#does my math make sense?? have other people thought about this???

[waitineedaname]

i know trying to decipher the timeline in mxtx novels is always an endeavor that ends in madness, but i can't help it. i can't stop wondering: how old is zhuzhi-lang? and, a related question that might either answer or complicate the first question, how old is tianlang-jun?

demons can live longer than humans, and appearances are deceiving when it comes to guessing their ages, just like it is with the immortal cultivators. zhuzhi-lang is described as looking fifteen or sixteen when tianlang-jun gives him a humanoid form, and as a young man when shen qingqiu sees him later, but that could mean anything

here's the timeline i can piece together:

tianlang-jun's younger sister has an affair with a snake demon and gives birth to zhuzhi-lang. we don't really know how much time passed between zhuzhi-lang's birth and his mother's death and tianlang-jun finding him. we have no idea how much older tianlang-jun is than his sister. they could be a year apart, they could be a decade apart. who knows.

zhuzhi-lang serves tianlang-jun for an undisclosed amount of time, and then they meet su xiyan. that affair goes on for an unknown amount of time but at the very least nine months because uh. you know. pregnancy.

seventeen years pass before shen qingqiu meets him in his snake form because this is shortly after luo binghe is sent into the abyss and he was seventeen at that time. shen qingqiu then meets him in his human form after the five years of corpsezun, when luo binghe is 25

so. let's try to do math while i go insane. putting the rest under the cut because it got long

this is made complicated by us not really knowing how demons age, especially heavenly demons or snake demons. snake demons could reach maturity earlier. heavenly demons could age slower. who the fuck knows. tianlang-jun could've been completely guessing when he gave him a human form that was around fifteen, but zhuzhi-lang seems pretty mature, so he's definitely not younger than that when it comes to maturity. so let's say he really is fifteen when tianlang-jun finds him. I'm going to go with the lowest numbers just to make math simpler. he serves tianlang-jun for a while before they meet su xiyan, let's say at least a year, so he's at least sixteen when they meet her. then let's say the affair with her goes on for at least a year, so he's at least seventeen when luo binghe is born, tianlang-jun is betrayed, su xiyan dies, etc. add 25 years to that, and zhuzhi-lang is at least 42 when he meets shen qingqiu in book two. this is especially funny to me because shen qingqiu is, what, also early forties at this point? if we don't count his five years as a corpse towards his age? so zhuzhi-lang is pretty close in age to him

but then how old is tianlang-jun? again, I'm gonna go with the lowest numbers for the easiest math. let's say zhuzhi-lang's mother was eighteen when she had him, for my own sanity, and let's say tianlang-jun is only a year older than her. presuming zhuzhi-lang really does age like a human, fifteen years pass before tianlang-jun finds him, which would put him at 34. then let's do the same math as before and say he was at least 36 when luo binghe is born, then add 25 years again, he's 61 when we meet him. this is so funny to me. get it grandpa

the alternative is that zhuzhi-lang doesn't age like a human, he ages like a snake, so he's acting like a mature teen but is actually like. two years old because of how snakes age. so then that nudges tianlang-jun's ages down, so he's like 21 when they meet and 23 when luo binghe is born, then 48 when he shows up in the main plot. this is still funny to me

there's not really an answer i can think of that isn't insane. i think I've probably thought about this more than mxtx has at this point. I'm mostly just amused thinking about how, in terms of maturity at least, zhuzhi-lang is close in age with shen qingqiu and significantly older than luo binghe

[wip]

A very very minor thing I have been curious about for a while, and I'm finally asking: why do you calculate queue posting times the way you do? For example, if I set my queue to post 3x a day, naively I would expect it to post every 8 hours. But in reality it posts every 6 hours with a 12 hour gap between days. Why complicate the math like that?

Answer: Hello @circumference-pie!

Buckle up y’all, it’s story time again!

First: nobody who works at Tumblr right now was a part of the work of planning the default queue implementation, which was more than ten years ago. So the full story behind “Why does it work that way?” has unfortunately been lost to the sands of time. All we can do is tell you how it works today and surmise some reasons why. The queue is actually a very clever system and part of how it works explains some of why it works the way it does. Also, there have been attempts to do what you ask—we still have “Queue 2.0” available in your Tumblr Labs settings, which tries to get closer to how you expect things to work.

Anyway! How the queue works today is not actually a queue in the traditional sense. There is no single list of posts that are in “your queue”. Instead, when you “Add to queue” after creating a post, we’re actually scheduling it to post at a future time, as if you had used the “Schedule post” option instead. We’re just calculating that time on your behalf when you use “Add to queue”, based on your settings, and how many other scheduled posts you have already. We use a secondary “index” model, called “ScheduledPost”, to keep track of posts you have scheduled on your blog. We do mark the ones that are a part of “your queue”, but the data model doesn’t keep one list of your “queue” per se.

You can see this in action on your blog, hiding in plain sight. If you add a bunch of posts to your queue, and then schedule a post for a specific future date, you’ll see both in your blog’s “queue” list, side by side. Because technically to us, they’re the same thing: queued posts are really just another kind of scheduled post, relying on the same always-running service to publish scheduled posts across all of Tumblr. Here’s a fun fact: we typically have about ~14.5 million future posts to publish from this list at any given time and are publishing hundreds of these scheduled posts every second.

So when you’re adding a new post to your queue, what we’re doing behind the scenes is starting at the beginning of your “day”, and creating time slots based on your queue settings. If a time slot is already filled, we move on to the next one. That’s why the default queue scheduler works how you describe—we’re trying to fill those “slots” based on the start of the day, rather than trying to divide the calendar day evenly. This just makes it much simpler for us to understand, scale, and predict when our “peaks” will be. At peak times, the publish-scheduled-posts service is publishing tens of thousands of posts in a manner of seconds. We did rewrite that post-publishing part of this architecture a few years ago to improve its efficiency and solve a lot of “lost post” bugs, but we didn’t change how “Add to queue” works.

However, the Queue 2.0 project available in Labs was an attempt to change the queue system to work as you expect—instead of starting at [beginning of day] and creating enough slots to fit [number of slots] every [number of hours], it tries to divide the calendar day into [number of slots] and fit the result back to the original algorithm’s mapping of the day. We never productionized this alternative approach, because it has a few bugs that some blogs hit in extreme cases, and we’ve never had time to fully fix them. It also can cause a bit of weirdness when time zones diverge, like with daylight savings time. Also, a lot of people prefer the default algorithm, and we haven’t thought of a nice way to transition everyone from one to the other. So for now, both options exist, and you can choose which algorithm for queue-slot-generating you want to use. We hope that makes sense! 

While complicated, it is a great example of a system built by engineers to make sense and be scalable and predictable. But sometimes these kinds of systems, while clever, aren’t very intuitive to understand without digging into how they work.

Thanks for your question, and keep ’em coming. 

[lavandulawrites]

Yan!genshin thoughts? Bet.

Tighnari's darling likes being loud just to annoy him since he has sensitive years. His darling probablu also likes using strong smells to make sure he stays away for a while, at least till they fade away.

Yan! Diluc definetly baby proofs every single corner from the manor. Also, against popular belif, I dont think he would baby trap his darling. Like, yeah, he does realise it could keep her with him forever, but at the same time, he is probably too scared she is going to die during child birth(I see teyvat as at least a few centuries in the past. A period when women dying during childbirth was the norm).

Yan! Capitano is scared to hurt his darling more than he'd like to admit. Probably had a nightmare about it one time and left his bedroom faster than my last braincell during the math test, to check on his darling...possible that due to the comotion she woke up and threw the pillow at him....well, at least she is alright.

If Xiao'd darling compliments some hybrid's animal features, he 100% will scoff and let her see his wings(jealousy jealousy?). Also, if she is being held in the abode, he most likely lets her out during lantern rite. Under his strict supervision ofc.

If Kazuha's darling is wearing a hat, Kazuha definetly stole it so "people wont recognize her"(what a load of bs). Also, I hc that Kazuha accepted the smth's offer and went back to represent the Kaedehara clan...just so he can trap his darling more.

Yan Neuvillette secretly reads the novels he gifts his darling (totally doesn't enjoy them himself more than her). If his darling asks for some fish an aquarium, he might complain that fish need to be free(ironic, isnt it?). Also, he daydreams about taking a bath with his prisoner lover.

Wriothesley 100% gets his darling a cat and gets jealous of it if(rather when) his darling shows more attention to the cat...or when the cat is making biscuits on his darling's chest(this is way more common than one might think)

Unpopular opinion, Dottore is absolutely touch-starved and loves cuddles. After a long day of torture testing in the lab, he just wants to lay down with his darling. Probably also got his lover a pet, just to make sure she gets attached to it and use it as blackmail.

Ajaw and Kinich's darling are great friends.Ajaw likes his darling because she does anything in her power to annoy Kinich after well, being abducted. The difference however is that when his lover does it, it feels more personal. Ajaw and Kinich's darling often times advise each other on how to be the biggest pests alive.

Also, googletranslate is hot.

