#also emergency mode

[vickyvicarious]

Something I read recently is that something that showcases Mina's vulnerable state is that she has her hair loose in the presence of everyone, when a woman should have her hair up for every man but for her husband in private.

Yeah, that matches up with my understanding. I believe loose hair was more for children, and adult women in company would have some sort of bun/their hair up somehow. There might be variations in how fancy you get with it for an evening out versus just a low bun at home, but I'm pretty sure it was almost always up.

Mina's not the first one who probably had her hair down in front of multiple men. Obviously, Lucy in the throes of being fed on was not always able to even leave her bed, and likely not able to have her hair up. On the 20th there is mention of it being brushed for her "so that it lay on the pillow in its usual sunny ripples." So we see it there too it seems.

And of course I imagine Mina's hair would be down during the attack in the middle of the night; they were sleeping! Everyone was in their nightclothes. But more notable is the aftermath. When they're eating breakfast, she must still have her hair down, otherwise she wouldn't be able to do this: "Pulling her beautiful hair over her face, as the leper of old his mantle, she wailed out:—"

Concerns about propriety are out of the window for a while. Dracula was driven away just before dawn, and Jonathan says that breakfast will be ready about six-thirty at the start of his entry, so it likely hasn't been much more than a couple hours at most since it happened. That's really not a lot of time at all, and they've all been more focused on planning out what action they are going to take than worrying about hairstyles. Even when they separated for a while, one person always stayed with the Harkers, so they might not have even changed out of their pajamas for this meal. I suspect they did though, just because sitting around in those bloodstained nightclothes wouldn't be comfortable physically or mentally. But still, it seems like most of them probably did a hasty/bare minimum toilette, and tried to stick close to/comfort each other throughout.

[egophiliac]

Have you seen the clips of the Ride Kamens characters' henshin scenes? They're all great, but Kamui's is the best one. I can't believe that he doesn't accidentally choke during it.

I've seen them in the twitter countdown clips, only gotten to a couple in-game though! (I've been playing pretty slowly...I keep getting distracted by the character episodes so I'm only on like...episode 2. :') (right now Saigo has gone off to fight some villains offscreen while Haruma talks to me endlessly about milk and it's GLORIOUS)

that said I do agree it would be very funny if Kamui accidentally swallowed his ring. or maybe not-so-accidentally. this, too, is ~art~ (somehow)

(he would not be the first character to canonically eat a rock though) (Leon my beloved...)

[orangetintedglasses]

( I'm sick (again), so it's time to ramble about how my Vash handles sickness a little bit while the idea is fresh in my head! )

( Vash's immune system is akin to the standard, healthy adult human's-- generally able to fight things off until there's a lapse, like when he's been going nonstop for a while. And while it he will burn it off within a couple days, there are... stages, when he is first getting sick.

Stage 1 is when he realizes he's coming down with something, and can fake his way through it for a little while. He tends to be more flighty during this time, and tries to hide himself away.

Stage 2 is when the fatigue and aches start and his energy drops considerably. If he hasn't found a spot to hide away yet, he will still try, but the standards are much lower. Can get a little delerious, but not common.

Stage 3 is the final and most problematic, because here he can be literally defenseless. The fatigue drags him into a rest period whether he likes it or not, and Vash will enter a sleep state for at least three or four hours to burn off what he can. Unfortunately, he cannot be roused during this time, and his patterns begin to manifest while he's unconscious, sort of cycling out the 'distress' signal the Dependents give off when ill, just a lot weaker.

