#none of the elements were in any way incorporated

[wrynnindoubt]

So

The new doctor who is godawful.

#its like what conservatives think when they say something is “woke” #like. who signed on this #how did you get such great actors to give such terrible performances #who is this for #its forced diversity casting in the worst way #its clunky and the pacing is weird and the dialogue is cringey #its like they they asked an AI to write a progressive script #none of the elements were in any way incorporated #its a liberal old white guy trying way too fucking hard to prove he's down with the times #but not actually asking any disabled or POC or queer people for pointers #I haven't watched since the moon abortion episode and I didn't even want to see them try to write a lady doctor #i was really fucking excited for a return to form and now I'm just worried about the new doctor getting hatecrimed in space #every episode is about how slavery is bad actually did you know that? well its bad

[ghulehcirice]

Lavender Fog Part 2

[Phantom Ghoul X Reader]

[A/N]; Hey Babes! Thank you for all the love on part one I really wasn’t expecting it all I want this to be as amazing as good as I can make it but let’s go over a few reminders!

TW/CW list; the ghouls are described more in-depth as pack like creatures and are displayed as doing things such as nesting and scenting, as well as purring, there will be talk of harassment and bullying not done by any of our main characters, foul language such as whore, slut and other unsavoury words will be used for reader! Please remember you are none of those things! This fic will incorporate the Possessive!Phantom elements I was aiming for last chapter! Some siblings of sin shit talking the ghouls and calling them inhuman, demons etc.

THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE MASKS AND I DO NOT WANT THEN TO BE DRAGGED INTO THIS.

I am all for respecting people and ideas. My philosophy with this is that the band was originally established to be completely anonymous I will keep that with everyone. Which does include the ghouls and papas.

On a more silly note I want to include Copia more and I am an autistic and trans Copia truther and he will probably resemble my own expirences!

With that being said I will add any tws that are needed so let’s get started.

Apparently this connection you both shared was a rarity between humans and ghouls, you knew ghouls often get attached to people, thinking back to all the videos you have seen of Omega and Papa Terzo. But it’s not often that that bond happens between a newly summoned ghoul and a regular sibling of sin.

The past few days had been a whirlwind of organizing with you, Copia and Sister Imperator. Quickly you’ve come to learn you can’t spend a whole lot of time away from phantom, Lest you want a ghoul fussing over wheter you’ve eaten, if you’ve been hurt, etc. you had to move into the ghouls den with him, not that you really cared, they have their own kitchens and everything. That’s not even starting on just how comfortable ghoul nests are. That reminds you to swap some of the clothes you had given him to build his nest with so you had clean clothes.

Your past few days had consisted of alot of this, swapping clothes from the nest, getting moved into the den, figuring out what you’re going to do in the clergy now because you can’t do a whole lot with your puppy of a boyfriend (is that what you two are? Cirrus called it being mates but also said it’s not a title to be taken lightly.) It has also been a lot of getting to know Papa on a more personal level as he helped you learn about ghouls. Quickly you’ve come to learn Papas not very different from anyone else in this Abbey. He had a very big love of his rats VERY BIG. This man really loves rats, outside of his papal makeup he struggles with things anyone else does, eye contact, talking, confidence. Can I just emphasize how much this man loves rats and rodent like animals? Same with those old really shity 8 but games. If you asked me last week how big a rodents test were I WOULD NOT have guessed that they do not stop growing. The fact Copia had stuttered out when you first met was going straight into your little box of horrors. Right next to the fucking talking plant from that show.

On days you spend in the papal library, you would often be coddled near to loving suffocation from Phantom. Smell is a large thing for ghouls, so you usually have to spend anywhere between an hour and a half all the way through 4 hours cuddling with a ghoul so you’re properly scented. And no, you can’t move unless it’s absolutely necessary even then you get trailed to and from whatever the important thing was. Once you both are settled further, you need to have a talk about space and boundaries. You know he’s been trying his best to learn between everything. On the nights you spend in eachothers arms he tells you about some ghoul customs, although you can’t hear a whole lot over the… purring? Apparently ghouls do in fact purr when they’re happy and you were not hearing things. Had to have Copia help you realize that one. But he told you about something, the name was in infernal tounge, which is apparently the native tounge in the pit. But it seemed similar to promise rings.

From your understanding, ghouls who were mating would forge a ring of this extremely tough material that’s found in the pit, it’s hard to find and even harder to meld into shape. He told you that if you could find that material and mold it perfectly to fit the chosen partner and return it then you were fated to be together. In turn you told phantom about your newly acquired fact and in turn would tell him about human courting and dating culture, like how in most cultures people also exchange rings, and get their love officiated in often times extravagant ceremonies. And you promised him one day you’d take him on a human date, once he properly learned how to glamour.

It was hard at first, learning how to balance phantom with your learning and the tasks you had quickly picked up around the den. It would turn out most siblings of sin arent brave enough to come down here to do their chores. So you were the go to for any task that had to be done by a human granted you could be pulled from phantoms death grasp long enough to accomplish anything of course leading to more phantom cuddles and scenting. The more you let it happen the nicer it became you had to admit it was pretty nice to have someone caring about you so much that they wanted to coddle you.

But on your next escapade from the ghouls den you quickly learned that ghouls can also have a protective streak. This was abit of a later trip then you would usually be on, if you had to take a guess Terzo might’ve gotten his dick stuck in the eyehole of a ghouls mask… again. Wasn’t your job to question though. On your route to Copias quarters you were cornered by some siblings of sin. They caught you in the old corridors, which was very strange because no one was supposed to have access to this place.

“Can I help you folks?” You muttered out with the confusion clearly lacing your words. The siblings snickered at you cruelly jeering like hyenas when you tried to duck around them only to be stepped infront of by one of them.

“Arent you the ghoul fucker?” The tallest of the flock sneers, confused you step back only to hit the wall “I’m sorry the what?” The siblings just laugh at your confusion, looking to and from one another and oogling you like a circus freak.

“You’re fucking that new ghoul aren’t you? The one that’s replacing the Aether ghoul?” They repeat, watching you with the eyes of a hawk. The two on either side of her chuckle and close in on you, forcing you to curl closer into yourself. Out of the corner of your eye you could’ve sworn you could see a flash of weirdly coloured fog, though it’s probably nothing.

“Im not ‘fucking’ anyone. Why would you ask such a thing?”

“Everyone always knew you were a whore, are you trying to get into papas pants through his ghouls? Or are you just a slut like that? You know none of the ghouls would even care about you right? They’re monsters! They can’t feel any real human emotions, you’re delusional if you think any of them care about you. It will dump you out once it finds something better to have at.”

You flinched away at the siblings cruel words. They didn’t know anything about your bond with phantom and the others. You knew they were nothing like these siblings of sin said. Taking a deep breath, you recentred yourself and just stare at the group. Using all the i don’t give a shit energy you’ve picked up from Mountain to deter them.

They didn’t seem to like this very much because they started stepping closer and closer, if you’re being honest you felt like the nerd kid in any 90s high school setting getting their lunch money taken by the bully jocks. Before they could pick you up by your feet and shake all the coins from your pocket like a rag doll and give you a swirlie in the school toilet, the smallest of the group was shot to the floor in a heap of black, white, and.. lavender? Oh shit.

Phantom must have come to find you, or one of the ghouls seen the sibling bothering you and went to tell your mate. Before you could wrack your brain you were torn away by the scream of the other two siblings who were backing away from the scene. Within an instant papa was out of his quarters, clearly having just woken up given the disheveled look he was in, only having on his Mickey Mouse pyjama pants and being bare chested on top. Wait, does papa have top surgery scars? Oh cool. You could tell papa was a little fruity, now you knew why. Quickly you and Copia worked together to get phantom away from the sibling who didn’t seem to be hurt, looked to be a few cuts from phantoms claws.. he has claws?? The sibling probably had a few bumps and bruises from the fall too.

Papa took the three siblings after you abashedly gave him the file you were supposed to, leaving you to calm down Phantom, Now that everything was calmed down, you quickly realized Phantom didn’t have his mask on which was a surprise because on one hand, the ghouls aren’t supposed to have their masks off anywhere average siblings could see them and two, Phantom hasn’t taken off his mask around you yet, when you two first met he had an old Era 3 mask on. He told you he wasn’t the most comfortable with his face, telling you that he had gotten pretty beaten up during his summoning, and that he had birthmarks he didn’t like. You couldn’t see why, he has Lichtenberg scar righ down his left eye and moving down and across the bridge of his nose the eye it when through was a lighter shade of purple then his right, you found him beautiful but he really didn’t like it, you’re probably gonna have to give him a lot of cuddles tonight.

Once everyone was away from the scene, Phantom stared into your face, breathing heavy. It felt as though everything fell silent and still. Until Phantom ran at you, and picked you up into a bridal carry, without speaking her took you back to the den. When you arrived in the lounge the other ghouls all watched you, with Cirrus and Aurora coming up to check on you. Phantom held you away possessively from the woman, He ignored everyone and took you to your shared room.

You were definitely right about having to give him extra cuddles that night. When he laid you down and got into bed, before dragging you onto his chest and taking your face in his hands.

“Are you okay?” He asks, gently handling your face as he looked it over for scars, in turn you grab his face and kiss his own scars, using your spare hand to guide his hand to feel your heart beat.

“I should be asking you that, bug. You didn’t have to fight them for me. They’re just jealous.” He growls at the mention of the incident, gently nibbling at your hand that held his face. He doesn’t reply but gently shifts you from his chest and goes to his chest of draws, he rustles around and grabs an short for you and puts it on the bed for you before grabbing his own clothes

“I’d be a bad mate if I didn’t.” He leaves to get changed and you get into the shirt, and gently re arrange the nest to be comfortable for a good nap. You can hear Cirrus checking up on phantom and the muttering of Their conversation. Once phantom is back, you curl into his side as phantom purrs and hums the tune of Little Sunshine.

Deep down you think you’ll be just fine with your mate.

