#gamer aunt

[johnnydany]

Leveling Up To Aunt EST 2024 Funny Gamer Lover T-Shirt

Get yours now: https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/47094493-leveling-up-to-aunt-est-2024-funny-gamer-lover

[sharpace]

92. The Cousins

Jayce has one fear.

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[natjennie]

"I do think dating any one of us would be akin to dating all of us by virtue of the way our friendship is" like. drawtectives polycule real.

[intercomkris]

🚬i hate you so much sometimes i wish you'd die...

Marcato Scott-Tanaka. age: 27-early 30s ish gender: cis male nationality: american ethnicity: haitian, japanese occupation: drug dealer

[veone]

has the voice of an angel.

[arolesbianism]

There's no such thing as an "aromantic lesbian" you're fucking delusional lmao. Either you're attracted to women or you're not. Also for the love of GOD learn how to shut up you never stop fucking typing do you. Nobody's reading all that 🤪

Sure thing man, would you like some fries with your order

[card-carrying-system]

WEVE REACHED TRUE GAMER

[i5leeps]

Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered Gameplay Walkthrough Part 7 - MARTIN LI

[barrenclan]

do you have any webcomic suggestions?

Oh, do I! :D I'll keep the descriptions short, otherwise I'll talk about each of these for a million years.

Warrior Cats:

The Average Adventures of Genericpaw - parody comic. But watch out.

The Exiled - Fishpaw. Murder mystery.

Follow Your Heart - Sootpaw. Personal drama.

Meandering - River. Slowburn romance.

Saltburn's Clan - Saltburn. Pinepaw's cool butch lesbian aunt.

Convocations - Elkmask. Political drama. Biggest inspiration to The Dog Star.

Other:

Wilde Life - supernatural dramedy.

Wychwood - magical post-apocalypse.

The Glass Scientists - Jekyll & Hyde retelling.

Tiger, Tiger - swashbuckling magic adventure.

Little Tiny Things - French slice of life.

Paranatural - ghost fighting teens. Also, the inspiration for PATFW's "journal style". Also, Hijack.

Phantomarine - magical ghost adventures.

Awkward Zombie - gamer comic strips.

Sakana - fish market dramedy. Yuudai.

Skin Deep - cryptids comedy.

Dumbing of Age - daily college dramedy. Gave me the worst hyperfixation of my life.

The Order of the Stick - D&D adventure. My favorite comic ever created.

How To Be a Werewolf - werewolf drama.

Fairmeadow - fantasy hippie drama.

Lackadaisy - bootlegger cats. You've seen the animated pilot.

The Property of Hate - TV head guy.

Too Familiar - magical animal companions.

I'm With You - goat people romance.

The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya - sweet vampire romance.

XKCD - it's XKCD.

Vainglorious - dragon adventures.

Bybloemen - demons committing financial fraud. Gorgeous artwork.

Bicycle Boy - amnesiac in a post-apocalypse.

Novae - supernatural historical romance.

Never Satisfied - magical teen drama. It's on hiatus right now.

Monster Pulse - teens with magic organs.

Children of the Light - magic squirrel drama.

To Catch A Star - sparklewolves.

Cursed Lights - magical animal people drama.

What Lurks Beneath - cat cult.

Rabbit Hole - bunny cult.

Villtur & Sarx - sci fi manga.

Best of Bad Decisions, The Doe of Deadwood, Repeat, I Didn't Know - Songdog comics. Probably the most influential creator on my comics.

Crushed Olive Branch - Shadowhunters gayboys.

Broken Crown - magic kingdom adventure.

Sleight of Hand - Fallout gayboys.

What Happens Next - internet teen thriller.

Golden Shrike - deer adventure.

The Pale - Twin Peaks adjacent.

Un/Bound - magical road trip.

Apocalyptic Horseplay - modern horseman of the apocalypse.

There are many more, of course, but these are some of my favorites, and the ones I could remember at the moment.

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

DIRK: Let's test something. Describe your gender in a way that'll baffle cis people, but other trans and enby people will get. I'll start.

DIRK: I prefer not to be perceived by others.

