I like Zoids, mainly the xCentury-verse. I like Organoids. I have more headcanon than I know what to do with. Come suffer with me. [occasional light NSFW, gore, sensitive topics]
I've been reading one chapter of Echo every night before bed and I'm loving it so far! I'm on chapter 33 atm and I just had to tell you how much I adored the interactions between Specula and Vega. I'm sad that I'll be caught up to the most recent chapter soon, I hope there's more coming c:
There is more coming! I didn't revisit the story to leave it unfinished again, don't worry. I also have at least 3 more Zoids comics coming.
I just took a brief detour to work on a visual novel I need to do *right now.* That's taking up most of my bandwidth. I've been working on Zoids stuff as a breather inbetween that.
Been revisiting my Zoids hyper-fixation and the first couple I ever shipped 20+ years ago (Brad/Naomi.)
I just want to say I love all your āsketchcrapā and your art makes me so happy if thatās not a weird thing to say.
It's not a weird thing to say, I'm glad it makes you happy! It's such a rare item in our already-tiny fandom, and I'm glad that sharing my fondness of it makes others happy too.
Since all Organoids produce slugs no matter what sex they present as, do Zero and One also do this? Do they occasionally just show up with random eggs and try and feed them to Bit/Vega?
...Zero and One are basically spiders georg and should not be counted
Realtalk though, although they are functionally Organoids in just about every way that matters, they're not "natural." They're... demigod constructs shaped into a context that could function in the way that was needed. They were brought into being for a single purpose with no mind for the aftermath.
So they're not really doing the normal Organoid thing reproductively. (So, no.)
Organoid Biology: More Information Than Anyone Ever Wanted edition
Organoid biology re: reproduction and associated behaviours.
Sexual content. Obviously. Don't say I didn't warn you.
The wild/feral setup for Organoids involves colonies that nest in a specific spot and theyāre loosely led by a handful of āfemaleā Organoids. Like Zoids, Organoids donāt have a set sex. The Organoid(s) in charge of the colony will switch to a female (read: egglaying) role if they werenāt already set up for that.
This leadership is usually stable, but anyone can pick a fight with the lead females if they so choose. If someone does this and loses though, theyāre gonna have a bad time. If a lead female is defeated, they generally just shrug, switch to a male role and vibe, or if theyāre unhappy enough with things they might leave the colony.
Thereās an unequal ratio of male to female Organoids in wild colonies. The MAJORITY (90%+) take on male roles. Their job is to feed and protect the colony, and spend an ungod amount of time in ritual combat and mating displays to show how awesome they are and should be allowed to fuck the āqueens.ā
The other female Organoids in the colony tend to not be so picky, but their lower social status is known. While theyāre allowed to reproduce and not strictly prohibited from it, their eggs and offspring are fair game until theyāre old enough to defend themselves. Wild Organoids have no qualms whatsoever about eating offspring that arenāt theirs.
Wild Organoids OVERBREED. Like Zoids, they produce a high number of offspring/potential offspring with the assumption that a lot of them will be eaten/wonāt make it to adulthood.
However, as Organoids developed tighter and cooperative social structures, the loss of eggs and hatchlings dropped significantly. The evolutionary timeline hadnāt quite caught up with this yet, and the āweāre spreading like wildfire and eating everything that movesā stage of this mess is when they first came into contact (and conflict) with ancient-ancient-Zoidians.Ā Ā
Iāve gone into the history of ādomesticating the Organoidā before so I wonāt go into it here, but in āmodernā Ancient Zoidian times, the majority of the colonies on Zi were ādomesticā Organoids, wild ones were becoming uncommon. They went extinct completely after the Death Saurer.
Domestic Organoids still retain wide feral streaks, but their colonies are fundamentally altered because Zoidians disrupted the entire basis for their social structure. The main purpose colonies served at that point in time was to be safe communal nesting grounds.Ā
The sex ratio of Organoids now mirrored the sex ratio of Zoidians, which is like humansā. Organoids were generally compelled to take on the biological sex of their bondmate, but could switch if the life of the Zoidian in question reflected that.Ā
Many of the smaller Zoidian groups/nations/tribes/clans didnāt get along 100%, so the Organoids did indeed have reason to protect their nesting areas. Often, even if Zoidians managed to avoid direct conflict, their Organoids sometimes wouldnāt. This is part of what kept driving the Zoidians into conflict.
