#bro is making a whole ecosystem

[peck2neck]

drawpile doodles

[trans-yllz]

maybe jiang cheng eating his food with upside down chopsticks was a production mistake. or maybe it was a visual metaphor for his complete blind trust in wei wuxian and willingness to take anything his older brother hands him

[wisteriagoesvroom]

how each driver would respond to “would you love me if i was a worm” 🪱

(and you actually get turned into a worm)

charles leclerc: gets the whole ferrari team to take turns looking after the worm. there’s a care roster and a motivational talk and everything. you become not charles’s worm but the ferrari worm. he posts a really cool social media story about “my journey looking after the worm.” you are loved, if a bit haphazardly.

max verstappen: “do i have time to keep a worm? probably not. but i will get someone to get you a decent box i guess. sorry if my cats eat you.”

oscar piastri: “no. you’re a worm.”

lando norris: professes his love and says “of course i would, babe”. only to be away so much on holiday or busy on track that you eventually perish in your enclosure

lewis hamilton: yes and will get you the most beautiful box with all sorts of fronds and ferns. he will build you the cutest little jungle gym of mind-enriching worm activities. you will see him about once a year but he will make sure you’re always fed and happy. he will help raise awareness of worms in their ecosystems all over the planet

carlos sainz: actually is very good at keeping the worm/you alive but is thrown for a loop because charles and lewis are all doing exceptionally with their worms. he flushes you down the toilet in a moment of emotional distress

alex albon: doesn’t tell anybody about the worm but will eventually have the longest living worm although everyone will forget this fact.

george russell: holds a drivers meeting about whether it is ethical to keep worms and should they in fact be considered emotional support animals. the vote is split and the outcome is undecided

fernando alonso: makes a tiktok with you “day in a life with my worm”. then leaves you on the side of the road and you roast to death under the sun

lance stroll: begrudgingly looks after you for about a week after which he pawns you off to his sister who is now stuck with his random worm

kevin magnussen: gives the worm to his daughter who uses it for a school project. it’s very cute

nico hulkenburg: people forgot about him so he didn’t even get a worm. he’s not that sad about it.

zhou guanyu: would seem totally neutral about it but end up incorporating a worm design into his track fits and his helmets. his worm helmet goes super viral on weibo.

valtteri bottas: will use you for fishing bait and might be a bit sorry about it.

pierre gasly and esteban ocon: constantly fighting over the same worm. nobody knows that the other has the exact same one. it ends with the alpine TP stepping in and confiscating the worm. the worm somehow gets acquired by mclaren.

yuki tsunoda: he keeps you in a box that is structurally very questionable but yuki somehow finds time on the road to get you the highest quality worm feed and vegetables. you thrive under his gourmand care although he shakes the box way too hard sometimes

daniel ricciardo: changes you immediately for a caterpillar and hopes nobody notices. the caterpillar takes ages to turn into a butterfly and then people are asking bro i thought you got a worm. he gets a caterpillar tattoo.

sergio perez: couldn’t care less. thought you were roadkill stuck on his windshield and squishes you with the windscreen wiper by accident

logan sargeant: WHAT DA FUK IS A WORMMMMM? your worm life ends prematurely when logan accidentally drops your box on the floor. james vowles gets him a new worm and it remains to be seen whether the second worm is better (hopefully it is).

[jacks-the-flower]

Do you really think letting the dragons go at the end of the third How To Train Your Dragon movie was right? I think that flew in the face of the first two movies' messages, not to mention it kind of gave Grimmel what he wanted.

on so many levels, no.

the WHOLE POINT of EVERY HTTYD MOVIE OR SHOW BEFORE 3 was that dragons and vikings were capable of harmony, that both people and animals can be good even after a lifetime of doing otherwise.

but httyd 3 taught kids that 'hey sometimes people are beyond redemption and WE have to compensate for that.' THE DRAGONS have to suffer the consequences of other's villainy, fuck the other movies. If it were just berk trying to protect the dragons, then ok maybe i'd be less salty- BUT IT'S NOT. BOTH SHOWS INVOLVE OTHER DRAGON-SYMPATHETIC PEOPLES. THOSE ARE CANON. THEY LITERALLY DELAYED HTTYD 3 FOR YEARS WAITING FOR RTTE TO END.

and the moving berk bit? because of overcrowding?? HICCUP WHAT TF WERE YOU THINKING??? rtte was literally PEPPERED with 'we need to do whats right for the dragons and their natural habits' AND BRO WENT AND FUCKED OVER BERK'S ECOSYSTEM.

and then left. what happened to 7 generations through the dragon wars, hiccup? what happened to the wars with alvin, dagur, viggo, krogan, johann, drago, etc etc. hiccup? did stoick's death change you that much?

httyd contradicted SO MUCH of what the franchise had established beforehand - themes, lessons, settings, people - that you can TELL that they'd been working on it for a while and were just more unwilling to change things as time went on in the project.

the only consolations i can make are if: 1, they didn't consider the shows very canon anymore; 2, they were just trying to follow the books; or 3... i didn't have one for three BUT NEITHER DID THEY HUH

anyways if i ever put something in my rb's as support for that ending then i must be having a moment of insanity or am firmly in the bargaining stage of grief, or both. both is good.

