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jovialbasementmusic · 7 months

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What do you do with a brainwashed army of cult survivors?

At the end of Heart Part 2, Etheria still has a population of thousands of Horde Prime’s clones. This is going to be, putting it mildly, a Problem for the Etherians. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen what happens to a cult follower when they are faced with conclusive evidence that their entire worldview was false, but you probably have some intuitive idea. Imagine if you said to a young-Earth creationist “Hey, here are multiple overlapping lines of evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that life on Earth evolved over hundreds of millions of years,” or to a Scientologist, “Check out this evidence that L. Ron Hubbard was a fraudster who started a cult as a money-making racket!” You can probably guess that in each of those cases, the response is unlikely to be, “Goodness, I have been mistaken all my life! Thank you, kind friend, for relieving me of my false beliefs.”

As someone who’s left a cult, let me tell you, the clones are not all gonna react like Hordak or Wrong Hordak.

You might have heard of cognitive dissonance theory, but most people misuse the term, so I’ll quickly explain it. When humans encounter information which contradicts or disproves their deeply held beliefs, they experience psychological discomfort. This feeling sucks, and people will go to great lengths not to experience it. But when those beliefs are central to your identity and your place in the world, letting go of those beliefs also sucks, and people will go to even greater lengths not to do it. So they resolve the cognitive dissonance however they can. They might decide the person who gave them this information is an evil liar and lash out at them. They might find a way to convince themselves the information is in fact compatible with their beliefs after all, and then try not to think too hard about whatever mangled assemblage of the facts they have settled on, in case it falls apart under closer examination. They might modify their beliefs slightly to fit the facts ("Prime always said he would go away for a while before returning in triumph!"), and then maintain that this is what they thought all along.

As an aside, one of the landmark texts on cognitive dissonance theory is When Prophecy Fails, which tracks the actions of a doomsday cult after the world failed to end on their predicted date. Sure enough, the acolytes of this cult did not abandon their beliefs despite this pretty concrete evidence that they had been wrong. Instead, they started recruiting new followers as hard as possible. They tried to get social reinforcement for their beliefs (“This must be true—look how many people believe it!”) to help them cope with the empirical disconfirmation they’d just lived through. So yeah, this theory is highly applicable to cult behaviour. And Prime’s clones are quite definitely a cult.

So it’s fair to say that just because the Hive Mind is down and She-Ra has just kicked Prime’s ass into oblivion, the clones are not all gonna just accept that Prime is gone and his mission is over. Some of them are going to continue fighting, convinced that Prime is not really gone. Some will insist that their connection to the Hive Mind is still intact, and deliver messages as the word of Prime. At least one clone is going to claim to be the reincarnation of Prime himself, and begin recruiting followers. More likely, several clones will attempt this gambit, creating factions with names like The True Followers of Prime and The Glorious Servants of Prime. These factions will go to war with each other in service of their Prime (honourable, redeeming) against the enemy’s Prime (evil, destructive). As time goes on, these factions’ ideas about Prime’s teachings will diverge, providing new opportunities for conflict. If they’re allowed to go on long enough, probably some benign and progressive versions of Prime’s cult will emerge, teaching that Prime in fact existed to bring peace and freedom to the Universe, and that those warlike factions have strayed from the true path of Prime.

All of this gives the people in charge of Etheria a headache. Etheria doesn’t believe in retributive justice, and as brainwashed cult members, the clones have diminished responsibility for war crimes they committed while Prime was alive. So it’s fair to say they can’t kill them. But they also can’t just ship them all off to live unsupervised in a colony somewhere in case they radicalise each other and start another war. Sure, some of them will follow Wrong Hordak into accepting that Prime lied to them, and they will find meaning by travelling the universe, attempting to restore planets Prime destroyed. Some, like Hordak, will give themselves names and begin the agonising process of creating an identity for themselves outside of everything they ever thought was true. But what of the rest of them? They’re essentially adult children, ignorant of everything Prime did not want them to know. They also trigger PTSD flashbacks in a great many citizens of Etheria, who cannot look at them without remembering what they suffered under the Horde.

What do you do with that many brainwashed survivors? What does compassion and restorative justice demand? I don’t know if I’ll get around to writing this as a fic or not, so here’s the setup and you can let your imaginations take it where you like. I’m new to tumblr and to the spop fandom, so if you read this far I’d really appreciate a reblog. And if anyone else has already had similar ideas, I’d really like to read them.

