#midnight advice

[sixth-light]

I have had these thoughts bubbling away in my head for like...eighteen months or so now (it will become very obvious why shortly) but the discussion in this post has pushed me to write them down: I think societally we HUGELY underestimate how motherhood for primary caregivers, particularly first-time motherhood, can be a source of vulnerability to radicalisation.

There is obviously huge cultural variance here, but for a lot of cis women becoming primary caregiver to an infant in a capitalist Western society represents a time of immense vulnerability because in general you are:

Incredibly sleep-deprived (which has well-documented knock-on effects for your judgement, mental health, etc)

If you gave birth, recovering from a significant challenge to your physical health (even in the best-case scenario)

Isolated from your previous networks and communities of people in full-time work

Completely separated from the context of your prior career goals and achievements

Under huge amounts of stress to learn how to care for an infant (don't get me started on breastfeeding)

And on top of this, you are also be experiencing a huge amount of messaging about how all this is natural, wonderful, something you're meant to do, something you should love doing, and something that you must do for the welfare of their child. It's a huge amount of pressure and life change even when everything goes right and there's very little cultural space to express negative feelings about it.

Any group of people who offer community, support, and affirmation to cis women in this situation are going to have a really good shot at radicalising them into some very weird and dangerous headspaces and in fact we see this happen all the time - think antivaxxers and TERFs. It flies under the radar because of the hazy positive glow that associates with motherhood and babies and also because we don't take the radicalisation of women seriously I guess because they rarely shoot anybody, but...yeah. It is such a vulnerable time!

[saturnstrays]

HAPPY NEW YURI I MEAN YEAR!!! 🎇🎆✨

me and my beautiful majestic robotic wife (which is which we will never know)

og vers under cut lool

[deadlypoetacademia]

Grateful for 2024, hopeful for 2025

I wish this year everyone heals from something they do not talk about. To be honest, I am scared to start this new year. 2024 was quite an adventure, a roller coaster of emotions, a year of ups and downs, a year where I lost and learned, yet found so many good people. I am scared for the new life that will begin this year. I just wish to find strength to start all those beginnings with ambition and end up the existing ones with lots of memories. Dear God, this year let me find happiness, the true, real and raw happiness. 2025 please be good. There are lots, lots and lots of hope from you.

[pratchettquotes]

"But hold on," said Tiffany. "Won't I be you one day? And then will I talk to me now, as it were?"

"Yes, but the you that you talk to won't exactly be you. I'm very sorry about this, but I am having to talk about time travel in a language that can't really account for it. But in short, Tiffany, according to the elasticated string theory, throughout the rest of time, somewhere an old Tiffany will be talking to a young Tiffany, and the fascinating thing is that every time they do, they will be a little different. When you meet your younger self, you will tell her what you think she needs to know."

Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

[skierisa]

seriously. HOW does one start writing a ninjago fanseason? every other time i tried it came out as very edgy and very much whatever was happening with teen dystopian teen novels from the 2010's, and i SERIOUSLY dont want it to happen again

so seriously, where do i start planning it, like, WHERE, like HOW

[mxmorbidmidnight]

In the time where I return to the trees and do my wolf things, which do not concern thee, please respect my right to privacy/joking. In this time I collect rubbish from my local scrubland area. Amongst said rubbish I have found MULTIPLE pairs of underwater. Keep in mind the only water one might swim in is a knee deep creek (at best, majority of it only reaches the ankle or shin), which is also HEAVILY polluted. Not to be controversial, but I fear you must put your dick away. So sorry babes💔

Think about this duckling the next time you become tempted to engage in sexual intercourse in nature. Is it truly the want of thee for this innocent creature to grow up surrounded by thine UNDERPANTS?!!?! THY PANTALOONS?!!?!!

[xarrixii]

sometimes you gotta imagine dialogue like one of those fancy aesthetic wave or wind graphics. people don't just talk about stuff. they have motives for why they say that stuff, and it'll remind them of other stuff, and they keep talking because humans like talking.

if you struggle with dialogue the best way i can try to explain it is, think about a time you had a conversation, any conversation. where did that start and where did it end? how often did it get redirected?

say i wanted to get from, you know, plot point A, "Dad said we were having mac n' cheese for dinner" to plot point B, "I wish school wasn't so stressful"

i'll italicize what gets the conversation to move before it even moves

You're having mac n' cheese for dinner! That's so cool and epic! Man I love mac n' cheese. It's so much better when Dad makes it than when Mom makes it.

A sibling might join in, you know, "Don't get me started on the school's mac n' cheese. It's so awful."

Aw man I hate school. The last thing I need when I'm stressed out is crappy school lunch mac n' cheese.

