#and then multiply it by many thousands

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 231

doomed timeline

u ever think about how literally every single one of the thousands of aradias that traveled back to fight in the trolls' boss battle was from a doomed timeline where she had to a) watch all her friends die b) process that she was also doomed and c) then power through all that to do a bunch of time travel detective work so that she could advise the alpha iterations of her friends on how to avoid splitting into that doomed timeline in the first place? before traveling to a battle she knew she wouldn't make it out of?

yeah man

[hearty-an0n]

i missed going to live hockey games so much oh my gosh

[anexperimentallife]

Project 2025 would ban anything the far right considers pornography. The far right considers anything queer-positive to be pornography, and they WILL encode that into law if given just a TINY bit more power.

Have queer fanfic (or trad published literature) or pics of your transition, or of two men kissing, saved to your hard drive? If the GOP get their way, you'd be guilty of possession of pornography. Did you share any of it? You'd be guilty of distribution of pornography. Have a sweet coming of age story with a queer protagonist? That'd be child pornography.

Even now, states are trying to make it a crime to be openly queer in public (by, among other things, classifying dressing as the "wrong gender" anyplace kids might see as a sex crime against children). Oh, and Florida tried (and thankfully failed) to impose the death penalty for the above.

This is just one example of the horrors awaiting us if the project comes to fruition.

And the far right is already screaming that any adult who mentions around kids that queer people exist is "grooming" children. Wear your Pride shirt past a playground? You're now a child groomer. Think they won't put that into law if allowed? You're naive.

The GOP currently controls the Supreme Court (which is how they overturned Roe v. Wade) and has a majority in one branch of congress. Imagine what will happen nationwide with the GOP controlling every branch of government, including supermajoroties in both houses of Congress.

Oh, and top GOP officials have also announced their desire to NUKE Gaza, so don't come at me with, "but I can't vote blue because Biden..." Or tell me how you think Gaza would somehow be better off with Trump and the GOP.

In France, the left and center joined together--even though they disagree vehemently on many issues (get two leftists together and they'll have three positions on any issue)--to stop the far right from totally taking over, because the one thing they ALL agree on is that fascists dictatorships are BAD.

Much the same with the UK finally kicking out their own neo-fascist party, the Torries, to install 400 Labour MPs. Not everyone loves Labour's policies, but virtually everyone with a brain cell recognizes that the Torries are fascists, and that FASCISM BAD.

"Every election, they tell us this is the most important election if our lives!" Yeah, because each election over the past several decades has been more important than the one before, until we are now at a tipping point between remaining a fucked up oligarchy with SOME resemblance to freedom, and an outright neo-fascist military dictatorship.

Trump has literally stated publicly his intent to criminalize dissent, use US armed forces against protesters (Kent State, but multiply it by thousands), purge all agencies and stuff them with those personally loyal to him, and use the DOJ to go after anyone he perceives as a threat to his political power, among other things.

And remember the things he did in office, like pulling the teeth of federal workplace protections for queer folks (which Biden reatored).

I don't care if you don't like Biden or Harris. Neither do I. But the alternative is Trump, and anyone telling you not to vote in 2024, or to vote third party, is rooting for Trump, and for Project 2025. Anyone telling you not to vote does not give one single solitary flying fuck about vulnerable populations in the US or anywhere else in the world.

"You're just being an alarmist!" Right. Like I was being alarmist when I predicted the failed Jan 6 coup attempt. Like I was being alarmist when I said the GOP would try to use control over SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Fucking vote.

[luckykiwiii101]

Hello, I am writing to you as a 22-year-old girl who managed to enter the void on the night of May 17 and changed her whole life.

I started my void  challenge in December 2021. It was very difficult for me both physically and psychologically. Because I had an environment that was abusive and violent. And my conditions were very terrible. I had an exam that I couldn't win for 3 years, an alcoholic father who beat me, and a mother who never let up on it. I have lost a lot of things in my life in 3 years, but I have never given up on emptiness. If there are people who are still struggling with the gap, I hope my success story will be a motivation for you.

One morning when I woke up with failure again, I was feeling extremely unhappy and hopeless. But an incident at home during the day made me say, ‘That's enough, I'm going to fuck everything up tonight and wake up in a void.

When I wasn't feeling very sleepy- or even sleepy at all- I lay down on the bed. Because I'm afraid to fall asleep. In order of;

15 min Holotropic breathwork

20 min Silva method

10 min Alpha State meditation

After lying motionless for about 45 minutes, the brown noise started playing. It is very natural that there is a desire to move, to be overwhelmed,to give up in this part. Please continue for your dreams. When the brown noise was playing, I used a single affirmation. 

‘I'm simply deciding that I'm in a void.’

I can't remember how many times I repeated it. After a while, everything became quiet and I felt so peaceful for the first time in my life. I had a 30-page document and I said that everything in there would be manifested.

A day ago, when I had nothing, I now have a house on the Mediterranean coast, a black bmw ix car, a Harvard math degree, an online job where I earn 25 thousand dollars per month by working only 4 hours a day 4 days a week (Dollars are very valuable in the country where I live, and my salary is multiplied by about 30.), I have a beautiful face, body and skin. I also showed that I can ride horses professionally and draw pictures. I confirmed that the apple products, books, cosmetics and skin products in my wishlist are also in my house. I have also declared the person I will meet about 1 year from now and who will become the man of my dreams.

THIS IS AMAZING!!!! I’m so happy that you’re now living your dream life 💗

This is such a good example of showing people that they can truly do anything. Thank you for taking your time to share this 💗

[cripplecharacters]

Disabilities that You Should Consider Representing in Your Writing More… part 1

[large text: Disabilities that You Should Consider Representing in Your Writing More… part 1]

While all disabilities are underrepresented in basically all sorts of media, it’s hard to not notice the trend in what disabilities make up the majority of representation. It’s especially visible when having a blog like this, where we can see what disabilities writers even consider including in their writing, and which ones never come up.

One in four people are disabled. With eight billion people alive it means there’s a lot of disabled people, and a lot of reasons why they are disabled in the first place - but this diversity is rarely represented, even on this blog, and anyone who has been following for a while has probably noticed that fact.

To be blunt: there are disabilities other than “amputee” and “invisibly disabled mobility aid user”. Does that mean that it’s wrong to write either of those? No, and we don’t want to imply that it is. Does it mean that either of these have a lot of good representation? Absolutely not, half of all the amputee characters out there are written by people who don't seem to be even aware they're writing a disabled character. Does it mean that when you are deciding on what to give your character, you should think beyond (or along! people can be, and often are, multiply disabled!) just those two? Absolutely. Disability is a spectrum with thousands of things in it.

This is, simply, a list of common disabilities. This is just a few of them, as this is part one of presumably many (or, at least three as of right now). By “common” we rather arbitrarily decided on “~1% or more” - so at least 1 in 100 people has the disabilities below, which is a lot. Featuring!: links that you should click, sources of the % that are mostly just medical reports and might be hard to read, and quick, very non-exhaustive explanations to give you a basic idea of what these are. 

