#Chemical dependence

[justletmeon12]

Ibuprofen withdrawal headaches are the worst.

"I have a headache."

"Take some ibuprofen."

No, bitch.

[x-ourrayofsunshine-x]

okay so….Ray and the DD Spider shirt….

[dykesynthezoid]

I think one thing that really gets me about the “Daniel’s not repressed” crowd is that they seem to view him as someone unashamed. Which is a head scratcher. Like they see him and go “oh come on he’s totally shameless,” like sorry. The addict? You think the lifelong addict is impervious to shame??? Nooooo baby. Noooo

[the-ipre]

Consider! Charles finds a camera that has been enchanted to make ghosts show up on film and is absolutely thrilled about it! They’ve got plenty of pics of the girls up and about the office, but it would be good to have some of the founding members, right? Edwin is not quite as enthused about the whole prospect as Charles, as photographs were quite the long, drawn out process back when he was alive. Also, although he does not mention this bit, after a hundred years without seeing it, he’s grown somewhat disconnected from his physical form as something that is his.

Charles is pretty convincing, though, and Edwin is far too willing to allow himself to be convinced when it comes to his friend. They rope in Crystal and she lines up the shot, Charles and Edwin with their arms around each other as they beam at the lens, and then she takes the photo and the flash goes off and when she blinks, the boys are both gone. Crystal calls out for them, but the office is small and it isn’t like there’s much space to hide. She considers that they both sunk through the floor and are fucking with her, but before she can give that particular option too much thought, the camera prints out a small picture.

As it develops, Crystal finds that it did manage to capture the boys’ likenesses, as well as their ghostly essences. The photo is frozen at the moment she took the picture as they both grin at the camera, but when she Reads it she can feel their fear and desperation as they are trapped in the film.

Now, it’s down to Crystal to figure out how to undo this curse and break them out!

[reksink]

A Little Survivor (With Grand Gourmand Bonus💚)

[ryuusea]

sherliam halloween doodles, based on sensei’s art

[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.

[sometimes-i-make-mcr-fanart]

had to leave out the the interludes :( because only 12 options. Also no never listened too option

[haoqw]

happy pride month

[elfieafterdark]

The locked tomb truly is the dark souls of dark sapphic fiction.

[hifi-walkman]

I don't get how ya'll are casually posting jpegs when there's literally completely unreleased MCR that you can listen to right now. like, this tag should be exploding so much it hits trending from that. it is insane.

[collectorcookie]

they released the full body image for the outfits and i now get to roast murr on unsafe lab practices (<- worked in labs before). Explanation in tags

[dailydegurechaff]

I wanted to know how do you interpret Tanya's gender. After reading chapter 58 of the manga i got the impression that she is definitely trans coded, but maybe thats just me

Very good question.

To be honest, when I think too hard about Tanya’s gender (and sexuality, for that matter) it gives me brain worms. Fun brain worms, but brain worms nonetheless. I can’t explain it. Everything she’s got going on is complicated as shit there’s way too much to think about.

Like, she was a man, but now she's a girl. But at some points she says she still sees herself as a man internally so is this MtFtM? How does that work. And if she accepts she's a woman now, is that just MtF or do we add more letters. More importantly: Was Being X being Transphobic or being the Greatest Trans Ally of All Time with the free divinely issued sex change.

Ok ok, jokes aside. Confession: I actually do not keep up with the manga, so I had to go find the chapter and read it first. Having read it now though, I see what you mean.

The conversation she has with the Salaryman/herself in that chapter really does read as essentially saying “I’ve accepted who I am now.” It’s a far cry from a much earlier part of the manga I remember where she has a breakdown about being a man/people seeing her as a girl.

A friend of mine was actually showing me stuff from more recent chapters of the manga (don’t know which chapter tragically, but I know it’s not currently translated to English) and from what I gathered of it, Being X was showing Tanya a dream of being back in her past life and in response she basically demanded to go back to being Tanya immediately. It is definitely not just you, I 100% see the trans-coding you’re talking about.