Yeah dude I know like why's school always got to make you feel worse about like everything you ever do ever. It's so stressful.

you notice?

this can work for more important things, too. if you keep up with flash/burn, an example from chapter 42:

i needed to address why liam pretty much never teleports even though he, well, he obviously can. a lot. chapter 4 made a big thing of this. so he started out explaining that, but i also needed to address a future plot point regarding alph's new moves. how do i get from telepathy to alph? well, i bring up a situation where alph was present. as humans do, they drawl and tell stories, and, bam. alph is suddenly in the conversation.

silence is a part of dialogue, too! my choir director in high school liked to say it with music, but it absolutely works with just normal human conversation, silence is a tool to help abrupt shifts in pace or emotion.

sometimes someone will say something, another won't think of a reply in a few seconds, and the person will talk again because they thought of more. and so after they hit alph, liam remembers this thing, and he says it. boom, foreshadowing and addressing what someone might be asking a question about.

(does this make sense? am i making sense)

characters talk to themselves too. in third person and in first person, there will be periods where a character is just thinking in their own head, and lucky for you if you need to cover multiple things at once, humans like jumping from one thing to another and forgetting where they started in the first place.

so--don't think about dialogue as this terrible thing. just have 'em talk like you would to a friend. where would you move off a topic onto something else? it's pretty likely this fictional word/art creature is gonna do the same exact thing

[spark-hearts2]

QUESTION TWO:

SWITCH BOXES. you said that’s what monitors the connections between systems in the computer cluster, right? I assume it has software of its own but we don’t need to get into that, anyway, I am so curious about this— in really really large buildings full of servers, (like multiplayer game hosting servers, Google basically) how big would that switch box have to be? Do they even need one? Would taking out the switch box on a large system like that just completely crash it all?? While I’m on that note, when it’s really large professional server systems like that, how do THEY connect everything to power sources? Do they string it all together like fairy lights with one big cable, or??? …..the voices……..THE VOICES GRR

I’m acending (autism)

ALRIGHT! I'm starting with this one because the first question that should be answered is what the hell is a server rack?

Once again, long post under cut.

So! The first thing I should get out of the way is what is the difference between a computer and a server. Which, is like asking the difference between a gaming console and a computer. Or better yet, the difference between a gaming computer and a regular everyday PC. Which is... that they are pretty much the same thing! But if you game on a gaming computer, you'll get much better performance than on a standard PC. This is (mostly) because a gaming computer has a whole separate processor dedicated to processing graphics (GPU). A server is different from a PC in the same way, it's just a computer that is specifically built to handle the loads of running an online service. That's why you can run a server off a random PC in your closet, the core components are the same! (So good news about your other question. Short answer, yes! It would be possible to connect the hodgepodge of computers to the sexy server racks upstairs, but I'll get more into that in the next long post)

But if you want to cater to hundreds or thousands of customers, you need the professional stuff. So let's break down what's (most commonly) in a rack setup, starting with the individual units (sometimes referred to just as 'U').

Short version of someone setting one up!

18 fucking hard drives. 2 CPUs. How many sticks of ram???

Holy shit, that's a lot. Now depending on your priorities, the next question is, can we play video games on it? Not directly! This thing doesn't have a GPU so using it to render a video game works, but you won't have sparkly graphics with high frame rate. I'll put some video links at the bottom that goes more into the anatomy of the individual units themselves.

I pulled this screenshot from this video rewiring a server rack! As you can see, there are two switch boxes in this server rack! Each rack gets their own switch box to manage which unit in the rack gets what. So it's not like everything is connected to one massive switch box. You can add more capacity by making it bigger or you can just add another one! And if you take it out then shit is fucked. Communication has been broken, 404 website not found (<- not actually sure if this error will show).

So how do servers talk to one another? Again, I'll get more into that in my next essay response to your questions. But basically, they can talk over the internet the same way that your machine does (each server has their own address known as an IP and routers shoot you at one).

POWER SUPPLY FOR A SERVER RACK (finally back to shit I've learned in class) YOU ARE ASKING IF THEY ARE WIRED TOGETHER IN SERIES OR PARALLEL! The answer is parallel. Look back up at the image above, I've called out the power cables. In fact, watch the video of that guy wiring that rack back together very fast. Everything on the right is power. How are they able to plug everything together like that? Oh god I know too much about this topic do not talk to me about transformers (<- both the electrical type and the giant robots). BASICALLY, in a data center (place with WAY to many servers) the building is literally built with that kind of draw in mind (oh god the power demands of computing, I will write a long essay about that in your other question). Worrying about popping a fuse is only really a thing when plugging in a server into a plug in your house.