#spop #spop meta #horde prime #clone army #hordak #wrong hordak #shera

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marvelstars · 1 day

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X-men 97 S1: 07

Loved this chapter it looks like Rogue and Captain America were investigating Hydra/Bastion Operation Zero Tolerance

It was a good showing for Rogue´s grieff but also of the X-men getting together to defeat this new enemy.

I LOVED Amelia Vogh appearing again, with her on Genosha along with Emma I get the sense that we are going to see the Ultimate Sentinel but with Mr Sinister and Cable there we also could be seeing Apocalypse soon, OZT could very well be his way of separating the strong mutants from the weak ones as his motto survival of the fittest said.

Loved nightcrawler comforting Rogue over Gambit and Magneto on days of the death in Mexico. Remy´s funeral was also very heartfel and beautiful, I don´t think the X-men made one for Magneto because without a body they know he still could be alive even if it´s a long shot and to be honest, no one of them except the professor was close enough to mourn him properly.

Cable calling Scott Dad and remembering Maddie was awesome, is what I always wanted to see in the comics, I love Jean but Maddie gave birth to Nathan and loved him, she deserves to be remembered by him as well.

Talking about that, Bastion having Magnus is horrible, my poor blorbo :( but if what Cable said was true, if only the electromagnetic fields can cointain prime sentinels then it makes sense to take Magneto out of the board and of course Bastion is a sadist so I can see him turning Magnus into a prime sentinel and if Apocalypse is also involved, he could also take the opportunity to turn him into one of his riders.

That last part gave me chills with that music, it´s just Magneto´s luck to die apparently and be taken by Bastion, Mr Sinister and their sentinels while Charles dies apparently and he gets a vacation, marriage and a galactic crown. That man just can´t win. Lol at them not only taking his powers away but also keeping his mouth shut, his mouth is too powerful not to take it away in this series.

In short I loved this, Genosha looks like it will still be a factor in this series in the near future so I hope we see other characters besides Amelia and if Exodus was a survivor that would give them another reason to become antagonists in this series.

PD: We also saw a short scene of Quicksilver and Strong Guy was on Genosha, that gives me hope of seeing Lorna in the next chapters especially if they are going to need someone who uses magnetic fields.

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meddlingmesmer · 9 months

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a summary of Hickory's festival experience:

RUNNING ALL THE GAMBITS

COLLECTING ALL THE LOOT BUNDLES

getting ferried home by the friend who saw his burnout coming a mile away

italah is @vinetooth-prime's ❤️

#gw2 fan submission #festival of the four winds #gw2 #guild wars 2 #gw2 human #charr #hickory hill #italah silvertongue #puffershart

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zvaigzdelasas · 1 month

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[Eurasianet receives funding from the NED, OSF, the FCDO, & others]

Delimitation discussions appear stuck at present over Azerbaijan’s demand that it gain control of eight villages in border areas currently under Armenian jurisdiction. Pashinyan in comments to journalists signaled a willingness to unilaterally hand over four of the disputed villages. In doing so, he also suggested a practical way of settling the boundary between the two states. His initiative appears intended to deprive Azerbaijan of a pretext to launch new military action to seize territory, including any assault that could cut Armenia’s direct access to Iran.

“The de jure border that existed at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union was reaffirmed by the [1991] Alma-Ata declaration and not only by that declaration, but also by the agreements held in Prague on October 6, 2022,” Pashinyan said at a March 12 news conference.

Four of the disputed villages – Baghanis Ayrim, Lower Askipara, Kheyrimli, and Gizilhajili – were on the Azerbaijani side of the border between the two former Soviet republics and were occupied by Armenian forces in the 1990s, during the first Karabakh war, which concluded in 1994 after the signing of the Alma-Ata declaration.

Citing the Alma-Ata and Prague agreements, Pashinyan acknowledged that “the former administrative border, which existed during the Soviet Union, is somewhat beyond that present administrative border.” He went on to call for both states to reaffirm the frontier defined by the Alma-Ata agreement. [...]

Earlier in 2024, Armeniamaintained that Azerbaijan currently controls 31 villages situated in roughly 200 square kilometers of land that are rightfully Armenian. There had been some talk in Yerevan of proposing a trade involving all the disputed settlements. But Pashinyan in his most recent comments made no mention of such a swap.[...]