As for my personal interpretation of her gender, I touched very briefly on it once before, but I honestly think she wouldn’t want to label herself as anything. At first, this is out of hesitance and not wanting to acknowledge that anything might be ““wrong”” or ““different”” about her. Later on it turns into character growth, more along the lines of, “I don’t need the label to define me, I just am what I am/like what I like. I don’t care about it any more than that.” Yes this is 100% projection on my part. No, I won’t apologize for it lmao.

Of course, that's entirely my own headcanon. I definitely am not saying it’s the only way to interpret her, it’s just my personal thoughts. Especially since my opinion is subject to change on a dime depending on what I’m reading/working on myself. The Tanya gender is, in fact, transient, shifting like water.

Like. A transfem Tanya fic that focuses on her adapting to life in her new world and coming to discover she doesn’t actually hate her new body? I’d totally read that. I’ve seen a few fics that include that as a part of the narrative and those scenes of acceptance were among my favorite parts.

I get the feeling this is the route that the manga is going as well. It’s a bit of a shame that we don't have those aforementioned scenes in the light novel (or at least, I don't remember them), but I don’t think that Carlo Zen really intended that to be the focus/narrative in the first place. And honestly, I also think that’s a good thing because it allows for so much more room for interpretation and headcanon around Tanya’s character.

Anyway, the other direction is also compelling to me. A transmasc Tanya fic where, after feeling uncomfortable and hating how feminine he looks for years and years, he finally goes ‘Fuck this, I’m gonna go back to being a man’? I would read the fuck out of that too.

Could also be paired with him finally choosing to defect, where they think about it like, ‘Well there’s nothing to hold me back now, right? I don’t have to maintain appearances anymore. Also, since I’m defecting this would be a great way to hide myself. They’d all be looking for the wrong person. Two birds with one stone, how efficient.’ …Now we’re getting to fic ideas I won’t ever get to so it’s time to move on I think.

Semi-related to the Trans Tanya Concept, this actually brings me to a bit of a lore/headcanon/idea/question I want to present to the public for opinions. In Norden, during the inciting battle of the war, Tanya uses magic to “dope up” so she could enhance her strength and reaction time and kill pain. I took this to mean she used a formula to synthesize the narcotics/adrenaline hormone/whatever else directly into herself, right?

Can you see where I’m going with this? As long as you know which hormones to make, how they’re made up, and what quantities you need… Well, don’t you think magic HRT is completely possible? Of course, as I'm not sure it makes sense for Salaryman to have known the detailed specifics about it from the modern world, it would require a lot of in-universe research/science advancement for someone to actually do that, but theoretically...

The magic system in this universe has so much potential to be explored, I’m fascinated by what you can theoretically do with it. Although, this is long and off-topic already I think this should be the end, lol.

I think I talked too much? I’m sorry, you were probably not expecting such an answer. I told you, Tanya gives me brain worms (mental illness).

I guess the TL;DR is this: that kid definitely ain’t cishet.

[theresa-of-liechtenstein]

i come home to my mom hell-bent on throwing out half the stuff we use because some barcode scanning app told her they have “bad grades” and she’s starting to say things about good and bad chemicals and it’s just like. SCREAM. like. i keep asking her what are the metrics by which they assign those grades and by what standards are they defining those metrics and also, who is “they”? and she only is just like “i don’t want us to get cancer” yeah man i don’t want cancer either! but i also don’t want to subscribe to something that will make me suspicious of all the fucking molecules in the world KNOWING i am susceptible to disordered eating! like am i crazy to be skeptical about this? am i crazy to think this way??

[ctrl-alt-deleting-yr-face]

CY PLEASE IM BEGGING YOU DONT HURT LOS ANYMOREEEEE PLEASEEEEEEE

OKAY ITS NOT NECESSARILY GONNA BE *HURTING* THEM..

JUST LIKE. A LITTLE SPOOKY MOMENT

[gideonisms]

ngl having bad brain times. Can you ever physically FEEL the lack of the get things done chemical