#i probably would've posted if i got no response too tbh

[leafyolive]

i got three yesses on posting shirtless osamu wip and thats enough for me

[piningpercussionist]

Hii! I didn’t know if replying to my own post would be best or just sending an ask so I’m just gonna send an ask in response to your tags lol!

1. I’ll try to find the source of O’Malley calling them crimesex, but I fear it may be buried due to the fact that he randomly switched up and stopped posting anything Gideon YEARSSSS ago (+ deleting a lot of the posts, especially about Gideon and Ramona)

2. Gravesflowers is such a good ship name tbh

3. It’s all good! Haha I mostly just didn’t put it in main tag because I didn’t want hate en masse. Reblogging my post is totally chill :3

Agkcshskf so fair

Okay, this vaguely rings a bell now, actually; I've probably been told this before. I can confirm for you that it probably definitely isn't on his instagram anywhere- I went through it a while back and screenshot literally every Scott Pilgrim post in sight, so if it was there I'd probably have it. (I'll even go check those screenshots just to be sure, but I feel like if I saw even crumbs about what their relationship was like, I probably would've passed it along to the fandom immediately; big on providing those kinds of things to the people, me... which means I've got livestreams to go through at some point and take notes/clips off.... even if some of what he says in those is a very "I Pretend I Do Not See It" worthy...) Next best scenario is I do follow a sort of archival Scott Pilgrim account I could poke around on, but I don't think they've uploaded anything like that there yet, should they have it. It's quite possibly something lost to him deleting it like you said, or otherwise it's lost in the depths of Twitter, and we will probably never see it again because that site is broken as fuck. (Every day I Languish about the Lainey art that's supposesly on his twitter somewhere....)

I thought so too! It's just kind of the Vibe their relationship gives off to me, very appropriately summed up in the name. "Gravesflowers." It just provides a very dark, grim picture,, to me,,

So Fair, and ty! Relieved to know it's chill. If anyone gives you shit about the post do let me know; I'm pretty sure the people that follow this blog wouldn't do that about this one in particular, but if they do I'll block 'em lol. You lose access to my little archive of SP stuff if you're a dick to the people I reblog stuff from for no good reason- seems a fair punishment.

[fazafras-pizza]

Semi Long (but not super serious) Update Post

((OP: Hi! Sorry for the sporadic posting. I know May was kind of light on content -- I think I've mentioned it before, but I have a comic outside of this that I work on and was trying to dedicate myself to it for the entirety of May and it's got a bit to it (I only got a page and a half done lol, but that's still some! So I'll take it.) Plus I've obviously got other life stuff, but that's my main art focus that would eat up my time.

I would've probably had another post today since I was feeling artsy (it's all I did this afternoon tbh), but I kind of ran out of asks again and couldn't think of anymore mini comics besides the one that's going to transition us to the next Night Shift that I haven't scripted out. (It's so annoying having so much motivation but no creativity 😅)

But the good news from that I guess is that, if you were ever worried about if your ask would get buried if you sent it in, don't be! I've answered nearly every single one that's come in since we came back last August (btw: oh my gosh it's nearly been a year since we've been back that's wild), so I will definitely get to it, like, immediately lol. Y'all send in such good and fun asks and I love making responses for them, you guys genuinely make this such a good time and I appreciate you so much, I can't express that enough. I wouldn't still be doing this if it wasn't for you guys and it makes me so excited to show you what else I've got planned for the blog because ohhhh buddy :))))))

(Like, there is no joke a completed story start to finish planned for this blog and all it's characters. That's how much I love it and everything for it.)

BUT! On another totally different topic -- I wanna talk about accessibility stuff! This pops up in my mind every once in a while and I wanted to posit it here:

Obviously this blog operates with a lot of images containing text and I know a lot of people find it helpful to have image descriptions as part of their experience here on Tumblr. I think the way I would do it is probably going back through and updating all the alt image description things where I can, but I know some posts are so old (since I started this blog in 2017) that that might not be possible. With how there's often continuing text dialogue under those images, do you think that written out image descriptions would interrupt that? And if so, should I post the image descriptions under the text dialogue?

This might be something I have to contemplate for a while, but I think moving forward I'll just start including it in the images because I don't think it'd be too difficult, it's just something I know I'm overlooking.

Likewise, should I make a tab on the blog that has a summary of the "plot" of the blog? That way new followers can catch up without it seeming daunting and old followers can get a refresher if they need to.

Let me know your thoughts and if there's anything else I could do to make it more accessible that I might have not considered! Again, thank you all for following this silly little blog and making it such a joy to run, it's been wonderful, and I'm looking forward to running it for so much longer! 🥰))

[dreamcatcher-roulette]

I've had your post up in a separate tab for ages, but life 😮‍💨😅

Just wanted to say I appreciate the in-depth response about RAID (and cosmic rays!) and especially the S.M.A.R.T. article - it'll come in handy as I'm quite complacent 😅 about my personal backups (I think my music files have the most "redundancy" via iPods 🤡)

*I dunno if you'll find it interesting, but the OP's schadenfreude in this Reddit post was amusing to me, at least 😅

https://www.reddit.com/r/Netsuite/s/Bxu6bFnrkS

But tbh, even for the outage referenced, 🤡 I would've been more angsty about the potential hours! of productivity lost (i.e. bc users getting anxious about deadlines, etc.) rather than the potential that our data pre-incident would be corrupted or lost.

Anyways, in any case! Thank you for sharing your tangents! I hope you're doing well!