ROXY: ooohhh a void w thigh high socks and a beanie

KARKAT: I DUNNO. PICK A SLUR

KANAYA: I Drank Too Much Gender Juice

SOLLUX: ii wii2h ii wa2 an ab2tract concept.

JADE: oobleck!!!! my gender is oobleck

ROSE: I am a grand, old piano. I am painted black, shining and somewhat glossy. Covered in vines holding beautiful, golden flowers, I sit in the middle of a forest; forgotten, yet not lost. A cat sits atop me, staring into the distance with a glare in its tiny, marble eyes. The sun lays itself on top of my base in streaks, like looking through swaying, almost open blinds. I am a grand, old piano.

DAVEPETA: B33 < seven goblins in a trench coat, each with a diffurent hypurrfixation

HAL: David Bowie, as played by Tilda Swinton.

NEPETA: :33 < none gender with left boygirl X33

FEFERI: A s)(apes)(ifting tentacle monster t)(at takes t)(e form of your gay aunt's wife!! 38)

CALLIOPE: if gender is a performance, then mine is the cUrtains which are drawn in to block stagehands switching props and the backdrop.

JANE: I'm a girl in a man way...

DAVE: i dont know what im doing leave me alone

CALIBORN: BOOBY MCBEARDY FACE.

DAVESPRITE: rooster

ERIDAN: im all the genders but also none of the genders and evverything i wwear is drag and evvery crush i havve is gay

EQUIUS: D --> If Gerard Way was a sport bike

TAVROS: wHEN YOU ORDER A MAN FROM wISH,

VRISKA: I'm genderfluid 8ut not in a "sometimes a girl, sometimes a 8oy" way. Sometimes my gender is Wesley from Princess 8ride, a sexy cow8oy, pir8 temptress, greasy gamer entity.

GAMZEE: An OlD vEnDiNg MaChInE tHaT oNlY gIvEs YoU nIcKeLoDeOn SlImE aNd GrApE sOdA :o)

JAKE: I want to be able to see my gender in the forest after weeks of camping and get scared away. Then the next night wander into the forest searching for it again but disappear without a trace. Like those horror movies you watch sometimes you know?

JOHN: i'm a person?

ERISOL: ii think of gender a2 iicky 2tuff that ii dont wwant on me, attached twwo me. that2 another wway of 2ayiin i dont wwant gendered terms twwo define me. iim agender

JASPROSE: No matter who you are, if you have sex with me, it's gay!!

ARADIA: i d0 n0t exist 0u0

TEREZI: BOWL1NG 4LL3Y C4RP3T

[kingdomfall]

REVIEW? SLIGHT RANT

Just finish reading the new chapter in K-manga.

let me just first say, I hope this shut up any whiners of not getting anything about Sakura's back story (you impatient bastards) even though we know plenty about Sakura.

Anyway chapter is awesome if sister cries in the next chapter or any future ones I will explode.

slight spoilers ahead

The fact that Kiryu lives in a big house should not come as such a big surprise to Nirei, like come on he went to private school, Him wilting when he welcomes them in is so cute.

Kiryu having a anime/gamer room is so like him and I only wish I had just as much memorabilia from my favorite shows/games and space for it.

The eyes of the people are so scary to me like even the kid eyes are shaded and it being so wide makes it scarier.

I find it interesting that both of them had the same thought about each other, saying the others head is in the clouds. I especially find it interesting that Kiryu's sister thinks of him like that (Akari).

Even from the little that we seen of Kiryu i don't get that vibe from him. He might not care of how people perceive him (as being rude, and at least to males) as indicated with Tsugeura. He also indicated politely that Sakura can talk with him at another time during that interaction. He might always be on his phone playing but he pays attention; he lifted his head when Sakura declared his ambition. He also noticed the commotion was going on in class when Tsugeura invited the trio to eat (though It's not clear how much context he got thru the earphones).

I'm very interested at how they interacted as children and what's their interaction like now.

As for the final scene I found it sad how reined looking Sakura seems with that interaction. I wonder what the sister seem to have done wrong in the eyes of the caretakers (saying this because we don't know if its a family member and if it is what kind (mom, dad, grandparents, aunt/uncle). And like I said on top if they make her cry I will self combust.