Intellectual disability (about 1.5%) Intellectual disability is a condition we have written about at length before. It’s a developmental disability that affects things such as conceptualization, language, problem-solving, or social and self-care skills. ID can exist on its own or be a part of another condition, like Down Syndrome, Congenital Iodine Deficiency, or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. This post covers a lot of basic information that you might need. We have an intellectual disability tag that you can look through!

Cancer survivors (5.4% in the US, about 0.55% worldwide) A cancer survivor is a pretty self-explanatory term. There is a lot of types of cancer and some of them are very common while others are very rare, which makes this a very diverse category. Cancers also have different survival rates. While not every survivor will have disabling symptoms, they definitely happen. Most of the long-term side effects are related to chemotherapy, radiation, and other medication, especially if they happened in children. They can include all sorts of organ damage, osteoporosis, cognitive problems, sensory disabilities, infertility, and increased rate of other cancers. Other effects include removal of the affected area, such as an eye, a spleen, breasts, or the thyroid gland, each of which will have different outcomes. Cancer, and cancer treatments, can also result in PTSD.

Diabetes (about 8.5%, ~95% of that are type 2) Diabetes is a group of endocrine conditions that cause hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) for various reasons depending on the type. The vast majority of people have type 2 diabetes, which can cause fatigue, poor healing, or feeling thirsty or hungry. A diabetic person will use insulin when needed to help manage their blood sugar levels. There are many complications related to diabetes, from neuropathy, to retinopathy, and chronic kidney disease, and there's a lot of disabilities that coexist with diabetes in general! You might want to check out the #how to write type 1 diabetes tag by @type1diabetesinfandom!

Disabling vision loss (about 7.5%) Blindness and low vision are a spectrum, ranging from total blindness (around 10% of legally blind people) to mild visual impairment. Blindness can be caused by countless things, but cataracts, refractive errors, and glaucoma are the most common. While cataracts cause the person to have a clouded pupil (not the whole eye!) blind eyes usually look average, with strabismus or nystagmus being exceptions to that fairly often (but not always). Trauma isn't a common cause of blindness, and accidents are overrepresented in fiction. A blind person can use a white cane, a guide dog or horse, or both. Assistive solutions are important here, such as Braille, screenreaders, or magnifying glasses. We have a blindness tag that you can look through, and you might want to check out @blindbeta and @mimzy-writing-online.

Psoriasis (about 2-4%) Psoriasis is a chronic skin condition with multiple subtypes; it can cause intense itching, pain, and general discomfort, and often carries social stigma. It’s an autoimmune and non-contagious disability that affects the skin cells, resulting in raised patches of flaky skin covered with scales. It often (30%) leads to a related condition, psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, tenderness, and fatigue, among other things.

Stroke survivors (0.5-1%) A stroke survivor is a person who has survived any kind of stroke (ischemic, hemorrhagic, etc.). While the specific symptoms often depend on the exact location on where the stroke happened, signs such as hemiplegia, slurred speech, vision problems, and cognitive changes are common in most survivors to some degree. When someone has a stroke as a baby, or before they are born, it can result in cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and other disabilities. We have a brain injury tag that you can look through!

Noonan Syndrome (about 0.1-1% - mild is 1%, severe 0.1%) Noonan Syndrome is a disability that is almost never mentioned in any context, but certainly not around the topic of writing disabled characters. It’s a congenital condition that can cause cardiomyopathy, chronic joint pain, hypermobility, short stature, facial differences such as ptosis, autism, and various lymphatic problems among other things. Some people with Noonan Syndrome might use mobility aids to help with their joint pain.

Hyperthyroidism (about 1.2%) Hyperthyroidism is a condition of the endocrine system caused by hormone overproduction that affects metabolism. It often results in irritability, weight loss, heat intolerance, tremors, mood swings, or insomnia. Undertreated hyperthyroidism has a rare, but extremely dangerous side effect associated with it called a thyroid storm, which can be fatal if untreated.

Hypothyroidism (>5%) Hypothyroidism is an endocrine condition just as hyperthyroidism is, and it causes somewhat opposite symptoms. Due to not producing enough thyroid hormones, it often causes fatigue, depression, hair loss, weight gain, and a frequent feeling of being cold. It’s often comorbid with other autoimmune disabilities, e.g. vitiligo, chronic autoimmune gastritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Extreme hypothyroidism can also be potentially fatal because of a condition known as Myxedema coma (or “crisis”), which is also rare.

Deafblindness (about 0.2-2%) Being DeafBlind is often considered to be an extremely rare disability, but that’s not really the case. DeafBlindness on its own isn’t a diagnosis - it can be caused by a wide range of things, with CHARGE syndrome (congenital), Usher syndrome (born deaf, becomes blind later in life), congenital rubella, and age-related deafness and blindness being some of the most common reasons. DeafBlindness is a wide spectrum, the vast majority of DeafBlind people aren’t fully blind and deaf, and they can use various ways of communication. Some of these could be sign language (tactile or not), protactile, the deafblind manual, oral speech (aided by hearing aids or not), the Lorm alphabet, and more. You can learn more about assistive devices here! Despite what various media like to tell you, being DeafBlind isn’t a death sentence, and the DeafBlind community and culture are alive and thriving - especially since the start of the protactile movement. We have a DeafBlindness tag that you can look through!

It’s probably worth mentioning that we have received little to no asks in general for almost all the disabilities above, and it’s certainly not due to what mods answer for. Our best guess is that writers don’t realize how many options they have and just end up going for the same things over and over.

Only representing “cool” disabilities that are “not too much while having a particular look/aura/drama associated” isn’t what you should aim for. Disabled people just exist, and all of us deserve to be represented, including those whose disabilities aren’t your typical “cool design” or “character inspo”, and literally all of us deserve to have good, informed representation. Sometimes we are just regular people, with disabilities that are “boring” or “too much”, and don’t make for useful plot points.

mod Sasza (with huge thank you to mod Sparrow, Rot, and Virus for their contributions with research)

[merumis]

do you know how many days it's been since kuroo last saw you?

he hasn't been counting—doesn't know it off the top of his head, or even what the exact date was, and today, he's not even sure he could tell you if it's april 7th or 9th—but if he does the math, he can get a ballpark answer.

around four years—365 days multiplied by 4, add in a leap year, you land with one thousand-four hundred-and-sixty-one days. give or take a few, for your situation.

but maybe he should've expected to see you here, all things considered.

(one night, a few weeks before graduation, maybe? you had mentioned you were going to grad school in edinburgh—he leaned down so you could yell it into his ear over the music of the bar. you were tinted a sweet shade of purple in the light—your friends were busy playing an arcade game that kuroo couldn't name anymore.

something died in kuroo's throat that night. he went to tell you congratulations—if a little halfhearted—but never quite made it there. a friend came over to swipe a game token you were holding, and you laughed and shooed him off. kuroo's roommate's hand landed on his shoulder, and then there was a shot in his hand. not much room for deliberation there, he supposes).

somehow, it seems, he'd forgotten those details until now. he'd been ducking from awning to awning to avoid the rain; he'd forgotten to pack a raincoat; he'd been in such a rush—last minute business trips be damned—that he didn't think to check the weather even when he decided to schedule a later return flight. a friday night, a full saturday, a sunday morning all to himself in a city that wasn't his—one that he felt a misplaced affection for despite never visiting prior to wednesday at 3:53pm.

and now, you're standing at the awning just ahead of him—facing out towards the street, watching the rain while you tear at the bready pastry in your hands.