—————————————————————————

[A/N; WE DID IT! I hit major writers block with this, I wanna thank you all for the love on Part one, and especially @pinklunarprincess for supporting my posts thus far, you were the first person (from my memory) to encourage me with part one and I thank you! I hope you guys enjoy, I’m too exhausted to beta read right now so if I missed anything PLEASE let me know, I’m working on another little fic idea I’ve had so hopefully something will be out soon<3 love you all and thank you

#ghost band #ghost bc #the band ghost #ghost band x reader #ghost bc x reader #phantom ghoul x reader #phantom ghoul #nameless ghoul x reader #nameless ghouls

[sagau-my-beloved]

hello I’d like to request venti with s/o who has angel wings like his pls

Venti with reader that has wings headcanons:

Warnings: possessiveness, talk of mild manipulation, vaguely suggestive in some parts

-

• For starters, Venti would be so beyond happy, I really can't describe to what extent

• He now has something in common with you that none of the other Archons have

• Would definitely emphasize this by either incorporating his wings into his everyday outfit (assuming he's not trying to hide his status), or simply choosing to be in his Archon outfit more often

• Now you match, and, in his own mind, that emphasizes that you're inherently closer with him

• He really can't help how proud of himself he is for that spur of the moment design choice all those years ago

• The people of Mondstadt now believe that their Archon was 'made' in your image, the sense of superiority is going through the roof—

• It only makes sense that you would bless your favorite nation/element/Archon/etc. to resemble yourself in some way

• Do you have a closer relationship with the Anemo Archon than previously thought? Were you two something more than just divine creator and blessed worshiper?

• (Venti might have the opportunity to spin this in a way that he was given his Archon form by you specifically to be your lover, it's not like you would know the difference without your memories—)

• He shows off his wings a lot around you in various ways, like stretching them out to their fullest extent to emphasize how pretty and big and well-kept they are, always trying to catch your eye

• Will absolutely get a very dreamy expression if he notices you admiring them, he'll admire yours in return (as if he doesn't already admire everything about you constantly)

• He wants so desperately to just touch and preen and run his hands over your feathers, to see exactly how sensitive your wings are

• But Venti knows that's a rather intimate act, and he's not going to push your boundaries that far unless you make it explicitly clear that you're ok with it

• The exception is, of course, if your relationship has evolved past simply creator and acolyte onto something more akin to lovers

• Then it's only natural that he should help you with things like that, as natural as picking up house work and cooking and showering you with attention constantly

• He is sooo overwhelming sweet while doing it too

• Going on and on and on about how honored he is, how beautiful they are, how much he loves you

• Venti is absolutely keeping any feathers of yours he happens to find in a safe hidden place, because no one else deserves to have them

• May even braid one or two of them into his hair so he'll always have a piece of you close

• He would also be more than happy to give you some of his own, thrilled even

• If you look closely, you'll see that this might translate over to his version of a promise ring—

• You must be bound to each other now, right? Constantly carrying a piece of each other and all-

• Oh, and he takes the lead on accommodating furniture since he knows the struggles of sitting in regular chairs with big wings

• Venti wants to fall asleep with your wings wrapped around him so badly, it's on his bucket list

• Another thing on that is jumping off Starsnatch Cliff hand in hand and just gliding together

• Anyway, he gets irritable when he sees someone else touching your wings, especially without your explicit permission

• He will intervene by physically pulling you into him, a daring smile sent in the other person's direction, asking them to try it again

• If it is completely consensual, then he'll just be sulking in the corner

• After, you'll have to deal with him practically on top of you, complaining excessively about how you're just too nice and you shouldn't give into people's requests like that, especially when they don't fully understand what they are requesting

• You're the only person allowed to touch his wings, because that means he's bound to you

• While he can't actually dictate what you do, he kind of wishes you would allow him exclusive access to touching your wings in return

• They're a display of power sure, but they are also a display of vulnerability, because they're a rather big and fatal target if struck the right way

• So letting someone close enough to touch them is both very intimate and a display of something above a platonic relationship, but people without wings wouldn't really know that

• And if someone disrespects you by some rude offhanded comment about your wings, it's on sight—

#genshin impact #sagau #genshin venti #genshin x reader #venti x reader #yandere genshin au #yandere genshin x reader #headcannons

[writergeekrhw]

Do you remember any DS9 stories you wrote but had to be scrapped due to cost, actor unavailability or any other non-creative reason and you wish they could have made it to the screen? Or that may have turned some arcs to a significantly different direction?

The only stories we abandoned on #DS9 were for internal, story driven reasons. We dumped them because they never gelled. None of them that I can remember were bearing walls, so the fact we abandoned them didn't really change the overall arc.

A few examples:

I worked for a while on a story about freeing Sito Jaxa from a Cardassian prison, but we never really cracked it. Then we tried to repurpose it as a Tom Riker story, but it still never quite worked. I'm not sure either of version was ever worthy of screen time, to be honest, but I incorporated some elements of them (like killing the cell mate) into "Hard Time."

I had a pitch about the Defiant going back in time to a key Klingon/Federation battle. The crew realizes there are far more Klingon ships then were in the historical record and Sisko and Worf debate whether to destroy them or not. It was shelved because we had too many time travel stories. I cannibalized it for the ANDROMEDA episode, "Angel Dark, Demon Bright."

My original pitch for "Past Tense" was closer to "Far Beyond the Stars" until I changed it from a Prophet vision of Sisko as a homeless man in the 20th century to the time travel/prison riot story we ended up with. I always liked the original version, but "Far Beyond the Stars" is way better.

#ds9 #star trek deep space 9 #deep space 9 #star trek deep space nine #deep space nine #star trek ds9 #star trek #tv writing #tvwriting #ask me stuff #ask me anything

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

have you read (ugh) Harry Potter and if so how do you compare it to TOH ( also let’s burn Rowling at a stake lmao)

I grew up with Harry Potter so it was a pretty big part of my childhood. It was a fun, fantasy series that inspired millions of children worldwide and had a considerable impact on children's literature. Given its popularity and position in the zeitgeist, it was inevitable that people would be inspired by it, analyze it, criticize it, mock it, etc.

Now I haven't read HP in a long time and it's been a hot minute since I've watched the movies but I think I remember enough. It's also difficult (and probably unfair) to compare TOH and HP because one has 7 books in which to expand its lore and characters while the former only had effectively 2 1/2 seasons. But let's try any way. This got long so there will be more after the cut:

The Owl House is a structurally flawed show and it has a glaring blindspot in how its poc characters are treated but at least it doesn't have offensive tropes such as Jewish-coded goblins and elves who are happy to be slaves.

TOH's biggest strength is probably the likability of its characters and how easy it is to project onto them; Eda is the fun and sassy mentor but struggles with a terrible curse that many people read as a metaphor for chronic illness. Luz is your typical kid protagonist who is curious, excitable, and struggled to fit in at school. Amity was the perfectionist bully but secretly has a soft side. These are all good archetypes for your characters and it's easy to see why they're appealing.

On the other hand, I feel like HP's biggest strength is its world building: Hogwarts feels like a place the reader can step into as do Knockturn Alley, Gringotts, Grimauld Place, the Burrow, 2 Privet Drive, etc. The fact that I can still name all of these places shows the culture impact HP had and just how immersive the books were (and of course, how the movies brought them to life).

I think a big part of this is how HP incorporates magic into its universe: Hogwarts has the moving staircases, a ghost haunting the girl's toilet, floating candles in the Great Hall, the magic makes the setting come alive. When Harry said that Hogwarts was his home, many readers felt the same way.

When I think of the Boiling Isles, I think of how small it feels; there's Hexside, the Emperor's Castle, and the titular Owl House but aside from the last one, none of these places really stand out design wise or even emotionally. Hexside is just another fantasy school except with teeth, and the Castle is just a generic evil overlord castle. And the Owl House only stands out because of Hooty, without him, it's just another house.

As for the magic itself?

Well, the magic in TOH is really inconsistent, especially the glyphs. Here's a post that goes in depth on how poorly the glyphs were incorporated into the show. It's also not terribly creative with its magic: Willow is a plant witch but we only ever see her attack with vines and Gus' Illusion magic is explored in one, maybe two episodes. The only new element that is interesting is Abomination magic, which looks cool but it's basically water bending with goo.

For a show set in another world, it doesn't really do much to distinguish itself from Earth outside of the aesthetics; there's social media, movies, a job fair, and people treat covens like college degrees (which has enormous implications for how poorly done the EC is). It doesn't feel like you're in another world and I think a big part of that is the lack of whimsy in the show.

When Harry Potter explored the castle, the reader did as well, and we were just as amazed and impressed as he was. As Harry explored the wizarding world and all of its creatures and inhabitants, that sense of whimsy and awe never faded. I never got that sense of whimsy when Luz was exploring the Boiling Isles, it felt too similar to home.

If the show had spent more time in season 1 establishing its tone and identity instead of making fun of HP or fantasy tropes in general then we wouldn't have this problem. Hexside is especially guilty of this: look! here's our Parody Sorting Hat! check out our broom game that has nonsensical rules! take that Harry Porber!

As it stands, TOH looks good on paper but it botches the execution of its interesting ideas and concepts. I can see why so many people love it though because some of the things the characters go through are Relatable but for me, I've seen all of this done before and better in other media. If it came out years ago, perhaps it would have left a bigger mark on me, but in the end, TOH has very nice designs but it's undercooked.

#asks #the owl house #toh critical #toh criticism #harry potter

[tj-dragonblade]

Shipper Tag Game

Tagged by the delightful @seiya-starsniper @zzoomacroom and @carnelianmeluha, thank you!

What ship were you completely obsessed with as a teenager, but now you don’t care about anymore? I...hm. Am I willing to publicly admit to the self-insert daydreaming I did as a teen, long before my days in internet fandom? Okay I guess I kind of just did but I refuse to elaborate. I have long since moved on and I ship him with an in-universe partner at this point.

Which ship would you consider your first one? You ask a lot of my poor aging memory. I'm gonna say...before internet-accessible fandom? I was very keen on Rogue and Gambit in high school, when the 90s XMen animated series was one of my primary interests. After acquiring internet access and discovering communal fandom? 2x5, Gundam Wing. Duo and Wufei.

Your first fanfic was about which couple? Duo and Wufei

Do you remember the first couple you saw fan art of? It was probably Heero x Duo since that was the big popular ship in GW

Have you ever gotten into ship discourse? I don't think so. I am not exempt from having spoken ill of ships over the years but it's been about my opinion, not some kind of value/morality judgement and I have never gotten into fights with anyone

Did you used to have a NOTP or have one currently? There is one ship that I will class as a NOTP and it only became that after it went unexpectedly canon. I'm still willing to incorporate their canon kid into things and I have no interest in demonizing her, but I absolutely Do Not Want to see/read/hear about them having a genuine romantic attachment because the canonization pissed me off so bad. It's SaiIno from Naruto, for the curious.

