#lb asks

(sent this to u cause idk if they do asks)

LMFAOOOOOO this one’s for you bestie @swaymarked

lb!Roxy:  oooh ooh i got this 1 :3

cause like dirk will go all srs science-y on u if u ask him but cherub biology is actually super fucking neat ok?

ive been researching! ;) which is a trip and a half let me tell u when we only even know about maybe a couple 100 cherubs in the universe and theyre all super territorial and spread out across a bunch of star systems and it would require a ton of different types of cultural and political shenanigans to get near all of them

it is a mess

so the thing u need to know is that –as far as we can tell– cherubs do this thing where they like genetically encode and evolve their value systems? straight up heritable personality awesomeness.  so on top of all the usual fun height an eye color and stuff the cute new babbu also gets like parent 1s way of doing things and parent 2s way of doing things and maybe also like parent 3 and 4 and etc –and then i guess the different ways fight it out and either 1 way wins or if theyre similar enough they just kinda merge together

which is not really how humans do it by a long shot :p

and then way out on the end of the spectrum of cool cherub personality shit weve got cal aka callie and calib who are just kinda rocking along flying their own flag like the awesome rebels they are doing their own thing not settling on 1 at all :3333

so thats how the cherubs do

idk i sort of think of it like calliope and caliborn are different people but theyre also kinda like two different version of the same person

if that makes sense

which now that i read it over it HELLA does not lmao, but aliens whatre u going 2 do?

tl;dr --

any negotiations that go on are p much just me and dirk working shit out between us bc it wouldnt even occur to callie and calib to interact w/ each other like that

its all the same brain and whoevers got the body makes the calls

lb!Hal: Sensor readings would indicate that I have roughly 100% of the suspicious eyes on him. Suspicion levels are set to max and paranoia is on board and fully buffered. No dubious behavior is slipping by this AI.

(Also, I have stupid amounts of free processing time on my non-existent hands. What else am I meant to do but obsessively stalk every single organic life form on this ship?)

But seriously, dude is mad wack. If he ever does go on that dopey alien clown killing spree we can all see brewing inside him, I am going to be the most prepared. Leaping immediately into action, I will use my extensive range of shipboard functions to ring just so many alarms. All the alarms. All of them.

lb!Eridan:  No, they’re mine.  I’ve been curatin’ them especially. I was on rotations for ages an’ ages afore I got a proper planetside assignment an’ I made a real habit a’ collectin’ some local knick-knack wherever I got sent.  Shows how broad-minded an’ culturally enlightened I am.  Very uplifted.

lb!Dave:  dude dont diss on denial denials great denial is a safe space what did denial ever do to you 

denial has been working its ass off for me for years and did nothing to deserve this

shhh my sweet summer child just relax and let the denial flow over you and rock you in its invasively plush embrace

but anyways there is a difference between denying a thing and consciously choosing not to act upon a thing because the status quo is nice and comfy and lets you sleep at night and also it probably wouldnt work anyway and also he would straight up flip his shit if i tried no lie

of course its still going to hurt

but theres all different kinds of hurt

Ohmygod, I love that image.  Okay, let’s see.

This one was a troll-organized event, but it was Feferi’s thing, and she’s doing a dramatic gesture of cultural acceptance for whatever (probably human?) planet she’s visiting.  So, yes, this is a firefly-verse “deep south upper-class” aesthetic meets “half of us have never even heard of a masquerade before and have no clue how this goes.”

Feferi’s entourage are all perfectly costumed in  fancy dress (or dress uniform as appropriate) plus stylized half-masks.  They mostly represent local flora and fauna and about a quarter of them are mildly if inadvertently offensive in some way.  The rest of the trolls are all over the map in terms of costume design and extent, (that one lady in the corner is just a straight up lobster-monster body suit) and, yeah, they seem to have decided to function of this event is to one-up each other by presenting themselves as the SUPERIOR LUSUS (usually some iteration of their own).  Each troll’s definition of superior is slightly different, but tends to vary along a spectrum from MOST EXTRAVAGANTLY DANGEROUS to MOST UNDERSTATEDLY DANGEROUS to MOST UNSETTLINGLY DANGEROUS and etc.

And actually all of the trolls are finding themselves kind of really freaking unnerved? And pretending not to be? THIS IS A SAFE PARTY.

The scattering of other aliens are equally all over the map.  (One dude’s got, like, a salad bowl on his head. It says “pumpkin.”)

The humans have a better grasp on how masquerades go and are in more typical space!deep-south fancy dress and stylized half or full masks like Feferi’s coterie.  A good number of them are meant to convey political sentiments.  A small minority are subtle barbs that they’re counting on flying over the alien’s heads.  (p sure there’s a guy fawkes mask in there somewhere.)  Also, one lady picked a cthulhu theme, which is pinging the trolls majorly as horrorterror/ Gl'bgolyb and that lady is having an interestingly tense evening.

Also, if you’re interested: Jane- playfully mustachioed white bunny mask; Dave - crow, Dirk - gull, Cal - angel (Calliope went by the book on this, and they are thus a very striking many-winged, many-faced creature of great beauty and terror), Jake - cosplaying a character from a movie he just watched; Roxy - keeps switching her mask and making her crewmates track her down  (kitty-monster, regular angel, a a hot pink version of Dave and Dirk’s masks, etc).  Oh, and Karkat - like if sharp-edged crab-styled white face-plating was crossed with a knight’s helmet, probably expensive, similar in design to Feferi’s group.

I got some more writing done for cyberbunny today but I REALLY want to do asks for fireflystuck/ lightning bug au because the masquerade meta last night got it on my brain

They only mindfuck you if you demonstrate criminal antisocial tendencies. You know, like not speaking appropriately well of the Beneficent Alliance, or being kind of rude at parties.

It’s therapy! and it’s in your own best interests, of course. :o)

Luckily Jake is inhumanly good at accidentally charming people and they thought he was adorable like a small fluffy animal. It completely distracted them from any whim of going poking around at his social phobias. (Which they wouldn’t really be supposed to do anyway, but, hey–who’s going to tell a pair of subjugglators how to do their job?)