Ahh what a great honour to be a long standing open tab. Funnily enough I started drafting this yesterday and got distracted from it as well. My original response to how I’m doing was going to be “semi patiently waiting for the Dreamcatcher comeback announcement” but since then we got Fromm messages saying probably not until at least June (noooooo) and now I'm also neck deep in ACC, much to my dismay. I have nothing intelligent to say about batteries, they’re complete mysteries to me as well, but they sure do exist. Unfortunately.

Anyway! I do have things to say about backups. Below the cut 😉

The thing about backups is that you can definitely get way deeper than you need to, I think it’s mostly important to be aware and comfortable with your level of risk. The majority of people don’t hold too much irreplaceable data on their personal computers, and the data that does come under that category often fits within free or cheap tiers of cloud backup providers. Before I had my current setup I used to take a less structured approach to backups. I sorted my data into three categories:

Replaceable, which encompasses things like applications and games which can be re-downloaded from the internet (and, if the original download source were no longer available, this would not be a huge deal);

Irreplaceable but not catastrophic, which encompasses things like game saves, half finished software projects, screenshots I've taken etc; and

Irreplaceable and catastrophic, which encompasses things like legal documents but also select few items from category 2 I'm just very personally attached to.

Category 1 items I had on a single hard drive, category 2 items I copied over selectively to a second every now and then when I got struck with a particularly large wave of paranoia, and category 3 items I did the same but with the additional step of scattering them through various cloud providers as well. Now that I have an actual redundant drive setup in a server I have Kopia running on my personal computer to periodically back up everything that isn’t on my SSD, but I still rely on those external cloud providers for offsite backups.

It’s important to note my setup is ultimately designed with hardware reliability engineering in mind but those aren’t the only factors at play when thinking about backups, especially for enterprises. That Reddit thread is hilarious and I can see exactly where both sides are coming from, it’s a common enough disagreement between people of different departments. Senior software engineers tend to be paranoid old bastards who loathe to trust anyone else's code, which is in direct opposition to so many “software as a service” business models these days. But from a business perspective it makes complete sense to always have your own copy of the data as well, even if it isn’t the copy being used. It’s not just loss of productivity (although I agree that’s the most likely extent of any service down time) but often there are legal obligations on keeping records of certain types of work, and, while I’m pretty sure a company could win a court battle to absolve itself of responsibility in the event of a trusted third party being the one to drop the ball, that’s not the kind of argument you even want to risk getting into when there’s such a simple extra safeguard that could be put in place.

My assessment of the risks of my own backup solution of course has a MUCH lower threshold for striking out controls based on cost. I'm a hobbyist after all, this whole thing does not generate money it only takes it. Most notably I don’t have any full offsite backups, which leaves me vulnerable to near total data loss in the unlikely event of a house fire or someone breaking in and just picking up and leaving with the whole lot. The problem with defending against either of these scenarios with a “proper” 3-2-1 backup strategy is that the first server already cost me enough, I don’t want to go investing almost the same amount into a second one to stick somewhere else! And paying any cloud provider to host terabytes is no friendlier on the wallet.

There’s also the issue of airgaps, which is something enterprises need to think about but I do not have any desire to entertain. If a bad actor were to infiltrate my network in such a way that gave them root access to the server hosting all my data I would have no ability to restore from a ransomware attack. Of course this scenario is very unlikely, I’m already doing a lot to mitigate the risk of a cyber attack because running my services securely doesn’t incur additional costs (just additional time, which does mean I haven’t implemented everything possible, just enough to be comfortable there are no glaring holes), but it’s still something I am conscious of when running something which is exposed (in a small way) to the internet. Cybersecurity is also a whole separate but interesting topic that I’m by no means an expert in but enjoy putting into practise (unlike BATTERIES. God. What is wrong with electrical engineers (I say this with love, I work with many of them)).

In conclusion, coming back to how this relates to my dreamcatcher images blog, you can rest assured that my collection of rare recordings is about as safe as my collection of rare albums is, in that, barring a large scale disaster, they should be safe as long as I want to keep them. Which is hopefully going to be a very long time indeed, because I don’t just enjoy the process I also enjoy the content I’m preserving. But the average person probably doesn’t need to put the same level of effort into archiving — Google and Microsoft’s cloud services have much more redundancy than a home setup could ever achieve and can hold all the essentials (like the backup of the Minecraft server on which you met your oldest friends, for example).

[leejihoonownsmyheart]

FIRST OF ALL WELCOME BACK BRIEEEEE

it did tickle me but...would've been a lot better if it woke me up at like...9am and not in the wee hours of the morning 😔😔

OFC I WILL VALIDATE YOUR OBESSION??? ANALYZING SOMEONE'S PLAYLIST IS TOTALLY VALID CUZ LIKE IT GIVES YOU SUCH A GOOD INTRO(?) TO THEIR CHARACTER AND WHAT KIND OF PERSON THEY AREEEE

you make me laugh ALL THE TIME brie pls remember that!!

YES I HAVE!! MY FRIEND USED TO READ IT ALL THE TIME AND IT WAS ACTUALLY KIND OF A TREND IN MY SCHOOL LOL (i was too busy reading harry potter but wtv...)

DARK HAIR GREEN EYES IS HE A TREE? completely unrelated question...would you climb him like a tree.

OOH WHATS UR FAV CDRAMA??? FEEL FREE TO DROP RECS AND LITTLE THINGS YOU LIKE IN THESE RESPONSES CUZ IM ALWAYS OPEN TO WHATEVER

ohhh thats so sad :( maybe one day they'll come to your city ??? if you do get to go to a con you should SO post a pic because i'd love to see more of you tbh (NOT IN A CREEPY WAY IDK IM SORRY IF IT CAME OFF LIKE THAT)

I SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO APPRECIATE MY GUY FRIEND YES. but like.....last week he called me ma'am......LIKE THAT HAS TO MEAN SOMETHING GOOD RIGHT??? WHEN I TELL YOU THAT I ALMOST THREW MY PHONE WHEN I SAW THAT NOTIF POP UP. he's kinda flirty and ig he's playing dumb?? i have no clue cuz he's SO hard to read but there were times when we totally could've left each other on seen but we didn't so i assume that's also a good sign..

