#And a LOT of human experimentation

[disorganizedkitten]

Fourteen year old Paranormal Enthusiasts and budding scientists Vlad Masters, Jack Fenton, and Maddie Walker enter Axiom labs alive and well. Things start to go wrong when one of the inventions blows up in Vlad’s face, though.

The hospital releases him three weeks later, but he isn’t the same.

Neither is Amity Park.

Vlad can’t tell his friends everything, but they all have questions. Why were Axiom labs shut down thirty years ago? Who are the GIW? Where are these monsters coming from? And, perhaps the most baffling, why does Jack’s ghost hunter uncle set off Vlad’s ghost sense?

[a-study-in-bullshit]

i refuse to be embarrassed of who I am and what you once were just because you changed and think I should too

[g1deonthefirst]

wasn't alfred a hedge fund manager? i get where ur coming from re: the class divide post otherwise btw but am somewhat stumped ab this bc he was definitely the one making the most money and likely highly educated as well, and ended up a cav. ig it is STEM/nonSTEM divide?

hi! yes, alfred was a hedge fund manager — he was also augustine's brother and so comes from a similar (presumably very wealthy) background. this exception doesn't really disprove the rule to me: either way, john was disproportionately likely to make people who were highly educated necromancers and people who were not cavaliers. i want to walk through a couple possible reasons for this.

the first possibility is that john (1) believed that people who were more "intelligent" were more likely to be able to understand necromancy and (2) implicitly believed that people who were academically high-achieving like scientists, lawyers, doctors, etc. were more "intelligent." clearly, john and the lyctors all seem to think pretty highly of their own intelligence. john in particular went from being a poor māori kid to being an accomplished scientist, and i don't think it's a stretch to say he probably believed he deserved it on the basis of intelligence.

in contrast, both alfred and cristabel have their own talents and intelligence disparaged — john describes alfred as "useless, but a darling" and augustine describes cristabel as "not hav[ing] the intellect you'd ordinarily find in a sandwich or an orange." additionally, necromancy is talked about in scientific terms, which lends itself to the idea that you might need some scientific understanding to be good at it. i think it's entirely possible that john consciously decided that some people wouldn't be intelligent enough to hack it and made them the cavaliers, a problematic assumption chiefly in that it equates academic achievement with innate intelligence.

the second possibility, and to me the more likely one, is that john simply made the people closest to him necromancers while making people he wasn't as close to (essentially his friends' friends) non-necromancers. it's pretty clear that the people john made necromancers were people who directly worked on john's original cryogenics project with him, while the cavaliers were all people who got dragged into his cult by those original project members. alfred is a perfect example of this — he's there because he's augustine's brother. other people have made posts about the possibility that john did this to intentionally separate his friends from the people they loved.

but either way, i think this demonstrates who john as a character cared about. john, as a successful scientist, surrounded himself by people who were highly educated and successful, predominantly (as you note anon) people in STEM. people who are disproportionately likely to be white, neurotypical, and cis, or at least disproportionately likely to be able to conform to white/european, neurotypical, cis standards. not only is john not as close to people in his project-turned-cult that aren't as highly educated, but poor people aren't present at all. there are no janitors, no retail workers, no manual laborers, no farmworkers. i don't get the sense that john ever really unpacked his internalized biases or questioned why he primarily values people who are highly educated.

"but," i imagine my hypothetical reader who's somehow made it this far protesting, "of course he's surrounded by highly educated people. he's working on a cryogenics project!" well...precisely. tumblr user sophelstien's scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds essay touches on how this project demonstrates that john is not as progressive as some people assume he is, but what i'll say here is simply that john didn't have to make the people in his cryogenics project the leaders of his new society. and by installing the very people who our society rewards into positions of power, john — consciously or not — shapes the new society he's creating with the old society's inequalities.

[destinysquared]

Did a pic of a new fanfic I'm reading called The Road Less Travelled by @discoeffect ! I’m really enjoying it and had to draw the characters (again). Also I’m a bit of a sucker for batarian/human stories haha.

Let me know if I got their designs right! (the colors of course are just fun/experimental stuff). Enjoyyyyy

[wisteriavines]

You ever go back to your notes about your character’s origin/backstory and realize that hey, hold on, that’s not the “fun” backstory you remember it to be— you genuinely traumatized them for life

[pastaxandria]

I'm Sending A Raven: Chapter 4/5 🌧️

The Library of Pastaxandria has recorded for its shelves: Chapter 4 of I'm Sending A Raven.