Who were the last couple in the last fanfic you read? Dreamling

Currently, do you have any OTPs? Depends on your definition of OTP I suppose. To me it means 'favorite couple' more than 'can't stomach seeing them with anyone else'. Currently that's Dreamling. Currently I'm not really interested in reading about either of them with anyone else but historically as I spend longer in a fandom my tastes grow more willing to branch out, so who knows what the future holds. And I still have OTPs from each fandom I've been in (some of which predate the common use of the term 'OTP') even if they're no longer my reading/writing focus.

Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting into? Not...really? Not mad about? This is such a weird question, if I was truly taken with a ship I would have explored it? Are we asking if I'm mad about getting into a ship after the fandom has passed its peak of popularity maybe? IDK? I mean, there are occasionally characters from properties that are in formats that I don't tend to invest my time in (Podcasts, video games, long-ass long-running animes that I did not get in on the ground floor with) that catch my interest, and then I have next to no canon framework for exploring my interest, but it's not a thing I'd ever get mad about. If I really want to know more about Gale and his potential matches I'll find somewhere to read BG3 lore, y'know?

Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they’re kind of interesting? Mmmmmno. But I do have more than one that's gone the other way.

Do you have any ship that, in the past, would have been considered normal but now you would be cancelled over? Mmmyep. I remain unapologetic about it; that is my ship, tirelessly built with my own two hands and almost nothing predating me to influence interpretation, lovingly crafted exactly as I see it and convincingly enough to interest a handful of other folks. Thankfully none of the people leaving occasional kudos on those fics these days are raising a stink about the 'problematic' elements.

What is your favourite crack ship? Lord of the Lost's Judas album gave me serious serious Jesus/Judas vibes, but that's not really crack so much as quote-unquote blasphemy. I am going to steal Seiya's answer of Tony the Tiger x The Grinch, because I am hard-pressed to think of anything else that would qualify.

What is the couple you read the most fanfics about? Currently? Dreamling. I tend to hyper-focus on one fandom at a time and when I'm lucky enough to ship the popular pairing, there is Far Too Much to spend my limited free time on and little reason to invest any of it elsewhere.

What do most of your ships have in common? I think the broadest way to sum up the widest swathe of similarities is that I generally enjoy a dynamic of Reserved x Exuberant, or to pull back a little further still, of Complementary Opposites.

What do you absolutely hate in a ship? Hate very rarely enters into it. Lack of chemistry, I guess? But that is a very subjective criterion. For every 'But why would you ship them?' I can ask, someone will have an answer.

Tagging, no obligation, tag me in your existing post if you've just done it: @danikatze, @zalia, @esperata, @staroftheendless, @rooftopwreck, @aquilathefighter, @chaosheadspace, @ginoeh, @macavitykitsune

#tagmemes

[pruskita]

For any Kirby oc! 💫🪄⚡️⚙️⚖️🦋

First of all, a big apology for posting this late, I just didn't know how to respond And to answer these questions I will use Mitty and Natsumi o Nachi

🪄 (Magic Wand) - Are they capable of wielding magic? Is it a learned skill, or is it innate? What sorts of spells can they cast? Do they possess any magical items or artifacts? [e.g. the Dimensional Mantle]

If both can use magic to some To some extent, Mitty can using fire magic involves creating it and also controlling it, Nachi can use air and wind by making things float or giving gusts of wind.

💫 (Shooting Star) - If they were to wish on a clockwork star, like Galactic Nova or Star Dream, what would they wish for?

⚡️ (Lightning Bolt) - Which Power Effects [Blizzard, Bluster, Sizzle, Splash, Zap] would their attacks grant? Do they have any particular weaknesses or resistances, elemental or otherwise?

I think Nachi would be a blizzard If there is any disadvantage it would be to use it in closed places since there would be no way for the air to escape, and Mitty would be a fire Clearly his weakness would be water.

⚙️ (Gear) - Do they have any knowledge of, or connections to, the Ancients? What do they think of them?

Nope, none of them are connected to the ancients, but Nachi believes that they will colonize a large part of the galaxy and leave various things of theirs On the other hand, Mitty believes that the ancestors are not what they say and believes that they stole technology from other cultures or that they simply do not exist.

⚖️ (Scales) - On the subject of a certain someone’s lengthy rant; is your OC moreso on the side of magic or science? Somewhere in-between? Do they incorporate the two together in some way?

Both are more affiliated with magic than science, but that does not mean that they use combinations of both sometimes or that they have a bit of technology that helps with their magic.

🦋 (Butterfly) - Does your OC ‘fear the reaper’, so to speak? If they fused with Morpho Knight, what sort of form would they take on

If both of them, because of what they have been taught in their lives, are afraid of the reaper, they know that if they see it it will be a misfortune or the death of someone.

#natshumi #kirby oc #Mitty #Questions to my oc #Es la primera que me hacen preguntas así que pido disculpas si no la se contestar bien

[tokuvivor]

Thanks for the tag on this one, @shychick-52! (Update: And @writebackatya.)

how many fics do you have on ao3?

12.

what's your total ao3 word count?

69,172.

what are your top five fics by kudos?

The Power of Three

Bridging the Gap

We Could Bring You a Hamburger…

One Night Ultimate Duck (Or Hummingbird, or Parrot)

Duckverse June 2023 Prompts (yes, it’s a story collection, but it still counts)

what fandoms do you write for?

DuckTales 2017, mostly, a bit for Super Sentai, did one for the Netflix show Dash & Lily, and I have a couple ideas of fics relating to other shows.

do you respond to comments? why or why not?

Yes! Someone took time out of their day to read my stuff and leave their input on it, and the least I could do is show my appreciation for it in return, and elaborate on any questions they may have.

what's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Shit, I’m really not good with ending stories on a down note; I try to make the endings as satisfying as possible. But I’d say the closest thing to that is for my 6th Webby Week story, Am I Good Enough? (An Internal Battle). It’s basically just Webby wrestling over being chosen by the Papyrus in her mind. Even though it doesn’t end on an outright fairy tale note, she does recognize that it’s okay to not have something that big figured out immediately, and that it’s good to talk about it with other people if you have trouble processing it.

what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

That’s a tough one. There are probably certain stories I’ll discuss in later answers, so for this one, I’ll go with We Could Bring You a Hamburger…. I mean, it’s just a sweet, simple story about something that absolutely should’ve been shown in canon (Webby getting her first hamburger). It’s just a good, satisfying, slice of life kinda thing.

do you get hate on your fics?

Well, on the second chapter of The Power of Three, I got somebody telling me that Huey shouldn’t be guilty over going against his general Woodchuck instinct and leaving Violet behind, and that he should be jealous and upset with Violet and Lena for insulting him and making him feel miserable. Jesus.

do you write smut?

No. I honestly don’t think I’d be good at it. Especially regarding a show like DuckTales. If I were to, it’d probably be wayyyyy down the road.

do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one you've ever written?

Not actively; if I write something with multiple fandom tags on AO3, it’s mostly because minor elements of one thing are peppered into my DT story.

have you ever had a fic stolen?

No. Thank god.

have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but that’d be interesting.

have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Yes; I started working with @sisiwritesfanfics on her Super Sentai Couples One-Shot Collection beginning with the second story. We’re currently trying to work on the third.

what's your all time favorite ship?

I don’t know, probably Fendra? But I generally prefer fanworks of them more, especially when stories go more in-depth regarding their relationship than we got in canon. There are others in DuckTales, and other pieces of media, that I really enjoy, though.

what's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

At the moment, none. But there are a couple idea that I have that I don’t know if I’d ever start.

what are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, especially between two characters, and being able to really get into characters’ minds.

what are your writing weaknesses?

Writing full-on angst. I can incorporate bits of angst into stories, especially when it’s introspective, but a full story of it just wouldn’t be my thing (so, way longer than Am I Good Enough?). Also, losing motivation at certain points in time.

thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I’ve done bits of gratuitous Spanish or Latin in my stories before, but no full-on dialogue. But I did provide the translated Spanish dialogue between Fenton, Gosalyn, and Webby in @writebackatya’s story Let’s All Go to the Movies!.

first fandom you wrote for?

Technically speaking, I did a piece based on Wreck-It Ralph back in high school for my creative writing class. So that, I guess.

favorite fic you've ever written?

Massive toss-up for me here. The Power of Three is special because it was my first fic, and it focuses on the budding dynamic between Huey, Violet, and Boyd, which absolutely should have been explored in the show. But my other major early idea for a DuckTales story turned into Bridging the Gap. Gandra isn’t written nearly as often alongside Huey, and we only really got a resolution of her relationship with Fenton (amongst main and major recurring characters) in the show, so I wanted to build on the pieces we got between Gandra and Huey in her episodes, which culminated in what I still think is my absolute favorite scene I’ve written. I think the overall edge goes to Power, but Bridging isn’t far behind in my heart.

Tagging @godfrey-the-chaos-duck and @sparklingspidey

#ao3 ask game #ducktales #super sentai #dash and lily #am i good enough? (an internal battle) #we could bring you a hamburger… #a second chance to save a life #the power of three #bridging the gap #let’s all go to the movies!

[comicaurora]

Hey Red, longtime fan of your channel and as of yesterday Aurora binge-reader

I have a few questions about your comic, answer as many or as few or as none at all as you want, and I apologize in advance for my physics-and-worldbuilding-junkie lizard brain that absolutely adores and wants to grok your awesome fantasy series, Please know this all comes from my own insatiable curiosity and passion for your comic

First of all, the metal caste gets their free will from recieving a spark at puberty, or from being struck by lightning and being "chosen", but could a mage give a spark to an unsparked metal caste by zapping them with lightning? could you be zapped multiple times? what happens if an already sparked metal caste is struck by lightning?

Do certain subgroups of humans that were elementally influenced or evolved show specific proclivities towards respective elements? (like are there a lot of stone mage metal-castes)

What are the crystal caste and where did they come from/were first mentioned either in a post or in the story? Rattle off as many varieties and their general deal as you want

Would the inhabitants of aurora ever have to retool or add new holidays if in the future any significant enough conceptual gods arise?

Is the white dragon real in the sense of as VD's opposite or is she just not real/is just a created god

If so, what's the actual source of the paladin's magic and how does it fit in with the elements?

Can gods channel the elements and be mages?