[aworld-inpink]

just a quick warning, I do read most of the cast as trans in some way, especially the siblings, so if you get easily triggered by stuff like that, just don't interact please 😸

please be respectful of the space I have curated ★

Trans Obey Me! Headcanons ("brothers" edition)

Lucifer:

transmasc Luci genuinely brings me so much joy

like, the idea of him being the oldest and first to come out?

im in love

Lucifer is one of the more cut and dry ones to me

but I do love people who draw/write him as transfem, theyre the biggest troopers ever

Luci definitely acts as the main support for a lot of the others

especially when it comes to appointments for hormones

he/him, FtM

Mammon:

i am so insanely obsessed with this man

me and him are t4t trust

nah, but for realz

trans guy Mammon with the COOLEST top surgery scars, you will not catch them lacking

probably got a sick ass tattoo to give them a cool shape too

similar to the white on his chest in his demon design

off topic, but chubby Mammon actually makes me 🤤

need to be squished between his thighs yesterday bro

jjhjhjhjh they're so handsome look at that little guy go

i feel like he would say his pronouns are he/him but secretly wouldn't mind they/them also

he just feels like he would be seen as less of a guy

i love them

he/they, FtM (and so devastatingly bisexual (affectionate))

Levi:

everybody say thank you to Levi for inventing being transgender

she ..... she's my everything

if Mammons my boyfriend she's my wife bro

(Mammons my favourite, Levi just has more whimsy)

gamer girl

i NEED her bathwater gang you don't understand ......

i made a whole post about transfem Levi, you should check it out ;)

tho trans guy Levi also has a special place in my heart and my bed (he's just like me fr)

do you wanna know the good that flat girl Levi would do for the ecosystem??

it would end climate change

she/her, MtF, Ruri chan was her trans awakening (half joking (not really))

Satan:

oh Satan the demon that you are

yknow they do say that Satan invented the gays

this NERD

book lover? likes cats? BLONDE?

how much more she/he/they can you get bro

demon born out of hatred, aged from transgenderism

that's all I'm saying

do you think Satan would feel the need to tie himself down to one specific gender identity?

fool.

Satan is everything and Satan is nothing

she/he/they, shrugs (genderfluid would be most accurate, but they're mostly unlabeled)

Asmo:

see the fandom argues about Asmo all the time

"is it ethical to headcanon them as trans just cause they're feminine?"

well, no, not necessarily, but that's besides the point

Asmo's similar to Satan in the way of not being tied to one specific gender or expression

but I feel like she's much more aligned to being a guy than Satan is

like, he doesn't mind other pronouns and sometimes enjoys them

but I think she's bigender with a heavy masc lean

expression wise he's more fem, but gender wise she's more masc

she/him, bigender and so full of love

Beel:

him.

i. i love him so much.

he's genuinely one of the sweetest characters in the game, and someone I would genuinely like irl

anyways however

I feel like this one is very stereotypical of me

cause this is the same headcanon as most of the trans part of the fandom

but Beel is so very trans man

like, didn't have top surgery just exercised to turn his boobs into pecs typa trans man

he's so powerful

and so lovely

and so, so transgender

he/him, FtM

Belphie:

similar to Levi, I do actually have a separate post just about Belphie

so if you want a less brief headcanon, check it out

anyways

Beel and Belphie are both trans to me, even in scenarios when I don't see the others as such

but my thing about Belphie is massively projection and based off my own identity

I think Belphie is also trans, but doesn't pass, doesn't want surgery, and doesn't necessarily want testosterone

like, I think he would feel a bit isolated from his siblings, especially Beel sometimes, since they're all relatively passing

but Beel would reassure him and they would cuddle on bad dysphoria days together, tons of snacks piled onto the bed for Beel and movies on autoplay for background noise :)

he/him, nonbinary

[henrysglock]

High Existence and ZeroSpace: The First Shadow and NINA May Be Massive, Immersive Drug Trips

The blurb in last Friday's video from TFS sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. I found a lot of sites quoting The Alchemist about the universe conspiring to give you what you truly want (which is similar and it's probably what I was thinking of when this blurb registered as familiar), but I couldn't find this exact quote:

Well...not at first, anyway. I decided to stick every word I could make out here ^ into my search bar...and I found where the blurb comes from:

This blog post is quite literally the only source I could find for it, and the whole damn thing is directly lifted.

Right off the bat, the site fucking jump-scared me:

And it doesn't end there. Let's dive in, because this rabbit hole is a trip unto itself...no MDMA​ ​required.

1. The Fucking Website...#1 (HighExistence.com)

High Existence is a sort of drug-induced-spiritual-trip centered self-help site.

It's got blog posts and podcasts and all that jazz. Here are some of the highlights:

Wow! That was...a lot. A lot of words from the word show, too:

Wholeness, heroes, ancient aliens, prisons of politeness, and the fucking Shire, too, I guess. Why not?

(An Aside: I've included the VR in here too because of the sheer similarities between Henry's experience with the Shadow in VR, El's experience in NINA, and The First Shadow in general.)

Like fuck it, why not keep going, these posts date back to at least 2017:

And don't let me start in on that Creel boy and Faust...

