shitposting rave 5: discount rejects from every genre

"Of course you're important," says Valiska. "But you wouldn't want to stop thinking of others as important, too, would you? I'm the queen of my pride, but that means I have more responsibilities than the rest of them, not that I'm better than they are."

 

Valiska giggles. She can't say anything disapproving, not as foul as her mouth is sometimes.

 

I know I've met the others here, though I couldn't say which was which, but I don't think I'm going to try figuring it out on my own. Though I do wonder-- the contract feeds you in some way, yes? What do you do when the owner of it dies?

 

Caer teaches me res-pon-si-billty! But I like shiny names too! -pouty pout-

 

It is terribly impolite to refer to my sole method of sustenance as "a thought experiment". The kind of things we take as offerings are in a way referred to as "energy" but they are not released by an act so much as everything has potential energy that is merely so to say marked as belongin to one entity or another.
The consort grows a poppy. The poppy has inert perceptionness and preservationness. Belonging mostly to the poppy but being marked as relating to the consort since he contributed to its being. The lad offers the poppy to the useless ribbon, the poppy's perceptionness and preservationness is now marked as belonging to the Eye Of Snakes and they can draw on it for nourishment and performing feats.
There is no fundamental difference in whether the offer is a physical thing for the Eye of Snakes or breaking a deer's neck for the Birchwolf. The death is not important, nor is the target. The act of hunting is. The innate destructionness of it. And it being intended for one of ours.

 

Retreat to the other place, entering a hibernation of sorts until a new contractor summons me and demands my services. Our kind is efficient when in our realm. It is being in the physical one and forcing feats of power when things become costly.

 

[He grins, nothing but encouraging about Hippolyta swearing her wee little head off if she wants to do that.]

Aww, sparkle-bit, you can have all the shiny names i can think of from me, yeah? I can never resist you, you know me.

 

Sensible! So it is much like the Fade then, not a place that requires an input of energy from you. And that's why you have the contracts you do? Because someone asking for a service outside of your realm of ability will ask for far more from you?

 

-she trills and throws her arms round his neck, nuzzling at his face- Uncle Scanner, you're my favourite!

 

Essentially. Though another reason is that while not requiring much energy, sustaining oneself without getting lost in the others requires some. A difference between just existing and retaining some agency and identity of your own if you will. Once you had a taste for other worlds even being able to run into eachother and entangle your essences for the ultimate embrace cannot quite soothe the ache for physicality. Though some of us take this farther than others.
[The wolf rolls their eyes, clearly having a specific someone in mind]

 

[He hugs and nuzzles back, laughing.]
Your other subjects'll be jealous if you say that too loudly, Your Radiance.

 

...a cassette? You're speaking nonsense. Did you hit yourself with your own powers again, Interrogator?

 

"There's nothing wrong with wanting a shiny name," Valiska agrees. "Shiny things are pretty--though I chose a stripey name for my own family. If 'Radiance' is meant to be a family name, there's nothing wrong with that at all!"

 

Valiska sighs. "She's a child, Switchboard. Hippolyta is not mature. She's not done growing. She's a little girl. Somehow, some coding in your species which permitted sexual reproduction was reactivated, and the resultant beings are not full grown when they emerge from the carrier's body."

 

That's so fragged up, I love it.

 

Reactivated? There must be some mistake-- Cybertronians have never been capable of sexual reproduction. Even cassette-carriers only produce from their own spark. I might not be an anatomist, but even I know we're simply not built for it.

 

Valiska shrugs. "I just know what I was told by some of the parents. You might be from a different dimension where things happened differently, but I assure you, it really did happen to the people it happened to, and by and large once the surprise wore off, things have gone well."

"From a purely logical point of view, sexual reproduction is a bit fucked up, but as someone to whom the capability to reproduce sexually was also only recently restored, I can truthfully say that everything about it makes me a happier person. I liked having sex before, but I'm much happier now that I can also have children. Though I certainly know that is not true for everyone." Valiska pats her belly instinctively; there's not much of a bump, and there's certainly more of a bump in her dreams than there is in her waking world, but she knows the kits are there.

 

"Science is no respecter of etiquette, I fear, but when you call me mortal in a tone which implies that you're better than me because you are not, we've already abandoned politeness, haven't we?"

Ford shrugs. "What you're describing seems to me to fit perfectly into my paradigm. You don't draw sustenance from that which dies; but you do draw sustenance from the energy the killer has devoted to finding the sacrifice, planning the sacrifice, and emotionally preparing to perform the sacrifice, all of which is released in the act of killing. But it's not the act of giving a poppy or breaking a deer's neck that you feed on. It's the emotional and spiritual energy behind it. The effort of directing the Will that reaches its climax and is released when the act is complete, not the wielding of the knife or the plucking of the flower."

 

Ssssort of like the cassette thing but without the cassette coding, listen I ain't a medic I know frag all about how this slag actually works I just know I'm safe because I don't bump nasties with any of the nerds onboard.
Also wow you filthy little aftlicker that hasn't happened to me in forever. At least not often. Shut up.

Naaaah he's just been dead since like. Primus. When did you die again, needles? Some time during the war. He didn't really catch most of the ways our god ended up getting creative. Or any of the other fun slag that people on cybertron got creative with. All hail Lord Starscream, say it louder or his primacy will have a screeching tantrum again, oh god there goes the poor grounder, out the window for venting wrong while he went by, oh primus what did we do to deserve thatand so on.
(Disclaimer I have never in my life set pede on Cybertronian metal I dunno if they even have windows. Do they have windows? I hope they have, Starscream seems liek the type to defenestrate people for funsies.)

 

Then how do you explain the cases in which we find our own sustenance when a contractor fails to pay and fails to keep his or her wards in repair?
Or that summoning our kind used to be done in fields or groves containing our kinds of beings as it is easier to sustain us if we are surrounded by what we draw Being from.
And you also neglect those pure forms of Perceptionness who draw from being offered knowledge. Some take memories. Some feast on dreams. Some merely demand texts on subjects not yet known to them.