#just very detail oriented...

[canisalbus]

Ohh the scent thing is such a fascinating facet of your story! When Machete does his violent work, can Vasco smell it on him? Does Vasco's scent linger on him after they spend a night together? Can passerby smell sex or arousal? What kinds of smells do Machete's co-workers give off? That would make the forbidden things very difficult to hide.

Does any of their peers suspect them at any point?

I think Machete is too much of a neat freak to let any unpleasant odors stick to him for too long. Even though I have this habit of drawing him sprayed with blood and such, in reality it's fairly uncommon for him to get his hands properly dirty, even towards the end, at his worst. He has employees specifically for that business. I think the only affair that is exceedingly hard to avoid or scrub off would be executions by burning, which he has to supervise on occasion. Smoke is just one of those things that spreads far and wide and permeates everything. The persisting aroma of charred flesh and burnt dog hair makes him nauseous for days.

If there's enough close contact it's only reasonable that their personal smells would start to blend together. I can see this being a significant bonding thing under most circumstances. Machete always gets a little blue whenever he has his sheets changed after Vasco has gone back to Florence.

Depending on the situation recent sex might be noticeable, arousal would probably be only detectable on very close proximity. This kind of stuff starts to cross to pheromone territory and that's just a little too nebulous and instinctual for me to unpack in a logical and meaningful way, I think.

His co-workers smell of various things just like everyone else. If there's something seriously wrong with their health you might be able to tell, or not. You might be able to guess where they live, what they do for living and what kind of pastimes they enjoy if they smell familiar in a certain way. Some people are easier to read and some don't give you much of anything to work with.

But we're talking about very subtle things, I'd imagine in order to notice any of the above you'd have to stand at least withing a touching distance to a person, preferably be somewhat familiar with their usual scent profile and have the intent and awareness to decipher what you're sensing. It's not something you can catch from the other side of the room or a thing that dictates social interactions to an overwhelmingly great degree. So if you manage to maintain a sufficient distance to anyone who might suspect something, you're probably fine. Regular bathing helps, and using perfumes and other additional scents to divert people's attention away is very common.

[qiu-yan]

i'll write a more in-depth post later, but imo one of the reasons for the level of disagreement in this fandom is that many of us readers can see what mxtx is trying to imply about ethics through her work and simply do not agree with her base premise. like i think that there are some conclusions about the various characters in mdzs that mxtx wants you as the reader to draw. you can kind of tell even if you don't agree with those conclusions. more importantly, though, you can also tell exactly what kind of moral philosophy mxtx (consciously or unconsciously) favors, and what she treats as the granularity of morality, so to speak. the most commonly-held positions in the fandom are those mxtx intends for the reader to reach using her own beliefs about ethics as fundamental axioms.

the problem, then, is when the reader does not agree with mxtx's unspoken axioms of morality. if you come into mdzs with a moral framework different enough from what mxtx has (consciously or unconsciously) used to write mdzs, then of course you're going to come to different conclusions regarding the characters or even the object lessons of the story.

or rather, in simpler terms: the rammies, mxtx....the rammies....

[bijoumikhawal]

*sees a long post from an American comparing Cardassia to the USSR/China* *rolls eyes and keeps scrolling*

[blujayonthewing]

I've realized that the problem with fursonas is that trying to engage with the concept feels exactly the same as when I was a little kid trying to have an imaginary friend; it sounds like fun, it looks like the other kids are enjoying it, it lowkey feels like something I, personally, should have, but whenever I try it just feels forced and fake and like I don't know how to do it, or that I'm doing it Wrong

[joelletwo]

now it is incredibly late to be saying this but god the month-long hiring process has sucked kjsdf turns out thats the perfect amount of time for the excitement-anxiety to wear off and then the hopeful responsible problem-solving forward-thinking optimism to wear off and then the "fuck it" dissociation to wear off and whatever other defensive layers i had up between me and "huh maybe itd be easier if i died than to get a new job to do badly at" to wear off lol whoops. please. please. please. its literally gonna be fine once i actually get started and get in the swing of it. i JUST have to survive a few more miserable days <- NOT IN DANGER. just fucking miserable

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Question to non-crocheters:

Can you notice how many different stitch types are in this?

I ask because I'm using different stitches for certain parts of my tallit to stand out, but I'm curious how noticable it is to a relatively untrained eye, since I feel other crocheters might have a leg up over you - if you see any differences, I'm curious what you see!

[unnonexistence]

i need to read more math papers because so far the thing that has been most frustrating about trying to relearn stats/learn data science is i'd have a practical question like "how do i decide the bin width for my histogram?" and it felt like the things i was reading were shrugging their shoulders at me. like "idk, you pick the one that is best for the data." and that was incredibly frustrating because it felt like What's Best For The Data was some sort of arcane instinct data scientists possessed, with the only way to learn it being "idk just practice and you'll get the hang of it". awful. awful awful awful.

however! turns out histogram bin width is actually an active area of research! there are Rules Of Thumb for it but there is no one way to do it because "best for the data" depends on your goals. it's just an optimization problem, and as with any optimization problem "best" depends on what you're optimizing for. probably a lot of things in stats are like this. i am back on solid ground again.