[Jason voice] "[Eddie] made a deal with the devil and now he has his powers!" (Also we get it, one of them is neurotic and the other is psychotic. I've been saying this since like...forever)

Of course, all that insanity aside, the Russian base arc has just...an insane amount of ST4 and TFS stuff packed into it in general:

(And this isn't even all of it. I know others [cough] Stav Heroesbyler [cough] have covered it even more...but bro it is THERE)

But most importantly for the NINA arc:

Three things: Dialogue doubling (there's the one I showed, plus a) Robin yelling "Wipeout!" at Steve which has the pipeline -> "Wipeout!" at Rink-O-Mania -> 002-005 bullying El in a very similar manner and b) Steve's "that's amazing" line about the water fountain -> "This is amazing!" not only from Alice irt the Creel house but also from Mike irt Will's painting on their way to save El from NINA. Again, these are just a few of MANY instances), makeup doubling with the bloodshot eyes, and my beloved: set/prop doubling.

I love that beautiful framing on the nearly-identical square clocks. I have so much to say about that clock, but specifically:

The clocks being set 9 minutes apart, which happens to be the exact length of time from the end of Vecna's voiceover in 4.07 to the start of the fight sequence in 4.07 (aka the length of One's frozen-clock monologue).

Not only that, but the clock isn't even right. It says it's 3:55, but it's definitely not 3:55 AM (see: movie theater scene) but it's also not 3:55 PM:

(And why do we have a clock in an elevator anyway? That's the real question. That thang only exists to deliver subtext, baby! It exists to connect the two scenes further!)

Anyway, as you all likely noticed, this site mostly deals in psychedelics, stimulants, and empathogens.

link

Hell, you could even pull One's bit on the ecosystem into it, since he's describing connections between beings that are being disturbed/destroyed by humanity.

Anyway, the site tends to center specifically on DMT and MDMA...so let's talk about those:

MDMA & DMT An aside: Interesting to me that psychosis here can be counteracted with sedatives. Makes me wonder if whatever happened in 1979 could have been halted if they'd just tranq'd One. Hm.

First off: Did I read that right? Piggy-backing? Damn, son. 4.09, The Piggyback, is pictured in that paragraph. So is Brenner's candy bit with the children -> "candy flipping" vs LSD use in Brenner's lab.

Second: Ah, how nice. Intravenous/injectable. Just like how El is constantly being shot up with...something...to enter NINA.

Now, nearly all psychedelics can induce psychosis, but especially so if they're combined with other psychoactive substances and/or if the user has a history of psychosis (either themselves or in their family).

However, MDMA specifically has been posited as a treatment for PTSD and retrograde/traumagenic amnesia:

link Like...wow. Okay, I guess!

tl;dr: One seems to have been tripping fucking balls during the monologue. Literally every fucking version of him. El likely is as well. Funny how that works. Was any of that real? [smash cut to the way blood pours down the walls and the dead children dance around in the VR version of NINA] And either way, Henry in TFS isn't far behind with his hallucinogenic moments.

The connection? Whatever the hell is going on in Hawkins Labs...and symptoms of drug use.

I was not expecting to get this much out of a single rabbit hole. But...that's life with this show, isn't it? And this is only Part 1.

2. The Fucking Website...#2 (Futurism.com)

The guy who made that original post that TFS lifted the blurb from (Jordan Lejuwaan) runs a couple different websites. The most interesting one is Futurism, which is basically an online version of the Weekly Watcher:

It won't let me filter by date, but it seems to have been founded in 2017, stemming from an infographic subreddit. (Now, it says it's a trustworthy news source, and maybe it is, but... Do your own assessment of that. I'm not your mother, yknow?)

Jordan Lejuwaan was also involved in something far more interesting irt Stranger Things...

3. Zero Space

Jordan co-founded an immersive, interactive theater experience called ZeroSpace back in 2018. As we all know, TFS was just in the beginning phase of its creation around this time.

So...This was like a brick to the skull:

"Alice in Wonderland" (don't get me started: rabbit fuckery, DRUGS!!!!!, clocks/being later, Alice Creel, Fringe connections (Through The Looking Glass and What Walter Found There being the episode about the pocket universe where 20 years passed in 5 days...and also wherein we find out about him hiding away an Observer child that he will later time travel with to save the world from the Observer takeover...erasing himself from time/the timeline by doing so...there is SO much) not to mention the "one pill makes you larger/smaller" vs teen El and baby El...it's too much to try and fit in this post), "ALIENS AND LASERS", "stretch the perceived reality of the sense", "art, actors and your own mind converge to prompt MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS" (which was a common complaint about TFS: it leaves people with more questions than answers).

("See you on the other side" being an in-show line from Henry in the lab to Patty in the void, but this image is ripped directly from the same promo video that the High Existence blurb appears in.)

Here's a little taste of what ZeroSpace is like, but I suggest going to the actual page to see it in action:

It's heavily heavily reminiscent of TFS, even just in the content warnings...

Not to mention the actual show content SFX:

However, the goal of TFS isn't to stretch our senses. We're just watching. We are not the volunteer seeing the other side.

For most of the show, that person is Henry (except the first 5 mins, when it's Cptn. Brenner and his crew literally experiencing the other side). Henry is doing the experiencing. He's the one breaking the fourth wall by picking at/breaking the sets, the one running through the audience and leaving out the theater doors (only to end up right back on stage just like El in the Rainbow Room in 4.05).

