no longer a large mound on your body, but a small bundle in your arms, a tiny face with bright green eyes peering up at you.

A child, looking at it’s mother.

When you took your hand away, Yoongi almost followed. Wanting to continue to live in that fantasy you dreamed up for him. However, when your touch left, so did your emotions. He realized how ridiculous that was. Staying here? A dying Earth with a species that was already abandoning the ground for the skies. There wasn’t a chance he would stay here... Except, maybe for you.

“Yoongi?” you asked as the two of you stood from the ground. His hand was on the clasp for the ship, readying himself to pull open the door.

“Hmm?” he asked, turning to you.

“Can I ask a favor?” you offered, coming closer.

“I guess, what is it?” he said, dropping his hand from the metal.

“It’s human tradition to hug when there is a departure... I was wondering if we could hug, because your leaving and stuff,” you said, biting your lip.

“How do we hug?”

You chuckled at the question and came forward, wrapping your arms around his torso and leaning your head on his chest. Yoongi wrinkled his brows in confusion, but mimicked your behavior. The sensation was one of comfort, he realized. You didn’t want him to leave, so this was your way of seeking his comfort for the departure.

“I have to go,” he said, pulling his arms off of you.

“I know,” you said, doing the same.

“Hope your life goes as you want it to. Don’t die young, don’t be stupid and don’t cry so much. You look really gross when you do that,” he said, offering his advice. You laughed softly and nodded.

“I’ll try my best, thank you Yoongi,” you said.

“For what?”

“For crashing into the corn,” you explained.

Yoongi wasn’t sure how his desecration of your crops was a good thing, but he didn’t question it. He nodded before hauling himself into his ship and beginning to start the engines. His mind can’t shake that image though...

The look of pure happiness on his face, how happy you longed for him to be...

You were back on your porch, watching the spaceship beginning to depart. Your heart was breaking a thousand times over again. He really was leaving, he wasn’t going to stay with you... No matter how much you dreamed for it to be true.

Yoongi looked and used his heightened abilities to gaze at you on the porch, the tears were apparent still. But it wasn’t sobbing like earlier. It was just broken, small hiccups that shook your frame every now and again as you saw the engines begin to phase in correct alignment.

Pain gripped his heart as he saw you in that state. He didn’t know why the pain was there, but he didn’t like it one bit.

A fairly stupid idea struck him...

Perhaps you couldn’t live in a corn field together... But you could travel the stars together...

Yoongi jumped from the ship and ran across the field. You noticed his frame and began to run as well. Tripping over your legs and rushing to be by his side again. Once near each other, you wrapped your arms around his neck. Yoongi, unsure of what kind of expression this was quickly unraveled your limbs and took your hands.

“Yoongi, what-”

“Come with me,” he demanded.

“What?”

“Get into that spaceship, and come with me,” he said, pointing to the door.

“Are you serious?” you asked, smiling at him then the ship before you.

“Of course I am, but are you?” he asked, raising a blue eyebrow at you.

“Definitely.”

And that’s how this journey started. In a field of corn, with a dream.

* * *

Now, you had been traveling with Yoongi for almost two years. The two of you were the best of friends. The only friend he’d ever had, really. The Uzmanics don’t really form bonds with others, it is seen as messy and kind of unimportant to tangle yourself with other individuals in their eyes... But, when they do form a bond it is an intense one.

Yoongi and yourself had seen many things together. Some terrifying, some incredible. And everything was still ahead of you. There was too much out there to see, and not enough time to see it. But like fuck if you weren’t going to try.

Yoongi had decided upon another topic of research... Saving species. How to do so and how to make them repopulate in an efficient manner. He’d been reading for almost three months, and you were getting rather bored with it all. The last planet you’d been on had a stagnant population and was dying out rather quickly. It was a similar background as yours, but a few stages further along.

Ever since Yoongi saw the dead fetus in their laboratory, something struck within him. He never wanted to see that again.

Although, being on warp speed for a few months can get really fucking boring.

Time to pester!

You wandered down the halls of the ship, making your way to Yoongi’s study. He’d spent most of his time in here as of late. And you were not happy with the abandonment.

Knocking on the door caused a muffled groan of ‘enter’, from Yoongi’s lips. You strolled in, smiling and ready to cause mischief, it was one of your specialities.

“Yoongiiiii~” you breathed, sitting on his desk next to him as he read his book.

“What is it, Y/N. I’m busy,” he announced.

“Busy, oh I see. Am I that uninteresting that you’d rather read your book?”

“If that’s how you want to take it, sure,” he said.

You peaked at the book he was reading.

Anatomy of the Human Male - Volume 12

He was reading about your species? You wondered for what purpose.

“What are you reading that for?” you asked, leaning against his shoulders.

“The human race is one of the races closest to extinction. I am wondering if breeding with other species will help the gene pool become more varied, helping with fertilization. I’m studying up on the males to see what sort of species could be compatible,” he said.

“Wow, you really want to save us,” you explained. Yoongi looked at you and nodded.

“I never want to see the result of infertility again. It was horrific,” he swallowed thickly.

“Well, what species have you found to be compatible?” you asked.

“A few, humans are a fickle race. Females don’t breed easily, and when they do the fertility has to be timed and cycled correctly for the egg to be bred correctly, then the female has to take care of the-”

“Yoongi, I know all about that. I happen to be a human female myself,” you commented.

“That’s right, I forget that sometimes,” he sighed. “The Adamantians might be a good fit, however their abandonment of young might not feel correct for humans.”

“Absolutely not,” you said.

“What?”

“Is that the thing you’d have females breeding with? Hell no, for my fellow human females I’ll be the one picking here. Show me another one,” you said.

Yoongi flushed slightly, but continued with his list. “The Extraxians also pose good numbers, however the males are a little awkward to say the least... The females might have good luck with human males though,” he noted.

“Ew, gross. I could never have sex with that,” you stated. Yoongi sighed and continued on down the list.

Failure after failure. Yoongi kept running into the same problem.

His lack of knowledge on the actual act of breeding, as well as the females anatomy. All of the books of female reproduction and breeding are highly sought after, due to their rarity.

“Y/N, quit making gagging sounds over there and help me figure this out,” he said rubbing his face in frustration.

“Well, Yoongi it sounds like there is a lack of data for the experiment. So, gather more data. Find more books to read and stuff,” you said, pushing your hair out of your face.

“I can’t gather data on a dying race, there isn’t enough of them. Plus, the books on female anatomy are far too expensive, I’d have to sell everything in order to purchase just a chapter,” he said, rubbing his face.

“Yoongi,” you whispered, biting your lip yet again. He was worried for the skin there.

“Hmm?”

“What if I told you, there was something better than a book that could tell you everything you wanted to know about female anatomy of the human race?” you said, blushing. Yoongi was confused to say the least. What could possibly be better than one of the most sought after pieces of literature in the modern age?

“What are you talking about?” he asked, taking his glasses off to look at you.

“Yoongi, I am a human female.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “We’ve discussed this,” he muttered, losing interest.

“Which means I have female human anatomy,” you said. Yoongi thought about your statement.

“Y/N, it’s so kind of you to offer, but I don’t want to kill you and cut you open for science. You’re a friend of mine,” he said, pushing his hair up off of his face.

“What? No! I don’t want you to dissect me! I’ll show you on my body, Yoongi!” you said. Yoongi thought about it for a moment. It seemed like a rather good idea.

“Alright, that’s fair. How would you like to proceed?” he asked.

“Well, I guess you could ask me what parts you’re confused about and I’ll show them to you and explain how they work,” you said, coming closer. Yoongi nodded and looked at his book.

“Alright, so the hips seem to be mentioned frequently. Can you show me your hips please?” Yoongi asked, you nodded and slowly lifted your shirt, exposing your stomach to him. He marveled at the smooth texture it appeared to have.

“My hips are here,” you said, pointing to the joint just underneath your ribs and the skin that slightly flares out. Yoongi nodded and came closer.

“Am I allowed to touch you?” he asked, looking up for permission.

“Yes,” you breathed slowly. Yoongi nodded and reached forward, his skin touching yours. Ever since the two of you began traveling together, he put up an impressive mental wall to keep your thoughts yours and his thoughts his. But your skin was beautiful. He loved how soft and supple it felt against his hands. As primal as humans could be, they had a very lovely feeling.

“So your bone should be,” he gripped a bit tightly. “Here.”

He smiled and turned to his notebook, writing down a few obscure scribbles.

“Next the Iliac Crest,” he announced.

“It’s kind of hard to show you, let me guide your hand,” you said, reaching your palm towards him. He nodded and let you move his hand down your stomach along the side of your hip that sloped towards your lower body. “Do you feel that dip? That’s the Iliac Crest,” you confirmed. Yoongi nodded and felt your skin, enjoying the sensation.

“Interesting, how about the breasts?” he asked. You squealed slightly, moving up to cup your chest from nerves. “Where are they?” he asked, wondering what was taking you so long.

“U-um, well. Those are considered intimate parts to humans...”

“Y/N, I’m not going to hurt you. It’s scientific, I promise you. I just want to help,” he said, rubbing his thumb against your hip gently. The feeling made you crumple and you nodded.

“This is embarrassing for me so, don’t be so... blunt, please,” you said, pulling your shirt over your head. Yoongi stared at the new skin revealed to him. You had more fabric on underneath the shirt you were wearing... How much clothing did you need?

“So, where are your breasts?” he asked yet again. You blushed and unhooked the oddly shaped clothing item and let it fall to the floor. What he saw were two peaks with a beautiful rosy nub at the tip.

“T-these are, um... My breasts,” you said, trying not to cover yourself.

Yoongi stood up and surveyed the territory. Men didn’t have these, that was for sure.

“What do you have these for?” he asked, looking at them, wondering about their purpose.

“To feed children when they’re born. Much like animals with their kids, human mothers produce milk from their breasts full of nutrients to help their young,” you explained. Yoongi nodded and wrote down the information.

“May I, uh, touch them?” he asked, not wanting to over step.

“Yes,” you whispered. “Just be gentle... They’re, ah, very sensitive,” you commented. Yoongi nodded and reached his hands forward cupping your skin in his palms. The rounded buds poked at his skin.

“What are the pink colored buds at the end of your breasts?” he asked, continuing to feel your chest.

“A-ah, they are my nipples... That’s where the child feeds from,” you said, biting your lip. Yoongi squeezed particularly hard and a moan ripped through your throat. Yoongi dropped his hands and looked at you with concern.

“Are you alright?” he asked, touching your shoulder. You nodded quickly, eager for his touch.

“It’s fine, like I said it’s just... sensitive...”

“Okay, that’s alright... Um, well. The next thing would be the mons pubis?” he said, looking at you expectantly.

“Oh,” you said, looking at the ground.

“Is something wrong?” Yoongi asked.

“Well, that’s a woman’s most sensitive place... That’s our genitals. Everything we need for making the baby is down there,” you said, pointing to your pants. Yoongi nodded.

“I don’t have to see it, if you don’t want me to... You can just explain and I’ll try to find out from there-”

“No,” you said firmly. “I want to help too. If me being a little embarrassed can help save humans then I can tough it out,” you said, getting up on his desk.

“What are you doing?” he asked, looking at your position on his desk.

“I need you to help me take these off,” you said, undoing your pants. Yoongi nodded and came forward, helping you push the material off of your legs. You sat on his desk, clad in only your light blue panties. Yoongi observed you, assessing the situation.

“Are you certain we can continue, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he said, touching your knee.

“Yeah, it’s alright, I’m alright.”

Yoongi nodded and slowly pulled your panties down and off your legs, exposing your vagina. Yoongi dropped to his knees before you and pushed your legs apart slowly.

“Alright so where’s the mons pubis?” he asked, gazing at the pink tones.

“Up here,” you said, moving your hands against your pelvic region. Yoongi nodded and took a few notes.

“Alright and-”

“Don’t you want to touch it?” you asked, Yoongi flushed.

“I don’t think that’s going to be necessary you seem nervous and-” he was cut off as you moved his hand to your skin. He felt the soft hair that collected there. As well as the heat that was radiating from further down.

“W-what’s next?” you asked.

“The Labium Majus?” he stated. You moved your hand and his down to the lips of your center. He touched the hot skin there and grabbed his pen once more.

“Right here,” you said, panting at the attention he was giving you.

“I see,” he noted, writing again.

“Where else do you want to see?” you asked, waiting for instructions.

“The Labium Minus,” Yoongi said, lifting his eyes from his books to look at your center.

“Those should be, right-ah!” you gasped, feeling his finger brush against your clit. Yoongi looked to you with concern.

“Did I hurt you? Are you alright?” he asked, moving his hand away. You nodded quickly.

“You didn’t hurt me, but that’s another part I’ll teach you quickly. That’s the clitourous, it-it’s one of the most sensitive parts on the female body. It provides pleasure during intercourse,” you explained, trying to keep your heart rate under control.

“Oh, I see...” he commented, looking at the small bud with curiosity. “Can I touch it again?” he asked, wondering if your reactions would continue.

“Yes, please,” you begged. Yoongi moved his thumb over your pearl again and you arched your back into his touch. Yoongi noticed your reaction and made a note of it in his mind. A willing female participant and a compatible alien...

The final and most likely pair to create an offspring was a human female with a male Uzmanic...

Yoongi kept his pace up, watching as your skin began to flush and turn a soft shade of pink. He stared at your center as it began to lubricate itself, or he assumed that’s what you were doing.