If so, why didn't VD posses the twins or have a god created for him to channel magic through?

how is VD even able to influence anything if he's stuck inside the adamantine prison?

if the white dragon is real, does she correspond to an eighth element?

is the eighth element soul?

if not what is soul? and is anything in this world not made of "elements" in the "stuff made from a primordial or whatever made them" way?

is adamantine made of the same stuff as soul?

are there more than eight elements?

where do stars come from?

where did the moons come from?

are there more planets besides the world we know?

do they have living things?

does the amalgam star look kind of like the green sun from homestuck (look it up)

do the other 4 promordials (and the 1-2 dragons) have progenitors like life's amalgam star and fire's two mysterious parents?

is or was there a whole society of primordials out in space?

If the promordials happened to develop a different language/alphabet would their great runes look different?

And some fun meta questions and comments:

I love the auroran calender, being that it is far more mathmatically clean and consistent than our own, (I watched your Thoth gambles with the moon video), is this sort of wish fufillment? I also love how you incorporated some chaos back in with the red moon sword and added a three day intercalery period

What are some common tropes you knowingly subverted or played with when writing the story?

It's extremely refreshing that Kendal doesn't have "chosen one" angst, instead he has much more subdued "no one will get hurt because of me" and "am I human?" angst

What's your opinion on tv tropes, (I for one, have wasted so many hours on it)

Did the primordials have a super-fun six man band dynamic?

who was the comic relief?

What's your actual opinion on Erin (I find his character super fun/compelling and I find his hubris hilarious)

The god mechanics have kind of a neil gaiman feel, I love it!

Vash gives off extreme shonen protagonist vibes (like goku + thor + spiderman) Is this on purpose? I love it

Kendal also seems pretty shonen protagonisty

Could you make an entire chapter where Erin just reads one of his magic textbooks and we get an in depth look at the study of magic and everything the people in the story know about it (I'm kidding of course but I also would actually eat that up like chocolate pudding because I'm a total lore junkie)

And sorry this is soooo long, you prob won't respond and I don't want to annoy you, just really curious and excited about your comic!

Holy heck, okay, let's count it down

The lightning that sparks a metal-caste cannot be influenced by another will - so a mage's lightning won't have this effect. If an already-sparked metal-caste is struck by lightning they receive a Second Spark and become a Stormbreaker.

Yep! For instance, almost all Ignans are fire mages.

The Crystal Caste live on the Helm-East continents and were influenced by the increased presence of Stone's bones, which are the source of all natural crystal. They haven't been mentioned in the comic yet, but have been discussed some out here. They're allegedly ruled by the Adamant Caste located on the northern continent, a family descended from the first Adamant King who led a rebellion against the magically dominant Glassfolk that once ruled the region. They possess the unique ability to control and redirect magic other people cast, even more rare among the Crystal-Caste who are very rarely mages of any kind. Under the Adamant Caste on the equatorial continent are three empires in a tense stalemate - the militarily powerful Sapphire Empire, the naturally-protected Ruby Empire shielded by a mountain range and a vast desert, and the weaker Emerald Empire that sprawls on the eastern coast and has only maintained its power at a level comparable to the other two through uniquely cunning tactics and a habit of accepting the talents of non-Crystal-Caste into the court - even some ferin.

Not unless they wanted to. The gods that get festivals are the ones it's easy to theme a party around.

Unknown!

See above!

Nope! The gods control the elements in a completely different way than mortals do. Rather than channeling elemental energy/primordial souls, they seem to impose their own soul on the elements they wish to manipulate, embodying it and reshaping it that way.

See above!

The Void Dragon is a living primordial being. We have no parameters for what abilities we can expect him to have, as all the other primordials we know of are dead. Evidently he can exert a degree of surveillance and physical control outside of his body. Maybe that's something all primordials could do!

Presumably the Light Dragon would correspond to an eighth element.

If soul energy is an element like the other primordials, it doesn't behave the same way any of them do, and it seems to universally permeate everywhere anyone has looked so far.

The nature and origin of soul energy is unknown. The Collector would very much like an answer to the same question!

Adamant is the perfect balanced fusion of the six elemental primordials, and it's a physical substance. Soul energy is a typically invisible energy that permeates everything. They are not the same thing.

Confirmed yes, starmetal is not any of the known elements and is theorized to be literal cooled shards of dead stars. Thus we know there are more elements out there, even if it is just one more element.

The origins of stars are largely unknown, but some observers with very good telescopes claim that new stars sometimes appear in luminous gassy nebulas.

The moons are the destroyed remains of Stone's armaments - a sword and a tower shield. Without him, over time they crumbled and gravity took over. That's why they're called Sword and Shield.

Unknown!

See above!

Pretty dope but no, it's much weirder than that

Yes!

Unknown but possible!

Evidence suggests that the runic language is the writing system of the Primordials, so by definition the runes would look the same.

META QUESTIONS:

Definitely wish fulfillment on my part. I just like it when things evenly divide other things. Is that so wrong?

Oh so many. Chief among them is the Easy Romantic Subplot Between The Male Lead And The First Girl. There was a draft (when I was like eleven) where of course that was going to be a thing, and then I realized I super didn't need to do anything I didn't want to do, and their relationship can just be whatever. Outside of that I don't tend to think of storytelling in terms of what tropes to avoid so much as I let the characters do what makes sense for them, and sometimes that means skipping over more easy stock plots or sources of conflict.

Kendal's flavor of angst is, in my opinion, significantly more relatable than "boohoo having a cosmic destiny and awesome sword is really sad and I wish my life was boring", like even though that's probably what WOULD happen I like this a lot more

love me some TVTropes, I spent like six months in highschool devouring as much of it as I could find and emerged changed - an elevated being, one could say. To this day I like going on TVTropes after I finish a series and just reading through the bite-sized analysis and highlights.

yeup!

definitely Lightning

I love Erin very much. I write a lot of paragons who will always try to do the most morally right thing they can manage - so it's very refreshing to write somebody who literally thinks he's too smart for that. Erin has a moral compass - he even follows it sometimes - but he prides himself on prioritizing real things like knowledge and power. Erin will use any tools he has available to succeed - in theory. In practice he's rigidly principled and it frustrates him immensely. Erin is like a "season 1 villain turned season 2 grumpy ally" except we fully skipped season 1. Erin is also convinced he's the main character, which is very funny to me. Also sometimes it's just fun to write someone being a huge dick to people who deserve it, and since I have a lot of protagonists who either can't or won't stand up for themselves, letting Erin loose on the people hurting them is very cathartic.

Thanks! Neil Gaiman's attitude towards gods definitely influenced me, although I put my own spin on it to make it work in a way I actually fully enjoyed.

Vash's protagonist vibes are absolutely intentional. He is the hero of the wrong story - every brash, powerful, badass protagonist trait I like rolled into one. Literally the most mortifyingly known I've ever felt was when I sent the first chapter to a friend of mine and she saw the first page he talked on and immediately responded "so this dude is based on Inuyasha right?"

Kendal has the outward appearance of the most classic hero I could construct, but on the inside is very different - a lot more melancholy and very laser-focused on his task, caring achingly deeply but slowly learning to let himself be cared for in return. Many hero's journeys focus on the protagonist's personal desires and flaws distracting them from their inevitable quest, but I thought it would be interesting if Kendal had the exact opposite problem - a being driven by a singular heroic purpose learning to let himself do and feel literally anything else.

if we ever get to the Mage Academy this could very well happen and that is a threat

#asks #aurora #long post

[nono-bunny]

The Obey Me manga is so cute! And wholesome! And it does a fantastic job at adaptating season 1 of the story while incorporating elements of the later ones. Some of the arcs leading up to the pacts got overhauled completely, but the new shorter stories made to replace the longer story arcs were really cute!

Also, the changes made and the new story elements created to accommodate Zephyr were really fun! They are a very different type of MC than the one in the game by virtue of still being a Lilith descendant, but somehow one who doesn't have innate magic in the way the game's MC does which creates such an interesting twist?? I was surprised that there ended up being an explanation for why they're an amnesiac sheep rather than it just being something they used to avoid creating any sort of canon appearance of MC, and the whole thing was a really cool and unique idea that also made me cry

Also, the end was SO cool??? I'm a sucker for that type of framing in spin-offs, and Barb was great and such a fitting choice to end on! A lot of stuff throughout gave NB vibes, but none more-so than that. Cryptic and all-knowing is a good look on him!

#obey me #obey me the comic #obey me manga #obey me one master to rule them all #obey me swd

[feyariel]

Fey's Pokémon Rue-minations: The Rock Type

I have tried time and again to write about what I would have done differently had I been in charge of developing Pokémon/just in general what I'd change about the game. However, time and again it falls apart because it turns out I've bitten off way more than I can chew in a single post. So I'ma break things down by talking about more specific issues I have with the series and go from there.

I'm going to start in an odd place: the Rock type. Rock was one of the first 15 types; while it was one of the more elemental ones, its presence was redundant, its damage didn't make sense, its moves were craptacular, and its identity was at best muddy. As the generations have gone by, it has gone from semi-balanced to absurdly imbalanced. In my humble opinion, it shouldn't exist. I'll explain why.

Identity -- What Makes Pokémon Rock-typed

In Gen I, there were eleven Rock-types. The most familiar ones were Onix and the Geodude line: Geodude was the first Rock-type you encountered (as an opponent via Brock and in the wild) and was by far the most common of the type. Onix was second, being treated as Brock's trump card and the trump card of numerous Hikers before finally appearing in Rock Tunnel. At the same time, this is when you would first find all of the fossils, though you wouldn't encounter the Pokémon themselves ever with the sole exception of Aerodactyl, which appeared on Lance's team of non-Dragon-type dragons. Despite being the earliest Rock-types designed and despite Rhydon featuring prominently in a lot of early material (the Super Game Boy frame included), you wouldn't encounter Rhyhorn until the Safari Zone and Rhydon until the Unknown Dungeon (since renamed "Cerulean Cave").

From this, you can take it as a matter of fact that Geodude is emblematic of what the Rock type is supposed to be: animated rocks. Creatures that are rock. The fossils are incidentally rock in that they're revived from rocks --

-- though whether or not the process reconstitutes them as rocks or they just retain that for some asinine fluff reason is beyond me. It's worth noting that the original fossil Pokémon weren't able to learn any Rock-type moves in Gen I. Rhyhorn and Rhydon form a third group, being Pokémon that may or may not have any rock to them but are comparatively rock-like.