With each bit of info I find out adjacent to the play, the more convinced I am that this is some secret third boy's experience in a NINA-like simulation.

Overall—

a) TFS most likely isn't wholly real, and it seems very likely that it's the same kind of simulation as NINA.

b) El was probably drugged up with some kind of empathogenic psychedelic going into NINA, likely with the goal of setting her up to form emotional connections quickly and deeply only to rip that deep connection away in order to bolster her abilities.

c) NINA is not, then, wholly based in truth. Parts of NINA (staring at the bullying from 002-005) may have been generated from El's memories of the outside world.

d) With NINA and TFS seeming so similar, I wouldn't be shocked if parts of it are just one massive empathogen trip (staring at how quickly Henry and Patty bond, similarly to how quickly Henry and El bond in NINA).

e) Whoever is in NINA with teen El is also tripping balls, most likely, and may have gone off the rails in that regard. However, that's in a simulation...hard to assign guilt or blame for things done in a fictional/unreal world.

f) Whoever was with baby El in 1979 may have been in a similar situation "moving chess pieces"-style instead. Read: drugged in order to put him in a situation where he would bolster El's latent abilities...and it went wrong (see also: Walter Bishop's orchestrated/fake massacre meant to bolster Olivia's latent abilities.)

g) Richard Brenner having been the head of narcotics makes me question which Brenner we're seeing at any given time: Martin, or Richard?

[meadow-roses]

This is a post wherein I talk at great length about Anthony Rodzic, Felix's older brother! Requested by @accidental-spice 💚

This is gonna get long so....

Open-minded skeptic:

Anthony doesn't believe in magic. Not in the sense where he ignores the impossible things happening around him but rather staunchly believes there's a scientific explanation for anything "supernatural". If it looks like reality is breaking the laws of nature, that means there is more to the laws we don't know about, not that ✨magic✨ is changing things.

He's looking at the world and going "that person just grew a plant with their mind and shot laser beams out of their eyes. That is impossible, but it definitely happened. It's not because of magic, as my younger brother is insisting, but some secret law of nature that's overriding the usual order of reality and creating an anomaly." (aka, magic) So he's not entirely wrong... just, the laws they're missing are the ones everyone else are calling "magic".

Basically, he's a dude with absolutely no magical affinity trying to define the in-world magic system using the scientific method.

He continues to hold this stance even after time traveling/teleporting, meeting faeries, an alien who can hear people's thoughts, and an Ancient with enough magical energy to create a planet who says LOL YOU'RE SO CUTE

"No, no," he says to the eldritch being made of magic, "There's no such thing as magic, everything can be explained by science." -proceeds to have a several hours long q&a session with Ketsler about magic theory-

This guy literally takes a stroll through the faerie realm and starts making mental notes about how truly bizarre and otherworldly the ecosystem is while marveling that the atmosphere can sustain him at all. Meanwhile his guide just

Dude it's magic???

This ties in with his current project- finding the cause and cure of the newly discovered disease that is gaining more and more prevalence and claiming many lives. It behaves like a type of cancer, but none of the cancer treatments have any effect on it. Working alongside some other more experienced scientists/doctors, they've identified the source of the disease has a connection with what seems to the be source of the super Talents.

Anthony gets involved in the whole Dauntless shenanigans after Felix gets sick with a really serious case of the previously mentioned disease that he somehow recovers from, and then immediately runs away from home. Anthony takes time off from work (his boss is a really chill guy, also a character 😏) and goes after his idiot little bro. Anthony is the only character in the story that sets out to find Dauntless and actually succeeds without Felix's consent 😂😂 He ends up joining the gang of orphans as the voice of reason and only person who can legally drive xD

He's also Felix's older brother!

He's about seven years older then Felix, so he definitely sees him as his baby brother lol They don't have a super close "best friends" kind of relationship, but they do both care for the other a good deal. Despite them actually being so similar, Anthony just doesn't understand the insane situations Felix keeps getting himself into. He runs away from home to be a vigilante??? Invites literal aliens to live in his house??? Apparently now he's involved in some interdimensional war against some eldritch being that can't die??? Not Anthony, he lives a quiet life. 😌

[sepublic]

What if we reimagined all of the other non-Teridax Makuta as eldritch horrors, just as Teridax was initially presented in the early years of Bionicle? What if we used each Makuta as a prompt of sorts; What if THEY were the big villain terrorizing an island, their individual name unknown so they’re just THE Makuta to the local Toa and Matoran? Make each one feel worthy of the title of Makuta, with their depictions in Karda Nui being akin to physical, humanoid avatars meant to interact with others, just as the scheming Teridax is like for the vortex from MNOG?

Like for example, Chirox! You have this swarm of spiders known as the Visorak, led by one massive spider, known as Makuta. The Visorak mutate their victims, before dragging them back to their master.

Makuta is a spider-like entity that emerges from a cave, using his spindly limbs to grapple with and analyze his victims... Potentially drawing upon them for inspiration, before tearing and prying them apart into their base pieces, adding them to his massive collection. From these recycled parts, Makuta creates more Visorak, or dreaded Rahi creatures that wreak havoc on the ecosystem. Like Makuta, they are poison, destruction incarnate; They always inherit his twisted spirit that destroys.