“Y/N, you’re creating a substantial amount of fluid-”

“I’m wet for you, Yoongi,” you breathed, staring into his eyes.

Uzmanic males had similar biology to human males. They looked rather similar from the books that Yoongi had read, however Uzmanics were a tad bigger than the average human male. However, they had the same set up. Testicles and a penis all in the same areas on their bodies. Although he had a feeling his intercourse was much different than the human’s.

Although Yoongi couldn’t figure out why human men had nipples. Since you just stated females used them during feeding their young, did males feed the young as well? Seemed a little much to be completely honest.

“Y/N, I need to tell you something,” Yoongi said, pulling his hand away and lifting you up towards him. You looked at him with slightly glassy eyes, a hunger set within them... But you were still attentive.

“What is it?” you questioned, suddenly feeling the chill of your nakedness. Yoongi brought you closer to himself.

“After you’ve told me your biological set up, and from the few things other anatomy books have had to say. I believe I have a perfect match for the female human specimens,” he stated.

“Alright, but if it has tentacles I’m out,” you said, resting your cheek on his chest.

“Uzmanic males would be a highly successful test subject with human females. Uzmanic males share many traits as human males do,” Yoongi sighed.

“Wait, what? You mean your kind and mine would have a good chance with having kids?” you questioned. Yoongi nodded.

“Yes, Uzmanic males are very virile, due to the process being rather uneventful not much comes out when ejaculate is produced, so what is given to the females has to be effective,” he stated, thinking back on the times he took part in breeding on his home planet. It was usually quick, boring and slightly messy. All together, it was an uninteresting experience.

“Yoongi, are you suggesting we... we try to have a baby?” you asked, lifting your head and looking at him with curiosity. Yoongi thought about it for a moment.

“Well you responded nicely to my touch not too long ago, so perhaps we should try it. We could figure out if intercourse between our species is successful. Some species don’t react to each other, so the mating process can’t continue,” he explained.

“Uh, so you want to try having sex with me?” Yoongi thought for a moment, he wasn’t feeling particularly aroused by you, but he was curious.

“We could try, I suppose,” he said, looking at you.

“Will I get pregnant?” you asked, feeling a sense of overwhelming nerves hit you in the stomach.

“I’m not too sure, we’ll have to see,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head.

“Yoongi, do you know anything about human intercourse?” you questioned as he took his boots off.

“Not particularly, but I know how my species breeds so I’m assuming it’s fairly similar. Seeing as how our species have some mimicry in our structural set up. Why, is there something I should know?” he asked, coming closer.

“Um, no... Just, not sure about this,” you breathed, looking at the marks on his skin with interest.

“If you aren’t sure then we don’t have to do this. You’ve shown me a great deal, so I can just go find another human female who might be more comfortable with the idea-”

“Absolutely not,” you stated, feeling jealousy burn in your cheeks.

“But, Y/N if you don’t consent then I won’t feel comfortable-”

“Put whatever thing you have into me and don’t mention another girl ever again,” you growled, gripping the desk with rage. Yoongi was startled at your statement, not expecting such ferocity from you.

“Alright then, when would you like to have intercourse?”

The desire for him you felt earlier was slowly fizzling out with all the scientific talk, you had to salvage this.

“No time like the present, I’m already naked so,” you said, covering yourself slightly. Yoongi nodded and continued where he left off. You watched as his markings became more apparent to you. His skin was rather beautiful to behold. The deep royal blue that weaved with his muscles made your heart race. Yoongi looked at you watching him. You truly were entranced by him, and he felt something stur in his stomach. What was that feeling?

“Okay, how do we proceed?” he questioned, looking at himself then to you. Your mouth was dry at his appearance. Already, you could see striking differences between him and other human men. First, he had no belly button or nipples, it was a smooth expanse of skin that all wound around, covering his flesh. His eyes were bright green against the pale gray of his body, making your stomach clench. He was truly something to behold.

“H-How do you guys have sex?” you asked, looking at his length, sitting flaccid against his thigh. Yoongi shrugged.

“Nothing too exciting. The females release a pheromone into the air that gets us males enticed and then we approach. Once the female consents to the union she takes us into her opening and squeezes, providing us with stimulation that’s enough to produce ejactulate. Once that’s over she’s usually pregnant,” he said, rubbing his arm. You blushed.

“Where are the females openings?” you questioned. Yoongi’s hand came to your skin and poked your belly button. You squealed at the sensation, making him crack a smile.

“Around this area, we ejaculate directly into the womb, seeing as how our females don’t have a great deal of reproductive organs,” he explained.

“Mine is a tad lower than my belly button,” you stated.

“Belly what?” Yoongi asked, looking at your stomach in confusion.

“Don’t worry about that, I’ll tell you later. Let’s focus on this right now,” you said, taking his hand.

“Fair enough, but how do you humans have sex? Is it different?” he questioned, looking at your belly button with mute wonder.

“A bit, firstly you don’t stick anything in my belly button,” you laughed.

“I still am confused on that part, but continue,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Well, you have a penis. So that makes things a little less confusing for me,” you said, gazing at his cock with a throb going straight to your center. “And you put it in my vagina, then we sort of, just go at it... Pretty simple,” you said.

“What do you mean, ‘go at it’? Do you not squeeze like female Uzmanics?” he questioned, wondering what kind of stimulation you provided to get his semen.

“A bit, but I don’t do all the work like the other females do. We work together to finish,” you explained.

“Finish what?” he asked. You smacked your forehead.

“We both ejactulate,” you tried again. Yoongi screwed his face in distaste.

“Well I certainly don’t want to get pregnant,” he said, looking at his stomach. You sighed, rubbing your face in frustration.

“Yoongi you won’t get pregnant. Women orgasm, it’s a rush of pleasure that signals the ending of sex... Sometimes. Women can generally have multiple orgasms. There’s research to suggest that it’s a reward to promote more sperm competition and things of the like. Generally, women just want sex because it feels good. However, we’re working for a very specific goal so I don’t necessarily need to orgasm to get pregnant,” you said, already hating the idea of being left high and dry by this male.

Yoongi seemed to think for a minute. “Sex feels good for you?” he asked, looking to your vagina with curiosity. You swatted him away and crossed your arms over your chest.

“Yes, it does. Pleasure is the way that keeps humans from dying off... However, that didn’t help when gene pools became stagnant...”

“That’s interesting, so say you did get pregnant and have a child. You’d want to continue having sex after the birth of this child because it feels good? You wouldn’t feel like sex was just a means to have a baby?” he quizzed. You nodded.

“Most humans don’t have sex to produce offspring, they do it to feel pleasure and to become closer to another,” you explained. Yoongi nodded and grabbed his notebook quickly, jotting your statements down.

“I see, that is very different from Uzmanics. Women only breed once then are finished,” he said. “So you’re saying that you can have multiple children in succession to one another,” he confirmed.

“Yes, but it is very difficult on the female body. Usually women try to have children with a few years between them so their bodies can recover from the stress of bearing a child,” you stated. He seemed to understand this and continued his note taking. “However, we’re getting very off track. We’re supposed to be having sex,” you said, reaching for him. Yoongi looked at your outstretched arms with confusion.

“What are you doing?” he asked, looking at you.

“I want to kiss you...?” you questioned, wondering why he was so weirded out by your approach.

“I don’t know what that is,” he said, looking at you and raising his eyebrow.

“It’s a way of showing affection, we put our lips together and... Uh, kiss,” you said, struggling to come up with better explanation but failing.

“Is it necessary for breeding?” he questioned, looking at your lips with curiosity.

“It will help me relax,” you said, lifting your gaze to his. Yoongi nodded and accepted your advances this time.

Slowly, you leaned forward and placed your lips on his in a soft kiss. Yoongi sat there wondering what this had to do with anything. It wasn’t that he didn’t like it or anything, it just seemed a little unnecessary. Yet again, there was the stirring in his stomach that made his penis twitch oddly. He jumped from the sensation and your lips seperated with a pop.

“Are you alright?” you asked, looking at him with concern in your features. Yoongi nodded, looking down at his genitals, disoriented.

“Yeah, my penis felt weird for a moment. Anyways, let's continue,” he said, coming forward and moving to press his lips to yours this time. You didn’t have time to question his little outburst before his mouth hit yours. You felt his cool skin against your lips and sighed in pleasure. He wasn’t moving, just sitting there with his mouth touching yours. It was a bit odd, so you started to move your lips slowly, trying to encourage him to do the same. Yoongi pulled back for a moment, staring at your mouth.

“Yoongi, this isn’t going to work if you keep moving away from me,” you sighed, exasperated at his constant stopping.

“This isn’t doing anything, why are you insisting upon it?” he asked. You bit your lip and wrung your hands together.

“It’s apart of human nature to show affection during this process. Since it’s in our biology to do this to make a child, it’s a romantic gesture... Usually it isn’t so test tube and scientific, the mood isn’t right. I can’t relax when you keep acting like a stranger,” you accused.

Yoongi frowned. Was he truly too detached from this experience? It was obviously putting you in a negative mood, something not helpful when trying to produce a child. He wanted you to be comfortable and happy during this time, perhaps he should attempt a different method.

“I’m sorry,” he began. “You know I’m not good with emotions, no Uzmanic is. That’s probably the biggest difference between humans and us. You are creatures of feeling and sensation. Uzmanics believe in logic and science above all else. That’s where we’re getting stuck,” he explained. “So, I will try to get out of my own head and be here in this moment with you. Because, I’ve found over traveling with you for so long... Being in the present, the here and now seems to be the best place for me... As long as you’re there with me,” he said, pressing his forehead against yours in an affectionate way.

Yoongi waited for your response with bated breath, hoping that his little show of emotion would help break down his walls and help you come to him. A small smile lit across your face, burning away the sadness and discomfort of earlier.

“Thank you, I appreciate that. I think another reason we’re getting stuck is that I’m in your study and not on a comfortable surface. Let’s try moving this somewhere else,” you suggested, standing up.

“That could be a good idea,” Yoongi agreed.

“Alright, let’s go to my room.”

*  *  *

Yoongi was sat on your bed, a robe wrapped around his frame. You insisted that this would help set the mood. He had been waiting for you to finish in the bathroom, yet another thing you said would be crucial in the long run. He ran the fabric between his fingers, letting the softness warm him. However, a sour taste reached his mouth as he realized... It wasn’t as soft as you.

Eventually, Yoongi was certain you had fallen asleep in the bathroom and was going to abandon this for the time being when the door opened. You stood there in a robe similar to his, but much shorter and made out of a different material. The color was a deep, royal blue... A color familiar to him as he looked at his skin.

“Are you ready?” he asked, watching as you came forward.

“As I’ll ever be,” you breathed, standing right in front of him.

“So, how should we proceed?” he asked, looking at your wet hair. “Did you bathe?” he questioned, taking a strand between his fingers. You nodded and lifted your leg onto the bed.

“Touch,” you offered, pulling the robe up off your thigh slowly. Yoongi nodded and reached out, placing his hand on your shin. Your skin was warm to the touch, his cool skin meshing with your own nicely. He heard you sigh in content, closing your eyes and relaxing. “Go higher,” you suggested. He did as instructed, moving his hand up over your knee. The skin he found was so smooth and soft, it was pleasant to feel.

“You’re soft,” he said quietly, admiring the way you reacted to his touch.

“Thank you,” you commented. “I’m going to take my robe off, but keep yours on alright?” you requested. Yoongi nodded and closed his eyes.

“You may disrobe whenever you like,” he said, keeping his eyes shut. He felt your hand on his cheek, causing his eyes to lift open. You were staring at him, a soft look in your eyes.

“Don’t look away, I have something to show you.” Yoongi nodded and did as you asked, keeping his eyes open and on your body.

With patient movements you undid the tie around your waist, pulling the silken fabric apart. Yoongi wasn’t sure what purpose this served, but it was almost irritating how slow you were. He wanted to see you again. He came to the conclusion that he like how you looked naked. You were different than Uzmanic females, of course, but it wasn’t a bad different. The pink tones of your skin made him more worked up than he had realized.

Finally the robe fell to the floor and you stood before him with more material over yourself. He recognized the design of the clothing, but didn’t know what they were for. “You still have more clothing on? How long does the mating process between humans take?” he asked, propping his head up on his palm. You made a sort of distressed squeak and crossed your arms over your chest.

“This is called lingerie, it’s used to help women arouse males with pretty fabric,” you said, turning around to show him. Yoongi did think that it looked nice, but it was still on you and keeping him from touching your skin.

“Seems a bit redundant when it’s just going to be taken off anyways,” he feigned irritation, raising an eyebrow. You huffed in annoyance at your seducing techniques going AWOL.

“I’m trying to arouse you! Do Uzmanics really not enjoy sex to the point when a woman offers themselves up to them on a silver platter, they turn around and say they wanted gold?”

“I never said I wasn’t aroused,” he said, keeping a level face. Yoongi couldn’t deny that you looked good. But it all seemed a little useless when the process wasn’t going to be very long.

“A-are you aroused by me, Yoongi?” you asked, a blush rising to your cheeks.

“Sure,” he said, not conveying any kind of emotion to back up his statement.

“Sure? I’m stood here in the nicest set of lingerie I own and all you can say is sure? What do I have to do to get you excited to have sex with me?” you asked, coming closer.

Yoongi thought about it for a minute... The female pheromones that were released during their breeding sessions usually made him feel a little sick, not aroused. But he wasn’t sure if he’d ever been truly aroused in his life. The women of his home were pretty, sure, but nothing of great importance. You were already much more beautiful in his opinion. Especially with your soft skin...