After that it's generally just sniffles and coughs and a milder fever until the cold is gone. He's fine to do Vash things at this point! )

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Valicer In The Dark -- Fun With Trauma

Hi all -- it's time to talk about my VITD trio again! Specifically, today we're discussing their Traumas! :D Now, "Trauma" in Blades In The Dark refers to a condition your scoundrel picks up when they max out their stress during the course of their adventure -- once they fill up all their stress boxes, they have some sort of mental break, can no longer participate in the rest of the current score, and develop a new specific personality quirk that will haunt them for the rest of the adventures. A character can develop four traumas before they have to be retired from life as a scoundrel (either literally retiring or being thrown into jail as a sacrifice to the Bluecoats). On the plus side, each new trauma is also a chance to earn extra XP -- if your character struggles with the side effects of a trauma during a score, you can mark a point or two of XP for it and level up your character a little bit faster. The book has eight potential traumas for scoundrels to pick up -- Cold, Haunted, Obsessed, Paranoid, Reckless, Soft, Unstable, and Vicious -- but as I've thought about my trio and where I want them to go (and what other systems in the book I'd like to use), I've come up with somewhat more bespoke traumas for them:

-->Alice: Our favorite Cutter actually starts with a trauma -- as I've mentioned before, I looked at the description for the Haunted trauma -- "You’re often lost in reverie, reliving past horrors, seeing things" (pg 14) -- and went "yeah, that pretty well covers her hallucinations of Wonderland." (It's the reason she also gets two starting abilities instead of just one -- trade-off!) As for her next potential trauma, I was initially considering Vicious -- "You seek out opportunities to hurt people, even for no good reason" -- but then decided that perhaps a slightly more logical one would be a tweaked form called Overprotective -- "You make sure everyone knows that what's yours is yours, to the point of violence." Alice is, of course, protective of Victor and Smiler even before she picks up this particular trauma, but afterward, she can get a little overenthusiastic about keeping danger away from them, simply because she doesn't want to lose the people she loves again. That house fire where her family died did a number on her head, after all! The pair probably have to rein her in sometimes to make sure she doesn't accidentally cause them more trouble trying to keep them safe. I don't have a specific scene in mind for what triggers it, but I know it would have to involve Victor and/or Smiler getting hurt and her just letting loose to protect them.

-->Victor: My initial ideas for a trauma for our lovely Whisper were Paranoid -- "You imagine danger everywhere; you can’t trust others" -- as the result of a particularly dangerous score that spooked him badly, or Obsessed -- "You’re enthralled by one thing: an activity, a person, an ideology" -- as the result of him getting a little too much into studying the dangerous magic of Duskwall...but then, while researching the Ritual special ability to figure out how to create new rituals for Victor to use, I found the sample ritual "Portal to the Depths" -- which involves singing an ancient song to open a portal up into the Void Sea, swamping anyone unlucky enough to be in front of it with its dark water filled with mysterious starlight and dragging them into the cold depths. The thing is, whenever someone uses this ritual, along with taking six stress, they must also tick a progress clock called "Seduced By The Leviathan's Song."

Cue me coming up with a scene where Victor, having filled up that progress clock, is with Alice and Smiler at The Docks (yes, this the name of a neighborhood in the city; it is self-explanatory) -- and ends up getting mind-controlled by the song of a nearby Leviathan into nearly walking off one of said docks to either drown or get devoured. Fortunately, this is after the trio have started playing with hypnosis in their private lives, and Smiler and Alice are able to stop him in his tracks by invoking their control over his mind -- but the experience leaves Victor with the custom trauma Phobia -- "You are terrified of a particular person, thing, or place and refuse to be near it." As you might imagine, Victor's terror revolves around the ocean, and he refuses to be anywhere near it if he can -- no more scores involving The Docks for this trio!

-->Smiler: Deciding on any trauma conditions for our cheerful combination Leech/Slide was a bit tricky for me at first -- not only is Smiler a naturally-cheery person who takes a lot of things that would stress out others in stride (see them very casually talking to ghosts in "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of"), they also of course end up in possession of the ability Functioning Vice, which allows them to adjust how much stress they clear when indulging their Vice and makes emptying out that track between scores a lot easier. I really wasn't sure which of the ones on offer would actually fit them --

And then. While reading through the "Changing The Game" section of the book, I stumbled across the "Forgotten Gods" section in "Advanced Abilities and Permissions." Which details what happens when your character opens their mind to a forgotten god -- including access to the ability Glorious Visage, which allows the character to hit everyone in the vicinity with an image of the god's form, costing them three stress and causing everyone around them to at least flee in fear or be paralyzed with dread. The more traumatized the character, the more harm they can do, up to killing a specific person by shattering their mind. I was like "Oooooo, wow, creepy but neat" --

And then I was like "Smiler's already been touched by their god..."