That’s all Makuta does, even when he does create; He inevitably just destroys. Instead of coming up with new things on his own, he relies on Fate to mutate the living into something random, hoping chance will eventually grant him a working design for Makuta to copy. You could say Makuta has no real ideas of his own, and is a gambler, a parasite, betting something will come along for him to take. 

But isn’t destruction the same as creation, isn’t destroying his victims necessary to make things? That’s where the imagery of the spider comes into play; Its long, spindly limbs? They’re fingers. Makuta is not just a spider, he is a hand; The same hand that reaches into the parts bin to make new creations, plays with MoCs before tearing them apart to make something new. Just as Teridax represents the parts bin, Chirox is the builder’s hand, like in the Lego Movie, or Super Smash Bros. 

Each Visorak is like a hand of its own, grabbing victims, reassembling them randomly with mutation. Dragging them back to Chirox, whose hand motif is also inspired from the fact that he is the only Makuta who can fully control his Shadow Hand. And Makuta’s spider-like form? It’s attached to something much, MUCH bigger... It is not just a hand metaphorically, it is a literal hand and when Makuta’s lair collapses around him, it reveals the massive figure he is attached to; His whole, true self, a titan more resembling the Chirox we are familiar with.

The others are different angles and facets to approach the myth, the legend of the Makuta; Different re-imaginings, just as people came up with their own G3 and their own take on Makuta. Just like the Makuta contest we had for G2. Vamprah can represent the animalistic side of Makuta; The raging, kicking, screaming beast he was once described as by Vakama. The apex predator, for if his minions are the Rahi beasts, he is the greatest of them all.

Or Bitil! A temporal entity, haunted by his past selves, constantly summoned by his future self. Always going through different iterations, just as a MoC is frequently edited, redone, rebuilt; You can track his transformation, his evolution across his many selves; Makuta represents the existential horror of the timeline, of the way things change. A ghost of the past, and also a vision of the future. If the Vahi is central to the tale of Bionicle as the Mask of Time, what about Makuta as someone who constantly exploits and distorts this force?

Those are some of my initial ideas. Makuta needn’t always be this faceless force of nature, they can be a humanized figure, like Krika, who can be a sympathetic, tragic villain doomed by the narrative, consigned to his role and aware of it as part of a meta discussion; Miserix is the mighty dragon our knights must slay; The Makuta of Stelt, a land of merchants and commerce, the all-consuming force of corporatism that stifles creativity, or a bargaining devil. Gorast is a fanatical priestess hoping to bring in a new age, Mutran the quintessential mad scientist who played god and flew too close to the sun in his obsession.

Spiriah is a corrupt lord seething over his failures, who transformed and resents his people the Skakdi and must be rebelled against; Tridax is a multiversal collector providing commentary on adaptations; The Vortixx hope to harness the ultimate weapon that is Antroz; Kojol is the arcane keeper of knowledge like Lucifer, who stole the Light of enlightenment from the land of thinkers and is burned for it; And Icarax? A completely straightforward dark lord to conquer, as he always intended to be. Each plays the role of Makuta, as the final villain, the ultimate evil who started this conflict, whom our protagonists must rise to eventually vanquish.

[stargazer0001]

After coloring I realized that I made a walking (not talking) bisexual flag. So I decided to roll with it.

A bit more info under the cut

So! My first iterator OC. ESN!

Pronouns: they/he/she/it

Sexuality: Sigh. Bisexual asexual. Bro likes all women and one very specific kind of man.

He is the youngest of his local group, only created shortly before the mass ascension event. So, she never exactly grew close with the ancients. Not really caring for their whole ascension ordeal either. It was never really even one to connect with other iterators. Instead, it created friends. Or well, purposed organisms. With the purpose to just exist and live happily. They created animals, and life. They loved life, and still do. Though he particularly loves vultures, those beautiful winged beasts, soaring in the sky. She loves the sky in general, finding it beautiful. The different colors, the clouds, the sun, the moon, the animals that can glide and soar in it. Sadly, as they are stuck in that sad little puppet chamber, he can never be outside. Oh how she longs to feel the grass, to smell the flowers, to play in the rain, to climb in the trees. To feel truly alive. So, instead of wallowing in self pity, she brought the life to her can. An entire ecosystem is found in her structure. Though this does make it quite hard to traverse, it doesn't really matter to ESN. He is stuck in his chamber after all. They have an entire collection of animals that it has made. Yeah, one ripped off his leg but thats okay! I would of drawn some of the animals, but just know that he has made different kinds of lizards, vultures, plants, slugcats, the whole thing. Maybe I'll draw some tomorrow.

Also, its mute! She used to be able to speak, but moss and algae grew in their voicebox, making in incredibly hard and painful to talk. Though I mean.... it doesn't really have friends to talk to anyway. They barely interact with other iterators. The few times they've interacted with their local group was strained and awkward, so they don't see a point in it anymore. Why have friends when you can have pets? Right?

oh yeah I gotta @ some people

@rustylorde-comix

@cookieeevee

the two people who wanted to see the ref I think. If you want, I can always un@ you. Wait is it untag... or unping.... idk.