“Not too sure, I don’t know if I’ve ever been aroused in my life... Uzmanics don’t use sex as a means to procure pleasure. We do it so our race doesn’t die out. Necessary evil if you will. It’s painful for the woman and the men don’t generally get much enjoyment out of hurting their partner, so it’s all together kind of boring and unsatisfying,” he said.

“Is your penis sensitive? Like, do you gain pleasure from being inside the females?” you asked. Yoongi thought back and nodded.

“Yes, it feels nice when we’re inside them. But generally they are screaming so you feel bad to gain any kind of pleasure from the encounter,” he explained. You sighed in relief and went to your knees.

“Then I have an idea,” you said, crawling in between his legs.

“What is it?” he asked, looking at you being so close to his length was sort of awkward.

“I’m going to blow you,” you said, moving his robe aside and looking at his length with determination in your eyes.

“Blow me what-ah!” Yoongi yelped as you took his penis in your mouth. He gripped your shoulders and bit his lip, not knowing what to do with the sensations. It was so hot inside of your mouth. Since Uzmanics have their lower body temperatures the feeling of being enveloped by something so warm and wet was incredible.

You wrapped your hand around his shaft and began pumping up and down, ensuring every inch of his cock was covered in slick. Yoongi trembled at the sensation, eyes closed shut from the feeling. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath as he focused on your touch. The way your skin felt against his, caressing his length unlike the females he’d been with before.

“Do you like it? Does it feel nice?” you asked, licking the underside of his shaft and sucking on the tip like a popsicle. Yoongi wasn’t sure he could speak, so overwhelmed by you. Every slight adjustment of your grip on his dick made him shiver slightly. He gave a nod, biting his lip harsh enough to draw blood.

You stared at his face, feeling pleasure course through your core. It was almost embarrassing how soaked your panties were, enough to stick to your center. Yoongi was slowly losing grip on his mental state, slowly feeling your thoughts sweep into his mind.

He could feel your pleasure just from sucking him, how much you got off on it. Your emotions plus his own physical state started pushing him towards an edge. He’d ejaculated before, obviously, but this sensation was something completely heightened. Different than the times he’d bred before.

“Y-Y/N, I feel really weird,” he warned, trying to get you to stop. But you wanted to taste him, more than anything.

“It’s okay, Yoongi. Let it out, let me taste you... I want it, please give it to me,” you whined, pumping him aggressively. Your words caused a wire inside him to snap.

He came with a shout into your mouth, surprising more than you with the velocity and the amount he produced. He couldn’t seem to stop, he wanted to fill you up... When the sensitivity set in, Yoongi pulled himself from your mouth. You swallowed his cum and wiped your lips, looking Yoongi in the eyes with desire. Without knowing why, Yoongi surged forward and captured your mouth with his, causing you to fall back onto the floor. He followed you, not severing the kiss, moving his palms to yours. You interlocked your fingers and encouraged him to kiss you deeper. Yoongi seemed to pick up quickly, licking into your mouth with fervor.

Yoongi pulled back and licked his lips, tasting himself on your tongue. “I can see the appeal of kissing now,” he breathed, leaning back down and swallowing your mouth once again. You gripped his neck to keep yourself grounded. The lack of air made your head spin, but you didn’t want to be seperated for even a moment. Yoongi finally let you pull back, as a gasp filled the air.

“Touch me,” you pleaded, pulling at his robe. Yoongi nodded and ripped the material off, relishing in the smooth feeling of your skin. You moaned as Yoongi licked at your throat. He wasn’t sure why, but he wanted to lick and kiss every part of your body. Leaving bruises and marks in his wake.

“I feel like I can’t think straight... What’s going on with me,” Yoongi wondered out loud, looking at your frame beneath him.

“I know... I feel it too. Please, please fuck me,” you moaned, trying to lift your hips for any kind of friction. Yoongi almost yelped from the sensation of your wet heat trailing across his aching length. You looked up at him with pleading eyes, biting your lip intensely. Yoongi moved forward, kissing your stomach then lower, right above your center. He wasn’t sure why, but the smell coming from there made his mouth water uncontrollably. He wanted to lick you there, taste you as you tasted him.

“Y/N, can I?” he begged, gazing up to you for permission. You nodded quickly, brushing his blue hair from his eyes. Without any form of restraint he dove into your center, tongue laving a large swipe from the base of your core to right below your panty line. An agonized moan left your mouth at the sensation. It was almost too good. Yoongi went right back to your mound and licked at your center like a man possessed. He’d never smelt something so arousing. He felt he could burst again at the taste of your liquid sliding onto his greedy tongue. You arched your back and felt his nose brush against your clit, causing you to hiss in pleasure.

“Yoongi, my clit... Please focus there, I wanna cum,” you murmured, tangling your fingers into his hair. He complied, moving his muscle over your sweet pearl. He sucked and pulled at the flesh, wanting to hear more of your sounds. You panted his name, watching as he kissed your clit multiple times. The building of your orgasm was beginning to reach its peak. Yoongi couldn’t seem to get enough, kissing your lower lips and sucking to get more of your flavor in his mouth.

“So sweet,” he moaned against your core, pulling your leg over his shoulder so he could move deeper into you with his tongue. He found a hole towards the bottom of your vagina. He experimentally dipped his tongue inside to explore, when you cried out in pleasure. Yoongi looked to you with worry, but you shook your head quickly.

“Yoongi, please don’t stop. Feels good, keep going baby,” you pleaded, almost on the verge of tears because you wanted to cum so badly. Complying with your request Yoongi slowly pushed his tongue back inside your cavern, feeling the velvet of your walls touch him softly. He moaned at the feeling, wanting to put a different part of himself in this place.

He was rock hard against his thigh, dripping down onto the floor, making a mess of the carpet. However, he couldn’t find a single fuck to give at the moment. All that mattered was you. The sounds you were making and how you felt against his body.

“Gonna cum, ah-ah!” you whined, back arching off the floor and you flooding Yoongi’s mouth with your juices. He swallowed, slowing his licks, as you shuddered from your high. You dropped to the ground with a thud and your chest was rising and falling with the effort of breathing. Yoongi could feel your heart rate thrumming in your inner thigh and he was almost alarmed at the pace.

“Breathe, Y/N,” he coaxed, kissing your stomach slowly. He relished in the softness against his mouth. Every part of your body was enticing to him. How hadn’t he noticed before this night? How beautiful you were? How fast you made his heart beat...

When your breathing evened out, Yoongi nudged your cheek with his nose. Sleepily, you turned your head and caught his lips in a kiss. He parted your lips with his tongue and you could sense his urgency against your thigh. “Yoongi,” you whispered, hand coming up to cup his cheek. He leaned into your touch and gazed into your eyes. “Make me a mother, please,” you begged, wanting to be filled up so much you couldn’t walk the next day.

A possessive growl filled the room and Yoongi hauled you from the ground and onto your bed. A searing kiss placed on your lips made you moan, wrapping your arms around Yoongi’s neck as he pulled at your bra with irritation. “Get this off,” he demanded, sitting back on his haunches. You sat up and undid the back, letting the material fall off your wrist and onto the floor. Yoongi pushed forward, gripping your breasts with his hands, kneading your sensitive flesh.

“Ah!” you cried out, giving Yoongi’s neck open mouthed kisses as he fondled your chest.

“These will be swollen with milk for our child,” he moaned, moving his mouth to your nipple and sucking it into his mouth. You cried out and ran your fingers through his hair. Encouraged by your sounds, he continued, flicking the bud with his tongue and gently nipping with his teeth. You could feel your wetness sliding down your thighs as Yoongi continued with your breasts.

“Please, please stop teasing me and put it in,” you sobbed, shaking from want. Yoongi pulled back and nodded, grasping his length and pushing it against your center desperately.

“I-It’s different than our females... W-where do I?” he asked, looking to you for help. You gripped his length and guided it to your entrance, feeling it dip in slightly due to Yoongi’s work earlier.

“There, just be slow... It’s going to sting for me a little bit,” you said, shifting your hips slowly. Yoongi felt his heart jump. Sting? It was going to hurt you like it hurt the other females?

“I-I can’t hurt you... I won’t,” he stated firmly, beginning to pull away.

“No!” you cried, reaching for him desperately. Yoongi was shocked at your outburst, but remained still. “I need you, please... Please put it in, I want the pain... I want it all because it’s you. I want all of you with me, forever. Yoongi please,” you whispered into his neck.

“I crashed in your cornfield, I probably destroyed hundreds of years of work,” he stated, already losing his moral compass at the feeling of your breasts pressed against him.

“Then make it up to me and plant another seed,” you said, taking his hand and resting it on your stomach. Yoongi stared at your hand and his, interlocked over where your womb should be... His heart throbbed at the want... A family that he could be apart of. Not one that only wanted him for a few moments. Someone who wanted him because they desired his company and enjoyed being around him...

“I will,” he said, cradling your head in another kiss and following you down onto the mattress. Yoongi found your entrance with ease and looked to you for one final blink of permission. You nodded and he slowly pushed forward.

The heat hit him first. It was hotter than your mouth, tighter too. The feeling of being enveloped so entirely in the plush walls of your core. Yoongi gripped your waist and kept you still. A soft yelp came from your kiss swollen lips.

“Oh fuck, Yoongi,” you sighed, leaning your head back on the bed and gripping onto his bicep for some kind of traction to keep you in reality.

His throbbing, thick length had you gasping for air. You’d never experienced something quite like this before. So cool, yet pulsating in rhythm to Yoongi’s heart beat. His hands were practically glued to your sides, making you squirm from the unrelenting pressure.

“Please, move Yoongi. Fuck me,” you cried out. He stared at you with confusion. You weren’t squeezing like you were supposed to.

“How am I supposed to move? Why aren’t you clenching tightly?” he questioned, sweat pouring down his face.

“Oh I’m sorry I’m not tight enough for you,” you said, trying not to clench out of spite. Yoongi whined, rutting against you almost instinctively. Unsure of how to continue, he kissed your lips for reprieve.

“How? How do I do it? Y/N, tell me how do I fuck you?” he asked, licking into your mouth with such wanton desire it was contagious.

“Your hips,” you rasped. “Move them back, then forward again. Build a rhythm,” you said, trailing your hands to the flesh of his ass and gripping tightly. Yoongi squawked and bucked into you harshly, drawing a grunt from your lungs. The harsh strike of pleasure hit your spine and you arched into him.

“Like this?” he questioned, pulling his hips back then pushing back into your heat again. You nodded, drawing marks down his skin. Watching as they swelled up and rivaled his natural skin tone.

“That feels so good,” you panted, watching as his cock disappeared inside of you and reappeared with your fluids covering it in the glimmer of the dim light. You observed as Yoongi’s eyebrow furrowed with effort, trying to keep his pace as well as deliver pleasure to both parties.

“Shit, I’ve never felt anything like this... What is this sensation, being inside of you is so incredible,” he gasped, his head falling into the crook of your neck. Yoongi splattered kisses there mindlessly, so focused on the feeling of you consuming him. You gripped onto his biceps and rocked your hips against him, easing him into the rhythm.

You couldn’t breathe evenly, Yoongi’s thrusts becoming harsher as time went on. “Oh fuck, Yoongi!” you yelped, digging your nails into his beautiful flesh and watches as blood pricked against his skin. He hissed but the pain only egged him on. He plunged into your heat with desperation, the sensation becoming overwhelming.

“Y-Y/N, I feel really weird,” he warned, continuing the watch the lewd scene before him.

“Are you gonna cum, Yoongi?” you asked, reaching up to wrap your arms around his neck, forcing your hips down against him. Yoongi whined at the feeling of your walls clenching down on him.

“W-What’s does that mean?” he asked, grasping at your chest. Kneading the delicate skin to provide you more pleasure.

“Means you’ll finish in me, and get me pregnant,” you breathed. Yoongi gasped at the statement.

“Oh, fuck,” he groaned, tensing up. Suddenly, there was the overwhelming heat that signaled his release. The watching Yoongi’s face cloud over in pleasure sent you over the edge. Your walls fluttered around Yoongi, pulling another shot of cum from his length.

A few moments later, Yoongi collapsed onto the bed. You felt his length slide out of you, causing a shudder to rush down your spine. Yoongi and yourself were panting harshly, feeling the afterglow of your orgasms flood your system.

Silence rested in the room, not uncomfortable or unwanted. Yoongi’s breathing began to even out and your mind became a little less foggy.

“Yoongi?” you whispered, feeling the dampness between your legs grow uncomfortable.

“Yeah?” he whispered back, turning his head to look at you.

“Can you get me a washcloth?”

“Why?”

“Because your stuff is drying on my legs and it’s disgusting,” you stated. Yoongi cleared his throat in embarrassment but quickly got up and went to the bathroom. He was back a few moments later and crawled onto the bed, between your legs once more. You couldn’t help the thrill of pleasure that ran down of your spine at the sight.

“Don’t clench like that or I’m going to fuck you again,” he warned, wiping your legs down.

“Well... Maybe we should make sure I really do get pregnant.”

Silence.

“God damn it, get on your knees.”

---

You woke up three weeks later, fitful stomach the only thing on your mind.

Quickly you threw yourself through the bathroom door and emptied last night's meal into your toilet. Yoongi ran in, sleep still present in his face but concern running through his veins.