I ALSO APPRECIATE YOU BEING SO STRAIGHTFORWARD LOL?? IT'S SO REFRESHING

STAY SAFE W THIS FRIEND GROUP OKAY??? you are probably NOT the problem....people that are 'in tune' with their emotions are usually still VERY unhinged and NOT in control (they're just good at acting like they are) and besides!! it seems like you have a lot more personality than them HAHAHAH

HMM ALRIGHT?? I GUESS SCHOOL IS THE PROBLEM THEN AHHAHAHA.....(it's never really that funny is it 😔😔) best of wishes to you!! you got this <3333333

OKAY BUT HOW DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH RIZZ (read: rizzness, taemin) TO EVEN PULL??? NOT LIKE A 'ew ur gross how did you pull' TONE BUT LIKE AN APPRECIATIVE QUESTIONING KINDA TONE IDK HELP I CAN'T DESCRIBE MY EMOTIONS

I'LL READ BASICALLY ANYTHING YOU WRITE BRIE DON'T EVEN WORRY ABOUT IT

-I MISSED YOU TOOOOOO (🫨 anon)

THANK YOUUU GLAD TO BE BACK!!!

If nothing else my favorite think to do is analyze mr. lee jihoon it’s a great self-study, my new senior thesis

HARRY POTTER IS SO SLAY ARE YOU A RAVENCLAW OR A HUFFLEPUFF THOSE ARE MY GUESSES FOR WHAT HPUSE YOU MIGHT BE WHAT’S YOUR HOUSE

He is a tree…. But he’s the mc’s so i will refrain from climbing him 🫠

LOVE O2O ITS SO CUTE I do love me a good lil cdrama DO YOU HAVE ANY DRAMA RECOMMENDATIONS

ILL SHOW YOU A PIC FROM ANIME CON AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST!! I hope that spn comes close to me sometime though! I’d love to see them irl someday

Hmmm uh I don’t know how good him calling you ma’am is tbh… is he a sub IT WOULD BE GOOD IF HE’S A SUB… kinda flirty and dumb huh…. I don’t know if he’s flirty and dumb maybe he’s just a himbo… but i don’t know that last thing DOES seem like a green flag

YOURE SO SWEET THANK YOU 😭 I WILL BE VERY CAREFUL 😭 IM GLAD YOU LIKED MY STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS 😭 YOURE WAY TOO NICE 😭

YOU ARE ACTUALLY SO FUNNY it’s never really that funny…. 😂😂😂

NO BUT ACTUALLY HOW DO I HAVE ENOUGH RIZZ TO PULL THAT IS SUCH A GREAT QUESTION THE MORE SELF-CENTERED ELITIST I ACT THE MORE THAT STRANGE MEN LIKE ME SOMETIMES I WISH I COULD EXPLAIN IT WHY DOES THAT GUY LIKE ME I LITERALLY BULLIED HIM 😭

[msommers]

5, 8, 24 and 32 for riya/victor and 6 for any riya ship (or potential ship?) of your choice!

thank youuuuuu. now pretend i published this in a timely manner and didn't forget to hit post the other night xoxo // development questions for couples

How do they consciously realize that they like the other character? Does it take them a while?

there was a solid year before they made things official in which they played a game of push & pull because they both were getting such a kick out of it, and i think riya's genuine feelings would have manifested somewhere during that time. riya's interest was purely surface level for a while as she found entertainment in his persistence and displays for her attention and [redacted horny shit], but the actual moment of realizing she Liked the guy beyond their game would have taken a few months. almost certainly after noticing that he wasn't getting tired of her teasing and it only encouraged him further, she loved that he couldn’t be deterred by any of her more attitude-filled responses or bad moods. 

i think victor probably had his realization talking to bastian tbh. bastian would have been tired of having to watch his brother flirting with riya as he had to constantly be nearby to do his due diligence as her guard, and victor would've been given a moment of "no wait, it's not like that. i want more" while being admonished for choosing the worst lady to pick as his next temporary fixation. of course that made bastian's life more miserable because victor doubled down on his efforts to gain riya's true affection with bigger acts but that's not his problem, maybe just go take 15 and relax for once while they have some fun, bud.

What do they think about romantic love? Do they have baggage surrounding it? Do they idealize it? Is it an object of longing and wanting, or were they really not thinking about it until they started falling for the other character? What are their expectations like?

neither of them had big thoughts about it as they'd spent a lot of years going through lovers like they were flavors of the week/month. riya likely had the strongest outlook on it because of what a romantic her father is and how she'd seen him display it over the years to her mother, but i wouldn't say she had that kind of love as her #1 priority. they both discovered what that kind of love was like together as they grew closer and found no desire to end things. riya expected romance to be digging in roots together and building a family because of what she'd seen from her father's happiness, but turns out her and victor's romance was more like discovering they wanted to share the thrill-seeking with each other. it used to be just following whims for the excitement in the moment for just oneself, but then ideas came with thoughts of "i want [him/her] here for this" and it was clear the love had reached a deeper level than it had with others. 

