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theskyexists · 4 months

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There are many reasons to not go in for nuclear power and some reasons to go in for it after all.

Against:

1. It takes so many damn years to build. We'll be 20 years on and far past our carbon budget. That HUGE (they are insanely expensive) amount of money could have been spent on something more scalable. Nuclear is not scalable. Wind and solar are extremely scalable (and cheaper every day). One reason is that renewable plants (e.g a mill) are small and a repeated construction. Expertise for constructing renewables is widely available, nuclear plant construction expertise is in short supply. Counter (a bit weak): even if it takes ages to build, still, we're not on schedule for non-fossil fuel use anyway, so it will probably unfortunately still be relevant in twenty years.

2. A nuclear plant is a national security risk. One: in times of war. 2: in times of natural disaster. No counter to that except: surely war won't be THAT bad and the failsafes will always be enough.

3. Sourcing the concrete, steel and uranium that goes into such a plant isn't good for the environment. Nor is uranium renewable. Current stocks and use would provide us with 130 years of energy production. Build more plants, that number goes down. Counter: producing any power plant requires mining and transport - coal plants and renewables do too, for example.

4. Nuclear waste is a non-negligible problem. There are (war) incentives NOT to reduce waste. Even when waste is minimised, waste remains. Highly dangerous waste can kill people for longer than any society on earth has ever survived. 500.000 years... So no society can reasonably take responsibility for it. When nuclear waste is stored and then spills (as has happened in Germany) the state must pay billions in taxes to clean it up. Storage is difficult. There are NO permanent storage sites ready in all of Europe. There's about 180 plants now that have ran for decades. No permanent storage. If a company is made responsible for a nuclear plant, they tend to pay out to their shareholders one year and claim not to be able to take care of the waste for fear of bankruptcy the next - or they've already declared bankruptcy. Literally happened here. There are no incentives to deal responsibly with the waste for companies. Germany is projected to have to pay hundreds of billions of euros for permanently storing all the waste they've still got lying around at interim sites. Once again, money which might have been spent on scalable renewable production. 500.000 years... this a storage solution must last for 500.000 years. Ever seen concrete last so long... ?

5. We're seeing nuclear crowd out renewables RIGHT NOW IN REAL TIME in politics in the Netherlands and the UK. The money (and project managemeny time) really cannot be spent twice.

For:

6. Fossil fuels have done way more damage to the environment so far. Nuclear is preferable. In fact, 20% of European electricity and 10% of total energy is provided by nuclear power plants. 180. Plants. All renewables combined provide 17%. No real counter to that: they really do produce a lot of electricity without emitting greenhouse gases! Importantly: they don't need a lot of space. (Nuclear on the whole causes about as many greenhouse gases as wind energy equivalent and even slightly less than solar. Forty times less than coal.)

7. Nuclear is a proven way to produce a LOT of power. Weak counter: this makes it a liability in the electricity grid and incentivises less maintenance to minimise downtime (if no other plants can take over - generally not if they're too big. This makes them unreliable, just like renewables). Counter to that counter: much smaller (scalable) plants are being developed. Counter to that counter: they're experimental. The thorium reactors thay produce shorter lived waste are also experimental. I.e. it will take decades before we can build operational versions. (BUT! there's an ENORMOUS amount of thorium on earth, which is extremely important. Waste is much less problematic and meltdown impossible)

8. Nuclear plants that are not traditional baseload only plants and have load following capabilities can play a role in managing the ups and downs of renewables on the grid. Counter: even when built for this purpose, it's impossible to make enough money to pay for the construction and management and deconstruction and waste management by only running these plants as buffer. This is a problem because companies are asked to construct the plants, not the state. Counter 2: in a hybrid system with renewables the grid operator actually has to PAY OFF (millions) the nuclear plant to stop it producing so much. It's a liability in a hybrid system with renewables.

Final conclusion:

CURRENT nuclear power plant construction does not play well with the transition to renewables because there is no way in this financial system to use its production as a buffer, the state cannot produce the plants because there is a lack of expertise, companies cannot afford to run the plant as buffer and cannot be trusted and ideologically and politically nuclear power is proposed as an alternative to renewables instead of a complement which cuts into the much-needed financial resources necessary for renewable expansion. It is slow to build and badly scalable. We need speed and scalability considering our climate deadline. There is no permanent solution for waste and takes billions of euros to store right now already. Uranium is a scarce and non-renewable resource. Existing plants impede the transition to renewables (there is no need). They form a liability for continued production when it comes to short term production for the grid when needing maintenance and long term liability for energy production when they need to be decommissioned (France is dependent for 3/4ths on many plants that must be decommissioned at the same time). Nonetheless, existing plants are preventing a large amount of carbon emissions. Nuclear can be a useful element to the energy mix, and requires a lot less space than renewables. If innovations in scalable, smaller plants with increasingly better business cases, faster build times and ability to offload production to each other, there may be serious synergy with renewables. Still, these will be useful for 50-100 years until uranium runs out. Problematic, not just because it leaves us with expertise and infrastructure that will have no fuel, but also because we need to transition FAST and it's uncertain in how many years this technology will be operational. Thorium would be a solution to a lot of problems, but that is also decades away from operation. Putting money into research and test reactors is a priority. Decommissioning existing plants early would be stupid even if it would remove their contributions to transition intertia and the as of yet unsolved and increasing waste storage problem.

#my stuff #my thoughts #just thinking....#nuclear power

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a-mole-of-iron · 1 year

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Yes, we can stop climate change - and solve ecological problems in general

In the last few years, I have seen again and again a particular social response to climate change that can leave human civilization just as devastated as denying or ignoring climate change: and that is doomism, and fellow-traveler ideas of eco-fascism and eco-austerity. Make no mistake: climate change is a very serious issue that can cause noticeable damage to Earth and a hell of a lot of damage to humanity, but people absolutely love to take it to lurid extremes, like "Mad Max hellworld" and "Earth becoming the second Venus by 2100". In this post, I'm just going to lay out numerous reasons why the situation is far from hopeless, why sensationalized narratives of climate change are just a petty excuse for inaction, why "we'd better start taking mud baths to get used to being in the ground" rhetoric is incredibly dangerous (not to mention a betrayal of the weak and vulnerable by the strong and well-off), and why, ultimately, things aren't as dire as "the common wisdom" proclaims - so that people can stop feeling crushed by hopelessness, and start solving all of the very, very real environmental problems the way they're already being solved. All my examples will be sourced from the IPCC reports and real-world accomplishments in eco-restoration, via an extremely helpful blog called Doomsday Debunked, which just reprints all the IPCC and IPBES findings that doomist media and activism deliberately omits.

Most of this post is adapted from one I already made before elsewhere - but perhaps on Tumblr it's going to become more popular and widespread. I'm going to split it into three different sections: climate change mitigation, biodiversity recovery, and why "green austerity" is not a brilliant idea, will not save anything, and is ultimately an outdated falsehood that emerged from a place of insufficient knowledge and understanding. Almost all paragraphs contain links to sources/more info, but they may be hard to see in some custom Tumblr themes - be sure to mouse over if you want to find the links.

CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION AND YOU: how renewable energy really can save the world!

Here's the biggest thing first: Climate Action Tracker, which is a pretty damn respectable source, has slashed off 1.1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius off its average warming projections since 2010, according to their own records. Hell, in 2018, three degrees of warming was a pledge, and four degrees was the expected upper limit; now three degrees is expected if the current level of fossil fuel consumption continues without any reduction - and two degrees is the policy target, while optimistic projections are inching closer to 1.5 degrees. And to "achieve" 5 degrees Celsius of warming, which is misleadingly described by journalists as "business as usual" when by our current day it's anything but, we would need an economic mobilization from now to 2100 to burn all the coal that we can possibly burn. With coal plants shutting down in reality simply due to being unprofitable, I don't have to tell you how "realistic" and "plausible" that is. The takeaway from this is simple: the Paris Agreement and environmental activism work, and I really don't see them winding down unless we let doomism reign supreme.

A specific example of policy and technology that can seriously reduce climate change is the amazing growth of solar power over the last 10 years. I am old enough to remember the early 2000s, when solar photovoltaics (the panels that convert sunlight directly into electricity) were an unproven, esoteric, and expensive technology, and people meant solar water heaters when they said "solar power"… but nowadays? There is literally predictions that if solar energy keeps growing at current rates, and considering it already beats fossil fuels on price, it might simply price out gas, coal, and oil before 2050, rendering them entirely obsolete. Even now, investment into coal or gas power plants is seen as an incredibly stupid thing to do, because they might become "stranded assets" - too expensive to run, and unable to even recoup their initial cost.

The clathrate gun/Arctic methane bomb hypothesis has been effectively disproven at the current time. The release of methane from clathrates is endothermic, meaning it takes in more heating than it releases; a direct opposite of a gunshot/explosion, which is an exothermic reaction. More modern research also turned up the fact that methane has been seeping upwards at a constant rate for millennia now - we just didn't monitor it. Seabed disturbance could possibly upturn some of the clathrates, but ocean warming alone simply can't do it - it would take thousands of years of warming for the temperature change to propagate to the kind of depth that methane clathrates are found at.

The hypothesis of runaway greenhouse effect has effectively been disproven too: with a more powerful greenhouse effect, Earth's albedo grows just as fast as the heat-trapping capacity, meaning runaway warming is highly unlikely and the only cause are human industry CO2 emissions, which can be obsoleted by renewables and thus stopped.

The biggest threat from climate change as it is now appear to be extreme weather events; for example physically straining heatwaves, or severe floods from large amounts of rainfall. And those are serious problems. But heatwaves can be deal with by adapting our environments - the most obvious example being to plant some trees instead of layering our cities in concrete. Similarly, flood management isn't some arcane art; we know how to do it. It's just been ignored due to complacency and budgetary stinginess.

The expectations of social collapse from climate change are… overstated, let's say. The IPCC's own worst-case scenario is NOT "Earth as a lifeless desert" or "collapse of human society"; the situation IPCC associated with three-degree warming is that hundreds of millions risk being displaced by sea level rise and temperatures in the tropics getting too hot for comfortable life with no weather difficulties (NOT THE SAME as "you go out at any point during the summer, you die in ten minutes"), and the UN Sustainable Development Goals will be left in ruins. In other words, the poor people of the world will go back to starving and suffering, and the rich, especially in the West, will for the most part retain their quality of life. And so to me, as a non-Western, not-ultra-rich person, doomism is a personal affront, and doomism from solarpunks and environmentalists is a grave betrayal.

