#neurosity

[neonblack]

Turns out we don't need neuralink to drill holes in our heads in order to increase the bandwidth of our brain-computer interface. Electroencephalographic (EEG) sensors can measure and process your brainwaves. So, you'll be able to use computers without having to lift a finger. The future is exciting!

[straightlightyagami]

u ever see someone with extremely fucked up views (or actions) and think wowww if a couple of things in my life went the tiniest bit differently that would have been me

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Who is this sassy lost child?

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[vinelark]

Kon: If I had a nickle for every time I fell for an emo twink from gotham who's weirdly intense, has blackmail and stalking as hobbies, and crafts elaborate plots to convince people he's okay, I'd have two nickles. Which isn't-

Robin: One.

Kon: What?

Tim, taking off his mask: One.

tim being like how dare you imply there’s someone else who could pull off this impeccable combination of neuroses. i am wholly singular thank you

[catwyk]

i respect jon ware's decision to never make an official fun episode, but that aint me. enjoy that one tiktok trend with the sillies !

transcript (sry abt my handwriting) + my fav frames below !!

carpenter: I'm carpenter and my this is my first drink of the night.

off camera: carpenter? hhow many caprenter?

faulkner: I'm faulkner and this is my first drink of the night

off camera: FAULKNER! how many faulkner?

paige: I'm Paige and my first drink is vodka lemonade.

paige: kidding lol. Hehe imagine though. I don't know how many. We're on bottles now. I'm pretty functional. Just ask my cult.

[her bottle: Silt Russian VODKA]

hayward: I'm James Hayward and this is my first beer of the night

hayward: paaaaaaiiige. paiiiiaaiige...

[paige holds up 4 fingers]

[vigilskeep]

Viago voice ‘I’m just protecting my investments!’ while he nags all his crows to take their personalized gummy vitamins that he made himself

[de riva voice] teia what do you mean viago was stressed and irritable while i was away. if he got like that every time he sent one of his crows out he’d always be stressed and irrita—ohhhh

[epiphainie]

day three mindset is maybe i could engage with canon compliant content too bc god their breakup was really juicy i hate that it's juicy

[shrugemojiidk]

“Why do you think sladejay works” well, you see-

[mediumgayitalian]

“Can I come over tomorrow?”

Nico’s hands still on the stubborn pillowcase. “To…my cabin?”

“Yes.”

“Um.” He resumes, sliding slowly away from Will’s wide round eyes, stuffing the puffy square of feathers into its fabric prison. The ghost of geese past are not happy with him. He is their prince. They will submit. “Yeah? You could all those other times, too.”

“Yeah, but I want to come over.”

“Yes,” Nico agrees, wondering if this is perhaps one of those moments Kayla warned him about. Has it reached day five of Will not sleeping? He doesn’t think so. He was napping when Nico came into the infirmary this morning to help with the tidying he promised to do. At least he was drooling enough that Nico hopes he was sleeping. “You mentioned.”

“So I can?”

“Yes, Will.”

Maybe it’s just an American thing. Nico has been noticing some Moments lately. He’s not sure if all teenagers have unanimously decided on some code they’d like to speak in during the few months he was busy defeating his great grandmother, or if maybe he’s finally stuck around long enough to notice, but nobody says what they mean, nowadays.

(He has gathered, thus far, that ‘on fleek’ is a synonym for ‘aflame’, although ‘yeet’ continues to evade him. Perhaps because Cecil and Lou appear to have indulged in the sick delight of replacing their every word with the term with the sole purpose to Confuse. Or perhaps, as Will has so indicated, they have each endured one concussion to many and are beyond any hope.)

“Sick!” That one Nico knows, at least. “I’ll come by after my morning shift? Connor got cursed by the Hypnos, Hecate, and Aphrodite cabins this morning so I have to do brain surgery before he forgets how to feel genuine human connection again, but I’ll be done by noon. Probably. I mean, Connor has a thick skull, genuinely I mean, which is why his lobotomy has been delayed so many times, but so long as I —”

It has been under Nico’s notice lately that Will eyes, genuinely, sparkle. He has read the cliche time and time again and rolled his eyes almost every time: diamonds sparkle. Water sparkles. Snow sparkles. Eyes reflect, and sometimes glow with reflection. They do not sparkle. To claim a set of eyes are sparkling is to profess to the world and all capable of registering your words that you are a brainless idiot who cannot dredge up from the depths of your mind, the most barren and bereft back corners, a single unique or clever comparison; a minutely original way to describe excitement or animation.