What would their partner do that would really turn them on, perhaps unintentionally?

one of victor’s plays during that year of chasing was getting onto his knees and hamming it up with some praising, not-so-subtle flirting, and lowkey begging for her attention because he thought she’d get a kick out of it, and hey maybe they’d have some fun in a side room before she shooed him away for the night if she got enough of a laugh out of it. turns out he flipped some switch in her because something Awakened in riya seeing him like that and he for sure secured her attention for the entire evening with that one lmao every instance after that was very intentional, homeboy spent a lot of time on his knees for this woman.

first of all, riya knows all too well when she’s doing something to get somebody hot and bothered tbh. now for the actual answer: riya’s incredibly tactile and doesn't shy away from being touchy with her lovers/partners at all times. victor loved it in general but the 👀 came whenever she was grabby with him. stuff like taking his chin in hand to shift his focus to where she wanted it, pulling him in by the neck or chin for a kiss, holding him still there before said kiss just to tease him, pushing/pulling him around in bed when she wanted him somewhere specific, etc etc. he was a sucker overall for her being the more dominant one

How do their friends react to finding out they’re a couple? Do they have lots of mutual friends? Did their friends know, perhaps before they themselves did?

they probably do have a lot of mutual friends now that i think about it, and i’m sure none of them were surprised by the time they made it official. definitely some people who weren't so happy (out of jealousy or annoyance, take your pick), some who were excited by it, and a few who didn't give a fuck because they assumed the pair would move on to a new person like they had been doing for years. they both had plenty of lovers in the past and suitors in the present, it would have been no surprise if they'd called it quits, but those odds got lower with each year that went by! insert more bastian going thru hell about it goofs here

How do they react to the realization that they like the other character? Is it an “oh my god I’m never going to think about this again” thing, or are they pretty comfortable with it?

(a second post for the riya/leroux tag bc spotify shuffle played the leroux song while i was brushing my hair and that's basically god herself telling me what to do here)

riya's entirely comfortable with it because it didn’t really have time to develop into anything really deep?? it was mostly her just projecting the idea she’d be down to make a moaning room out of any free space if they had half an hour or more to fool around, y’know. plus she's used to developing attraction and connections to people relatively quickly. she was fine to throw a few flirts his way to check the vibes and then continue on without making a fuss about it 🤷‍♀️

i can only presume any leroux reaction would be along the lines of "i literally cannot think about this right now" given the Everything that was going down during the time they had together, and he's not exactly built like riya over there. no time for moaning rooms or making eyes @ each other there's work to be done you little freak (he wouldn't call her that) ((she'd be fine if he did tho. might even like it))

[bubblegumkitkat]

Which is better future leo or current rise leo?

This is an interesting question that really depends on what you would consider “better” (I’d put my money on Future Leo in a fight but he’s a resistance leader in a twenty years post alien invasion apocalypse and Current Leo is sixteen)

this got long so its under the cut

We only see Future Leo for a handful of minutes (a bit more if you consider storyboards and unused content canon) and in those minutes we don't learn much about him or his duties/skills/personality/state of mind other than what we can see from his design, for example the masks tied to his (single and that feels significant but fuck if I know why) katana and his prosthetic arm modelled after Raph (or taken from Robo-Raph like I said it depends on what you consider canon)

Honestly I think of Future Leo as more of an extension of current Leo as opposed to a separate character since Future Leo is basically a short glimpse at a Leo forced to grow within a very specific circumstance, much like 2003 Raph, Leo and Mikey in the episode same as it never was, in rise Leo’s case if it weren't for the Kraang invasion end of series Leo would've had to deal with being made leader and presumably would have, in time, grown into the role. Future Leo didn't get that.

We know what he was like as a teenager up until the timelines diverge and we know as an adult he’s a responsible leader and mentor (maybe take “greatest ninja ever” or w/e Casey called him with a grain of salt cause that’s his dad lmao) but we don’t see any of the in between and that’s a massive gap! longer than current Leo’s been alive. we don't get to see how he’s grown up or what lessons he’s learned, whereas we see all of current Leo’s development past the cut-off point for becoming Future Leo

Current Leo now knows what could be and has already fixed what Future Leo likely considered one of, if not his greatest fuckup, Does that make him better? it for sure means his future self will be different now with new problems since the Kraang aren’t a concern (rat king anyone) and probably new issues (I can see Leo’s “it’s not about me” lesson going too far pretty easily tbh the kid already tried to sacrifice himself once)

so yeah this got long but tldr; i dont think either is better except future Leo is because his design fucks and i know he cried when Casey put his markings on his mask

[shatteredtime]

your ekko's thoughts on powder vs jinx? did he have a crush on her? mun's thoughts on the ship itself and whether you see it ever happening?

» — ⌜ALWAYS ACCEPTING QUESTIONS ABOUT EKKO⌟ ,

— anon.

thank you for the ask anon because i meant to write about it and never got to! that said, prepare for an essay because the brief answer is just: it's complicated.

when it comes to powder, actually, it isn't really. ekko was obviously very close to vander's kids, as is obvious in the fact they trust his tip about jayce's office, how affectionate claggor is toward him, and most of all, when he and vi reunite later on. their dialogue establishes they had a sibling-like relationship, and that ekko was often around her and the other 3.

which leads to powder specifically: being closer in age i think they'd sort of naturally be brought together, especially with their shared interest in creating things (because, despite her lack of confidence at the time, powder clearly enjoyed making her bombs and stuff, and i think ekko would've always had the inventor streak tbh).

they're said to be 12ish in act one (jinx 11/12 more specifically, ekko 12/13), and they probably have known each other their whole lives. and while i don't really keep the sentiment (or phrasing) of how he states he had a crush on the special interactions in game, it holds true to my ekko that he had a baby crush on powder. they were good friends, she was smart and pretty and nice, they were around each other a lot... it's easy to see how it'd happen.