Speaking of the IPCC reports: the last one states with decent confidence that as soon as we stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, temperatures will begin to drop. Just think on this for a minute.

The "1970s MIT supercomputer that predicted the collapse of civilization by 2040"? That computer was not just less powerful than a smartphone from five years ago - it modeled the world as a single pixel, primitive even by the standards of the day. (Link to article that features actual model comparisons, via browser-based Javascript emulation. 'Nuff said.)

The so-called "deep adaptation" paper that managed to put people into therapy by its sheer grimness? Junk science that was rebuffed by Michael Mann - the author of the "hockey stick graph" of global temperatures, so not a climate denier by any means - in a four-letter tweet.

Earth turning into a second Venus by 2100? Yeah. That's… not gonna happen. We literally don't have enough fossil fuels to induce a greenhouse effect this bad, at any timescale, and I don't know if we could do it even if we started importing dry ice from space and cracking carbonate minerals for their carbon content to deliberately destroy the planet for some stupid reason.

And just because I feel like mentioning it: no, Earth can't run out of oxygen for us to breathe, barring an invasion of Galactus or some other planet-devouring alien.

BIODIVERSITY + CONSERVATION: lies, damned lies, and statistics

The infamous notion that we are heading for a world without insects was based on a study where half the map was blank, and some countries only counted the domestic honeybee (which relies on humans to thrive). Not all plants need insects to pollinate them, either. But at the same time, overuse of insecticides in agriculture is a serious issue with many adverse effects, and it has to be fought against. There is currently a campaign in Europe with this aim. Native grass lawns in cities help a lot too, more than you would think at first.

Similarly, there is a general notion that we are "in the middle of a sixth mass extinction", except we're not "in the middle". We're in the beginning of one. Now, if we all start/keep behaving like the Glukkons from the Oddworld series of games, or the Blargs from the first Ratchet & Clank game, for a few hundred more years - then we're totally going to face an impoverished biosphere with half or more known species dead. But if we do that, I'd say extinction of species would be far from our only problem.

The number one agricultural land use that drives deforestation is grazing cattle and growing crops to feed them; cropland and cities simply don't compare. Ergo, just by shifting to plant-based diets supplemented by lab-grown meat cultures and sustainable fish, we can rewild nearly 30% of Earth. And climate impacts there can be reduced too, if you simply buy local.

For a reforestation success story on a massive scale, look no further than the Loess Plateau.

Conservation success stories are actually plentiful; however, they do not get aired on the news because good news does not draw in views, clicks, and outrage. You can just go through this article on Doomsday Debunked to see how successful nature conservation can actually be.

The only two biomes that are most endangered by climate change are coral reefs (which would be replaced by the more resilient sponge reefs at 3 degrees of warming or around that), and the mountain glaciers, which will take thousands of years to recover, unlike the polar ice caps that'll be back in a couple of decades. But even corals have shown more resilience than expected before, so the scale of devastation is not nearly as huge as people might imagine.

GREEN AUSTERITY: "Friendly fire! Stop shooting, you pointy-eared leaf lover!"

A common, in fact extremely common, idea is that the only way to save the planet is accepting massive reductions to our quality of life - and by "massive" I mean "living in dugouts and doing subsistence agriculture while literally billions of people die for lack of warmth and medicine". Not only is this unacceptable, it's also a complete lie. The best way for someone living in the car-dependent, fossil-fuel-hungry sprawl of North America to reduce their carbon footprint is actually moving to a country with walkable, bikeable cities and good public transportation, like the Netherlands… or preferably, reforming and rebuilding their own local environment to this standard that used to exist in NA before its suburbanization that included zero public transport due to auto industry lobbying. NotJustBikes is an entire YouTube channel that explains this better than I ever could.

Another common idea is that building enough renewable generation capacity is just not possible with existing resources here on Earth. But consider this for a moment: when we mine metals and make them into electric engines or batteries, they don't go anywhere, with the only possible exception being metal flaking off due to corrosion. The metals composing wind turbine generators, electric vehicle motors, and batteries, or silicon composing the solar panels, remain in place and can be recycled several times, if not infinitely. Oil and coal that our current civilization burns for fuel EMPHATICALLY CANNOT be recycled - the entire problem we have is that they turn into carbon dioxide and clog our atmosphere, while soot and other exhaust fumes damage the health of people living in cities. Getting rid of 99% or more of fossil fuel infrastructure doesn't seem like that hard of a choice when you remember that feeding a renewables-based infrastructure requires a far more modest production capacity.

The issue of soil depletion from intensive agriculture is not only exaggerated by the negative/doomist framing (no, we are NOT going to run out of topsoil in 60 years!) - it's also a problem of mismanagement rather than an inherent agricultural problem. Stop oversaturating fields with fertilizer, introduce polyculture and crop rotation, and you'll see how much better things can get.

Similar to the above: the production of fertilizer does not require fossil fuels, no matter what some people might be saying. The three types of fertilizer are nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium. All of those are abundant chemical elements on Earth, and circulate through the biosphere freely; nitrogen is the 70% of our atmosphere and cannot possibly run out, and phosphate with potassium are abundant in the Earth's crust. The only direct use of fossil fuels in fertilizer production is the Haber-Bosch process that condenses nitrogen from the air into ammonia, and guess what molecule it needs for that? Hydrogen, which is the stronger half of the elements composing hydrocarbon fuels and which we could have in abundance by simple electrolysis of water!

Related to the above: it is beyond ridiculous how cow manure is dumped into rivers or similar by most modern farmers, when with right subsidies it could be transformed into cheap-as-free fertilizer to be used in agriculture. Someone should go create subsidies for large-scale composting...

Surprisingly enough, even consistent economic growth - which I am not a fan of by any means - can be achieved on a finite planet, because economic growth is all in what you count and how you count it. If we calculate economic growth not by production, but by improvements in human condition and condition of ecosystems (i.e. an economy that grows with the growth of trees), then we'll see that right now some world regions (like, again, North America) are failing as much as countries poor in money, but also that there is an enormous space for growth measured in sustainable prosperity.

The much-touted problem of water wars is an actual problem only for regions way, way inland. Any coastal countries have access to efficient desalination; it's not 1850 anymore. Water doesn't disappear from the world after people use it in cities and industries, it goes right back into the soil/atmosphere/rivers and oceans, so we can't "run out of water".

Interesting fact: we don't actually require any particularly specialized carbon capture technology to remove all the excess CO2 from the atmosphere, and will not require us to divert society's resources to expensive machinery. The old adage about the best carbon capture technology that's called "planting trees" still holds - and what's even more interesting is that there actually are even better methods that are not much more complex… and produce other things for the environment and for civilization in the process.

CONCLUSION

To sum things up: yes, the situation is serious, and "already bad enough" as Michael Mann put it (admittedly, he's been leaning into negative framing himself… but it can't be all positive, the problems of climate change really are dangerous, especially to the world's poor), and there's been a lot of environmental damage due to industries and rich consumers deliberately ignoring the externalities/knock-on effects of their resource use - but it's not nearly as horrifically bleak as some people presume. Right now there is great momentum behind climate action - which, yes, is partially propelled by increasingly hostile weather, but also by an understanding that social progress, democracy, and collective action are vital to build any form of a decent society, as well as by seeing new opportunities rise from cheaper renewable energy, better cities, and other innovations that will both stop climate change and make life actually worth living no matter where you might be. And in these conditions, throwing in the towel or surrendering to eco-austerity or even eco-fascist thinking is the worst possible action any one person can take. The green, sustainable, egalitarian future is not merely a dream or flight of fancy - it's eminently attainable if only we keep pushing for it and help eachother achieve it. But of course, there are people who stay up nights thinking how to take that future away from us, and now that climate change denial is no longer tenable, with more and more people believing their own eyes, the doomism and inactivism have become their primary, perhaps only, means of holding onto their power…

I hope this post will be helpful to people here who find themselves in the grip of doomism and hopelessness. I expect some people to disagree, but I prefer to believe the sources like the IPCC, IPBES, Climate Action Tracker, and all the climatologists behind these organizations' reporting - who've been closely watching both the worsening extreme weather from climate change, and the emergence of all the simple, usable, life-improving technologies and social practices to combat it. If we don't believe these people, then really, who can we believe? And if you do trust their reports on all the positive things being done and planned for environmental needs, it is not simply an idea that we can deal with climate change and restore, then protect our environment - it's objective reality, it's respectable science, and thus, it's good hard common sense.

More information: Doomsday Debunked (layman explanations and positive framing, also covering a ton of other "not actually the end of the world" topics for scared people), Carbon Brief (more technical and a bit less brazenly optimistic, but showing things like the absolutely crazy speed of renewable energy development), Not Just Bikes (an urbanist YouTube channel showing how cities can be improved, not made poorer, in the process of reducing fossil fuel use and car dependency).

#climate change #global warming #solarpunk #bright green environmentalism #hope #reasons for hope #psa #problem solving #debunking doomsday #long post

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teecupangel · 1 year

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Okay, ignoring cannon and ubisofts total neglect of Elijah. Here's something to think on.

Au where Desmond is active in Elijah's life, maybe after the whole temple and solar flare fiasco he survives, Bill thinks he's dead and he takes the opportunity to per say... retire. Someway somehow Desmond catches wind of his son, the (loving and healthy) banter they'd have would be gut clenching hilarious it'd make you sick from laughing hard.

Desmond: look kid I really need you to cut back on the attitude at the moment

Elijah being the damn near carbon copy of Desmond with twice the sass: for any malfunctions, questions, or complaints, please contact the manufacturer

All the ancestors somehow watching the banter from the sidelines, either laughing or shaking their heads: those are definitely our descendants

They would have an “Elijah, no!”/”Elijah, yes!” and “Dad, no!”/“Dad, yes!” dynamic and everyone who knows they’re father and son would be like “yeah, that tracks.”

You also know Desmond would be the kind of dad that would make dad jokes because he knows it annoys Elijah. The more Elijah looks like the world is conspiring to kill him with his cause of death being embarrassment, the more Desmond does it.