Out of all the Rock-types in all nine generations, I've identified five categories of Rock-type:

Rocky Earth Elementals. These are simply rocks that are animated. Despite being the core of the type, there aren't that many and most are related to each other. The Geodude line (normal and Alolan), Onix, Lunatone/Solrock/Minior, the Roggenrola line, Carbink/Diancie, the Rolycoly line, the Nacli line.

Statues, Structures, Gargoyles, etc. The Nosepass line, Regirock, Stakataka, Stonjourner, Hisuian Growlithe/Arcanine. It's in the name: they're statuary (or, in the case of Hisuian Growlithe/Arcanine, inspired by it) or otherwise resemble human-made stone construction.

Fossils. First, we have what the games call "fossil Pokémon" -- creatures you get only by having a fossil item and taking it to a lab for reconstitution. However, I think we should also include Rock-types based on fossils (Bonsly and Sudowoodo) and creatures primarily known through fossils (the Larvitar, Aron, and Relicanth lines), as they're effectively fossil Pokémon without the Jurassic Park-inspired cloning process. Almost none of these should be Rock-types: the Sudowoodo and Aron lines are the only exceptions and I'll deal with them separately.

Mineralized Creatures: These are creatures that have incorporated minerals into their anatomy, usually in the form of a rocky shell. In the case of the Aron line, the typing doesn't make sense, as Steel always trumps Rock and Rock/Steel is a terrible type combination. Shuckle, the Corsola line, the Aron line, the Dwebble line, the Binacle line, Kleavor, the Glimmet line.

Supposedly Mineralized Creatures. The same rationale as previous, but its a cop-out -- an excuse for making something that's not clearly made out of rock into a Rock-type. The canon may or may not explain what the rationale is. The Hisuian Growlithe line, the Rhyhorn line, Terrakion, Hisuian Avalugg, the Rockruff line, Nihilego, Drednaw, Klawf.

There are two I haven't mentioned: Magcargo, which gains the Rock-type because it's hardened lava while its pre-evolution, Slugma, doesn't, and Iron Thorns, which is a paradox Tyranitar and as such is only allowed to change one type (in this case, Dark to Electric), even though it's clearly a robot (Steel/Electric).

Of the Pokémon I labeled fossils, the only ones that deserve to be (justify themselves as being) Rock-types are Bonsly and Sudowoodo. This is because they are literal fossils -- animated petrified wood, as such being as much rocky earth elementals as they are fossils. (They have full justification for being Rock/Grass -- unlike Lileep and Cradily, which are echinoderms [starfish relatives].) Even the Aron line fails at this because of how poor a combination Rock and Steel are together.

This is rather infuriating if you think about it: there are a lot of options one could have for mineralized animals, but what we get are creatures that in no way look like they're made out of rock, even partially. Nihilego takes the cake: it's a fucking jellyfish, the least rock-like thing you can imagine short of air, and yet it's a Rock-type.

Things get worse when you think about Rock mechanically.

What is Rock-type Damage?

One would be forgiven for questioning the logic behind Pokémon's type chart. By and large, something becomes a Pokémon type if it can demonstrate one of three qualities: a logical form of damage, a logical form of defense, or a type of creature. Bug, Dragon, Fairy, Ghost, and Grass are all creatures which don't immediately lend themselves to being unique damage types, yet here we are.

Some of the logic is that if 1.) the thing attacking has a discernible identity and 2.) deals more or less damage in certain situations than in general, then it has made itself an attacking type. Dragon is a great example in that it is only super effective against dragons; it's something of an elite type, since dragons use the type's moves and dragons are themselves resistant to common elemental types of damage besides Ice.

Rock doesn't really make sense here. Rock is super-effective against Bug, Fire, Flying, and Ice. The logic is rather poor:

Rock squashes Bug. If we were talking about normal arthropods, which have a size limit, this would make sense: a comparatively large object crushes a very, very small creature. In Pokémon, though, Bugs can be as large as humans and should have hard exoskeletons.

You use rocks to hit birds. The Flying type was originally called the Bird type (hence Missingno's typing), but was probably changed because of the numerous creatures that would make sense having it (Charizard, Butterfree, Zubat, Golbat, Scyther, Gyarados, and Dragonite). However, there is no reason to make Rock its own type just for this: you could easily make Rock Throw and Rock Slide Ground-type moves that bypass Flying's immunity to Ground.

Rock smothers Fire. This...I guess works? You don't smother fire with rocks because they tend to leave gaps for air to flow in, plus you can melt rocks with enough heat. Again, this is an overlap of Ground.

Rock shatters Ice. This one kinda makes sense, as Ice is relatively brittle, though by technical definition Ice is a rock. Even so, it's not a great rationale: ice in real life can shatter rocks, while you need something especially hard to cut through large blocks of ice. If we drop the literal interpretation of the Ice type and go for what it's supposed to be -- coldness -- this makes even less sense, but then again it's kinda hard to find a counter to coldness that isn't heat (fire).

All in all, we're not doing a good job of justifying Rock as an attacking type.

Where are My Rock-Hard Defenses?

If you think about Rocks, you think "defense." They're hard. It's natural. Graveler was probably created to represent the Defense stat when stats were being made.

...and yet, Rock is one of the worst defensive types in the game, along with Ice and Grass. Rock is weak to Fighting (think Brick Break), Water (erosion), Grass (also erosion?), Steel (harder), and Ground.

I'm guessing Ground (mud) also erodes Rock, but what would be the main mechanism for such -- wind-blown sand -- is present in the series as a weather condition created primarily by the Rock-type move Sandstorm; Rock-, Ground-, and Steel-types are immune to that weather. Sand Attack and Sand Tomb are both Ground moves, but not Sandstorm, and Sand Tomb's main form of damage is by crushing and suffocating Pokémon -- hardly an issue for burrowing creatures made out of rock like Geodude and Onix.

Grass makes less sense. If you're looking at this using Wu Xing logic, you're probably thinking about roots breaking apart the earth. However, that takes a lot of time -- especially with harder materials like rocks. This logic began in Gen I, when we had Absorb and Mega Drain (no mechanism explained), Razor Leaf and Petal Dance (cutting), Vine Whip (beating tendrils), and Solar Beam (lasers) as attacks. If super-sharp leaves (regular or modified) or super-strong vines are able to break rocks, certainly those should be hard or sharp enough to cut through softer materials like flesh and bone (Bug, Dragon, Normal) and roughly as hard and brittle materials (Ice) with to equal or greater degrees (i.e., deal super effective damage to them). But it doesn't.

The only thing that makes even a little bit of sense about the Rock-type is that it resists Normal. Since most Normal-type moves in Gen I reflected its then purely physical nature, this worked. It didn't make sense with Hyper Beam or Tri Attack, but such was the problem with typing pre-Gen IV. It also didn't make sense with Self-Destruct and Explosion; even if these had been the types they should have been (Fire) and dealt a flat amount of damage instead of being based off of stats, Rock's resistance doesn't make sense. After all, we use explosives to break apart rocks.

As a Presence in the Metagame

I think the Rock-type exists to screw things up. It's redundant with Ground just as Ice is with Water, but Ice is distinct enough in concept (being about coldness) that that distinction makes sense. Rock is indistinct from Ground conceptually; as types of objects, soil is a complex mixture that is made up of very small rocks (minerals). In Gen I, this manifested as all Rock-types either being fossils (which again shouldn't be Rock-typed) or part Ground. We didn't get our first pure-Rock-type until Gen II and that should have been Rock/Grass. Almost all Ground-types have had access to Rock-type moves. As a result, Rock existed to give Ground an in-house means of attacking Flying-types, which were otherwise immune to it. Normal, Fighting, and Ghost would not be given tools to overcome immunities of their type rivalry for several generations, Psychic had to wait for Gen III to bypass Dark's immunity, and Electric's only means of bypassing Ground's immunity to it is through a Ring Target. In other words, this is a bit of favoritism that makes Earth more powerful than it should be.

Then came Sandstream. In Gen III and IV, Sandstorm dominated the field, with teams having to figure out how to bypass or live with Earth-flavored types (Ground, Rock, and Steel) not having chip damage every turn when everyone else would. Sure, other weather teams existed, but the metagame didn't revolve around them -- unlike how it revolved around Tyranitar.

And then came Gen IV and Stealth Rock. I don't think anything has broken the game as much as Stealth Rock has. When Psychic lacked resisted hits against anything besides itself and super effective hits against it in Gen I, it still had to deal with being physically frail for the most part and where not (Exeggutor, Slowbro) weak to other types. It was possible to contend with Psychic. Stealth Rock's introduction destroyed types and type combinations. If you were 4x weak to Rock (Bug/Flying, Fire/Flying, Ice/Flying), you had no presence in the main meta, regardless of how powerful you were, unless you had already been banned (Ho-Oh in Ubers); you could not survive. Anything with a Rock-weakness at all was in trouble. Anything that was neutral to Rock was hurting. Again, we have Rock creating a centralizing mechanic that overwhelmingly favors itself and closely related types.

If Rock were supposed to be an elite type -- as Dragon was in inception and Psychic was quickly characterized as being, both for fair (it's fucking magic) and unfair (type problems) reasons -- it would be one thing. But it's not. It's meant to be one of several typical, fairly interchangeable types. But its presence as a complement to Ground (and by extension Steel) only serves to give these edges that other types cannot replicate, ones which neither type needs.

Conclusion

There is very little need for a Rock type in the game. Certain Pokémon exemplify it, but they are a minority: a few groups (and fewer actual lines) of earth elementals and organisms that create hardened carapaces in a sea of fossils and metaphors. There are a large number of Pokémon that can claim Rock-like attributes (e.g., Ponyta's hard-than-diamond hooves) but are not themselves Rock-types, so the justification becomes strained. Game Freak has clearly struggled to keep up with making non-fossils, as the number of Rock-types that are clearly partially or wholly mineral are not common. As a mechanic, Rock's defenses make no sense, its offenses make fewer, and its moves centralize the metagame around the Aristotelian Earth Element against all other themes and types. Most of the type's functionality could be done with other types and game mechanics. As such, I would eliminate the type entirely from the series.

[callipraxia]

Dark Nights

Suuuuper late for week three, so I tried incorporating elements of all three of the sub-themes to make up for it!