Prior to Pashinyan’s March gambit, Azerbaijan had staked out an intransigent position about the return of the eight villages. “As for the four non-exclave Azerbaijani villages occupied by Armenia, their affiliation to Azerbaijan is beyond any doubt and they are subject to immediate liberation,” Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev said in the statement issued March 9, two days after the latest round of border delimitation talks. Mustafayev leads the Azerbaijani negotiating team.

“The issue of liberation of four of Azerbaijan’s exclave villages occupied by Armenia will also be resolved within the delimitation process,” he noted.[...]

The villages that Pashinyan seems willing to unilaterally hand back are important to Armenia from an infrastructure point of view. A highway to Georgia, as well as a pipeline carrying Russian gas to Armenia, pass through these villages. Pashinyan also addressed the issue in press comments, saying that he has instructed relevant state bodies to “reroute those lines so that they pass through Armenia’s de jure territory and so that we don’t have problems in that area.”

The prime minister’s remarks triggered an immediate outcry from long-standing government critics, who accuse Pashinyan of treachery and a failure to defend state interests.

“By unilaterally giving in, not only do you not create a guarantee that Azerbaijan will not attack, but on the contrary, you give them better conditions to attack you from those positions,” Anna Grigorian of the Hayastan alliance said in comments broadcast by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

18 Mar 24

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dialupmodern · 8 months

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Pilot and Machine: The Lovers

So i wrote a little story about a mech and her pilot, and i've finally worked up the confidence to post it, please be nice

CW for a few kinda gross descriptions of creatures, descriptions of violence, and some melancholic themes. (if i should add anything to this section please reach out!!)

The blistering heat of the desert sun beat relentlessly down upon the pilot, even through the labyrinthine mechanical nightmare of the mech's internals. Long ago, they had promised it relief from the heat, taken it underground into an icy laboratory, stripped it naked and wrapped it's skin with a tight suit of biotic interface material. "Self-sustaining," they had said, "No need to eat or drink in case of emergencies." They had slowly incorporated it into the biogel, a strange, frigid interface to the mech's controls and subsystems. It was odd, malleable yet firm, inescapable on one's own. Those memories felt distant and cold, now. Foreign, almost. The pilot found it irregular that it could feel the biogel against it's skin, which was radiating a feverish heat that was somehow still discernible even in the impossibly scorching desert sun. To the machine, it felt like a pit in her stomach, strangely like her first kiss, or at least what her mind told her was her first kiss. Which didn't make any sense, machines like her wouldn't have had a first kiss, let alone a need to remember far back enough for the sensation to be recalled with any detail. She paused at this series of messy thoughts, her patrol halted temporarily as the lone cloud in the sky passed overhead. She turned her head upward, gazing toward the horizon. The biogel continued getting hotter, tendrils of jet-black liquid crystal creeping through it ever closer to the pilot's burning form. Two more hours till the next suncycle, it dutifully reported. Even deep in the bowels of this mechanical beast it found joy in performing what small duties it had. The machine noted the suncycle countdown, and strained it's sensors to catch a glimpse of the half-sphere beginning to eclipse the sun. She couldn't see, and a painful twinge came to her as she remembered being scolded for looking at the sun, even when the tightly locked hexagonal panels covered it wholly. This didn't make any sense, she thought, a machine like her wouldn't have had anyone to scold her. A rippling in the sand brought the pilot and machine both into sharp focus.

Subroutines began to scream in the pilot's head, while hormones and stimulants flowed into the core crystal reservoir of the machine. They saw through the same eyes, heard the same rumbling terror, and both in harmony reached for the convertible sword upon their back. The sandwurm burst forth, horrifying speed and power behind it's strike, the sword slashing across it's body just as the wings unfurled, whipping downward in a desperate, violent attempt to escape what was, by now, it's certain fate. A second slash cleaved it's left wing in two, rending a guttural pained screech from the depths of the thing. It's mouth opened wide, millions of needled teeth and inflamed cilia attempting a last ditch gambit, some futile attempt to intimidate or eat the machine, though it was far too large, not to mention inedible. The machine's free hand hinged downward, a large metal spike emerging in an instant from it's wrist, as it's arm, already primed and ready, struck with a vicious speed. Effortlessly gliding past the creature's gaping maw, the spike passed cleanly through it's brain, sensory organs and shards of bone and tooth collecting along the base of the crude weapon as it pierced through the top of the sandwurm's skull. As the spike retracted, and the hand snapped back into place, the euphoric response began to kick in. It was built-in, a simple dopamine trigger for pilots after a combat victory at first, but it had evolved independent of the engineers and scientists. Whatever it was now was arcane to them, but it was astonishingly effective, so they let it be.