Plot-wise, this could happen while Desmond was trying to tie up loose ends on his side to make sure his ‘death’ is permanent to everyone involved.

This, of course, leads him to learn about Elijah thanks to a file in Abstergo’s database that connects Elijah to his own file so he deletes everything by physically destroying the servers that housed that specific database and then makes his way to find Elijah.

In this scenario, Desmond knew it would be too risky for Elijah and his mom to stay in New York when Abstergo already knows about them and he managed to get his…… Desmond doesn’t even know what to call her… friend? Ex-one-night-stand? Anyway, he managed to get thru to them and they all leave the US because it’s just simply too risky to stay in the country.

(And, as much as Desmond wants to go to Villa Auditore, that would be stupid).

So they go to a country that has minimal ties with his ancestors and sorta try to live like some kind of sitcom family but Desmond and Elijah’s mom have the romantic chemistry of a wet cardboard box so everyone who knows them knows they’re friends raising their son together. Desmond gets a bar and Elijah has a sorta normal school life.

Then Desmond notices Elijah’s smarter than he actually is but hiding it because they are trying to remain incognito.

“Sorry, kid. I know it’s hard pretending to be someone you’re not.”

“I’m not pretending. I don’t want people to know I’m smarter than all of them combined.”

“Okay, take it down a notch, Einstein.”

“Do you know what they think of the smart kids in school? It’s just a different kind of torture, being known as the smartest kid in a government-mandated prison. I’ll probably get pushed all over in the showers if they knew I know how to use all the chemicals in the science lab to build a bomb. ‘God’ forbid I drop my soap…”

“Oh my god.”

Really, Elijah and Desmond say a lot of stuff that gives them headaches but that’s how similar they are. Elijah also likes to stare at the people his parents date and go “good luck” before going back to his room.

And both of them know Elijah is just being a little shit to make the poor innocent ‘date’ paranoid as fuck.

And Desmond would have problems with how to talk to Elijah at the start, of course. He had missed a lot and it was just awkward between them.

Until he realized who Elijah acts like.

Always curious about everything and anything.

A sharp tongue with a habit of sarcastic and dry humor.

A genius who knows he’s a genius.

Oh god.

His son was a mini-Altaïr!

And that is how Desmond realized that the best way to get into Elijah’s skin is to be a loving dad who likes to tease his son.

And Elijah, as much as he pretends to be annoyed by it, actually leans in whenever Desmond ruffles his hair or hugs him.

Not that he was going to say anything about it though.

Nope.

Sidenote:

I kinda like the idea that Elijah’s personality is a mix of a young curious child with the arrogance of Aita. Being kidnapped and watching his mom die made him a quiet child that has anger issues. So this Elijah would be happier and much more polite. He’s only sarcastic when he’s annoyed or close to someone. Also, his first crush will be someone who can kick his ass and Desmond would just stare at him because… yeah, that tracks.

And, if we keep Desmond’s Bleeding Effect, Elijah could interact with his ancestors as well. Might even call them something like variations of ‘grandpa’. They usually try to pretend to be Desmond whenever Elijah’s mom is there but Elijah knows which is which by now.

Desmond knows about it and he can’t help but feel happy that his own son accepts even that part of him.

#we always ignore canon anyway XD #edward can also be included in the bleeding effect #he has a feeling he knows elijah but he can’t be sure #elijah just keeps quiet #oh course #elijah knows he’s a sage #but he’s keeping it all a secret #because he’s afraid desmond would hate him if he knew #he was the sage of a man that loved juno #ask and answer #assassin's creed #desmond miles #elijah miles #teecup writes/has a plot #fic idea: assassin's creed

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ultimate-worldbuilding · 11 months

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CITIES

A full list of what a modern / sci-fi city needs. You can incorporate many elements into your fantasy city as well. Of course you don't need this many things, but sometimes it can help your story if you understand and think about how your world works.

Electricity and energy resources

If your city has electricity, or anything similar to it, it's worth considering where this energy comes from. Is it renewable energy, or not? Is it something else entirely? (Is it magic?) These buildings and facilities are usually located on the outskirt of cities.

Windmill Location: Flat planes, maybe even deserts. Tailor it: break up the structure of a today's windmill: e.g. what if they are way bigger, or people live in it, etc

Nuclear Power Plant Location: Anywhere, in space, under the water, in the sky, inside the terrain. Prompts: What about accidents? Secret labs inside the plant?

Storm Power Plant Location: Almost anywhere, in the sky, in space, on space ships, planes, etc. Further ideas: tornados, harvesting lightning, harvesting the power of the wind with fortified windmills, sun storms in space.

Water related power plants Using the energy of a flowing river,sea waves, or even a vortex.

Burning power plant Burning trash, coal, diesel, gases or your world's fuel. This can be very polluting in your world, which can add up to your worldbuilding: green activist wants this plant closed, people getting sick aournd the plant, etc.

Geaothermal Power Plant Using the planet's heat to generate energy. You can put this anwhere on your ground or under.

Solar Power Plants These need a lot of place. If you are also making a map, be sure to add these on places where they actually get sunlight. (Don't put them on the north side of a mountain.) prompts: what if somebody covers them on purpose?

Health, Life and Death

All health and mental health related facilities (even for pets). Tailor these to your worlds problems, diseases and conditions (e.g. cyberpsychosis in Cyberpunk 2077) You can put these fqacilities, together, or even in a very different location, for example a floating private clinic above the city. You can even use virtual worlds as a twist.

Hospitals and clinics General hospitals, clinics and private ones.

Doctor's office

Ambulance station

Cyberware repair clinic

Drug Rehabilitation Centers

Vets Vets for people's pets, you can even add robot vets, for robot pets.

Nursing Homes Home for the elderly.

Asylums Home for people with serious mental health problems.

Pharmacies Are these private? Are there black market versions? What medicines can you buy here?

Dentist Promp questions: Are there any unique procedures? Do people's teeth are different? What about dentists for different species?

Sanatorium These usually are in the nicest parts of a city in the outskirts. They do have big gardens too. It can be even in space too, or even virtually.

Morgue Story tips: you can include a place like this for investigations or horror elements.

Cemetry Before diving deep into this one, state how your people bury their loved ones. The method the whole cemetry. Here are some burial types from the world:- Leaving the body in nature (or space)- Embalming, and preserving- Leaving in water (or space), or let it sail away on a ship- Burning the body (by fire, or by sunfire), and placing the urns in a sacred place (space, ground, buildings, etc.)- Buring the body under ground

Crematorium Used if your people burn bodies.

Quarantine zone

Misc Essentials

As these are essentials, they can be targets in a conflict. This can help your story further.

Fire station

Water tower (and storage) If it doesn't come from a pshysically higher place.

Server buildings

Lighthouse

Transportation and Travel

Transportation can change a lot in a scifi high tech world. I often grab a real concept and put into a different enviroment. Train? Space - Train. Jetski? Sun wave - jetski.When building transportation, think about:- where these vehicles are stored- where you can access the service,- who repairs them and where- where do they go when they are no longer used. These types of transports all have office centers, and they are usually different corporations and companies.If the parking lots or hangars are abonded, it can be a place where homeless people gathered, and live.

Bus stations, depot, stops and repair garages

Spaceship (or airplane) ports, hangars and repair hangars Don't forget to add ports and hangars for military, trading and public transport spaceships.

Metro stations, metro depot

Taxi stations, depot

Ship ports On rivers, sea, ocean, or the sky. (for flying ships but not spaceships.) Don't forget to about military, trading and public transport. These ports can be just platfroms.

Parking lots Multi storey car park.

Rental Renting the vehicles you have in your city, spacehips, cars, ships, etc.

Travel agencies

Fuel stations gas stations for cars, taxies and buses, and fueal stations for spaceships, and ships.Prompts questions: Where are these located? Is there possibility of shortage?

Package receiving point (or drop point)

Warehouses (personal, corporations, cars, etc)

Housing & Homes

Housing is an interesting part of building a city. I advise you to look around in your enviroment, and in the world how people live in different countries. You can always twist these ideas by putting them into a different enviroments (e.g.: shipping containers as living space, in a frosty enviroment, and people use fur to cover the insides for insulation.)

Luxury flats, and houses

Middle class flats, and houses

Lower class flats, and houses

Huge flat blocks (all are the same, available for all classes)

Prebuilt houses (all are the same, available for all classes)

Houses made of different elements You can vary as you want, example: Mass Effect colonies

Shipping containers as homes

Discarded vehicles as homes

Shelters For people, sentient robots, animals, robot animals.

Hotels

Motels

Food and Plants

Questions: Where does food come from in your city? Is it from outside of the city, or does it have some facilities to create food? Where does that food go? How is the food situation in your city? Do people make food at home, or order, or eat prepackaged food?

Grain Processing Plant

Crop fields If you have crops, is there a fungi or incest that is destroying crops? Or an organization?

Restaurants

Cafés

Drive-ins

Fast food restaurant chains

Bakery

Pastry Factory or any factory that makes food that is in everybody's lives, out of the plant the city has on its crop fields.

Food Packaging Factories

Food Processing Plants

Green houses

Nature reserve

Plant nurseries

Ranches for livestock

Slaughterhouses (or syntethic meat producing facilities)

Pastures

Brewery What type of alcohol does the people drink? What are they med of? Are there traditions related to them?

Education, Science & Knowledge

What general education system does your city have? What subjects are there? At what age do usually people finish their studies?

Elementary school

Kindergarten

High School

University

Music School

Library

Science center

Research Facility

Museum

Conservatory

Entertainment and Services

Entertainment and Services are a big part of every day lives. How much fun people have in this city? How much time do people have? Does this have black and extreme sides? Are there regulations in place? Is there a disctrict just for party time or doe poeple do this all around the city?

Ferris-wheel

Bars and Pubs (eg. Vape Bar)

Skating rink (ice, scifi ice skate, etc)

Brothel

Arcade

Arena / Stadium (depends on the setting, and nature of the events held here)

Stripper bar

Dance studio

Barber

Beautician Explore every aspect, different species, and cyberware (if you have these in your world)

Gym

Amusement park

Spa

Aquapark

Fighting rings People, robots, animals, etc. Where is this ring? Are these illegal?