“Are you alright?” he asked, coming next to you with a cold cloth to press against the back of your neck. You nodded, leaning into his touch.

“Stomach is upset,” you complained. Yoongi’s head perked up, looking at you with raised eyebrows.

“Is this morning sickness? Are you pregnant?” he asked. You thought for a moment. You weren’t due for your period for another week, however it didn’t hurt to check.

“I’m not sure. I’m not late, but you can give me a test and I’ll take it,” you said.

Yoongi booked it out of the room and grabbed his medical supplies kit. The dreaded white stick was handed to you and a timer set.

You walked out after washing your hands. Yoongi and you leant against the wall, waiting for the test to develop.

“Do you want to be pregnant?” he asked, looking at you with his bright green eyes.

“If it’s with you, then yeah,” you breathed, gazing down at your fingers. Yoongi’s heart rate sped up, a sense of longing coming over him.

“Me too,” he said, taking your hand in his.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Do you want to see it?” you asked, coming out of the bathroom.

“Just tell me,” he breathed.

“It’s negative,” you said, holding the stick out to him. Yoongi frowned.

“I wonder why, we’ve been having unprotected sexual intercourse.

“Sometimes women need a couple tries before they actually get pregnant. The human fertility cycle is a fickle thing,” you stated, rubbing his shoulder.

“Are you disappointed?” Yoongi asked, throwing the used test in the garbage.

“A little, but at least I have an excuse to have sex with you again,” you smiled.

“You don’t need an excuse, I like having sex with you,” Yoongi stated, a blank expression on his face.

“Oh, I’m glad you enjoy it,” you said, feeling a little offended that’s all he liked.

“But I think I like it because it’s with you, I don’t know if I’d enjoy having sex with anything else,” he said, pulling his face into a confused look.

Before he could open his mouth again you covered his lips with yours. Yoongi fell into the rhythm quickly, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you closer.

“I might like kissing you better than sex, however,” he stated, resting his head against yours. You smiled and started leading him towards the bed.

“Let’s try again,” you breathed, laying down.

“Try what again? Sexual intercourse? I thought I was improving, you seem to be enjoying it as well. I thought you made me deaf in one ear from all the screaming,” he said, rubbing his ear for effect.

“Getting me pregnant, idiot. I wanna have a baby with you cause I like you,” you said.

“Oh, I like you too I guess.”

You frowned.

“Never mind, take me home,” you pouted, sitting up and crossing your arms.

“Why? Did I offend you again?” he asked, sitting on his knees.

“Yes, you’re being an asshole.”

“I don’t see how my inability to understand you relates me to the place you defecate from but whatever,” he sighed. “But I do like you,” Yoongi confessed.

“How?”

“Do you want an explanation of how I like you or the reason or-”

“No for fucksake Yoongi I want to know if you like me cause I give you sex or because of my personality,” you sighed, rubbing your forehead in frustration.

“I liked you before we started having intercourse. I wouldn’t have brought you along with me if I hadn’t. You’re my first friend, first kiss, lots of other things too. First cornfield to crash in,” he said, counting on his fingers.

“Yoongi, do you love me?” you asked, letting your walls down for once.

“Is that the human emotion that you talk about a lot?” he questioned. You nodded in response. “Then, yes. I do love you, Y/N,” he said, smiling a little at the end of his sentence.

You were quiet for a moment. Yoongi bit his lip, had he upset you again? Damn, he really tried that time. Suddenly you launched yourself at his mouth. He almost didn’t have enough time to breathe with all the mouth action going on.

“D-Did I-” Kiss. “Say something-” Kiss. “Right for once?” Kiss.

“I love you too, Yoongi. Now take your clothes off.”

#BTS #Bangtan #Min Yoongi #Min Suga #Suga #Yoongi #BTS Min Yoongi #BTS Smut #Smut #BTS fanfiction #BTS smutty fanfiction #One-shot #Yoongi Alien!AU #BTS alien #Impregnation Kink #Like holy shit #Didn't think it would get this kinky #Sorry not sorry #Jessika Hathaway #Yoongi as an alien #He's pretty awkward #Blunt too

[sethjacob]

Interview with an Astrobiologist Part 3

Here’s part 3 of my conversation with Graham Lau, an astrobiologist and science communicator who was kind enough to talk with me about space exploration and searching for life in the cosmos to help promote my comic book Astrobiology #1, which is on Kickstarter for another week. 

Check it out and consider backing us if you want to see the comic get made! 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sethjacob/astrobiology-1

How do you feel about panspermia, this idea that life travelled from somewhere else through space as microbes and landed on Earth to start all life here? To me, it's always been a little unsatisfying...you know, life had to originally start somewhere. It's kind of pushing it back another step in the chain.

Yeah, you're quite right. So panspermia, it's unsatisfying, because yeah, it pushes back the origin of life to somewhere else. And so we still have to then solve the origin of life problem, to try to figure out how life actually started. However, the idea of panspermia is one that is worth consideration.

For instance, in the early solar system, sure, Mars might have had its own biosphere. And maybe that biosphere came from Earth. Maybe life originated here and then, through an impact, took some material to Mars, and then a biosphere took off there. Or it could be the other way around. Maybe some life was brought to Mars early in the history of the solar system.

However, you know, I always say my personal favorite candidate outside of Earth in the early solar system for life would have been Venus. Even though Venus is now super hot and it's a hostile environment for life as we know it, it likely hasn't always been that way. And in the early solar system, it could have been the far more favorable place for life. It might have had oceans, it might have been in a much better state for being a living world itself.

And so for all we know, maybe we really are Venusians. Maybe life originated on Venus and then was brought here, and then global catastrophes happened on Venus, like the surface melting out and runaway greenhouse happening. And then Venus lost everything. It's an interesting idea, but again though, it takes away from the origin of life question. I'm very glad that we're looking to see how an origin of life could've happened here on Earth and where it might have happened here on Earth. But again, the idea of panspermia is very intriguing.

Do you think we should be looking at more extreme, seemingly inhospitable places for life? For extremophiles, like microbes that can thrive on hydrothermal vents? It's kind of a paradoxical idea: searching for life where it's hard for life to exist.

Yes and no. I think a lot of our current research in astrobiology in the solar system, we are looking at those place that would have been or are extreme environments.

So in Titan, for instance, we're looking at what would be an extreme relative to us, these hydrocarbon lakes. On Enceladus and in Europa, we're looking for hydrothermal vent systems, these superheated systems on ocean floors where life can flourish because the energy and the chemistry, the geology that's present that could allow for life.

And even looking for life on Mars, a lot of the places that we're looking at for life to happen on Mars are places that are relative extreme environments here on Earth. So we think those hydrothermal vents and geothermal springs, if they existed on Mars, could've been really good environments for life to thrive. There could have been really salty environments that provided the last refugia for life on Mars. And so, in many ways, we really do look for the extreme environments on these other worlds to try to find signs of life.

That said, extremophile itself is kind of a funny term. It really is very human and animal-life centric. Because in the early history of the Earth, before oxygen came to dominate our atmosphere, all of us oxygen breathers would've been extremophiles. And even now, there's organisms that thrive in the ocean that don't live on land, and so for an ocean organism, we're extremophiles. 

It's weird, we use that term extremophile to represent something that can thrive in extreme environmental parameters relative to us...but alien life, if it's out there, almost all of it might be extremophilic relative to us. Maybe all of us have different environmental parameters of gas concentrations and temperatures and pressures that we enjoy. It's kind of a funny term, to use it all the time like that.

Do you think if we ever discover life that independently began on another planet, we'll see that it has very similar features to species on Earth, in a sort of convergent evolution effect?

Yeah, so that's a very great question. It's one of the big ones that I'm currently playing with myself. If we find alien life...I mean, there are things that life seems like it should do. There's a lot of forms of metabolism on Earth, but this idea of having to find some way to get energy and to get the necessary material to build up your body, so alien life probably also has to do that.

Even if it doesn't follow the exact same pathways that we do, it would likely have some similar ones. It would likely rely on a lot of the same chemistry and physics. And in many ways, we can constrain the chemistry and physics that are probable, but we don't yet have an exact theory of biology that tells us exactly how life chooses to use physics and chemistry to survive. And it might be way different than how we do it.

That said though, it kind of makes sense that life would do some similar things. So for instance, if there is other multicellular life out there, maybe that alien life has figured out how to make legs and wings and fins, and other kinds of appendages for moving through its environment. That seems like something that could be very likely. Even if those structures don't look exactly the same as we have them here, it makes sense that they would still have structures that would achieve that same purpose. And very much convergent evolution.

It would make sense that alien life has picked out a few of the same kinds of things that we do. And maybe we do some things that are fairly unique. And maybe other alien life forms have their own unique things. It makes sense that there's a lot of things that life does that would be fairly similar.

What do you think is the strangest, most alien-like form of life on Earth? It's octopuses, isn't it?

That's a pretty awesome question. For extinct life, there's so many things. So many of the living things on Earth have now gone extinct. But you look back at the time of the large land mammals, tens of thousands of years ago, here in America. Or the time of the dinosaurs. And even some of the earliest animal forms, after the Cambrian radiation had occurred, were just really weird things. Like Hallucigenia and Opabinia, some of these other weird sea floor organisms, that just seem utterly alien to us now, even though they come from the exact same biosphere as we do.

With current life on Earth, there's a lot of great culprits. So for one of the talks I give that I'm currently turning into a book called The Craziest Creatures on Earth, I look at some of these weird organisms, from microbes to animals and plants and things. And just try to figure out, “What are the weirdest things? And what could they teach us about alien life?”

So for instance, I love talking about the hummingbird. I know that seems weird, because hummingbirds, they're just like pretty little birds, they don't seem very alien. But hummingbird metabolism is just extraordinary. Hummingbirds, per bodyweight, have something like 70 or so times more of a caloric requirement per unit of bodyweight than we do. And that means that they just have to put down the calories like crazy. If we were metabolizing like hummingbirds, we would have to eat some 155 thousand calories a day, just to stay alive. And that's just staggering.

And there's other things, all across the planet. You look at the organisms of the deep sea floor. Like angler fish, and blob fish. And it seems like every year, with more submersibles and ROVs going down to these very deep places in the ocean, we're discovering more and more of this huge diversity of weird organisms on the sea floor. It's really cool that a lot of them are using bioluminescence to light up the sea floor down there and to attract prey, attract mates.

There's just so much crazy life here on Earth. Sometimes just stepping back for a minute and taking a look at everything is just kind of staggering how many weird things life has done.

How seriously do astrobiologists take the rare Earth hypothesis, the idea that complex life like we see on Earth is just extremely rare?

So the rare Earth hypothesis came from a book called Rare Earth, by Peter Ward and Don Brownlee, two astrobiologists from the University of Washington. And the hypothesis set forth is basically that, even though life might be common in the cosmos, that life on Earth as we have it, not just intelligent human life, but also the plant and the animals life and the structures as we have it, could be more rare due to a variety of factors.

For instance, the Earth has a very large moon, relative to its size. And that moon not only helps protect us from asteroids, but it also helps us lock in our orbital obliquity: basically the leaning of our planet in its orbit. Our moon helps to keep that very stable. And so there's been a hypothesis that that stability of our pole has made it easier for life to continue on our planet, and that maybe pole shifting is problematic for life. Even though there's also debates against that...it might turn out to be that pole shifting is even better for life, for all that we know.

We're like, “Okay, we have life here. We have this big moon. It holds the pole in place. Maybe that's helpful.” But we can't say for sure. We also have Jupiter, and sometimes Jupiter actually forces asteroids and comets towards us, but we think most of the time Jupiter is actually acting like a big brother with a giant shield out there, blocking all the incoming stuff. So Jupiter kind of takes away from all the impacts that could be happening on Earth.

There's a few of these very specific things about our planet and its place in our Solar System that might make for our life here to be fairly rare. That said though, even though it's an important consideration, and its definitely worth spending the time to think about, it's also one of those cases where it's taking what we already know to exist and saying, “It exists because it's special.” But we just don't know. It might be there are other worlds out there that don't have giant moons, that don't have Jupiters protecting them, that have an abundance of life. And maybe have advanced intellectual civilizations.

Even though I think it was a very important time for Astrobiology to have that hypothesis come forward, and I think we all give it serious thought and consideration, I'm not necessarily sure I've bought into yet myself.

It kind of reminds me of the Anthropic Principle. It's just sort of, yeah, we're biased because we're here. So it's sort of logically trying to figure it out. It's sort of a similar concept.

It's the exact same concept, really. If you think about it, it's saying, “We're here. And so, we're special. And then everything else must be made to make us special.” But I don't know if I buy into that, necessarily.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sethjacob/astrobiology-1

#science #comics #kickstarer #scifi #sciencefiction #nature #space #future #environment #stem #planet #exoplanet #alien #cosmos #universe #discovery #art #comicbooks #comic #wilderness #cyberpunk #astrobiology

[chancellormatt]

Voltron Rewrite Episode Two - Faith and Friendship

Episode Two

    The Dark Voltron weaves around the last of the pitfalls of the Quantum Void. It pulls to a stop just outside the planet hidden at the center of the Void. Dark Voltron breaks back up into lions almost immediately.

    “Here we are.” Lotor says.

    “Getting readings from some kind of structure down on the planet’s surface.” Sendak says.

    “We shall see now if your alternate had anything of value to provide us.” Zarkon replies.

    “If my alter went to all this trouble, I’m fairly certain that it is valuable.” Lotro says, his voice holding the slightest bit of offense.