And yet.

Will is indeed very animated, and very excited about very many things, and it shows on his face; in the wideness of his grins, the springing mass of his curls, the stilted and flailing gilt of his languid limbs. It also shows, perhaps most obviously, in his genuinely magnificent eyes — Nico has seen the Logan Sapphire. He has touched the precious thing with reverent hands, stared in awe as it thrust out the light shine upon it like the golden ichor of Ouranous swirling with the sweet saltwater to birth Love Incarnate. He knows glittering, he knows gleaming, shimmering and shining and twinkling.

Will’s eyes sparkle, like the very tip of a mountaintop, like the crackling ends of a flame, like dewdrops on spider silk. It is transfixing. It is alluring.

“—ico. Nico! Hello-o?”

It is also a trap.

“Sounds great,” Nico says loudly, voice like cold soda over vanilla ice cream. He clears his throat, twice, to no avail. His vision begins to blur as the heat pouring off of his face warps the air. “Um. See you then?”

Will nods, or at least Nico hopes he does. His curls bounce, anyway. They are hard to miss. They remind Nico tangentially of how laughter sounds, unimpeded by shame; how the shimmering satin of a ribbon would curl and bend under the smooth slide of the scissor’s blade.

(His father’s circuit of jesters often included poets playwrights. They also doubled as Nico’s babysitters. Surely no lasting consequences, that.)

“Yes!” He flashes a smile, then, and it becomes imperative to note that his eyes squint at the force of it, and his slightly-too-big teeth brush his bottom lip, and he has, in fact, on each cheek, a dimple.

Now, Will is often and even frequently called Apollo Junior by just about every living soul in camp, up to and including Immortal Camp Director And Horse, Chiron; and uproariously once even Mr D, God of Wine. Allegedly, as taunted by Kayla, even by Will’s own mother. The golden hair and unfortunate habit of winking and legs for days do most definitely create an image.

Nico, however, contrarian he be, must deny: he has seen Apollo. Apollo is beautiful and golden and charming, but Will is not quite his spitting image. Will, more aptly, is the son of the Sun. He glows; the glare of his smile leaves impressions behind in the cells one’s eyes, the glide of his limbs is almost dragging, languid. To look at him is to commit yourself to blinding. To seek so desperately the solace of the light as to ignore the unsettling sting of the burn.

“I can’t wait!”

As a blissful cloud moving in front of the solar system’s brightest star saves your eyes the eternal fate of darkness, Will’s duty so saves Nico from an eternity of shadow. He returns, humming softly and horribly, to his work, sifting through folders and updating patient files, and Nico exhales the breath setting foundations in his lungs, slumping forward in fervent relief. A melancholic reprieve from the summer rays, if only for a moment.

He waves goodbye, or at least he hopes that he does, rushing out the infirmary doors and tripping down the rickety porch steps.

“Hurrying somewhere, Nicholas Claus?” drawls Mr. D, throwing darts a perilously balanced apple atop the horns of a satyr bleating in morse code.

“That was not even an attempt,” responds Nico, and hurries away before he can be dolphinized. Dolphinified? Made into a bottle-nosed beast. (Why bottle? Of all comparisons to make, who decided bottles were the utmost separate object to which the snout of the slippery beasts should be named? Oh, wait, drunk people. Bottles. Okay. Mystery solved.)

He manages, in his heroic retreat across the common, not to destroy entire swathes of grass and plants, a feat for which the Muses could perhaps write epics about. Truly he is capable of the utmost restraint and self-control. He does raise several full sized wolf skeletons, but they seem primarily preoccupied with hunting down the the Stolls, so a win-win as far as Nico is concerned. Probably not for Connor, who is apparently cursed or concussed, he doesn’t remember exactly, but he has managed thus far with his startling amount of daily braincell loss so by statistic and happenstance he is bound to survive another incident.

“There has to be away to shut myself off,” Nico says, out loud to himself, proceeding the slam of his cabin door and the heavy breathing upon it. He turns to his altar. “You mentioned an off button, Father. I don’t suppose it has been successfully implemented.”