Goddamn you cooked🫶🏻Also, I haven’t forgotten your Kazuha request🤫

Poor Tighnari, he is really gonna suffer😭 Though I believe he manages to turn the table one way or another…

I 100% agree with you. Diluc would definitely baby-proof absolutely everything. He is so extremely overprotective (I ain’t complaining🤭). I also agree with the baby trapping. I think he has considered it, but he chooses not to, as it would do more damage than good.

Yeah, Capitano is definitely very paranoid. It does make sense after all the things he has experienced, paranoia is only to be expected. I think he would make his darling sleep in the same bed as him in order to watch over her.

Hahah Xiao is so petty (kinda cute). He definitely would want her to see the beautiful lanterns with him. It would be like a date that the humans talk so much about.

Awww he definitely would. If he did go back to restore his clan, Kazuha would definitely have enough power to keep his darling close to him at all times. It would be a wise move. Thigh his longing for freedom would make it difficult, so he would have to sacrifice something.

Hehhe that’s definitely something he would do. He really is a hypocrite🙄 Though he would definitely argue that he is only doing so in order to”to protect you”. Oh yeah, Neuvillette definitely daydreams a lot about taking a bath with his darling.

Wriothesley getting jealous of a cat is something I never knew I needed😭 It’s kinda cute tho tbh. Though I don’t think he would dislike the cat, he would definitely compete with it to see who gets your attention first. The cats wins every single time (as it should).

I agree with you. People forget that Dottore has been abandoned and hated through all his life (not to say that some of it is without reason) and it’s only natural that he would crave affection when he has gotten his hands on his darling. Ooof he is really sly with that pet thing😬

Ajaw and Kinich’s darling would definitely be besties. I really pity Kinich. Both Ajaw and darling would give him grey hairs rather fast😭

All in all, you really cooked with your headcanons😌 they’re all on point in my opinion🤭

Give me your yandere thoughts

[supreme-leader-stoat]

Alright someone told me to make it it's own post instead of hiding the story in the tags, so:

When I do mental math, I actually do visualize the numbers floating in the air like how tv serial sfx artists seem to think super-intelligence works. It's just a thing my brain does. I'm not literally hallucinating them, but I have a clear sense of which number is which and their size and position in relation to each other, I 'break' or 'split' large numbers apart into smaller ones, and I can 'smush' them together into larger numbers when adding sums. I just assumed that was how numbers worked until I was in high school and my dad asked me why my eyes always flick around looking at nothing when I'm thinking about math.

All that is to ask,

[its-time-to-write]

hi! Could you please write something with like reader opening the door one day when Roy stars knocking for training but reader and Jamie aren’t open about their relationship yet? I think it would be cute xx

I also thought this was cute. Not sure if anyone notices/cares, but all my titles are song lyrics based ever so loosely on the vibe I am trying to convey. Thanks for another great request!

what it is

Someone’s aggressively knocking on the door and as you roll over to check the time. It’s 4am, and you poke Jamie who is fast asleep beside you.

“Babe,” you whisper, “someone’s at the door.”

Jamie groans and mumbles something incoherent. As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you can tell something’s off. You reach out your hand and feel his forehead. It’s burning up.

The knocking continues and Jamie lets out another groan and says something that sounds like raining? Oh. Training. You remember he trains every morning at 4, but you’ve never seen who he goes with. He just kisses you in your sleep and is back right as you wake up for the day. 

You roll out of bed, grab one his sweatshirts from the floor, and pad downstairs to the door.

You swing open the door mid-knock. The man on the other side lowers his fist, looks at you all squinty for a moment, then says, “Who the fuck’re you?”

You return the look. “I live here. Who the fuck are you?”

The man scoffs. “No, you fucking don’t. This is Jamie Tartt’s house. Jesus fucking Christ, is he fucking blowing off training because of a fucking one-night stand?”

Oh. You know who this is. This is Roy Kent. You didn’t know he was the one training Jamie, but you guess it makes sense based on how much Jamie talks about him. It’s Roy Kent this, and Roy Kent that, and Roy says I need to eat more protein, and Roy said my hair looked funny today, does it look funny to you? 

You sigh. You and Jamie have been together for three months, and you basically live at his house. You’re really only at your flat to change clothes. You have a toothbrush, pajamas, and half a wardrobe at Jamie’s. Your books have started to make their way onto his shelves too, as you read them and then leave them for him to start. That was a little bit of an accident at first, after you left This Side of Paradise one night and came back to a different bookmark on page 34.

Anyway, Roy Kent doesn’t know you’re dating Jamie, or that anyone is. You suppose in his mind, Jamie is happily single, fucking around like the twenty-something year old footballer he is. 

Roy is still looking at you expectantly, so say, “I do live here. Why don’t you come in?” and hold open the door a bit wider. 

Roy’s face says fuck it, and he follows you inside to the kitchen. 

“Can I get you some tea?” you ask quietly, although Jamie can sleep through anything. 

Roy seems surprised by the question, but says, “Yeah, sure,” as he stands by the kitchen island.

“Jamie’s sick,” you say. “He’s still asleep upstairs. I doubt he’ll be up for training today.”

“Right, yeah,” says Roy, “I’m sorry, but who the fuck are you? Jamie’s not fucking supposed to be doing the whole one-night stand thing, he told me it’s too fucking distracting from training.”

You chuckle. “That’s comedy gold right there. Yeah, no, I’m not a one-night stand. I’m his girlfriend.”

Roy’s impressive eyebrows lift in shock, and you laugh again and give him your name. “Didn’t know I existed, did you? I’m not one for crowds or a big fuss. I told Jamie if we made it four months than he could start telling people. He was a little upset, but,” you shrug, “no point in making it a big deal if we just break up, right?”

You can practically see the wheels turning in Roy’s brain as he does the math.

“So you’re telling me that you’ve been fucking dating this little prick for three fucking months, and he hasn’t fucking said anything?”

You nod. 

“Fuckkk,” Roy whispers, “that makes so much fucking sense.”

You quirk an eyebrow at him.

“He’s been less of a prick recently,” Roy explains, “More considerate, been carrying around fucking books and shit. Not fucking flirting with everything that fucking moves. Thought maybe he was just taking beating Zava too fucking seriously.”

You nod and move to pour the tea. You and Roy both turn as you hear footsteps coming down the stairs. It’s Jamie, who is wearing a headlamp, pajama shirt, athletic vest, and a single sock. And, thank God, pants.

“Ready for training coach,” he says with a salute, but the action almost makes him fall over. He looks all pale and sweaty, with bags under his eyes.

“Told you he was sick,” you say.

“Fuckin’ hell,” is all Roy can come up with.

Jamie seems to notice you for the first time and breaks out into a smile. “Roy! Look! I have a girlfriend,” he says, words a little slurred while pointing to you.

It’s punctuated by a “Jesus Christ,” from Roy as Jamie wobbles, unsteady on his feet from his fever.

“Alright, mister,” you say. “Back to bed.”

Jamie frowns. “Always so mean,” he says. He does an imitation of your voice, “No Jamie, you can’t tell Roy about us. Yes Jamie, I know Roy’s your best friend. No Jamie, I don’t think you love Roy more than me.” He looks at Roy as you sling his arm around your shoulders, supporting him at his waist. He puts his fingertips on your lips as he says, “See what I have to put up with?”

You roll your eyes and suppress a smile as Roy says, “What you have to put up with?”

Jamie is so loopy right now. He lays his head on yours and smiles again. “Look at this. Me two favorite people, finally meeting. You should stay for dinner, coach.”

Roy rolls his eyes and shakes his head. You can tell he’s trying not to laugh as you both mutually decide not to point out that it is now 4:30am and dinner is a long, long way away.

“Let’s go get you out of those clothes and into bed,” you say as you start to lead him back to your room. 

Jamie casts a look back at Roy and wiggles his eyebrows. “Babe, you can’t just say things like that in front of granddad. Might give him a heart attack. Old people are such prudes.”

“Go to sleep, Tartt,” Roy says. He looks at you and says softly, “I can see myself out.”

You smile and wave with your free hand. “It was nice to meet you,” you say. “Hopefully we can meet again under more normal circumstances.”

Roy nods once and does what you think is a smile? He turns and heads out the door as you maneuver Jamie upstairs. Jamie Tartt has a girlfriend. And a good one at that. What is the world coming to?

[marsdql]

Skating on thin ice

♡ 𝒥 — [ 양정원 ] ⊹₊⟡⋆ jungwon ── .✦ f!reader ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ . . . 𝒲𝒸 2.1𝒦

──── eyes full of 𝓆𝓊ℯ𝓈𝓉𝒾ℴ𝓃𝓈, we walk past eachother, pretending there’s no 𝒸ℴ𝓃𝓃ℯ𝒸𝓉𝒾ℴ𝓃 . . . { a lot of teasing, frenemies to lovers, fluff, crack, low self esteem, highschool drama, romance, bullying, self doubt, light angst? }

────୨ৎ────

“Y/n, I swear if I have to ask you to finish your homework once more, your phone will be on the side of the road!” Your mother yelled from across the kitchen.

