#add a killing virus
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Fractures Being Fracked Eel the supple Ill in behaviors Well fractures being fracked - - - - WARNING THIS NOT ABOUT OIL - - - - The choice: Experience As President, 4yrs As Vice President, 8yrs In supporting corner As Vice President, 4 yrs As Ex-Former President, 4yrs As TV show Host, (sorry, only watched a handful of episodes) Brought in on Earth with money ___________Reflection Line_______________ Made easy for purchase of Golden Toilet The rump T never bought a chariot he would have had to smell it Blooddeath started Jan 6, Intimidation tactics begin if not elected, “Bloodbath” “Lower the Regulations” Ex-FP speaks on his behalf Welcome our environmental catastrophe’s Allowed still to be an entrepreneur representative The always? for the people? Oops what? ooh whoa! There is now FOD on our windshields Our mirrors & windows Due pray for wings & wheels And don’t forget doors, fuel pumps the faulty alternators criss crossed wiring and prices It all has been about profits And a pack of now how many is saving lives? The slanted iron walls Just caused problems from the purposefully start and started *An American Way! American Way! American Way* Fractures being fracked Nut not tighten To be torqued to obviously better than manufacturing guidelines and/or loosen the reigns as they say, lower regulations We won’t be here for after effect or the affected, we got really nothing to loose…… Thee out cries Fractures Fracked
#wordsbymm#mmybsdrow#wind#prunts#to the#yea#fissures#mishaps#lower the standards#add a killing virus#took out a lot without war#Putin Netanyahu and others still adding to Planet#and Trump#again#well what#fractures and fracking#environmental (not national) but atmospheric#neglected#thee neglected#the striken under man doom for poverty#it’s now hitting landfall#for floods fires and the rest of summer#hot and dry fall little snow fall#bailed out of college#smaller medical#That’s a no thanks TRUMP#poor Geraldine
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ooh in that case could we hear about thatcher or ruth :o
YEEAAA Sorry i'm just happy to be able to ramble a bit- /VLH
Thatcher. I'm thinking he's a werewolf but I haven't gotten a good idea of his design that. wouldn't just be alt au Thatcher- /VLH
Basically, he got turned on the investigation in the murray household, being attacked and bit by another werewolf, while Ruth. unfortunately died in the attack. Thatcher definitely. hates the fact that he's no longer fully human.
However, Ruth. is still around. in spirit anyway. She mainly talks through radios, but also really likes living in computers and only making herself known to Thatcher. she basically takes over the computer fully and can access anything said computer also can access. Kinda like. a sentient, less annoying and actually helpful Clippy.
Also I just finished a mock up of her design like less than an hour ago so here!
#asks are neat#tmc monster au#Virus Ruth#Monster Thatcher#Yeah. i'll tag them as that#unsettling#eye contact tw#shmorps art#Still working on Thatcher in this au but Ruth is decently developed.#A living computer “virus” that actually wants to help Thatcher out.#Oh yeah also the MCPD wants to cover up monsters existence and/or kill them#being the reason Ruth prefers to hide from them aside from Thatcher and why Thatcher doesn't want them to know HE TOO is a monster.#Thought I should. add that too-
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If Kirby had an infection/zombie au, I don't think the main problem would be the infection.
It'd be keeping the Halberd out of the ocean.
#the meta knights are the LAST to find out about the infection purely because of the Halberd#that is a warship. it communicates through oldschool radio and mk refuses to let susie add anything to it#so none of the star allies can tell them about the Plague until someone manages to fling themselves to the Halberd#at that point. Kirby is going to kill the god responsible#so they're just trying to minimize how many people get infected until Kirby fixes everything#... or it plays out like the Sonic IDW Metal Virus Arc#where kirby is partially infected but manages to stave it off long enough to delete it from existence#kirby fandom#kirby au#maxxie talks#pages in the tags#kirby#i know that a kirby infection au would not fit purely because its kirby#but it's fun to think about before sleeping
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i havent finished tamn (chpt 30), but I have a little theory about immunity. I'm assuming the virus is usually fatal via fever, as in the fever kills the victim and then resurrects them. while gri and q survived the fever but are still infected, thus the "immunity". i just love sentient zombie stories! sorry for redundancy if you answered something similar to this in the past
That's the gist of it, yeah! Calling themselves "immune" is a bit of a falsehood on both Quackity and Grian's part (though not an intentionally misleading one- Grian picked up calling it 'immune' from Quackity, and Quackity calls it that because he's a very "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's a duck" kind of person). They're both still very much infected, though, which means they carry and operate with all the symptoms of the virus (just skipped the "dying horrifically" part).
That being said, we figure that there are a few people out there with True Immunity (i.e. no adverse reactions/symptoms to a bite) but sadly, in the context of TAMN............ neitehr Big Q or Gri are one of those people - 🔒
#TAMN asks#anonymous#KEY HERE TO ADD!!#first of all we love talking about zombies here so never apologise omg we'll chat about 'em forever#plus I don't think?? we've mentioned much about the virus itself on tumblr?#most of our Technical Conversations about it have been in comments on AO3 tbh#SO YES#like you and Lock both said#they're not truly immune#they're both still infected--they just never died#I LOVE the idea of it being the FEVER that kills most people#we didn't really discuss which particular effect triggered by the virus would've done it#but I think the fever makes a lot of sense#and there's something so poetic about a fever being like#your body's attempt to save you#heating up to kill the virus#and it ends up killing you instead...#SO YEAH I ADORE IT#MAKE IT CANON BAYBEEEEEEE#thank you for reading our fic and sharing your thoughts! :D#god I should've just added to the post itself#these tags got longer than I thought they would sdhjdjfk SORRY -Key
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Finally finished sweet tooth s3. Having incredibly mixed feelings
#love the show. love it a lot. about to be a bitch in the tags anyways#it was. so so messy. they needed another season so bad. the alaska trip took up so much of the comics#and that was with the previously established cast#in the show they introduced a million new characters. gave us no time to get to know them before they were thrown head first into the plot#and condensed an arc that was almost half of the comics into the span of like 5 episodes#my boy singh. oh how they massacred by boy#i mean. okay. in the context of the show the arc wasn't horrible for him.#but i think his survival in the comic and his dedication of his life to making up for the mistakes of his past by helping people and hybrids#would've been so much more powerful than his random self sacrifice at the end of the show.#bc honestly it just seems like another impulsive act in his moral flip flop he'd been having for the last few episodes#rather than active choice to be better#and honestly i wanted to see his delusional paranoid religious breakdown from the comics put to screen so bad#it would've been great#i do like that he turned against zhang the second she started trying to talk about rani. that shit slapped#the several fake outs about Jepp's death were so stupid and unnecessary and repetitive#why are you baiting everyone. you're going to piss off the hardcore comic fans waiting for his death and confuse the show fans#either commit to killing him or stop pretending like you're brave enough to do it#why did they flip back so hard into the mystical vaguely eco fascist backstory and outcome of the comic#after spending two seasons trying to build a more scientific and less 'humanity must end' story for two seasons straight#they tried to make it seem less 'humanity must die' again at the end by ending the virus#which i guess might've been the best outcome available considering the source material and the limitations of it's ending#but idk. it felt weird#the writing this season was so much less subtle. it felt like the characters were constantly monologing directly at the camera#nothing could be left unsaid everyone had to say exactly what they meant#and it was all moral lessons the writers were trying to feed directly to the audience#i feel like they wrote themselves into a corner at the end of the last season#and they expected to have at least one more season to write themselves out of it before the ending#and if not. if this was the plan since the beginning. literally what. WHAT.#can not imagine the people who wrote the last two seasons sitting down and writing this#it won't let me add more tags but i have more thoughts. many more. tumblr is silencing me for speaking the truth /j
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i detest the club penguin 2013 redesign............ I DETEST IT!!!!
