#or where they're located

[inkskinned]

crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.

i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.

in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.

i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.

i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.

plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.

the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.

we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.

i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.

a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.

today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.

loved beyond thinking.

[gauntletqueen]

When a non-horror game has a horror section, I often find it a little more effective or memorable than a full-on horror title's horror, in a way. I think that's because, for characters in fiction, they usually don't know they're about to experience a horror story, so they aren't mentally prepared at all. As the audience, we know that when we boot up Silent Hill, we're gonna see some scary stuff and can mentally prepare accordingly. But when some innocuous children's platformer or RPG or whatever suddenly throws genuine horror elements at me, I'm taken out of my comfort zone much more roughly since I don't expect it at all. I think that's neat :>

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Seeing people say that we never see the Doctor and Ruby talking for more than 30 seconds makes me think 73 Yards and Dot and Bubble has just clouded their memories because the first four episodes of this era are almost nothing but the Doctor and Ruby talking and bonding.

Yeah, the Doctor-lite episodes meant we haven't had as much lately, but so many are going on as there's been none at all, as if every episode before 73 Yards was like Rogue where they were mostly separated in their own plotlines.

[flebdoodle]

I hate them on a metaphysical level (lying)

[prolibytherium]

There's a LOT of things people do wrong when constructing fantasy beliefs in pantheons of gods, but one of the more specific is having only one god related to fertility and it kind of being just a horny sex thing.

Like you'll have one in the entire bunch whose sphere is listed as fertility and it's basically like Yeah this is the sex one. She's always depicted naked (but not TOO naked because censorship and/or the writer's own skittishness). She's going to have the exact body type epitomized in contemporary western beauty standards and there's usually no chance in hell that she's gonna be fat (unless MAYBE they're referencing 'venus' figurines). Her thing is fertility, which means having sex and making babies. Might be a goddess of beauty or love or marriage too, because these are kinda sex things, but that's probably it. And yeah that sort of thing is virtually nonexistent in real life.

Like the concept of fertility is so fundamentally important to the function of most societies in human history in ways that it is just Not in industrialized imperial core countries. Most people are getting food from stores, and not having to worry about harvesting crops or breeding livestock or foraging for food or having enough animals to hunt, so fertility only really comes up as a concern if you're trying to have kids (and there is certainly societal pressure to have children, but your wellbeing and survival is rarely going to Depend on it). And I think writing only from that perspective and not even trying to learn about WHY fertility is so conceptually important is why you see this trend.

There's no absolute universal statement about how people believe in gods but it's broadly accurate that systems with many deities will Usually have more than one deity associated with fertility, and these associations will certainly include human reproduction but also the fertility of livestock/hunted animals, plants, the land itself.

Some fertility deities may also be heavily associated with seasonal changes or environmental factors that agriculture or foraging is dependent on (spring/summer/fall, seasonal rains, seasonal flooding, rain itself, sunlight, good soil, rivers, wetlands, etc). Some certainly might be related to love, marriage, sex, and beauty, but that's VERY RARELY going to be the sole way the concept of fertility is embodied. And they'll often will have other associations not directly about fertility, or related to fertility in culturally specific ways.

[sk-yay-sk]

I don't like any of the maps I've seen for HTTYD so i'm playing a puzzle game w all the locations. This is the 3rd version so far

[notbecauseofvictories]

[ Open House Chicago 2024 — All Saints' Episcopal Church, Dank Haus German Cultural Center, St. Mary of the Lake, Riviera Theater, Wilson Avenue Theater]

[radioactivepeasant]

Snippets: Free Day Thursday (Second, sillier part to follow Friday)

Poll Results: Trespasser Jak

Picking up from HERE, Jak and Daxter have been taken back to Spargus

The drive back to the city was not quiet. Every couple seconds, the kid with the amulet he shouldn't have had was pointing to something else, talking a mile a minute to the fuzzy orange thing. The red rock bluffs fascinated him. The crocadeer on the clifftops fascinated him. The frith-rotted cactus was interesting to this stranger.

Jak started to lean out of the seat again, trying to take in every speck of the horizon.

"Will you stop that?" Damas asked irritably, "You're going to fall out, and I'm not turning this car around to go get you. What are you so entranced by, huh?"

Jak's enthusiasm wasn't dimmed in the slightest. "After they took us to Haven- I thought there was nothing left out there but wasteland!"

"You're in the Wasteland," Damas reminded him.

"Nah."

Jak stood up despite the driver's protests and clung to the turret gun to watch a flock of birds.

"This place isn't wasted. It's alive."

"And you won't be if you don't sit down right now-!"

Damas’s headache only multiplied -- exponentially. once they had actually returned Spargus.

The stranger gawked at everything, sometimes lagging as many as ten behind to look at the most mundane things. Forges. The communication hub/post office. Leapers. A stray chickalope he tried to pick up-!

Getting him into the Gate District garrison building took five minutes longer than it should've, by which time Damas’s patience was almost completely gone. It was all he could do to keep some modicum of professionalism as he herded the boy and the talking spirit thing into a clean, well-lit room for interrogation. He left them with a stern warning to wait there until someone came to figure out who they were.

Then he left to make a very strong pot of coffee. He wasn't going back in there without it.