and how it broke his little heart when he thought she died with the others, only to see her reappear with silco and calling herself jinx.

which leads us to the next part of the first question. when it comes to powder, ekko cared about her a lot, regardless of the crush. she was very important to him. and like i said i think he'd have seen her as someone smart and nice and pretty great. jinx is... only one of those things.

silco is bad news way before he gets to the height of his power post timeskip. even as a kid ekko knows that — and would've expected powder would know too. moreover, even if they didn't know the whole story, it's obvious vander (and the vander-aligned side of the undercity) had issues with silco. it would have been a personal betrayal regardless, but then there's the added fact ekko was watching when silco had grayson and benzo brutally murdered before taking vander. he saw it firsthand — it's how vi knows where to go.

and if the enforcer doesn't matter to him, vander definitely does, as does benzo, who clearly took him in the shop and gave him the chance to tinker and work on his little inventions, something that would've been very important for a kid from the undercity who'd have few if any opportunities to make something of his interest and talent otherwise. we don't see much of him and benzo, but i hc they were in a way close (benzo was looking after ekko when his parents are not around, after all). so seeing all that, seeing silco there and knowing he's responsible for benzo's death (and later on believing he's also responsible for vander's and claggor's, mylo's and vi's deaths), ekko's stance on silco is also very personal, which in turn makes powder's decision to stay with him a very personal betrayal, both for that and for what she meant for him.

i imagine (and this is, of course, subject to change and up to plotting with jinx writers!) initially he wouldn't have wanted to believe she was with silco willingly, or that she didn't know all he had done. i think it's very likely he'd have tried to reach out (to save her, indeed, as 'the boy savior' she accuses him of being later on). but once she made it clear this was her choice... ekko's mentality really is that powder was dead. it's why she has a place at the mural; whoever jinx is, it's not his friend, it's not the girl he liked. this is someone else entirely, someone he doesn't know and doesn't like.

throughout the years, ekko's feelings about jinx only get more complicated because, despite assuming that stance, it's never as simple as that. he can't completely separate who powder was from who jinx is, and as much as he'd scoff at the idea, deep down part of him still cares. not a part he ignores as much as a part he's unaware of until the time comes to face her and he falters in the last moment.

for the most part, though, he greatly dislikes jinx. resents her, even — when she kills one of the firelights because she reminded her of vi, ekko is viciously angry, enough so he forgets about the plan to lunge at jinx, being held back by the other firelights. he believes powder is gone and beyond saving because he felt her betrayal and witnessed it firsthand, because they've been on opposite sides for years and he lost friends at her hand, because he reached out early on and was refused. she is jinx by choice, and he hates the chaotic, uncaring person she has become. even if deep down part of him holds on to the idea she could be saved still. that somehow she could be powder again, even if that wouldn't erase everything she did as jinx.

as to my thoughts on the ship: i'm a big fan of pain and friends to enemies to lovers so 🤷‍♀️ i don't think it's impossible, necessarily, but it'd depend on a lot of development, individual and of their relationship. as jinx currently is? no, i can't see it. ekko cares deeply not just about himself or his loved ones, but for his city and its inhabitants. he cares for his people. he does indeed want to save people. he wants to make things better. and this fundamentally clashes with jinx as she is now — someone who suffered a lot and had to face a world that didn't seem to care for her and who, in turn, doesn't care for it.

it would take a redemption of sorts and a change of heart for it to happen. not to say she has to become an entirely different person, but that there must be change. it's making me think of ca.tra/dora, a little; in the sense c.atra was someone full of anger and resentment that was also turned against a.dora, and that her journey was imo less redemption and more healing, but both things sort of walk hand in hand. point being: if jinx went through a similar change, one motivated by personal feelings and relationships rather than a sudden desire to do good, but that led her to understand the harm she's causing and want to take a different path, then i can see the ship working. for all his anger, ekko does care about her still, otherwise he'd just have ended it on the bridge. they both did things that, from the other's perspective, hurtful (not that they're on the same level). so it'd take a lot to rebuild trust, before anything else, and for any sort of feelings to develop after that.

so the answer to the 'do i see it happening' is a tentative yes? i can see it, but it depends on how it's done. and personally i do like it; i think it could be very angsty and full of character development, which i love.

as of now, though, i think ekko's feelings about jinx are mostly negative and generally too complex, and that he'd have a hard time even coming to terms with the fact he still cares for her to a point. and that is likely to get worse before it gets better, given how she is by the end of arcane's first season.

[theprismaticvoid]

I'm in a rambling mood tonight and I just kinda wanna talk about something meaningless. A friend put these tags on a post she retweeted tonight and it just kinda got me thinking (not in a bad way, not mad at you or throwing shade Jade <3)

I feel like this isn't an uncommon sentiment tbh. I don't think anyone would have an issue with advertisements on the internet if they were small, unintrusive banner ads. If a website had a little banner for coca-cola or the latest blockbuster movie, it wouldn't really matter to me or many other people; we basically have the same thing going on with billboards along roads and nobody really complains about those.

And it got me thinking about the reason why we're in this advertising-hell we are now, the constant war between sites trying to either guilt-trip you or lock you out entirely if you use adblock, adblockers trying to get around their detection methods, and users spreading methods to get around the guilt-tripping/lockouts of sites

I think it's easy to just say that companies got greedy and kept demanding more intrusive ads, stepping it up from simple banner images to flashing animated banners to entire videos that they want autoplayed with volume on whenever you open a page, to the point where adblock became necessary to have a good viewing experience, meaning the less extreme ads weren't profitable anymore because less people were seeing them.