    “-If we are preparing to land, shall I cloak us from detection, sire?” Honvera cuts in.

    “I doubt the planet has any threats worth my concern, but if you must.” Zarkon says.

    “Right away, my lord.” Honvera closes her eyes, and begins to gesture with her hands. Purple quintessence crackles along her fingers, as glyphs appear outside above each of the dark lions. The glyphs pass through each lion, crackling along their surface, before disappearing.

    “That should suffice.” Honerva says.

    “Begin approach.” Zarkon orders, taking the lead.

    The lions fly down towards the planet’s surface. They fly through the atmosphere for a time, gliding above the surface.

    “Sendak, where is this structure you spoke of?” Zarkon asks.

    “It should be just ahead, my lord.”   

    Sure enough, a large metal dome becomes visible just moments later.

    “How would you like to organize the intrusion?” Lotor asks. “Raimon and myself could go in and-”

    “Lotor, Raimon and I will go inside, to see what this dome contains.” Zarkon says sharply. “Honvera and Sendak, you will stay here to provide support, in the unlikely event we require it.”

    “Yes my lord.” All reply. Lotor’s comes a half a moment later than the others, and with a hint of annoyance.

    The Black, Red and Blue lions touchdown on the surface, behind a nearby rock formation, and their Paladins exit. Zarkon takes the lead on the approach, with Lotor and Raimon creeping along just behind him. They reach the sheer metal face of the dome.

    “There should be an access hatch not far from your location.” Sendak informs.

    They find it shortly. Rather than try to breach it through vai subtler means, Zarkon opts to simply kick the door in. Lotor rolls his eyes as he follows Zarkon inside, with Raimon bringing up the rear.

    “Communications cluster up ahead.” Sendak supplies. “Hold on, there are some-”

    A pair of Galra drones round the corner down the hall. A blur of motion, Zarkon shoots forward and brings a clenched fist down one drone so hard it’s smashed into scrap against the floor. Before the other can even get it's weapon up, Zarkon throws out his other hand, that clutches his bayard, and a sword materializes in the middle of the drone’s chest. He pulls the wickedly curved purple blade out and the drone collapses.   

    “Try to improve the speed of your warnings in the future, Sendak.” Zarkon says, making it clear this is more than a suggestion.

    “Y-yes sire. My apologies.” Sendak stammers.

    Zarkon and the other two continue onward. Finding another door at the end of the hall, Zarkon kicks that one in too. The room inside has a line of consoles set up beneath a long display screen, showing the inside of the dome. Forests, fields and hills, at the center of which is a cluster buildings can be seen at a distance.

    Lotor walks over to one of the consoles and sets to work. After a quick scan on some of the readings on the console’s smaller screen, he speaks:

    “It seems that this place is some kind contained habitat for the species inside. That’s curious, no direct mention of the species by name…”

    “Find me something useful boy.” Zarkon instructs.

    Lotor continues to type, before looking back up at the large display. “Hold on, I’ll get us a close up visual on that town over there, maybe that will give us some answers.”

    The display switches to close up view of a town, with dozens of humanoid figures moving about inside. Lotor zooms in closer, and as he does his eyes widen.

    “Those look like-”

    “Alteans.” Zarkon says, stepping forward looking interested for the first time since entering the building.

    Raimon jerks his head up at the mention of the word, and now stares at the display.

    “Living alteans. Dozens of them.” Lotor says, almost reverentially.

    “Honerva are you getting this?” Zarkon asks.

    “I am sire.” She sounds surprised herself.

    “You can use these.” Zarkon says. It is more statement than question.

    “Indeed I can.” She confirms.

    “Good.” Zarkon smiles. “Very good. It seems you were right after all son.”

    Lotor blinks, forcing himself to tear his eyes from the display. “Father, may...I have some time to figure out what my alternate was doing here?” Lotor asks carefully.

    “You have one quintent. After that, we will begin the process of rebuilding our army. Starting with these alteans.”

***

    Pidge stands next to her mother, Colleen Holt, looking bored. Collee, on the other hand, has a self satisfied look on her face. They stand inside a room with with a series of computer terminals giving readouts of data onto monitors. The back wall has a line of windows letting in streams of early-morning sunlight in.

    Pidge sighs. She sighs again. On the third sigh, her mother speaks.

    “Bored Katie?”

    “Extremely.” Pidge says.

    “I thought you loved computers.” her mother says, still smirking, without looking away from the monitor she’s reading from.

    “I love hacking into alien networks and taking down their defenses one by one. I love making a communications relay from scrap metal and whatever im carrying in my pockets. I love dismantling a new piece of technology and toying with it until I figure out how it works. I do not like doing basic analysis for the base’s air conditioning.”

    “Well tough luck kiddo. Maybe if you hadn’t run off to space, without telling your mother, I’d let you have fun with your father and brother. Besides, this is more than just the air conditioning.  It also shows us the water usage.”

    “I’m a Paladin of Voltron mom!” Pidge exclaimes. “I’m supposed to be out there helping to fight the Galra, not sitting around checking computer readouts!”

    “Oh yeah? And here I thought all your other Voltron friends were taking time off to be with their families…?”

    “Well technically…” She said, scratching the back of her neck “-but Hunk told me they’ve already started getting ready to rebuild the Castle of Lions, they’re gonna need someone to set up the computer net-”

    “And if they ask for you, specifically.” Pidge’s mother interjected. “I’ll think about letting you go. If I think you’ve learned your lesson by then.”

    “Matt gets to work on the cool stuff.” Pidge protests, halfheartedly.

    “Matt got kidnapped by aliens on accident. He didn’t go looking for trouble. Besides, he’s spending time with your father, so I’m allowing it. In the meantime, I get some quality time, just me and my daughter.” Colleen pulled Pidge into a side-armed hug, while Pidge grumbles, but does not resist.

    “We could at least do something more interesting...”

    “What a great idea! I’m almost done here, why don’t we go check out my plants. I’ve become a bit of a gardener since they moved me onto base. I know how much you love the great outdoors and sunlight Katie.”

    Pidge only groans.

***

    “Alright here’s the plan.” Lance says. “I drop by Ryner and get some of those pretty alien flowers, get all dressed up in some nice clothes I’m borrowing from my brother, maybe shower for good measure, then a solid ten minutes of psyching myself up, before I finally go and ask Allura outh on a date.” Lance explains animatedly.

    “Uh...huh. And...why are you telling me all of this?” Keith asks. The two of them are walking down a corridor within the Galaxy Garrison base.

    “Hunk’s busy and Pidge is grounded.” Lance shrugs.

    “I see…” Keith says, distractedly.

    “What? No, ‘I don’t have time for this Lance,’ or ‘I’ve got to go brood instead of talk to people Lance?’”

    “What?” Keith says, as if missing what Lance just said.

    Lance eyes him oddly. “Yeah you’re definitely acting weird.”

Keith only sighs and rubs his eyes. “Sorry, just have a lot on my mind right now. What were you saying again? You wanna ask Allura out or something?”

“Yep.” Lance says confidently.

“And you brought this up because…” Keith strains, as if trying to figure it out. “...you’re worried it wont go well?”

“What? No! Have you seen me Keith? I’m irresistible…” Lance holds the confident look for another few moments, before relaxing his shoulders and twiddling his fingers nervously. “...well I mean...I guess I am a little worried.” He finally admits.

Keith gives a half chuckle.

“She never takes me seriously,” Lance goes on. “I...I just hope this goes well.”

“Well dunno how much I can help you there. I guess just...be honest about how you feel?” Keith says it as if not entirely sure.

“Honest huh? That’s good, I should write that down…”

Keith shakes his head. “Now if you’ll excuse me, ‘I’ve got to go brood instead of talk to people, Lance.’”

“Hey, there’s the Keith we all know!”   

***

    Lotor studies the Altean colony from the display screen, entranced by the images of men and women working, while the children play.

    Honerva walks in, breaking him from his trance.

    “Mother.” Lotor says, acknowledging her, before shifting his gaze back to the screen.

    “What have you found, my son?” She asks.

    “A great deal.” Lotor says. “From listening on their conversation, and scanning the deep archives of this place, I’ve begun to piece together a narrative. The Lotor of this universe scoured the stars to find the alteans that survived the destruction of their planet. Then, he gathered them all here into this colony, where they’ve thrived for millenia.” Lotor shakes his head and smiles slightly. “To think there were so many. I admit I’d thought of the same idea before but...he actually did it.”

    Honerva says nothing, scanning the screen a moment, dispassionately.

    “Not excited to see your own people again?” Lotor asks.

    “Most of my kind were always too short sighted. More concerned with a sense of ‘morality’ than they were with actual progress. There’s a reason I married a galra. In the end, they didn’t receive anything they did not earn.”

    “Hm.” Lotor says, noncommittally. “Guess he feels differently.” Lotor nods to the side of the room. There, in the shadows, Raimon leans against the wall, staring at the screen. Honerva’s eyes narrow.

    “How long has he been doing that?”

    “Since we got here.”

    “Raimon.” She says.

    The maroon armored man doesn’t respond.

    “Raimon.” She says a little more firmly.

    The man finally tears his eyes away from the screen to face Honerva.

“Yes ma’am?” He asks in a gruff voice..

    “Go to Sendak and see if he needs assistance.”

    The maroon paladin nods slightly and heads towards the door. It is not lost on Honerva or Lotor how he shoots the alteans one last, lingering look, before exiting the room.

    Honerva turns back to Lotor. “Did you find anything else out?”

“Apparently my alter also started moving some of the alteans offsite, to this planet’s moon for other research, though I haven’t been able to look into that as of yet. Oh, and one other thing. They...well it seems that as a result of my alter’s actions, I’m held in a certain position of...reverence to these people. Their chosen savior, if you will.”

Honerva’s eyes flicker to the statue of Lotor on the display. “I’d never have guessed…”

    “So the only surviving alteans in this universe all worship my son. It would be humorous, were it not so pitiful.” Zarkon says, from behind.

    Both turn to see him stalk into the room.

    “Pitiful or not, it's is useful. I’m quite certain they’ll do anything I say.” Lotor points out.

    “Ruling through fear is better than through faith. Fear can be trusted. Faith can fail, but people never forget what they fear.” Zarkon says dismissively.

    “Their faith will make them work harder. People always work harder for something they believe in, than they will for fear of punishment.” Lotor shoots back.

    Zarkon’s eyes narrow. “Your experience in leadership are limited boy, and colored by your own weakness. Rule comes through power.”

    Lotor meets his stare, and both gaze at each other. Honerva’s eyes flicker between the two of them.

    “Perhaps...you could allow him to try.” Honerva suggests.

    “To what end?” Zarkon asks, not breaking his stare.

    “Lotor simply wants to please you by getting command of these people, just in his own way. It would do no harm to let him try. If it fails...it is never too late to instill fear.”

    The father and son continue to stare each other down. Finally, Lotor drops his gaze, shoulders slumping. “...it is as mother says. I only wish to serve, the best way I know.”

    Zarkon scoffs. “Very well, you may try this experiment. But, should it fail, it will also fall to you to be the one to crush them back into the dirt. Be ready to bloody your sword. Part of rule is knowing when to get your hands dirty.”

    “...yes father.” Lotor says, looking back at the viewport, brow now creased with concern.

    Zarkon turns away. “Make contact by end of day. I want those new weapons ready soon, for the coming war.”

    “Just...what sort of weapons are these to be? The alteans are not trained soldiers, by any measure.”

    Zarkon leaves without explanation. Lotor turns the quizzical look on Honerva. The woman smiles slightly.

    “Alteans. There are a few things we are good for…”

***

    Pidge and her mother stood in front of a wide garden stretching down a portion of the length of one of the Garrison base’s outside walls.

    “How long did you say you’d been growing this?” Pidge says noting just how far the garden goes.

    “Oh just a few months. Kind of lose track of time here on the base.” Pidge’s mother hands her a trowel. “Now come on, some weeds got in and I want this place clear by lunchtime.”

    Pidge shrugs, and takes the trowel. Together, they get to work, carefully uprooting the bad while leaving the good undisturbed.

    “...so tell me about these friends of yours.” Pidge’s mom asks with a raised eyebrow.

    “Where’s this coming from?” Pidge says, suspicious.   

“What? I’m not allowed to wonder what the people my daughter’s been spending all her time with are like?”

    Pidge sighes. She's silent for several moments, as she gathers her thoughts.

    “...I guess you knew Shiro a bit before. He’s really been taking care of us through most of this. Keeps us focused, and makes sure we stay together as a team. He was a great leader, and always tried to help me look for Dad and Matt when he could.”

    “Sounds like him.” Colleen notes.

    Pidge nods. “Keith is...I dunno, kinda emo? He’s always running off to do things himself. He’s gotten better...I think. He’s doing his best being the new leader, I just don’t know how cut out for it he is.” She shrugs. “Allura’s a princess...from space.”

    Colleen gives Pidge and odd look, but she continues anyway. “She’s tougher than she looks. All about duty and trying to figure out she can help us beat the Galra. Been kind distant lately, though, dunno what that’s about.”

    “What about those other two boys? The ones you went to the Garrison with?”   

    “Lance and Hunk?” Pidge thinks again for a moment.

    “Hunk is a big softie. But he also keeps everything in perspective. Reminds us there's more to life than just a big space war.”

    She hesitates before going on.

    “Lance...is kind of an idiot.”

    “Oh?” Colleen says.

