#obligatory talk tag

[bitsbug]

whenever I imagine two iterators interacting via puppet, I immediately conceptualize it as two academics playing dolls together, giving them funny little voices and making them 'kiss' (smacking the dolls into eachother) and all

[littlenastieswewhispered]

“buffy ended the show single :)” ok but only because her current love interest just DIED!! (he near quite literally died in her arms! in sacrifice for her!) her last words of the entire series were telling him she loves him and then saying his name in admiration. she isn’t single; she’s a widow.

[jay-aro]

the bond between an aroace person and the fictional character(s) they find hot is a sacred thing

[spideypawz]

a tale of two roses. mwah.

[pr0cyon-lotor]

Shen Yuan is the type of guy to get proposed to and brush it off with a "yeah sure. if you don't change your mind when you're older I guess lmao"

Little does he know but he has a husband because that little former street rat isn't letting go

[a-sociopath-do-your-research]

He knows right? Like. He has to know.

[whamss]

"Making Rosemary tea drinking lesbians is bad" says Internet User, but not because it strips them of their characterization and turns them into carbon copies of each other, destined to sit in the background while other characters (men) have character arcs around them, but because they aren't Silly Enough. No no, we don't need to flesh them out, we just need to turn them from Wise Lesbian Couple to Comedic Relief. This will fix everything wrong with fandom depictions of them. *Wipes sweat from forehead* Woo! Being a feminist is so tough!

[bitsbug]

Excuse the discord screenshots, but I'm having late night Rain World thoughts again and I do not want to re-type all this.

[bitsbug]

I think they'd taste like a cross between mussel/clam flesh and mammalian meat, specifically a rabbit. chewy and sinewy, with a jarring grit to it, very gamey. Imagine the faint iron taste of meat but overlayed with slimy mollusc flavor. Probably not appetizing.

RAIN WORLD COMUNITY I HAVE AN IMPORTANT QUESTION

....

How would you think a slugcat would taste?

I feel like they would be like a gummy but not sweet but like sour u know

[amelia-yap]

AUEGH

[volitioncheck]

does near every single post-canon DE fic out there need to be tagged ‘Sober Harry Du Bois’? i’m getting so tired of it.

do i expect every single piece of fan content to have to fully delve into the often-depressing always-complex topic of addiction? not really. sometimes you just want to write/read a silly fluffy romance one-shot, whatever. i get it. but i think my issue is specifically with the fact that for nearly every sillyfluffy au out there, there almost must be a ‘sober harry du bois’ tag. and it does feel very slapped-on more often than not.

i think to me it is an unconscious statement that nothing *good* can ever happen to harry du bois until he is completely and permanently sober. before solving the next big case, he has to be sober. before quitting the force, he has to be sober. before falling in love with kim, he has to be sober. before accomplishing anything, starting any sort of recovery, making any life improvement, he must first be sober.

sobriety as a goal, as a journey, and honestly as a concept in of itself is not as cut and dry as so many people think it is. and i think it would serve a lot of people well if they did some introspection on the implications of how nearly every single post-canon fic that isn’t dealing directly with harry’s addiction have him as completely sober instead.

if the plot of the fic isn’t going to touch directly on harry’s substance use (and again, i’m not demanding that every single fic should), why does that mean that sober!harry must be the default?

i think i am just tired of reading a casefic, a smutty one-shot, a fantasy au, whatever, where it almost seems that before getting on with the plot, the author feels obligated to first assure us that the harry we’re reading about is a Sober Harry. it’s established with a couple lines in the exposition, probably about his improved appearance, a tag up top, and then never brought up again; a checkmarked box. like the societal image of An Addict has completely prevented people from being able to imagine a person just, continuing to live life, while still struggling with addiction.

life happens, with all of its backslides and achievements, mundanity and changes, to people with drug addictions just as much as people who don’t. is a post-canon harry who isn’t sober not worth writing about?

i think so. i think the game we all played thinks so too. in fact i think that sentiment is woven into the game’s very core. i just wish i saw that reflected in our fan content more.

[bitsbug]

Kyliyt don't have that many hand gestures due to the positioning of the primary manipulators, which are on the back of the forearm and face inwards. Akin to humans, twisting the arms to expose hands can either be a sign of trustworthiness or a threat, depending on what's being held. Holding an arm up and doing a scratching motion with the fingers is a common way to request allopreening from a flockmate.

Tipoon are a highly tactile species and thus use their hand* for a LOT, socially. Beside electroreception-based language, tactile languages are the second most preferred.

Tapping someone with the antenniform is a near ubiquitous greeting gesture. In kyliyt Cities, it's a habit of tipoon living there to hold one or both top arms up & wave to indicate their presence (tipoon are a very small species and kyliyts are visually oriented). Also in Cities, crossing the antenniform and holding out the lower arms is essentially like calling for a cab.

A lot of the other ones are less symbols as we'd define them, since they're touch-based. Tipoon don't have very good vision. Ok so this sounds weird but trapping someone's neck using the upper & lower arms is the polite way of indicating 'I heavily disagree with you and I want to have a measured duel about it', whereas just brushing the neck with the antenniform is 'What you say is interesting'. Like a thumbs up without the implication of agreement. Grabbing someone with the whole hand is either highly intimate or extremely crass, in a non-duel context.

* "Hand" in the context of tipoon means all four arms, the jaw, and antenniform. The individual arms aren't very dextrous, but are arranged to function like one big hand in combination with the lower mandibles.

Antenniform on tipoon are modified fingers that function like antennae, so they're included.

A speculative biology question for the folks out there with critters with cultures & dexterous hands/ other body parts that they use for interacting/ manipulating their environment.

Do they have any kind of gestures or symbols they make using their "hands?"

Think of like a human giving the middle finger, or shadow puppet of a dog, the two finger peace sign, hand waving for greeting? These kinds of gestures!

Perhaps they have a symbolic gesture to represent specific event(s) or being(s) from their cultural histories?

I am just so damn curious to see how other cultures, especially with less human anatomy would approach these gestures. It's not something I see many people bring up!

[spideypawz]

They’re doing lalonde brainwave communciation. Be patient.

[wynautwai]

With Infinity Nikki I think the question we should ALL be asking is:

What is baby's first hell/lifetime suit Star Sea gonna look like, because you KNOW it's coming back

[sleepy-hyperfixations]

Do i think snow would have ended up a better person if he was in a poly relationship with sejanus and lucy gray*? Not particularly but couldn't hurt.

[bitsbug]

Well you see I go in and out of the pipe! (being silly)

But really my usual strategy is to goad the red liz towards a room transition pipe (a one-room pipe can work too but they're less reliable), and time the interval of travel so that I can pop out while the lizard is still turning around, using the brief immunity to stab the beast. Use the next transition cycle to retrieve the spear, don't stay out for longer than a second. When it starts weakening and trying to retreat you can stop juking but keep a FAR distance. Take pot shots basically.

Having more than one spear around is recommended for that part, but if you're gourmand or arti you can stun it to get your spear back. Just don't get cocky because even in death throes they WILL instakill. You can perhaps use rocks to do the same, but that's riskier.

this came up somewhere and now i'm curious. which means i'm doing another poll

would be nice if you could put your metric for deciding which one in the notes too, but the one i have in mind is how hard it is to fight them, especially without explosives. so just spears.