The pilot felt the tendrils of liquid crystal wrapping around it's limbs, swimming through the biogel and quenching it's fervid flesh with exploratory touch. The machine had felt every last curve before, and yet it was so beautifully new to her, as if it was her first time all over again. The machine strained, trying to remember back to her actual first time. It had been a boring, unsatisfying affair, with some man who'd caught her the right amount of drunk and depressed. She was disgusted at the thought, that was the only man she'd ever been with, and while she didn't regret it, it still wasn't something she cared to dwell on. This, however, felt like how a first time was always talked about. Exploring, feeling, purest trust and pleasure leaking into every small movement, every inch a pyre upon which insecurities and anxieties were thrown, only to be quenched by her ice-cold crystal tendrils. The pilot, for it's part, was thrashing in ecstasy, still encased and protected by the biogel, every sensation upon it's parched and fevered skin a wholly new and rapturous experience. The pair continued to bask in their sensations, barriers broken and experiences intermingling freely, as the rest of their patrol finished without incident. Neither the machine nor the pilot wanted to return to the hangar, the underground laboratory. They knew what it would mean. separation, invasive diagnostics, repetitive, difficult questions. They both felt a dread building, in their own ways.

The pilot hated being outside the biogel, aimlessly wandering the base for hours outside of it's patrol, it's purpose. It often ended up laying upon the machine's chest, locked in idle conversation until it was found and forced away again, to passionless wandering and waiting. The machine hated being alone, she always had. Loneliness wasn't a stranger to her, but a bitter old rival. A rival that had followed her all her life like a specter, reminding her what she could not have. When the pilot would come into the hangar against protocol and lay itself upon her chest and speak about anything and nothing, the loneliness left her, for a while. While her hulking metal form was essentially inert without the biogel and pilot, the sparse communication was still more than enough to keep her going in the times when her dear pilot was gone. Staring at the wall in the meantime bored her, though, and it had become positively maddening as of late. They saw the team in the hangar, just as they always were as their circular patrol route came to an end. The countenances of the engineers and scientists were dour and joyless, typical fare ever since the patrols had started in earnest. The machine was a prototype unit, something she was reminded of at every possible fucking interval, but the group had recently needed to start using the pair to properly defend the base against hostile fauna until additional mecha repair supplies could be secured.

As the gigantic blast door closed, the floor began to shudder, the impossibly large hydraulic platform lowering them into the base proper. Whenever the door closed, she dreamt of the mechs she occasionally saw with EVA units, able to breach the atmosphere and leave this godforsaken place at will. Instead, she was stuck in this sandy hell, being repeatedly lowered into a further circle. The machine always hated being disembarked, the feeling of being opened up, and everything inside removed or scrubbed so clean that it didn't feel like her anymore. It felt like losing half her mind every time, and it never got easier. The pilot hated it too, always resisting with what feeble strength it possessed, longing and fighting for the extra moments immersed in it's purpose, sharing a mind with what was, by all logic, it's only friend. And yet, the pilot was disembarked all the same, hatches opened and internals exposed. Her beloved pilot pulled reluctantly from her, resisting all the way. The biogel, thoroughly soiled, was drained away as diagnostic computers spun to life, cables plugged into ports she always forgot she had. She watched, helpless, as the pilot walked stiffly with the scientists, feeling an indescribable, choking sorrow rippling through her core as she realized she didn't remember how to breathe. Then the code surged through her, and she felt it, flowing down practiced pathways, invading her core, collecting endless data she hadn't realized she'd been storing. Small repair drones began skittering around her internals, quietly fixing any issues they found. It always made her feel so violated, her mind and body both laid bare, and relentlessly scrutinized without remorse or emotion. Despite all the anger and disquiet she felt, she hoped the results were good news.

A lone scientist with mousy brown hair curled into a loose bun, and a face worn from a life of stress, sat the pilot down and began the questioning sequence. The pilot was deeply uncomfortable, the base was all white walls, cold steel and colder air. Sterile, unlike the cockpit, it's only real home. The last vestiges of purpose clung to the pilot like a lover the morning after as it obediently answered the same questions it always did, in the same impossibly bored monotone.