Ship: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Chapter Summary:

Below them lay nine circular floors, the majority of them buried beneath the earth. If you’d already been taken to the lower levels in preparation for the move, it would be a long climb down. But that was a climb he’d happily make. He’d told you once that wherever you went he would follow, his body and yours caught in permanent orbit around one another. There was no cage that could keep you from the Devil’s reach; no darkness that could hide you from his senses; no chains, no bones he wouldn’t break if it meant you’d be free. They’d tried to keep you from him. And for that, they would pay dearly.

Wordcount: 8.8k

Warnings for this chapter: dehumanization, references to suicide attempts, ableist language, references to torture, references to human experimentation (there ARE kids in some of the Kennels though it's not graphic, but be careful anyway), references to starvation and calorie amounts, suicidal ideation, disassociation, hallucinations, blood, guns, the usual violence. Hang in there, my darlings, this and the next I'm about to post are our final two chapters!

Read me on AO3 where I'm about to crush your heart

[sepiamestus]

I love you indie games I love you open source software I love you browser extensions I love you software mods I love you experimental programming languages I love you programming as part of the narrative I love you I love you I love you

[scrivenger-grimgar]

BNHA x DGR because I’m mentally ill ✨

Izuku would be the ultimate analyst and he’s like 11 when he’s scouted and accepted into HPA’s class 77 (SDR:2), but he still desperately wants to be a hero so he’ll constantly seek out Akane and Nekomaru and be like “teach me to fight” and they’re like “holy SHIT he’s terrifying let’s do it” so they become friends, and later he approaches Peko and is like “fight me” and Peko finds this both deeply unsettling and also accepts that the request immediately. Fuyuhiko is very happy that she’s making friends!

They become the Fight Club and it’s essentially an underground fighting ring except above ground and you aren’t allowed to kill or maim people (psychological warfare is very much allowed however).

In that first year Chiaki befriends Hajime, and Hajime is forcefully befriended by Izuku and the two drag him into class 77 until they collectively see him as a friend (barring Nagito). But Hajime is going thru it and thinks that they don’t think he’s a friend, and this ultimately leads to him considering the Hope Cultivation Program. He gets kidnapped by his career councillor near the end of the year and is officially expelled from HPA. He later goes missing. For a year.

Izuku is super fucking sus bc he’s not an idiot and has obviously noticed tha something fucky is going on with the school (finances are skewed, funding is disappearing into somewhere, high ranking people visiting the school too often when they don’t have any relatives attending, stockholders buying and selling at increasing rates, leery of heroes and police, monitoring students more than usual, extreme security increases; Izuku smiles and nods and ciphers everything down through multiple different scripts with missing keys that no one has solved, and very carefully does not react. He searches for the Rat’s encrypted email for 6 months because he still wants to be a hero.)

When he sneaks through the ventilation and finds that lab and finds the one in the lab. That changes things.

After the first year’s sports festival, there is a four day break.

When Izuru finally meets the vent crawler in person he feels something other that anger, hatred, or fondness, that he can’t identify; it’s not from the still sleeping Hajime. Emotion is not something so easily removed from someone who feels so strongly. The scientists don’t know what exactly happened to some of the talents they tried to instill in him and he would never tell them that it was his other half who had received them.

The hero raid on Hokkaido’s Hope’s Peak Academy is largely missed by the media, if only due to the fact that the school is largely made up the quirkless.

In other news UA’s first year classes now have new classmates. As do some other hero schools. Wonder what that’s all about…

(UA gets class 77, Aizawa gets Izuku, Izuru, and Hajime, Sekijiro gets Peko, Akane, and Nekomaru, 1C gets Nagito, Chiaki, and Ibuki, etc.)

[normalcannibalism]

i feel weird and self conscious about my art again. sigh

the entire post ended up in thw tags ohb my god

[astarab1aze]

➥ Limitations & Weaknesses: Satra

sati is a unique case in that the majority of his power and memory are sealed under layers of memory charms, seemingly permanent debuffs, and the like; powerful as he is, this sealing resulted in a range of weaknesses, limitations, and susceptibilities.