This problem also grew a lot in later years, exploited by ill-meaning groups re: the idea that Zoidians generally forgave transgressions driven by Organoids. It was a good-faith effort to indicate they were āthe better personā there, a show of their control over their emotions vs. their partner.
It takes several days for an Organoid to switch between sex roles, itās not instant. Itās more a āhormonalā type change than anything physical.
Organoids hatch without any sex role being active, because theyāve not been exposed to anything thatād prompt them one way or the other.
This changing of roles is not something they can necessarily consciously do, and many (domestic) Organoids come to strongly prefer the role of their bondmate to the point theyād maintain it even if their bondmate died. The preference is so solid that it can override wild/feral promptings to the contrary.
Organoids can reproduce as either sex for their entire lives. Which is also true for most Zian creatures. The reproductive ability is rooted in the Core, very literally.
Healthy Organoids of both sexes (who have not recently copulated) regularly produce slugs, aka unfertilized eggs. And literally everyone likes to eat these. Organoids of all ages, and Zoidians alike.
Organoids, especially of the domestic sort, for which most survival pressures were greatly reduced or removed entirely became incredibly hedonistic. Some Zoidian groups tended to control the outcomes of this by encouraging āexcessā egg consumption, so no maturation/hatching resulted. Some groups just let nature take its course. It was a contentious issue.
Organoid/Zoidian families donāt maintain related Organoid offspring. All the eggs were laid/seen to in the colony, and the female Organoid and their bondmate mightāve hung out there for awhile to tend to the hatchlings. Big emphasis on āmightā because Organoids can range from incredibly maternal to āshit eggs and runā, which generallyād align with the attitude of their bondmate.
Toddler-equivalent Zoidians are basically taken to Organoid colonies to find a young Organoid to bond with. Thereās a lopsided maturation difference between Organoids and Zoidians (obviously); Organoids will be much larger than their partners for a bit, but take a while past the Zoidiansā sexual maturity to reach their own. This has to do with how long in general it takes for Zoid Cores (Organoid Cores too) to sufficiently bud.
Organoids were intimately involved with Zoidiansā lives and this included their sex lives.Ā
Zoidian families of any arrangement were overwhelmingly likely to have extremely compatible Organoids. The Organoids would often be the ones encouraging their partners to have sex, just by dint of being aroused and drowning their partners in Horny.
Either side could choose to have sex independently, but it was so much better to do it as a group, that more-or-less became the complete norm. In the group, itās the Zoidians having sex AND the Organoids having sex - theyāre not involved āacross state linesā so to speak, but the feedback loop between bonded partners is the best kind of crazy.
Needless to say, not having sex this way seemed boring and dumb.
(And now you feel slightly more bad for Shadowās Immense Predicament.)Ā
Other details that people probably want for some godforsaken reason:
This is the end of an Organoidās reproductive organ. Thereās 6 of them. Theyāre a little larger than all of the other cabling in their body.
This is how the male and female parts fit together:
The interior of the femaleās cabling is basically coated with thick, nutrient-rich jelly thatās not much unlike whatās inside a Zoid core.Ā
When their own Core buds, the buds eventually break off and go get stuck somewhere in aforementioned jelly. If fertilized, they become eggs, if not fertilized, they become slugs.Ā
Organoids donāt climax. Their entire experience of copulation reads like a continuous orgasm, as the encouraged behavior is length and quality of connection, not building to anything.
As one might imagine, this is unreasonably amazing for the associated Zoidians, and likewise the presence of pleasurable intercourse leading to climax is wholly foreign to Organoids, who get just as much out of that experience.
Organoids are actually quite into touch, but their most sensitive place by far are little synthflesh areas on their reproductive organs. When locked in with another Organoid, both are receiving direct and continuous pressure.Ā
Nothing in a human or Zoidian body can offer this. At best, an Organoid can be quite teased by various sphincters, but the real appeal in participating āaloneā (read: no 2nd Organoid) in sex is that they can still experience whatever their bondmate is experiencing. In addition to what pleasure they can nab for themselves.
Oh yhea and mutual masturbation is totally a thing.
In addition re: males there also has to be SERIOUS TRUST INVOLVED HERE BECAUSE a fully aroused male Organoid can easily fuck you up:
They also just kind of ooze milt the entire time theyāre aroused, and that intensifies if theyāre stimulated.Ā
Did you ever post that long explanation you made about Organiod reproduction? I love your take on Organoid biology and I'd love to see more of your ideas for them.