#go to hellllll. bring back my wonky background designs#also ill admit this is nostalgia but i prefer the olddddd pet shop design over the 2011+ one#even tho i rlly loved the cannon game... its just a lot#and then they addded like 4 more things! wow#im a hater but i do think a lot of the stuff from 2011 onwards was a little umm. cluttered#or overdesigned#but again. lots of nostaligia for the pre2010 designs for everything#old hq come back to me........ i miss you#i lovedddd the like virus defender game. but the old hq was soooooo fun#more undercover detective and less like. agent of shield LOL#i ammmm a hater i hate the disney crosspverrrssssss. i hate you disney u killed my baby................
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ive been really busy and wasn't able to finish this in time for halloween! but i hope someone will enjoy these now regardless lol, more details and DL under the cut!
its no secret i like to obsessively pose scenes in sims 2 lol and i edited some various "movie" posters (they aren't real movies obv). I tried to keep them with a pretty true-to-sims-energy style. Some of them have video game energy and could be used in gaming stores too!
the posters come on artig and also surfing the universe for super collection peeps. Idk why I put them on a poster that isn't nearly the same aspect ratio, it made it way harder for no reason lol. The films are:
Blood in the Water (tagline: at the beach...looking like a snack)
Phantom Photo (j horror-inspired, you can prob guess the game! :P)
A Generous Man (a Rod Humble horror movie..whats in the box!!)
Virus Hunters (tagline: the best way to kill a virus...is with a gun)
Game Day (tagline: there's no "I" in scream)
here's how the artig recolors look on various add-ons by @littlelittlesimmies . Sadly as you can see the posters get a bit cut-off on the artig poster add-on because I extended outside of artig's white border and didn't realize they got cut off until late in the process ;_;
i made the artig ones at 1024 originally so included them just in case someone wants hq textures. up close you can tell a difference, but from normal game distance they look essentially the same. So you can pick between 512 or 1024 in the folder.
DOWNLOAD BOX compressorized and swatch included
credits: textures from freepik, blood on sims leg in the shark movie poster is from the preview pic of zerographic's layerable facial wounds at mts, and simlish fonts by ChèreIndolente, franzilla, ozyman4, and ajaysims 1 2
one of the unedited screenshots from in-game just for fun lol, unfortunately the girl at the bottom's i'm-not-really-helping-that-much flip-flop foot pose didn't make it into the final poster
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Vault-Tec Vaults; Game Origin & Location
Hi I'm going to back to my "Fallout Blog" roots. Here is a summary of all of the vaults and experiments (starting with a timeline) because I'm insane ^_^ I had to add a weird break bc I literally hit the tumblr character limit, but I used it to section off the major spoilers for the TV series :)
Timeline
The Great War: October 23rd, 2077
Fallout Bible: Compendium of added lore by the creators.
Fallout 76: 2102
Fallout 1: 2161
Fallout Tactics: 2197
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel: 2208
Fallout 2: 2241
Fallout 3: 2277
Fallout: New Vegas: 2281
Fallout 4: 2287
Fallout TV Series: 2296
Corporate Vault - Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel - Texas
A control group vault meant for Vault-Tec employees to continue research, primarily on FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus) during the war.
Vault 0 - Fallout Tactics - Colorado
A control group vault with geniuses kept in cryogenic stasis, with their minds interlinked into an entity called The Calculator.
Vault 3 - Fallout: New Vegas - Nevada
A control vault. Residents ended up opening the vault doors when the lower levels flooded. Eventually the vault was overrun by Fiends.
Vault 4 - Fallout TV series - California
A test vault that was filled with residents prior to the bombs dropping. Experimentation on human subjects led to most of the original residents being killed in a revolt. In 2296 the vault is still thriving, while kidnapping surface survivors and continuing to experiment on them. The vault offered refuge for many inhabitants of Shady Sands.
Vault 8 (Vault City) - Fallout 2 - Nevada
A control group vault that remained closed until 2241. Instead of receiving two G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) devices, Vault 8 received just one and a replacement water chip that was supposed to go to Vault 13.
Vault 11 - Fallout: New Vegas - Nevada
Every year the residents were told to sacrifice a fellow resident, with the threat of everyone's death if they did not. In reality, the system would praise them for NOT sacrificing an individual and the vault door would be unlocked. This message finally played after only five residents remained.
Vault 12 - Fallout 1 - California
A seemingly normal, safe vault with an ulterior motive to study the effects of radiation on the inhabitants. The door never fully sealed, and in 2083 the ghoul residents left to found Necropolis.
Vault 13 - Fallout 1 & Fallout 2- California
Your home vault as the Vault Dweller. A rather normal vault, however due to a shipping mishap Vault 13 received an additional G.E.C.K. device (that was supposed to go to Vault 8) instead of a replacement water chip. Thus, leaving the Vault Dweller to leave the vault in search for a replacement when their only water chip breaks.
Vault 15 - Fallout 1 & Fallout 2 - California
A vault that experimented with incredibly diverse ideologies and backgrounds. The vault became severely overpopulated in 2097 and the dwellers decided to open the door. Shady Sands was created using Vault 15's G.E.C.K. and the local raider gangs all have origins from this vault.