    “Yeah, he’s constantly misunderstanding basic science principles he should’ve learned in the Garrison, cracking jokes at really bad times, and if he’s not doing either of those he’s flirting with some girl he just met.”

    “And he’s...your friend?”

    Pidge chews on her lip. “...he’s also caring, brave, and works a lot harder than he lets on. If you’re feeling down you can always rely on him to be there with a wisecrack, or hand of support.”

“Sounds like a reliable guy.”

“He is.” Pidge examines the leaves of a flower.

Colleen looks like she’s about to say something when she is cut off.

“-I think these are overwatered.” Pidge says. “See the yellowing on the leaves here? You’ll probably want to cut down on the water for theses guys in the future.”

Colleen blinks in surprise. “Katie...since when do you know anything about plants?”

Pidge shrugs. “Ryner. From the coalition. Helped show me how connected everything is. Guess I just see things a little differently now. How it's all made of the same stuff in the end. There's a...beauty to it.” Pidge looks embarrassed by her own words.

“You really have changed.” Colleen says, wide eyed.

“That good?”

“I think so.” Her mother smiles. “It's nice to hear about all your friends. Before, you didn’t like hanging out with anyone that wasn’t Matt or your computer. I’m glad you’re connecting more.”

Pidge doesn’t say anything but she smiles too.

***

        Hunk works on a large piece of machinery, on the table in front of him, dismantling it one piece at a time. He works inside a large warehouse, full of similarly busy Garrison and Coalition members. Lance saunters up and glances over Hunk’s shoulder.

    “Hey there, whatcha working on buddy?”

    “Just some stuff for the new castle.” Hunk shrugs

    “What kind of stuff?”

    “Eh, just engineer stuff. You probably wouldn’t be that interested.”

    “Hey, don’t forget I was in the Garrison too, I know all kinds of stuff about spaceships and all that.”

    “Alright. We’re trying to figure out if the power capacitors inside these earth star engines with be enough to handle the increased load from the new castle, because if not then we’ll either have to use the coalition’s limited resources, or basically start from scratch to...okay where’d I lose you?”

    Lance blinks several times. “Uh...capacitors?”

    There is a silence between the two for several seconds. “So…” Hunk says.

    “Yeah okay, forget the engineering stuff, I don’t understand anything, what else is new? Have you seen Ryner?”

    “A while ago. She left those flowers you asked for on a table over there.” Hunk points a thumb over one shoulder.

    “Great!”

    Lance walks off while Hunk continues to work. There the clanging of metal objects moving around. Then there's a crashing noise, followed by muttered curses. Hunk winces at the sound. Lance walks back up, with a bouquet of alien flowers.

    “Found ‘em.” Lance smiles.

    “So, you’re really gonna ask our Allura, huh?”   

    “Sure am!” Lance says.

    “Huh. Good luck.”

    “Thanks, but don’t need it.”

    “What are you gonna do if she says no?”

    “You don’t...think that’s likely do you?” Lance swallows.

    “Dunno man. I mean, she is a princess…”   

    Lance looks nervous. Hunk seems to notice, and quickly stammers to correct himself. “-but I’m sure she’ll take you up, I mean why wouldn’t she? Heh…” He laughs nervously.

    “Yeah, whatever. I’m gonna finish getting ready.” Lance walks away, significantly less enthusiastic than he walked in. Hunk sighes, then shrugs his shoulders and returns to work.

***

    Pidge and her mother walk into the hangar. Pidge is noticeably excited.

    “Now you’ve been good so far, so I’ll let you have this much. You can look around and say hi, but no working on anything.” Colleen explains.

    “I know mom.” Pidge replies, looking around at all the pieces of machinery the engineers and scientists are working on. Her eyes widen at once item a Coalition alien works on.

    “Is that a Colaxium helix battery? I’ve only read about those…” A gasp as she turns to another table. “A Rethid power conductor!? I thought they stopped producing those.” Another gasp at a glance to another table. “Woah a M’vran antigrav inducer! That’ll be perfect for generating lift. And that over there is...oh just a regular old Garrison engine.” Pidge looks slightly disappointed.

    “Losing your respect for the classics Pidge?” Hunk asks, looking up from his work.

    “Oh hey Hunk.” she says, noticing him for the first time.

    “Pidge, Mrs. Holt.” Hunk says, nodding to each woman.

    “Checking out the old capacitors to see if they can meet the new load?” Pidge asks.   

    “Sure am.” Hunk confirms.   

    Pidge leans over to get a closer look and reaches a hand towards the engine. Colleen catches her hand before it makes contact. Pidge looks up to see her mother smile and clear her throat. Pidge sighs and pulls her hand back.

    “Still grounded huh?” Hunk says.

    “Yeah…” Pidge sighs.

    “The way mom’s dragging her around, Katie’s gonna be attached at the hip by the time her hair turns grey.” Says a new voice. All turn to see Matt along with Sam Holt and Shiro walking up.

    Pidge narrows her eyes and smiles thinly. “Just wait ‘til I get free Matt, I’m gonna show these guys what a real science officer looks like.”

    “You’re a few years too early for that.” Matt says confidently.

    While the two siblings continue their stare down, Sam and Shiro move over to meet Colleen.

    “How’s our little girl doing?” Sam asks.

    “Stubborn as always.” Colleen smiles. “Shirogane, it's been a while.” She offers a hand.

    “Too long, Colleen.” Shiro says, shaking her hand.

    “I hear you’ve been taking care of Pidge, and the others.”

    “I did my best, but they’re practically grown now.”

    “Not just yet, they aren’t” Colleen says shooting her daughter a glance. “Sam, Matt, I know you’re both working hard, but I hope I’ll be seeing you both for dinner.” She says it in such a manner that it seems more like an order than a request.

    “Yes ma’am.” Sam and Matt say in unison, giving mock salutesµµ

    “How about you Shiro, can I twist your arm into coming?”

    “Afraid not.” Shiro sighs. “I’ll be tied up in negotiations with the Garrison.”

    “Ol’ Sanda’s being a piece of work as usual.” Matt pipes in.

    “Matt…” Shiro says warningly.

    Matt waves his hand dismissively. Pidge chuckles, as Shiro shooks her brother with a disapproving look.

    “How about you Hunk?”

    “Sorry Mrs.Holt but my own family’s promised they’d cook a feast every night for a week after coming back home.”

“Well I guess I can’t fault you for wanting to go with that...” Colleen chuckles.

    ***

    Pidge and her mother walk down a corridor inside the base sometime later. Pidge displays little of the boredom and discontentment from earlier, instead replaced with a slight smile on her face, and a skip in her step.

    “Having fun yet?” Colleen asks.

    “Day’s improving. Still would have liked to be touch some of that tech though…” Pidge replies with a raised eyebrow.

    “Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.” Colleen emphasises the last work to make clear that it is no promise.

    Pidge shrugs in apparent surrender.

    “It was nice to meet your friend Hunk, but where are all these other friends I hear about?” Her mother asks next.

    “I’m sure they’re around...oh speak of the devil.”

    Pidge says this just as Lance slides around a corner, dressed in a suit jacket, button down shirt and slacks. He carries the alien flowers in one hand, and looks to be in a hurry. However, he skids to a stop upon seeing Pidge and her mother.

    “Pidge!? What’s going on? Thought you were still grounded.” Lance says with confusion.

    “Am. Sorta. Mom’s got a tight leash on me.” Pidge sighs, and gives a shrug.

    Lance’s eyes shifted to the older woman with curiosity.

    “Mom, this is Lance. Lance, my mom.” Pidge explains, gesturing back and forth.

    “Nice to meet ya Missus Holt!” Lance says shaking Colleens hand.

    “So this is the boy I heard all about.” Colleen replies.

    “Huh?” Lance looks back at Pidge. “You bad mouthing me to you mom already?”

    “Something like that.” Pidge says with a wry grin.

    Lance returns the grin. “Oh, well in that case, Mrs. Holt I’m sure there are a few stories you’d love to hear about Pidge from out in space. Did you know that for a while we didn’t even know she was a g-”

    Pidge cuts him off with an elbow to the ribs.

    “Ow!”

    “Forgive Lance, mom.” Pidge says, adjusting her glasses. “He’s had a lot of head trauma out fighting in space. His memory isn’t what it used to be.”

    Lance rolls his eyes, while Colleen only chuckles.

    “So Lance, what are you all dressed up for?” Colleen asks.

    Lance smiles again, and stands up straighter. “Well as it so happens I am on my way to go ask Princess Allura out on a date.”

    “Really…” Colleen’s eyes flicker to Pidge. Her expression is unreadable.

    “Yeah, I don’t been to brag but I’m pretty popular with the ladies...kinda got turned around looking for her, though.” Lance goes on. “Heard she was on the left quadrant with Coran, so I’m headed over now...” Lance’s voice trails off as he notices how quiet Pidge has become.

“Hey you doing alright Pidge? Usually you’re hitting me with some robot or something when I talk about chasing after some girl for this long. She’s mean like that.” Lance says the last to Pidge’s mom.

Pidge, for her part, reaches up, and flicks Lance on the nose.

“Ow!”

“There. Happy?” Pidge sighs and turns to her mother. “We should head back to the apartment. Wouldn’t wanna get in the way of Lance’s big date.”

    “Hang on a second, there is something up with you.” Lance accuses.

    “Goodbye Lance.” Pidge says, already walking past, waving behind her.

    “It was nice meeting you.” Colleen says, hurring off to join Pidge.

    Lance looks back at the two retreating women, with a concerned look. They disappear around a corner in moments. Lance is left alone in the hallway. He turns back around, but hesitates. He looks down at the flowers in his hands. Then, he looks back one more time, and sighs.

    He starts to run. He turns inside the door Pidge and Colleen just came from. He dashes out into the hangar. In moments he finds Hunk, who is cleaning his hands off with a rag.

    “Hunk are you busy?” Lance says quickly.

    “Just finished up, why?”   

    “I need a favor, asap…”

***

    “Are you ready, son?” Honerva asks.

    “When am I ever not?” Lotor replies.

    The two of them sit inside a shuttle transport. The ship lands with a thump. Lotor takes a breath, and stands up.

    “Stay in the ship, if you would, I don’t want them getting spooked.”

    “Very well.”

    Lotor nods, perhaps more to himself than his mother. He walks over to the door, and clicks a button along the side. The door unseals with a hiss, and a ramp opens up, extending down to the ground below. Lotor takes a step outside.

    He is met with the sight of hundreds of alteans gathered in a circle a short distance from the ship. There is a clamor of hushed conversation. All stare at Lotor. One red-haired woman among them steps forward.

    “L-Lord...Lotor?” She says in an uneasy voice.

    Lotor smiles. “Yes, it's is I, Lotor! Your savior has returned!”

    There is an excited clamor among the alteans. He allows it to go on for a moment, before raising both hands, and gesturing for them to quite. He takes a breath before speaking further.

    “...I have returned from a long journey. Out in the bounds of space, I fought many battles, and experienced both victories and failures. I come to you now, with a new sense of purpose. Because, my dear alteans, I now have the legendary Voltron on my side!”

    This causes a full on cheer to erupt from the people, but again, Lotor motions for quiet.

    “But, my enemies have grown strong as well. They possess their own, twisted imitation of voltron. Much of the universe has fallen to their control. I cannot defeat this foe alone...”

    There is a hushed murmur in the crowd. Lotor allows it, building anticipation for his next words.

    “...my people, you have hid here for so many years. Well the time has come for that to end! The time has come for alteans to stand proudly once again, and help guide this universe to what it should be. I now call upon every man woman and child altean here in this colony! I ask you to help me take up arms against the forced of this false Voltron!”

    There is silence for a short moment. Then the crowd explodes into cheers. Lotor relaxes. He turns to the girl in front of him.

    “You there. Are you in charge of these people?”

    “Y...yes? Lord Lotor have you forgotten me?”

    Lotor sighs, and rests a hand on his forehead. “Forgive me. Battles with my enemies have left me with many scars. Not all of them are physical. Certain memories have become distant to me. Please remind me, I’m sure it will come back in time.”

    “Of course, my lord.” She says bowing her head. “I am called Luca.”

    “Luca. I will be entrusting you to prepare our people for the coming storm.”

    “Thank you for this honor, Lord Lotor.” She bows further. “I will do my utmost to get them ready...but how exactly are we all to contribute?”

    Lotor glances up to the sky briefly. “I will have more information shortly…until then, be ready for anything.”

    “Yes, lord Lotor.”

    Lotor nods and turns back around, to return to the ship.

    “I think that went well.” Honvera says.

    “Undeniably. It is as I expected.” Lotor allows himself a grin. “They’ll do anything I ask…”

***

    Pidge lies on a sofa, staring at the ceiling. She is inside an apartment with her mother. The sofa Pidge lies on is in the living room, while the connected kitchen is where Colleen has begun to prepare a meal.

    “So, was following me around today the worst thing ever?” Colleen asks.

    “No...I had fun.” Pidge admits sitting up. “It's not that I didn’t want to spend time with you, I’m just excited to get to work with Dad and Matt. Imagine what the three of us can do together.”

    “Well sometimes it's important to put the science aside for a bit, to remember the simpler things in life. Like watering the plants, or cooking a meal. Speaking of which, you could be helping over here.”

    “I wasn’t in space that long mom, did you really forget what a disaster I am in the kitchen?”

    “Point taken. But even so, it might be something you want to figure out sooner or later. Who knows? You might want to cook for your husband someday.”