Historical note, I have no idea if car boots that worked like this were a thing in the seventies. Consequently, we’re working with my vague early memories of the nineties. It is, after all, semi-canon that the GF dimension was a little ahead of ours; aside from Fiddleford’s laptop, there’s also Ford somehow being able to show Stan home movies from their childhood. I looked it up and home video cameras didn’t become a thing in our world until just about the time Stan got thrown out of the house, and it would have made the Pineses early adopters if they had even taken it up then. Can’t really see Filbrick as the type to pay for the most up-to-date fad technology, really.

Summary: Stan Pines once chewed his way out of the trunk of a car. Years later, he starts to remember how that happened, and wishes he didn’t.

It was not, strictly speaking, the worst sensation he had ever woken up, to as soon as he realized first how cramped up his arms and legs were and then that he could not move them far enough to reach more comfortable angles, Stan realized he was in trouble. Then he noticed some of the other things that hurt – specifically, his head; he thought it would have hurt anyway, but the way the surface under his head seemed to vibrate slightly but constantly wasn’t improving the nauseating waves of pain emanating from the lump he was pretty sure he now had on his skull, either. Then he tried to remember the last thing that had happened, came up with an attempt to deny everything that he’d known was doomed even as he’d made it, and groaned before closing his eyes again.

Yep, he was in trouble. A lot of it. And if he didn’t do something and didn’t do it quick, then it was probably the last time he was going to be in any amount of trouble. Which was something that sounded so much better when it meant something besides what it meant in this case.

For once, he was almost glad Ford wasn’t around. Most of the time, his brother had either laughed off or defended Stan’s various misadventures even more readily than Ma had, but every now and then, Stan had done something so spectacularly stupid that even Ford had felt obliged to acknowledge the dumbassery of the behavior in question. His vision was none too good even when he didn’t think he probably had a concussion, but at the moment, he could practically see Ford – in the same state, even, of furious disarray that he had been in the last time Stan had seen him for real – with one hand on his face as though to obscure his resemblance to as big an idiot as Stan was, asking why, exactly, he had thought it was a particularly bright idea to try cheating at poker with a famously unstable guy….

I didn’t, Poindexter, he silently addressed the version of his brother he talked to inside his head a lot. In a vague way, Stan knew that the real Ford certainly no longer really looked like he had back then, no more than Stan himself did, but he avoided thinking about his total lack of exact knowledge about where Ford was and what was going on with him except on their birthdays. It was not their birthday, and so, he barely noticed the problem with his mental image of his twin brother looking so much younger than the last thing Stan recalled seeing in a mirror. Just ran out of better options and hoped I could swing it. Apparently, I was a little too optimistic about my chances, so are you gonna help come up with any ideas about how to get us out of here or not?

Taking a deep breath and forcing himself to exhale slowly, to not give in to the impulse to hyperventilate from sheer terror in the already sparse dark air of what he was increasingly sure was the trunk of a car, he tried to think like his brother.

This was, admittedly, not easy. He hadn’t often understood what went on in his brother’s head even back when they had spent a solid eighty percent of their time together, and when he had, it had usually involved imprecise analogies. There just…weren’t people who thought like Ford did; that was what made him a genius and what made Stan being his twin look like someone’s idea of a bad joke. However, he had spent most of his waking moments around the guy for still just a little more than half his life, so he could at least make educated guesses. Ford wouldn’t get stuck in the car on his way to his own murder and disposal, but he…could get stuck in…something. Yeah, that made sense. Forget the car trunk part, forget the off to be murdered bit, just think about…being stuck somewhere he didn’t want to be. That could happen…

No. That was what was happening. Right here, right now. They had gone hunting cryptids, as they often even before the Jersey Devil had turned Ford’s conspiracy theories into firm beliefs, and a…cave had caved in, right, so now they had to get out of it. So what would they do?

Assess surroundings, probably. What there was to assess, anyway. There were only fine lines of light around what Stan assumed was the lid of his current death trap. Things in here were all close enough to the end of Stan’s nose that he could have seen them clearly if there had been enough light, but there wasn’t enough light, so vision wasn’t going to help him here. Feeling…hard to move, but he could, a little. Not that there was much to feel. Just the rough, carpet-like interior of the trunk, he guessed, the slightest hint of air when he turned his head left…

Wait. The slightest hint of air when he turned his head left?

With an effort that made him nauseous – because if there was nothing to work with after all, puking was going to improve his situation by leagues, he was sure – Stan turned the rest of himself left, too. Yeah – yeah, it felt like there was air, just a little air, coming through. Which meant…was this one of those trunks that could, in theory, be opened from the backseat of the car as well as from the outside of it?

Problem: he didn’t have the use of his hands. He needed more room before hand-usage – or, for that matter, kicking – could come into play.

Solution: use what he did have to work with. Which was…what?

He thought (after feeling, as carefully as he could, around it with one of the less damaged bits of his face) that there was a piece of the backing which seemed loose. If he could rip that loose, he’d be into the stuffing and stuff, right? That would be easier to work with. So…what were his options as far as damaging the panel enough to permit access to the backseat? While, if possible, allowing the piece of panel to function as an impromptu weapon if he needed it?

Nothing. There was nothing. He had nothing. He was nothing, except a soon-to-be corpse. Was that better or worse than being what he vaguely remembered someone calling him right before he’d blacked out, a comment which had involved gutter rats and….

No, he informed Mental Ford. That is crazy.

The Ford in his head agreed with this assessment. It used words like ‘probability’ that Stan had only the slightest of understandings of. It did, however, get one point across pretty clear: two percent chance of survival (using a number he’d pulled out of thin air) was still better than zero, and zero was what he had if he didn’t do something.

This has got to be the dumbest idea I’ve ever had, Stan thought, forgetting to filter his plans through his brother’s voice as he considered the only means of operating something he could think of right now. That brought on a swell of panic – he didn’t make the plans, he wasn’t good at making the plans! He was in this very situation because he did not know how to make good plans! – but there was nothing for it. Gasping, struggling to keep the last thing he’d eaten where he’d intended for it to be, he started putting the plan into motion -

And then opened his eyes, about thirty-six years later, to find himself looking at boards – boards which made up a ceiling, which was, if not high, at least a respectable distance above his head. He also immediately noticed the lack of all the feelings that went with being bashed in the head recently, and that he didn’t currently appear to have teeth at all, even though his jaw was sore for some reason. And, perhaps most notably, he wasn’t alone.

“Stanley?” Ford held up a lantern, looking and sounding half-asleep still. “You all right?”

“Ah – yeah,” said Stan, rubbing his jaw. He must have been clenching it in his sleep. Made sense, considering the dream he’d been having – wild dream, that one. Way, way too much detail. “Sorry…dream. Somebody was trying to kill me over a game of cards.

“That is always unpleasant,” Ford said, and Stan exhaled in amusement at this statement of the obvious. “I imagine especially in…your case.” It took Stan a beat to realize the implication - that the matter-of-fact way Ford had said that, it wasn’t because he was just…stating the obvious. That it sounded more like Ford was somehow perfectly familiar with how it felt to unexpectedly remember times when someone had…decided to take the hands-on, one-guy-deemed-unnecessary-at-a-time approach to solving overpopulation, so to speak. After a second, Ford added, “do you, eh, want to talk about it?”

“Not in the slightest,” muttered Stan. He rubbed his jaw again. “Damn, I hope that wasn’t real. I mean, if it was, that might answer the question of why you’ve got your original teeth and I don’t, but – “

“What, you really did chew your way out of the trunk of a car once? I never could decide if I believed that.”

Stan sat up and stared at his brother. “Huh?” he asked. “How do you know that?”

On the other side of the cabin, Ford’s expression changed slightly, probably without him even noticing. It was the look he got when he was feeling guilty about something stupid again. “It’s…one of the more memorable details about the night you arrived in Gravity Falls,” he said. “I was so sleep-deprived I could barely think straight, much less remember much after – everything else that happened that evening – “

“After I decided it would be a great idea to hit you two feet away from something you’d just told me could put holes in reality, you mean?”

“Er, yes. I suppose.” With a visible effort, Ford got back to the point instead of going into one of his absurd point-by-point analyses of why actually, everything had been entirely his fault, first to last, and everyone else was entirely blameless in the affair. Stan had finally lost his patience with it about a month earlier, and while getting into a fistfight on the deck of a fairly small boat had also been kind of stupid behavior, nobody had died or gone off to see another galaxy, and Stan guessed the point had been made. “But at one point you were yelling about various things you’d done…while we were estranged, and that one was bizarre enough I remembered it.”

“Huh. I…guess I can give myself points for creativity in a crisis, anyway?”

“You do seem to have a knack for that, Stanley. An…unfortunately frequently self-destructive kind of creativity in a crisis, apparently, but….”

“Eh, smashing things is my calling in life,” said Stan. “Apparently, including my own teeth.” He stood, muttered something about getting some air, and went out onto the deck in the dark.

It was the new moon, but it still wasn’t as dark as his already-fading memory of the what the inside of that car trunk had looked like in his dream. It had been lighter outside, when he’d somehow managed to push the cushions concealing the opening into the trunk apart with his head without blacking out, but still a dark night. That, he guessed, was how he had gotten away with it….

Stupid, he thought irritably. Sheer dumb luck was the only reason he’d gotten away with it. Sheer dumb luck that it had been one guy in the car, sheer dumb luck that the guy had been tired and distracted and listening to the radio, so he hadn’t noticed anything going on behind him until it was too late to just shoot Stan then and there –

The vivid feelings of the dream were all but gone, but he still remembered events as…normal memories, he guessed, now that he’d been reminded of them. And he was starting to remember the rest of it, too, however foggily: trying to strangle a guy with his bare hands for lack of better options. The crash as the guy in question lost control of the car. Stealing the gun and walking – well, limping – away, after all, telling himself that of course the least lucky of the two luckless idiots involved had gotten himself out, too, and not ended up dying like that…

No, it hadn’t just been a dream.

It had been a long time, even with what Dipper called his ‘supplies for the Scrapbook of Crimes Past,’ before Stan had remembered even a little of his years on the road, his life more and more like a nightmare while he was awake than it usually was when he was sleeping. After he’d discovered Ford’s history of criminal shenanigans in the multiverse – well, of course he’d made fun of him, because how could he not? When was he ever going to get a chance like that again? Ford had practically been setting himself up to get poked occasionally about that one, trying to maintain his prim-and-dorky façade after he’d gotten home when he knew full well that he was as much of a liar and thief as Stan had ever even dreamed of being. It would have practically have been a crime to not have some fun at his brother’s expense about that, almost as bad as it would have been if, knowing how distressing everyone found his ‘case,’ he’d ever said out loud that sometimes, he wondered which of them, him or Ford, was really the lucky one.