No answer comes forth. He indulges in a brief moment of self pity, wherein the Nico who lives in his brain clears his throat, digs around the messy confines of his mind to find an imaginary black hoodie, slips it on, digs around again for a dagger, and stabs himself, choking and twitching pitifully. Real Nico then walks with great purpose to the exact geological centre of the stone cabin.

“Okay,” he says again. He nods, once, narrowing his eyes in determination. The Nico in his brain opens one curious eyelid. (Does Will do psychiatric assessments?) “Okay, this is. Hm.”

It is not the first time they have been alone together, after all.

In the weeks following Gaea’s defeat and Will Solace’s nonstop, irritating persistence, Nico has been thrust in his proximity an incredible number of times. From his three day stay, during which he was simply so unconscious for so long his father was concerned enough to manifest onto the mortal plane and poke at his soul until he responded, to his unofficial indoctrination (ha) as a nurse, to camp clean-up efforts, to cabin renovation, to general life — they have become friends. Coworkers, at least. Together they make the camp a little more bearable for everyone in it, including Nico. It is rewarding work. It is illuminating work; Will is a good teacher, and he is funny, and he is good company (and he happens to have very long legs that he does not bother to cover up very often and Nico has eyes that do what they please). They have been in Nico’s cabin together several times over the last few weeks.

Never before has Will come over without some kind of stated purpose.

At least, not and absence he has made so obvious. True, the renovations took longer than expected, and the paint on the east wall is smudged from where Nico shoved Will, shrieking, off the stepstool, and they have perhaps, on occasion, used Nico’s illegal Wii when they were meant to be helping Annabeth make plans for Capture the Flag, but —

But.

Intent.

Is important.

It has been made abundantly clear to Nico over the summer that he has friends upon which he can rely. Reyna has made a point to Iris Message him at whatever Roman tryhard time she believes he should be awake, prompting an attempted murderous shadow travel that left him unconcious in Missouri and at the unfortunate end of many people’s shouting. And Will’s friends, who can perhaps at this point be called his friends also, have created a game entitled “How Many Grapes Can We Flick At Nico During Lunch Before He Goes Ballistic And Sends Us To Purgatory For A Little While” (four), which they are inclined and inspired to play every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Piper enjoys dragging him around to do Things. Jason is just around constantly. (Does he sleep? Nico should check on that properly.)

He had a point, somewhere. He’s sure he did.

It was maybe the impending anxiety attack, helpfully informs Brain Nico.

“Ah,” regular Nico replies, then grapples around for his least favourite pillow, slams it into his face, and screams at the top of his lungs for several minutes.

Brain Nico decides once again that commentary is the way.

I think we are an all powerful demigod of something, he muses. Dirt, maybe? Bad vibes? I can’t quite remember.

“The dead?” inquires regular Nico.

Do you think those years isolated in the Labyrinth perhaps situated us firmly on the shores of mentally unwell? responds he, blissfully unhelpful.

“I think that was Tartarus, actually,” says regular Nico, and promptly banishes his brain self to the deepest recesses of his mind, among memories of the taste of liquid fire and Calculus.

With the remaining, functioning (well.) part of his brain, he places both palms on the cool floor and attempts to focus.

Juicy Fruit It gets right to ya Juicy salt Hmmm Juicy Fruit, The taste the taste that’s —

For the love of all holy things, Nico begs his brain. It doesn’t work, but what ever really goes right in his life, so he pushes past the increasingly louder replays of eighties commercial jingles and maps out the ground below the cabin floor, pushes through the layers of underground.

Ah. Perfect.

He pulls up the very aptly placed skeleton of a cat, letting it scratch and sniff about his cabin before cautiously approaching him.

“You will be sure to tell it to me straight,” Nico says solemnly, holding out his hand. The cat bobs its nasal cavities in and out of Nico’s fingers and, apparently deciding him to be worthy of its attention, rams its skull against his knuckles. Nico snorts, running a fingernail along its cranial sutures and grinning as its purring echoes in his mind. “You seem very wise.”

The cat’s caudal vertebrae rattle in indignation, miffed at the mere idea that it could be anything other than wise. Nico is honestly quite impressed by its ability to glare without actual eyeballs, eyelids, or thought power.

“I am going to name you after my sister and pray that’s not weird,” Nico says. “I mean, I don’t think she would mind. You’re pretty cool, actually, and Hazel’s cool, kind of, so. Win win.”