I did not. Mostly because I didn't think tumblr would allow for it directly (a bit nsfw), though that's probably less of an issue now with their 'mature' tagging thing.
I'll format it properly for the blog and post it in a bit for those interested.
Dropping this here to let everyone know I've set up a Patreon.
Things will continue to be posted here, don't worry - but if you'd like and are able to support me making the stuff I do, it'd be vastly appreciated.
Heyyo! Are you still working on your website? I just started reading your fanfics and I'd love to read all the background info on your characters and history and stuff! c:
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: I am technically working on 3 websites of my own PLUS one for my job, and right now the job one has been such a Project that I haven't been working on my own because I only have so many website-spoons at once.
I will be done with it soon, however, and will resume working on my own sites. In the meantime, if you have any detail-questions, please feel free to ask.
Hello again, same anon as before! Iāve spent an unhealthy amount of time scrolling through your old posts because my brain decided to hyper-focus on someone elseās headcanons for once lmao.
Anyways Iāve got some questions for you if you have time! Iām really fascinated with your backstory for Hiltz, especially when he first woke up and lived with the Scholar. So, hereās my questions:
1) How in the heck did Hiltz (or any other random Zoidian that may have woken up w/o their Organoid, i.e. the ancestor of Dr.D) figure out what to eat if they didnāt have their memories? Did Hiltz just get to the point where he was so desperate for sustenance that he tried catching/eating some random wildlife and then went, āHuh. This actually tastes good.ā Or did the people holding him at first bring him a bunch of different stuff until they found something he could keep down?
2) How did the Scholar learn the Zoidian language? Even if he was able to translate old text or whatnot, how did he figure out how to pronounce things well enough to communicate with Hiltz?
3) On the same topic, since Hiltzās brain was super fucked up without his Organioid and he couldnāt really hold onto/ make sense of his memories without Ambient, how was he able to learn the modern language the Scholar taught him? Did enough of it stick for him to at least be able to communicate?
4) When the ancient Zoidians put themselves into capsules after the whole Death Saurer thing, did they have a āwake-upā time set? How long were they expecting to be in there?
5) Finally, not a question but a lil scene that just popped into my headā¦so after Hiltz and Ambient started searching for more capsules, did they ever like come across a huge bunch of them that were justā¦.empty. Like, in pristine condition, looking great, but NOBODY is inside.
It would be the biggest slap in the face to both of them- there coulda been people in here but you killed them before they got here!
6) Actually, that does lead into another question I AM SO SORRY- but like does Ambient ever mourn the loss of HIS species? Or do bonded Organoids only really care about their bondmates?
I am always delighted for my headcanons to cause chaos MAKE THOUGHTS!
1) So - in my hc Zoidians are technically evolved humans, so they aren't wildly physiologically different to the point of not being able to eat normal foods. They just have altered nutritional needs, a palate that would find most standard human foods utterly bizarre, and probably had lost certain enzymes along the way meaning some stuff they just couldn't eat and it'd make them sick.
Hiltz didn't completely lack memory - he knew what he wanted but didn't really understand how to translate the foods he saw into foods he was familiar with. (hence him being so fucking excited to figure out what SALT was called.)
Part of why Hiltz was so scrunkled in the beginning of Worthless is because he was basically suffering extreme bodily imbalances/malnutrition and nobody - neither him or his captors - understood that, or how to fix it.
2) Short answer: the Scholar's pronunciation wasn't great. I'd actually wanted to include Hiltz being critical of that but it didn't fit mood-wise with that progression (plus, he was so desperate for anything familiar.)
Long answer: there had been random Zoidian survivors seeded throughout society for some time, and while the majority (if not all) had scrambled memories, some who learned to communicate with people and who were articulate enough to link the languages, would have been doing so. That material is what the Scholar would've been studying.
3) It wasn't that his brain was fucked up, it was justā¦ not working great. Memory-wise, imagine a hard disk with a missing MFT. The data's all there, butā¦ good luck getting to it.
Organoid bonds literally alter how the brain is wired, and a side-effect of that is [without going into massive detail] their absence causing the equivalent of file_not_found, dll missing, etc etc issues. But like how people with TBIs can learn to work around their injury, so could Hiltz work around this missing component - but he spent so long doing so that his brain rewired itself enough to negatively impact his bond with Ambient when they did get back together.