The more he remembered of his own life and the more he collected of what little his brother let slip about the past thirty years in hyperspace, the more Stan thought they might be more alike than either of them would have ever imagined, even when they’d been kids. He wished he didn’t know enough, about either of their lives at this point, to form that thought.

When he had still had very little real memory at all, and had been trying to learn the faces in old photographs and tapes well enough to pass himself off as remembering them more than he did, he’d thought that Ford was the lucky one, between the two of them. They’d both had to do things they had emphatically not wanted to do in the Fearamid, but at least Ford hadn’t ended up walking that endless tightrope that Stan had for that first week or so, constantly on edge, constantly terrified of disappointing someone, constantly worried he was going to get it wrong. The more tidbits he heard about Ford’s life, though, and the more he remembered about his own…there were times, now, that he thought a blank slate was the greatest gift he’d ever been given. Even the nightmares, after all, didn’t seem as vivid as he thought his memories once had, and even a partial picture of his own life let him know that he would be happier if he didn’t get everything back eventually.

Time wasn’t a river, he’d realized at some point. Not if the past was considered part of time. The past could be a lovely swimming pool for some people, maybe, but he wasn't one of the people it worked that way for. His past, he became surer with every memory, was just what was left behind after a flood. Dead water, standing where it didn't belong, and not to be walked in - no telling what was down there, but it was pretty certain that it contained a lot of stuff that couldn't even be guessed at from the surface, and which nobody would ever want to think of.

#stanuary #stanuary 2023 #week 3 fear #gravity falls #gravity falls fanfic #stan pines #ford pines #stan's memories #violence referenced vaguely

[absolute-immunities]

Fred P. Graham, The Self-Inflicted Wound (Macmillan, 1970):

The result [of pre-incorporation Due Process doctrine] was also a Federal standard of constitutionality that in light of today’s values seems to have tolerated too much. Volumes 356, 357 and 358 of the United States Reports contain the Supreme Court decisions for 1958—a typical year when the fundamental fairness doctrine was in full flower. They include such rulings as these:

—In Illinois a man was accused of killing his wife and three children. The state tried him for killing the wife, but introduced evidence of all four deaths, and the jury gave him a twenty-year sentence. The state went for the death penalty again, prosecuting him for killing one of the children. This time he got forty-five years. At the third trial, for killing another of the children, the jury finally sentenced him to death. The Supreme Court held that his double jeopardy argument was irrelevant, since the Fifth Amendment did not apply to the states. Otherwise, the procedure did not seem fundamentally unfair, so the death sentence was affirmed. [Ciucci v. Illinois, 356 U.S. 571 (1958)]

—A New York businessman was subpoenaed to testify before a state grand jury investigation into labor racketeering. He was given a grant of immunity from prosecution on state corruption charges, but he still refused to testify, pointing out that he might incriminate himself under similar Federal labor racketeering statutes. The state judge nonetheless gave him a thirty-day jail sentence for contempt of court, and the Supreme Court affirmed on the ground that the Fifth Amendment does not apply to the states. [Knapp v. Schweitzer, 357 U.S. 371 (1958)]

—A New Jersey man was tried for the robbery of three persons in the course of a tavern stick-up. None of the three could identify him, and although a fourth patron did, he was acquitted by the jury. The state then tried the defendant again for the robbery of the patron who said he could identify him, and this time the defendant was convicted. The Supreme Court let the conviction stand on the ground that the double-jeopardy clause does not bind the states. [Hoag v. New Jersey, 356 U.S. 464 (1958)]

—On the advice of his attorney, a New Jersey murder suspect turned himself in to the police. They isolated him in an interrogation room and questioned him for seven hours, refusing to let the lawyer see or advise him until after he confessed. The Supreme Court upheld the confession, finding it voluntary. [Cicenia v. Lagay, 357 U.S. 504 (1958)]

—A Los Angeles man was arrested on charges of having murdered his mistress. During the fourteen hours between his arrest and his confession he asked repeatedly to be allowed to call his lawyer, but was refused until after he confessed. His death sentence was affirmed by the Supreme Court. [Crooker v. California, 357 U.S. 433 (1958)]

* * *

In the three decades between Brown v. Mississippi and Miranda v. Arizona, the Court delivered thirty-six opinions on the voluntariness of state court confessions. They covered a wide variety of circumstances; some confessions were upheld and others were thrown out. The result was that state courts could examine the case-by-case authorities of the Supreme Court and could find authority for affirming or rejecting almost any type of confession.

In 1963 H. Frank Way, Jr., a political scientist at the University of California, studied the 126 state appellate court rulings on allegedly coerced confessions that had been reported in a previous seventeen-month period. He found that the Supreme Court’s subjective test “provides no substantial yardstick for the states,” and that only a handful of the opinions even referred to Supreme Court confessions decisions. As an example, he noted that all six of the confessions reviewed and upheld by the Texas courts during this period included elements of heavy-handed justice. He described one appellant’s case as follows:

"Here then is an accused who made a confession after being twice arrested without a warrant, after being illegally arraigned on a false charge under a fictitious name, and after being illegally held and questioned intermittently during a two-day period, with the final interrogation continuing throughout the night. Of course, he had no legal counsel during this period. Collins was described by medical experts as being of low intelligence, with an abnormally low tolerance for stress—a man who had the character of a three to six year old child. With the use of this confession, Collins was convicted of murder and sentenced to ninety-nine years of imprisonment."

The other five cases included: (a) a defendant who was illegally arrested and, according to undisputed evidence, beaten until he confessed; (b) a Mexican-American who was arrested without a warrant and questioned intermittently for three days before he confessed and was arraigned; (c) a Negro who was sentenced to death on the strength of a confession given after intermittent all-night questioning, including, he claimed, beatings; (d) a robbery suspect who was questioned for fifty minutes and confessed because, he claimed, he was sick and the police refused to take him to a hospital until he talked; (e) a twenty-two-year-old man with a sixth-grade education who was never arraigned, and who was denied counsel during his interrogation and also at his trial, which resulted in a five- to thirty-five-year prison sentence.

* * *

[In Ohio,] the State Supreme Court had given its blessing to warrantless searches, even in situations when search warrants could have been easily obtained. A victim of one such search, a Cleveland woman named Dolree Mapp, appealed her case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The summary of her case in the Supreme Court’s opinion [Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 644–45 (1961)] showed how much police abuse some state courts would excuse:

On May 23, 1957, three Cleveland police officers arrived at appellant’s residence in that city pursuant to information that “a person [was] hiding out in the home, who was wanted for questioning in connection with a recent bombing, and that there was a large amount of policy paraphernalia being hidden in the home.” Miss Mapp and her daughter by a former marriage lived on the top floor of the two-family dwelling. Upon their arrival at that house, the officers knocked on the door and demanded entrance but appellant, after telephoning her attorney, refused to admit them without a search warrant. They advised their headquarters of the situation and undertook a surveillance of the house.

The officers again sought entrance some three hours later when four or more additional officers arrived on the scene. When Miss Mapp did not come to the door immediately, at least one of the several doors to the house was forcibly opened and the policemen gained admittance. Meanwhile Miss Mapp’s attorney arrived, but the officers, having secured their own entry, and continuing in their defiance of the law, would permit him neither to see Miss Mapp nor to enter the house. It appears that Miss Mapp was halfway down the stairs from the upper floor to the front door when the officers, in this high-handed manner, broke into the hall. She demanded to see the search warrant. A paper, claimed to be a warrant, was held up by one of the officers. She grabbed the “warrant” and placed it in her bosom. A struggle ensued in which the officers recovered the piece of paper and as a result of which they handcuffed appellant because she had been “belligerent” in resisting their official rescue of the “warrant” from her person. Running roughshod over appellant, a policeman “grabbed” her, “twisted [her] hand,” and she “yelled [and] pleaded with him” because “it was hurting.” Appellant, in handcuffs, was then forcibly taken upstairs to her bedroom where the officers searched a dresser, a chest of drawers, a closet and some suitcases. They also looked into a photo album and through personal papers belonging to the appellant. The search spread to the rest of the second floor including the child’s bedroom, the living room, the kitchen and a dinette. The basement of the building and a trunk found therein were also searched. The obscene materials for possession of which she was ultimately convicted were discovered in the course of that widespread search.

At the trial no search warrant was produced by the prosecution, nor was the failure to produce one explained or accounted for. At best, “There is, in the record, considerable doubt as to whether there ever was any warrant for the search of defendant’s home.” The Ohio Supreme Court believed a “reasonable argument” could be made that the conviction should be reversed “because the ‘methods’ employed to obtain the [evidence] . . . were such as to ‘offend “a sense of justice,” ’ ” but the court found determinative the fact that the evidence had not been taken “from defendant’s person by the use of brutal or offensive physical force against defendant.”

seems bad

[void-ink-studios]

Hi! Any Dark Matter headcanons?

OOOOOHHHHH, Friend, I have MANY.

Dark Matter is the second oldest of the Incarnations of Void, only second to Morpho Knight.

Dark Matter was created out of the hated, despair, and thirst for destruction of the Cult of Void, as they longed for revenge for being cast out and stranded far away from home by their paranoid, jealous rivals the Physicus.

Several pieces of Dark Matter were collected when it first formed, and embedded into various magical artifacts, most notably the Master Crown.

Dark Matter, as a cloud, is One Entity. It operates as one consciousness and acts on one set of thoughts. However, when it subdivides and solidifies into entities like Dark Matter Drones, Swordsmen, or even Zero, it ceases being One Entity, and becomes more like a Swarm. They're compelled to work towards the goals of the Cloud, but do technically have their own thoughts, feelings, and potentially alternative goals. Once they rejoin the Cloud, all memories, experiences, and knowledge gained is incorporated back into the Cloud's consciousness.

Drones are pretty fluid in how they manifest, having a wide assortment of possible hair styles and colors, skin colors, and number of eyes. Swordsmen, however, are much more limited in their form, at least until Dark Matter is redeemed.