Highschool has been on your back this year, everything becoming more and more difficult as the days fly by. You were never a math girl—science, sure. But math? Never. Definitely your worst subject. Nothing really ever made sense, well sometimes it did, but only in budget related stuff—of course you were only good in budgeting, shopping addict.

To make things better—Yang Jungwon, a boy who transferred just a year ago, would always pick on you for your math grades each time he’d see your note from the corner of his nosey eye. If you knew better, you’d make fun of him too—his science grade was trashy, while yours were always colourful.

He never meant any harm from it, he only does it because of the time you humiliated him in PE class when you got higher than him in the beep test, infront of all of his friends who were watching from outside your gym class. Although, your sensitive self cannot handle any insults towards your grades—especially when you’re trying all you’ve got—and still getting so low.

“Another 5? Comon now y/nnie, we’re IB students! You shouldn’t be getting this low now… didn’t you want to become a doctor?” Jungwon whispered in your ear from behind. You quickly yanked his head from your shoulder, making him jump back into place onto his seat behind you. ‘Do you ever get tired of making fun of me? Go focus on your own things.’ ‘I can’t focus on my own things when you have too many flaws…’ he said as he gave you a wink and plopped a lolly into his mouth.

As you were walking to the bus to go home, you were stopped again—by jungwon. “What do you want now, jungwon?” You said in an annoyed tone. “Hey, what’s with the attitude… I’m not here to say anything mean, unfortunately. My friend Sunghoon told me to ask you if you did ice skating, he said he saw your instagram profile and you had something about it in your bio” You were obsessed with figure skating, you claimed that you knew how to skate—when in reality, you fell the last time you tried it and now too scared to try it again. Yet, you still had it in your bio and made it seem as if you were a skater…

As a child, you didn’t do much sports like most people. You wanted to do taekwondo—too boyish for your parents. You wanted to do basketball—lost passion for it after 4th grade. You did gymnastics/dance—wasn’t as flexible as your other friends and got discouraged, slowly growing out of it. Now as a teenager, you felt the need to know a sport, but you knew that it’s only good to be actually amazing at a sport if you started it when you were young.

You went to a sports school and you were one of the only ones who never tried out for anything, too scared of people being better than you because of them doing the sports from a young age. —— “Y/n? Hello? Are you even listening to me? You loser… why are you zoning out at this time? Don’t make me scare you out of it!” Yelped the boy right next to you. “No! Okay? Get out of my face jungwon! I don’t know what you’re saying but whatever it is, no!” You forgot what he even said—too lost in thought to care. It was your stop so you had to hop off anyway.

Days pass by, it’s depressing during winter, nothing to do, especially on Christmas break. Suddenly, a loud, aggressive knock on your door catches your attention. Coming from behind it, “y/n! Y/n! Comon! I know you’re there, I can hear your grumpy sighs from here!”

As you opened the door, you were welcomed by his huge smile—jungwon’s. “Now, what on Earth are you doing here? Is it to tell my mom that-“ as you were about to finish your sentence, you spot your mom and another woman—who seems to be jungwon’s mother—walk from the driveway to your front door.

“Y/n, please welcome our guests with respect and go get the kettle ready. Now miss Yang, what do you prefer? Tea or coffee?” Said your mother before you were even able to process what was happening.

Jungwon stared at you with the biggest grin on his face—as if he planned this from the start. He stayed behind you in your house as you walked towards your kitchen, being the good daughter you are and doing what your mother telling you to do.

“Okay, so, care to tell me what you’re doing here? Did you convince your mother to become friends with mine so that you could annoy me in my own house aswell?” You asked him, avoiding eye contact at all costs—because the last thing you needed, was to add something on his list of “things to hate on y/n”.

As you turned on the kettle, filling it up with water, he responded with a more serious tone than usual “no seriously this time, they saw eachother at the supermarket near our school and recognized eachother from social media.. I didn’t believe it either when I saw my mom pull into your drive way.” How did he even know it was your house.. “and don’t ask me how I know it’s your house, you practically run off the bus and make it to your door before it can even driving.”

As Jungwon sat at the kitchen table, his usual smirk returned. “Anyway, back to the real question. Do you ice skate or not? Sunghoon won’t stop bugging me about it.”

You sighed, suddenly regretting every choice that led to you putting “figure skater enthusiast” in your Instagram bio. Avoiding his gaze, you muttered, “No, I don’t actually ice skate.”

Jungwon’s eyebrows shot up, his teasing grin reappearing. “Wait—what? But your bio—”

“I know, okay?” you snapped, crossing your arms defensively. “I just… I like watching figure skating, and I wanted to seem interesting, okay? People who are good at sports always seem so… cool. And I’m not good at anything.”

His grin faded, replaced by an unusually soft expression. “Hey, don’t say that. You’re good at plenty of things.”

You scoffed. “Name one.”

He leaned back, pretending to think. “Well, for starters, you’re great at making me laugh. Even when you’re mad. And you crushed me in that beep test, remember?”

“That doesn’t count,” you muttered, though your lips twitched upward. “I’m still not good at sports. Or anything else, really.”

Jungwon rolled his eyes. “Stop putting yourself down, y/n. You’re good at science, better than I’ll ever be. And honestly? Half the school’s scared of your sarcastic comebacks. That’s a skill.”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “Right. Sarcasm queen—what a talent.”

“Hey, it’s better than lying in your Instagram bio,” he shot back, smirking again. “But seriously, if you want to learn to ice skate, I can ask Sunghoon to help. He’s a pro.”

Your face flushed. “No way. That’s way too embarrassing.”

Jungwon leaned closer, a teasing glint in his eye. “What, afraid he’ll fall for you when he sees how graceful you are on the ice?”

“Shut up, Jungwon!” you said, shoving his shoulder, though you couldn’t stop the smile spreading across your face.

“Fine, fine,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “But for the record, you don’t have to be good at sports to be cool. And you definitely don’t need a fake bio to impress anyone.”

You blinked, caught off guard by his sincerity. “Thanks, Jungwon.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, popping another lolly into his mouth. “Just don’t expect me to stop teasing you anytime soon. That’s what friends are for.”

Friends? The word lingered in your mind, leaving a strange warmth in its wake. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t so bad after all.

As the days went on, Jungwon started acting… differently. It wasn’t immediate, but you noticed. The sharp teasing comments he usually threw your way softened, replaced by subtle jokes that didn’t sting as much. He even started helping you with your math homework after class, though he made it clear it was only because he “couldn’t stand watching you struggle so much.”

You weren’t sure what to make of it. Was this some elaborate scheme to catch you off guard? Or had he genuinely decided to be nice? Either way, you couldn’t help but feel a little flustered by how much time he suddenly spent around you.

It was late on a snowy Thursday afternoon when it happened. You were sitting on a bench outside the school, waiting for the bus. The air was crisp, your breath visible as you tucked your hands into your coat pockets. Jungwon appeared out of nowhere, plopping down next to you, his usual lolly in his mouth.

“Waiting for the bus again? You know, one day you’re going to freeze to death out here,” he said, nudging you with his elbow.

“Thanks for the concern,” you replied dryly, though you couldn’t help the small smile tugging at your lips.

He tilted his head, studying you for a moment. “You look tired.”

“Wow, such a compliment,” you said, rolling your eyes. “Long day, that’s all.”

“Bet you’re overthinking something again,” he said casually, leaning back on the bench.

You hesitated. “Maybe. You’re being weirdly nice lately, and I don’t know why. It’s kind of throwing me off.”

Jungwon glanced at you, his expression unreadable for once. “Weirdly nice? Wow, thanks. I didn’t realize I was such a villain before.”

“You kind of were,” you teased, though your voice was quieter this time. “But seriously. Why are you being… like this? Did you get bored of making fun of me or something?”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “You’re so dense sometimes, y/n.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you asked, frowning.

He turned to face you fully, the teasing glint in his eyes replaced by something softer—something you couldn’t quite place. “It means… maybe I just like spending time with you. Maybe I like seeing that little smile you try to hide when you think I’m being funny. And maybe I realized I didn’t want you to think I only know how to annoy you.”

Your heart stuttered. For a second, you forgot how to breathe. “Jungwon… what are you saying?”

He sighed, his breath fogging up in the cold air. “I’m saying.. just, never mind—see you later y/n!” were the last thing he said before he left—your bus arriving at the same time.

t . . . b . . . c . . .

[paranoiddreams]

Random Gojo HC’s

Warnings!! - Not really any except for mentions of his big ass ego, my silly takes, and the Kendrick vs Drake situation from earlier this year. Also, not hate to imagine dragons or Disney adults, it’s just funny to imagine Satoru Gojo associated with those things😭

A/n!! - smth short bc I don’t feel like writing anything long rn😭. I’m working on some asks, including one for MHA so I can put something up on there, but for now, he’s some goofy thoughts I’ve had abt Gojo over the week✨

- He’s the proud owner of a few pet rocks, which are just rocks he’s seen on the ground during his nightly walks and picked up.