(your hair has grown out from your college-age bob. it sweeps down past your shoulders, though he can't see where it disappears to. you must be twenty-six now. he recalls you complaining about hairstylists who cut your hair too short—about bad haircuts that lasted for months for you and moments for him. he thinks you always knew how to fix things).

he forgets there's a gap between your awning and his, so he doesn't move quite fast enough. his hair is a little more soaked than he would've hoped by the time he gets to you.

you turn your head to look at him before he reaches you—a piece of your pastry hanging by your fingers, waiting to be placed between your teeth. your brows are furrowed, your gaze a little hard, until you reach his face.

"tetsurou," you breathe, and he smiles down at you for a brief moment before you've pulled him down to wrap your arms around his neck. you pull back, placing just the heels of your palms on his cheeks to avoid scraping him with the crust of your pastry. "oh my god- what are you- why are you here?"

"business trip," he replies, "it was last minute. didn't think to reach out."

"god," you say, and pull him in again. "it's been years," you mumble into his shoulder, "you've gotten so old."

there's a moment when he wants to know everything you've done for the past four years—what you celebrated, what you never dared to tell anyone about, the food you've eaten, the drinks you drank until you made yourself sick. have you smoked recently? he wants to ask, if so, please let me breathe it in.

"how are you?" he asks instead.

(he feels twenty-one again. he's on the perimeter of a house party with you. he won't ask you about last week—when he kissed you and you dug your nails into his back. he won't leave your side either, and you keep leaning into him, but you're both making vague observations about the people who pass in front of you. do you ever think about it? he wants to ask. he never does).

"good!" you say, "yeah, no, busy, but- you know. good." you've leaned your shoulder into the brick wall now, and he mirrors you. you've both got your heads leaned in so close, he thinks he can smell the soap off your body.

you've always had a strong nose. maybe you can smell his.

do you ever think about it? did you ever?

"if it weren't such a downpour, i'd invite you to coffee at my place," you say, with a half-smile pulling at your lips. you speak with an exasperated breathiness now, one that he only heard in early winter and spring. he wonders if old habits die hard.

"it's okay," he says, "i like the rain."

you smile now, fully. warm. "i know."

(he's twenty-two. you're a few months from graduation and one of your friends insisted you all buy cheap tickets to some concert. he stepped outside to breathe and watch the rain—you followed. you wore his rain-soaked jacket for the rest of the night, and he thought about the way you pressed your lips into his shoulder in that absent-minded sort-of-way for the rest of the week. you both went on dates with different people the following thursday).

do you remember the poems you used to write? he wants to ask. the ones where i never knew if you talking about me or not. i used to keep myself up over them, would read them once, twice, a third time under the light from a lamp that was bound to go out the next night, but never did. do you remember that stupid dumpster outside my apartment? he wants to say. where it was always too windy to light anything, so we sat outside in the cold and talked for hours, looking over our shoulders whenever we mentioned someone by name.

on the road next to you, a small girl in a big raincoat and galoshes speeds down the road, her father carted behind her by the hand. he desperately tries to slow her down. kuroo looks down at his shoes and kicks a loose rock, then looks up again at you. you lean past him, tossing what's left of your pastry into the trash can next to him.

"i think you would like it here," you say. he smiles.

are you different? he wants to ask. are you the same girl i thought i might've been in love with? do you still hum when you cook? do you still refuse to use a recipe? do you still bite at the edges of your lips until they bleed?

"yeah?" he asks, with a smile that takes up more of his face than he'd like to admit. he leans over you as he rocks against the wall. "what about it?" it sounds less like a question, and more like a challenge—he's not sure how he intended it to be.

"it's slower here," you reply. you reach your hand out towards the road, waving five spread fingers out across a landscape you can see painted across your eyes. "removed, but not boring," you settle on, and smile up at him.

"you think i like slow?" he asks.

"i know you need it," you reply.

back then? no. now?

maybe.

"when i first moved here," you start. he looks over at you, but you're not watching him. you're looking out at the street again, eyes fixed on something that he can't place. "i swear i saw you everywhere. anyone over six feet, anyone running along the coast. sometimes, i'd think i heard your voice and i'd just stop- listen for a second, waiting to hear more of it." you look over at him, "of you," you clarify with a laugh.

"there were these guys in some of my classes, i don't know, they used to use your cologne, or your soap or something it would just-" you laugh again, "it would drive me insane."

(he's twenty-two. you keep a toothbrush at his apartment—just in case. when you're here, he sleeps on the couch).

"you know," you laugh again, and you watch him, carefully. your eyes keep flitting over his face—quickly, from one place to the next, like you're not quite sure where will tell you what you want to know. "i think i was in love with you back then."

(he's twenty. he wants to know you. he thinks about you for an entire day after you whisper an exaggerated thank you to him during class and laugh at his offhanded joke).

"yeah," he replies. "i think i was in love you too, you know."

he smiles down at you, and then he knocks his shoulder into yours. when you laugh, you curl into him, letting his body's warmth radiate into you where your arms touch.

your laugh sounds wet, a little shaky.

if he spoke, he's sure his would too.

"when the rain lightens up," you start, "would you like to come back to mine?"

he clears his throat, a soft, breathy sort of thing escaping him when he speaks.

"yeah. i'd like that," he replies.

[eowynstwin]

This truly is the last thing I want to say on this blog and then I'm done psych I lived bitch, but given how the fucking catastrophe started it's only appropriate this is how I end it—

You have racist bias whether you like it or not. Particularly if you are US American, racism was baked into your worldview no matter what kind of household, liberal or conservative, you grew up in. Racism is quite often far more covert than it is overt. It is not just a voluntary behavior; it is more often the subconscious ways you organize and hierarchize other cultures and people.

In the case of Gaz—sure, you might actively believe that he deserves to be more included. You think he's a good character and people really should think about him more! But you personally headcanon him a certain way, and really it's not a headcanon you're actually all that into, so that's why you don't talk about him as much. It's not because he's black, it's because he doesn't fit the thing you like talking about the most. The fact that he's black is really just a coincidence, you're not excluding him because of that. In fact, you're sure other people like him for exactly the reason you're not all that into him, and you'll just leave it to them to pick up the slack. Or you'll get to him later! In fact, you have some ideas for him. You just haven't gotten around to them yet.

Take that and multiply it by thousands of white women in fandom—not just this fandom, not just Gaz's character, but every fandom and every character of color. It doesn't matter that there's no active malice behind not personally liking black characters and other characters of color. Non-white characters still take a backseat to their white counterparts, because white women in fandom cannot wrap their heads around black, brown, indigenous, and Asian characters as complex, complicated characters worthy of their interest or frankly, their desire.

They cannot wrap their heads around this because they were conditioned not to by decades of racist culture.

Case in point; plenty of white women in this fandom have fallen head over heels for Makarov and Graves. The sins of these out-and-out villains are totally forgiven by virtue of their sex appeal, and because they are portrayed by attractive, charismatic men who put a lot of passion behind their performances.