4) Yes, and "until the environment recovered enough from the Death Saurer/Death Scorpion." BUT: Moonfall (battlestory calamity reference) happened while they were in stasis and that's what ruined the majority of the capsules and knocked the 'timing systems' of the other ones either offline or out of whack.
5) They came across a lot of 'dead' capsules (very few would be found intact at this point in time.) Most any intact capsules, whether or not they had viable occupants, had already been found at that point - and as Hiltz was freaking out about in Worthless, a lot of those Zoidians had been accidentally killed just because the people trying to open the capsules didn't understand how it worked.
(This is also why Hiltz kinda breaks mid-Pantheon - he'd been holding out hope for a huge group of "his group" he knew had been kept around where One was. But One was foundā¦. and nobody else was. Hiltz lost hope.)
6) I mean, he doesā¦ but Organoids are much more "present focused." The thing Ambient (and any Organoid) likely misses most is the background 'group mind/hive' presence of their originating colony. But the bonding process hijacks their loyalty/concern from the colony to their bondmate.
Hey there, I just wanted to pop in and say I absolutely adore your work. I came for Brad/Naomi and stayed for everything else. The way you expand on the characters is awesome, I've had a blast reading through all your head-canons and also looking at your comics. You actually made me appreciate Hiltz a character, when I first watched through CC/GF I was like, eh he's a guy I guess. But damn you really gave him so much depth in your work! Keep it up!
Ahh! Thank you! I'm glad my work's reached another fan of this small but well-loved anime trainwreck. <3
A few days ago on the Discord server I had a late-night ramble about a unique social setup/phenomenon on Zi that I realized a) I'd never talked about here and b) I should do that.
Basically:
A side-effect of a sexually-liberal society with controlled reproduction and serious economic issues would be relatively slow population growth - and very few true "oops babies".
But there's still people who'd have kids, then realized that Wasn't For Them. Either they didn't want the responsibility, the pairing broke up, the polycule broke up, whatever.
There's certainly enough people in larger areas where there'd end up a bunch of kids who functionally become "community kids." Zi, societally, doesn't seem like it has great social safety nets. Like at all. But I think most people would still try to do right by the kids, especially in places with more resources (eg not small colonies or towns.)
So you have these like - enclaves of kids who can go to school/classes if they want to, can learn trades if they want to, have places they can go, are roughly provided for - but nobody's their direct parent or taking direct responsibility for them.
The quality of these enclaves (and quality of life within them) would vary wildly depending on the region, its economics, etc.
In some places the parents of these kids may be communally involved, just not want to have to deal with the kid all the time. And this is just socially acceptable and normal on Zi.
It largely arose as a practice from the post-GF era when there were so, so many orphaned kids. (The Jackals are basically an outgrowth of one of these types of enclaves from this era.)
Brad and Bit both come from this type of "community kid" background.
Naomi basically has PTSD but only when Ambient's not around because he has an inadvertent calming effect on her via Brad.
by "inadvertent calming effect" I mean ambient is literal walking mindfuck. he alters your perception to make you more okay with things. He's not Ryss/Specula levels of "I've altered your whole reality" mindfuck, he's the subtle, vague, jedi-mind-trick kind. (As I've mentioned before that this is literally how Hiltz was able to get away with shit.)
I laugh about this as a sitcom/relationship thing but honestly for the love of god let's not forget that Ambient is Ambient.
yes, I fully recognize how incredibly toxic this ability is in this context, yes it's a problem, no Brad doesn't perceive it as one because folks with Organoids have blindspots to them.
please also do not perceive this as weakness of Naomi's, it's not at all meant to be, she's getting the full fucking force of mental manipulation that was used on the leaders of nations, give her a break.
(but amazingly when she's around Leon and thinking about the fucked up shit she and Brad did, well, yhea, she uh. has some concerns.)
haha I really hope someone in the story figures this out or can fix it. not that they can un-kill the Fuma team, but
Leon is the only thing providing anything close to a moral compass.
in case anyone wants to forget that One is weird and terrible: don't, he's still weird and terrible. and about to make Vega weird and terrible too. Sara, you fucked up.
I also need folks to remember that, with the exception of the Backdraft characters, none of these people are used to things being this dangerous. they're almost in denial about how much mortal danger they are in.
Good evening, since we need to ignore most of reality for approximately the next four years, does anyone have any questions or other burning nonsense they'd like me to launch into?
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