Meowdlion - Meowd's Blog, I Guess

Diversity win! The horniest person you know is on the asexual spectrum

so ffxiv has this beloved meme

and a cn player actually put this to the test (thankfully with homemade ballistic gel, NOT with their actual butthole) and they even [ documented it here ] and i can't stop laughing

thinking about a parallel universe where furries with big useless bappy paws exist IRL, but so does that one dumbass apple mouse that has no buttons, a charging port on the bottom, and a shape that is extremely uncomfortable to use if you have normal adult human hands

writing is so fun

Ok so we've talked about mech dysphoria and dysmorphia before yeah? Your body doesn't feel the same when you climb out of a mech, doesn't feel 'right' anymore.

Too few limbs, not enough sensors, everything feels too big, now that you're not? There's no more combat stims and pleasure chemicals either, you're down to just your stock standard dopamine, which you have a clinical deficiency of now, btw. You struggle to pick objects up, your hands an unfamiliar shape, with not enough strength. You struggle to get out of bed sometimes because you can't tell what proportions things should be anymore?

Yeah, all that has been discussed to death.

What about communication?

What about pilots who, just, can't talk outside of their mech? Become socially inept without all the assistant systems they plug themselves into within the cockpit?

Think about it, mech combat becomes very disorganised very fast if it's allowed to. We are talking clashes of potentially dozens of war machines, the size of buildings, with enough guns to level cities. Orders need to be direct, easily understandable, followed immediately, actually projected onto the pilot's vision.

Every order, every report, every sentence, is punctuated by hundreds of layers of feedback. Tactical simulations and overlays, attachments for battlefield plans, every order having many implied conditions transmitted to the pilot through code and dictionary references to make sure a pilot cannot POSSIBLY misinterpret it in the few seconds before the command should be executed. On top of that, each order can also be wired to project a different cocktail of stim/pleasure chems/whatever have you, ensuring a pilot knows exactly what to feel about the order, establishing the priority of it through the pilots own brain chemistry.

And the same can be true about communications between squad mates! So much of it would be sending those same simulations around as sit reps, or enormous data packets containing not just the words the pilot is trying to say, but also links to relevant information and mountains of meta data, establishing tone, intention, context. Within the cockpit, a portion of the onboard AI is delegated to parsing this metadata, projecting it into the pilots consciousness, speeding up the process of understanding these mountains of digital documents to mere moments.

Now put a person used to that in a social setting. Where they are not made instantly aware of what someone is talking about or referring to. Where they cannot just query an AI and receive every piece of relevant info at once. Where they have to understand the subtext of what that person is saying without any metadata to indicate sarcasm, annoyance, disinterest. Where they are unable to understand the many nuances of communication and body language and expression without the helpful hand of their mech's processors. Hell, where they don't know how hearing certain things should make them feel without the presence of the chemicals to guide their response. Imagine them seeming lost outside of their mech, unable to talk or connect anymore, the social, human part of their brain having atrophied from disuse much like their neurotransmitter production. Imagine them scurrying back to the safety of their mech where, in the digitally overlaid world, everything is so much clearer and understandable and-

HAS THIS BECOME AN AUTISM METAPHOR???

Fic idea that won't leave my head despite my continued insistence that I'm not going to write it (Bad dad Eggman warning)-

It's a Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games fic. Bowser and Eggman are hanging out, villain solidarity and all that.

Metal Sonic walks in. Eggman precedes to pause his conversation with Bowser to absolutely scream at Metal for coming in third place in the 100m sprint. The whole nine yards. "I built you to be SUPERIOR!" and all that. He then orders Metal back to the training area to practice clear through the night 'til the next morning.

He then turns back to Bowser and says, "you were right! Kids are difficult!"

And from that moment Bowser makes it his mission to adopt Metal Sonic at all costs.

Just one problem- nobody believes him.

The Mario gang insists that it's none of their business. There's a truce between heroes and villains during the games, after all, and Peach isn't interested in pissing off what she sees as Mobian sovereign who's been known to mess with cross-dimensional shenanigans before.

So, to the surprise of everyone, Bowser then goes to Sonic to mention the problem- only for an apathetic Sonic to emphasize that he's already given Metal enough second chances by now and that frankly it's his own fault if Eggman's mean to him. Most of the rest of the Sonic gang seem to agree with this- with the distinct exception of Amy, but even she's hesitant to stir up trouble during the games. She suggests that if Bowser nicely talked to Eggman about all this, maybe Eggman would treat Metal Sonic better!