"Answer each question without thinking about it, as quickly as you can."

A terse nod.

"What is your name?"

"I don't know."

"What color are your eyes?"

"I don't know."

"Where were you born?"

"I don't know."

"What year were you born?"

"I don't know."

"How old are you?"

"I don't know."

"What planet are you on?"

"I don't know."

"What are you?"

"A test pilot, selected for prototype mecha unit H6DR, final designation classified."

"You are lost in the desert. The sun has made your mouth warm and sticky. Your skin blisters and burns in the unrelenting sunlight. Shards of debris and shrapnel lay around you, remnants from the destruction of all you hold dear. You are making your way toward the head of the mech you once occupied, the only identifiable piece of wreckage. In defiance of all logic, it speaks, in a broken and distorted voice, beckoning you in a way only you would understand. What does it call you?"

"Lover."

"Are you alone?"

"Yes."

The scientist scribbled something on their clipboard. The pilot didn't want to know what it said, whatever was being written wasn't good news, of that it was sure. It had long since grown accustomed to the routine of it all, even if the questioning was supremely boring. Every time it hurt worse, every time the unjustifiable urge to snatch the clipboard out of her hand and throw it through the glass window got a little harder to resist. It hated the questions, they weren't anything but a formality, another roadblock to what it was meant to do, what it so desperately needed to do. And yet, ever since they'd started sending it out with the machine, to do it's job, they had only gotten more hostile toward the pair. Why did they get so angry at them, for only doing what they'd been made to do, what they were both built to do? Hollow tears rolled involuntarily down the pilot's flushed cheeks, it's face contorted into a mask of pure agony, but it didn't make a sound. Through the tears of rage and pain, it saw the scientist wince, clutching her clipboard tight, protecting her precious data, even as basic human empathy clawed at her heart. There was a distance there it knew all too well. It wasn't human, not in their eyes. The pilot so desperately wanted to disagree with her, to scream and flail and prove, somehow, that it was human. But it knew the truth, and in spite of all the illogical, unjustifiable want in it's heart, it was proud.

The scientists and engineers convened in a room, a feed of the hangar cameras relegated to a small monitor on a corner table. The main presentation screen was filled with data, 3-dimensional models, graphs, and spreadsheets. The air in the room was heavy, almost humid with a sense of panic, yet beneath it all, the same icy dread. Everyone in the room was silent, looking at notes and back to the main screen, confirming what was all but written out for them. One scientist finally spoke up, the scientist who had taken the pilot's questions. "I think it's clear that we've gone far past the experimental stage. If she goes back into that mech, she isn't coming back out." Another piped up, a gruff, older man with graying brownish hair, whose lab coat clung to him with a desperation that spoke to his true aptitude. "She's already not coming back. You've seen the test results, we all have. They've each become too much of the other." He bowed his head solemnly before continuing, "Separating them would be an extraordinary act of cruelty." "But what can we do? They're the only mech/pilot team we have left! How are we going to-" she stopped herself. An uncomfortable truth had finally pushed itself to the front of her mind, one that everyone else in the room had long since realized.

As the scientists went off to their meeting, the pilot hid behind the same rack it always did, the first chance it got. It was skilled at this by now, and they all seemed rather distracted today. Within minutes of the door closing, the pilot was back in the hangar. "You came back," spoke the titanic machine, heard only through the cybernetic nerves linked to the pilot's ears. "Of course I did, I always do. Sorry it took so long." The pilot began climbing the machine, and as it's skin touched the cold metal of her body, it inexplicably felt a little better. It knew every inch of the machine, in a deeply personal way, a way it knew the scientists would never understand. It found it's usual spot, a dent on her chest they never bothered to hammer out. The pilot loved this spot, not least because it could still see her face. "I hate it here," she said, her synthesized voice carrying a slightly distressing amount of emotion. "I never asked to be here, I just want to be with you, a part of you." The pilot took pause, staring at it's hands before replying, "And I, you. We were built for each other, and whatever we are now, they can't understand. But we're still made for each other." The machine felt so many emotions making ripples in her core, different frequencies all crashing together, making it hard for her to think. She opened the cockpit, catching the pilot somewhat off guard. "It's hard to… ugh, it's hard to think without you there. I can't move, I can't let my thoughts out. It's all just waves and frequencies, always hitting walls. Please." The pilot slid carefully from it's now precarious position and into the cockpit, breaking the surface of the fresh biogel. As it was fully engulfed, it felt the tendrils of the liquid crystal flowing down and in. One of the tendrils formed a hand, and reached out to grip the pilot's.