I think that's definitely a big part of it, but I don't think it's the whole explanation

And then I suddenly remembered, flash player. Back in the late 2000s/early 2010s, it was everywhere. Nowadays I think most people just remember it for games and video players, but it really was for EVERYTHING at the time - including ads.

That was before HTML5, before it was as easy to make a site dynamic with just stock Javascript - if you wanted to do anything more complicated than images and links, you needed something like Flash Player to do it (that's a bit of an exaggeration, but still, you get my point).

So, advertisements wanted to make things more dynamic than just a banner GIF - more complex animations, reacting when you put your mouse over them, multiple buttons for different sites, etc., and so they were flash applets.

And the important thing about Flash Player is that it was horrible for performance. Flash was a resource hog even with well-programmed stuff, and a LOT of ads at the time were poorly programmed, super inefficient for how simple they were.

I had an absolutely terrible laptop back in 2014/2015, just a very slow clunker that could barely handle browsing the web most of the time, and I remember opening Task Manager and killing Flash Player around every half-hour or so because the advertisements on sites like TVTropes or Wikia were both so abundant and so poorly-programmed that Flash would be taking up like 75% of what little RAM my PC had at the time. A lot of the reasons people recommended installing adblockers was because of the massive performance increase you'd get from not having all of those resource-hogging applets active at once.

So it makes me wonder, would we still be in this ad hellscape we are now if Flash Player hadn't existed, or at least been better programmed? If every flashing banner at the time hadn't been its own independent program running on a slow virtual machine for very little benefit?

I mean, the answer is probably yes, we still would've gotten companies who got too greedy and tried to force more and more intrusive ads on us constantly - but I can't help but wonder how different things could've been if it weren't for all those years of your tabs instantly coming to a screeching halt just because an advertisement wanted to have two links at once and the developers decided the best way to do that would be to make the entire thing a Flash applet.

TL;DR: I'm holding Adobe responsible for every single time I see one of those "Hey, please disable your adblock. We neeeeeeeeeed to show you the most obnoxious advertisements on planet Earth or else our multi-billion dollar company won't be able to keep the lights on :(" messages from a megacorp that could definitely stand to cut corners in other ways instead of trying to guilt-trip people into having a worse experience for their own benefit.

[greyeyedmonster-18]

Soooo.... Your posts on intention of sharing have made me stop and think. Like a lot .. and I've come to some of my own realisations.

But I also wanted to say that I hope we *also gestures at the void* don't make you feel like you have to? Obviously we will gorge ourselves on what you do decide to share but I was having a chat with another friend earlier about the pressure of sharing when people know you have created something and it can be a lot.

And that I'm glad you didn't delete the thing even if you decide not to share it. Because it's got to have been important for it to have come out? Maybe. I dunno.

Anyway. I hope I'm not out of place by saying this. 😬🧡

Friend!!! Not out of place. Never <3 <3

bare with me though because this is a lengthy response, because i wanted to respond to all the moving parts in thisss

honestly sharing and intention is something i think about all the time, as someone who has always been a creative person ("art for arts sake" is like a constant thought in my head) and this year in particular ive focused alot more on writing (both here and outside of here).

And im glad that my babbling reached....someone. and someone else stopped to think (and tbh, the first post was made in response to a lot of the ugly things ive seen in *gestures to the void* lately that have made me...think about intention more deeply. and think there's lessons to be learned in...sharing things that were probably left kept to themselves)

And YES. . I honor whatever i create even if it goes nowhere. Like its OKAY to have things just be for yourself because that means it was important to you!! (Also not to be like Art History up in here, but it actually makes me quite sad when i see museums commodifying artists private journal entries and tiny sketches. Like...those...those werent FOR you. You know? It feels so invasive sometimes.)

And to your last point--pressure to share when people KNOW theres been something made? i'm still grappling with this. i've uh, made a post about this before too about not all art being a commodity, and i think...that's something (esp as followers grow on here for me, and my own little world is suddenly media consumption for more people than i would've ever thought) others need to be reminded of, on occasion.

not to put pressure on creators to share. not to put pressure on creators WHEN to share. not to put pressure on ourselves to made everything available to the public. like...you know when you cook a meal? for an entire family? I'm currently thinking about when i make pupusa's, and its like a WHOLE DAY IN THE KITCHEN affair, and its like you make 12 to give out, and you eat some as well. so by the end of your day in the kitchen, you're full and the community is fed as well.

like...i have to save some just for me. creators can save things just for themselves (also your phrasing of GORGING yourselves on my content/pupusa's was just perfect <3)

BUT, i will say that...and this is a very recent thing, I've come to pay attention when i want to share something, but just need some...time to sit with it, or need a baby step (why do yall think i post so many dribbles on tumblr?), I'll reach out to someone whom i know and trust to carry my secret and start sharing there and for that reason alone, i am so incredibly grateful for this weird little void.

(and even this response, which typically i would answer privately, i'm going to make public because...i dunno. maybe someone else will think about these things too)

[rosemary-is-in-pesterquest]

Terezi seriously deserves so much better... post canon would've been the perfect place to revive her friendship with both Dave and Karkat. but also, her and Vriska's relationship got totally shafted in post canon. for self proclaimed Vriska fans, they don't really seem to be including her? like they basically just replaced her with a bland teen version? what the hell was the point of that? to go off a bit: the most interesting parts of Vriska's story are centered around her traumatic upbringing, which she deals with in ways that make her difficult to love, and Terezi is tied to her through repeated attempts to love her anyway, in spite of how hard it can be.

the trolls actually have a lot of relationships where one person has to decide when to stick by someone, and when to give up. Sollux ends up in a kind of limbo state with Aradia... he still likes who she was, but she's not that anymore when we first meet her as a ghost. Kanaya is interested in Vriska for a bit, but eventually feels unappreciated and used after spending probably longer than she should've trying to become interesting to her. Feferi has to figure out how to give up on Eridan without it resulting in widespread destruction, and that threat is why their relationship is exhausting to her in the first place. and Terezi has probably the most complex conundrum of all with Vriska. the two of them grew up together, and spent a long time killing a lot of their peers. for Vriska, it was essential to her survival and she had no choice, while for Terezi, it was just a recreational activity... and this is why Terezi eventually feels more guilt over it, and is able to realize that she should try to reform herself. meanwhile, Vriska built so much of her identity and self worth around taking pride in her ruthless persona, that it seems inextricable from who she is.