But can we say the same for Hadir? Can we say the same for Hassan?

The sins of these two Middle Eastern characters do not outweigh those of their villainous white counterparts, yet how many angsty fix-it fics have been written exploring Hadir's complicated relationship with violence and imperialism? How many enemies-to-lovers or even lovers-to-enemies fics have been written about Hassan, the face of whose homeland has been irrevocably marred by US interference?

No one who points out the racism of this trend is accusing these white women of active, militant white supremacy. I'm not saying any of you even have to like Gaz, Hadir, or Hassan. But your preferences have been tuned for you by a culture shaped by slavery, imperialism, and white supremacy. That is not something you can escape merely because you support the BLM movement or reblog vetted Palestinian gofundmes.

The only way you can truly fight your own racism is to be actively anti-racist. It is about far more than who you give money to or what graphics you pin on your instagram. It is an everyday practice of learning how racism has shaped your worldview for you.

This is not work that is done in a week, a month, or a year. Becoming anti-racist takes as much time as it took to make you racist in the first place. For some of you, the work may turn out to be easy. For others, it may be hard. You must do it either way.

Some good places to start:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Ain't I a Woman? by bell hooks

We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity by bell hooks

A Burst of Light by Audre Lorde

The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Being Palestinian edited by Yasir Suleiman

[dandyroo]

petting foxian!reader's ears...

includes (in order): aventurine, jing yuan, kafka

warnings: just fluff :3 pre-established relationships, reader is a foxian or has similar features, reader is as gender neutral as possible, reader is only referred to by terms of endearment (no [y/n] or [name]) other notes: i fully intend on doing more of this prompt with other characters (namely, moze, argenti, and possibly boothill... my beloveds)

aventurine

every gambler has some kind of lucky ritual. rubbing a stone, getting a particular drink, scratching their partner's ears... well, alright. maybe aventurine's habit was rather unique, and perhaps entirely unnecessary, but he always insisted on it. before any big gamble--in life, in work, or simply just at the table--he was always sure to seek you out and scratch right behind your ears. and of course, he couldn't just scratch your ears without placing a gentle kiss on your forehead as well. and if he was already kissing your forehead, he should probably get your cheek for good measure. and don't the best things always come in threes? and so of course, a soft kiss would grace your mouth as well. alright, well, maybe it was a little more than just scratching your ears, but he swore up and down that it's what gave him luck. so of course, when your ears playfully flicked away from his touch, he fixed you with the most beautiful pout you'd ever seen. "darling, don't be so cruel." his hand remained paused in the air above your head, as if unsure how to move on without the feel of your fur beneath his fingers. "you expect me to go to the casino without my lucky ritual? do you want me to lose?" you giggled--you hadn't expected your little 'prank' to work so quickly. at your lighthearted laughter, aventurine's face softened into a slight smirk. "surely you're not praying on my downfall, hm? whatever my opponent has offered you, i'll double--no, triple it," he declared. "quadruple? mm... multiply it by ten and add a few thousand, just for my love." alarm bells rang in your head, and your ears perked up. you knew he wasn't entirely joking. "i don't need your money," you started, subconsciously leaning your head towards his waiting palm. "i know, darling." perfectly manicured nails found their way into your fur, scratching softly enough to make your tail twitch behind you. aventurine smiled--not the wide smile when he made deals, not the smirk as he held the winning hand, not the polite smile when he dealt with his supervisors, but a soft, melted one, the one reserved just for you. he paused after he placed the first of the three kisses, letting his hands fall from your ears to your cheeks. "there's no one else i'd rather give it to, though." a gentle swipe of his thumb along your face before he lifted his hands to place the second kiss. you could feel his smile against your cheek, and you chased it as he pulled away, beating him to the third and final kiss. satisfied at last, aventurine sighed as the two of you separated. "finally, enough luck to carry me through tonight," he teased. he lifted your hand to his lips--when had his fingers encircled yours?--and rested his smirk onto the back of your hand, stealing a fourth kiss you were sure would be added to the rotation. "perhaps i'll win enough to pay off that debt i owe you. what was it, twenty times my opponent and then a couple hundred grand?" "aventurine!"

jing yuan

the general of the loufu was not one to hide his affections. it seemed every waking moment brought a new way for him to wrap you in his arms, to hold you prisoner in your shared bed, and to smother you with attention. the one place he never dared rest his hands was the soft patch of fur right behind your ears. in his long life, jing yuan had known many foxians. he had befriended many, made deals with a few, and loved one--you. yet, despite his countless interactions with the foxian race, he was still unbearably nervous whenever his hand accidentally brushed over your hair, or when his eyes lingered too long on the way your ears twitched and moved. he tried to observe, he really did. other foxians seemed to have no qualms letting each other touch their ears--adjusting, scratching, fixing the fur, or otherwise. xianzhou natives, on the other hand, never seemed to touch their foxian friends or partners' ears. while walking on the street one night, you nearly bit off the hand of a drunken man who cooed over the tufts on your ears (to be fair, jing yuan wouldn't have blamed you. even in his position as an officer of the cloud knights, he certainly wouldn't have minded turning away and providing plausible deniability). but while walking with him in the market, you had no problem leaning down to let a curious child touch the soft fur on your head.

perhaps he was overthinking it. surely you wouldn’t fault him for simply asking…

and so, when night fell and the two of you were snuggled up once more, jing yuan dared to break the silence.

“my love?” he said softly into the darkness. he didn’t need to speak loud to cut through the quiet of the room, and he knew you heard him from the twitch of those ears.

you hummed back, encouraging him to swallow and continue. “your… ears. can i touch them…?”

there was a moment of dead silence, and jing yuan’s heart froze in its rhythm. it only started again when you laughed gently, clearly taken aback by his question.

“is that why you’ve been staring at them so much lately?” your teasing lilt brought a rush of red to his cheeks, and he found himself wanting to hide beneath a pillow. “of course you can. just be gentle,” you replied, laughter still in your tone.

hesitantly, slowly, he reached out his hand, resting it behind your ears with an air of uncertainty. hoping in his heart that he didn’t seem like a fool, jing yuan scratched gently, as though petting a cat. your tail twitched against him as you hummed, and a rush of confidence (and relief) soared through the general.

it seemed he had found a new way to constantly assure you of his adoration.