The seals that were put on Satra are inside of his body and mind, and, yes, this does mean that when he was young, he was cut open. The Shikabane have always been cruel and heavy-handed in their cruelty, going so far as to brand his internal organs with multiple seals, cutting off his ability to use any other form of magic than what they specifically ordained as helpful to the purposes they sought to use him for. Fueled by hatred, rage, and seeing him as little more than fodder for a single misstep. How they managed to open and close certain pathways is anyone's guess - the research behind it is entirely lost to time, careful records destroyed - but the fact of the matter is, they managed, and he was put under the knife against his will, with the majority of his memories repressed or erased including his free will to prevent him from regaining any of it and using his magic on them for such a violation of his being. This procedure permenantly altered him, permanently damaged his ability to make conscious choices, consciously remember things in both the short and long term, or even to speak a majority of the time.

Much of his power was sealed away with his memory, and though it seems as if his only affinities are for blood and bestial magic, he possesses a more neutral, moldable magical energy, which would have allowed him to use a wider range including utilities. They had to limit him somehow, because if he was allowed access to the rest of his power, he'd have been able to shake free of their control much earlier than he had - by a few centuries. The problem with this is, their attempt resulted in severed connections that could be healed over time, thus eventually allowing him access to this power again, as such when he defeated Dessudora and took off. Seals must be maintained, besides, though the damage done to his brain is irreversible, resulting in non-chronological flashbacks, bouts of deep forgetfulness, confusion, anxiety, migraines, muscle spasms, among other things. There are Big events he can remember, but not the little details, and things that were constant such as his multi-decade-long friendship with Ashari. He also suffers from intense nightmares, though he isn't and never will be open about them, but these he remembers also.

The Shikabane were desperate for power and social standing, willing to commit atrocities in order to secure both. They devised ways to 'copy' others' abilities, experimenting on and torturing their own family members to achieve this. In doing this to Satra, who at this time was known as Sachira, they were able to maintain a position in Chimachi's hierarchy, offering a powerful and indifferent agent who could and would follow orders to the letter without fail.

The seals inside of Satra function indistinguishably from curses, the methods used being extremely convoluted and torturous as well as leaving him unable to die until certain conditions are met. What those are, impossible to know, but he is cursed to live on and watch as everyone he's ever loved or cared for dies for the crime of killing a particularly problematic member of the family - following his orders, and his moral compass. Secure that he was right in doing so, that is orders were purposeful and the information accurate. Cursed for taking a loved one away, ever to live on and suffer this same instance , nothing more than a tool for hundreds of years. These seals are elementally charged by affinity, resistent to all forms of magic but especially blood magic. This is to prevent them from being tampered with or broken whether by Satra himself or extant individuals using magic. As such, anyone fishing around in his head for information will do more damage to his brain by doing so, and could render him unable to function at all; In turn, these people will come out without any information and their abilities being turned against them. A fucked up built-in security system that could take him out of the equation altogether to protect what's in his head; Consciously remembering something vs subconsciously remembering it, and there's a lot in there. The seals do not prevent any damage done to his body, however, in effect intensifying it as his death is more convenient, and should he break his curse and his mind no longer kept under lock and key, it's better for him to simply die.

Anyway, because of all of this, much of his energy is diverted into blood and bestial magic, of which he has mastered in terms of raw ability and sourcing. The problem with that is controlling it, and the symptoms of blood loss and physical exhaustion following, in such times he comes across as frail and feeble. Overuse of his magic, whether in large bursts or smaller functions, as well as the need to draw his own blood, will make him prone to passing out due to the exhaustion and physical weakness it may cause - like adrenaline when it wears off. His blood magic attacks are by and large area-of-effect, fine-tuned for crowd control and large-scale battle, thus prone to injuring or outright killing innocents and allies. Bestial magic is a bit of a different story, used largely for transformation, alteration, heightening his senses, fortifying his body, communicating with animals, and the enhancements it brings allow for sharp, precise, and frightening close-quarters combat, used practically. So it's not all grim for him. On top of this, he is able to use all of the Shikabane Judgment techniques, sans the specifically elemental ones, including Hell Prism.