Aquarium

VR café

Circus

Theatre

Zoo

Bowling alley (or any other alley for this type of entertainment)

Racetracks Animals, robots. How much of are these legal? Are there any bets placed on the racers?

Communication

Where do people get their information? Is there internet in your city? What happens when somebody disrupts communication on purpose? Does people/ the government / corporation manipulate the media?

Post office

Media studios TV, Internet, Talk shows, VR, whatever media your cuty uses.

Radiotower

Community centre

Employment agency

Open Spaces

Where people can organize events.

Forum, Square You can include a statue or a monument.

Park (It's scifi or fantasy, you can add floating parks too.)

Skate park (or any other equivalent of extreme sport park in your world, e.g. solar surf park)

Religion & Politics

What religion do people practise? Are there any banned religions? What sacred spacse do they need for that? Are there any districts heavily influenced by one religion? Are their beliefs go against the city council's views? Is religion and politics are connected or not? How do religion and politics influence each other?

Parlament/city council

Mayor's office

Convent

Oracle

Religious spaces Buildings, parks, monuments

The Force and the Law

Military , Police and Law. Do these mix with religion or not?

Military headquarters

Military training centre

Military base

Shooting range (or archer range)

Police Station

Jail & Prison

Military vehicle and gadget repair

Courthouse

Lawyer's office

Market & Financies

What currency does your city use? Are there any undergound currencies? What items and resources can be currencies?

Bank

Shop franchises Apparel, jewelry, furnishing, stationery

Broker's office

Armor shop

Cyberware (or body enhancment) shop

Weapon shop

Market (farmer's , junk, flee, vehicles, etc.)

Black Market

Drug Den

Malls

Corporate Shops (workers can pay from their own salary)

Building & Production

What do people need? Is there a shortage of certain types of products, or oversaturation and overproduction?

Factory: Electronics devices

Factory: Furniture and cutlery

Factory: Home gadgets

Factory: Weapons

Factory: Military equipments

Factory: Vehicles Cars, spaceships, flying cars.

Mining operation

Construction Site

Waste

What types of wastes are produced in your city? Where do they go?

Sewage system Pipes, old pipes that are no longer in use, cisterns. Are there any people living down here?

Junkyard Regular junk, old spaceships, broken cars, broken machines, broken robots. Do people live here or not?

Selective Trash Sorter Facility If your city recycles.

#scifi worldbuilding #scififantasy #worldbuilding #worldbuilding tips

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moonsb1996 · 1 month

Text

World of Ashes Lore (my Oc world history) p8

wow ! Finally it's the end of the prologue! I hope @the-invisible-introvert-2004, @lucia1234lizeth, and everyone who reads will enjoy it. Happy Songkran Day!

Photograph of Professor Gary Phelan and his niece Mary Phelan before landing on the moon Halimili in orbit of Neptune. Photograph by Dr. Keir Phelan.

Recordings of Dr. Keir Phelan and Dr. Mary Phelan's conversations were recovered from the CHUN Special Investigations Unit during the incident. ARK Space Research Center

M = Mary

K = Keir

M: Would you like to tell me what happened?

K: I don't have any problems.

M: Eh? But I don't think so. K...you almost fell into outer space.

K:...I know (sighs tiredly)

M: Grandpa thinks you're careless...but I don't think so. K...are you okay?

K:...If I tell you that I don't know why...do you believe in me or do you believe in Grandpa?

M:…K. I've already told you, right? Even if the whole universe doesn't believe in you I'll be your shadow that believes in you...Will you tell me what's going on yet?

K:…(sighs) Yes, there's a sound...like in my ears.

M: Sound?

K: I'm not sure either...I think it's ringing in my ears. Maybe I’m in space for too long I absorbed too much solar wind.

M: K, that's not funny.

K: Okay, okay.

M: It's a man's voice...right?

K: ?? Did you hear that?

M: Forget it, I'm going to write a report that you stayed up late and ate too much ice cream.

K: M...Come on.

M: You can't have too much sugar.

This is the end of the recording.

#my art #my original characters #my original art #my novel #my original writing #my ocs #oc art

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hungerpunch · 7 months

Note

hi I love you longest and fiercest and kind of gross, my lobot. Will you tell me a story about Pierre and Este and Charles that hurts me real good in all my gayest bits??

ginba you always say the sweetest things (✿◡‿◡)

i guess i may have something ha ha ha. please note that while i've done some research i am not an expert so if anyone has a timeline qualm, have mercy.

He's 13 when he kisses Esteban, soft and scared and burning for it.

He's been confused about his friend for months, vexed by how the innocent urge to spend all his time with Esteban seemed to go from from something boyish to something more, something worse. He's unsure when Esteban's dark gaze started pricking at his skin instead of sliding off like water. Ashamed to admit exactly when his thoughts started being consumed by a repetitive longing to touch Esteban's inky black hair, or fit his hands around the disproportionately skinny clutch of Esteban's ribs.

But it happened. It did. And it's tortured him.

And Esteban kisses him back.

Pierre just had his first kiss with a girl a few weeks back. It made him feel warm and excited, an adrenaline rush that he couldn't stop smiling about.

Kissing Esteban makes him feel sick.

please tell me, Esteban begs over text after weeks of radio silence from Pierre. did that kiss mean anything to you?

No, Pierre texts back with shaking fingers. Sorry, he sends, and watches their friendship unravel over those next few and final years. At their best, they manage a stiff cordial, an all right, a phony politeness. At their worst, they're made of actively hostile barbs and little pushes. Everything from cold shoulders and rude hand gestures in between. There are so many factors that make Charles different. Age. Pierre having a little more job security, some therapy. Not to mention that Charles feels inherently safe and sure whereas Esteban had felt like holding his skin to an open flame: dangerous and reckless. Esteban is a good boy but he's got a bastard in him. Charles is just sweet, only sweet, through and through. Even when he's being bratty, it's vanity. Not deep. It doesn't linger. Nothing about Charles, not even that first disbelieving kiss, makes Pierre feel sick.

It becomes an open secret. It's wide out in the open for witnessing, hidden in plain view between hugs and hip-grabs and pressing close to whisper. The media doesn't look close enough to see it, team principals refuse to see it, non-friends see it and don't care, and friends tease them mercilessly in private.

Pierre is 22 the first time he has to contend with Charles, Esteban, and alcohol in the same space. At least, alcohol with the intent to get fucked up, rather than the occasional glasses of wine at family dinners of their youth. Pierre is no stranger to drinking but he hasn't exactly learned his hard liquor limits yet so he's leaning heavy and kind of sloppy on the bar while he waits to catch the bartenders attention. Charles is at his left side, patient, when an elbow shoves in to Pierre's right and a stick-like body wedges in.

Pierre recognizes him by scent first because he doesn't think Esteban will ever in his life stop using the same soap and deodorant combo.

"Ah, shit," Esteban says out loud when he looks down (down!) and notices it's Pierre he's shoved in next to. "Of course," he says with disdain, black eyes shifting from Pierre to the ceiling like he can't believe his luck.

Pierre, drunk, bristles. "Ah, fuck you." Esteban's spidery eyebrows raise at the back talk. Pierre feels a hand at his waist. "Are we having a problem?" Charles' voice sounds, loud enough to get both their attentions.

Esteban stares at Charles for a beat too uncomfortable before letting one corner of his lips furl into a lazy smirk. When his gap teeth glint behind the slow parting of his lips, they might as well be fangs. "No problem, Charles, if you keep your dog on a leash."

The comment winds Pierre, a brimstone fist in his solar plexus. "I'm not a dog," he says oddly, stunned for a second. Then the anger comes.

At 22, Pierre hasn't put on the pounds of muscle his future promises just yet, which is good because it means Charles is physically capable of dragging Pierre out of the bar before he can wring Esteban's neck.

At 22, he's insulted by the idea of being Charles' dog.

By the time he's 24, he's old enough to know he likes it. Both in bed, thick band of leather around his throat, and in the paddock, arm draped over Charles' shoulder protectively, waiting for Charles to sic him on somebody.

"Good boy," Charles will say and Pierre will think I would rip someone to shreds with my teeth for you. The only thing is, is that when the chips are down for Esteban… he has the same thought. The same viciousness in him. I would rip someone to shreds with my teeth for you, too.

#lo fic #pierre gasly #esteban ocon #f1 #ask #thekinkstheycarried

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tokusaatsus · 1 year

Text

THEIR LOVE LANGUAGES

ft. fushimi yuzuru, hibiki wataru, himemiya tori, tenshouin eichi

warnings: none

Giving: Acts of Service + Quality Time

For Yuzuru, being soft with people is something he’s still unused to, so he’ll most likely default to what he knows best. That is to say, being of service.

Helping you out is his way of showing his affection. It doesn’t matter how small the problem may be, he’ll still give all his effort to fix it for you.

If you’re working late, expect to see him enter your room multiple times with snacks and drinks and gentle but firm reminders about taking breaks. If you’re busy with preparations for an event, perhaps DreFes and the like, he will offer his services unprompted and without hesitation.

Being around you has the strange side-effect of making him increasingly giddy, but also more determined.

Know that he’s not doing it out of obligation–Yuzuru helps you out because he wants to. It’s his way of showing that, yes, he cares about you, and it has the added bonus of allowing him to be near you more. Two birds, one stone.

Don’t feel like you’re obligated to accept his help, though! His first and foremost priority when it comes to taking care of you is your comfort, and if you don’t want him to intervene he won’t.

Receiving: Physical Touch

Yuzuru isn’t used to giving softness, yes, but he also isn’t entirely used to receiving it either.

He’s probably touch-starved, but he wouldn’t exactly realise it until you hug him and he goes, oh. Because that felt…nice, actually, and he wouldn’t mind if you did it again?

He probably stares at you quite a bit after that, but don’t be fooled, he’s not judging you or anything like that. He’s just trying to figure out if it would be terribly weird of him to ask you to touch him again. He’s not entirely sure what the etiquette here is, as the only person he might have considered skinship with is Ibara, but he’s certain that the relationship he shares with the other boy is not comparable in the least to what he has with you.

If you’re expecting him to make the first move: don’t. He will quite literally bottle it up until he dies. You’re probably going to have to reach out first. Don’t be surprised when he clings onto you tightly, his face buried in the crook of your neck.

After, make sure to give him lots of affection, be it in the form of hugs or headpats or just linking your fingers together. He may startle at first, but slowly, slowly, he’ll settle into it with a gentle smile reserved only for you.