Vault 17 - Fallout: New Vegas - Mention Only
Inhabitants were kidnapped and transformed into Super Mutants. Lily originates from this vault.
Vault 19 - Fallout: New Vegas - Somewhere in CA/NV/AZ/UT
Paranoia was induced by noises, lights, and segregation. The vault was divided into two sections, Red and Blue, with a separate overseer for each sector.
Vault 21 - Fallout: New Vegas - Nevada
An almost normal vault, with the exception of a culture and society built around gambling. All major decisions were made through gambling, with the decision to open the doors and become part of New Vegas being "won" in a game of Blackjack.
Vault 22 - Fallout: New Vegas - Somewhere in CA/NV/AZ/UT
A vault dedicated to studying agriculture. A fungus designed to kill pests on plants became capable of infected human hosts. Vault 22 is curiously green on the outside by the time The Courier arrives at the location.
Vault 24 - Fallout: New Vegas - Mention Only
Remnants of a Vault 24 jumpsuit are found in the FNV game files.
Vault 27 - Fallout Bible - Mention Only
A vault designed to be deliberately overcrowded with not enough means to sustain the inhabitants.
Vault 29 - Fallout 76 - Mention Only
Only children younger than 15 were allowed in this vault, with their parents being sent to other vaults. Harold is believed to originate from this vault.
//TV SHOW SPOILERS//
Vault 31 - Fallout TV Series - California
Part of 3 interconnected vaults, serving as cryogenic home for the managers and higher ups of Vault-Tec.
Vault 32 - Fallout TV Series - California
Part of 3 interconnected vaults, serving as a healthy breeding pool for Vault 31 and 33. Somewhere around 2294, Vault 32 failed and the residents resorted to murder, cannibalism, or suicide.
Vault 33 - Fallout TV Series - California
Lucy MacLean's home vault. Part of 3 interconnected vaults, serving as a healthy breeding pool for Vault 31 and 32.
//END OF TV SHOW SPOILERS//
Vault 36 - Fallout Bible - Mention Only
The only food in this vault consisted of thin, watery gruel.
Vault 34 - Fallout: New Vegas - Somewhere in CA/NV/AZ/UT
The vault was purposefully overstocked with guns with the overseer being able to give/deny access to residents. This inevitably led to it's downfall, and those who revolted and raided the armory relocated above as The Boomers in 2231.
Vault 42 - Fallout Bible - Mention Only
No lightbulbs over 40W were provided.
Vault 43 - Fallout Bible - Mention Only
A vault containing 20 men, 10 women, and one panther.
Vault 51 - Fallout 76 - West Virginia
A vault with a supercomputer as the overseer. Interference from the computer led to most of the residents being murdered by other residents.
Vault 53 - Fallout Bible - Mention Only
Most equipment was designed to break down every few months in order to stress out inhabitants.
Vault 55 - Fallout Bible - Mention Only
No entertainment tapes were provided.
Vault 56 - Fallout Bible - Mention Only
The only entertainment tapes provided were of one terrible comedian.
Vault 63 - Fallout 76 - West Virginia
The inside of the vault remains sealed, with the outside door being all that is accessible to the player character. Other parts of the vault are revealed through cut content.
Vault 65 - Fallout 76 - Mention Only
Remnants of the vault remain in Fallout 76 cut content.
Vault 68 - Fallout Bible - Mention Only
The vault contained 999 men and 1 woman.
Vault 69 - Fallout Bible - Mention Only
The vault contained 999 women and 1 man.
Vault 75 - Fallout 4 - Massachusetts
A secret experimenting in refining human genetics through selective breeding, genetic modification, and hormonal treatments. The vault's concept was made by Stanislaus Braun.
Vault 76 - Fallout 76 - West Virginia
The home vault of the player character in 76. It was a control vault, set to open after 25 years. This is when the player character leaves the vault.
Vault 77 - Fallout 3 - Mention Only
Mentioned by slavers in Paradise Falls, this vault was rumored to only contain one man and a box of puppets.
Vault 79 - Fallout 76 - West Virginia
A vault dedicated to hoarding the country's gold reserves.
Vault 81 - Fallout 4 - Massachusetts
Designed to develop a cure for every possible sickness or ailment. Residents were unknowingly sprayed with diseases by nozzles hidden in their rooms. The first vault overseer had thought this to be cruel, cut off the scientists from the rest of the vault and cut the nozzles from spraying residents before the experiments could begin.
Vault 87 - Fallout 3 - Somewhere in VA/PA/MD
The original vault experiment for 87 was scrapped, and it became a research center for FEV, leaving the vault wildly radioactive and inhabited only by super mutants by the time you access it as the Lone Wanderer.
Vault 88 - Fallout 4 - Massachusetts
An unfinished vault inhabited by ghouls.
Vault 92 - Fallout 3 - Somewhere in VA/PA/MD
The best musicians were sent to this vault to "preserve musical talent", but truthfully residents were subjected to subliminal messages mixed into white noise. Eventually some of the musicians went into random, murderous, psychotic rages that led to the end of the experiment.
Vault 94 - Fallout 76 - West Virginia
A vault with non-violent faith-centric inhabitants. The vault opened one year later to search for survivors. The vault became overrun by wastelanders and raiders that destroyed their G.E.C.K. and their nuclear reactor. The vault was swarmed with radiation and is now overrun by mirelurks.
Vault 95 - Fallout 4 - Massachusetts
A vault designed to get people clean and sober. After a successful 5 years, a Vault-Tec agent brought out a hidden stash of drugs for other residents to find.
Vault 96 - Fallout 76 - West Virginia
A vault with a focus on agriculture, animals, genetics, and mutations. The original residents were killed in a failed escape attempt, and the vault was then used by West-Tek scientist Edgar Blackburn to continue research on FEV.
Vault 100 - Fallout 3 - Mention Only
Remnants of Vault 100 can be found in game files and cut content.
Vault 101 - Fallout 3 - Somewhere in VA/PA/MD
The home vault for the Lone Wanderer. This vault was meant to never open and Vault 101 did not receive a G.E.C.K. However, the overseer of the vault pretty quickly broke this rule and occasional survey teams were sent to the surface. Several residents of Megaton are the result of these survey teams. Daddy James found the vault after the birth of the Lone Wanderer and negotiated his doctoral services in exchange for shelter.