The Judgment techniques are blood-fueled abilities that cause catastrophic harm; To name a few:

Execution is medium- to large-scale; burns away the soul and any and all magical energy it produces, permanently removing it from existence in a blast of bloody hellflame; more effective with blood sacrifice & is limited

Crown of Thorns near-instant crucifixion, impalement; wide area of effect; thorny wood summoning that can either wrap around, pierce, whip, stab, impale, or otherwise completely shred the opponent and hang what's left of them to dry; high cost of and is more effective with blood sacrifice

Blood Sacrifice is used as preparation for use of any of the other Judgment techniques, using primarily his own blood in exchange for a boost in power or to cast bigger, more complex abilities

Deliverance is the formation of compressed layers of magic, blood or otherwise, into a mageskin-like armor

Second Wind, which heals moderate injuries and may be used on others

Hell Prism, a hereditary, kaleidoscopic manifestation of his particular brand of hell that allows him to trap, torture, maim, and kill either a single target or several at his leisure within its bounds; high cost of magic and blood; double-functions as a psychological prison, as he can illusorily kill his target in an infinite number of ways to break them down and leech energy before finally killing them outright.

Some aspects of these he cannot make proper use of, such as the elemental edges to each of them aside from his own specifically, thus some of his applications of the Judgment techniques are significantly weaker by comparison to his general use of blood magic on its own - in other words, it's easier and he's stronger if he doesn't employ the Judgment techniques at all, though that doesn't make him anywhere near safer to fight alongside. It's best to give him a wide berth.

Likewise, he is weak to fire and ice, as both make him sluggish, lethargic, dizzy, numb and prickly and can stop the flow of his blood, water will dilute his blood and render it less effective, air will blow it away or dry it and make it less effective. On the upside, he's immune to poison and most if not all necrotic magic, and he cannot be killed in any meaningful way or revived except by the conditions of his curse. Moreover, he doesn't allow what he's able to remember get him down, instead using much of that energy to fuel his generosity, kindness, and protection of others as the seals weaken.

[despairtempest]

*7 days left in the month* still counts baby!! happy pride! having fun w/ some new brushes owo

he/they/any for tempest

[sunflowersorrows]

does anyone else know about the human radiation experiments done in the US. i feel like they get widely ignored when the topic of human rights abuses against minority groups get brought up. they literally just irradiated people for "science" without their informed consent. i feel like this needs to be talked abt more with how people r like "the government is evil but they'd never be THAT evil" yes they have and will continue to be if it benefits rich white people

[unmotivatedartistry]

my first artwork of sixty a redraw of @thirium-drinker 's sixty piece here all of you go check them out. his art is rlly cool. like. VERY cool. i cannot get over her art. pls. go give them some love.

alt. backgrounds

aurhgirhgsjbjhf I love their sixty design sm

[musical-chick-13]

Genuinely I absolutely, thoroughly hate the way people have gotten in regard to "You can write fic about dark subjects, but don't ever go into detail about those subjects" (if they even concede that people are "allowed" to write about anything unpleasant at all).

Because I just read an excellent one that was...very fucked-up! Actually!!! But it was also a nuanced and gripping examination of abuse--switching between the POV of the abuser (who lies to themselves about the reality of their actions, making their POV sections all the more uncomfortable for it), their victim (who lies to themselves in a different way, by refusing both to acknowledge their own victimhood or to consider the ways they later come to continue that cycle) and, eventually, an outside party (who is the only one aware of the true reality, and tries (and fails) to help, through the comparatively powerless ways that are available to them).

And this thing was not reserved in any way regarding its depiction of all of this. It didn't cut away cleanly after a vague uncomfortable comment for the reader to fill in every single blank for themselves. There were even times where the victim themselves was under the impression that they were genuinely enjoying what happened, because they convinced themselves that they had control over a situation they never had control over!!! And I know that...certain people. Would absolutely accuse this fic of "romanticizing abuse" because of these things. Which I think is an INCREDIBLY unfair assessment of it, especially since most of the time the discussion of "romanticizing [x]" is less a discussion and more, "I don't care what the author intended, this story simply shouldn't exist because this is incontrovertible proof they are a horrible person in reality, also they should die."

[llycaons]

'freak4freak' can be a really fun dynamic and I genuinely love it because my number one will always be pariging <3 root/shaw is a really good one too though and recently I have become enthralled by whatever the fuck baru and shao lune have got going on. light and L are like this too but entirely platonically and also they hate each other

[starlightkun]

reading scientific articles on human scent glands to write one scene of a fic. sigh. guess what fic this is for.........