Vriska can't give up her kill-or-be-killed ways, even when she doesn't need to appease her lusus anymore, because this is the metric by which she judges people, and she can't stand to see herself as a victim. to her, weakness makes you killable... the way her lusus threatened her taught her that. failure results in death. and that's what bothers her so much about Tavros. by the standards she grew up under, he shouldn't have even made it as far as he did. but he also didn't even grow up by the same standards as Vriska to begin with. his lusus is tiny and cute, and he's clearly never even been asked to do anything violent before. even the fact that he had a choice is a novel concept. he didn't earn the right to live... not the way Vriska had to. to her, that's not fair. he even wanders into a game called "fatal live action roleplaying" like... the word "fatal" is in the name, looking for a fun adventure. as if Vriska hadn't been using this game to hunt her peers all this time. and she's probably killed a ton of more capable trolls than Tavros. what gives him a pass compared to them? the basic existence of someone like Tavros is like a wound that Vriska can't stop picking at, even while she's too prideful to admit she would've wanted a better life than what she got. instead, she has to hold others to this ruthless standard. if she doesn't, she might have to admit that her struggle was optional, or that it might not have made any sense to demand that much murder from a child. she didn't have to be raised like that. but like hell she's gonna play the victim. and it's alienating to be hated because of the one thing you feel like you've really accomplished. nobody could ever stomach being proud of Vriska, so she does it herself. she only has herself to rely on anyway.

all of this signifies a person who is damaged. she's in survival mode all the time, and it prevents her from forming connections with people. and Terezi sees this. Vriska's connection to Tavros is unhealthy, not just because Tavros is being bullied, but because Vriska isn't moving on. she's still all wrapped up in the idealized superiority of power, and won't admit that she even needs anyone or anything, even though she's genuinely not okay with losing so many of her friends over the Scourge/Charge debacle. so many of them consider this a step too far, but Vriska has genuine trouble discerning what the difference is between this, and her whole lifetime's worth of behavior. this is what she's had to do, and they're all more horrified at her, than they are at the things that made it necessary for her to turn out this way. and they don't have any solutions either. none of her friends can say "oh, well you should've handled it this way. then we could accept you" because the morally responsible thing to do would've been to die. Vriska not existing could've technically saved a lot of lives... if Vriska isn't proud of her strength, she might have to actually start feeling guilty for what she's done. and if Vriska felt a level of guilt that others think is appropriate for what she's done, she'd basically be ruined. people consider her unsalvageable, and she knows they see her that way. it breeds mistrust, and leads to her making all her decisions on her own, without asking anyone's advice or permission. they won't forgive her for even being alive, so screw them anyway. it drives a deeper wedge.

and Terezi is the one who actually understands all of this. she gets it... she was there. but she also knows that it would be healthier for Vriska to admit that she doesn't have to, or want to, live that way anymore. pride be damned, the things they did were awful, and their behavior should change. Terezi always had less riding on her adherence to these standards, so she was able to discard them easier. and now that she's on the other side of it, she knows that the longer you spend acting like that, the more the shame stacks up in hindsight. Vriska is digging herself a hole, and it's painful to watch, because Vriska is still basically Terezi's best friend. it's a hard position... if Vriska is never held accountable for anything, and never suffers consequences, then she may never change. but Terezi also irrationally wants to forgive her. because Terezi also wants to forgive herself. she doesn't want to believe that either of them are irredeemable, but when she kills Vriska, it seems as though they both were. it feels like they were both ruined. from the very beginning, as kids growing up in a fucked up environment, they never stood a chance. it's why they needed each other.

I just really wish post canon could focus on these two healing. they're both so well written, and so complex and interesting... and I was even really liking the hints of John and Terezi picking on each other. let Terezi have low stakes contention with someone! shenanigans that don't result in death would be good for both her and Vriska tbh. and it'd be so funny cuz like, Vriska is fond of John, and Terezi is so peeved by him. I think Vriska really started healing by knowing John, cuz as a human, she has a blank slate with him, and he couldn't have been raised ruthless, even if he would've been adept at being that way. to Vriska, John is an alien and doesn't work on the same scale as her. it leaves the point of survivability pretty moot, so Vriska isn't viewing everything in terms of that with him. and it's nice. she has fun. she gets to feel like a kid in a way that she never got to, because everything really is so simple. what I wouldn't give for the three of them to be able to pal around on earth C, that'd be so interesting!