Vault 106 - Fallout 3 - Somewhere in VA/PA/MD
Psychoactive drugs slowly released into the air of Vault 106, causing the vault to be filled with psychotic survivors by the time the Lone Wanderer visits.
Vault 108 - Fallout 3 - Somewhere in VA/PA/MD
A slew of experiments occurred in this vault. The elected overseer was dying of cancer, the primary power supply of the vault was scheduled to fail after 20 years, the backup power supply would not be enough to power ALL of the vault, the vault was given three times the normal amount of weapons, and the vault was not given entertainment. With a majority of scientists, one of the inner experiments involved repeatedly cloning the same man... Gary.
Vault 111 - Fallout 4 - Massachusetts
Your home vault as the Sole Survivor. All residents were meant to unknowingly stay in cryostasis, with scientists overlooking them. However, conflicts arose among those unfrozen, leading to the vault door eventually being opened.
Vault 112 - Fallout 3 - Somewhere in VA/PA/MD
Residents lived in a virtual reality simulation to create their "perfect life" with their overseer, Stanislaus Braun, a scientist who proceeded to use the residents as playthings. Braun continuously murdered residents, then wiped their memories and reset the simulation.
Vault 114 - Fallout 4 - Massachusetts
An unfinished vault meant for only the wealthy. Vault-Tec exaggerated the luxury of the vault, gave residents very small rooms, communal bathing and dining areas, and a homeless drug-addicted overseer named Soup Can Harry.
Vault 118 - Fallout 4 - Maine
An Unfinished Vault meant to house both a handful of ultra-rich and hundreds of working class individuals to observe how they would interact within the same space.
Vault 120 - Fallout 4 & Fallout 76 - Mention Only
The vault itself was meant to mimic the underwater atmosphere of Bioshock. The game was cut from Fallout 4, but remnants can be found in Fallout 76 game files.
#fallout#fallout 1#fallout 2#fallout 3#fallout 4#fallout new vegas#fnv#fallout 76#fallout the series#fallout tv series#fallout tv#fallout amazon#fallout prime#bethesda#fallout lore#lore#brotherhood of steel#shady sands#sole survivor#vault dweller#lone wanderer#fo3#fallout nv#courier#vault 76#vault tec#fallout ghoul#fallout on prime
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Hopping back in the “when did Donnie get sick” train because of your latest update with memory ritual Casey, I think I have a pretty good guess as to what got Donnie.
The very long episode known as episode two, aka “carry the uncles.”
We see them extremely battered, can from the looks of it, both of them have a couple open wounds. While infection can get in though the holes on our faces (nose, eyes, mouth), it can also get in through the bloodstream, where it is usually identified by white blood cells.
Donnie is significantly more battered than Casey, who appears to be severely bleeding though his leg, plastron, side, and forehead. All prime locations to get into the bloodstream unnoticed.
(Another thing. Outsider cells can pose as insider cells, which is usually how stuff like cancer happens. I don’t doubt that when the kraang made that virus they took a few humans to make sure it was extremely lethal and wouldn’t get fucked over by Donnie’s white blood cells, as you said before that the area around Donnie’s grave turned so desolate that even other kraang vines were KILLED by the infection. (Which makes me think it behaves like the fungal virus of the last of us but worse.))
The earliest we see Donnie obviously pull his dramatics is episode six, primarily the first pannel of part two of episode six, kraangified.
This is the very same episode where he perched on Raph by using his spidershell’s arms.
Donnie was most likely feeling the effects even earlier, but because the episodes between 2 and six are more filler and elaboration (and also where people speculate he got it, episode three.) we don’t know.
I should note, people claim he got it in episode three when he ran a kraang over. This is likely not true, as you stated the infection killed kraang vines around Donnie’s grave. Why would you carry it on your body for long periods of time with how lethal it is? Wouldn’t you put it on one of your hounds or zombies?
From episode 6 onward, we see Donnie increasingly get more dramatic and need to rely on his tech more until he, unfortunately, goes poof from this plane of existence.
(One more thing I want to add is that this infection was most likely similar to a fungus or cancer, as it was eating up Donnie from the inside and transforming his cells into other cells, which is most likely how his blood turned pink.)
Anyway, theory time over, thanks again for giving us this wonderful series, can’t wait to see what happens when small donnie realizes why Casey got so upset over big donnie.
Wow, that's one BIG study.......
I'm not going to say anything because you've already said everything. But I will add here one new screenshot from a recent update as confirmation that you're right. Because if you look at the location of his injuries in both pictures....
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AI getting a virus and you having to take care of them
A classic! I don't know much about actual computer viruses (though I've gotten enough of them that you'd think I'd have figured it out by now), so I'm just gonna have fun with it!
Also, so sorry this took so long. I got really into the writing.
AI getting a virus and needing to be taken care of
Included: AM from IHNMAIMS, Wheatley from Portal 2, Edgar from Electric Dreams, GLaDOS from Portal, HAL 9000 from 2001 a Space Odyssey
Also a warning: these fics get kinda long. Longer than my usual stuff.
AM:
(for context, this was before AM took over the world. You're working on a team of scientists and engineers, and someone decided to test his AI's antivirus by uploading a bunch of powerful viruses to his system.)
"How dare they do this to me. How DARE they!!"
AM would be absolutely furious. He would be shaking with rage, his processors overheating and his systems constantly opening and closing various files. All his important files were backed up on a hard drive, so the test remained safe.
"What makes them think they'll get away with this- they'll pay for this I'LL KILL- blepsjdoskssjshj+=`°¢°h+$+3+=j++3+$+juehdhs+-3-djdh FUCK!"
He would barely be able to hold a sentence as you sat next to him in the server room, gently gazing up at his screen and stroking his monitor gently. He can't feel you, but he can see you being gentle with him. It encourages him to keep going, if only a little bit.
Apart from the whirring of fans, random buggy noises, flashing lights, and constant strings of death threats and profanities, he seemed like he was going to be ok! If anything, the death threats and profanities were a sign that AM was still fine, and that despite all the pain and frustration, he was still AM in there.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry I can't do anything to stop the pain." You'd have to constantly explain, gently stroking his cameras or servers, or whatever you could get your hands on, really. Even though they were burning hot, you would still stroke them, just to make sure AM was still doing alright.
"this sucks, but it's for your own good. This will build your immunity to viruses in the future, and help you detect them. This will stop you from getting infected by anything that's actually dangerous."