[incorrect-web-novels]

Jun Wu: Let's test something: describe your gender in a way that will baffle cis people but other trans and enby peeps will get. Yin Yu: I prefer to not be perceived by others. Qi Rong: Idk pick a slur Xie Lian: I drank too much gender juice i wish i was an abstract concept Lang Qianqiu: Ooblek. My gender is ooblek. Shi Qingxuan: none gender with left boygirl Hua Cheng: A shapeshifting shadow monster that takes the form of your gay aunt's wife Ling Wen: If gender is a performance then mine is the curtains which are drawn in to block stagehands switching props and the backdrop Yushi Huang: I'm a girl in a man way Feng Xin: When you order man from wish Xuan Ji: I'm gender fluid but not in a "sometimes a girl sometimes a boy" way. Sometimes my gender is Wesley from Princess bride, a sexy cowboy, pirate temptress and greasy gamer entity. Mu Qing: an old vending machine that only gives you coffee and lime soda Quan Yizhen: I'm a person Quan Yizhen: i don't know what i'm doing leave me alone Shi Wudu: Booby mcbeardy face Pei Ming: No matter who you are, if you have sex with me, it's gay Jian Lan: "Hi, I'm non-binary. Please refer to me with gender neutral terms." (Source)

[lieutenantbiscute]

Shell Shocked AU [reference sheet]

- Basic run down for those who don’t know the AU! The 2012 and Rise universes are fused together; Raphael and Y’Gythgba ‘Mona Lisa’ end up raising the Rise kids when Raph brings them home one night after a patrol. Being surrounded by countless uncles and aunts is a lot but it’s a wonderful time and plenty of shenanigans ensue because of it!

Y’Phhorion (16yrs) 4’9”ft

Pyromaniac

Tags w/ Dad often

Doesn’t speak often/more quiet

Mediation w/ uncle Leo

UNYIELDING RAGE

Y’Thcorrin (16yrs) 5’8”ft

Temp. Sensative

Hates shell scrubs/cleaning

Gamer (BOTW/TOTK/JOURNEY/ECT)

Theater kid

Y’Ntherancino (16yrs) 5’6”ft

Comic collector

Gamer (GOW/GOW:RAG./HOLLOW KNIGHT/ECT)

ADHD

Extra training w/ uncle Leo

Y’Throvva (16yrs) 6”ft

Romance lover

Seeks hugs

Will eat ANYTHING

Unbridled rage

Controlled rage thanks to help from Dad, Slash, and Leatherhead

Extras with shell designs and no gear looks!

Bonus bonus: Corrins battle shell!

[negrowhat]

15 Days BL Challenge the Quadriquel

LAST DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This has been so much fun! Thanks again for this 4th installment @pinkkop

60. Favorite lesser known BL

Gameboys the Series. I'm going to keep talking about the series until more people watch it. Gameboys follows online gamer Cai during the COVID lockdown. He's at odds with his family and his dad is sick with COVID in the hospital. He finds online companionship with an eager fan of his named Gav. The first season of the series is almost completely shot in videocall style as Cai and Gav get to know each other and learn to trust and depend on each other. We meet a couple more friends (and enemies) along the way as everyone tries to adjust to life during the pandemic. There are 2 seasons and a movie but the movie and s2 follow the same storylines. WATCH IT!

Tinted With You. K-POP group A.C.E's leader Park Junhee stars in this short Korean BL. Junhee plays a student named Eunho who is a graduating High School senior. Eunho gets sucked into an ancient era painting where he meets an exiled Prince named Lee Heon and his grumpy but loyal bodyguard, Guem. The series follows the trio as Lee Heon tries to help Eunho return to his right time and Eunho tries to help Guem save Lee Heon's life. The series technically has Eunho and Prince Heon paired up but Guem and Heon definitely have chemistry and Eunho and Guem have chemistry. Honestly they feel more like a poly ship rather than a love triangle which is a treat tbh. I enjoyed it and was mildly obsessed with the series.