    “Mom!” Pidge jerks upright.

    “Look I want grandchildren, and Matt’s dating an alien or robot or something, can’t really tell which. Either way I don’t think the genetics of that work out, so you’ll have to-”

    “MOM!” Pidge shouts, red in the cheeks.

    Her mother only chuckles. “That tall one seemed nice, what was his name again?’   

    Pidge lays back down, with a frown.

    “Who Lance? He’s just an idiot.”

    “I thought you said he was reliable, despite that.” Her mother replies.

    “Forget that. He’s just an idiot.” Pidge says stubbornly.

    Her mother sighs but nods. “Sometimes men are like that. When they are, you just gotta knock them on the head and make them see reason.”

    Pidge shrugs noncommittally. “Not really sure what you’re talking about.”

    “Sure you don’t.” Colleen rolls her eyes.

    Neither says anything, and for a moment the apartment is silent. Pidge closes her eyes, as if to sleep. There is a knock at the door. She sighs, and sits back up. Her mother shoots her a confused look. Pidge shrugs.

“I’ll get it.” Pidge hops off the couch and walks over to the door.

Pidge opens to door and gapes at the person standing here.

“Lance!?” She exclaimes, blinking as if she wasn’t seeing right. Colleen leans out from the kitchen with an interested look.

“Betcha think you wouldn’t see me again today.” Lance says, flashing a grin. He holds a plastic bin in his hands.

“What are you even doing here?”    Pidge asks, shaking away her shock. “I thought you were-”

“Off asking out Allura?” Lance sighes. “Fully planned on it, but then I noticed how down my good friend seemed after I last saw her. Thought maybe being grounded after seeing everyone else was running around doing stuff was bringing her down.”

Pidge crosses her arms and shrugs. “Lots of assuming you’re doing there. And I’m not in a bad mood, I’m doing just f-”

Lance pops open the plastic bin.

    “-are those peanut butter cookies!?” Pidge goes wide-eyed and her mouth begins to water.

Lance chuckles. “Not my style to leave a friend in need Pidge, whether you’re about to admit it or not.

Pidge stares at him for a long moment. “...you gave up on your date because you thought I wasn’t doing well?”

“Allura’s not going anywhere. I gotta look after my friends.” He shrugs. “You still got that game we bought in the space mall?”

Pidge looks down and smiles slightly. When she looks back up the smile is more coy than anything else. She reaches up and hits Lance on the arm.

“Hey what’s that for?” Lance asks, not really seeming to be hurt by the blow.

“Nothing.” Pidge grins. “And yeah, course I still got Killbot Phantasm! I can have that baby hooked up to the TV in-”

Pidge’s mother clears her throat. She has a vaguely stern expression that is undercut by a thinly veiled smile.

“I do hate to rain on the parade, but Katie is still grounded.”

“Oh come on mom!” Pidge says clasping her hands, and going all puppy dog eyed.

“Yeah Missus Holt!” Lance says right behind Pidge, mirroring the girl’s expression.   

Colleen manages to keep up the facade for another few moments, before sighing. “Fine, but you’re staying for dinner Lance.”

“Alright!” he cheers.

“And let me have one of those cookies. Katie’s not the only one that’s weak to them.”

As Colleen takes her cookie, Pidge and Lance scrambled to set up the video game console. Just minutes later they are on the couch intensely focused on the screen, while the TV emits sounds of of explosions and other video game noises.

“Get this guy Lance, he’s weak to fire!” Pidge says, cramming a cookie into her mouth.

“Dang how do you attack with this glove? Who thought this was a good idea for a controller!?”

“Hey don’t diss the power glove, that thing’s limited edition!”

Colleen shakes her head, smiles, and turns away as the two continue to play their game.

#voltron #voltron fanfic #Voltron fanfiction #voltron season 8 #pidgeon #pidge gunderson #pidge #Lance #colleen holt #plance #pidgance #some plance garbage #bestship #what am i doin with my life

[familyofpaladins]

@rangergirl3 the rest of your message was so SWEET <3<3 ily. i’m actually probably going to make a seperate post for each of these because they’ll probably get long. 

Let’s start with 8 (Keith gets poisoned by Alien Race that they are trying to ally with as part of some test).

Aahhhh this is a good one.

Alright so this one takes place during that time that Shiro is gone, and Keith is the ‘leader’ (I don’t think (???) it’s really important whether or not his in black at this point, but it has been kinda decided that he’s suppose to be the leader now). So they go to this planet that has just barely managed to keep the Galra at bay, and has potential resources that could help team Voltron, so they are meeting with the leaders of the planet to discuss an alliance. 

When they get down to the planet, they have a brief meeting, but then the Leaders ask to speak with Voltron’s Leader alone. And because they’ve kinda named Keith as Leader, he goes (They all have a 5 second silent debate about whether or not it should be Allura or Keith, but they said it was the leader of VOLTRON, so they chose Keith).

So Keith goes into a separate room with these leaders, and the Main Leader starts talking with him about how important Loyalty is to their species, and how they want to make sure that Voltron won’t turn on them like the Empire did. The species is fairly friendly if a little stiff and cold sometimes to strangers, but she (the Leader) offers Keith a drink, and he would honestly rather not, but he thinks it would be rude to refuse it so he drinks it. It doesn’t taste great, but it’s better than nunvil, so he manages to keep a straight face while drinking it.

All the while the Leader is still talking about how they want to make sure that their allies are loyal and “- a crew must be loyal to each other, or there is no chance of loyalty to their ‘allies’ and to have a loyal crew, you must have a loyal leader.” Keith gets a slightly ominous feeling from her words as she stares at him. “In order to make sure the we can trust potential allies, we put their leader through a test.” 

Keith doesn’t really like the sound of this, but he’s also very willing to do it, because this alliance could be very helpful in stopping the galra, and he already kinda messed up in leading the others so he wants to make sure this goes right, and if he has to pass some test then he’ll do it. 

(Keith) “Alright, so what is this “Test” and when does it start?”

(Leader) “Oh it has already begun.”

Oh great, Keith thinks, it’s some behavioral thing to see how he interacts with the rest of them, and he’s probably already blown it-

(Leader) “To show your loyalty to your crew, you must be willing to put their lives ahead of you own in order to protect them.”

Keith jumps up at this point, because if understand’s what she’s saying then that means his team his family is in danger and he will NOT sit for that, and demands to know what they’ve done with his friends. He would get up in the person’s face but he’s got the guards guns pointing at him, and it doesn’t do any good if he gets shot before he finds out what happened to his team. 

The Leader is still sitting calmly and continues, saying that his team isn’t in any danger. Yet. “You have a poison in your system that will get more and more painful until you die in three days time. There is an antidote, but you cannot take the antidote until you have left the planet” (they were planning on spending a little less than three days on the planet with them).”If you take the antidote before that time or tell any of your crew what is happening, it will show that you don’t value their lives, and we will not ally ourselves to people we cannot trust to hold our secrets or who are selfish and would put their own lives higher than those of the people under their care. And if that were to happen we would have to disspose of you and your crew as we cannot trust you to keep the secrets of Our planet that you’ve seen.”

Keith is filled with so many different emotions he doesn’t even know how to react, it appears that his friends aren’t in immediate danger, but their lives were literally just threatened if he says anything or tries to save himself, he’s also been  at some point poisoned with out him know- the drink when he came in, that’s what did it. Quiznak he should have refused. He’s angry relieved and angry again and mostly confused, what was the point of all this. 

He does end up yelling a little and says that they better not hurt his friends. She says they will be fine as long as he endures the poison. He’s handed the antidote (in a bottle or something) and asks why it’s being given now, and why not just keep it until they get ready to leave. She says it serves as a temptation, and they want to see if he will endure the pain even though the cure is right there so that his friends stay safe. He asks what if they figure out something is wrong on their own. She tells him that he must act normal, for if they find out he’s been poisoned, it has the same effect as telling them. 

Keith is pissed at the whole situation, but seeing as how he’s already poisoned there’s not much he can do, so he has to go along with it. He thinks he can start to feel the effects of the poison now (it’s like a very mild pain in his stomach like something he ate didn’t agree with him). 

So they all leave the room, when the others ask what happened in the room they tell them that they were discussing trust between the two groups and that they will continue their negotiations the next morning. 

So now Keith has to keep this from them when really all he wants to do is get his team off this planet as soon as possible, because he’s not sure he wants to team up with a group of people that test the other’s loyalty by poisoning them, but he can’t outright suggest that, because that has the Consequences to it. 

So they spend the night and morning there and the pain has gone from very mild to it feels like his insides are all twisted and his muscles are swore all over like he’s been on the training deck for 8 hours straight. There’s a couple times where he loses his face a little at the pain and the team have been starting to notice something up with him. but they don’t know what’s wrong. They try to ask him whats wrong, but he says its fine, and for a split second they think it looks like he might be panicking a little, but it’s gone before they’re sure, and decide to let it go.

They spend a lot of time going over negotiations but the species is hard to handle and Allura doesn’t understand why they are being so slow in accepting this, and is close to saying they just leave, because if these people don’t want to ally with them fine. But, ... they would be very helpful in the fight, so it’s important that they stay. Keith tells her that it’s her decision, if she feels that they really need these people for allies they’ll stay, but if they will be fine with out them, then they can go home anytime. (Again Keith wants them all off this planet, but does understand the importance of this alliance.) 

Allura keeps trying, but nothing seems to work so after spending over two days there, she decides that they aren’t getting anywhere and that they should leave before wasting anymore time here. Keith is so relieved because now there’s just so much PAIN, it feels like he’s being stabbed with knives that are both made of ice and red hot, and honestly he’s not entirely sure how he’s standing at the moment. 

But as they’re about to leave, the aliens stop them and tell them they can’t go yet, because they haven’t completed the loyalty test yet. Allura and the others are confused as to what this test is, but now Keith is imbetween them and the aliens (He’s so CLOSE to getting them out of here, he is NOT going to let these guys hurt his friends! He will fight them off if he has to) and is in position to fight them, and the others are confused to his reaction because it had seemed that he had been fine with them (in reality it was just Keith doing his best not to anger the aliens so they wouldn’t hurt them) and now he’s ready to fight and demands to know why they can’t leave. he did everything they said!

Turns out that the test they told him wasn’t the full test. The antidote isn’t actually the antidote. Normally the leader given the poison passes out completely after about 30 hours (Keith at this point is running at around 52) (but it still kills you at 72 hours) and then the rest of the test is for the crew to find the ingredients and make the cure for their leader, this way they know that not only is the captain loyal to their crew, the crew is loyal to the captain. 

(this alien race really aren’t bad guys, they just have a VERY messed up system of testing loyalties, and normally no one gets hurt, except for the jerks who actually are selfish and leave the planet (along with their crew) and take the antidote only to die because it didn’t actually cure them)

The team is FURIOUS because one of their own was hurt and they didn’t even know it and these people DARED to hurt him as part of some stupid test, and only now just tell them that they only have like 20 hours to find and make this cure or else Keith’s going to DIE. They’re mad at the aliens for doing this, mad at Keith for not telling them (even though they do understand after they calm down a little) and really mad at themselves for not seeing it sooner that Keith really wasn’t doing too well. 

Keith is still prepared to fight these guys, because with the pain in this head, it hasn’t quite sunk in that his team isn’t actually in danger, only he is, he still wants them all off this planet as soon as possible. ANd he’s angry and scared and protective and in so much PAIN, that he can’t even speak with out screaming. Buuut he does eventually pass out right there, and so starts everyone else’s part in the Loyalty test. And they REALLY need to hurry because they only have like 20 hours left and normally the crew gets more time (the aliens really didn’t expect Keith to stay on his feet that long). 

So the team splits up, most go out to find the ingredients to make it, and one or two stay with Keith because (despite their explanation) they are NOT no way in the history of the universe are they leaving Keith alone with them. 

So the rest of the fic is just a race against the clock to save Keith as they get all these stupid ingredients, and save Keith. 

After they do so, they leave the planet, and they might come back to finish negotiations and  maybe they won’t because Voltron doesn’t like people who poison their potential allies even if it is normally a well meaning test. 

And now that everyone is safe, they ask Keith why he didn’t try to tell them or take the antidote in secret somehow, and Keith tells them that he didn’t want to risk getting any of them hurt because of him, and that he’d much rather endure the pain than lose anyone else he cares about. Then cue the massive group hug that everyone gives him. :D

This would be alot of angst of Keith trying to manage the ever growing pain because HE Will NOT lose anyone else he cares about no matter what. (also he totally kinda panicked when he woke up, because he thought he failed and that his team was going to be killed, and very nearly punched Lance when trying to get up so he could save them. Also a group hung right then and there as well because they were all so relieved that their antidote worked and he’s alive!)

Found family fluff and Keith angst :D my favorite things

#Rangergirl IF YOU WROTE THIS OUT I WOULD LOVE THAT #ALKFJALKDSJ; #and i would totally draw pictures for it #let's do it #rangergirl3 #fic ideas #my fic ideas #voltron #keith #allura #lance #hunk #pidge #coran #found family #group hugs #angst #whump #poisoning #really long post im so sorry #famofpaladins rambles #i will do the others later #enjoy this!!!

[aion-rsa]

The Secrets of Marvel’s Eternals

https://ift.tt/2Z6GLNH

This article contains Eternals spoilers.