Giving: Physical Touch + Words of Affirmation

Wataru is very open with his affection.

Compliments dropped casually in the middle of conversations–you look beautiful today’s spoken while you walk to class and you have such a lovely smile, my dear, you should show it to me more often’s mentioned during a stroll in the gardens when his doves alight on his head and shoulders in a spray of feathers–you should be used to it but they never fail to catch you off-guard.

He’s quite touchy-feely as well, so do expect intertwined fingers and kisses pressed to your forehead, cheeks, nose, lips. Even in public. Especially in public, depending on the audience.

(What can he say? It’s the performer in him.)

Even when alone with you, Wataru never minces his words. Why use just one when seven will do just as well? His declarations of love are long-winded, brimming with flowery prose. He might compare you to a warm summer’s day, or perhaps a gentle breeze that caresses his face? His monologues can take a while, though. He’s so filled with love for you that once he starts, it’s hard to get him to stop.

He needs you to know how much you mean to him, and what better way to show it then to affirm his love for you every day?

Receiving: Words of Affirmation

Wataru may seem like an untouchable force of nature, yes, easily on par with hurricanes and solar flares, but do remember that he is still a human being with insecurities.

As a performer, he is used to primarily one-sided relationships, like that of an actor and his audience, so do be sure to acknowledge and reciprocate his affections out loud. Tell him you enjoyed his performance, compliment his appearance, maybe even drop a flirty line–I can’t take my eyes off you, and I don’t think I’d ever want to–just to watch his eyes sparkle.

If you aren’t comfortable with large displays, that’s fine as well! Little things, like You’re amazing’s and I love you’s are enough to keep him sated.

Just hearing your voice saying sweet things to him is enough to make him melt. Wataru loves you, has loved you for a long time, but it’s always been from afar. People like him, raised up on a pedestal, are untouchable. You weren’t supposed to bring him down to your level, to remind him of what it feels like to be wholly, fully mortal.

But you did.

If you’re apart, do text him about how much you miss him and wish he was with you. Don’t be scared about seeming clingy. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, so rest assured that no matter how much you miss his bright presence, he’s missing you just as much.

Giving: Physical Touch

Tori is more reserved with his affection, a side effect of being raised in the Himemiya household, but he has no such qualms when it comes to you.

He’s always clinging to you. Whether it be hugging you tight and wailing about how much he missed you and how could you leave him alone for so long?! or just holding your hand when you walk together, skinship with you is something he adores.

Despite seeming shameless, he’s the kind of person to take any excuse he can to initiate touch without seeming too obvious. For him, it’s easier to express how he feels with his actions instead of his words, so his clinginess is a measure of how much he cares about the people around him.

It might take you a while to read between the lines, but once you find out his constant need for close contact is actually his way of showing his love, please do cuddle him close.

Tori always feels safe in your hold–when you wrap your arms around him, he never protests, just snuggles closer with a sigh. It’s so easy to relax when he’s around you.

Receiving: Gift Giving + Words of Affirmation

Tori can be a little insecure at times, which is why he always appreciates it when you give him little gifts.

As the son of the Himemiya Family, he has rarely ever wanted for anything. He’s used to people giving him things, in an attempt to gain his favour, but it feels different, somehow, when you’re the one doing it.

Even if it’s something small, like a cute pink plushie you saw that reminded you of him, he’ll still love it because it came from you.

It means that you’ve been thinking of him.

He finds it flattering that you seem to think about him so much, because somehow you always have a gift for him every time you meet. And, as a bonus, the gifts are always cutesy things that are appealing to the eye, which means you associate him with cuteness and beauty!

However, that might not always be enough, so make sure you remind him of how much you care about him.

You could leave little sticky notes telling him to have a good day, Tori-chan :) or you could just tell him to his face. Either way, he’ll definitely appreciate it.

Giving: Gift Giving

Eichi adores showering you with gifts–if you were to ask for something, anything at all, he would do his very best to make sure it is yours. No matter how small your request is, he manages to find a way to give you something spectacular.

Oh, I saw this and thought of you, he might say as he hands you an expensive jewelled bracelet. Or, perhaps, I remembered you said something about wanting to try this? as he offers you a beautifully layered cake, made with only the finest ingredients there are.

Do be careful when asking, or else he might mistake your complaint about your cramped room as permission for him to buy you your own private island!

He would give you the whole world if he could, make sure you’d never have to want for anything in your life ever again, but he knows you wouldn’t accept.

Still, Eichi can’t help but want to lavish you, just a little. Indulge him, won’t you?

When he sees you using a gift that he’d gotten you–perhaps wearing a piece of jewellery he’d bought that reminded him of you, or drinking some tea he’d brewed with his own hands–his heart beats just a little bit faster.

Receiving: Acts of Service + Quality Time

As the head of not only Starmaker Productions, but also ES, and the heir to the Tenshouin Conglomerate, Eichi is a naturally busy person. He rarely has enough downtime for his own interests, so chances are he will have even less for yours.

Please do understand that while he would prefer to be spending time with you instead of looking over all these piles and piles of paperwork, Eichi isn’t in high school anymore. He’s in charge of so many things and it’s a lot of responsibility, he can’t slack off and leave it all to Keito.

Assure him that you know the importance of his work, but also be sure to remind him his health is important too, and not to neglect it all in favour of overworking himself. Make sure he takes adequate breaks, bring him drinks and snacks throughout the day, and overall just help him out as much as you can. He appreciates everything you do for him, so it warms his heart to know that you’re thinking of his well-being.

Additionally, he wouldn’t mind your silent presence in his office. You could curl up on the couch and just relax, maybe scroll through the ES official Twitter feed or read a book? Just you being near him is enough to invigorate him, and he always feels better when you’re around.

notes!

WC: 1.6k

reze txt damn.

#✒️...scribbles!#fushimi yuzuru x reader #hibiki wataru x reader #himemiya tori x reader #tenshouin eichi x reader #enstars x reader #fushimi yuzuru #hibiki wataru #himemiya tori #tenshouin eichi #fine #enstars

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justastarholder · 5 months

Note

I don’t understand why Sun wants the gift of fire so badly.

Sure, he has the gift of wind, but he is also regarded as a god of light, is he not? He represents light.

Eclipse is the god of darkness. The problem with this? Darkness is not an actual thing. It’s just the absence of light. So not only is Eclipse the god of nothing, but Sun would be the god of light and darkness since they are both the same.

Light, when you think about it, is much more overpowered than the gift of fire would be.

Light itself can produce heat and fire. It can also be turned into energy like electricity, as seen with solar panels.

With all this in mind, it just makes me so angry when I see the lengths Sun goes to just to have fire when light and wind are both way more powerful than fire is.

"...It was never really about strength," Sun admitted softly. He wrapped his arms around himself. "You're right to be frustrated. I'm frustrated. I threw everything away for the gift of fire."

"Why? ...I guess because, deep down, I thought if I finally had fire like my father... I would be happy. I just wanted to feel like I'd finally made him proud."

"In the end... I guess I was only ever meant to be a disappointment."

#star holder au #sun answers

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bougiebutchbitch · 1 year

Text

Okay but

We’ve all seen (and greatly enjoyed) ‘Batman fucks Joker to keep Gotham City safe’

But I would like to propose to the jury: Joker fucks Batman to keep Batman strong enough to defend Gotham against him

It’s a typical night, and they’re brawling over the rooftops, the Bat Signal illuminating the clouds above like an overexposed lightning flash. All is fine and dandy. Or at least, it should be.

Batsy’s... distracted.

Joker landed three hits out of five. All did far more damage than they should have, jarring Batman’s shoulder joints and knocking the air out of his solar plexus. He even managed to stab him! Without using any of the fun jokeshop distractions in his pockets!

Why, Batman’s hardly protecting himself, relying on his armour to do the work - which is real stupid, given how Joker’s memorized every gradient, every angle, the weakpoint of every plate. And that isn’t where the oddities stop. Batman‘s simultaneously louder and quieter than usual. All those gruff grunts when he swings an uppercut almost make up for the lack of banter - but Joker can’t get a rise out of him, no matter what buttons he pushes.

Not that Batsy’s zen. His jaw winds so tight, he must be at risk of cracking a tooth (which is only fair, considering how many of Joker’s he’s punched out over the years). Evidently, something’s eating away at that big ol’ brain of his. Bats in the belfry again. Ha.

It takes far longer than it should for Batman to wrestle him down off the roofs, into an alley, where he can be pinned and cuffed in the grime and the trash, where he belongs. Ooh - Joker chews his painted lip, wiggling delightedly in the gutter. Facedown, hips up, Bat’s big hands pinning his hands above his head - ain’t this just Joker’s favourite pose?

He arches back, cracking a joke - of course he does, who would he be if he didn’t? (”Is that a batarang in your codpiece or are you just, ha-ha-happy to see me?”)

What he doesn’t expect is for Bat to crack too.

Batman startles. Lurching away. Dropping Joker’s wrists like he’s burning.

How... odd. After all, it’s not like flirting isn’t part of the usual routine.

Except Bats is glaring at him. He looks oddly tense. Flighty, almost. For a reason Joker can’t quite figure out - which is a novelty; usually, he knows precisely what threats he’s thrown at his darling, precisely why he deserves all the pain Batsy brings him with his fists.

Joker frowns. He hauls himself slowly to his feet, flicking a knife from his sleeve in case Bats gets handsy again. The white lenses of the cowl hide Batsy’s eyes. But there’s something about the rapid heave of his chest, the tight clench of his fists, leather squeaking around the gauntlets’ carbonfibre plates...

Almost as if -

Joker’s eyes widen. Oh.

Ohhhh.

So, that’s what’s got him all zoned out tonight. Joker’s first instinct, of course, is to laugh.

But even as the giggles geyser from his mouth, crackling off the alley’s leaning redbrick walls, his mind whirls uneasily in on itself. Batman was off his game. Batman was vulnerable. Batman was weak. In fact, Gotham’s caped crusader is still favouring his right leg, though Joker should never have gotten close enough to steal one of Batsy’s cute little bat-shaped blades and jam it into his calf.

He can smell out the problem, sure as the heavy, oiled scent of Batsy’s kevlars sticks to his bloody knuckles. Batman’s got the horn - and if that ain’t hilarious, Joker doesn’t know what is.

