#ADD: No. 20-1

[shwarmii]

i just heard one of my favorite youtubers say this meme out loud in a video and the pronounciation FLOORED ME so now i gotta know:

poll is just "which way do you say it"; tags is "which way is right", assuming your answer to "which way is right" is different to "which way do you say it". or i guess tags are also for uhhhhhh if your answer is complicated and if you wanna explain, if you have a diff way of pronouncing (pls tell meeeee), or whatever else you want, im not your parents, idk

[serpentface]

I'd say the 'aware of loss of faculties until they aren't' description is apt, but with less of the horror that most humans experience with this knowledge. Units have a sense of personhood, but archin do not tend to philosophically imagine a 'self'. Their consciousness being an emergent property of many interacting bodies kind of precludes the illusion of some core, unchanging individual essence.

The basic experience of being divided is something every unit would have been through, an entire unit is not in literal constant communication and will temporarily divide itself even down to the individual to perform simple tasks (though always with the comfort of scent trails leading back to the collective).

It would still be unsettling and a source of deep melancholy. The pain would be more knowing that there is no going back, the scent trails lead nowhere, there are no more eggs being laid that will replace the parts of you that die or are separated. You would increasingly struggle with abstract concepts and complex ideas, the edges of your personality would slowly be smoothed out, you are increasingly running on raw instinct. You remember everything, but without any way to organize these memories into anything more than flashes. Most of the pain would be a profound sense of loneliness.

How a merger would feel would depend on how much of the unit remains. If its personality is more or less intact, it will probably survive as the same 'person' (mergers are usually accomplished with recently pupated ants, or by taking a few individuals from many units so as not to disrupt other consciences). If it's down to just a few ants, any remnant of the original personality will be lost upon the merger and they will settle into the new personality (perhaps subtly changing it, as all units do over time, but not in a distinct, easily identifiable way). The only thing that remains of the former unit is their raw memory. Even individual archin have very good memories and their learned experiences will supplement the new consciousness with everything it has experienced. So the new merger might learn and 'remember' the pain of loss, though not in a complex way (complex memories, like being able to tell a story, are stored in the collective and not the individual).

Mergers between roughly equal numbers of ants are rare and only done in desperation due to being incredibly disruptive to the personality of each, and a very literal danger that individual archin will become panicked and attack the 'foreign' bodies. A large ratio is ideal so one side has enough of an intact group consciousness to tamp down these impulses, and ability to physically restrain the other side until they have calmed and accommodated to the new scent. All mergers have risks of aggression, but introducing similar numbers is especially risky and sometimes fails entirely due to too many being killed in the process.

[ingrids-lockbox]

Pink House Collection - an ongoing series

Seagrave, ON July 2018 / Toronto, ON January 2019 /

Halifax, NS May 2019 / Saskatoon, SK August 2019 /

Toronto, ON November 2021 / Montreal, QC March 2023 /

Canon AE-1 / Nikon FG-20 / Canon T70 - Kodak Gold 200 / Fujifilm Superia 200 / Cinestill 800T

[greenerteacups]

Are there any other wizarding families that are underexplored in canon and pique your interest in a similar way to the Blacks?

This is a unique function of what food my brain worms like to eat, but no one's doing it like the Blacks. The drama? The intrigue? The Gothic horror? The prodigal sons and lost daughters and killers and sinners and martyrs and saints? The wizard Catholicism of it all? The story of the House of Black is the best book never written.

[starrwrrld]

models should be grateful they opted for racing bc these bitches would've served and sold

bonus:

the mf who truly served in both industries

[misty-moth]

If you watch ads to get the free chapter ticket and every stamina each day in ikepri+ikevamp+ikevil for a week, that’s roughly 2.5 hours of ads.

That is a movie. A beefy movie.

The breakdown:

Ikevamp: 3 stamina, 1 ticket

Ikepri: 10 stamina, 1 ticket

Ikevil: 5 stamina, 1 ticket

30 second ads, 15 seconds to close them out, ~15 seconds to use them before watching again. So, ya know, a minute.

21 x 7 = 147 minutes or 2.45 hours

Idk why I just showed my work… but please enjoy.

[krisvsthew0rld]

I've been thinking about this while making sandwiches for the last like 10 minutes and i feel like i should just get it out somewhere

(*please* tell me if this needs trigger warnings)

i just played buckshot roulette a little while ago and first off, great game, another one of those rare games that come in randomly and create a conversation a hundred times bigger than the game itself, and in this case, deservedly so! i especially liked the tension of pulling the trigger of a shotgun on yourself *point blank*, it is immense, as it should be, and the best part is that it never gets any easier no matter how many times you end up shooting yourself. but that's not really my point with this post.

the point i wanna make is the response I've seen only once but that worried me a lot nevertheless.

mike klubnika, the creator of buckshot roulette (and a few other great games) is russian. and i am ukrainian. now, i personally dont have a problem with mike just because of that, i know better than to blindly hate people because they're 'the other', plus his games outside of roulette almost universally have themes of resisting authority, and somehow i feel that was not born out of nowhere. which is to say i dont think he's a fan of the Current World Event going on between our countries. (needless to say, i'm also having a fucking terrible time living in war, and am not a huge fan of being invaded by russia. i'm only adding this because this is the No Reading Comprehension website.)

despite that, not too long ago, in a ukrainian art server i joined i saw an offhand comment from one user on someone else's piece of buckshot roulette fanart that worried me instantly, (and that was before i ever really bothered to play BR or look into mike's previous games, so it worries me even more now that i know more about the dev!). the comment went something like 'wow i love the game a lot, but the creator is RUSSIAN >:(' which, yeah that is, again, an offhand comment which didnt have much thought put into it, so why am i getting so worked up about it? because it is kind of indicative of the fact that said person only really hates the creator *because he's THE OTHER.* if they bothered to look into just his itch io page and think about any of the games which are not BR, they might have found that hey, they seem to universally have a message i agree with and one of the games just straight up all but screams 'WAR BAD.'