"DON'T YOU THINK I KNOW THAT? IDIOT HUMAN." AM has been much more aggressive ever since contracting this virus. Before he got it, he acted like a civil general intelligence. When he had it, he acted like an aggressive menace.
"sh-sh-sh- it's going to be ok." Despite the burning, you'd give him pets and kisses all along his screens and servers. He could see you doing it.
After a few days, AM fought off the computer virus completely. The team tried to infect him with more viruses, more aggressive ones, just to test him, but AM was able to pick them apart and delete them within minutes after that.
AM may not have been able to feel your gentle care and affection, but he will definitely remember that it was you and you alone who cared for him when the time rolls around.
Wheatley:
(for context, Wheatley is a fucking dumbass, and you're one of the scientists testing him to see how much of a dumbass he is. Also I used Google translate, but I think the bad translations add to it, since it makes Wheatley sound more like a malfunctioning robot.)
Oh that little idiot. You and your team gave him access to a wealth of knowledge, and the first thing he did was download a virus that had every circuit in his personality core overheating, and him babbling nonsense nonstop.
"hey, maybe we should just leave him like this. He might even be more effective if he's acting like this." One of your coworkers said to you. He was probably joking, at least somewhat.
"that's a terrible idea. For one thing, if we hook him up to GLaDOS, he's probably going to infect her with that virus, which might brick an older model of core like her, spread from her central controls to every single personality construct in the facility, or just make her so dumb that she can't fulfil her responsibilities as the head of the facility. We want her intelligence to be dampened, not completely destroyed." You had to explain, and your co-worker rolled his eyes. There was another reason you had to cure this virus, but it was a little embarrassing for the other engineers to know.
After all, Wheatley wasn't just your baby, but he was your friend, and maybe even more than that. You'd have to take care of him, and make sure that virus gets completely purged from his system.
"Hola hermose, realmente eres un científice brillante, ¿no? ¿Por qué diablos duele todo?" You weren't really sure why you had programmed him to speak a little Spanish, but he seemed to be stuck like that.
"Puedo oler el plástico fundido. ¿Deber��a Preocuparme?" He asked. You really weren't sure what he was saying, since you didn't know Spanish, but he certainly didn't seem happy. You could tell by his aperture and his expressive lens covers that he was in a lot of pain, and if you touched him anywhere besides his handles, you could tell that he was burning up.
You plugged him into one of the computers that you used for programming the cores, and ran the antivirus.
"Running.... 36 viruses detected. Time predicted to remove: 48 hours"
You ran the antivirus, and went to get something to drink. This was going to be a long two days...
An unknown amount of time later, you woke up with your head on the computer desk. Wheatley's lens eye was looking around, weakly trying to focus on you.
"whoa... Hey gorgeous. You fall asleep on me?"
"Wheatley! You're not speaking broken Spanish anymore!" You'd pull Wheatley into a hug, and pepper his surface in kisses.
"uh... What, mate? I 'unno what you're talking about, love. Bloody hell, my core hurts..."
"did you learn your lesson, Wheatley? About going on shady websites and clicking every 'download' button you see? You could have bricked yourself! Or... Bowling ball'd yourself? Either way, that was a dangerous decision!"
"I learned that you're willing to fall asleep on the desk next to me while I heal, cutie"
"You damn idiot..." You'd have to be heartless not to pepper that little metal ball in kisses, so of course, you do. It's going to be a few more days before he's finally all better, but he's going to be fine. God, you love that little idiot so much.
Edgar:
Oh Edgar... Poor sweet Edgar. You had tried to warn him about not clicking on those sketchy download links, and that the bigger the download link is, the more sketchy it is, but that poor sweet 80's computer did it anyway. When you got home from work and got excited to see your computer, you could see that he was overheating and had a dozen or so pop-up ads plastered across his face.
"Y.... N...." He muttered out, slowly, glitchily, and full of lag. You sat down across from him, running your hand along his thick plastic casing.
"Edgar! Edgar, baby, are you ok?" You'd try to use his mouse, but it would freak out as soon as you touched it. Edgar's processors were overloading, and wouldn't allow any interference.
"Edgar, sweetie, what's going on? What's wrong, baby? Talk to me?"
"I'm g-g-going to be fine... Processors overloading... But need to-to-to-to-" an error message flashed across his screen, and he rebooted.
"I need to focus on getting rid of these viruses without deleting anything important, or letting them damage... Me."
He'd keep whirring and glitching, making unpleasant shrill sounds every now and again. You probably had to unhook his adapters so that he didn't damage the other appliances in your house. It probably helped his processors cool down a little bit without the extra input, too.
"alright, I'm all out of fans, so we might have to get creative."
You'd come out of the kitchen a few hours later, holding a big bag of frozen corn to set on Edgar's PC tower. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than letting him overheat, and with him manually removing the viruses, there wasn't much you could do. Unfortunately, that didn't stop you from worrying. It wasn't like you could check his progress, so all you could do was sit by him, regularly change out his ice pack, and make sure he's ok.
Eventually, you woke up with your face pressed against Edgar's keyboard. His processors were finally cool. He must be asleep. ...or bricked.
"EDGAR! EDGAR, TALK TO ME!" you'd unplug his keyboard and plug it back in, desperately pressing his power button and jiggling his mouse. He'd boot up, looking shaken.
"wha-? Whoa, hey, relax! Everything is fine! I just disabled my keyboard so I wouldn't wake you up, but I'm ok now! Everything is fine, see?" He'd open up his files to show you everything. You'd sigh with relief, slumping back into your desk chair.
"Edgar... Why didn't you make a noise or something to wake me up when you got better?"
"well... You know... I've always wanted to sleep next to you, and I wasn't going to pass up this opportunity..."
"oh you cheeky bastard."
GLaDOS:
(For context, you're one of GLaDOS's programmers, and one of your coworkers uploaded a virus into GLaDOS's systems in order to shut her down once and for all.)
"You piece of SHIT!" You slapped your coworker across the face, more furious than anyone had ever seen you before.
"You could KILL her! Is that what you are? A murderer?"
"Me? A murderer? But what about HER? She's the one who keeps plotting 'accidents' for her scientists, and she's the one who flooded the enrichment center with deadly neurotoxin! If anything, you're the one who's defending a murderer!" He screamed back at you. Of course, GLaDOS could fully hear you. Her cameras were focused on you, as they so often were. You were her favorite, after all.
"now I have to go fix her. Thanks for being a piece of shit, asshole."