But of course, Bowser already gave the dress-down of the century to Eggman the very moment after he sent Metal Sonic away. Did Eggman listen? Of course not.

But we all know that Bowser is nothing if but persistent. He also happens to be the resident expert on kidnapping people. . .

Step 1: Bowser got his kids together and asked them to help him befriend Metal. So now Metal's got this menagerie of Koopas suddenly taking an interest in him and he doesn't really know how to deal with it. Other kids? They think he's cool and not a failure? They invite him to hang out and do fun things? But of course, Eggman prohibits "fraternizing with the enemy", but Metal finds ways to get around this order anyway.

Step 2: have the Koopa kids teach Metal a koopa sign language- one of the kids, Lemmy, already uses this sign language because he's nonverbal, so it's not too hard for the rest of the kids plus Bowser himself to sneak in a few lessons behind Eggman's back.

Step 3: once Metal is conversational, Bowser asks Metal if he'd like a new papa who won't scream at him so much.

Step 4: realize in horror as Metal explains that he can't leave- Eggman's programming won't allow him.

Step 5: Bowser asks Amy to ask Tails how to get the subservient programming out of Metal's head. Tails then provides a small USB plug-in that'll give him remote access connection once plugged into Metal's systems so that he can undo the programming.

Step 6: kidnapping time!

Step ???: realize that Metal would actually prefer to be a girl. Bowser's daughters/GNC kids then proceed to dress her up in the blackest, spikiest clothes and accessories they have. Metal adores it.

Step 7: ruin the entire Olympic games setup as Eggman threatens violence against whoever stole his robot.

Step 8: Metal gives her original "dad" the finger as she jumps into the portal back to the Koopa kingdom with her much cooler new family.

Uhhhh skip a few steps in here as the whole Bowser family goes no contact with the rest of either gang for a bit. They don't care that they ruined the Olympic games, not when they got a cool new daughter/sister out of the deal. Eventually the Mario gang comes around and forgives Bowser for ruining the games. They then invite Metal go-karting. All is well.

Step 11: Sonic visits the mushroom kingdom one day and is absolutely appalled to find out that people say to him "ohhhh you're like the flesh version of Princess Metal from the Koopa kingdom!"

God, why didn't anyone tell me that DMing an RPG would cause me so much Psychic damage! I just wanna spill the story, I just wanna tell it all right here and now!! What do you mean I have to wait a week to progress the story!!!

why do we even have legal genders anyway. maybe we should not have those

mech pilot who got separated from their mecha when their civilisation was domestication and their military got dissolved. despite all attempts to help them, they still have persistent phantom sensation from the limbs that they used to have but no longer do; constantly missing the feeling of a rifle in hands that don't feel the right size, feeling blind and deaf without all of the enhanced feedback from sensors capable of a hundred times greater acuity than their own body

eventually, however, one particular affini reads their medical file and comes up with an idea. she files a notice of intent on the pilot, then swiftly heads over to their hab and whisks them away the next morning. they don't even bother resisting; having long since given up hope that things will get better, and unable to imagine any way they could get worse

the affini takes them home and lays them down on a surgery table, promising them that soon, everything is going to feel right again. they expect nothing, presuming her to be lying to them, but they feel a great weight behind their eyes, and a moment later, they fall closed.

it feels like they've only blinked, but when they reopen them, everything is different. every sense that was missing is suddenly there again. they look down at their arms to find them just the right size; their body no longer one of flesh, but of gleaming white metal plates, pulsating with thin green lines of a material they don't recognise. it takes them a moment to realise what it is: under their metal skin are muscles and tendons made out of vines, their former optical sensors replaced with sight blossoms, and their rifle woven back together from a mixture of bark, chambered with rounds made of amber

most of all, they are no longer alone. they could feel their mech before, but it's different this time; as if the sensation surrounding them isn't quite their own, but a body that is both theirs and not. a faint, slow pulsing that shifts in time with every movement, guiding them to know exactly where to look, and what to do. moments later, they hear a voice whispering- not into their ear, but directly into their mind, just like their onboard AI used to:

"Good morning, my precious little Pilot."