all that to say, i feel like recently, nationalism has been on a steady rise in ukraine. obviously there is a good reason to be upset, very much so, but going down the road of blind hate is terrible, and only leads to where russia is today - a country ruled over by a senile old man, who blindly hates the country neighboring his own, and who successfully tricked most of his own people into doing the same. that tiny little offhand comment isnt the only one that i've seen that showcases this kind of nationalism but it might be one of the most blind and stupid cases.

tldr: nationalism is on the rise in ukraine and i'm afraid

[feline-evil]

Dick or no dick confirmation Pickles was always going to be trans to me anyways; if he's swingin' somethin that's phallo babes, if he's not then his t-dick fat. What's not to get.

[coffinpal]

pet him

[kuruk]

oh my god I know like it sounds weird to say this when it's just avatar but the original show has aang go back to the southern air temple to show katara and sokka his home only to find evidence of the genocide of his people and the loss of his loved ones and it's quiet until you see his grief and his rage but you just see the aftermath a hundred years later and the netflix adaptation makes it feel like they wanted it to be a cool action movie with an epic scene showing the fighting and running of the airbenders like that side by side with aang running away and it's like ??? okay it's "darker" congratulations I can see that's what the goal is based on the differences in firebending and early on screen deaths go and focus on every bit of violence for the audience's lazy sadistic pleasure instead of any of the characters personal narratives especially the women that can all be taken right out + the discovery of different places all over the world in the earth kingdom and outside of it. put everything in omashu so they don't get to meet people and see the diversity of the world and each town and SEE what life is like for them under war and have these experiences with all these people build up to something bigger at the end

[narugen-moved]

keep thinking abt hoshina and mina GOD.. (spoilers for manga and kn8 bside)

given what hoshina said about his previous division treating him like a burden/parasite just because he can’t handle firearms and specializes in his swords… how tiring must it have been to have to work with those people each mission despite having a common goal?

and how tiring must it have been to be constantly told off by his own father for wanting to continue his family’s tradition, or to be told to give up on being part of the jakdf by his own teacher -

before mina, a high ranking commander personally reached out to him, to recruit him into her team?

the fact that she didn’t see him during joint trainings and think: why bother with that? why bother with blades when bigger kaiju will appear? when she personally deals with bigger kaiju herself.

but she instead saw him and thought: he can help me, he can cover my weaknesses (mina not being able to handle a vegetable peeler is hilarious) and he’s someone i can trust

she sees potential in him, she sees how he can excel within her division, she saw hoshina and as captain - has probably heard everyone talk shit about him but she was still certain that he’d be one of her division’s greatest asset

(and even when platoon leader ebina refused to let hoshina help out, mina stood firm on her decision and her claim that hoshina would be useful. when she asked him if he could take down the big kaiju, and he could only promise saving the child within it - she believed him, took his word for it and waited until he carried out his promise.)

and now hoshina is the vice captain, putting faith in a new recruit whom most people wouldn’t have believed in… full fucking cycle..

tldr: it makes me rly fucking emotional to think about how hoshina was given a reason to continue improving with his swords after being told to give up all this time… and how mina had never once thought his abilities were useless 👍

also makes me crazy how protective he is of his position as vice captain, as the person who stands by captain ashiro’s side…

[secrettreestuffidk]

you ever think about how pretty much the only reason we use base10 is because we have 10 fingers and if everyone had 6 fingers on each hand we'd use base12 and never even think a thing of it and also math would be pretty much better in every way?

[familyofpaladins]

Me: I have this idea for a fic! I think it will be about 9-10k words! A good amount! Not too little not too much!

*10k words later*

Me: .... I'm only half done. Haha... ha O_O

[justablah56]

hi guys this is my way of announcing that my Taylor now has glasses , thanks

[itwoodbeprefect]

i was tagged by @luredin to list 7 comfort films and tag 7 people, and also, longer ago, by @goneahead to post a top 4 of comfort movies, so i'm going to go with seven because it's More and when it comes to movies i'm going to need More. thank you both for the tag!! 💖

shelter (2007) - top 1 comfort movie maybe. it's just Vibes.

buchanan rides alone (1958) - for what it is i've perhaps seen this more times than any person should but "very dear to me" is one of those previously mentioned things that it is, so that's alright.

10 things i hate about you (1999) - the classic! ironically one of the newer movies on this list but it's The Classic to me.

the electric horseman (1979) - robert redford saves a horse and jane fonda is the real hero for walking! in! those! boots! and hey. soft animal activism cowboy/reporter romance what more could the heart want.

zachariah (1971) - queerness and anti-violence and cowboys and music and those darned Vibes again. they get me every time!

hard core logo (1996) - look. this is objectively not a very comforting movie. i know this. but it's catharsis and Feelings and by now deeply familiar fucked up people and that IS comforting (to me).

wilby wonderful (2004) - i am. not currently coherent about this one. check back in a year or so.

i'll try to tag some people who i haven't seen in connection with this game yet, but i'm mostly guessing: @littlestarsailor @beansterpie @smileylover99 @flownwrong @batvreason @eg515 @spaceradars ✨

zero pressure of course!

[skitskatdacat63]

2005 German Grand Prix - Fernando Alonso & Jenson Button(+ Juan Pablo Montoya)(my personal post-race highlights)

+ Bonus Michael Schumacher