[weirdmarioenemies]

gName: Pokeyplant

Debut: Super Mario Galaxy

Ah! It is Pokeyplant. Pokeyplant is a Pokey that is a plant, and this does not make it special, because they are all plants by default. But I have to admire how proud it is of being a plant! It takes this seemingly mundane aspect of itself, and really owns it. I think that is great! You should love something about yourself that you take for granted RIGHT NOW!!! Punk

You may notice that Pokeyplant is not particularly pokey. It is not pokey at all, in fact. Someone shaved this cactus! Evidently to gather enough cactus spines to fashion them into a very painful sweater. Why is that so obvious? Well, there are no sheep in Dusty Dune Galaxy, are there? No WOOL for sweaters. Gotta use cactus spines! Unfortunately!

There is only one Pokeyplant in the entire galaxy. In the entire game. In the entire franchise! And while the Prickly Piranha Plant from Galaxy 2 is just as rare, it at least gets to have a pretty significant role as Piranha Plant’s side smash attack in Super Smash Bros. Imagine if Pokey was a playable fighter that also took aspects from its variants in its moveset! It could have a move where it turns into Pokeyplant, removing its spines and making it more vulnerable to attacks!

Pokeyplant’s whole gimmick is sort of being a Pokey that is more vulnerable to attacks, but like, in a fun way. With no spikes, it can be Spin Attacked, and its segments will go flying! Alternatively, its head can just be jumped upon to defeat the whole thing at once. That is really it. Its being a unique entity is certainly more fun than its behavior!

However, Pokeyplant is not the first full-length Pokey who could be jumped upon! In fact, in their very first appearance, Pokeys- who were green- could be stood upon just fine!

And then, in Sticker Star, they decided to just bring those back! As of Color Splash they are known as Green Pokeys, and their whole thing is being the Pokey that can be jumped upon. Mario does not punch in this game, but I’m sure they could theoretically be punched safely as well!

Pokeyplant is a delightful little tidbit in the ongoing development of Pokeys! Really, I mostly like it because its name is funny. If you take one thing from this post, I hope it’s that Pokeyplant has an amusing name. But I also think it is just fascinating that a separate modern spineless Pokey was established with Green Pokey, perhaps even entirely independently! Mario’s world is a whole ecosystem of fun little pretend creatures!

[ettadunham]

i hate to be the guy adding to the arcane ramblings when i'm also the guy saying 'just let me enjoy women's wrongs in peace' @ discourse, but god, i keep thinking about arcane's storytelling. there is this cheap trick that i've seen tv shows do in our modern fandom ecosystem, seemingly to try and cultivate a following, where they would gesture towards / imply things or let the audience fill out the blanks constantly. and obviously, that almost always leads to a let down, because no, they're not gonna follow through. they're not gonna write the story that you're writing in your own head, and they're probably just gonna give you something else to chase instead of fulfilling that potential you saw in it.

but what i like about arcane is that they're not just letting you fill out the blanks - they want you to find the connections and the details that complete the story that they're telling. it's not just vague gesturing where you can read anything into it, it's intentional and consistent. yes, it's super fast paced, but it's also efficient not just with its story but its character writing, and if you can meet it where it is, if you can follow its characters through their journeys, it can be immensely satisfying.

and listen, i'm also the guy saying that we should bring back 22-episode seasons. give me my bottle episodes, my beloved fillers, my special little bros, let them breathe gdi, but damn. this show is my exception that proves the rule, whatever the fuck that nonsense phrase means.

and okay, season 2 maybe was a bit overstuffed. a bit too punchy for its own fucking good. there actually were some points where i got a bit of a whiplash, but even there, it was mostly when i felt confused by whatever was happening (and that might also have meant that i missed something or didn't have a full on vibe with a character). like, i didn't really understand what the fuck was going on with viktor, and why jayce smashing him (nice) with a hammer made it so that he was suddenly evil aligned i guess. but you know what, they somehow still made it make sense retroactively by the end, so i'm not mad.

on a somewhat opposite end, i don't think i got a full grasp of the whole black rose plotline, and to this day, i'm still not sure if i'm supposed to think that mel's brother died because their mother failed to save him, or because she just straight up murdered him herself (i think it's the former, but i s2g, i was so sure at points that they were implying the latter). but that ultimately didn't really take away from the heart of that storyline which was mel and ambessa's characters and their relationship, and that really was all that mattered. god, that was so good.

and you know what? i don't even care that caitlyn seemingly switched up on a dime when she bumped into her ex. because i was so fucking locked in to that character and it just... made sense to me. and not just in a funny 'haha, lesbian' way, but in a real, i-know-this-bitch-in-my-gut-and-my-emotional-investment-is-paying-off way.

god, this show is so good. still would have loved a s3 though.