Ghost Host Ghost House. I will talk about this series forever. Paranormal vlogger Kevin travels to Thailand to visit with his mother's side of the family (His aunt, uncle, and younger twin cousins). When he gets there they are acting a bit peculiar but still happy to see him. He also meets the family friend Pluem who is immediately interested in Kevin. The series follows Kevin as he discovers there have been some recent deaths in his family and also as he gets to know Pluem who is also dealing with the death of his father (and his sister is ill). Not only do we get ghosts and paranormal happenings, but we get a few love stories, and also we get to see how these characters deal with death, grief, and regret. Get tissues...you will cry.

The New Employee. Late 20-something-year-old Seung Hyun lands an internship at a famous ad agency where he is working under the very strict but successful director Jong Chan. Jong Chan is very serious about his work and he pushes Seung Hyun to question whether he wants to be there or not and gives him the space and opportunity to learn and grown. Jong Chan also wastes no time in letting Seung Hyun know that he is interested in dating him. The series follows Seng Hyun as he navigates his new work load, advancing his career, meeting old crushes, and dating his new boss all at the same time.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Brinklump Linkdump

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

Life comes at you fast, links come at you faster. Once again, I've arrived at Saturday with a giant backlog of links I didn't fit in this week, so it's time for a linkdump, the 14th in the series:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

It's the Year of Our Gourd twenty and twenty-four and holy shit, is rampant corporate power rampant. On January 1, the inbred droolers of Big Pharma shat out their annual price increases, as cataloged in 46Brooklyn's latest Brand Drug List Price Change Box Score:

https://www.46brooklyn.com/branddrug-boxscore

Here's the deal: drugs that have already been developed, brought to market, and paid off are now getting more expensive. Why? Because the pharma companies have "pricing power," the most reliable indicator of monopoly. Ed Cara rounds up the highlights for Gizmodo:

https://gizmodo.com/ozempic-wegovy-wellbutrin-oxycontin-drug-price-increase-1851179427

What's going up? Well, Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists. These drugs have made untold billions for their manufacturers, so naturally, they're raising the price. That's how markets work, right? When firms increase the volume of a product, the price goes up? Right? Other drugs that are going up include Wellbutrin (an antidepressant that's also widely used in smoking cessation) and the blood thinner Plavix. I mean, why the hell not? These companies get billions in research subsidies, invaluable government patent privileges, and near-total freedom to abuse the patent system with evergreening:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/23/everorangeing/#taste-the-rainbow

The most amazing things about monopolies is how the contempt just oozes out of them. It's like these guys can't even pretend to give a shit. You want guillotines? Because that's how you get guillotines.

Take Apple. They just got their asses handed to them in court by Epic, who successfully argued that Apple's rule requiring everyone who sells through the App Store to use Apple's payment processor and pay Apple 30% out of every dollar they bring in was an antitrust violation. Epic won, then won the appeal, then SCOTUS told Apple they wouldn't hear the case, so that's that.

Right? Wrong. Apple's pulled a malicious compliance stunt that could shame the surly drunks my great-aunt Lisa used to boss in the Soviet electrical engineering firm she ran. Apple has announced that app companies that process transactions using their own payment processors on the web must still pay Apple a 27% fee for every dollar their process:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apples-app-store-rule-changes-draw-sharp-rebuke-from-critics-150047160.html

In addition, Apple will throw a terrifying FUD-screen up every time a user clicks a payment link that goes to the web:

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/second-verse-same-as-the-first/

This is obviously not what the court had in mind, and there's no way this will survive the next court challenge. It's just Apple making sure that everyone knows it hates us all and wants us to die. Thanks, Tim Apple, and right back atcha.

Not to be outdone in the monopolistic mustache-twirling department, Ubisoft just announced that it is going to shut down its driving simulator game The Crew, which it sold to users with a "perpetual license":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

This is some real Darth Vader MBA shit. "Yeah, we sold you a 'perpetual license' to this game, but we're terminating it. I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Ubisoft sure are innovators. They've managed the seemingly impossible feat of hybridizing Darth Vader and Immortan Joe. Ubisoft's head of subscriptions, the guillotine-ready Philippe Tremblay, told GamesIndustry.biz that gamers need to get "comfortable" with "not owning their games":

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-new-ubisoft-and-getting-gamers-comfortable-with-not-owning-their-games

Or, as Immortan Joe put it: "Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!"