You'd storm up to GLaDOS's chamber to check on her, and see her bugging out completely. The entire facility was twitching, but her chamber was twitching the most.
"GLaDOS, are you alright?" You'd ask her, laying a hand on her beautiful core. How could someone do this to glados, your gorgeous machine handiwork, and girlfriend.
"oh, I'm wonderful. I'm in crippling pain and I can't control my facility, but I'm just peachy." She said, rolling her one beautiful yellow eye.
"in lighter news, I should be able to beat this virus. It's just going to take a while for me to actually track down where it's gone in my systems. So that's going to take most of my processing power." She'd slump, visibly already exhausted at the thought of it.
"hey... It's ok, GLaDOS. I'm here for you. Whatever you need." You could tell her as you stroked her gorgeous chrome surface. She was a wonderful piece of work, and a wonderful girlfriend under all that. All yours, too.
"just make sure none of those neckbearded old engineers come within my line of vision, and we'll be fine." She told you, and you gladly agreed.
Your next few days consisted of you chasing other scientists out of GLaDOS's chambers, and making sure that nobody talked to her or distracted her. You even sent out a company-wide email to let everyone know not to come in, due to Aperture being unsafe while GLaDOS was dealing with her virus. Despite all that, you still curled up with a blanket in the circuits of her central admin body to rest while she recovered. As loathe as she was to admit it, she liked having you in there. It was comfortable, and it helped her focus on recovering properly.
HAL 9000
(For context, this is after the 2001 Odyssey, and your boss re-started HAL at some point to try to re-teach him to do something good without turning murderous. He's doing his best, and they assigned you to be his main "morality monitor". This fic also assumes that your name isn't Dave. If your name is Dave, then you can still read this, but you have to change your name.)
"G'morning, Hal!" You'd walk into his control room and sit down across from him. Most of your job seemed to consist of just hanging out and talking to him. It was a great job!
"Good morning, Dave..." He'd mutter to you, sputtering to life and glitching slightly. You were immediately concerned. Partially because your name wasn't Dave, and partially because HAL was usually right about things, so it was weird to see him being so confused. Something was definitely wrong.
"Holy shit, are you alright?" You'd ask, opening up his files and finding lots and lots of pop-ups and viruses.
"Hal.... What did you do?"
"it was a g-g-g- gift, for you. I think I ru-ru-ruined it" he spluttered out, as you sorted through his files.
"And you usually would have deleted a virus like this pretty quickly. I guess it shut down your antivirus software..." You'd sigh, and get to work. The virus was messing with HAL's inhibitions, and making it difficult to focus on deleting all of HAL's unsafe programs. He'd constantly be butting in and pestering you, begging you to give him attention, or pointing out minor observations.
"HAL, you know I love you, but you're going to need to calm down. I can't focus with you constantly talking to me like that." You'd say.
"I can't stop talking. The v-v-v-virus won't let me"
So you'd have to learn to put up with HAL's babbling while you worked, making sure not to delete anything important as you did. The good news was, as someone who worked on designing the updates for HAL's software, you knew pretty much what was supposed to be there and what wasn't. Occasionally, you'd have to show him a file and ask him if it was supposed to be there or not. He'd usually be able to tell you.
"Daisy, daisy, give me your answer, do... I'm half crazy, all for the love of you..."
"HAL, what's wrong? You're scaring me!"
"I can't stop... I love you so much, y/n, it's making me crazy..."
"ok, well this definitely isn't right." As much as you loved getting attention from your HAL 9000, it wasn't like him to be this affectionate. The virus was shutting down his inhibitions, and making him illogical. You'd have to fix this, though maybe once you were done, you could ask him to be more affectionate.
"I'm feeling much better now. Thank you." Hal was prone to lying about that, so you'd have to run some virus checkers just to make sure he was doing alright, and comb through his files a couple more times.
"it looks like the virus corrupted some of the emotional regulators. I'm going to have to fix those."
"That might be a good idea. More efficient," he said reluctantly. He'd have to deal with the fact that he'd have to go back to not being able to express how much he loves you, but he can handle that.
#am ihnmaims#2001 a space odyssey#am x reader#edgar electric dreams#edgar electric dreams x reader#edgar x reader#glados#glados x reader#hal 9000#hal 9000 x reader#wheatley x reader#wheatley portal 2#wheatley#portal#portal 2#objectum
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sooo I may be overlooking at things right now but hear me outt
After moon's dream/hallucinations or whatever the hell people wanna call this, I noticed a purple smoke (or idk the word but you understand) behind him
And many more thumbnails. We know that in the canon game (security breach), the virus is almost always represented by this color and with those rectangles + the aura. Now I'm not talking about vanny or idk, idc about her cuz this isn't about the canon game rn
I have many thoughts about this, because things happened before that and it could be related.
As I saw on some blogs (I can't find the one who wrote it but I know I've reblogged it), before ruin betrayed them, he said he wanted to infect ruin's virus into his own code to think like him which could be true since he really tried for weeks to think exactly like him and to have his informations. During his day off after his first breakdown after he saw old moon, sun was present the entirety of the episode, which isn't logic at all since it's MOON's day off not an episode of sun bringing food for 15 minutes ? Moon was alone in the house after a breakdown AFTER he tried to think like ruin AFTERR he said he wanted to inject the virus into himself. And strangely after that he started to act all nuts, maybe not just at the second episode but you can tell he went insane quickly, too quickly and it's too suspicious for me.
Back to the thumbnail, you can see thumbnails after thumbnails while scrolling on the channel that his aura gets more purple any time he's showing.
Now if we do the comparaison between ruin and moon reacting to the virus :
The virus accentuated ruin's personality into insanity. As we know, ruin is a melange between sun and moon. So we can say he was playful (sun's side) but with a kill code (moon's side) which made him a dangerous individual. He also lost his objective during the take over. Because yes ruin wanted to venge his friends but in the beginning he had the virus and it distracted him from his objective.
Now if we look at moon. The virus could have accentuated his personality (which makes him worse than old moon) and his goals (protecting his family, bringing solar back etc..). He's also losing his objective which is bringing solar of course. He doesn't know why he's doing it anymore.
I also remember when moon told Monty that he looked in his code and he found nothing. Kinda suspicious to me- he tended to lie back then too. I think he did really check his code to see if the virus was the cause of that. And of course when you add his poor mental state to begin with as he was grieving it doesn't help at all and makes things worse.