[cicadaland]

bro it's like this whole website exists just to make people mad. like its whole user ecosystem is built around that. I am going to take another break maybe I will come back Tuesday?? I also want to be on tumblr less because I really have to lock in academically

[elbiotipo]

the 'why do they have potatoes' thing is a generally good worldbuilding question though. like if you wanna say your fantasy world is at all realistic you SHOULD be thinking about what kinds of flora/fauna are native to the ecosystem youre writing in and if there are non-native plants and animals, how did they get there? like its JUST either being too lazy to think about """boring""" worldbuilding questions or being too lazy to care about implying that your fantasy europe colonized fantasy south america bc corn is not native to medieval france. equivalent of that post thats like "people will spend 30 years designing elf lingerie but if you ask them why their orcs have monolids suddenly research is impossible"

FGJKLSDJGFKJDSKJGSDK GOD THAT LAST PART

Yeah, I've seen that a lot, let's try to fix it and make literal races with fixed traits in the original material (the literal Monster Manual) more diverse. bro. just ditch the whole thing. I promise you don't need to cling to Tolkien's stereotypes or put stat numbers into races to make fantasy.

Leaving aside this, yes, it is because I'm an ethnobotanist, but asking "where the food comes from" is perhaps the single most important question you can ask in any kind of worldbuilding, at any scale. It defines everything: social organization (that alone determines a lot), the technology, the culture, economics, population, down from history and social changes to whatever fun quirk you want like "hey, isn't that funny that in this world they use magic to make coffee ice cream?"

You don't necessarily have to have an equivalent to every world culture -though I insist in a fantasy South America to make people realize just how much this continent contributed to the history of the world, and how much of what we consider "European" actually comes from other cultures-, you can have magical or fantasy or more wacky explanations. Maybe bears domesticated them, maybe they actually ARE a different plant and you notice that they're cooked just a little different, whatever. Just why, in a world of fantasy, you limit yourself to the exact same setting and things that are established? I don't particulary care if they are grounding or relatable or whatever, I do't read fantasy or play fantasy to be "grounded", it's to immerse myself in a world and story and say "damn, that's creative". Even the best characters are completely interchangable and generic if they don't come from a living world (and if you set it on Earth, I personally demand even more care to your research)

And also it's just plain fun to answer, you learn a lot about the world, and get more creative ideas for your story! Also, I won't shoot you.

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

People: corporations are bad and evil and blinded by greed!

Corporations: *Dangles AI in front of them*

People: Fuck artists, this is the way of the future! What's that you say? These things worsen climate change because they suck up tons of fresh water and cause shortages? Who cares! I can stick it to the greedy artists and make millions! Money money money!

No wonder we keep getting fucked; it's all too easy for people to point fingers at the greed of others, but they always make excuses for their own greed.

As far as I can tell, it's training AI models in general that takes a lot of water for cooling, not AI art in specific, and it hasn't caused any shortages yet. Servers in general require a lot more water than you think and while they're working on solutions to try and offset the water footprint by using non-potable water, there's not enough transparency in how much is being actually being used by data centers and in tech firms' promises to be "water positive" by "replenishing watersheds" (which sounds suspiciously like the whole 'we plant two trees for each we use.....in a massive tree farm that is in no way a good replacement for the ecosystem we destroyed!' deal).

Yes, AI sucks up way more water than your average data center and that's another mark against it, but it's part of a much bigger problem. Getting rid of it won't save us and blaming it all on tech bros and AI art just distracts from the real, systemic problem we all have to deal with.

[blazehedgehog]

Given they’re soft rebooting again… what’s your Jurassic world 4/jurassic park 7/ Jurassic animals and also Triassic and Cretaceous animals make life difficult: the movie pitch? I feel like, as fun as the sequels can be, they’ve lost the science parable and horror/thriller elements of the classic - for all its faults; at least lost world has that.

Hmm... I'm gonna think like a movie executive. What's hot right now? AI's hot, right? It's the buzz. I propose a hard reboot.

Crichton's original novel opens with this big screed about a near future where we have "designer genetics." Genetic manipulation gets easier and easier and I think it's said Jurassic Park takes place in a world where it's getting to the point that parents can custom-order what kind of kids they'll have by selecting specific genetic traits. (It's been a while since I've read it)

Jurassic Park the movie shows human beings physically modifying genetic code by hand using VR displays, but Mr. DNA also admits that "a full DNA sequence contains 3 billion genetic codes." So it's ridiculous to assume that a human being could edit the genetic code by hand. One sequence would take years to get right, maybe even a lifetime.

So our story is that we have some 20 something silicon valley tech bro. He got outrageously rich off of crypto and NFTs and was smart enough to cash out early. We frame him as altruistic but around the edges we can see maybe he's not the greatest person. It's suggested he knew crypto was kind of a scam, which is why he got out early, but obviously he was in crypto at all to begin with, which does not bode well. But he's supposedly "one of the smart ones." Now he's rich! And cool! And using his powers for "good." He's beloved in pop culture.

The next wave is here. Neural network LLM Artificial Intelligence. He's all in. It's the next crypto. And he starts a company that uses LLM AI to "solve the genetic algorithm." He spins this out into a financial empire where people can custom-order pets with specific traits. But obviously people with a lot of money start wondering if maybe they can get more... exotic products.

With the realm of cats, dogs and parrots conquered, our techbro begins phase 2: recreating extinct animals. This is a guy who thinks he's going to save the world by restoring lost links in the food chain (without doing enough research to see how that would change our existing ecosystem, since he could be resurrecting an invasive species).

He's going to debut the first of his phase 2 work at an event he's calling Jurassic Park, because he's going to demonstrate the first living dinosaurs in 65 million years. Jurassic Park will continue to operate as a massive nature reserve; a symbol of his control of life itself.

Obviously: everything goes wrong. The AI has never had to change this much genetic code before. It has to make up whole entire sections of DNA. The end result is unpredictable, but techbro is confident that if the AI sequenced things well enough that something could actually hatch from the egg, then it's safe.

It is not safe.

Not only do we not understand anything about dinosaur behavior, these technically aren't even dinosaurs. They're genetic mutants. The on-site dinosaur expert brought in with the press to verify Jurassic Park's claims quickly realizes that while some of these dinosaurs are accurate in some ways, a lot of them have hard deviations away from known science. Muscles that aren't quite right, appendages that aren't the right size, things like that. Maybe their brains and brain chemistry are slightly different.

The question remains whether known science was wrong or whether the AI made something up that was never true.

The question is brought up again when we learn a technician within Jurassic Park sabotaged everything intending to steal the genetic learning data from techbro's servers. Techbro says the thief poisoned the data and that's gotta be why there's mutations.

The security systems fail. The thief has left them to their creations. Jurassic Park as we know it happens.

Since a lot of movies have to deal with this, all throughout this, nobody has phones. To prevent leaks, all of their phones were confiscated before they entered Jurassic Park and locked in a security checkpoint. Our techbro, maybe as a sign of solidarity, even gives his phone to the security guy. We could even say maybe they've been having security issues beforehand, to set up the thief hacking everything before he actually does it.

Anyway, since our thief sabotaged the park's own communication channels, a lot of the movie is about getting back to that security checkpoint, breaking in, and getting their phones so they can call for help.

Oh, and also: all of Jurassic Park's vehicles are electric, too, and tied into the security mainframe. Since the park's whole security system was hacked and disabled, none of the vehicles can be operated. The only thing that works are these little golf carts, but they're small, can't go very fast, and offer little protection. Maybe our survivors try one, it gets smashed by a triceratops, and they're too far away from the depot to go back for a new one. So a lot of the movie is them traversing the park on foot.

As they're being chased by dinosaurs through the park itself, they end up deep in the core of a genetics lab. And it's here we learn the dark truth: there is a wide margin of failure. The recently deceased specimens are all kept for study and learning and there's a lot because the AI fails often, and it has to be taught not to do that. We see dozens of disfigured animals. Bits and pieces of dinosaurs, pets, and even, in one tank... human parts. These tanks are labeled "phase 3."

Not only are the mutated dinosaurs not the work of sabotage, this guy's been trying to create genetically modified people. We have our big "what have you done?" moment of horror. One of the last surviving members of the press is going to blow the whistle on this place. It's over. Maybe it's someone we build up as the techbro's new friend discovering that their hero wasn't who he said he was.

Just then, a dinosaur bursts in and kills that person. Drama! Tragedy!

Obviously, the survivors find a way out. Techbro has to live with his own conscious. Multiple people died at his hands on this day and he had a hand in creating some of the worst sins against nature mankind has ever seen.

(Or maybe we stick to the original Jurassic Park book and he dies just before getting on the escape chopper.)

[nerdydowntherabbithole]

Hey lemme. Lemme slide my calculator at you,,, I would put a read more on this but tumblr appears to have taken away the option after I added the picture? Sorry for length!

This is Sings in Silence!!! Way back when the ancients were still around, she had a civil war break out atop her can that lead to both sides sabotaging her by literally setting off bombs in her systems to keep her from interfering. She went mostly nonverbal from the whole experience and now uses sign language to communicate in person, along with more animalistic mimicry she picked up from her scugs :)

She refused to work on the great problem anymore after the conflict, which lead to her population becoming convinced she was irreversibly broken, and that she may also start refusing to help them. She never did end up refusing, but she had to watch as they all slowly migrated to other iterators' cities instead, despite her best efforts to prove she was still good for something. She wasn't scrapped due to the effort involved, but all repair work on nonessential systems also stopped at this point, leaving her with a number of them that either don't work or are extremely temperamental. Also her inspectors are literally mad ALL THE TIME.

Silence ended up adopting an entire scug colony as citizens and creating a whole overgrown (unstable) ecosystem for them atop her can! She even picked up the hobby of studying and researching the natural world around her, just to learn how to better provide for them without most of the facilities intended to let her do that. She would give the world for them. In fact, she even lets them in to eat her neurons in times of food scarcity due to the unstable environment :) she has the facilities to make more, but it still sucks.

She tends to be sweet and patient, but void help you if you even think about hurting one of her precious citizens. The scugs trust her so much that they even leave their pups for her to babysit! Despite this, she's also prone to anxiety and overreactions, often making extremely poor decisions when finally riled up. I imagine that she could be persuaded to Go On A Walk if it was for the good of her colony-- she would rather let herself decay and her corpse serve as a shelter for them than leave them alone without a caretaker for no reason, in full honesty.

OAAAHHHH OH MY GAAAWWD I LOVE HER SO SO MUCH SHE IS SO GOOD. BUT ALSO OWIE THAT STORY. Yet another iterator punished for the problems the ancients made. AUUGGHH SHE IS JUST SO GOOD BRO. 10/10 Should be allowed to touch grass instead of having to let guys eat her neurons when times are tough