Hazel the Cat seems unbothered by her christening, curling up in Nico’s lap. He runs his hand from cranial base to coccyx, finger dipping and bumping along the ridges of her spines, and settles against the cool floor, attempting to breathe evenly.

“It’s just.” He swallows. It takes a try or two, to work around the massive stone borrowed in his throat, and Hazel the Cat nips playfully at his fingers until his lungs settle again. “Before we had something to do, you know? We’d be cutting bandages, and he’d be all, hey, did you know bandages are mentioned in one of the first ever medical manuscripts and definitely predate it by many hundreds of years, and I would say I did, actually, I talked to the guy who made that clay tablet, and his eyes would get all wide and he’d be like no way, tell me everything, and then I would just talk forever.” Nico huffs. “We had something to talk about, you understand. Something to do.”

Nico tries to imagine what Hazel his Sister would say. Probably something along the lines of you are an impossible person, which is code for I have about as much luck as you do in this century, pal, the best I’ve got is hope for the best and remember adults no longer smack you for standing wrong. Which. Fair.

Hazel the Cat just purrs in his head again. It’s as encouraging as anything, he supposes.

“Am I supposed to have…conversation starters? He likes twizzlers and intentionally bad poetry. Maybe I could do something with that?”

Hazel the Cat shrugs at him.

“It’s not even — okay, it’s not just that, though. What is — how close is close enough in a casual setting? Or too close? How am I meant to greet him? Am I supposed to offer something? Make something? What do I do if there’s a lull in conversation? Or if it’s all lulls? Oh, gods, how much silence is socially appropriate —”

Hazel the Cat twists in his hold, meeting his eyes as if to say well I don’t think you’ll be struggling with that last one.

“Shush,” he tells her, but his mouth is twitching. “I’m just — I don’t want him to finally realize I’m weird. Or boring, gods. He’s such a hyper person, you know? He never stops. And I am supposed to entertain him! I think!”

This time he can actually hear his sister’s voice, in the back of his mind — you’re such a dummy. Ringed with fondness from the many times she’s said it to him, shoulders nudged carefully together, head knocked gently against his. You are weird and boring. Most people are.

“Ugh,” he sighs, tipping his head back until it rests against the mattress. “Friendship is hard work.”

Hazel the Cat swishes her tail, rattling the discs of bone like a rattlesnake. It’s a surprisingly soothing sound, like rain pinging softly against his window, or the flutter of the poplar trees outside of his father’s palace. Unconsciously he matches his breathing to it, slowing until it’s even, gentle, deep. His eyes, without any direction from his brain, drift until they blanket his hazy eyes, heavy as stone..

“S’not that serious,” he murmurs to himself, soothed under the weight of his feline friend. “S’just Will, I guess.” A beat. He smiles, slightly, a small, curling thing, mimicking the coiled heat in his belly. “It’s just Will.”

———

part two

[violent138]

Bruce, hypocrite that he is, totally books his kids' doctors appointments without asking them and usually as a pointed remark about a problem he observed during patrol or a replay of some beat down (he maintains the sixth replay was for evidence and entirely not to bully a reluctant kid to go see a physiotherapist).

Somehow, despite the kids' best attempts, the surprise booked appointments managed to find them:

On deep months long undercover ops

While in space

While travelling back in time

Running for their lives from a villain and trying to get in touch with the Cave

While trying to hear Oracle's orders over comms

While operating a criminal empire after faking their death

By popping over case files they were trying to access on the batcomputer and refusing to disappear until they confirmed their appearance

[dilidos]

Rewatching season 2 and people probably talked about this to death already, but I just gotta whinge like a bitch or I'll explode. There's so much missed opportunity for Sydney&Carmy content bro. It's not even a ship thing, it's like...all these times Sydney went around eating food, we could've had Carmy going with her. Like, ordering too much because they overestimate their stomachs, shit talking the menus and restaurant decorations, eating from each other's plates - "Hey this is really good. Try this" "Yeah? Okay, uh, yeah, try mine", nerding out over specific cuisines, sharing utensils because they're weirdos, Carmy showing off his fancy connections, Sydney bouncing her ideas off him, talking about their past and their dreams for the new restaurant, talking to other people, sharing that huge fucking sundae at the end. Fuck, I just love it when they talk about the food man. It's the biggest reason why I can't accept Claire, like Carmy ditched that whole wonderful experience to go on a fucking date and it's so goddamn devastating seeing Sydney shouldered the dream of two. We could have a roadtrip episode. We could have a roadtrip episode.