Unless Zero or Dark Nebula is within close proximity to them, Drones and Swordsmen are able to act in ways counter to the Cloud's goals. Some have even broken away entirely, forming their own identities and separated completely from the Cloud. This has only happened a few times, notably in beings like Gooey and Krako, a Drone and Swordsman respectively.

Drones are far more likely to break away than Swordsmen. For this reason, Drones are almost never sent anywhere by themselves. The Cloud will often send packs of Drones to any given location as a scouting party, so they keep each other in check, while Swordsmen can go on solo missions.

All Dark Matter entities are capable of possession and channeling of innate magic, but some are better at it than others. Drones, for example, are easy to spot when hiding within a body, but can channel and wield any innate magic of their host with ease. Swordsmen are better at hiding, but not as good at magic, so they resort to body modification, or rejecting the host to fight outright. Nebula cannot hide, but is able to wield her own magic into powerful attacks from safely within the host.

A Host might be conscious or unconscious during an infection from Dark Matter. Each entity has the option to simply hide in the body like a parasite or exert their own will over the host's to directly puppet them. Infected but not controlled hosts might still act strangely compared to their normal routines or behaviors.

None of Dark Matter need to eat, drink, or sleep. Although, after redemption, many partake anyway for the fun and pleasure of it.

Zero does not believe that Dark Matter is an evil force. As the Incarnation of Despair, they are all prone to a melancholic disposition, and often feed into each other's misery. So, Zero smothers their own emotions to not feel despair and sadness, they strive to be free of feelings. They think this is what consciousness is for everything: Misery, or Numbness. So, their goal is to purge feeling from the Universe, so that no one is subject to the Misery, and can instead enjoy the Hive's numbness as one Universe Wide family.

Kirby is what makes them finally start to question their own motives and experiences. Zero LOATHS Kirby and resents their own creation and circumstances. Why was their Hive denied the simple joys that seem to come so easily to this pink child? Why was their only options Misery or Numbness? Was that ALL they were meant for?

It's in the midst of this existential crisis that Zero attempts to Create for the first time, using knowledge from Dark Nebula's elemental magic, and their observations of Kirby's fighting style. The result is Miracle Matter, Kirby's counter, able to use the same copy abilities Kirby can, with the added advantage of being immune to all damage except the elemental magic they're currently wielding.

So, yeah, that's at least all the Pre-Redemption stuff I have for now, but if you're interested in more, shoot another ask!!!

#incarnations au #kirby au #kirby dark matter #void chatter #void thoughts

[canonical-transformation]

I don't think I have the time or energy to do a Neuromancer-inspired Sumeru AU but gods I would read that fic.

---

It's an off-the-books job, Katheryne tells them. The Adventurers Guild will broker communication with the client but there can't be any paper trail or they risk severe damage to their reputation. Only discuss the job with her, and even then only when she says it's safe to talk. They're not to approach her about it otherwise.

But it's simple enough, really. There's a vault. The kind that's not supposed to be opened under ordinary circumstances. The inner vault is layered behind locks that use Elemental power, repurposed Khaenri'ahn tech, and some Akasha-based rotating cipher. The perimeter is guarded by a 24-7 security detail who're armed to kill and who make the Corp of Thirty look like schoolkids. If any alarm sounds anywhere, the whole outer perimeter will go into hard lockdown mode for an entire month, no way in or out... have fun starving to death.

What vault? Sorry, says Katheryne. You don't need to know the who or where, not yet. It's somewhere in Sumeru City. And what's the package? Let's call it an experimental seed.

Uthman, the exiled Akasha hacker, and Lu, the Inazuman-looking assassin with a dark past, set about the job.

There's a certain memory crystal that needs to be recovered from a destroyed Fatui lab in Dragonspine. A modified Akasha terminal buried in an evidence room in the Court of Fontaine. An ex-Hexenzirkel mage to recruit in exchange for a mysterious favour. A Sangemah Bay Pty Ltd prototype elemental catalyst held in a warehouse near the Chasm — a warehouse that the Liyue Qixing seems to have a personal interest in guarding.

Through this all, our protagonists try to dig further into where their financial backing is coming from. With the money moving through the Guild, it's hard to tell, but eventually they follow the trail back to the Chandravathi Trading Company.

The Chandravathi Trading Company was established 380 years ago. It does... nothing; no obvious imports or exports, no physical offices save a slew of mailboxes. The Trading Company is joint incorporated across Fontaine and Liyue, two countries whose laws collectively make it impossible to peer deeper inside the organisation.

And yet... the money is real. The 5% advance our protagonists have been paid is enough to set up a family for life, and that's not to mention that the Chandravathi Trading Company somehow got its hands on a cure for the bio-blockers that were supposed to stop Uthman from ever touching an Akasha Terminal again.

(And when it turns out that Sangemah Bay took out insurance for the prototype catalyst from none other than Liyue's Tianquan, and they 'compensate' her for the theft with a key and a mysterious ledger that Katheryne gave them for exactly this contingency... Ningguang frowns and says that if this really is the manifest of the ship that she thinks this is... then, yes, the amount of Azurite that warehouse key unlocks is more than compensation enough... but does that mean the protagonists' employer salvaged the wreckage two hundred years ago, and simply sat on that stockpile for all this time? What kind of company directors operate on a centuries-long time horizon?)

(Meanwhile, Lord Sangemah Bay has written about that Trading Company exactly once, only to say: they're bad news; don't go near them with a hundred foot pole. Not in those exact words, but that's the gist.)

Their mage, Megs, is less concerned about who's paying for this—Mora is Mora—and more concerned about which enemies they're going to make.

Because she recognises a few elements of the spell matrix she's been paid to hack past, recognises them from Hexenzirkel archives. And those glyphs and subdiagrams? They were top-secret Spantamad work.

"No wonder your Katheryne wants this off the books," she says, once she's done describing the erudition and genius it took for her to figure this out. "This isn't some Homayani vault or Northland Bank branch. We're breaking into the Akademiya."

And what prize, they all wonder—

(Lu, the assassin, quits on the spot. And returns the next day, after a nightmare about her old employer, Arlecchino, reminds her just how much she needs the surgical face+blood change she's been promised at the end of this job.)

And what prize, they all wonder, could their employer—who has all the money and time in the world—possibly want to steal from the Sages?

How did the Chandravathi Trading Company convince the Guild (...or is Katheryne working alone?) to work directly against the Sumeru government?

What the hell is in that vault, and are our protagonists sure they want to let it out?

#fic bits #fic ideas #genshin impact spoilers #neuromancer #au: neuromancer fusion heist #genshin impact #sumeru #my writing #one named oc but otherwise #genshin lyudochka #mona megistus #bunch of others #lesser lord kusanali #nahida #dark!nahida #arguably #but also 'dark' is so subjective #someone plz run with this AU idea; i don't think I can do it justice :p

[zerogate]

[T]he forces of gravity and electromagnetism are very delicately balanced. The bigger stars, those with a high mass, put out heat at a phenomenal rate, becoming in the end what are known as “blue giants”. Smaller stars lose most of their more modest heat by the action of convection currents, sliding into a condition in which they are described as “red dwarfs”. Both extremes are inherently unstable, but between the two is a very narrow range of star sizes that allow the sort of equilibrium provided by our far more kindly Sun.

If the balance between the forces tipped in favour of gravity, all stars would be washed-out blue giants. If, on the other hand, it favoured electromagnetism, the universe would by now be studded with nothing but bright red dwarfs. And there would be no health in us.

We owe our whole existence, and that of all typical stars it seems, to a wildly improbable numerical accident that equates two of the fundamental forces in the universe. And the coincidence doesn’t end there. The number of stars in a typical galaxy is the same as the number of galaxies in the universe. The age of the universe, expressed in nuclear units, is the same as the number of charged particles in it. The electric force between two protons is the same as the gravitational force between them. And all of these measurements, together with a long list of basic parameters, hover around the same unimaginably large number – the huge and mystic ten-to-the-power-of-forty.

Fifty years ago, the Nobel Prize-winning English physicist Paul Dirac said “such a coincidence, we may presume, is due to some deep connexion in Nature between cosmology and atomic theory.” He and the astronomer Arthur Eddington were so impressed by the recurrence of this large and unlikely number that they built elaborate theories around it, ending however with little more than the simple and humble admission that “something strange is going on”. Just how strange is only now becoming apparent.

[...]

Life as we know it is based on carbon, which did not exist in the early universe. In the beginning, there seems to have been nothing but a lot of hydrogen. Then came the big bang, which created temperatures high enough to make some heavier elements, but lasting only long enough, perhaps for just a few minutes, to produce large quantities of helium. The synthesis of heavy elements in any quantity had to wait until there were suitable stars of sufficient stability to cook the ingredients for the necessary billions of years. Which is precisely what happened and, as the stars reached the end of their natural lives, exhausting their nuclear fuel, they became supernovae, exploding violently and sending their varied contents spewing into interstellar space.

Amongst these elements, there seems to have been a surprising amount of carbon, formed as a result of yet another happy coincidence. Carbon nuclei come into being as a result of the rare and simultaneous triple collision of three separate helium nuclei. If just two collide in precisely the right way, they form an unstable nucleus of the hard white metal beryllium, which exists only for a very short period of time. And if a third helium nucleus strikes the temporary beryllium with exactly the right amount of energy, it too becomes incorporated – to produce carbon. None of this, however, can take place unless the resonance, the frequency of internal vibration of all three nuclei, is in complete harmony. But, as chance would have it, the thermal energy of a typical star, the temperature of its interior, lies at the one level that makes this not only possible, but inevitable.

And still the plot thickens. For the newly produced carbon to survive inside the star, it has to be prevented from combining even further or burning up to produce yet heavier elements such as oxygen. Fortunately for us, this prohibition is ensured by the further “accident” that the natural resonance of oxygen lies at a lower level than that provided by the combination of the first three helium nuclei. Events in the star conspire, somehow, not only to produce large quantities of carbon, but also to ensure that most of it stays that way long enough to be disseminated across the universe as one of the vital seeds of life. “Our bodies are formed,” as Sir James Jeans once remarked, “from the ashes of long dead stars.”

[...]

Another scientific knight, the fearless Sir Fred Hoyle, has no doubts about the nature of all this cosmic coincidence. He calls it “a put-up job”. In discussing the origins of life, he points out that neither carbon nor oxygen could ever have been produced in stars, unless their nuclear resonance was fixed at precisely the known levels. Nothing else will do. He concludes that “a commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”

-- Lyall Watson, Beyond Supernature

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