Links to useful youtube videos

How does a server work? (great guide in under 20 min)

Rackmount Server Anatomy 101 | A Beginner's Guide (more comprehensive breakdown but an hour long)

DATA CENTRE 101 | DISSECTING a SERVER and its COMPONENTS! (the guy is surrounded by screaming server racks and is close to incomprehensible)

What is a patch panel? (More stuff about switch boxes- HOLY SHIT there's more hardware just for managing the connection???)

Data Center Terminologies (basic breakdown of entire data center)

Networking Equipment Racks - How Do They Work? (very informative)

Funny

[thebeautyofanoracle]

Dear Future Husband,

I don't know if you actually exist but if you do, then I don't understand where you are, when will you meet me, and why is it taking so long for you to meet me.

I know you're hustling and working hard so that you can be stable before you meet me, but why is it taking so long, on top of that, these random men that I just talk to are so weird, and I'm so done with them now.

You better come fast. Like real quick.

Your future wife.

[catgirlkirigiri]

Do YOU need wormz in your petz4 game? Well boy do I have the cat breed file for you!!!

Introducing. The worm. You know you want this thang don't even try to deny it

WORM. Comes with:

4 color varations (that are honestly pretty similar but like. It's a worm. It's gonna be pink. idk what to say of course they're similar)

Smooth Ass Creature (was gonna have a banded texture but it kept breaking)

Floating Tongue??? (someone help me I CANNOT get rid of the tongue I've tried so hard it's still there I'm going insane)

Meows. (tabby cat based. Non-ow)

Weirdly large baby (I do not know how to make the baby smaller. Sorry)

What are you waiting for??? Get your own petz4 wormz today!!!!! <- Link to mediafire download of the .cat file

[lgbtlunaverse]

POV switches in chapter 108

This is generally me trying to figure out which parts of the novel are from wei wuxian's limited perspective and which ones are omniscient, as they switch pretty frequently and without warning. And also specifcally because @darkfalcon-z asked in a reply to a post I made earlier today!

Obvious disclaimer that this meta looks pretty closely into specific wording, and that my source remains a translation. I haven't read the original text and so can't attest to my accuracy there.

So MDZS gets real messy with its narration. It obviously starts in omniscient with celebrating Wei Wuxian's death, but spends a lot of its time in limited, most exemplary shown by the enduring obliviousness wei wuxians has towards lan wangji's feelings never being explicitly undercut by the narration.

The novel... does NOT telepgraph when it switches povs. Moreover, wei wuxian does sometimes make confident statement about how other characters feel. Prime example being him talking about how jiang cheng would react to finding out about his core

This being, notably... NOT what Jiang Cheng's actual reaction is when he does find out. That's because wwx is working with incomplete information here, he didn't know Jiang Cheng was willing to lose his core for him to begin with.

Also, he afformentioned obliviousness to Lan Wangji leading to him, multiple times, attributing the wrong motivations to lan wangji's actions.

The novel doesn't outright say "wei wuxian assumed/ thought that jiang cheng would react like that" in the screenshot above, but it DOES clearly show, by leading with him thinking about why he thought he coudn't tell jiang cheng about the golden core transfer, that we're in his head at the moment. And so the following statements are also his thoughts, not omniscient narrations. The difference is very subtle. But it's there

So we're in chapter 108. right before Lan Xichen stabs Jin Guangyao, an we're clearly in omniscient.

Lan Xichen's feelings are stated plainly and there's not very much focus on Wei wuxian at all. It switches over briefly to him and lwj checking up on Wen Ning but his feelings are not overriding everything else.

Then the stab happens

We're still in omniscient here. "Lan xichen felt his heart go cold" a detail Wei Wuxian couldn't know, stated plainly as a matter of fact.

However.

I think this part

Is where we retreat from omniscient back into wei wuxian's pov. We're not told anything about either of these character's inner worlds, but do get some extra litte commentary that jgy was so slow that even Jin Ling could catch him with his eyes closed! That's not something either Lan Xichen or jgy would be thinking of right now. It is, however, a comment Wei Wuxian's inner monologue might think to make.

In the context of my earlier post, which this was inspired by. It also makes some assumptions. Namely, that Xichen is just going after jgy to catch him. It doesn't explicitly say so, because we're not in omniscient anymore but it's clear Wei Wuxian thinks so as he'll feel the need to warn him in a few seconds. This is interesting, as it directly contradicts a popular fan interpretation of this scene, that's become explicitly canonized in multipe adaptations, which is that Lan Xichen is intentionally going along with and is willing to die with him. I'm not saying this theory is correct based on its popularity alone, obviously. I was actually surprised to find out it was so vague when I read the novel considering its popularity!

By the next chapter we'll be unambiguously back into wei uxian's head, and after "Lan Xichen could no longer persuade himself to silence him again" which is in the paragraph before the one in the image above, we are no longer told any other character's feelings or inner thoughts except for Wei Wuxian's. Specifically, this:

So this describes wei wuxian realizing a "something" what something? well, this something.