[thewiglesswonder]

You know the TFA Decepticons aren’t an oppressed minority right? DJW even said their Rise Up rhetoric was a jab at how conservatives preach about Protecting Freedoms, and in the Allspark Almanac it’s explained they wanted to colonize other planets and the Autobots objected to that. The Decepticons were exiled for being military fascists.

I'd really, really love to know where I've ever said that on this blog, but since you seem very convinced that I did, let's look at the lore again. I don't feel like trawling the internet for this specific tweet/whatever form this DJW evidence has, so if you have that, I'd love to see it.

This timeline from the Allspark Almanac II pretty clearly states that the entire crux of Cybertronian society as a whole has rested on colonization, very early on in their species' history. Their "Golden Age" 8 billion stellar cycles ago is characterized by expansion that led to the colonization (!!!) of their solar system, further colonization only prevented by isolationism.

The earliest indications of the factional split that mark their history exist within the ruling class Guardians and the Malignus, defined as a "military caste". This implies that Golden Age Cybertron existed as a caste system. Which I would take a guess as not being particularly great.

And when we get to the first (again, quoted from the text here,) "military coup", it's executed by the political ancestors of the Autobots. Not a peep about the Malignus while that was going on.

This faction eventually becomes the Protectobots, and the most notable thing about them is that their leader attempted a Great Purge of "undesirable elements" from their society. I'd be hard pressed to think I'm wrong in thinking that's kinda fucked up. We're not given explicit reasons for this 17 million year war, but wars don't happen without someone to oppose someone else, and we get this in the form of the Destrons.

As for the point about colonization: my point is not that the Decepticon's motivations are not what we see in canon. Not at all. My point is that the Autobots have the same fucking motivation.

The Age of Expansion literally begins when the Autobots take power! It only ends when they butt heads with the Quintessons! Colonization, militarism, and facism, as you put it, are not traits that are unique to Decepticons.

And, according to this timeline and historical reasoning given, there is no mention of either faction's position on further expansion. The formation of the Decepticons is rooted in the divide between labor and military aligned Cybertronians. Both sections are equally responsible for the imperialistic efforts of their Empire/Commonwealth/whatever you want to call it, and make no mistake, this does continue into the present day! From both factions!

Assuming you're referring to my hefty lean towards the Cons in terms of character/exploration interest in the gist of your message, my goal here is not to elevate them to the same Good Guy Status the Autobots have by virtue of being the protagonists. I am fully and completely aware that they are a group of insane zealots that have rallied under a guy who was described by his own VA as an "elegant bully". Rather, I think what you're picking up on is my focus on the fact that the Autobots in Animated have more than their fair share of insidious shit going on.

They retain what is essentially a military dictatorship, with the position of Magnus being only theoretically beholden to the will of the Council and Guilds, as seen when Sentinel was able to fire Fortress Maximus with no approval from the Council and got nothing more than a disapproving sentence from Alpha Trion. We have no word on how their schooling institutions work, but all of it seems heavily centered on their version of the military they've concocted in the absence of warbuilds. And, just in case we forgot about Sentinel's proposed budget...

And that's not even getting into how fucked up Autobot culture is! They're unspeakably xenophobic, throw around propagandistic phrases like they're nothing ("Cogs in the Great Autobot Machine", anyone?), have an incredibly questionable justice system if Wasp is anything to go by, and this only seems to be getting worse at the end of Season 3, if Sentinel's curfews and public service announcements are anything to go by.

I'm not trying to make the Decepticons look better. I'm trying to make the Autobots look worse.

[cringefailvox]

radiobelle has a terminal case of and they were both bottoms because alastor is the laziest pillow princess imaginable and i truly do believe that charlie can only access her dom abilities with someone she is codependent with. and alastor would rather gouge his eyes out of his skull than rely on anyone

[quirinah]

tomesaburou gekkans

[ducktracy]

compilation of my villagers bullying me. this will be a growing collection. these are all from today alone.

[taravangians-storming-balls]

am I being too critical or does it really feel like nearly every kaladin chapter has kaladin looking into the camera and clunkily reciting a Fandom TakeTM that doesn't have the decency to even be thinly veiled