- Don’t mistake this man’s goofiness for insincerity, although, because that’s not it at all. He gets nervous, and resorts to a joke. Or, he gets angry, so he tries to cool down with a joke.

- Satoru DOMINATES at just dance, he’ll dance up a storm no matter who he’s competing against.

- Has started fights/gotten people angry because of some of his off handed jokes, but is completely oblivious to it…like you’ll think he’s trying to act like nothing is wrong, when in reality he just DOESN’T KNOW?!

- I was thinking abt making a whole post on this, but I think he’d listen to artists like Imagine Dragons (unironically), Chase Atlantic, BTS, Charlie XCX, and NewJeans. Although he’s not much of a music guy, he does like to listen to stuff when he’s alone on a walk or in the car.

- This man has a god-complex, and we all need to admit it even thought he’s our silly little guy…🤧 but he definitely strikes me as the type to get very absorbed by his ego at times. But best believe he’s got people around him that’ll smack some sense into him, because he really does have a big heart deep down.

- Satoru has an iPad. I can’t explain, all I know is that he has an iPad 10th gen and it’s blue.

- Has a strange attachment to the Barbie movies. All 52 of them. He watched the first one when he was like 12 (I did an unnecessary amount of math and googling to fact check this) and thought “omg? Another fabulous, multitalented, attractive person like me? I’m in.”

- She was definitely not his first crush though, that was Meg from Hercules fs.

- He’s not a Disney adult, but if he were to go to Disney, he’d be able to name each character, ride, and find all of the hidden Mickey’s. So he’s pretty damn close.

- Has used his biblically accurate eyes to blind many people before. Although, most of the time it’s unintentionally. The other times, he’s just being a little shit or distracting an opp.

- Didn’t care about the Drake vs. Kendrick thing, but when Yuji explained the whole ass lore to him he said he was on Kendrick’s side to appease him. He has nothing against either artist, he’s just too busy waiting for 2025 for the BTS reunion to care about anything else culture wise LMAO

Dividers by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more <3

[erinwantstowrite]

opinions on ai?

This is the perfect time to share something I wrote a few months ago when I was upset about it:

AI is the bane of my existence and I hate it so much. Not only because of the environmental impact that it has, but because of how it gives us absolutely nothing of value in creative spaces and is actually a detriment to our future, rather than being "innovative" like companies want us to believe.

If you're using AI to write notes for you, or to answer questions, to write your essays and your discussion posts, you are hurting yourself. But eventually you will hurt others with your willing ignorance. You are not learning, you are not taking the time to push yourself to new bounds. You are not absorbing the information you need, and for why? Because it's hard? Life is hard. Learning is hard. If learning was easy, you wouldn't be learning anything at all. And one day when you need to use these tools you put down and gave to a program in order to do your job, you are going to get someone hurt in some way. If you're going into teaching and you didn't bother to learn about childhood development because you let an AI take your notes because you couldn't be half-assed to sit through an hour long lecture, you will fail every student that comes your way. If you're an engineer and you had AI do the math for you, something that you make will break and it could kill someone. Because the AI can not even count how many times the letter 'r' is in strawberry, but you're trusting it to make bridges or design buildings?

And in a creative sense, you are not an artist if you use AI. I will scream it from the rooftops if I have to.

You are not an artist if you use AI.

Because to be an artist is to put your very soul into what you create. And an AI has no soul. To be an artist is to lay yourself bare for people to witness and interpret, and it's scary but it's freeing. To be an artist is to make a message with your art, to have people a thousand years from now sit in a museum and feel connected to who you were so far in the past. To think that humanity may be different but we are also inherently the same. To be an artist is to despair over the process of creating your art because it's difficult, and time consuming, and damn does it drive you crazy. But then you get that end result and you realize you learned something about yourself, you got better at something that brings you joy, you created and now you see what you are capable of, and what you will be capable of in the future. To be an artist is to connect with someone because of what you made, and that someone includes yourself.

We keep telling young artists that they need to be better now, they need to quit if they aren't good at it on the first try. We keep acting like we didn't start from somewhere ourselves, like we were born with the fine motor skills and the talent needed to create. It's because our attention spans can't handle over 20 seconds and we need multiple videos playing to drown out our own thoughts. We have to look at comment sections to see the court of public opinion before we make a judgement ourselves. If anything is out of the ordinary or doesn't look the way we expect or want, it must be shamed. And this existence is exhausting because at the end of the day, we have done nothing of value. When coming across a video of a young artist who took the time out of their day to create, we need to encourage them to continue going, tell them that their work is worthy. Because it is. It is worthy because they made it. If we shoot them down before they can go anywhere, we've just killed an artist that could have painted the next Starry Night, or created a sculpture that millions of people would try to visit. We've shot down someone who could teach others how to create one day in their future. We shot them down and killed their inspiration and motivation, and they might turn to someone else to do it for them because they will believe they are not worthy enough or talented enough to make it.

When I was still in school, my favorite part of the year was seeing the projects put up on the wall. The silly displays our teachers put up to show a holiday with slightly wonky paper snowflakes, the posters that the art students made with "too many lightning bolts around the guitar", the signs for school dances, the yearbooks that students spent all year making, the English class posters that depicted scenes from what they were reading and they were made with stick figures or they had someone draw out butterflies. I loved seeing the decorations for Homecoming Week, loved looking ta the booths that everyone made for our career and science fairs. I liked when we put on talent shows still, when we did pep rallies and fashion shows and we saw everyone get together to have fun and not care if it was "perfect." No one there was a professional artist, not yet, but that didn't make it any less entertaining or creative.

We dance because we want to feel how our bodies move and express ourselves in ways words cannot. We paint and we draw and make pottery and quilts and pictures because at one point, all we had were cave paintings of our hands, and we still look at them with reverence for where we started. We sing and we drum and we laugh because music is a universal language that anyone can understand, and isn't that breathtaking? We write so that people in the future can pour themselves over our words and learn from us, so that kids can hide their books underneath their covers with a little flashlight when their parents put them to bed hours ago but they just can't put our story down they have to know what comes next! We cook for our loved ones and have family recipes that mean we've been tasting the same food that our family we never got to meet were eating too.

We create because humans are meant to create. We put our love into the process, we put our dreams and our hopes and our hard earned lessons into these creations.

AI will never have that. AI has none of the process, and therefore, it is not art. We can gripe about how art has different meanings all we want, we can shout that art is only art if it invokes an opinion or a thought, but that is not what makes art. Because there is still effort put into placing a shoe on a pedestal, or painting a yellow square, or painting a mural on a wall, or writing poetry in a tiny notebook at school, or melting crayons together, or anything that requires you putting it together. If AI is doing all the work for you, then you've accomplished nothing. And you stole from the people that actually did accomplish something. You stole not only their effort, but you stole their process, their feelings, their hope and their dreams and their ideas of the future.

AI is nothing and will ultimately become obsolete. Because humans will not stop creating just because companies are pushing for us to stop and hand it over to them. They want us to stop creating, they want us to pay them for it, they want us to put blind trust into what they're doing, they want us to forget that they are stealing from us. I will not forget. I will never forget. Because I was born to sing and dance and write and draw and cook, and when I die, my body will go right back to the Earth and perhaps flowers will grow around my grave. I will still be creating even then. And even if AI is still around and still trying to steal from us, I will die knowing that it could never do the same.

[blorbocedes]

BROCEDES! ROOMMATE AU + UNEXPECTED VIRGIN!

‘Take a shot if your body count is more than 5!’

Most of the crowd drinks, even those with obviously shifty eyes and guilty demeanours. Lewis drinks.

He was coursemates with Adrian the previous semester and had to hear his bitching and moaning about the bitches he gets – the lack thereof, spots him drinking too. Nico’s standing at the end of the couch, expensive loafers careful to step around the sticky spilled beer.

He nurses his red solo cup, untouched. Lewis frowns.

‘Take a shot if your body count is double digits!’

Fewer people drink this time. The crowd goes ‘ooh’ at the ones who do. Technically, Lewis’ is 7 – 8 if you count the blowjob and her getting her period at the last second, opting out. But college athletes have a reputation to maintain, so Lewis finishes off his cup.

This time, Nico is watching him. Smiles when their eyes meet and does a mock salute, lips still not grazing his drink.

What the fuck? What could it be? It bothers Lewis that Nico’s not being honest. He's seen Nico half-lidded hanging off some guy’s arm at a party or cuddled into some girl to know better. Although, since Nico has access to all the population instead of 50%, it would make sense if his count is twice as high.

A pretty girl in a low cut top and blonde highlights taps Lewis on the arm to dance with her, and all thoughts of his roommate and how many people he fucks are forgotten.

A few hours later, the party has died down. Cold pizza and the music is less in-your-face, more indie. A small group gather on the floor playing the laziest truth or dare with a half empty bottle of Bacardi. The guy beside Nico is in an obnoxious leather jacket and tight pants, and his hand rests on Nico’s thigh.

It falls on Lewis.

“So… Lew-iss,” Natalie? maybe asks, voice slurring a little. “Do you remember when you first met Nico?”

Nico raises an interested eyebrow. Of course he remembers. However, Lewis is aware they asked the question because people think him and Nico are secretly hooking up because they live together, and since Nico’s seen with everyone. His teammate Felipe and his girlfriend are within earshot.

“Nah, man. I don't remember shit like that. I remember when I like, lost my virginity.” Lewis offers as bait.

Nico frowns, it's cute on him. Brows wrinkled up.

Naomi(!) bites. “Tell us about how you lost your virginity.”

“That's two questions.” Lewis leans back, flashing his most charming gap-toothed smile. Everyone's too drunk to keep track of whose turn it is.

Nico disappears off with Mr. Skinny Jeans.

It's a little while later when Lewis has smoked a spliff to clear his head, rejecting the blonde highlights girl’s offer back to her dorms which is on the other side of campus, when Nico returns, hair mussed and shirt buttoned more than it was when he left.

“Home?” He asks. Lewis follows.

Nico’s a pretty chill roommate. He grew up with a silver spoon and an only child, so he has no concept of sharing. Instead, when he orders Thai, he makes sure to order for two so that Lewis doesn't try to eat any of his dumplings. Lewis gets to have the flat to himself a lot since Nico disappears for the night, returns at early hours of the night with glitter on his cheek or bite marks on his neck and a cheeky smile before collapsing on the couch. Lewis can't complain, it makes bringing girls over easier. And when Nico is studying, he keeps to himself. Lewis will know, because there will be an extra coffee for him. In turn, Lewis gets rids of the bugs in the flat – the first time Nico seeing a cockroach asking if they should call pest control or sue their landlord for unhygienic living conditions.

“Why didn't you drink? At the body count question?” Lewis asks, breaking the amiable silence of their walk home, and the lack of filter signalling he was drunker than he thought.

Nico hums thoughtfully. “Cause that would be a lie?”

Lewis tries to make sense of that, doing math in his head. “No…? It wasn't about the exact number, just if it's more than.”

“Yeah,” Nico smiles, unlocking the door and stepping side. “That would be a lie.”

Lewis rolls his eyes. Nico and his riddles and his games. “It would only be a lie if you're a virgin. Which you're not.” He snorts at the thought.

Nico’s eyes flash dangerously. “Yeah?” Nico turns around, effectively trapping Lewis between the door. “You think about who gets in my pants a lot, Hamilton?”

Lewis feels a flush rise in his neck. Thank god for melanin, if he were Nico he'd have two giant red spots on his cheek right now.

“I don't care who you sleep with. Or don't sleep with.” Lewis tries to go for gruff, chill, but it doesn't quite land. He gets out of Nico’s cornering, going to the couch. “It's just weird you’d lie considering Jenson–”

“Oh if Jenson said it, it must be true.” Nico’s sarcasm is shrill and annoyed, betraying how drunk he is.

It does make Lewis pause. Jenson has a habit of embellishing stories of his conquests. The fated twins threesome never happened, he had separately hooked up with twins. Lewis remembers Jenson bragging in the locker room how he rocked Britney’s world and Lewis had worn his his shin guards with a little more force than necessary.

“Rock my world?” Nico rolls his eyes, leaning against the wall. “Hardly. We made out for forty minutes until he came in his pants.”

TMI because now Lewis is inundated of images of Nico, mouth swollen and bodies entangled while fully clothed.

“So you're actually a virgin? What about all those people?” Lewis is still trying to wrap his head around it. Nico is the most sexual person he knows. He eats yoghurt off the spoon distractingly, and has no shame walking around the apartment naked. Very sexual liberation chic, and Lewis had to draw up boxers boundaries.

Nico wrinkles his nose. “So you get with the easiest lay on campus and you're the only person he won't fuck. Do you want to admit something's weird and wrong with you, or do you just go about inferring you had sex? It's not like I'm going to correct them.” He must see something on Lewis’ face because he interjects, defensively offensive, “Don't ask why it's better to have a reputation. I know your tells. You drank twice.”

Lewis chooses his words carefully, gentle like he's not trying to spook a wild cat. “I'm not judging. I'm just surprised. Nobody figured it out?”

Nico softens at the tone. He sinks on the couch beside Lewis. “Honestly, you're the first person to notice.”

Lewis finds that sad. “Hey, we don't need to talk about this if it's a sensitive topic. I'm sorry I –”

“Jeez, Lewis. I don't have trauma, I'm just frigid. A pricktease. Nothing bad ever happens to a Rosberg.” Nico works on the complicated laces of his boots. He hates being pitied.

Lewis leans over. “It's really not all that cracked up to be. The first time, at least. Cause you're bad at it and you don't know how to pace yourself. Lots of people wait until they're ready. My first time, it was this girl I was seeing after GCSEs. We couldn't find a place so we got in my dad’s old Subaru. Lasted like 30 seconds. Wiped the whole place down but I was convinced he would know somehow. Come Sunday, I went and told him. He hadn’t the slightest clue. So that was an awkward drive to church.”

Nico gawks him, crumpling into himself laughing. Lewis regrets being a vulnerable and oversharer of a drunk. Nico’s gelled hair has come undone from hours of partying and falls over his eyes. Lewis is never going to open up to anyone ever again.

“On God's day, Lewis?! And you think I should save myself until marriage? Find myself a nice, righteous wife?”

“Someone you trust. Someone you're into.” The room spins a little. Nico Rosberg is a virgin.

“Someone who’d remember when we first met?” Nico challenges. "That's not very nice, is it? I can't believe you forgot--"

“You were checking out an encyclopaedia on space at the library. I wanted the Senna autobiography. We were 12.”

Nico’s eyes go wide. Lewis holds his gaze.

[valrvn]

SURVEY BREAKDOWN

(long post warning)

**A FEW DISCLAIMERS**

I AM NOT A SCIENTIST, I AM A HUMANITIES BITCH. My math skills are limited, and I have no training on processing/presenting this sort of data. I am also one person with a shitty laptop, an unreliable internet connection, and a very busy personal life. Take all of this with an extremely large grain of salt.

Participants are self-reporting. They may not know for sure, they may be wrong, they may be lying. I took everyone here at their word. I tried not to extrapolate much from what they were saying, because I do not want to misrepresent what they said.

I will be covering why people thought they developed this fetish in a later post because this is already too long.

Gender of Participants

*According to a 2024 survey, 1.14% of American adults identify as transgender, while 1.52% do not identify as male, female, or trans (some of whom identified as Non-Binary.) That makes the presence of trans and non-binary participants VASTLY disproportional to the American average. I'm sure some of it can be explained by younger people being more likely to identify as not cis, and younger people using the internet far more than the older generations. I also read a paper once that suggested the internet was responsible for the development of more niche fetishes. It's also possible that trans people are more likely to be comfortable engaging with communities surrounding 'deviant' sexual interests because they've already been labeled 'abnormal' (BUT THESE ARE ALL JUST GUESSES). What I theorize is that, because pregnancy is inextricable from sex organs and gender rolls, trans people (ESPECIALLY AFAB trans/non-binary people) are more likely to have those early, strong emotional reactions to pregnancy that seem to develop into fetishes. I'll get into this more on my next post.

*cis women outnumbering cis men was not something I was expecting, but makes sense, since young girls often have to think about pregnancy much sooner than boys, and it threatens to have a much greater impact on their life.

*in retrospect, I wish I'd included a question on how the participants found the survey, since knowing might help explain the disparity between trans and cis people.

Sexuality of Participants

*most (but not all) of the people who chose "other" wrote in an ace-spec identity not included in the above choices (ace lesbian, demi-sexual, etc.,)

Content of Fetish Material Consumed

*the vast majority of participants selected multiple answers, the exception to this was straight cis men, who often only selected the 'Cis Female Pregnancy' option (a small percentage of this group also answered femboys). The minority of straight cis men who chose other options most often fantasized about becoming pregnant themselves.

When the Fetish was Developed

*One person wrote in that they didn't believe children could have fetishes. Their entry was shortly followed by one from someone who described frequently masturbating to fantasies surrounding pregnancy at the age of 5. This isn't important to the overall data, I just find it funny.

How Great a Role does the Participants' Fetish Play in their Achieving Arousal?

How Great a Role does Sex Play in the Participants' Fetish Related Fantasies?

Did the Participants' Pregnancy Fetish Play a Role in their First Time Experiencing Arousal?

*most of the "it's complicated" answers were people who couldn't remember their first time experiencing arousal.

...

That's the basics down, stay tuned for a breakdown of why people think they developed their fetish.

(will be linked when post is done).

[max1461]

I'm terminally humanities brained, but I am kind of interested in pure mathematics and POM and generally just more mathematics oriented philosophy stuff/mathematics in general, I haven't studied any kind of maths since Highschool, how should I get into it? Should I read Quine?

Oh, this is a great question and I am very happy you have decided to send it to me! My answer reflects my particular views on mathematics and what it is all about, of course, so keep that in mind.

The number one thing I would like to convey about mathematics to someone coming from the humanities is that mathematics, far more than most fields, is something you do in addition to something you learn. Mathematical thinking has to be practiced, it is a skill that you train. If your primary interest is in philosophy of math, I'm afraid I haven't read very deeply on the subject and probably can't recommend a good starting place. Maybe... Russell? Look into Hilbert's program, and why it failed? But if you want to understand math "from the inside" instead of "from the outside", then you have to do math, and to that end I think "who to read" is the wrong question.

This might sound a bit scary, but I don't think it needs to be. Math is not so hard to do, although it is a very foreign type of thinking to those who are not practiced at it. In fact, this is why I think doing math is important even if your interests are primarily in POM; math is ultimately a human activity, regardless of e.g. what you believe about the ontology of mathematical abstractions, and I believe that in order to understand it fully (to have a picture of it beyond just its ontology) it must be understood as a human activity. Thus, one must do it, at least a little bit. It is, if nothing else, a whole realm of human experience all its own, and I think just about anyone would profit intellectually from spinning their mental gears in a mathematical way here and there.

Thankfully, there are many great places to start if this is your aim. I assume that what we're talking about here is "proof based" math rather than just calculation. To that end, a great introductory book is Velleman's How to Prove It, which will give you some guiding principles and many examples of how to approach a mathematical proof. Beyond that, I think you'll want to pick up an "entry level" introductory text (that is, an introductory text aimed at undergrads, etc.) on any math topic that strikes your fancy, and work through it—making sure that you understand the structure of the arguments (proofs), and attempting as many of the exercises as you can. The exercises are really the most important part. You cannot learn math without the exercises. You cannot learn math by reading it. The only way to learn is to try your hand at it yourself.

Expect your reading speed to be slow, and new concepts to be confusing. Expect to read things over and over, and fiddle with them in your head, before they make sense. Well, I mean, if you're anything like me or like most people. I think one of the biggest reasons people get turned off to math is that most of it just doesn't make any sense the first time you encounter it; it won't make sense until you've thought about it a lot.

One way or another, if you have a background in philosophy and are used to parsing and evaluating careful arguments, you will have a leg up on many people getting their introduction to proofs.

As for what topic to start with... you could always start with Euclid's elements, which is still a perfectly solid introduction to Euclidean geometry even after 2500 years. It does not quite meet modern standards of mathematical rigor (in other words, its proofs have gaps by modern standards), but realistically this is not a big deal: the basic thinking style is the same, and the gaps are somewhat subtle and technical IIRC, so I don't think it will really affect the beginner experience. On the other hand I believe at least a couple of Euclid's proofs are genuinely flawed (that is to say, they aren't just uncareful in their presentation, but are actually invalid in their structure), so maybe it's better to start with a modern work first.

Some books that I think are good for a beginner:

Graham, Knuth, & Patashnik, Concrete Mathematics — The focus of this book is on mathematical tools for computer science, but even if that is not your interest it's still a great book. It deals mostly with familiar concepts such as whole numbers and sequences (you might have encountered, e.g., the Fibonacci sequence), but is great for learning to problem solve and think mathematically.

Rudin, Principals of Mathematical Analysis, ("Baby Rudin") — If you want trial-by-fire. A lot of math undergrads have this as the textbook for their first proof-based math class, and it's notoriously challenging. Its topic is the field of real analysis, the rigorous foundations of calculus. I... wouldn't start here if I were you, honestly, but it's definitely a classic.

Some graph theory text. Some people seem to be recommending Wilson's, which has the convenient feature of being available online here. I haven't read it, but looking over it, it seems fairly gentle. There are a lot of pictures, and proofs don't enter the picture until a couple of sections in. Graph theory has the advantage of being very visual and having basically no prerequisites, so this might be a nice place to start.

Some abstract algebra book. If you're looking for a really clear presentation of the way mathematics is done today, starting with axioms and proving theorems deductively from them, etc., there is probably no place where it is more straightforwardly visible than in abstract algebra. The first math book I ever attempted was Herstein's Topics in Algebra; not the most beginner oriented, but certainly not inaccessible, and hey, it worked out for me! If this one is not to your liking there are a million books on e.g. introductory group theory you could look into, or the very canonical Dummit & Foote, or so on.

Uh yeah I think that's all I got. Anyone else feel free to put any more thoughts or recommendations in the reblogs!

[mdhwrites]

You've said before how you feel about Luz abandoning the Isles when they needed her because she refused to try and fix it. I think it's said that she genuinely believed she would only make things worse so she thought she needed to take herself out of the way? Are my memories faulty?

Okay so I'm going to start with a scenario to make my point clear because you're not wrong... But you also are.

Let's say you're assigned two partners for a science project. You decide the best way to split the work up evenly is to have one person do the research, one person to write up the conclusions and one person to do a lot of math for the calculations you'll need. You each state your strengths with one saying writing, one saying research and the last saying, "I like math."

However, a week passes and you are struggling to finish any it because you've gotten none of those calculations for it back. When you push, the person goes, "Well sure, I like math but I suck at it. As such, my calculations would have been wrong. That would have caused you all problems so I decided the thing that made the most sense would be not to do anything at all." The project still needs to be done though and the majority of the work has been done for them. As such, now you and the second person have to work your ass off to do what your third member cannot while they contribute nothing but they promise they feel really bad about it and they're okay taking a C if this ends up making the project fail, even though their actions would have gotten them an F on their own.

Luz likes to make decisions. She essentially never consults ANYONE on what she should do and half the time someone tells her, "Don't do X," she goes ahead and does it. This also constantly gets other people in trouble and gets her in trouble because she is really bad at making decisions. And yes, with helping Belos free the Collector, she admits that she made a terrible mistake and that she makes a lot of mistakes. Her literal statement on this is that she'll finally listen to her mom and learn from her mistakes by staying in the Human Realm. Permanently.

Do you potentially notice a problem here though? Yeah, my thoughts have NEVER stopped at "Luz left a planet to die because she wanted to stay home." No. I always do mention that she claims part of her reasoning is because she makes stupid, rash decisions on her own that hurt others but then she goes ahead and makes a stupid, albeit with implied a LOT of thought, decision ON HER OWN that will hurt people.

Do you know a great way to avoid making a mistake? Asking someone else if it's the right choice to make. Or hey, just decide you don't need to lead anymore. If your decisions are the problem then let someone else make the decisions. But... Then Luz doesn't get to do the fun thing she likes to do. She actually has to listen to other people and maybe do things that aren't her number one option because her first choice would get people hurt. That isn't what Luz wants. Luz doesn't want to actually grow or learn or get scolded for her mistakes. Otherwise, she wouldn't CONSTANTLY LIE ABOUT EVERYTHING.

So instead... Why not just let them suffer the consequences while she stays home and lives in peace, her problems in a far off fantasy realm that she never has to think about again? People always like to say she's giving up so much but what is she actually giving up? The fantasy world? You mean the one that's currently ravaged by a child god and has a populace that she assumes will hate her? Yeah, that's hardly something to give up. The chance at friends? Too bad Thanks to Them shows people who are very interested in being her friend and also Yesterday's Lie showed there are people like Luz who would probably be willing to be her friend. What is Luz sacrificing by deciding to just sit at home with her loving mom and live a normal life?

So why grow? Why learn? Why try to do better? When you can do nothing. That's what Luz wants to do. She wants to just stay home and do nothing, even as that means condemning an entire world, bare minimum at least a continent, which includes her found family and friends, to death. Her claims of trying to do better are nothing but excuses so she can have a clear conscious as she allows thousands upon thousands to be enslaved and tortured.

So yes, she SAYS that she is doing this because she doesn't want to make things worse. The problem is that there are plenty of ways for her to still have even attempted to help without having to make the decisions she's afraid to make worse but those options would require more work and require her not to be the star. And none of this, even if this is the most expanded version of this point, is missing from those past blogs because they also talk about how she claims to have a problem making decisions and yet still makes this choice entirely on her own.

Because she isn't learning. She's just deciding that some broken puppets are a small price to pay to keep getting to do whatever she wants. It is an excuse, end of story. See you next tale.

======+++++======

Sorry for so many blogs about this. It's admittedly to me a very important point because it's the moment Lumity dies. It's the moment that Luz's character can never recover. It's the moment when the TOH fandom became genuinely horrifying when it comes to mental health as THANK GOD no one has tried to refute this with "She has depression" because yes, that will get you blocked if you try to tell me that. I am disabled by depression and I understand lives still matter. I understand I'm not supposed to lie, CONSTANTLY. I understand basic ass morality, unlike Luz. And in this moment, there's no turning back for her, let alone after For the Future when she doubles down on how selfish her desires are.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[goshdangronpa]

Where to begin in sharing my thoughts on Class of '09: The Flip Side ...

Well, how about the positives? Everything I've seen is so negative, and trust me, I have thoughts. But I enjoyed quite a lot of it, and I wanna do my part to balance out the discourse. So, here's a list.

Jecka makes for an interesting protagonist compared to Nicole. She's far more emotional - I swear, she breaks down crying in every route, which is genuinely disconcerting. She's also way less savvy. I'm not fond of how overwhelmingly negative these endings are (more on that in another post), but it at least makes sense. Nicole gets the upper hand in several endings from the previous two games because she's usually cunning enough to avoid potential problems, manipulate her way out of them, and/or get people in serious trouble. Jecka may be a bit of a bitch (and I love her for it!), but as she says in one ending, she kinda needs Nicole. Putting her in the protag role isn't just subbing her in for Nicole. Flip Side explores how things would go for someone with slightly more conscience and way less guile.

Jecka's so goddamn gay, oh my god. Wanting to look for a "goth work girlfriend" at Hot Topic. "I can afford holes, Imma buy me some hoes!" Kissing Ari! She says she only did the latter for attention, but girl ... girl. Someday she'll ask someone "Doesn't every girl think about sleeping with their gal pals?" and be shocked when that someone says no. (Tbh when I heard that one route would explore a previous game's route from Jecka's perspective, and when I saw the CG of the jeckari kiss on Tumblr, I created an entire plotline in my head that didn't come to fruition. Pity - it'd at least make for a good fanfic.)

"It's been seven seconds." The scenes based on this bit are some of the funniest in the whole series ("Why don't you magically gather some friends?"). Like something straight out of South Park. If the Co09 anime Kickstarter had reached the stretch goal of a full 25-minute episode, would this have been the script? I've heard people say that Flip Side doesn't feel like Class of '09, or that the dialogue isn't as good in this one, but this part, among others, works for me. "Can anyone do the math?" "... I thought this was health."

I'm a lifelong FYE patron who will drive 40-odd minutes to visit the only remaining store in my entire region. So for me especially, the entire FYE storyline was a ride. It reminded me of American Dad, where every episode turns something mundane into an elaborate conspiracy or wild adventure into its secret underbelly. It's awesome from beginning to ... well, not the end, but it's mostly awesome. And we get to hang out with Kelly! That's neat!

This is apparently my hottest take: the "foot whore" routes are not that bad. For starters, they're not presented in a way that fetishizes Jecka herself. You never see her feet, or see what she does with them. Yall can still find the suggestion of it gross if you want, but comparisons to Quentin Tarantino seem unwarranted! More importantly, the foot services enable the writers to explore topics of sex work while keeping the game light on actual sexual activity. It's rare to see such subject matter broached in a thing like this, yet we get to see how circumstances can pull desperate people into selling their bodies, and how swiftly and easily they can have their boundaries violated and their safety compromised by the customers they depend on. The increasing disruption of normal conversations by the text notifications of Jeffery's donations is a genuinely despairing plot device. Both endings are troubling for different reasons (again, that's for another post), but the game's got something to say in a way that, to me, is fairly mature yet distinctly Class of '09. (Credit to my partner for this observation, I'm so grateful I could play this with them.)

... Uh ... the music sting from the opening monologue bumps ... It sounds more Class of '17 than Class of '09, but it's still cool ...

Okay so I can't think of more, at least not right now. (EDIT: How did I forget the Hatman? That was cute!) Flip Side may be the most flawed game in the series, but it's still pretty good. At the very least, I don't think it's the shitshow other people are making it out to be ... though there is a smell. I'll go deeper on the negatives in other posts.

[jeonscatalyst]

I keep thinking about the billboard eyes debate about who's eyes it could be & the theories, if it could be him really revealing his future partner like Taeyang did, who he seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from on Muse. The more I think about it, I'm leaning toward the eyes being someone "WE" the fans are familiar with, that he has some kind of public relationship with already, because putting some random girl or guys eyes he's dating behind the scenes, that we aren't familiar with, never seen him with, wouldn't make sense to reveal it this way, like I'm with this person you have never seen with me, here are their eyeballs, so you can stop shipping me with so and so, when all it does is add more confusion. You know what I mean. I don't think he would go through that trouble to publicly announce on a billboard in a video seen by millions to introduce his real "stranger" partner that way, UNLESS there was already some familiarity there already that he knew fans would pick up on and recognize. It would be basically introducing a complete stranger to the world as your partner in a very cryptic way since its just their eyeballs. You would probably just go the natural way first before doing something big like that, like start going out with them publicly or publicly linking yourself to them, to ease people in like the way Tae did and was dropping hints about him and jennie even before the hacker exposed him. Like testing waters Following jennie and then going out with her in public to Jeju and being spotted with her even before the leaks happened and then after the leaks both wearing the same clothes and couple jewelry from the picture, before eventually going public together in paris. This is why I think if jimin was trying to announce who his heart belongs too this way, then most likely it makes sense for it to be someone people are already familiar with. Someone he knows people are familiar with, someone he had been dropping hints with beforehand. And well I can name someone who fits that role right now, because we seen it for years, but esp this past year. Does this make sense to anyone else, cause I don't see Jimin waking up and saying "my GF or BF" no one has ever seen with me, I think I'm just gonna add their eyes on a billboard, they won't be confused at all. Probably not the best plan since the majority of people think its Jk's eyes, even non believers. And def not the brightest plan, esp going from billboard eyes dropping, straight into AYS cause that only convinced people more its Jk's eyes with all that flirting and tension we saw. And if those ain't JK's eyes. Well you gotta feel sorry for that person after AYS, cause that ain't your man. Sorry. Just saying.

Hey anon,

I think we are putting a lot of thought into those billboards eyes to be honest. Is it possible that those eyes meant something? Sure but it is also possible that they were just some random person’s eyes…..or maybe even someone we do know but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is more to it.

Just like you, I too had obsessed over those eyes especially when I found out that Taeyang had his wife’s face on a billboard in one of his songs and Jimin has always admired Taeyang and wanted to somewhat follow his footsteps so the math is mathing and it isn’t exactly delusional to think that he might do something like that since it’s not impossible but I also realized that sometimes, somethings really don’t mean anything more.

I would admit that sometimes those eyes look a lot like Jk’s that I get shook and start to think there is no way those aren’t Jk’s eyes but other times I tell myself that maybe they are not and we are just seeing what we want to see or what we wish is the truth lol. I am at a point where that is a Jikook maybe to me. I am completely 50/50 on the possibility that it is or not.

As for whether Jimin would choose to put a complet stranger, I don’t see why not. I mean before Taeyang put his wife on that billboard I don’t think people knew about her no? So it is possible that it might be someone who we don’t know and haven’t seen around Jimin……but as I said, the eyes on the billboard might just be for effect and not mean anything more.

For now, I keep my thoughts on it at 50/50 and if someday we get to confirm that it was indeed someone we know and suspect, then……..

[th3-c0ll3ct3r]

Okay I want to hear your thoughts on sapnap and mcc bc oh boy that sounds interesting

No because, genuinely there are old clips of people laughing when they bring him up because they know he's popular but they don't want to see anything bad about him. Like you can barely tell it's chuckle.

As you may know originally teams were categorised based on 2 factors. Vibes. And if they could go a long period of time without swearing or not.

In the Skizz and Imp podcast, Scott laments about how it was so hard to categorize people who could not go an extended period of time with swearing in their stream and with people who could not stop swearing.

And there is more people who are PG/ can go a long time without swearing, then non-pg people, the podcast was recorded roughly a bit before the sapnap drama with MCC but it was still bubbling.

I need you to go back and watch that podcast because even if they were clear examples you can still sense who he's talking about, because genuinely sapnap would swear so much but even non-pg people wanted to avoid playing with him. If you go back to watches old MCC wins you can hear the nervous chuckles of people when he begin to swear.

Additionally one time they were trying out a new system on MCC and a lot of people were aware of that and it came out that the math was wrong and two teams should have got first place instead of just one because of the math, and One team was willing to just relent a bit and at the end of the day walk away. But Sapnap on his own had caused such a fuss that they still had to give him a coin and had to let him compete in DodgeBolt, and how to get a crown for him post his picture saying that he won along with his team. I cannot describe to you the absolute tantrum that man went on. Over a coin. He was so disrespectful that he didn't come back for a couple mccs after.

There is a genuine reason why a collective group of people do not want him to compete in MCC.

And you're probably wondering why did he compete in the MCC recently? Because before the main deal of him being signed to kick.com he had already signed the application and had been accepted to do MCC. The same week he came out and said that he was joining kick.com and that a lot of it young viewers should join kick.com

People with begging Scott to remove him, but kick.com just gave that man 20 million and he would definitely find a suitable lawyer to take his case because he earns a substantial amount of money from MCC.

But why would he Sue over MCC? I have a longer post going through this, but I will explain it here to.