But it also cannot stand. Batsy’s condition is weakening him, to the point where some other lowlife from the criminal underworld might be able to take him out. That’s hardly an appropriate finale for their dans macabre! No - Joker refuses to accept this.

Something must be done.

Here’s the thing: Batsy ain’t exactly unpopular with the ladies. He’s got the damn Cat always hanging off his arm, and that Amazonian chick with the whip always stands reaaaal close when the Justice League assembles. Men, too - hell, Joker’s had more than one little talk with Lexie about how he needs to keep Supes away from Joker’s man. But Bats can’t let go with them, can he? Can’t use them hard and brutal, all that strength and fury unleashed on the person beneath him.

Sure, ol’ Supes could withstand it physically. But mentally? Bats wants to maintain that relationship. Wants all his friends - lovers, family, whatever - to see him as the epitome of control. Not a rabid, ravening bat-beast who will take what he wants with violence. And as much as Joker would love to watch Batsy break and tear the lot of his so-called friends apart, tragically, he knows Batman is far too likely to end himself - and their dance - early.

Thankfully, Joker is always happy to help his darling be the best version of himself he can be! Why, this will practically a public service! The city needs Batman!

He needs Batman.

To be strong. To be sure. To stop him, before he destroys this whole big, ugly joke of a world.

So, he grins at Batman, blows him a kiss, and runs. The next morning, there’s a knock at the door of Wayne Manor...

#batjokes #batman x joker #joker x batman #batman #joker #the joker #my fic #my art #bruce wayne

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naomitours · 3 months

Text

Tromsø, Norway: The North Above the North

I am not a "cold-weather" person, both in personality and in personal inclination. So you might wonder why someone like me would go to Norway in December. And if you asked me this after I actually got there, it would've been a damn good question! But I had a single reason, and a good one:

That's right, I went to see the northern lights. The green lady. "A-AURORA BOREALIS??", in the words of Superintendent Chalmers. People much smarter than me say this is caused by the sun's upper atmosphere emanating a solar wind that reaches *our* upper atmosphere. While not the most consistent place in the world to see it, Tromsø is one of the easiest and largest to try your luck.

Disclaimers from the Top of the World

The first thing you should know about Tromsø is that the sun doesn't come up for most of winter. You'll have light for a few hours, sure, but it's not the same. The meaning of darkness is different when it's ever-present, and those brief few hours of light mean everything. I found myself wanting to shed my coat and soak the light in through every pore of my body.¹ Depression is a real problem here, so is alcoholism. (I was even told by a local that they track alcohol purchases via card, to make sure nobody is drinking too much in the dark months!)²

The "sunset" over the Tromsø harbor, 1:35 PM.

The second thing you should know is that you need traction on your footwear. Pack your snow boots, or buy some shoe spikes because otherwise you'll be spending a good chunk of your time here on the ground, cursing the ice. My dumb-ass had decided to come to Norway on a whim, without thinking or preparing, so I showed up in my Doc Martens slipping and sliding. I almost couldn't make it to my Airbnb, my host having to come down and help me up the hills!! Thankfully I was able to borrow boots from my, again, incredibly lovely host³, but my god you've never appreciated gravel so much!

The Tromsø Troll Museum

That's right, the main attraction in the city, the reason you flew hundreds, perhaps even thousands of miles! This tiny museum with a bunch of trolls scattered all around!

It's a cozy space, and if you're as fascinated as mythology as I am, it's really a must-see if you're in town. Also, there's a replica of a hulder. According to local lore, these were beautiful women who would often try to lure men away from their human homes, to live in otherworldly pleasure with them⁴, or they would marry human men and join our world, retaining their otherworldly strength⁵!

Aurora Borealis

The biggest disclaimer I'd offer for the northern lights is this, you are never guaranteed to see them, even if you do everything "right". This was such a huge source of anxiety for me until I finally had a good sighting, then I was able to relax. I recommend doing some guided tours, these are not necessary (I saw them once right outside my Airbnb!) but it's going to maximize your chances by getting you away from the city's light pollution. There's many different modes of transportation for this, I myself took a bus and a boat, but I saw advertisements for planes, helicopters and even dog sleds*. The first time I ever witnessed the northern lights was on a sleepy little boat tour, New Year's Eve 2023.⁶

The interior was very cozy, more importantly it was warm, essential on a night with subzero wind chill. I enjoyed cookies and coffee and hot chocolate with marshmallows!

The lights don't look like the pictures, that should be stressed. The vast majority of aurora borealis photos are taken via long-exposure, and our eyes just don't work the same way. But on a good night you can see a faint green distortion in the sky, as if a riff into another dimension. It's like you expect an alien spaceship, or the giant hand of a monster to come ripping out of it, changing our world forever.⁷ But for the natives of Tromsø, it's just a day like any other.

View of the Aurora Borealis, from my Airbnb the next day.

I also recommend booking a few different tours, if you're like me and only really need to see it once, many will let you cancel on 24hrs notice if you pay extra. I recommend this as a good way to save money, but I'm kinda a cheapskate, so what do I know?

Also, please don't be discouraged if you don't see the lights on any given tour, you still do get some really beautiful photographs. It's important to keep a sense of relativity about you, you are standing at the top of the world, in the freezing cold. And in this moment you are having a novel human experience, regardless of whether or not you see some pretty lights on top of it.

What I Ate

Now, you might think the food is very bare-necessities in this sleepy arctic city, but you'd be surprised! One of the first things I had was something I had actually failed to find in Oslo, a delicious Norwegian donut called a skolebolle:

With a custard center and coconut flakes trimming the top, it's a deliciously sweet treat that I found in a Eurospar for the equivalent of a dollar. I recommend enjoying it with black coffee! Not pictured are the other things I got from the store, including paprika-flavored potato chips (highly recommended) and a large bar of Freia milk chocolate, which you'll not be disappointed by.

There's also an abundance of little convenience stores that will get you hot meals for relatively cheap (Northern Europe is expensive!) On the right you'll see a pepperoni calzone that was pretty good, along with a Norwegian soda that was less so. But if you're looking for a finer taste of Tromsø, stay with me:

This is a sampling I did of Aquavit, the signature liquor of Scandinavia. All of it was made right here in Tromsø, and I had a lovely guide for this tasting. To name a few, lingonberries and reindeer meat, not to mention a small slice of grapefruit.⁸ It's a little skimpy, however the point isn't to eat, but to taste!⁹

Conclusion/Takeaways

It can be a very scary thing, to be so far away from home. In all my years of travel, though that uncertainty has diminished, it never truly goes away. Maybe travel is just like any other experience, your tolerance to it builds until you only feel the original high when you get even further out of the world as you've known it. In this way, travel is much like a drug. But what moves me most about travel is its capacity to help us understand not just the planet we live on, but our own place within it. And if you ever feel lost for purpose, I might recommend standing on top of the world, hunting for otherworldly apparitions in the sky //

Footnotes:

¹ Of course, if you actually try to walk around in Tromsø without a coat, you will a)freeze to death and b)look stupid

² LITERALLY 1984

³ Of course, I had to return the boots when I left for the airport, meaning I fell not once, not twice, but THREE times trying to get down the hills to the bus stop. Seriously, you can't wear your Docs, no matter how fashionable and punk rock they are!

⁴ But why would you want to do that, when society is sooooooo good?? Like, who wants to live in a fantasy world where there is no suffering or want when we have Pizza Hut here, right now?

⁵ A hulder also features prominently on the cover of that one metal album by the murderous Nazi that your friend still listens to, despite knowing he's, you know, a MURDEROUS NAZI.

⁶ I would later go on to watch a man in lederhosen play The Weeknd, Cher, and at midnight ABBA's "Happy New Year", all on a keyboard. Dude was a one-man entertainment MACHINE, the vibe was immaculate.

⁷ As seen in Avengers 17: We Saved the World Again, in theaters this summer! Go watch it. Right now. The corporations demand it. DO IT. CONSUME.

⁸ Make sure your meds don't interact with grapefruit. Grapefruit may cause side effects including sour taste. Ask your doctor if grapefruit is right for you.

⁹ You know, like, a tasting menu or something!!

#travel #norway #tromso #tromsø #northern lights #aurora borealis #traveler #travel blog #traveling #places to visit #travel guide #footnote comedy for your soul

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toughtink · 1 year

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a long time ago i made a guide to keys in Gideon the Ninth. i said i’d do some more Locked Tomb notes in the future, so i’m back to do that! these posts are pretty much my personal notes taken during my last reread, perfectly prone to errors, so feel free to add on if you spot any inconsistencies. also, the citations are specifically for the american paperback versions of the books. and i haven’t put much from nona in this list yet; mostly this one focuses on Harrow the Ninth info.

The River Sections in The Locked Tomb Series:

The Riverbank—seems to have many of the things you’d find on an actual real-world beach: silvery sand, dried wood, colored stones, long feathery plant stems and willow-like branches washed up on the shore, salt wind.

Epirhoic—Uppermost, near the banks. Where the lyctors plan to fight RB 7. Where folks always hope their ghost travels (“may your spirit travel high on the River” or smth), where Abigail assumes Isaac and Jeannemary’s spirits will travel given their youth and goodness ( “[They] never did anything wrong other than the time they tried to pierce each other’s tongues, should have travelled lightly through those waters.” —Abigail, htn 397).

Mesorhoic—middle, i guess. some ghosts.

Bathyrhoic—where the swiftest fight against a RB (8) took place. much fewer ghosts.

Barathron—very few ghosts sink this low. Jod says if he believed in sin, he’d say they died weighted down with sin, placing them nearer the trash space. deeper portions have pressure similar to water pressure in deep ocean (htn 494), but they never figured out what the River’s made of. Apparently there’s also rocks down here??? Because the Mithraeum gets caught on some rock face when dropped into the River (htn 496).