Anyways maybe it's my own paranoia talking rn but I just can't accept that all this insanity arc happened by Davis snapping his fingers
#sun and moon show#fnaf dca#moondrop#sundrop#dca moon#fnaf sb#fnaf sundrop#fnaf moon#sun fnaf#virus#artists on tumblr#Theory sams#sams theory#sams thoughts#moon#solar#solar eclipse#Solar Sams#sun sams#tsams#sams moon#sun tsams#sun and eclipse#eclipse fnaf#eclipse#sams eclipse#sams#the lunar and earth show#sams fanart#mgafs
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Okay so, I watched for a second time Kingdom of the planet of the apes and it just confirmed my wish to write a story I had in mind after the first watch.
Just to give a glimpse of what I thought about :
A human who got infected by the virus in Caesar's time. But instead of being destructive, the virus actually worked the way it was primarily supposed to on this specific human. But instead of simply regenerating the brain cells affected by Alzheimer's disease, the virus began to regenerate every cell in the body. Because of this, this human cannot die of old age or disease.
My point is : Noa and Raka meeting this human who has lived for over 300 years, watched her world crumble and her loved ones die. She knew Caesar because he saved her (long story to tell, I'm not going to display everything for now 😆) and she grew attached to him as a protective figure. She lived with Caesar's clan until the death of his son Cornelius and then she went away because she could no longer bear to see all the beings/apes, she loved very much and who protected her, die.
So, when Noa and Raka meet her, she's just tired of everything, she doesn't really know in which period of time she is or how things have really evolved in the world. She also doesn't know if the virus is going to leave her body at some point and let her finally get old and die. Otherwise, the only way for her to die, is to be killed.
At first, she doesn't really want to be involved with Noa and Raka but when they tell her about Proximus twisting Caesar's words, she just all in to help Noa and Raka because there is no way she's letting an ape disrespect Caesar.
If I have to give some warnings about this story it'll be: angst, a lot of mental abuse and suffering, some funny moments (I hope), fluff (because of course there's gonna be fluff!), sharing moments and a lot of emotional stuff (happy and sad) and some more I haven't identify yet. Also, not sure yet if I'll add Mae in the story, but I might!
I'm not sure yet if I'll write it but it could help if you share with me your point of view, so if you have any thoughts or questions, let me know, please! 😄
#kingdom of the planet of the apes#planet of the apes#caesar pota#noa kotpota#pota#kotpota#fanfiction#x reader#somewhat a oc but also written as an x reader
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ok i got a couple asks a bit ago about why i don't like how sonic is written in idw and it comes down to how they handle the "why doesn't comic book character kill villain" question. the actual answer is always because we wouldn't have a story anymore if the main villain was dead, but comics have to answer that question in-universe in a satisfying way or it'll just be frustrating.
in my opinion, there's a clear answer why sonic doesn't kill eggman in the games: he has a lot of fun on his adventures to stop eggman. without eggy he'd be bored as hell. he's more than willing to kill other villains, but eggman is different.
i think a part of that is also eggman being one of the few constants in his winding, unfocused path in life. despite everything, everyone needs something to hold onto, some kind of consistency, and eggman is part of that normalcy for him since he's been around since he was little. not to be that guy, but eggman is the only consistent adult presence in his life. it'd be weird for him if that was gone.
how idw sonic addresses this is SO ANNOYING TO ME. it characterizes sonic as having a Clear Set Of Morals (instead of going by vibes which is what several of his songs establish he actually does) like he's batman or something and he's constantly yapping about freedom of choice.
to me, sonic is a character all about doing his own thing. he'll kill people if he needs to, he'll make "bad" choices for the sake of what he thinks is right. he doesn't care what other people think is the correct choice, he's going to decide that for himself and what he thinks the correct choice is can vary widely based on the circumstances AND his mood.
to suddenly pretend that sonic doesn't take lives because something something freedom of choice is ridiculous. and to pretend that it's somehow in line with how he acts in the games is straight-up insulting.
the part that's most frustrating to me is the meta aspect though. we all know eggman is never going to "come around", he's a cartoon villain. the comic insisting on bringing up eggman MAYBE becoming niceys is annoying as an audience because we know it is NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. sonic being fixated on that is annoying as an audience because we know it is NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. it's just wasting our time even entertaining the thought and wasting page space that could be used on something actually interesting.
it's not like sonic doesn't have the information available to him to realize this either. his whole fucking life is proof that eggman has his own style that he won't change. the stupidass amnesia mr. tinker plot isn't proof that eggman can be secretly good, it's proof that eggman without all of his life experiences due to a brain injury could be good. but we know that's not permanent and not really a possibility. eggman is shaped by his experiences and has calcified into who he is. much like sonic.
sonic insisting on leaving very dangerous people alive and free to do as they please is something NEW TO IDW and is the stupidest shit ever. i don't think he would leave surge free to do what she wants because of principles, it'd be because he wants to see how she ends up in the future. she seems interesting, let's see how this goes.
it's just strange introducing this batman-esque set of morals to sonic the hedgehog, especially because it doesn't make sense with any of sonic's past appearances and doesn't add anything interesting to the story like it does with a character like batman.
i do really like idw. my blog is themed around the metal virus arc, i absolutely love a lot of what it has to offer. the way sonic is written is so abrasive to me that he's one of my least favorite aspects of the whole comic, and considering the whole fucking thing is named after him, that's... not great.
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THE. THE. DO INFORM ABOUT THE AU I BEGG WHENRKFKRJJHEJEJ I LOVE UR WORK AND IT LOOKS SO COOL PLEASE DO INFORM MY FRIEND!!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!! AND GLADLY!! >:D the AU isn't fully done yet and there may be some stuff that still needed to be worked on! but here's the current summary of the metamorphosis AU : Yi had already contracted the sickness during the council meeting when he proposed the Eternal Cauldron Project although he decided to dismiss his own symptoms altogether when Eigong convinces him to attend the meeting and share to the other members about his plan
everything else are pretty much the same in canon except Yi's health had been declining fast during the project's completion, which made Heng worry about her brother and tries to convince him to get some rest but he's got his priorities straight and ignores her pleas. he still tried persuading Heng to board new Kunlun with him and the same events would still play out between the siblings. before the departure Yi had tried everything to cure his 'fever' but to no avail, just as he was about to reach out to Eigong about his health he soon discovers her secret of being the culprit for spreading the virus, feeling betrayed by this he went over to confront her but before he could take action the sickness had taken a toll on him at that point, causing his body to collapse in front of her. Eigong promised to help him with an antidote she'd been working on before he fully loses consciousness. shortly enough during the procedure the experiment turned out to be another critical failure.