kafka

it wasn't odd to enter your shared room and see kafka hard at work, seated at her desk with a mountain of papers beside her. still, you paused in the doorway, but kafka heard your entrance and turned to face you with a soft smile. "baby," she called, and that was all you needed to hear for you to cross the room and take a seat in her waiting lap. kafka was a busy woman, but she never let her work as a stellaron hunter get in the way of casual intimacy with her partner. often, while reviewing scripts or drawing up plans, she simply called for you to spend some time close together. it was a familiar routine; you settled into your seat, letting your arms rest on her shoulders, and she would hold you close, idly scratching your ears as she worked on whatever it was she needed to get done. "won't you help me wind down, sweetheart?" she cooed. as much as she enjoyed petting your fur, she always made sure to ask. of course, you never minded. it soothed you as much as it did her. you nodded, though you couldn't help but ask--"what is it about my ears that you like so much?" kafka chuckled, pulling you close. "it's relaxing. like... petting a cat. a cat that i absolutely adore." right on cue, her hand drifted up, perfectly manicured nails finding their way into your hair, settling down to the patch right behind your ears. you'd helped her pick out the cherry color that carded through your fur as you sat contently on her lap. after a moment of comfortable silence, you spoke. "another script?" you prompted quietly. kafka simply hummed in response, her eyes finally flicking from the paper in front of her to your face. she smiled softly as your gazes met, and her hands stilled for half a moment before resuming her soft petting. "i won't be gone too long," she assured you gently. "i'll be back before you know it." there was a rustle of paper as she set the script down, and her now free hand gently cradled your face. "i don't know how i'm going to properly relax without my sweet darling on my lap, but i suppose i'll have to make do," she mused with a subtle smirk. you rolled your eyes, but let your head rest in her hand. "you've done it before, you'll live," you reminded her. "in the meantime..." kafka's hand left your cheek to settle in your hair. "won't you indulge me for a moment longer?" as if you'd ever say no.

[seat-safety-switch]

Yeah, I worked on The Machine. And, as I pried open its secret compartments and loosened its wiring harness and decrypted its memories, it worked on me also. Deep within its many hidden copses lay immense knowledge, unknown to all but those who formed it. Who built The Machine? No one knows. Everyone knows. I know. Now that The Machine works again, the person who last built it was me.

For years, I was a humble regular home-gamer mechanic. Something around the house would break. For the sake of argument, we'll use as an example the time my microwave blew up when I opened the door. One morning, it just went pop and never worked again. Well, at least until I fixed it. It turns out that the door had a little microswitch inside, and that microswitch got gummy with aerosolized food goo. Because it was gummed up, it wouldn't switch the computer off in time when I opened the door. That would be dangerous: I could get a full face shot of microwaves from the still-running magnetron. A safety interlock fired, and blew the brains out of the big fuse controlling the magnetron. It died for me. Replacing the switch, and the fuse, brought that microwave back to life. I did many such repairs. I was not prepared for this repair.

Fix after fix, I built up my confidence, and I got cockier. I'd pull broken machines out of the trash, mysterious foreign computers from another country. Some things escaped my grasp, and slipped further into oblivion. Most, though: most, I pulled back from the brink, and forced them to live again. That's when I found The Machine.

It was beautiful, intricate: thousands of parts, wedged together tighter than I had ever seen before, and a cryptic fault at the centre of it. When you cram together this much stuff, the complexity doesn't just add: it multiplies. To aid me, I looked for a guide, a factory service manual. The manufacturer laughed. The manufacturer's representative laughed. Someone who made it, who I tracked down on LinkedIn, hung up on me and refused to answer his door when I visited. Weeks later, he was gone, "dead" in a suspiciously convenient accident, a body left behind at the edge of his bleach-washed property with no identifying marks or fingerprints. I got the message: I was on my own.

This little wire just came unplugged. I guess someone must have dropped it. All better now.

[ms-demeanor]

if we're like, showing graphs and stuff, this is the type that i think a lot of people on tumblr are thinking of when they think about the economy.

Only one third of people with family incomes below $50k spent less than their income each month. I would guess that a lot of people on tumblr who get aggro about this topic (and the vast majority of people on r/povertyfinance, who discuss this sort of thing a lot) fall into this earning category.

Real wage increases only matter if you got a raise (one third of workers got a raise last year, which means that 2/3rds didn't - included in the economic wellbeing report linked above). Whether or not rent is outpacing wages only matters if you're not going to be rent burdened (more than a third of renter households are cost burdened in every state and 12 million rental households spend more than half their income on rent). Employment rates lose a lot of meaning when you're working multiple jobs to make ends meet (the percentage of multiply employed workers was falling in the US from 1996 to the 2010s, when it plateaued, then it started rising slightly then collapsed in 2020 and has been rising steeply since then and it's too soon to tell if it's going to go back to the plateau or keep going up).

Four in ten adults in the US is carrying some level of medical debt (even people who are insured) and 60% of people with medical debt have cut back on food, clothes or household items; about 50% of people with medical debt have used up all their savings.

Tumblr is the broke people website and yeah, people who are working two jobs to afford $900 for one room and utilities in a three bedroom apartment are not going to feel great about the economy even if real wages are raising and inflation-adjusted rents are actually pretty stable. "The Rent is too Damn High" has been a meme for 14 years so, like, yeah. Even if it's pretty stable when adjusted for inflation it is stable and HIGH.

It's hard to feel good about the economy when you're spending the last few days of the pay period hoping nothing unexpected hits your account, and it's VERY frustrating to be told that the economy's doing well when you've had to start selling blood to buy groceries.

Sure, unemployment is low, that's neat. It's good that inflation has stabilized (it genuinely has; prices are not likely to fall back to pre-inflation rates and eventually you'll likely be paid enough to reach equilibrium, but a lot of people aren't there yet).

But, like, it costs eight thousand dollars a year out of pocket to keep my spouse alive. I'd guess that we've paid off about a third of the 40-ish thousands of dollars he's racked up since his heart attack. His medical debt is why I don't have a retirement plan beyond "I guess I'll die?" So talking about how good the economy is kind of feels like being chained in the bottom of a pit that is slowly filling with water while people on the surface talk about the fact that the rain is tapering off. Neat! That's good! But I can't really see it from where I'm standing.

Inflation really is getting better. My state just enacted a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers. The Biden administration has worked hard to reduce many kinds of healthcare costs. A lot of people have had significant portions of their student debt cancelled.

But a lot of people are still having trouble affording groceries and it doesn't seem helpful to say "your perception of the economy is decoupled from the reality of the economy" on the "can I get a few dollars for food today?" website.

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

"Pandora, Worrying About What She Is Doing, Finds a Way into the Valley through the Scrub Oak," from Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin

Look how messy this wilderness is. Look at this scrub oak, chaparro, the chaparral was named for it and consists of it mixed up with a lot of other things, but look at this shrub of it right here now. The tallest limb or stem is about four feet tall, but most of the stems are only a foot or two. One of them looks as if it had been cut off with a tool, a clean slice across, but who? what for? This shrub isn’t good for anything and this ridge isn’t on the way to anywhere. A lot of smaller branch-ends look broken or bitten off. Maybe deer browse the leafbuds. The little grey branches and twigs grow every which way, many dead and lichened, crossing each other, choking each other out. Digger-pine needles, spiders’ threads, dead bay leaves are stuck in the branches. It’s a mess. It’s littered. It has no overall shape. Most of the stems come up from one area, but not all; there’s no center and no symmetry. A lot of sticks sticking up out of the ground a little ways with leaves on some of them—that describes it fairly well. The leaves themselves show some order, they seem to obey some laws, poorly. They are all different sizes from about a quarter of an inch to an inch long, but each is enough like the others that one could generalise an ideal scrub-oak leaf: a dusty, medium dark-green color, with a slight convex curve to the leaf, which pillows up a bit between the veins that run slanting outward from the central vein; and the edge is irregularly serrated, with a little spine at each apex. These leaves grow irregularly spaced on alternate sides of their twig up to the top, where they crowd into a bunch, a sloppy rosette. Under the litter of dead leaves, its own and others’, and moss and rocks and mold and junk, the shrub must have a more or less shrub-shaped complex of roots, going fairly deep, probably deeper than it stands aboveground, because wet as it is here now in February, it will be bone dry on this ridge in summer.