Stoma—Super hell? Opens & closes. Ferocious gravitational pull. Mouth to Hell. “A genuinely chaotic space—chaos in the meaning of the abyss as well as unfathomable…located at the bottom of the River. The Riverbed is studded with mouths that open at proximity of Resurrection Beasts, and no ghosts venture deeper than the bathyrhoic layer. Anyone who has entered the stoma has never returned. It is a portal to the place I cannot touch” (Jod, htn 240). Jod’s rubbish bin 🗑️. When a hole opens, it’s enormous with huge human teeth at the edges, each tooth “six bodies high and two bodies wide.” Gideon also describes it as “an eaten-away tunnel of reality.” (htn 495) Also, thousands of tentacle-y tongues come out (htn 496). Stoma is Greek for mouth, and though medically it normally refers to a hole in the abdomen used to expel waste, if we think of it as a mouth (which like, teeth + tongues sounds pretty mouthy), it could be compared to the mouth of a river, aka where it meets the ocean. Is “The Beyond” (in the next section) that ocean?

The River Beyond—what lies beyond, believed in thousands of years ago, but pooh-poohed now, and researched/believed in by Abigail Pent (htn 397), aka where spirits are attempting to cross to without being dragged to the depths of the River or going insane. Abigail believes there is a whole school of necromancy still undiscovered because of a lack of studying The Beyond (my capitals, not hers) and that something has gone terribly wrong in the River.—Personally, it feels like the system has been gummed up by necromancy, souls coming and going and causing problems when they really should have been going in one direction. Alecto asks Jod where he put all the children in ntn, so maybe normally those souls go directly back to their planets/nearest cosmic bodies? But killing the planets has made that impossible so now they’re stuck in a subspace Purgatory occasionally getting sucked into Hell ala The Good Place where OOPS! No one’s been able to get to Heaven for 10k years!

some miscellaneous thoughts about the river:

perhaps the river was never meant to exist at all? could the destruction of the solar system have created it? and what’s with its use as subspace travel? it’s plot convenient, sure, but is that a feature that can be expanded to all souls, living and dead? or is it the spiritual dimension being sucked into some kinda worm hole that was already in space or something? idk, it’s very weird as you can be there spiritually but not physically or you can be there physically too as evidenced by the very physical kinds of rocks and stuff as well as whole space ships getting dropped in. it’s certainly a fun take on the river styx, and i do think we’ll be going beyond the stoma in alecto. maybe it’ll really lean in to the greek mythology connection this time and we’ll get a bit of an orpheus and eurydice moment with a certain saddest girl in the world going in to rescue a certain goth nunlet?

#the locked tomb #tlt #harrow the ninth #htn #gtn #gideon the ninth #nona the ninth #ntn #the river #capitalization is a funky lil thing on this post #because it got written at different times and was all about the Current Vibe #tinks tlt notes

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female-malice · 1 year

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Late on Saturday, as members of Congress scrambled to strike a deal for legislation that would raise the nation’s debt ceiling, they agreed to a total non sequitur in the text they would release the next day. After a series of late-in-the-game interventions by lobbyists and energy executives, the draft bill declared the construction and operation of a natural gas pipeline to be “required in the national interest.” It wasn’t really germane to the debt ceiling, at least not in the literal sense. But then again, it wasn’t any ordinary pipeline.

Building the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile conduit to deliver fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia, has been a top priority for Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia since the project was announced in 2014. The problem, for him and the project’s other supporters, is that it has been fiercely opposed by grass-roots groups and landowners living in the project’s path for just as long. Construction on the project was recently stalled after federal judges found that regulatory agencies had repeatedly failed to comply with environmental laws.

By forcing through this pipeline, the Biden administration rounded out the ransom sought by Republicans holding the global economy hostage and paid off a debt of its own to Mr. Manchin for his crucial vote last year for the Inflation Reduction Act.

But if the Senate passes the bill the House passed on Wednesday, an insidious piece of misinformation will be enshrined in federal law: the claim that the pumping, piping and burning of more fossil fuels is — despite all scientific evidence and common sense to the contrary — a climate solution.

Natural gas is predominantly made up of methane, a climate-warming superpollutant that is responsible for about a third of the warming the world has experienced to date. If completed, the M.V.P. will be a very large and long-lived methane delivery device. At the wells that feed it and along the way, some of that methane will inevitably leak into the atmosphere, where each molecule will exert 86 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide over 20 years. At the end of the line, the methane will be burned in power plants and furnaces, producing carbon dioxide. Taken together, by one estimate, the M.V.P. would generate yearly emissions equivalent to what’s produced by 26 coal plants.

And yet the bill’s text asserts — in a brazen stroke of climate gaslighting — that the pipeline will “reduce carbon emissions and facilitate the energy transition.”

Businesses and governments have long claimed gas was a bridge to a clean energy future, a transition fuel that would tide us over until renewables were ready for prime time. But now that wind, solar and battery storage are indeed quite ready and, in many places, cheaper than gas, the jig is up. That makes the M.V.P. a project in search of a rationale: There are cheaper sources of gas available via existing pipelines, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that demand for gas in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions will continue to drop off in the years and decades ahead.

Though the assertions that the pipeline is necessary and good for the climate defy logic, the political calculus is clear enough. Congressional Democrats and President Biden want to reward Mr. Manchin, who is weighing whether to run in what is sure to be a tough re-election fight in 2024.

Mr. Manchin was also a supporter of another large gas pipeline that would have originated in his state: the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which I have been reporting on since 2019. The two pipelines were twins, announced on the same day in 2014 and approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on the same day in 2017. They would have crossed similarly steep and landslide-prone Appalachian terrain. But the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was canceled in 2020 after years of tenacious grass-roots resistance and legal challenges.

Mr. Manchin seems determined to rescue the M.V.P. from this fate. And with it, his gas industry and power utility donors — whose lobbyists helped him in the final hours of debt ceiling deal making — will be able to further strengthen their hold on the energy system.

White House officials have said that the project would probably have secured the remaining federal permits regardless. But the provision authorizes all necessary permits and bars further judicial review of any of them — thus neutering an essential tool for ensuring that infrastructure projects comply with existing laws and regulations. It’s the legislative equivalent of overturning the Scrabble board in a fit of pique when you’re losing a game fair and square.

For many of those living in the project’s path, who watched as its construction has so far triggered over 500 recorded violations of water quality and other regulations, it’s a terrible betrayal. But it also sets a dangerous precedent. It is safe to assume this won’t be the last time this tactic is pursued to shield fossil fuel projects from judicial review or scientific scrutiny if they happen to be deemed by their developers and political allies to be in the national interest.

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia has cited this risk in explaining his opposition to the M.V.P. provision. When Mr. Manchin succeeded in getting a similar carve-out attached to the continuing budget resolution to fund the government last September, Mr. Kaine refused to vote for it. “If the M.V.P. owners are unhappy with a court ruling, they should do what other litigants do and appeal,” he said. “Allowing them to fundamentally change federal law to achieve their goal would surely encourage other wealthy people and companies to try the same. I won’t participate in opening that door to abuse and even corruption.”

Mr. Kaine, along with other Democratic members of the Virginia congressional delegation, remains opposed; this week he said he’s against any debt-ceiling bill that exempts the M.V.P. from judicial review. Meanwhile one of the lead Republican negotiators told reporters this week the pipeline provision is a “huge win” for his party because it puts “Democrats on record supporting a conventional energy project that removes or ties the hands of the judiciary.”

Democratic leaders will surely bristle at the suggestion that they are helping the gas industry obstruct the transition to clean energy. After all, they passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant climate legislation in U.S. history, and protected its raft of clean energy incentives from cuts in the debt ceiling deal. It’s clear that the deal makers regard themselves as the grown-ups in the room, making the tough trade-offs needed to avert financial catastrophe. But when the stakes are this large, one need not grant them that deference.

There’s always a political “crisis” gathering on the near horizon that will supersede concerns about the climate — that will cause us to look away from the dizzying rise of methane concentrations, currently spiking to levels not seen in over 800,000 years, a trend tracking with the worst-case climate scenarios.

This is what it looks like to shuffle along toward climate chaos, one misguided compromise at a time.

#cc

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fizzigigsimmer · 1 year

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Steve is a struggling superhero trying to gain entry into The Defense League, where the top tier superhero’s work together to save the galaxy. But his powers are unruly. He’s kinda like the hulk only instead of going smash, when he loses control of himself he spits out solar energy. He can cause a lot of damage if he’s not careful, and his origin as a hero is pretty messy. Rich boy doing penance: it’s been done. He’s not even president of the club (that’s Tony). Steve’s gadgets aren’t nearly as cool as the tin man’s but Dustin and the rest of the nerd squad certainly keep him in the most unique gear. The indestructible bubble gum actually does adhere itself to any surface. He had to buy a new laundry machine, but he certainly can’t fault them for imagination.

Steve may be a third string hero, but he must be doing something right because he’s already got an arch nemesis. ‘The Hurricane’ blows in about once a month to terrify Saturday afternoon shoppers and trash the downtown in the name of anti-capitalism or whatever, and Steve seems to be the only one who can stop him. The Brain? Turns out her cloaking ability doesn’t hold up to torrential rain. Freeze Frame? Won’t get near the guy after Hurricane picked him up and blew him right into the giant fish tank at Bob’s Seafood. Prism (Robin to those in the know) was done with him from the moment Hurricane started playing rock music from the city alert system whenever he started a rampage.

“He just wants attention. He’s your problem Steve because you give it to him.”

He didn’t put any thought into it at first. Then Hurricane starts showing up every couple weeks instead of once a month. Then it progresses to once a week, and now twice in the same week. It’s troubling… also annoying as fuck because Hurricane always shows up at the worst times, and he just talks so much. He talks more shit than even Billy Hargrove, the super critical and overly suspicious personal assistant (read babysitter) his father stuck on him to make sure Steve isn’t running the Hawkins branch of the company into the ground. The guy’s got his nose so far up Steve’s business that Steve’s 90% sure he is a corporate spy, he just hasn’t found the proof yet.

But he can’t focus on the problem of Hargrove with an overgrown super baby throwing tantrums to Metallica every five seconds. When Hurricane attacks for the third time in the same week, Steve has had enough. He calls it in and leaves before the others even confirm they’re on their way. He knows better than to rush in without backup but he’s so sick of this bullshit. He’s gonna put a stop to this once and for all. He takes the nerd mobile (as Robin likes to call it since Dustin and the other kids in R&D are always coming up with excuses for more test drives) and arrives on the scene in a cloud of smoke and screeching tires.