Scott couldn't say no. For alot of reasons but here are 2 off the top of my lil head

1. Him not allowing sapnap to compete in MCC after already accepting his application is illegal form of discrimination regarding someone's work. Because he would be discriminating against how he does his work and what he uses to do his work, ( a more clearer example of this would be for someone to reject another person's application because they found out that they were Binman/wasteman, explaining the other people thought it was filthy). In reality

Scott had no basis to withdraw his application and to withdraw his place because most arguments (which are true), had came from social media and it could be argued that the people on social media influence Scott to make that decision and therefore sapnap could have lost a large portion of revenue as a self-employed person that MCC and Scott would have had to repay him based on statistics.

Again I have a longer post going through the law on this but I fact checked everything, and he would genuinely have a legal basis to sue them for discrimination.

And Scott had to take all the stray bullets for that. Because in the UK you have to consent to a formal document being shared with someone else. And even though this is an application for a game it's still an application. So he couldn't share the content of the application because it's illegal here.

Also in the podcast Scott mentions him having a waiting list and then bring this up the applications and you brings up a rough idea of when they application started, and you could actually guess when the applications started From when sapnap started turning up less frequently. Meaning that he was one of the many reasons why the application was made in the first place.

2. Publicity. Sapnap brought a lot of viewers to can watch MCC and it's argued that if Dream and George were there but Sapnap was not there, the pair would not participate regardless of what team they were on because their friends. (BBH actually brings up how close their friendship is when he was defending dream against one of his many allegations and you can tell how close the friend group is. An in Sapnap's Defense of dream he literally goes on about how close they are and in the deleted vod he said wherever he goes I go).

But getting back on track, at the time without the large audience that MCC had it would have not been as sustainable as it is today. They definitely contributed to the success in the early days along with others as it will seen as a new form of Minecraft Monday.

He also raged pretty hard when in MCC 14 Scott's team won after giving hints to his teamate, to win ace race. To which half of his team didn't even finish. And they actually placed lower than top 3 in that event. Scott goes on to say about how he and other had tested it, they were giving instructions and Sapnap did actually finish.

But he was so mad that Scott team had won at a game that EVERYONE was objectively bad at that thiers a 15 minutes video of him screaming about it in Youtube.

Scott later went on to say him and many others who did finish also tested the map, and he always give hints to his team, AND SAPNAP HAD WON AN EVENT WITH SCOTT'S HELP AND USING SCOTT'S HINTS. It's only when he didn't win he had a problem with it.

Sapnap cried when he didn't win, and blame everyone about it yet shot up his ego when he did.

And admittedly he did get better as time went on but dude needs a whole ass team fr-

Are realistically you couldn't call the two of them friends they were more, a friend of a friend. And even if Scott didn't like them objectively over people like them and that's why they were there.

Sapnap but did not come back after the kick.com incident and I doubt he will.

And on that notion a lot of streamers have younger audiences ranging from children to teenagers to young adults. While kick.com is a primarily adult site, not completely adults but you're gonna see some weird things. The majority of streamers who participate in MCC, obviously are going to be put into teams. And if you were put into a team with Sapnap, who was streaming on kick.com, you might think to yourself "wow he'd fun ill check him out!" then boom pedo in your Dms.

For many streamers involved in the event he was not ideal to keep around because realistically he was endangering of a people's audiences while pumping out publicity from his own.

It was not fair to other streamers that their young audiences could we expose to an objectively talented person streaming on one of the worst sites known, and he signed this deal back when kick.com has no moderation, so imagine all the convicted sex offenders, criminals and gambling on the site, then in an attempt to get a younger demographic onto the side it paid Sapnap using the money that they gained from gambling to effectively switch over ( because, and Tubbo did a stream on this and summarized it accurately, because he had a couple conversations with this CEO and for money. Not for the audience).

Meaning that everyone is immediate circle who wanted to continue to watch his content or learn who he was through major events like MCC would download the app and then over your targeted by a lot of older people.

And actually this was the basis that allowed Scott to never bring him back but Scott could not get rid of him for the MCC because it would be legally discrimination.

There are a bunch of things too that I could say about how at the start the only people he would team with would be mostly from the dream SMP and how that directly correlates with how people described him in person, ( trying to control and dominate people), and how people like Niki were too scared to say no at the time, but it be a bit late my dude

The takeaway from this is that he was MCC Problem Child and that Scott couldn't immediately kick him out due to discrimination despite reassurance that he changed his behavior only to immediately sign to kick.com. How he'd endangered both his young audiences and other if he actually stayed. How we used to scream and yell at every one of his mistakes to the point where people didn't want to compete with him. How he would target people who faulted him within the game. And even how he practiced the game so much to the point where they had to make new maps and that if he would lose it would genuinely be down to his team and not him as a player because he had practiced so much meaning that his team felt worse after they didn't win because they knew it was their fault instead of just being happy to play the game ( like you remember when they blew up parkour warrior and replaced it with a new map because of them)

He was just realistically a mess and I'm surprised they tolerated him so long, because the amount of money they have to drop on changing things because the Dream Team had paid someone to recreate some of the maps so that they could practice, and then other people started doing that in which they would memorize a certain game practice that game and then come out on top ( an example of this would be technoblade, who memorised all materials needed for BuildMart and they had to change it and he was basically told that he couldn't do that and he was actually sorry because he didn't know because other people like we're doing it. And again with Technoblade killing people in Bingo to which in the Stream he says he didn't know that you could kill people in Bingo and once people figured it out that would be the strategy until they changed it. Philza practicing ace race maps as he had someone build an almost identical copy of the original because other people were doing it. Wil and other, trying to perfect The Glitch block technique and that's one point someone had commissioned another person to remake the map to see where it was going wrong so that they could utilize the bug instead of playing the game). All these things have in common that they were all in the same server at one point and that the dream team had started this trend but all of them stop doing it when they were told to stop doing it but the Dream Team didn't to the point where even Sands of Time had to be changed, parkour warrior, sky battle, battle box, parkour tag and TGTTOS had to be changed, and they actually sparked the "maybe we should have different maps" trend

Because it was a poorly hidden secret that they'd paid people to re-create maps so that they could practice. (but Scott giving hints is cheating he says while paying someone to remake parkour tag so that they can get a perfect run)

[lagunaseca2013]

Okay I fell in love with the bond horror au already. I seen you said bez was the only omega part of Vales pack. will bez have an unknown need to be near Marc as well? Since Marc basically has head pack omega instincts in him? Im sorry as soon as you said there would be omega Bez I was immediately excited to see if you knew where you would take it.

omg hi anon glad ur enjoying my conceptual horrors! literally saved this ask for my lunch break bc I’m having a work day from hell and I needed something to look forward to lol. the concept of bez being the only omega in the vr46 pack (pre marc ofc) comes largely from @hotmessmaxpress who has a beautiful omegaverse series where bez has tortured jealous omega feelings about marc abruptly becoming vale’s mate etc and then they get over it and love each other

it’s a little uglier in this universe bc things are rough for a long time after vale finally lets marc bite him. they’re crazy insane people so that part somehow comes first like before they’ve even truly worked anything out……..anyway the bez of this universe is the sole omega of the rossi pack for a loooong time and LIKES it that way. omega princess of the paddock, had all ten of his alphas holding his hands at the clinic during the great pregnancy scare of 2023 (after he finally got his way and had EVERYONE participating in his heat post victorious p3 in the championship; someone deeeefinitely knocked his IUD loose; not telling who; still #worthit)

he’s very beloved, grew up protected in his bubble of being one-of-the-alphas (they’re not all alphas btw that’s a generalization but yk) and kind of removed from like (internalized misogyny voice) “omega drama”

enter marc who like doesn’t even understand what’s going on the first ten times he’s invited into the pack nest, wants to participate so bad but still has alex’s insane (well-intentioned) pavlovian training that makes him want to die every time he touches any of them, mostly ends up curled in a ball at the edge of the nest with vale like protectively encased around him

bez does notttt fuck with that. he was literally a #marcanti for much of recent history, and none of them are talking through any of it so he doesn’t understand that marc is having issues and trauma responses, he thinks marc is like playing needy omega to get vale all to himself.

okay I’m rambling whoops. to answer your actual question, I don’t think bez, or even any of the pack feel any tangible kind of pull towards marc. they probably would’ve (and eventually do) if the bond was complete bc vale would feel marc and they can feel vale (is this making any sense ?? think like transitive property or whatever I graduated college without taking a single math class……..)

I DO however subscribe to the school of thought that bez actually just had a garden variety secret little crush on marc pre divorce (this is real life canon to me btw) and also post divorce in a tortured sexual awakening sort of way (remember this bez has like a million alphas and has never been w an omega and marc is like. the hottest omega to ever exist….this is me alluding to eventual omega on omega porn when they get to the level of healing where marc and vale can participate in pack sex without either of them having a meltdown) have I answered your question yet ummmm I’m not even sure

bez is appropriately horrified when he finds out about the decade long psychological omega torture vale has been doing to marc for general omega solidarity reasons, but he still kind of hates marc for a while, even when he’s like crying and yelling and hitting vale in the chest for ever doing that to an omega how would you have felt if this happened to me etc but in the back of his mind still like did it have to be that fucking guy ughhhh