(I’m not gonna add anything bc this is just, so good)

[crabnby]

ok @the-defiant-pupil i'm just gonna go ahead and make a new post bc this is about to get too long for my adhd ass

(context: continuation of this post)

1. funny thing is, i've actually read most of your sources already. they get really, really boring after awhile though, bc all of them start to say the same thing: yes there are differences, but there are also similarities, and scientists have yet to figure out the significance of this.

i'm not gonna go through each and every one of your sources, and i shouldn't be expected to either. when it comes to biological research, find the most recent articles with the most solid evidence/conclusions and call it good. don't dredge up an entire archive. i could find you sources that only characterize lichens as 2 symbiotic organisms rather than 3, but that wouldn't be correct bc the most recent research says otherwise. so yeah, just bc you CAN find that much info out there doesn't mean all of it is viable and should be used.

also, you can't just list a bunch of sources and expect it to be enough. you should contextualize them, explain them, tell your audience why each one matters. if you're really going to have that many, then be prepared to give a short annotation for each one bc i can guarantee you no one has enough time on their hands (or in my case, attention span) to read that many sources

your "plain as day" source by the way?? says this as well:

this is what i was talking about earlier!! do you actually read, contextualize, and analyze what you read? or do you just find the first line you agree with and run with it?

bc what i got from reading that article is that even after years of research and the largest study to date, scientists STILL don't fully understand what they're looking at, and they might never. so we, as people Not Actively Researching This Subject should be incredibly hesitant to draw our own conclusions when even the researchers can't do so.

i also like that the author mentions how socialization can affect brain structure and development — did you know that domestication causes visible differences in gene structure between the ancestor and current-day species? bc of selective breeding, humans changed the genetics of dogs, cows, crops, etc.; genetics changed bc of domestication, domestication didn't come about bc of a change in genetics. and i KNOW that you're going to tell me this has nothing to do w what we're talking about, but it does hold a similar concept: it's not just genetics and bodily functions that affect behavior, the environment has an equally important role.

similarly, gene expression in almost every species is highly regulated by the environment just as equally as it is the body (and for clarification: environment means anything external, body means anything internal). as are hormonal responses, reflexes, emotions, etc. all of which can have subtle but lasting impacts on the body! i don't actually think that anti-transmeds are trying to deny science when we say that how your brain developed is not the only thing that affects gender identity! i think it's kinda actually the opposite!

2. i've haven't heard of this tumblr biologist, so please direct me to their publications, i'd actually really love to read them

3. science literacy is a whole other beast than literacy in general. like, yes, you have to be able to read, but suddenly specific word choice and HOW you read articles becomes important. it goes from reading chronologically (english literacy) to reading section by section and contextualizing what you've read in previous sections and articles so that by the end you understand the initial hypothesis, if the evidence ACTUALLY proved it, if their methods were sound, and why it matters in the particular field.

i'm not trying to say that people who aren't studying science can't read peer-reviewed articles and understand them, but you do have to realize that it's a completely new skillset you have to practice over and over again, not just something you can pick up on the fly

4. i think you completely missed my point about the anti-vaxxer movement. the reason it started was bc McBastard Wakefield published his article and before any other research could be done to refute it or back it up, the greater population picked it up and ran with it. 7 or so years since it's been debunked and he lost his medical license, but people still believe him bc he got published, and to some of the most accredited journals at that.

my point was that just bc the research exists doesn't mean we should accept it at face value until the medical/scientific community can undeniably say "this is what this is, and what it means." and they're STILL doing further research, which means that hasn't happened yet. bc the whole point of science, and by extension research, is to never be satisfied w your results, and instead continue to look for more than you can currently see. or at least that's what i've been taught.

bc to look at published articles and assume that they MUST be true bc it's PUBLISHED SCIENCE is...exactly what the anti-vaxxer movement began on. and i'd rather not repeat that.

(please show me, by the way, how """tucutes""" 1. actually exist and 2. harm anyone by simply living their own damn lives)

5. yeah """""tucutes""""" don't have any science bc uh.....there really is none. science is a process, and we're currently in the research phase which means NO ONE should be using it as proof. it's good to say "hey this exists" but to completely invalidate someone's existence based on studies that scientists are still trying to understand? that's called abusing and misconstruing results

6. i'm guessing you don't actually care, but sure. i'll explain mating types of fungi to you.

in short: genetic diversity is advantageous for survival, and fungi are nothing if not crafty little bastards, thus 1000s of mating pairs for better chances of sexual compatibility

in long: each mating type is determined by a set of genes. really, you can think of mating types as extended alleles, since each distinct allele has a distinct mating type.

so as for 5 different mating types and how they're different...there you go. that'd be like asking me to tell you 5 different alleles of the same gene and how they're different. the only difference is in sequence and then how they're expressed due to differences in sequence.

usually we don't categorize every single mating type since that'd be a bit...much.

however, we can and do categorize fungi by how they reproduce! i.e., what kind of syntamy do they display? can they go through diploid selfing? can they inbreed or only out cross? what's their primary stage of life: diploid or haploid? do they rely on sexual reproduction or asexual reproduction? if it's an ascomycete, do they form pericarps or ascocarps?

in fact, one of the main differentiators between fungi is their life cycle, most of which is geared towards reproduction. that's why although basidiomycetes and ascomycetes are the only fungi that can form macro fruiting bodies (as well as many, many other similarities), they'll always be categorized differently.

but i digress. the reason i compared fungal mating types to brain morphology and "sex" categorization is bc i was making an analogy. i'm not a neurologist, as you can probably tell at this point, but that doesn't mean i haven't taken any classes that covered the brain pretty extensively.

what i was really trying to say was this: everything that i've read so far says that although there's definitely some differences between brains, there's also a significant amount of overlap, so much so that when you try to categorize the brain into two distinct types, you're still going to have an incredible amount of variety.

likewise, you could, theoretically, do the same to fungi. you could sequence the genes from each mating type, determine the different SNPs, and categorize them into two distinct groups based on what SNPs they do/don't have. it wouldn't make sense to do so, though, bc there'd still be too much variety within each group.

this was just me trying to relate it to what i personally study but tbh i can see how that would've been confusing, so i apologize for that