Cue the creation of the custom trauma Vessel -- "Your body is capable of hosting the will of a forgotten god -- and they know it." The way I see this working for Smiler is, the first time they overmax their stress, their god Mar-Mal sees this, is like "!!! Let me help!" and straight-up possesses their body for the rest of the score. Fortunately they do leave once the danger is passed -- helped by Victor and Alice going "It would make us VERY HAPPY if you gave us Smiler back" -- and Smiler recovers from the experience, but the door has been opened in their head, and it's not being shut anytime soon. The trauma automatically gives them access to the customized special ability Joyous Visage -- where Smiler can use Mar-Mal's power to stun people with happiness (it works a bit like the "Hysteria" power in VTMB's version of the Dementation discipline, with people getting completely incapacitated by laughter) -- but every time Smiler uses that power, a die must be rolled. On a six, they use the power safely and only take two stress; on a five through two, they use the power but Mar-Mal takes an interest in the proceedings, forcing them to take three stress; and on a one, Mar-Mal is like "time to take over again!" and possesses their body for the rest of the score. On the plus side, Mar-Mal automatically succeeds at everything they do while in control of Smiler's body (they are a fucking god, after all); on the minus side, when they leave, Smiler has to deal with Level 2 "Post-Possession Exhaustion" harm (because hosting the power of a god is no joke). Smiler has mixed feelings about this whole situation -- on the one hand, they're super excited that they can host the will of their god and not die, but on the other...they are a little scared that maybe, one day, Mar-Mal won't give their body back...

And there we have it -- three lovely traumas for my characters to suffer with! I don't know yet when they'll come into play during all the various stories I have planned, but they are there when I need them! I'm sure the trio are thrilled. XD

[omophagic-beast]

gripping onto consciousness by my fingernails and toes this fine wednesday afternoon

[revvetha]

.

[slowparts]

job making me feel like highkey insane today. i am biting and gnashing through the bars of my prison. i don’t care that im making money let me outttt

[korattata]

meta videogame bullshit my beloved

[gojoest]

i am back home reunited with my cat he meowed so much when i arrived (he’s usually very quiet) and now he wants to lay with me in bed and starts meowing again when i try to leave 😭😭

[greenteacology]

just saw someone post about how pro-Palestine protesters are doing terrible things like "swarming synagogues/hospitals/campus buildings" and i'm just like. do you not see a difference between these things?

protesting outside a synagogue - bad, antisemitic, harasses random Jewish people, falsely equates israel with all Jews

protesting outside of hospitals / university buildings - challenges institutions that hold significant power and should be in support of human rights and freedom, yet have been either silent about i/p or have been vocal in their support of israel

these are incredibly different things. protesting hospitals and universities is important when these institutions are failing to do their jobs.

[look-at-the-stars-tonight]

I'm just slowly falling back in love with marcia

[kutyozh]

"Renée is ne coole Socke" I'm sleep deprived

[luetta]

idk if people on tumblr know about this but a cybersecurity software called crowdstrike just did what is probably the single biggest fuck up in any sector in the past 10 years. it's monumentally bad. literally the most horror-inducing nightmare scenario for a tech company.

some info, crowdstrike is essentially an antivirus software for enterprises. which means normal laypeople cant really get it, they're for businesses and organisations and important stuff.

so, on a friday evening (it of course wasnt friday everywhere but it was friday evening in oceania which is where it first started causing damage due to europe and na being asleep), crowdstrike pushed out an update to their windows users that caused a bug.