There are no acorns left from last fall, if this shrub is old enough to have borne them. It probably is. It could be two years old or twenty or who knows? It is an oak, but a scrub oak, a low oak, a no-account oak, and there are at least a hundred very much like it in sight from this rock I am sitting on, and there are hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands more on this ridge and the next ridge, but numbers are wrong. They are in error. You don’t count scrub oaks. When you can count them, something has gone wrong. You can count how many in a hundred square yards and multiply, if you’re a botanist, and so make a good estimate, a fair guess, but you cannot count the scrub oaks on this ridge, let alone the ceanothus, buckbrush, or wild lilac, which I have not mentioned, and the other variously messy and humble components of the chaparral. The chaparral is like atoms and the components of atoms: it evades. It is innumerable. It is not accidentally but essentially messy. This shrub is not beautiful, nor even if I were ten feet high on hashish would it be mystical, nor is it nauseating; if a philosopher found it so, that would be his problem, but nothing to do with the scrub oak. This thing is nothing to do with us. This thing is wilderness. The civilized human mind’s relation to it is imprecise, fortuitous, and full of risk. There are no shortcuts. All the analogies run one direction, our direction. There is a hideous little tumor in one branch. The new leaves, this year’s growth, are so large and symmetrical compared with the older leaves that I took them at first for part of another plant, a toyon growing in with the dwarf oak, but a summer’s dry heat no doubt will shrink them down and warp them. Analogies are easy; the live oak, the humble evergreen, can certainly be made into a sermon, just as it can be made into firewood. Read or burnt. Sermo, I read; I read scrub oak. But I don’t, and it isn’t here to be read, or burnt. It is casting a shadow across the page of this notebook in the weak sunshine of three-thirty of a February afternoon in Northern California. When I close the book and go, the shadow will not be on the page, though I have drawn a line around it; only the pencil line will be on the page. The shadow will be then on the dead-leaf-thick messy ground or on the mossy rock my ass is on now, and the shadow will move lawfully and with great majesty as the earth turns.

The mind can imagine that shadow of a few leaves falling in the wilderness; the mind is a wonderful thing. But what about all the shadows of all the other leaves on all the other branches on all the other scrub oaks on all the other ridges of all the wilderness? If you could imagine those for even a moment, what good would it do? Infinite good.

-- Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home (273-5)

[ectocreature]

watching identity crisis since it's the anniversary of its airing and. um. i couldn't help but notice jack effortlessly pushing a bunch of roller coaster cars with one hand.

looking it up, the best answer I could get was here, which said that cars with two rows weigh about 1,600 pounds each. i know this is speaking in past tense but also trying to find an answer to this question sucks because the weights vary based on the year the cars are from so figure 2006 + past tense is good enough for something set in 2004.

which, this is already a lot. in fact, the most that any human being has ever deadlifted was 1,104.5 pounds, done by the strongman Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson. but how many cars are there here?

using an earlier scene, i count five.

putting 1,600 times 5 into a calculator...

Thats eight thousand pounds. This isn't even considering the weight of the people sitting in the cars.

if we were to take the average weights of teenaged boys/girls around the age of 14 and multiply them by... let's say four each (this count is excluding Fun Danny since Jack grabs him) then we'll get...

That's 868 more pounds to add to the load. (Granted, this is assuming everybody on the cars weighs the same (unlikely), that this measure is even indicative of how much they would even weigh, especially back in 2004 (unlikely), and that everybody on the roller coaster is 14 years old. (again. Unlikely.) However, this is the best estimate we can get.)

In total, that is 8,868 pounds that Jack is pushing. Granted, this is not considering the force that he needs to push out, but we'd need acceleration to to calculate the force since the formula is Force = Mass x Acceleration. We don't have the acceleration and I'm not dealing with that right now.

But still.

Jack is pushing 8,868 pounds with one hand. Whilst inside of an object that is floating in mid air and probably doesn't have too much leverage for him to atay steady on. Good god

[eternal-evergreens]

Hello! I stumbled across your post “jjk men as yandere” and I really enjoy both your thoughts and writing style.

I would truly appreciate if you wrote any scenario involving yandere Geto with reader (sorcerer).

Thank you if you even consider writing it<3

A/N Thanks so much!!

｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+*⁠.⁠✧"Meet Cute" ｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+*⁠.⁠✧

Post format: Drabble

Pairing: Yandere!Suguru Geto x GN!Curse user!Reader

Word count: 1.3k

Warnings: Reader is morally bankrupt, mentions of eugenics/genocide, reader is a little too into WWII, minor age gap, super greedy reader

"You're like a modern-day Hitler, huh?"

"...What?" Geto looked at you with wide eyes, putting down his to-go cup to better gape at you.

"Well, you are advocating for mass genocide and literal eugenics," you say, taking an unbothered sip of your own coffee. (Geto recommended the place. Apparently, his kids like the hot chocolate there. You'll have to ask him for the name of the place later.) "So, yeah, you're like Hitler."

Geto appears to be having a crisis of some sort. Just sort of staring down at his lap with an unreadable look on his face. You watch with amusement. This kid must be a newbie, you think—not that you're much older than him, but you at least have seniority on this.

"What, are you getting cold feet? You've already killed people, you know. If you want to make it in this career, you're gonna have to get real comfortable being compared to some pretty terrible things."

"I'm used to being called terrible things, it's just—"

"Oh, what? Like monster?" Geto says nothing, and you sigh, reclining back in your chair. (Damn, this cult has some nice shit. You wonder if you can sneak the couch out without anyone noticing?) "So unoriginal. Anyway keep your chin up. It's actually a good thing. Hitler already exists, so you can steal his ideas."

"Weren't you just complaining about something being unoriginal?" You wave your hand dismissively.

"That was then, this is now. Anyway what do you think? Hitler industrialized murder. You can do the same—if you can get the right ingredients."

"You're talking about power, right?"

"Pretty much. You'll need hands and money. And a lot of both. With that in mind, this cult is actually a perfect setup. But putting that aside," you take another sip of your drink. Empty. Damn it. "You didn't call me here just so I could give you my professional opinion, did you?"

Geto smiles. "I hear you'll do anything for money."

"I don't come cheap, you know."

"That's not a problem," he snaps his fingers, and someone, a "monkey" from the looks of it, walks in, clearly struggling with the weight of whatever's in that giant briefcase. You suppress a smile as it's placed on the table and opened. Hundreds, no, thousands of ¥10,000 notes line the briefcase from top to bottom. You nearly salivate from just looking at it. Quickly, you check for any signs of deceit, of counterfeits, empty space, or otherwise. You can't find anything.

"You'll find this briefcase contains over one billion yen." Geto says, gesturing for his...indentured servant to close the case. How many bills is that? It's gotta be over a million. You're half tempted to take the money and run, but years of experience have taught you not to underestimate guys carrying this much cash. "I trust this is sufficient?"