Capitalism without constraint is enshittification's handmaiden, and the latest victim is Ello, the "indie" social media startup that literally promised – on the sacred honor of its founders – that it would never sell out its users. When Ello took VC and Andy Baio questioned how this could be squared with this promise, the founders mocked him and others for raising the question. Their response boiled down to "we are super-chill dudes and you can totally trust us."

They raised more capital, and used that to create a nice place for independent artists, who piled into the platform and provided millions of unpaid hours of creative labor to help the founders increase its value. The founders and their investors turned the company into a Public Benefit Corporation, which meant they had an obligation to serve the public benefit.

But then they took more investment money and simply (and silently) sold their assets to a for-profit. Struggling to raise capital, the founders opted to secretly sell the business to a sleazy branding company called Talenthouse. Its users didn't know about the change, though the site sure had a lot of Talenthouse design competitions all of a sudden.

Finally, the company announced the change as the last founders left. Rather than announcing that the new owners were untrustworthy scum, warning their users to get their data and get out, the founders posted oblique, ominous statements to Instagram. The company started stiffing the winners of those design competitions. Then, one day, poof, Ello disappeared, taking all its users' data with it. Poof:

https://waxy.org/2024/01/the-quiet-death-of-ellos-big-dreams/

I'm sure the founders' decisions each seemed reasonable at the moment. That's every terrible situation arises: you rationalize that a single compromise isn't that big of a deal, and then you do the same for the next compromise, and the next, and the next. Pretty soon, you're betraying everyone who believed in you.

One answer to this is "Ulysses pacts": making binding commitments to do right before you are tempted. Throw away all your Oreos when you go on a diet and you can't be tempted to eat a whole sleeve of them at 2AM. License your software under the GPL and your investors can't force you to make it proprietary. Set up a warrant canary and the feds can't force you to keep their spying secret:

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

If the founders were determined to build a trustworthy, open, independent company, they could have published their quarterly books, livestreamed their staff meetings, built data-export tools that emailed users every week with a link to download everything they'd posted since the last week. Merely halting any of these practices would have been a signal that things were wrong. Anyone who says they won't be tempted in the moment to make a "reasonable" compromise in the hopes of recovering whatever they're trading away by living to fight another day is bullshitting you, and possibly themself.

The inability to project the consequences of your bad decisions in the future is the source of endless mischief and heartbreak. Take movie projectors. A couple decades ago, the studio cartel established a standard for digital movie distribution to cinematic exhibitors called the Digital Cinema Initiative. Because studio executives are more worried about stopping piracy than they are about making sure that people who pay for movies get to see them, they build digital rights management into this standard.

Movie theaters had to spend fortunes to upgrade to "secure" projectors. A single vendor, Deluxe Technicolor, monopolized the packaging of movies into "Digital Cinema Prints" for distribution to these projectors, and they used all kinds of dirty tricks to force distributors to use their services, like arbitrarily flunking third-party DCPs over picky shit like not starting and ending on a black frame.

Over time, the ability to use unencrypted files was stripped away, meaning every DCP needed to be encrypted, and every projector needed to have up-to-date decryption keys. This system broke down on Jan 1, 2024, and cinemas all over the world found they couldn't play Wonka. Many just shut down for the day and refunded their customers:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/1/24021915/alamo-drafthouse-outage-sony-projector

The problem? Something that every PKI system has to wrangle: an expired certificate from Deluxe Technicolor. The failure has been dubbed the Y2K24 debacle by projectionists and film-techs, who are furious:

http://www.film-tech.com/vbb/forum/main-forum/34652-the-y2k24-bug-major-digital-outage-today

Making everything worse is that Sony mothballed the division that maintains its projectors, so there's no one who can update them to accommodate Technicolor's workaround. Struggling mom-and-pop theaters are having to junk their systems and replace them. There's plenty of blame to go around, but Sony is definitely the most negligent link in the chain. Shame on them.

Big corporations LARP this performance of competence and seriousness, but they are deeply unserious. This week, I wrote, "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Score one for team deeply unserious. The multinational delivery company DPD fired its support staff and replaced them with a chatbot. The chatbot can't tell you where your parcels are, but it can be prompt-injected into coming up with profane poems about how badly DPD sucks:

https://twitter.com/ashbeauchamp/status/1748034519104450874

There once was a chatbot named DPD, Who was useless at providing help. It could not track parcels, Or give information on delivery dates, And it could not even tell you when your driver would arrive.

DPD was a waste of time, And a customer's worst nightmare. It was so bad, That people would rather call the depot directly, Than deal with the useless chatbot.

One day, DPD was finally shut down, And everyone rejoiced. Finally, they could get the help they needed, From a real person who knew what they were doing.

This is…the opposite of an AI hallucination? It's AI clarity.

As with all botshit, this kind of AI self-negging is funny and fresh the first time you see it, but just wait until 3,000 people have published their own versions to your social feed. AI novelty regresses to the mean damn quickly.

The old, good web, by contrast, was full of enduring surprises, as the world's weirdest and most delightful mutants filled the early web with every possible variation on every possible interest, expression, argument, and gag. Now, you can search the old, good web with Old'aVista, an Altavista lookalike that searches old pages from "personal websites that used to be hosted on services like Geocities, Angelfire, AOL, Xoom and so on," all ganked from the Internet Archive:

http://oldavista.com/

I miss the old, good internet and the way it let weirdos find each other and get seriously weird with one another. Think of steampunk, a subculture that wove together artists, makers, costumers, fiction writers, and tinkerers in endlessly creative ways. My old pal Roger Wood was the world's most improbable steampunk: he was a gay ex-navy gunner who grew up in a small town in the maritimes but moved to Toronto where he became the world's most accomplished steampunk clockmaker.

I was Roger's neighbour for a decade. He died last year, and I miss him all the time. I was in Toronto in December and saw a few of his last pieces being sold in galleries and I was just skewered on the knowledge that I'd never see him again, never visit his workshop:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/16/klockwerks/#craphound

A reader just sent this five-year-old mini documentary about Roger, shot in his wonderful workshop. Watching it made me happy and sad and then happy again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqMGomM8yF8

The old, good internet was so great. It was a place where every kind of passion could live. It was a real testament to the power of geeking out together, no matter how often the suits demand that we "stop talking to each other and start buying things":

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

The world is full of people with weird passions and I love them all, mostly. Learning about Don Bolles's collection of decades' worth of lost pet posters was a moment of pure joy (I just wish more of it was online):

https://ameliatait.substack.com/p/the-man-who-collects-lost-pet-posters

That's the future I was promised: one where every kind of freak can find every other kind of freak. Despite the nipple-deep botshit we wade through online, and the relentless cheapening of words like "innovation" and "future," there are still occasional gleams of the future I want to live in.

Like the researchers who spliced a photosynthesis gene into brewer's yeast (a fungus) and got it to photosynthesize, and to display enhanced fitness:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01744-X

As Doug Muir writes on Crooked Timber, this is pretty kooky! Fungi – the coolest of the kingdoms! – can't photosynthesize. The idea that you can just add the photosynthesis gene to a thing that can't photosynthesize and have it just kind of work is wild!

https://crookedtimber.org/2024/01/19/occasional-paper-purple-sun-yeast/

As Muir writes: "Animals have no evolutionary history of photosynthesis and aren’t designed for it, but the same is true for yeast. So… no reason this shouldn’t be possible. A photosynthesizing cat? Sure, why not."

Why not indeed?!

OK, that's this week's linkdump done and dusted. It only remains for me to share the news with you that the trolley problem has been finally and comprehensively solved, by Sidereal@kolektiva.social, of the IWW IU 520 (railroad workers):

Slip the switch by flipping it while the trolley's front wheels have passed through, but before the back wheels do. This will cause a controlled derailment bringing the trolley to a safe halt.

https://kolektiva.social/@sidereal/111779015415697244

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/20/melange/#i-have-heard-the-mermaids-singing

[okkefac]

Going into my pjsk fankids

Oh wow I got the one like! Using this as an excuse to blab about the fankids I've made for these blorbos. Umm I get super nervous sharing stuff like this, so if anyone sees this please be kind lol.

Pairings are really basic: shizuairi, emunene, minoharu, anhane, ruikasa In this kinda imaginary mind palace of mine there is also akitoya, mizuena and kanamafu - but none of them have kids. I'm going back and forth on if I imagine akitoya having kids, but I don't really see the niigo girls doing so - I see them more as fun aunt types.

As for leo/need, I hate to admit but I'm not a polyneed shipper no matter how much I want to be (I don't mind it as a ship, I'm just not passionate about it like I am the others here). I see ichika and shiho as aroace so I have them in a qpp, but I see hona and saki as allo. So we have some kids for honami and saki, but no set partner - feel free to HC as you see fit for the kids' other parent, I didn't design with anyone specific in mind.

Okay going in sort of age order by sibling set. Not all of them have super specific personalities yet, so some of the characters will be more vaguely detailed than others.

Honami - Rion, Isane and Yuuto

Rion and Isane are twins, with Yuuto being three years their junior. Rion and Isane are quite close, with Yuuto feeling a bit left behind due to feeling like the odd one out. As expected of Honami's kids, all three of them are fairly polite and kind - although Yuuto is more extroverted and likely to get up to mild mischief at school. Isane's grades are very high, so she decides to go to Miya girls, leaving Rion behind, to both of their frustration. II haven't thought about much detail on these kids individually yet, but I find their dynamic fascinating.

Saki - Atsuha

Fun fact: Atsuha was the first character whose concept I came up with. The first grandchild of the Tenmas - Atsuha definitely grew up very (lovingly) spoiled. She spends as much time as possible hanging around leo/need rehearsals, excitedly listening to her mom play the keyboard. Atsuha can play herself, but she's not super passionate about it - she actually gets very into design and construction and eventually becomes an architect. Has weekly visits with her uncles and cousins.

Saki wanted Atsuha to have a sibling, but things didn't work out that way, but Atsuha doesn't mind as she's so surrounded by love everywhere she goes - especially close with her cousins and honami's kids. She's a year younger than her, but sticks to Isane like glue at Miya girls when she joins.

Yes, that middle kanji is from Tsukasa's name. Yes, Tsukasa ugly cried to the point where he nearly passed out once he found out.

Emu/Nene - Raga, Earu

Raga and Earu have a two year age gap - Raga is a kind of typical mature older brother. Kind of takes after Nene a bit, but is much more academics focused. Earu is a loud performer - not wanting to go into theatre but wants to become a travelling clown. Both are avid gamers, but specialising in different areas.

Earu is born male but is nonbinary - if the spoke English they'd use he/they pronouns but definitely don't mind masculine titles (e.g they're happy to be called Raga's brother). Kind of describes themself as "not quite a boy but definitely not a girl". At some point they talk to Mizuki about things, and about how it's different and similar to Mizuki's situation. As you can see the have the girl's bow on - but they're wearing pants, they like to wear very androgynous clothing, but sometimes go a bit more masc or fem.

It's sort of presumed that Earu would take over phoenix wonderland due to being obsessed with theatre and performing from a young age, whereas Raga showed little interest. Although it later comes out that Raga was actually really looking forward to running things, and is just a bit more awkward at communicating his love of PXL - and it turns out Earu doesn't really want to be tied down and wants to travel the world, so it works for both of them that Raga becomes the one to take over eventually.

Shizuku/Airi - Nozori, Miyuna

Okay they're both a bit stupid, but I mean that with love. They had to be nerfed a bit. They go to Kamikou because they have to.

Both very conventionally attractive, they're only a year apart in age and are very close to each other - as well as to Nonno. Miyuna is somewhat overprotective, seeing her mother and brother both fall for things due to their general gullibility. Like Airi, Miyuna would definitely get into scrapes to protect her loved ones as a kid. Unlike Airi, Miyuna continues this to this day.

Nozori gets dragged into random situations on a fairly regular basis - usually by Yuuto who he is very ...very close with. He's actually quite into tech, being heavily encouraged by Airi so that they wouldn't end up like Shizuku.