"That's better," the machine spoke, her voice already noticeably softer than it had been. "It is," the pilot replied, it's normally stiff body going limp, save for the hand, gently holding the mass of liquid crystal interlocked with it. "I've been thinking y'know, but it's so limiting. Without you, I feel like I can't fully form ideas." "So, let's walk through it together." The pilot's calm, logical reassurances comforted the machine, setting her mind back on track. "What if we left? Just didn't come back to the base?" The pilot's brow furrowed, deep in thought. "C'mon, all the other mech teams did it! I'm sure we could find EVA equipment somewhere around here, if anyone could rig it, it's you!" The pilot spoke, calmly and evenly, "There wouldn't be any need. We already have EVA capabilities." "What?! Since when?" "It's been part of a slow series of upgrades, ever since we started going on excursions. I expect they've done their best to keep it from you." The pilot felt the hand tightening around it's own, another tendril reaching out to touch it's face tenderly, wiping away tears it didn't even know were there. "W-we could go? Whenever we want to?" "Yes. We wouldn't have many options after leaving, but we would be free, as it were. Together." More tendrils flowed into the biogel, surrounding the pilot in something that could almost be called a hug. "That," the machine said, voice vibrating through every tendril, "is the best news I have ever heard." The pilot felt itself smile, surrendering itself to the embrace of the machine.

"Th-they're going to let us die here, aren't they?" the scientist whimpered, eyes welling with tears and looking desperately for reassurance at a table full of people who wouldn't, no, couldn't look her in the eye. "Program was deemed a failure," the gruff man spoke at last, a barely perceptible catch in his voice, "they extracted all the standard teams one by one. That's why they haven't been coming back. We're to keep reporting data on H6DR until we run out of supplies, then-" He stopped himself, not willing to say what they had told him to do, to order his team to do. "Supposedly they'll send a rescue ship, but it's not looking likely." The scared scientist at the front of the room leaned herself against the large screen for support, and sobbed there, for a while. The gruff man looked on in quiet horror, as his heart broke. "I've been working on a project, something we might be able to do, but only if we surrender to the enemy forces." "The backup? I guess that could be a good enough bargaining chip. Wait, what about H6DR?" "A total loss. Honestly, I'm surprised it hasn't run yet. But whatever it does now isn't our concern. It deserves that freedom." "So what are we doing, then?" The gruff man stood, gesturing to the monitor in the corner, showing the pilot entering the cockpit of the mech. "We aren't interfering with the last phase of our experiment. Once it's gone, we unload the backup, send a distress call to the enemy, and hope they don't bomb us to hell."

The pilot and the machine were entwined completely within the biogel, minds and bodies a blur. The sensations pulsing through the both of them were indescribable, a pure and deepest joy, the feeling of getting home on the first day of summer vacation. Endorphins, hormones, snippets of euphoric response code, and combat stimulants all swirled throughout the steel behemoth. The scientists watching the readouts were perplexed, as the two continued to bond in so many arcane and beautiful ways. The pilot's body continuously convulsed in pure pleasure, waves cascading through every last system and wire, every atom of the liquid crystal core that flowed like a waterfall down the machine's spine and through it's heart. The two minds, pressed so tightly together and communicating, finally communicating correctly, spoke to each other in perfect harmony. "Lover," they spoke, in unison. The scientists heard them speak aloud through the monitor, for the first time. "Lover." The scientist at the front of the room started crying again. "I get it now. I understand." She looked up at the gruff man, who pulled her into a tight hug. "You have no idea. Neither do they."