"That depends on the job," you say, crossing your arms. "If you want me to take out Satoru Gojo, you'll need to multiply it a hundredfold before I even consider it."

"It's nothing that severe," he says, wearing the smile of a polished businessman. You sit up a little straighter. Maybe you were wrong about this guy being an amateur. Whatever he wants you to do, it's bad news. You feel excitement tingling in your veins. Will he ask you to take out a city? A country? Considering the scale of his plans, you wouldn't be surprised if he wanted you to take out a continent... you'd need a bit more to do something like that, though.

"I want you to marry me."

You snort, then laugh. You laugh for a very long time, even holding your stomach as you bend over in your seat. If this was a ploy to make you let your guard down long enough to kill you, it was smart. Still, you wouldn't go down that easily. You're more than confident enough in your ability to defend yourself, even in such a hilarious encounter.

Finally, the laughter dies down, and you wipe a tear from your eye. You look up at Geto's face, only for him to look back at you oddly serious. "No way..." you murmur, "are you for real?"

"I'm afraid I am," he says. Your smile drops. How annoying. What's this guy even want from you, huh?

"So, what, that money's a dowry?"

"More like a bribe."

"Uh-uh. No way. Not happening. I can't take a job like that."

"You're not even going to ask what's in it for me?"

"Not interested," you say, grabbing your bag and standing.

"I think I ought to tell you anyway," he says, throwing a sack onto the table. A stack of yen falls out, and you eye it with a raised eyebrow. "That's my payment for listening," he says. "¥200,000."

You inspect the fallen stack. Once again, it's real. He's either crazy or plotting something, and you have a hunch it's the latter. You sit back down. Whatever he's thinking, it's definitely bad news. Even so, you need more information to properly deal with it.

"I've heard you're the sole caretaker of four siblings." He shouldn't know that, but you decide not to derail the conversation by asking. "As you know, I've got two little girls of my own."

"So, what? You need a babysitter?"

"Precisely."

"Okay, but why marriage? Surely you could just hire me as a nanny and be done with it?"

"The girls don't trust strangers easily. I already told them that I had a Fiance out of town who'd be coming back soon. Just play along with it and you'll be compensated accordingly." "For how long?"

"Just until they turn eighteen."

"You'll have to pay me more." "What I showed you earlier was just a down payment; you'll also get an annual salary of fifteen million."

"Make it twenty."

"How's forty?" he says. You ponder over it for a moment. Judging from how you saw things earlier, it seems like he does genuinely love those kids. He's young and not afraid of spending, which would make you worry about the sustainability of the job, but cults are famous for making tons of cash.

"How old are they?"

"Six." So, twelve years. Counting the initial (over) one billion, the listening fee of two hundred thousand, and the annual salary times twelve, you'll be paid over ¥1,480,200,000. That's more than enough to send your siblings to college, as well as set them up for life.

"Deal," you say, reaching your hand out to shake. You'd ask why he doesn't just hire someone more qualified, but you think that speech on 'monkeys' he gave you answers the question.

"It's getting late," he says, shaking your hand. "How about I take you to dinner?"

"Why?"

"My girls are smart. They'll realize something's up if we don't know anything about each other," he says, standing.

"This isn't coming out of my salary, right?" Geto, or, you suppose you should be calling him Suguru, now, chuckles.

"I'm not nearly that stingy," he says. He holds out his arm to escort you, and you take it. "I'll need your ring size, too."

Of course, he already knows it. That, and so much more. After all, this may be your first time meeting him, but he's already met you plenty of times.

"Sure, but I'm not paying. Also, if you get me an ugly one I'm selling it."

"We'll go together, then." For some reason, the smile on his face seems a little too genuine to be meant for someone he's only just met, but you pay it no mind. Money is money, after all.

"Oh, what about living arrangements?"

"You and your siblings will live here," he says. "You'll have to sleep in the same bed as me, I'm afraid. Just to keep up the illusion."

"Do I get a bonus for that?"

"You're hurting my feelings," he says.

[ladyaldhelm]

This post is a very long rant about Generative AI. If you are not in the headspace to read such content right now, please continue scrolling.

....

....

It has come to my attention that a person who I deeply admire is Pro-AI. Not just Pro-AI, but has become a shill for a multi-billion dollar corporation to promote their destructive generative AI tools, and is doing it voluntarily and willingly. This person is a creative professional and should know better, and this decision by them shows a lack of integrity and empathy for their fellow creatives. They have sold out to not just their own destruction, but to everyone around them, without any concern. It thoroughly disgusts and disappoints me.

Listen, I am not against technological advancements. While I am never the first to adopt a new technology, I have marveled at the leaps and bounds that have been made within my own lifetime, and welcome progress. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning models certainly have their place in this world. Right now, scientific researchers are using advanced AI modeling to discover new protein configurations using a program called Alpha-Fold, and the millions of new proteins that were discovered have gone on to the development of life saving cancer treatments, vaccine development, and looking for new ways to battle drug-resistant bacterial infections. Machine learning models are being developed to track and predict climate change with terrifying accuracy, discover new species, researching new ways of dealing with plastic waste and CO2/methane, and developing highly accurate tools for early detection of cancers. These are all amazing advancements that have only been made possible by AI and will save countless millions of lives. THIS is what AI should be used for.

Generative AI, however, is a different beast entirely. It is problematic in many ways, and is destructive by its very nature. All the current models were trained on BILLIONS of copyrighted materials (images, music, text), without the creator's consent or knowledge. That in and of itself is highly unethical. In addition, these computers that run these GenAI programs use an insane amount of resources to run, and are a major contributor to climate change right now, even worse than the NFT and blockchain stuff a few years ago.

GenAI literally takes someone's hard work, puts it into an algorithm that chews it up and spits out some kind of abomination, all with no effort on the part of the user. And then these "creations" are being sold by the boatload, crowding out legitimate artists and professional creatives. Artists like myself and thousands of others who rely on income from art. Musicians, film makers, novelists, and writers are losing as well. It is an uphill battle. The market is flooded right now with so many AI generated art and books that actual artists and writers are being buried. To make matters worse, these generated works often have inaccuracies and spread misinformation and and lead to injury or even death. There are so many AI generated books, for example, about pet care and foraging for plants that are littered with inaccurate and downright dangerous information. Telling people that certain toxic plants are safe to eat, or giving information on pet care that will lead to the animal suffering and dying. People are already being affected by this. It is bad enough when actual authors spread misinformation, but when someone can generate an entire book in a few seconds, this gets multiplied by several orders of magnitude. It makes finding legitimate information difficult or even downright impossible.

GenAI seeks to turn the arts into a commodity, a get-rich-quick money making scheme, which is not the point of art. Automating art should never be the goal of humanity. Automating dangerous and tedious tasks is important for progress, but automating art is taking away our humanity. Art is all about the human experience and human expression, something a machine cannot ever replicate and it SHOULDN'T. Art should come from the heart and soul, not some crap that is mass produced to make a quick buck. Also developing your skills as an artist, whether that is through drawing, painting, sculpture, composing music, songwriting, poetry, creative writing, animation, photography, or making films, are not just about human expression but develop your brain and make you a more well rounded person, with a rich and deep experience and emotional connection to others. Shitting out crappy art and writing just to make a quick dollar defeats the entire purpose of all of that.