Again, the difference is subtle. The statement of "He was fighting with his last breath to lead Lan Xichen towards Nie Mingjue, so they could die together!" might seem like another one of those "other charcters' feelings" statements. But we're not IN Jin Guangyao's head right now. This is describing actions, not thoughts. He's not trying to get away (a visible action wwx would be privy to) which must be because...see statement above.

And all of this is framed under the banner of Wei Wuxian saying he realized something, and that being that Jin Guangyao isn't trying to get away and Lan Xichen needs to get away from him because... see statement above. This line basically starts as a repitition of what Wei Wuxian said, repeating his assumption, and then clarifying what Wei Wuxian DOES think is happening. The whole paragraph between is just buildup for the payoff of what that "something" of the realization is. MXTX could have writtern "wei wuxian, however, realized something. Jin Guangyao wasn't trying to get away! Instead he was trying to lead Lan Xichen towards Nie Mingjue so they could die together" and them describe the scenario, it'd be functionally the same in the manner of what information was conveyed, but the little gap in setup and payoff increases suspense and makes the reveal more engaging. It's a good little writing trick!

That wording above does make it way more obvious that that statement? Is one of wei wuxian's. That's what HE thinks.

In the line where jgy pushes lan xichen away, we're still not privy to their feelings or thoughts at all.

But we do get this curious litle "yet,"

That means this is a subversion, something that goes against what was previously established. Namely, that jin guangyao would want lan xichen to get caught by nie mingjue. The actual reality of the situaton conrasts hat we were told earlier. it's a surprise. to who? Well, to all the other characters watching this go down. wwx among them. We get other little commentaries, like how the sight of jgy being choked by nmj is frightening, placing us even further away from his inner world and into the shoes of someone watching him in the temple.

The style being used here is similar to the one in the next chapter, when nie huasang's plan is unveiled. First you get bit of dialogue with clear implications from Wei Wuxian, and then we go into wei wxuxian's head. In a few lines it's explicitly established that he's questioning things, and we are following his line of thought. And then a whle account of nie huasang's plan is given. With no further affirmation that we're still in wei wuxian's head. That's based on context clues given prior. Is this recount of the plan correct? Most likely, yeah! But we're never expicitly told. We are still in wei wuxian's head.

This bit on Jin Guangyao is similar. From the removal of stating other character's feelings (a possible exception might be the statement that "Nie Mingjue is not afraid of spiritual weapons" but that is something observable to wwx who's been seeing nmj not give a shit for a good few minutes now. We get nothing he's not privy to) and a clear indication that we're inside his head now. What we get next is his reocunt of the events, and they're fairly factul as he simply tells us what he sees, but when he gets into the reasons for why things ar ehappening? Well, if we wanted to, we could doubt that.

[deconstructthesoup]

I know that the overlap is probably razor thin but

If I were to write a Midnight Burger/Dead Boy Detectives crossover oneshot, would any of y'all read it?

[dreamaboutwhathappens]

nothing would be more both simultaneously delicious and devastating than if each variant track changed the reading of the album

[midnight-wood]

Thank u for reading Nightfall. 🥺🥺🥺 Means a lot to me since I worked very hard on it but it just didn't take off.

Omg of course!!!!!!

I really enjoyed it so so much 🖤🖤🖤

Should you ever add to it, put me on the tag list!!!!

Also I will say, back when I wrote consistently, (pre COVID, a lifetime ago) nobody ever loved the ones I put my all into??? But that did not stop me and it should not stop you. 🖤

[finallyunderstandingnothinggg]

can we please stop pretending? i'm tired of this estrangement game we play. god knows i've tried to move on. i've found sanctuaries alongside strangers more times than I can count. trying to fill the space you left in me. trying to replace what once was, with whatever might be. and still no matter what i do, no matter how far i stray, one issue remains; none of them are you. if we're capable of growing apart, we're capable of growing together. there's so much history behind us that i'm a fool for the future. you cling to the worst of us. i focus on the best of us. and maybe somewhere between those two is somewhere safe for me and you. i'm not afraid to fight. we've gotten it wrong so many times that maybe it's taught us what's right. you loved me at my ugliest. to me, you've always been the most beautiful thing i've held. so forgive me for showing up at your door again at this hour. when i realized i was free to go anywhere in the world, with you was still the only place i wanted to be..

[mxmorbidmidnight]

Morbid’s tips for rizzing up maidens

Give blood to she

Plant lettuce in her honour

Apologise when thou inevitably eats all the lettuce in lettuce patch

Buy lettuce from farmers market

Give lettuce to she

Now thou art married, expect the arrival of thirty children soon.

This is now thee but lesbian and with 28 more children: