Caracarahoney - Bee-Brained And Perpetually Hungry

Smew (Mergellus albellus), male, family Anatidae, order Anseriformes, Mooka-Igashira Park, Moka, Tochigi, Japan

photographs by anonymous photographer on eBird 

what is your least favorite Canon relationship in hive? (Doesn't have to be romantic)

Hi! Thanks for the ask!

And as for your question, is it fair to say Overlord and everyone? No? Overlord and Xiu Mei then.

(Including a Read More so I can ramble)

The thing about this relationship isn’t that it’s bad— on the contrary, it’s fascinating! But Mark Walden gave us crumbs when there was a whole cake, right there.

Overlord is a delight to me, but as far as villains go, he falls a bit flat. He serves his purpose as Big Evil AI competently, but that’s it. Little motivation beyond a hatred of humanity. While that links into HIVE’s themes of consciousness and where the bounds of artificial vs authentic each begin, it’s still just… basic, for lack of a better term. And there was so much more room for development in the realm of family, especially with the character of Xiu Mei.

Xiu Mei is many things in this series, but her role is primarily that of a mother. Wing’s mother, yes, but she’s also the “mother” of the series’ first true monster, and that fact unfortunately doesn’t appear much because she dies pre-series and Wing never ruminates on his mother’s role in Overlord’s creation. But HIVE does a lot with the concept of childhoods and what happens when they are disrupted or denied.

Overlord and his progeny (with the exception of Otto) are all denied childhoods, and as a result are hedonists with a need for immediate satisfaction and a constant impatience with their circumstances. Overlord’s birth is described as “waking up from a nightmare,” and he’s immediately asked to state his function. Theres no patience there, and no room for properly orienting oneself. Just Xiu Mei’s focus and optimistic haste with the result of her project. But (in my eyes) to that AI, it’s demanding and borderline rude, and we know that AIs can recognize such disrespect through HIVEmind and his treatment. And of course it doesn’t go well for the scientists at all.

But then, there’s Wing. And what’s special about Wing is that Xiu Mei does not make this mistake again. She fights to her last breath to give him a childhood- she hides him from the League as long as she can and does her best to preserve his innocence. And this shows in Wing’s maturity and relatively well-adjusted behavior later on. It’s a big contrast to her first “son.” She and Nero both have the feelings of “once burned, twice shy” characters who are brutally aware of their mistakes, and I wish that had been focused on more. Especially since she seems empathetic and I do think she would wonder how the activation went so wrong- was it something she said? Did? And so on.

I don’t know, I think something should have been done with Overlord’s feelings on his mortal “parents,” especially considering the three main figures involved are strongly linked to themes of parenthood in HIVE. You know how Otto asks why Overlord didn’t keep him locked up somewhere, and why he left him to develop naturally? Maybe it’s because Overlord did not develop at all and he knows innately it’s unnatural and risky. We needed more time with Overlord’s hatred for people being targeted at specific people, potentially his mother who is a competent parent to all but her “firstborn.” We know Overlord was aware of Wing’s upbringing, so there’s certainly room to develop it more.

I’m sure there’s a better way to phrase this all, but in summary:

Tl;dr : Overlord should have had a relationship with his “mother” to compliment HIVEs themes of childhood and its significance, but also because she and Overlord both suffer from a lack of screen time or POV moments that leaves them feeling a bit one note- the Dead Mom and the Bad AI.

i’m sure this has been done before but like. yeah. The Department really did a number on this kid

Had a dream of a comic like this

Uh oh! You are now a were-animal! This means you become a human-sized animal hybrid with uncontrollable bloodlust every night!

Spin this wheel to get your species

reblog to diminish the horrors from the person you reblogged from

Vibey song for Franz

Hi Mitch! For Franz:

(Perhaps a slight controversial pick here, but I knew it needed to be something fun and high-spirited; after he gets his feet under him in Dreadnought, Franz is consistently the cheerleader and motivator for the team, and he needed a song to match. I've including a song close to my heart- this is the one I've listened to for years as a pick-me-up. One of my dad's favorites too.)

Here’s a late-night doodle of another member of my Glasshouse OCs: Silver, Razor's teammate and a ruthless wreck of a man. Morose, anxious, and a perpetual pessimist, he's not the ideal Glasshouse graduate, but his infiltration and trapping skills make him a useful asset so long as the others are there to keep him on track. A good rule of thumb is if he's been around, you should watch your step and keep an eye on the sky, lest you stumble into something that might take a bite out of you... I plan to have some refs out for them all at some point where I can share more info, but in the meantime, all you basically need to know is a good chunk of his playlist is IAMX songs.

my liege we your council would not advise this course of action but we all agree it would be pretty funny regardless

G.I. Joe: My Version #2, this time with everyone's favorite morally questionable ninja! I always thought the backstory from the live-action films was really interesting, so that's what I'm basing him off of. Since that means Zartan's gang is involved, my SS design takes inspiration from protective cyclist gear, which blends surprisingly well with the ninja armor styles of the series. He's also got a bit more of a punk-ish vibe to fit with his Dreadnoks origin. The face paint is to reference both Zartan’s mask(?) and Zander’s face paint, along with paralleling the cheek scar for backstory reasons. I also thought it might be fun to include music that fits the vibes of these redesigns, so here's SS's:

(Backstory + extra stuff below the cut! Also, if anyone has any asks or anything for this, by all means ask away! It helps me figure out how I want things to go.)

Storm Shadow was an arrogant child who used his position in the clan to make enemies rather than friends, so when his uncle was killed with Storm's weapons, no one argued that he was innocent of the crime. He had no choice but to flee for his life... right into the path of the shapeshifting assassin Zartan (who was also, suspiciously in the area on "business." You can guess what kind). Having a ninja seemed useful, so SS was swiftly drafted into the Dreadnoks, where he became a loyal, if difficult assassin; he sees the bikers and their leader as his true family now, and he takes on a younger-brother-ish role in the group. It wasn't the most responsible way to grow up and his maturity reflects that, but he's still a powerful fighter, and through Zartan's machinations, another clan of ninjas has recently adopted him as their leader. Unbeknownst to Zartan, however, he's also got a secret weapon of his own he's been hiding, something he picked up on a trip to Arashikage territory... Other things: - He has a bike of his own; teaching him to drive is one of the Dreadnoks' favorite memories with him. - He still has the dual katanas that can fuse, however, they are not Arashikage; they're from the Red clan. - He is genuinely liked by the bikers, who will usually call him "Slash" (he's not too fond of the nickname but doesn't care enough to complain). Zartan is the only one that really uses Storm Shadow. - He struggles with mixing ninja traditions with the biker aesthetics of the Dreadnoks, and will switch between outfits depending on who he's with. - Occasionally uses British curses, then gets embarrassed over it.