In addition, over-reliance on automated and AI tools is already leading to cognitive decline and the deterioration of critical thinking skills. When it is so easy to click a button and generate a research paper why bother putting the work in? Students are already doing this. Taking the easy way out to get a grade, but they are only hurting themselves. When machines do your thinking for you, what is there left to do? People will lose the ability to develop even basic skills.

/rant

By the way if any tech bros come at me you will be blocked without warning. This is not up for debate or discussion.

[entheognosis]

Don’t you know that if you choose one hundred of the most intelligent people in the world and get them all together, they are a stupid mob? Ten thousand of them together would have the collective intelligence of an alligator. Haven’t you noticed that at a dinner party the more people you invite the more stupid the conversation? In a crowd, the qualities which everybody possesses multiply, pile up, and become the dominant characteristics of the whole crowd. Not everybody has virtues, but everybody has the low animal instincts, the basic primitive caveman suggestibility, the suspicions and vicious traits of the savage. The result is that when you get a nation of many millions of people, it is not even human. It is a lizard or a crocodile or a wolf. Its statesmen cannot have a higher morality than the animal like mass morality of the nation, although individual statesmen of the democratic states may attempt to behave a little better.

Carl Jung

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 68 + shima analysis // spoilers

acceptance of the monster: how facing the past is necessary when the goal is a brighter future

i think that those who have been following me for a while have seen all my analyses and random insights about shima. i have immense affection for him and he will always be one of my favorite characters ever. and chapters like this remind me of how important he is in my life. 

chapter 68 is very straight to the point, but it also hides some small and big changes that started to bubble up from previous chapters. for the first time, we no longer have small, not very explicit scenes from shima's memories or him being so afraid of finally facing the past: now we have the naked truth, laid out in front of us, so that we can understand a little more about how the childhood that shaped shima's entire life until now was.

unlike what i imagined, i didn't get angry with taiga now that he was introduced. of course, i don't think his actions were right or that he didn't influence shima in a negative way, but his appearance at that moment served as both a salvation and a tragedy for shima's life.

there are many layers to be analyzed. we know very, very little about taiga, but we can understand that he didn't have a very good relationship with his family either — the moment he talks about his parents' disappointment in him for giving up acting shows us that he was probably also forced to do something he didn't want to do. he is also the result of a desire imposed on him, causing him to rebel as the years went by.

in a way, meeting shima is like meeting your past self. i don't see much evil in his actions or see it as something malicious. i think he recognized in shima's face the same nervousness that he himself felt every time before his rehearsal, thus proposing that he also have an act of rebellion to feel a little freer.

however, the evil of all this is that taiga, without knowing anything, ends up entering shima's life at a time when he is most fragile and hurt by everything he has been facing (whether it be his abusive relationship with his mother or his growing fear of acting). shima sees taiga as an equal, someone who understands all the pain he has faced but managed to escape from it, while he’s still a prisoner. he sees the older boy as an inspiration, as a friend he longed for, who would show him what a life away from cameras and rehearsals would be like.

shima is still too young to understand everything that is happening around him, and too young to see any kind of problem in following his new friend. having a destructive act at a time of such fragility gives him a certain strength, because he understands this as the only way he has to face his mother and go against everything that is imposed on him. going out with taiga, even if secretly, is a message to his mother: you no longer have control over me.

unfortunately, we have known the result of these escapades for a long time. ririka, also worried about shima, decides to follow him and ends up being targeted by several online attacks. even though shima was the one who “took” her there, ririka, a beautiful and successful girl, is the perfect target.she is the one who suffers the direct consequences, and of course this is closely linked to the sexism that is rooted in society and how much people wait for a girl to make a small mistake so that they can destroy her in some way (i talk more about this in my exclusive ririka analysis).

now shima no longer has to face just two monsters: they have now multiplied into a thousand, becoming even stronger. the consequences of his rebellion come in an aggressive form, with his mother’s abuse and the new tarnished image he obtained in his artistic circle. his mother’s anxiety comes from the fact that shima would no longer get big roles, either because of this transgression or because he missed so many rehearsals, which did not lead to any improvement in terms of acting. blinded by all the anger she feels inside, shima's mother's direct response is no other than to attack her son.

child abuse is extremely common in the arts, whether by parents, the press, the public or co-workers. shima is just one of many young actors who have had to suffer the wrath of a parent who is disappointed by a dream that they themselves forced their children to have. and of course, this would result in years of being afraid to be who they are, to speak out and to live a normal life without carrying immense guilt. the prison that he has placed himself in for all these years is the evolution of the bonds imposed by his mother.

the turning point does not happen in this chapter itself, but in a sequence of long events that led him to where he is. it is impossible for shima to change overnight: it takes a lot of work and a lot, but a lot of analysis (even if it is self-analysis) to finally understand and be able to heal all this pain that he has been held hostage by for so many years. and the second part of the chapter shows exactly that.

shima is no longer afraid to face the monster of the past because he is no longer alone. he finally understands that there are people around him who care about him and fight to stay by his side. having people's support and love gives him the strength to move forward and continue this arduous battle of growing up. shima now understands what it is to be loved to the point of being happy about a past fight, as it resulted in an even closer relationship with mitsumi. he understands that being loved is being able to look back on the past and no longer feel pain or guilt, but to recognize the one who suffered so much, with no one by his side.

he now takes on the role of the monster, but no longer to affirm his guilt, but to be able to show his past self and all the other monsters around him how it is possible for him to be happy. how it is possible to decide things for yourself and follow your heart. how it is possible to love so many people and be loved in return. how it is possible to look at a person and feel an immense warmth, an inexplicable desire to keep fighting, all so that he can be by their side. 

shima is finally reaching out to his past self, so that they can form a new future together.

before i finish, i would also like to touch on an important point that i see the possibility of being discussed in the future: shima's current relationship with his mother. chapter 67 brought something very important, which was shima's recognition when he admitted that he felt a certain pity for his mother, due to all the comments he heard about her. deep down, he feels a certain empathy for his mother and no longer sees her as an unbeatable villain. he has been slowly trying to change his relationship with her, and the first step is to invite her to watch the play he chose to be in. this in my opinion shows shima's desire to forgive his mother in order to move on, but also seek some kind of forgiveness from her (which can be a result of many years of manipulation, since he still thinks he is guilty for a lot of his mother’s pain). i feel that we will still see a type of closeness between them and a deeper conversation, so that shima can finally feel like he belongs to a family again. this can be a triggering moment to a lot of readers, so if it does happen, please be mindful of it. 

the layers that not only this chapter but this whole new arc has are much deeper than we imagine. building a character requires love, patience and conversation. you need to listen and understand what your character wants. respect is needed so that the story can grow. takamatsu misaki has a huge affection for her characters, for her story and for everything she has been building since 2018.

we're so lucky to be able to follow such amazingly beautiful story.

thank you so much for reading 💛💛!! don't forget to support sensei if you can! always here to discuss more about the chapter!