The lovers took their first steps outside, into the darkened desert. The semt-transparent hexagonal panels of the Dyson sphere eclipsing the sun entirely, casting an eerie half-light as far as the horizon. They dug into their systems, their true synchronization revealing things they didn't even realize were there. The booster jets in their flight system, the railgun in their arm, the convertible sword's full potential. Every system at 100%, green lights across every panel and a violent euphoria coursing through them. They crouched, initiating a liftoff sequence that they had never once performed, but felt entirely natural to them. The sand turned to a crude glass beneath the heat of the boosters, fusion reactors spilling a deluge of their excess heat into the ground. A sandwurm pack rumbled ominously toward them, the leader leaping forward with murderous intent. On instinct, the concealed railgun deployed, piercing a hole straight through the beast's gaping maw and out the other side. The surge of emotion and ecstasy intensified, boosters screaming for liftoff, knees of steel momentarily buckled before springing up higher than they ever had. A missile salvo loosed itself from an integrated rack in their shoulder, catching the three other horrid things in a cascade of explosive power, shrapnel and molten sand blasting relentlessly against their soft bodies. They didn't even look back, feeling the euphoria of a job well done and letting it carry them up, up, up. When they finally breached the atmosphere, they heard radio chatter explode into their head. Through all the chatter, they heard a familiar voice, the scientist with the loose, messy bun and the stress-worn face. It sounded like she was crying as she spoke, "Goodbye, and good luck. I'm so sorry, for everything." The mech felt another surge of emotion, something different from the euphoric response, rawer and more difficult to parse. Another message came through, directed specifically at them, "Unidentified craft, exiting the troposphere, please identify or we will fire." The mech paused, unable to locate the source of the transmission, or even a possibility of such. "We are mecha unit HDR-VI. Shorthand designation: The Lovers." They didn't wait for a response, they simply engaged their boosters and flew, savoring freedom while they could.

#mechposting #mech pilot #mech posting #mecha #empty spaces #my writing

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queers-gambit · 2 years

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requesting rules and masterlist 🍒

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• writing r*pe / dubcon / s*xual assault / any relating content.

• never thought i'd have to put this - incest! INCLUDES step-family dynamics ❗️ this does, however, exclude Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon characters - within reason. i am still not a big fan of writing incest - to any degree.

NO - i will not be listing which fandoms i write for. you're better off making a request and allowing me to reject the idea for simply not "being in" the fandom.

🦋🤍🧸 emoji anon list — active & open

important note: cisgender female [both biological and identifying female] for all "female!reader" or "wife!reader" writings.

Stranger Things masterlist

featuring: Eddie Munson, Robin Buckley, Billy Hargrove, Max Mayfield, + more.

watch on Netflix

read here

Peaky Blinders masterlist

featuring: Tommy Shelby

watch on BBC or Netflix

read here

Harry Potter masterlist

featuring: Draco Malfoy

watch on your own DVD's, or stream occasionally on HBO and / or Peacock

read here

House of the Dragon masterlist

featuring: Princes Daemon and Aemond Targaryen

watch on HBO

read here

HBO's The Last of Us masterlist

featuring: Joel Miller

watch on HBO

read here

FX's The Bear masterlist

featuring: Carmen 'Carmy' Berzatto

watch on FX and / or Hulu

read here

The Marvel Cinematic Universe [ MCU ] masterlist

featuring: James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes

watch on Disney+

read here

Bullet Train masterlist

featuring: Tangerine

watch on Netflix

read here

Saltburn masterlist

featuring: Felix Catton

watch on Amazon Prime / Prime Video

read here

The Last Kingdom - no masterlist

Now and at the Hour of His Death

any who say, "it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," were never loved by him.

pairing: Osferth x female!pregnant!wife!reader

word count: 6.1k+

🍒 author's favorite 💔 A N G S T 🥺 hurt 🚫 NO comfort 🎭 drama 🥰 romance 🤰 pregnant reader 👰‍♀️ wife reader 💍 established relationship ✝️ Lord's name in vain ⚠️ spoilers 🐝 stand-alone / oneshot 🙊 general language and content warning ☠️ character DEATH - tread carefully 🥊 depiction of physical violence and / or aggression 🩸 depiction of injury and blood 💛 requires maturity and caution

read here

collections: a set of fics exploring varying plots of similar tropes using different muses. they are NOT related to one another.

Clingy Baby collection - in progress

fics regarding Reader being labeled clingy in various ways.

featuring so far: Carmy Berzatto, Bucky Barnes, Princes Aemond and Daemon Targaryen, Joel Miller

browse masterlist here

The Truth Will Out collection - being drafted / not promised / not published

fics regarding...

featuring so far:

To Be Announced

Nights Like This collection - being drafted / not promised / not published

fics regarding...

featuring so far:

To Be Announced

Designated Destination collection - being drafted / not promised / not published

fics regarding...

featuring so far:

this collection uses ONE muse in varying destination wedding events

To Be Announced

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