Jesus he’s going to have to have a talk with the kids about why his car needs to spit flame out the back. The smoke is so black and thick! Though it does look cool (he’s got to admit) when he emerges from the dark cloud, his cape fluttering behind him in the wind.

The sky is an ugly purple overhead, thunder booms and lightning cracks, and the wind whips around them like a twister, tossing droplets of water in every direction. In the center of it all, the eye of the storm, is the man who started it all.

“Hurricane!” Steve shouts to be heard over the howling wind and the super villain's manic laughter.

He turns. Glacial eyes spark with life when they recognize Steve. And it is Steve he recognizes, not just the costume. Cause the one time they thought to send in a fake to do this, Hurricane literally fed the poor guy to the fishes. Blew him so far away they had to fish him out of Lake Michigan.

“Am I dreaming or is that you, Pretty Boy?” Steve’s so done with him he doesn’t even bother reminding him that his name is Photon Blast.

“Yeah yeah it’s me. Don’t cream your pants.”

Hurricane laughs like a lunatic. Because he is a lunatic. And the sky crackles with lightning.

Right about now, usually Steve’s backup would be sneaking into place in order to spring a trap on Hurricane while he’s distracted; only Steve didn’t wait for them so there is no backup.

“Brave of you to challenge me alone.”

“Man, what are you talking about?” Steve huffs and Hurricane blinks at him in obvious surprise. He presses on, “Have I ever come at you alone? We banter, we fight, I let you pin me, and just when you think you’ve won, my team appears and you get captured. It’s the same shit every time.”

“Your prison cells can’t hold me!” Hurricane growls, eyes narrowing in Steve with rage like he thinks he’s being insulted.

“Yeah no shit. This is the third time we’re doing this.” Steve rolls his eyes, fists his hands on his hips. Taps his foot. “What gives man? You need a hug or something? A cuddle buddy?”

He’s expecting Hurricane to explode. Is ready for it. Aching for it if he’s honest, because it irks him that he never really beats Hurricane no matter how many rounds he ‘wins’. When the guy keeps breaking out of custody like it’s nothing and coming back, it feels like Steve’s trapped in a game with rules he doesn’t know. So he’s ready for a fight but what happens is worse.

“Are you offering?” Hurricane asks.

Steve stares at him, his mouth dropping open. Did he hear that right?

“What did you just say?”

The whipping rain parts for the leather clad villain and he saunters towards Steve. The fang of some poor creature dangles from his ear and his teeth glint in a sharp smile as he stops in front of Steve.

“I asked if you’re offering.”

“No fucking way dude!” Steve snaps without, thinking and immediately regrets it as the sky booms with thunder.

“Too bad. I give great hugs.” is what he hears before a gust of wind slams into him, so strong it smacks him right into the side of a parked car.

Steve groans. Partly in pain. Mostly in misery. This guy is fucking insane and for some reason, he’s obsessed with Steve and like only Steve.

This is his true penance, he thinks as he struggles back onto his feet before a small tree comes hurtling at his head like a toy carried on the wind.

Oh well, all the greats have their villainous groupies. Stark has too many to name. Wayne has a clown and Steve has a walking storm.

“You finally ready to put up a real fight Pretty Boy?” Steve’s personal pest in bondage gear calls out to him as the hero is reaching for his utility belt. “Or are you still playing around with toys?”

Steve pauses, chest heaving with anger, fighting for breath. He reminds himself that he can’t use his powers because they’re too unstable. People could get hurt and he’d never forgive himself if that happened again. But he’s so tempted.

Because Steve’s not nearly as good as he tries to be. Hurricane is laughing again, those eyes cutting into Steve… and all he wants in the world is the chance to show him what real power is and shut him up for good.

#harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #this is for the lols #whenever people call Billy a villian this is all I see #he would be exactly this bad at being a super villian #he gives no shits about anything but Steve’s attention #superhero!au

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rebeccathornewrites · 1 year

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Trials and Tribulations -- Seyka x Aloy fanfiction (ch 3)

Aloy knew something was wrong when GAIA pinged her focus.

“Aloy. A situation appears to be developing.”

Shit. Aloy tapped her focus, bending low over her sunwing. The air up here was frigid, but the sun was bright against the sunwing’s solar panels, warming her almost to the point of discomfort. “What’s the problem? Someone in trouble?”

“Uncertain. Seyka—”

At her name, a rush of panic swelled in Aloy’s chest. “Is she hurt?”

“Not… currently.” GAIA appeared to contemplate that. “Although based on the feed from her focus, I am beginning to doubt her safety will remain as such. I recommend haste to her position.”

A ping appeared on Aloy’s focus, marking a location nearby. It was deep in the luscious valley near the Bulwark, an area still dusted with snow. Aloy immediately angled her sunwing, urging it to top speed as she raced between the looming mountains. “Damn it. Patch me through to her.”

“I advise against that. When she speaks with you, her heart rate elevates, and her focus appears divided. In this situation, that might be fatal.”

“What's happening to her?” Aloy snarled.

A pause. GAIA spoke smoothly, undisturbed by her outburst. “I’ll patch you to Kotollo. He may have more answers.”

Kotollo.

No. No, no, no. Because Kotollo pitched a "trial of combat" to test new members of the Base. Kotollo tried to take people like Alva and Beta hunting by handing them a blastling and pointing them at a charger. He had the best intentions, but damn it all, they talked about this.

Seyka could handle herself better than most, but clearly that didn't matter much today.

Aloy ground her teeth, hunching further over the sunwing’s blazing wings, squinting as her eyes watered in the icy wind. She didn’t have to sit in furious silence long—Kotollo answered after a delayed moment.

“Aloy. You shouldn’t be concerned.”

Then GAIA took a moment to brief him.

It wouldn’t save him, not if Seyka was hurt because of this stupid ritual.

“I told you to leave her alone. She doesn’t have to prove herself to you, or anyone.” The words were hissed, drenched in irritation. “She’s perfectly capable of handling herself.”

“I agree. She’s surviving quite well, all things considered.”

Surviving. Aloy’s heart thudded in her chest. “What’s happening? I'm on my way.”

“I suspect it will be finished by the time you arrive.”

What would be finished? Seyka's life? Aloy's breath felt short. “Then get in there and help her!”

Kotollo went silent for a minute, and a crashing sound echoed through his Focus. Everything muted, and when he came back, he sounded a bit breathless. “No need. Seyka has triumphed.”

The clearing GAIA marked was in view. Black, billowing smoke drifted up from a small clearing, one surrounded by devastated terrain. Between splintered tree trunks and deep gouges in the icy mud, Seyka and Kotollo stood beside three felled scorchers. The acrid scent of burnt foliage saturated the air.

Aloy leapt off the sunwing before it had the chance to land. Her shield snapped open, and she drifted to the ground.

Seyka was standing. Okay, good. But she was also bleeding—crimson drenched her left arm. Not that she seemed bothered by it--she gripped the wound tightly, grinning like a fool.

The wound still made Aloy’s heart flutter.

“Seyka—”

“Aloy! Ancestors, what a time. Kotollo’s hilarious.”

“Hilarious” and “Kotollo” weren’t two words Aloy would use in the same sentence. But Seyka shoved his shoulder, and to Aloy's shock, he laughed deeply in response. Like they were old buddies, like he hadn’t just put her life in danger for some ridiculous proving trial.

Irritation seethed in Aloy’s tone, and she marched towards Kotollo. “Hilarious. Sure. Dropping you in the middle of a machine fight with no backup—”

“Hang on.” Seyka stepped between them, one hand raised. Her bleeding arm didn’t seem to be moving well, and she grimaced in pain. It stopped Aloy in her tracks—but Seyka’s amused expression melted her anger. “You know I asked for this, right?”

Behind her, Kotollo looked abashed.

“You—asked. For his ridiculous trial.”

Seyka cocked a hip, her long ponytail flipping over her shoulder. “Come on, Aloy. I did some research.” Now she tapped the focus at her temple. It left a bloody smear against the scuffed white ceramic. “The Tenakth respect combat. Triumph in battle. But they also happen to make the best blastslings east of the ocean.”

At this, Kotollo shrugged a shoulder. Confident he was no longer under Aloy’s fire, he knelt at the first scorcher and began rifling for scrap. Its plating was still blazing hot, but his metal prosthetic didn't care about that.

Aloy watched him for a long moment before crossing her arms. High overhead, her sunwing continued a lazy circle over the clearing, casting the occasional shadow. “So, you wanted a blastsling.”

“Well, I wanted to learn his crafting techniques. Turns out I’m shit at it.” Seyka smirked, gesturing at the crumpled pieces of a mauled weapon across the clearing. Aloy wouldn’t have even known it was a blastsling without her input.

Kotollo cleared his throat. “Your binding technique needs work. I warned you it wasn’t ready to test.”

“Well, now I agree with that,” Seyka told him, kicking the nearest scorcher’s metal limb. It creaked, hissed, and slid further down the hillside, and she yelped to scramble out of its way.

Aloy watched the whole thing with exasperation. “You couldn’t have tested the blastsling on like… a tree, or something?”

“And lose the chance to prove my fighting skills to a Tenakth? Hell no. That trial exists for a reason. Kotollo needs to know he can count on me to protect you.”

That shouldn’t have made Aloy’s chest flutter, but it did. Her scowl shifted into an amused smile. “You. Protect me.”

“There’ll come a time, sunwing, when you’ll need more than backup. Now Kotollo knows I’ll fight three scorchers with my bare hands, if necessary.” Seyka punched her open palm for emphasis, then hissed, gripping the bleeding wound on her shoulder. “It’s not the smartest option, but damn it all, I’m scrappy.”

“You’re something,” Aloy drawled, trying to ignore the flush creeping up her neck. “Are you planning to bind that wound, or—”

“Let me,” Kotollo said, appearing at their side again with a long cut of cloth. It had most likely been intended as material for the blastsling, but now he expertly tied off Seyka’s wound, then looped it over her neck in a makeshift sling.

Seyka examined the handiwork with a grin. “Thanks. You’re a doll.”

Kotollo paused, raising one eyebrow.

“I found it on a holo in the archipelago. Too much?”

Aloy swallowed a laugh. “Just right.”

(Read it here on Ao3!)

#horizon #horizon dlc #horizon burning shores #the burning shores #burning shores #seyloy #aloy x seyka #seyka #aloy #kotollo #fanfiction #rebecca thorne

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