[bizzyboyfriends]

major great.god.grove spoilers under the cut.

Part of me is always so confused on why it takes people so long to figure out In.sp.ek.ta is evil.

I remember after our first interaction, I was telling my friend that he's definelty got something to do with it because HOW did he get his lil grimy paws on the me.ga.po.n in the first place?? If king's evil, wouldn't they not want that yet he's the one who threw it when this could fix everything?? and if everyone is confused on where king went, wouldn't he know since he was the last one who saw them?? and if the mail is going through him, why's he letting King send these letters with the apocalypse on the horizon? Since going off the timeline, they all appeared after King's disappearance and wouldn't have the me.ga.po.n to send 'em.

I love everyone getting to a point where they're like " WAIT HE'S EVIL ??? " and I'm just sitting here since the cove like " oh yeah. " and then I end up ranting about how his account of events has various inconsistences each time he retells it and the varieties of evidence I personally noticed. Which is another detail I like about the game, If you look hard enough: You can sorta piece things together from the start to some extent

[b0amagination]

"Well? Suddenly, you're so quiet..."

[aq2003]

[pulls up a chair w the director of 2015 rsc LLL] wait okay so what do YOU think love's labour's lost is about if you're, like, taking away the play's commentary on race and beauty standards and how that interacts with the wider "frivolity of romance" theme

[talentforlying]

one of these days i'm going to write up all that i've changed from azzarello's bullshit era and the one (1) piece i've kept from milligan (and also changed) and the only thing currently stopping me is that it is going to be so, so inside-baseball incomprehensible. and i almost never want to go reading/screencapping azzarello and milligan to add references but i Want to add references.

canon is goop, just know that we continue to ride the bus down "hellblazer ended at #250 and looks like swiss cheese before that" street.

[goblinbeetle]

hello! sorry to bother you but could you tag vore please?

Oh uh- It's not meant to be vore, I'm sorry 😭

[darkartistyt]

Yknow what i understand why they reuse animation for the bey avatars all the time these fuckers are hard to draw

[redrobin-detective]

I think one of my problems as an AU fanfic writer is that I have a hard time deviating from canon with my ‘soft AUs’. I can and do come up with all sorts of wild scenarios and spin out from there but I like keeping the facts of canon as close as possible.

I think of the constraints as a challenge, to tell a story within my self imposed limitations. If I change ONE thing, how will events change and in many cases the answer is, not much at all on a story level while I focus on the emotional. But as much as I have adhered to canon and my only personal beliefs, it does tend to make the story a little predictable, a bit boring.

[karl-raccoon-in-a-teacup]

Pros of writing a Poe-centric murder mystery fic: Exploring a genre I love, Poe gets to show off the skills usually outshined by Ranpo, getting to come up with a clever scheme, etc etc

Cons of writing a Poe-centric murder mystery fic: Writing a murder mystery is very hard and the narrative consistency has me at gunpoint help

[thesearchforbluejello]

I fundamentally do not understand this show. The Dominion War was RIGHT THERE. Like, RIGHT. THERE. Why did we need some whack Romulus-blew-up backstory when the federation was already decimated by the war?? A follow up on the fallout of that and how the ceding of territory, the betrayal by allies, and the xenophobia of threats from both within and outside would have been SO much more interesting to me.

And they're so busy pulling half developed plotlines out of thin air that they're not even pounding in their anchor points for it all. Like, case in point, Jay looking for Icheb's cortical node. SEVEN HAS IT. IT IS LITERALLY IN SEVEN'S FUCKING HEAD. Like, okay fine easter egg? Maybe? But a major plot point isn't exactly an Easter egg?? Like obviously Beyer knows a shitload about Voyager, so at least one of them must be aware of that, so I assume it's implied... but not everyone has seen every Trek and that is from one specific Voyager episode, and Seven had the perfect opportunity to rub that in Jay's face... And are we not going to talk about Seven becoming a Ranger which is HUGELY antithetical to where she was at in Voyager? Because the fact that she became an individual on a ship that was what, 1/3 Maquis? Um, that's a super fucking important fact? Love that for her, but Christ alive nail. these. plot points. home.

idk I guess these two are nitpicks, but I have so many more and just don't feel like writing a novel expounding upon what I perceive as their many (MANY) failures in writing this show. But this show is just full of those moments and I don't understand their choices. Easter eggs only work when there's actually something semi coherent to hide them in (hence why most of M*rvel's fail nowadays, just saying). This feels almost as incoherent as Renegades, and I am SOOOOO very sorry to be actually saying that because woooooof that is not a compliment. Like... it's the Romulans, it's the androids, it's the Borg. It feels like whatever unholy combination is happening with Applebee's and iHop right now. Like... Okay I guess? But it's just a weird combination and very unnecessary. Just fucking pick one and go from there.

I do however need like a lot more ex-Borg bonding that was such a good moment okay thanks bye