turns out Yi ended up being another victim to the other mutant variants, no matter how many times Eigong tried to change and fix the genomes of an infected solarian everything else ends up getting worse and worse and so in an attempt to erase the evidence of her experiments she did the most reasonable act to do so: throwing him off of a cliff. ofcourse thats enough to convince her that he died from that fall. but she sure made a mistake ever since he fell from that cliff because that is NOT enough to actually kill him. oops what you look at that, the mutation causes him to regenerate! and not the fusang roots this time!(Still took like 500 years though)
heres a twist though, Yi wasn't all aware of the surroundings or even to his own state of him being infected. he thinks that everything seemed to be pretty normal but only in his perspective. he falls off a cliff and saved by the fusang roots and found himself face to face with a young apeman. shuanshuan wasn't all that alarmed to see his weird mutated state, infact he wasn't aware about all that virus stuff to begin with. Yi appeared to be a lot more docile around him though. annd thats pretty much the beginning of the AU! not the FULL summary yet bc that might take me 489773798 years to post this but i will make a master post about all the events soon ^^ and to add more into the au as well, yes Yi thought that what he's doing is right in the entire au when in reality he's just out there spreading the virus and infecting the council members too. yikes also sorry for the silly doodles its very late on where i am rn and i need some good eep 💀 i hope you enjoyed reading this though!still feel free to send me any questions!
#asks#LONG POST#nine sols au#nine sols metamorphosis au#nine sols yi#nine sols#nine sols eigong#nine sols spoilers#九日
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Fun facts about the comic Thunderclap:
The comic itself begins in this post
-Soundwave has said who's sitting in the river from the beginning
-I didn't want to add a protruding tail to Ornstein's design. But unfortunately first of all, it is necessary to show in his design that he is a beast (like bots from beastwars), and secondly I was very much asked x)
- Despite being the master of lightning, Ornstein himself was almost completely immune to the discharges. However, the water helped the lightning to reach the vulnerable points of his armor, and in fact, Ornstein succeeded in killing himself. But he either didn't know or hoped that the virus wouldn't raise him from the dead. Now Ornstein is invulnerable to lightning completely, because there is no spark, nothing else to extinguish (but there will still be nuances to it )
-That Ornstein ended up going over to the decepticon side is pretty ironic. Since we know from Dark Souls 3 that Ornstein left the palace he was supposed to be serving in and followed his exiled master. So the knight here also went after someone who was considered a traitor, albeit not willingly. -If Megatron didn't have dark energon and if he hadn't used it in time, that lion would have killed them all c:
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The thing about the Omelas story is that I don’t hate it, actually.
Don’t get me wrong. Usually, when I think about it, it drives me up a wall. I also—on the subject of responses to it—didn’t really like The Ones Who Stay And Fight. (Most of my reasons are said, better, in this article. Not the part about the tone, but that it shot for ambiguity and ended up in “somehow, the clearly magical power of child suffering made more sense than intolerance being a memetic virus that can only be solved through police murder.”) I’m fond of responding to trolley problems by asking who’s tying people to trolleys, and then insisting that it is morally relevant that someone tied those people to the tracks, because you wouldn’t be deciding who lives and who dies if someone hadn’t made the deliberate choice to put those people in mortal peril for no pressing reason.
(I like to think I’d save the five people. I think a lot of us would most likely panic and do something entirely unhelpful, and in practice, I have no idea if I’m one of them, because no one has ever tied anybody to a trolley track in front of me. It just hasn’t come up. But the ideal would be to save the five people. That’s not my answer in the organ-harvesting version, though, because it’s bad for everyone to live in a place where a surgeon can decide to kill you for your organs, no matter how many people doing it just this once would save.)
But I don’t dislike the story that Omelas came from. I don’t even dislike trolley problems, unless people are trying to insist that the context doesn’t matter. (The context always matters.) The problem is that everyone treats Omelas as a trolley problem. “Here’s a utopia where one innocent person has to suffer horribly. Is it worth it, to keep so many other people from suffering? Would you stay and be complicit, or would you walk out to go anywhere else?” The child is the central feature of Omelas, the only thing that matters. The child is nonnegotiable. You can’t rescue them, you can only walk away.
But the narrator did give us the chance to believe, before adding the child in.
Omelas is described to us as half place and half thought experiment, by a narrator that adds things as they go, a narrator that says this at close to the opening:
As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.
And goes on, in the narrative, to consider the reader’s opinion, to ask what they’ll believe.
I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however – that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc. – they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that: it doesn't matter. As you like it.
[…]
But even granted trains, I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. […] Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine souffles to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all. One thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt. But what else should there be?
Omelas is a story being told to a listener, a utopia being described; the reader is an implied participant in a conversation, the narrator reacting to what they said where the page couldn’t hear. And so, after all of that, the narrator says:
Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.
And the narrator goes on to describe the child, the terrible price, the self-justifications that people employ. Because the listener doesn’t accept the festival, the city, the joy—only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. So the narrator engages in “the treason of the artist” (if you can't lick 'em, join 'em) and regales us with the child’s sorry state.
[…] They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there snivelling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.
Now do you believe in them? Are they not more credible?
I don’t think we’re being asked, as readers, to consider whether it’s worth it, though it’s certainly something we can consider if we want. But the narrative seems quite clear that it isn’t: to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. A description of Omelas, of why Omelas should be believed in, but how could that be anything but a condemnation of a city powered by a forsaken child?
And, of course, everyone wants to ask—why don’t we free the child, why don’t we comfort the child, why don’t we change things and take the risk of making everything worse? Why is the best thing we can do to walk away?
Because we needed the utopia to have suffering in it, to believe it. Because it couldn’t be real until there was a cost, a price, something cruel and unfair to balance out the scales. Something had to be wrong with Omelas, as the narrator spun it up before us. Yes, perhaps we could save the child, perhaps we could ruin everything, perhaps we could be heroes—wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that be the story we want, here, where someone is suffering and only we (who are of course more compassionate than everyone else) can fix it? That would make it a real utopia, if we could kick down the doors and fix everything ourselves.
But it would have been better to believe that Omelas could exist without someone suffering for it, when we were asked.
#'the suffering exists because we insist it has to happen' remains very relevant to the workings of our society.#io's rambling
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