before i get into what the bug is, know that friday evening is the worst possible time to do this because people are going home. the weekend is starting. offices dont have people in them. this is just one of many perfectly placed failures in the rube goldburg machine of crowdstrike. there's a reason friday is called 'dont push to live friday' or more to the point 'dont fuck it up friday'

so, at 3pm at friday, an update comes rolling into crowdstrike users which is automatically implemented. this update immediately causes the computer to blue screen of death. very very bad. but it's not simply a 'you need to restart' crash, because the computer then gets stuck into a boot loop.

this is the worst possible thing because, in a boot loop state, a computer is never really able to get to a point where it can do anything. like download a fix. so there is nothing crowdstrike can do to remedy this death update anymore. it is now left to the end users.

it was pretty quickly identified what the problem was. you had to boot it in safe mode, and a very small file needed to be deleted. or you could just rename crowdstrike to something else so windows never attempts to use it.

it's a fairly easy fix in the grand scheme of things, but the issue is that it is effecting enterprises. which can have a looooot of computers. in many different locations. so an IT person would need to manually fix hundreds of computers, sometimes in whole other cities and perhaps even other countries if theyre big enough.

another fuck up crowdstrike did was they did not stagger the update, so they could catch any mistakes before they wrecked havoc. (and also how how HOW do you not catch this before deploying it. this isn't a code oopsie this is a complete failure of quality ensurance that probably permeates the whole company to not realise their update was an instant kill). they rolled it out to everyone of their clients in the world at the same time.

and this seems pretty hilarious on the surface. i was havin a good chuckle as eftpos went down in the store i was working at, chaos was definitely ensuring lmao. im in aus, and banking was literally down nationwide.

but then you start hearing about the entire country's planes being grounded because the airport's computers are bricked. and hospitals having no computers anymore. emergency call centres crashing. and you realised that, wow. crowdstrike just killed people probably. this is literally the worst thing possible for a company like this to do.

crowdstrike was kinda on the come up too, they were starting to become a big name in the tech world as a new face. but that has definitely vanished now. to fuck up at this many places, is almost extremely impressive. its hard to even think of a comparable fuckup.

a friday evening simultaneous rollout boot loop is a phrase that haunts IT people in their darkest hours. it's the monster that drags people down into the swamp. it's the big bag in the horror movie. it's the end of the road. and for crowdstrike, that reaper of souls just knocked on their doorstep.

[ogatas-beloved]

Oh you want my favorite fucking pictures of Amalthea's f/os

I like it when Kotetsu's does This face. This exact one.

I can't find the picture of '98 Wolfwood when he's all snotty and gross when he first meets everyone but that's my favorite of her. Here's second best

Ogata is obvious I like whenever he goes kitty. I also really like that one panel of him using his mouth to load his gun. Not for the same reasons as you obviously I just think it goes so incredibly fucking hard

And Marcille<3 she's precious but I especially like it when she looks so incredibly drained after dealing with everyone. God I really hope Tumblr doesn't make these pictures post single file

I ❤️ WHEN THEY LOOK SILLY 💖💘💝💞💕

[bugfeelings]

Like ok but here's the thing: growth is painful. Growth has been painful for as long as you've been alive to grow. The moment you were born you gained access to all these new senses - smell! touch! taste! sight! - but you also became capable of experiencing hunger, tiredness, pain. It's always going to be more comfortable sticking to the thing you know is safe. But that thing you know is safe is too small to hold you forever, and you have to come out.

[marciliedonato]

so my phone turns 1 today and i was checking it now and it totally glitched like 2 things overlapping out of nowhere so I closed the screen and when I tried to reopen it it only lets me either enter the code or scan my finger and unlock it anyway I can and the the screen is either blurred or there's nothing on it and I cant open anything the buttons don't respond and I cant even turn it off what the actual fuck I'm losing my mind fr

edit: i was able to force turn it off somehow bc it wasn't working and we're back random indian guys on youtube save the day once again