It’s not hard, when a Captain America or an Iron Man movie hits, for Marvel to have a comic on shelves that new fans can be pointed toward as an accessible way to get to know the characters. The same can’t be said for The Eternals. In a lot of ways, Jack Kirby’s most bizarre creations – god-like beings, created by the all-powerful Celestials to do battle with the deformed, wild Deviants – have endured despite their relative scarcity. The sum total of what can be reasonably called Eternals stories only runs to about 50 issues. So the task of centering them ahead of their big movie debut in November is both a blessing and a curse, even with an all-star cast and an Oscar-winning director at the helm. 

Enter Kieron Gillen.

Gillen is a Marvel veteran and no stranger to the company’s cultural juggernaut side. Counted among his greatest hits are a long run with Kid Loki in Journey into Mystery, a thematic touchstone for the MCU’s biggest television show to date. And he authored what is likely going to be an important comic to the MCU going forward in Young Avengers. When he’s not creating the source material for potential future blockbusters, Gillen is fairly skilled at playing with mythology: his creator-owned book for Image Comics, The Wicked + The Divine (co-created with his Young Avengers collaborators, Jamie McKelvie and Matt Wilson) mashed-up pantheons from around the world with pop music culture, and was a smash success. So Gillen was a natural choice to set on the weirdness of Eternals. 

For this new series, Gillen finds himself teamed with a pack of superstars on his Eternals relaunch – Esad Ribic, one of the most talented and epic line artists who’s ever worked in comics; Eisner winner Wilson on colors; and beloved star letterer Clayton Cowles lettering and doing the data page design work. We had a chance to chat with Gillen about his approach to the concept and what he’s got coming next.

Den of Geek: Late period Kirby stuff is pretty dense and odd, and generally tough to follow up on. I know Eternals is something that’s only spottily been touched through the course of Marvel history since he did it and usually to great effect. What was your first principle coming into this to make sure that you weren’t flattening the Eternals concept into just another superhero book, and at the same time, keeping it friendly to new readers who might have had limited exposure?

Kieron Gillen: My actual approach is very much the opposite, in terms of trying to flatten it into a cape book, because I think when they flatten into a cape book, they lose any point of existing. The Marvel Universe is such a busy place…a lot of the niches are filled.It’s like, if you were at DC, you couldn’t, for example, make a new hero, who is the paragon of all that’s good and everyone in America really likes him, because that’s Superman’s job. In any of these highly populated universes, you’ve got to look at, “Okay, how can I make them different? How can I find something that’s really just them?” So my approach is much more into drilling down to what makes them weird, what makes them different for audiences. And also things that have been implicit in the concept, I can perhaps put a spin on and make it even moreso.

One of the core things originally that I looked at is how when Kirby originally created Eternals, it wasn’t really for the Marvel Universe. They were folded in, and the work done by generations of creators there has been really interesting. But they sit differently in a universe where there’s actually gods, because their entire thing was they are people who have been mistaken for gods, and were actually aliens. There’s very much riffing on the 1970s Chariot of the Gods-ness of it all. Except of course, if you’ve got a universe where you’ve actually got gods, that starts to fray at the edges.

So what was a niche in the Marvel Universe that isn’t filled by the gods? I ended up with the idea that, if you actually look at it, even in the original Kirby stories, they’re people who’ve been mistaken for gods. In reality, they are a species of eternal unchanging immortal beings who have been created by actual space gods (the Celestials that are the gods  in this metaphor) in eternal battle with these demon-like creatures [Deviants]. 

I picked up some of the stuff that Neil Gaiman added to the concept, in terms of their immortality. Eternal is a very different word. You talk to certain theologians, there’s a debate whether angels have free will. Humans probably do. I’m not a theologian so don’t trust me on this, but the idea of whether angels have free will is a much more interesting question in lots of different ways. So I leaned into the idea that Eternals are angels. They’ve got this job and their job is to protect us, or at least the Earth, from demons. I pushed them into those elements, so all that stuff is very much let’s make them more weird. 

My broad theory is with DC characters the problem is the world. They are beautiful and perfect people who are facing a world that is corrupt. So Batman’s life is fine and then his parents were killed. Wonder Woman is sent as an ambassador to this warlike species of man. I think Wonder Woman is an interesting one to compare to because the closest Marvel character is really Thor. Thor is somebody who was sent to Earth because he was an arrogant shit [laughs]. To save the world, yes, but he is also the problem. So for me, the heart of Marvel characters, even though they try to save the world, they’re also the problem.

And for me, the Eternals didn’t really have that, and that’s why I’ve led to this idea that there’s this awful secret that when they die, they have to take a life to carry on living. And that’s, at least, one reason why Ikaris had to be my lead. Because Ikaris is such a good guy and the idea of, “Wait, when I do stuff, it’s not just my life I’m risking.” I know it’s not something [he’s] going to move past easily. He’s clearly going to be guilty, dealing with this for a very long time and there’s the relationship with the family and all that kind of element. And that seemed to be really interesting, especially because, and this goes into other areas with more Eternals, is that I always wanted them to be a society.

A lot of the Eternals don’t care. They’re ambivalent about this and in some ways they’re the bad gods. The idea of the Eternals includes people with very different ideas and yes, their job is to protect the Earth, but that doesn’t necessarily mean protecting humans. 

I’m fascinated by the comparison to angels because where they’re left at the end of issue six is very much a Paradise Lost situation where, not only are they fallen, but they’ve decided to cast themselves down. That brings Thanos in conceptually too. What was the most mentally complicated part to integrating Thanos into this new Eternals mythology for you? Because he’s more an external force of nature in the broader history of the Marvel Universe than he is really tightly aligned with Eternals history. But now with the Deviant stuff and the fallen Eternals, he feels much more integral to the concept than he used to.

When you think about Eternals, we’ve got the original Kirby stuff and then the generations of creators that have tried to integrate them in different ways into the Marvel Universe. It’s notable that some of the best stuff in Eternals has become everyone’s stuff, like the Celestials. But the Celestials are such a great fit. They’re one of the best visuals in all of Marvel. So many different people have touched on this connection between the Eternals and Thanos, [but] not much has ever really been done with it.

One of the aims for Eternals was to take continuity and turn it into mythology. So I was looking at all that 40 years of comics and trying to work out okay, let’s pretend they were all made by one person and it was all one big fabric. The creation of Thanos in my mind was always planned all along, and this is a fundamental sin of the Eternal people. It wasn’t that they had a kid who turned out bad. Kirby’s original idea was 100 Eternals, 100 Deviants, then only the Deviants breed. 

So there’s only ever been 100 in this weird static family unit, but what happened with Titan? What were all the schisms for? Where did Thanos come from? Thanos was really an attempt to extend the Eternal line, which went very badly wrong. You mentioned Paradise Lost, but I just got the Titanos Schism, which is an event in the history anyway, but I built up to being the equivalent of, I don’t know, one of those stories in Lord of the Rings, set 500 years earlier that’s in the appendix.

This is actually some of the stuff we cover in [The Eternals: Thanos Rising,] the Dustin Weaver special we’re doing. We talk about the background of all this. They argued whether they should actually have true Eternal children. They split. A’Lars AKA Mentor, met up with Sui-San on Titan. They work out a way to have Thanos (which is what the special is about) and hooray, they can breed. And then “oh no, this is what happens when we breed.” Thanos is really the worst case scenario.

But the other interesting thing is, of course, Thanos gets to meet his other family. The idea there’s a whole extended family he’s interacted with very little, which is really interesting to me. In the first arc,  I’ve written him as Frankenstein or the Phantom of the Opera. He’s just the Alien. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s regarded as a force of nature. 

I do this a lot in my books. People always say, I don’t really like villains. As much as I enjoy Thanos chewing the scenery and talking about poetry and death, I write them as people with powerful needs. The question becomes what will they do to get them? The answer, of course, [for] people like Thanos, is almost everything. But what’s always interesting for me is what won’t they do as well? If you can emotionally connect to all the characters, even the ones you hate, even the ones you want to lose, that’s when stuff becomes interesting for me. 

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Which Eternal was your hook when you first started thinking about the book? Who was your path into the world and did it change as you went deeper into it? Who do you hope readers attach to from your story as they head to theaters to see the movie?

Originally Ikaris and Sprite were the two, and I made them the point of view characters for two reasons. One, Ikaris is the most straight shooting character, therefore he was the person who would most be hurt by the twist. He’s the classic hero, so let’s put him through the grinder. And Sprite, of course, had been outside the story, so she’s useful because she doesn’t know stuff. 

I’ve got a version of Sersi who is a kind of depressed party girl. She’s been an amazing party girl figure. She’s always been enormous fun and I love that. I just wanted to do the alone on the dance floor kind of vibe, where there’s a certain sadness because she’d been doing hedonism for so long, what’s it covering up. Sersi around Eternals is a little bit different from her around humans. I think Sersi is, in some ways, the most complicated and messiest of the characters. I hope she’s the one I think we’re most attached to.

It’s a very different take on Gilgamesh. My biggest regret of the first arc is I couldn’t find space to use Makkari or Ajak, so I’m very glad that I got to do the specials. 

That’s kind of what Kirby did. One of the interesting things about Eternals in the original run is that it’s cut off early while he’s still introducing stuff. It’s not like it reached the midpoint. You’ve still got new characters coming in.  All the way through he’ll throw a random issue in with a different Eternal. It’s very free flowing. 

There’s nobody in comics right now that does grand spectacle like Esad and Matt together. Did having them attached on art change how you approached the scale of the story? 

I must admit I think I knew Esad was on the book before I started writing anything seriously. So leisurely it was, you know those amazing deep focus panels Esad does when you’ve got a city and something in the distance. I always think about that bit in Thor with Jason [Aaron], where you have the enormous dead giant in the background [note: Thor: God of Thunder (2012) #3 page 9]. I remember that and the moment, oh no, no, we’re going to have a lot of deep focus shots. I’m always looking for chances to do that with Esad because why wouldn’t you? [laughs] Obviously, I know Matt really well, having gone through all manner of growing with him, so I know how adaptable and how amazingly he responds to different characters, or different artists rather.

His colors for Dustin Weaver are really amazing in the Thanos Rising special. The fact it’s a story set earlier in the timeline he’s doing a modern take on old ‘70s coloring. It’s really psychedelic and pop, but the whole thing is clearly a modern comic, but at the same time, clearly lifting notes. But with Esad, it’s always how can I do something that allows Esad to actually provide the scale of things? Because it’s a very chatty book, but I’ve got to find interesting ways to make things chatty, interesting things. It doesn’t just have to be a battle scene. Even just an establishing shot is a thing of beauty. 

There’s these six Eternal cities I’ve codified. And the idea of, okay, when we go to those cities, it’s going to be the magical moments. In the same way, when we introduce New York in the first issue, that’s also a magical moment because it’s New York. In many ways, especially to a British person, New York is as magical a city as Olympia. There’s that kind of thrill.

Do the data pages help you get out of your own way or get out of Esad’s way on the art a little bit more?

A little bit. They’re a useful compression device.. At least part of the appeal of Eternals is its scope. Esad makes it really big visually, also big in the ideas of what we’re describing. There’s entire cast members and there’s political systems and there’s those groups who hate each other or like each other and I’m bearing all that in mind when writing it. And the data pages are a really good way of doing it.

Jonathan Hickman’s been doing it forever. I remember. When his Nightly News dropped, it was fascinating, but I’ve been really glad he’s managed to open up a bit of space in the mainstream for people to do that. Because it’s the thing I said I want to be a bit careful around this. I said, I always use a lot of text stuff in my indie work and there’s bits of all manner of text stuff I did before. I think it’s much more notable with Jon because Jon’s the designer so he can just do his own. With me, it was always a case of my interest in text and image and things you can do with that were limited by the fact that the resource I could have.

But what I was trying to is not just do what the X-books have done as well. [This] is the first time [Clayton Crain]’s done design internally and he’s doing amazing work, but it’s also stuff like the spread in issue three where we’ve got all those names. I literally programmed my own Deviant name generator. This generated 1,200 names on that page that Clayton laid out. We’re still working out how we’re going to release that online.  

What are you most excited for people to see in the second arc of the book?

The first arc’s been all about remaking the Eternals, as in here we are, we’ve got a new status quo, more heroes are dealing with the fact that there is a corruption at the heart of their system. Can they change it? Can we change this unchanging system? That’s the tragedy of their heroism to me. 

The second arc, I’m trying to do that to the Deviants. Not as radically because I don’t think the Deviants need it as much. What are the Deviants for? What are they like? If the Deviants were our lead characters, we would be absolutely petrified of the Eternals and now they’re living here. So we get to really meet the Deviants, we get to understand their life and their tragedy.

There’s an enormous battle. That’s something to look forward to. There’s romance and sadness, and there’s also really cool guest stars in the background, which I don’t want to talk about, but it’s important for me to ground this in the Marvel Universe. But also this is a world of humans. It’s not just weird Eternals falling around their fortresses. If an issue doesn’t have humans in it, I feel a bit off because for me that’s another thing about Marvel. Part of the fun of Spider-Man was always that I could look to my left and imagine Spider-Man flying past me, so trying to keep the element, the world outside your window, while still doing something with the scale of what we’re doing, that’s the trick. So I’m hoping that comes across in the next arc.

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Eternals: Thanos Rises #1 is on sale on Wednesday, September 15th in local comics shops and online. Eternals: Celestia, the story featuring Makkari and Ajak, hits shops and the web in October, and Marvel’s Eternals is in theaters the following month. 

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