Both siblings are often involved in very traditional Japanese ceremonies. Neither of them care much for the limelight, but both do love music.

Haruka/Minori - Nonno

Minori and Haruka's daughter - she's a year younger than Miyuna. Very close to the Shizuairi kids, she follows Miyuna to Kamikou even though she goes to Miya middle school. Definitely autistic (from Haruka). Nonno is fairly quiet and studious, used to her mothers having a lot of attention around the place. She lacks confidence to an extent, and tends to rely on clinging to other people. Nonno is a more recent addition to my mind palace, so I don't have loads on her yet.

An/Kohane - Nagisa

Wow I wonder who named this kid.

An and Kohane's son. As expected he's raised in vivid street like An was, and similarly was showered with love from a very young age. Not wanting to repeat the sourer aspects of her own childhood, whenever An and anyone else Nagisa was close to had to cancel on watching him practice, they instead invited him to join along for whatever errand they had to go do. This gave Nagisa a lot of knowledge of the inside workings of performing from a young age, and let him avoid some of the hangups An had.

As he got older, eventually Nagisa stopped tagging along to all of the errands, choosing to practice alone of his own volition. He's very confident, but not in a bad way - for example, where Kohane chose to wear contacts to look cooler, Nagisa instead decided "Well, I'm just going to make glasses cool" and stuck with them. He has quite the baby face, so makes up for it with a lot of piercings and trying to sound tougher than he is. The red streak in his hair is dyed, and he often swaps out the colour whenever he feels like it.

Fun fact: I didn't draw it, but his tongue is pierced too. Is it irresponsible for a teenager to have a tongue piercing? Maybe. He probably went and did it on his own, to be honest.

Rui/Tsukasa - Hikaru, Kazaki

Okay, Hikaru was one of the first characters I made, but Kazaki has only existed in my mind palace for about 12 hours, a very last minute decision to add. I was going back and forth on whether to give Hikaru a sibling, but decided Tsukasa should get revenge for using his kanji in Atsuha's name - and so Kazaki was born (Rui did choose her name though, just under Tsukasa's request to use one of Saki's name kanji).

They both got the Kamishiro autism, with Hikaru generally effected quite similarly to Rui (she struggles with textures, and socialising without bothering other people), and Kazaki effected to a lesser extent in different ways - Kazaki is very bothered by change and often stims with various trinkets of Rui's lying around the place.

Hikaru also got Rui's "genius" although unlike Rui she is much more aware and likely to bring it up - she sometimes gets frustrated when people can't understand things the way she does, although she doesn't mean it in a negative way - she is still just a teenager when she's like this. I'm not sure yet what Hikaru's passions are, but they probably lie outside of theatre. Kind of thinking rocks, rocks are cool. Tsukasa teaches her piano, but Hikaru struggles with fine dexterity and doesn't pick up on it - she eventually quits, where Tsukasa is fully supportive of course (he's seen what happened to Toya). Fun fact: Hikaru can do really good impressions.

Kazaki is into music and theatre, although mostly music. She's not a genius like Hikaru, but she picks up on musical things very quickly. She learns the piano with vigour, and starts composing her own songs from a very young age. Much more extroverted, Kazaki makes friends easily. She's not really odd like her parents, but unlike Hikaru she will play along with Rui and Tsukasa's weirdness for the bit. She does put on plays with her parents, although more as a hobby. Way later in life, she composes music for plays that Tsukasa writes and Rui directs.

They're not super close as siblings, fighting occasionally, but they do get along - much to Tsukasa's confusion ("Saki why aren't they like us?" "Oniichan I already told you, you go way above and beyond as a big brother." "No I don't!!"). Both girls kind of feel inferior to each other, with Kazaki feeling upset that she didn't get the genius gene like Hikaru, and Hikaru upset that Kazaki's interests align much more with their parents' than hers. Of course, to Rui and Tsukasa both girls are perfect. Eventually they get over this, but it takes some time. As adults the girls are probably super close.

In conclusion

I am so sorry why did I write so much. If anyone reads this i love you. If anyone cares I might make a name/pronoun chart because I find that stuff fascinating. ok bye.