He quickly decided that needed another kind of drink when he returned ten minutes later only to find Jak, barefoot, sitting on top of the table like a moody teenaged gargoyle. That ratty blue winter tunic was tied around his waist now, and the loose scarf and oversized undershirt didn't quite cover a surprising amount of scars for someone his age -- or maybe not so surprising if he was an Heir, given the proclivity of Haven to put those through the wringer-

No. No jumping to conclusions.

Old burns on the soles of his feet that looked roughly six to seven years old -- a childhood accident or stubborn adventure, most likely -- were the most benign of them. Damas saw old, healed clawmarks, and strange fractal-like patterns not unlike those struck by lightning, crossing his upper arms, shoulders and chest. Here and there he saw raised lines -- the telltale sutures of do-it-yourself shrapnel removal. Regardless of whose blood flowed in his veins, this kid was a soldier. And it looked like he'd been a soldier for a depressingly long time.

Damas pushed the thoughts from his mind and took a seat in the chair the trespasser had ignored.

"Alright. Let's get this over with as quickly as we can, shall we? I have a lot of work to do today."

"Oh...kay...?" Jak gave him a puzzled, wary look and scooted back across the table to rest his back against the wall. "I mean, I can't answer everything, and half of what I do tell you won't sound believable, but that's honestly not my problem."

Patience, Damas. Inhale, slowly. You're just stressed. You can't kill him if he's related to you.

Damas took an exaggerated breath and folded his hands on the top of the table. "I don't much care about your activities in Haven. My agents deliver news regularly enough. No, I want to know how you opened a locked door with a Seal of Mar on it."

The kid looked surprised, and then intrigued.

"Mar? Wait, really? He made it out here too?" Jak looked almost impressed. "Huh! Guy got around!"

"Answer the question."

The orange one answered in the kid's stead.

"Jak here's got the distinct misfortune of being descended from the guy-"

*Allegedly," Jak interrupted. His voice was distinctly harder than before.

"What "allegedly"? Dragging me into the frickin nightmare tomb wasn't enough for ya?"

"Everything we know about that guy we got from Krew, or Samos," his companion argued, "And most of the Oracles didn't bother to warn us that Samos was lying to us our whole lives. So no, I'm not taking that on faith."

Clearly this was a sore spot for the young man.

It just so happened to also be a very sore spot for Damas.

They were just going to act like they so happened to "conveniently" let slip that this boy was supposed to be related to him? Did they think he was a fool?

"What are you playing at?" he snapped, startling them both. "Do you think I am so easily taken in?"

"What-?"

"Tell me, boy," Damas said, much more quietly, "What makes you either brave enough or stupid enough to try to pull that story with me?"

And Jak blinked at him with eyes that were a little too familiar. Wide. Full of shadows and pain and anger but still clinging to the vestiges of innocence. He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head.

"Um. Who? Are you?"

If this was a con, the kid was a decent actor, Damas had to give him that.

"You're telling me you're a survivor of the House of Mar."

"No? I said other people told me I was related to that guy. People with a vested interest in controlling me."

Jak scoffed bitterly and spread his arms wide.

"Little "abandoned" orphan boy kept isolated to train as a soldier, so he wouldn't know what they planned for him. Wouldn't run. And then magically suddenly he's heir to the worst city on the planet? Give me a break. The guards in Praxis's lab came up with better lies than that."

Damas wanted to agree with the kid. He wanted so much to agree with him. Whatever else he might be, clearly Jak was not the kind of person who bought into delusions of grandeur. In fact, he sounded like he actively resented the thought. Damas could appreciate that. Rot, he could even sympathize with the kid.

But.

He had opened a sealed door.

And the river-weasel had just said something about a Tomb.

He really really didn't want to be right, but if they could give an accurate description of the Tomb at some point, that information would be pretty hard to fake.

"Why did they think they could pass you off as Haven's heir?" Damas asked bluntly.

"Because I can make old Precursor crap work, I guess? And the Oracles like me." Jak folded his arms and shrugged. "They're useless when it comes to actually protecting anyone, but at least they tried to help after the fact. More than most hu'mens did."

Oh. Alright, okay. Maybe he's a sage prodigy and he's never been trained. That would make sense-

"Pal, the Oracle called you a "chosen one". That's gotta mean something."

"Chosen for what? Time looped torture?" Jak's entire posture had become rigid. He was beyond agitated, but Damas couldn't quite pin down if it was anger or fear or something closer to grief.

"....I...sorry." The orange one looked down, clearly ashamed. "That's- fair point. I won't bring it up anymore."

Damas didn't want to hear another word of this. Not one. Without stopping to think lest he talk himself out of it, he drew a knife from the back of his belt. The boy tensed even further, looking like he might snap as he watched Damas pull a sheet of paper haphazardly from the notepad that came standard in all the interrogation rooms. Damas ignored him and placed the tip of the blade to the pad of his thumb, pushing until two large drops of blood dripped onto the paper. The boy's tension eased slightly, but he still looked vaguely alarmed.

Damas wiped the blade and, steeling himself, held it out hilt-first to Jak.

"Your turn."

Jak glared at him.

"Are you nuts?"

Damas remained stonefaced. "You want to prove those people wrong? Blood comparison. Computer will be able to identify if it matches old records or not."

"Then why'd you cut yourself?" Jak challenged.

"Control sample," Damas answered shortly, staring until the boy gave in and set the blade against the tip of his little finger.

He declined to specify whether he meant for or against.

Jak twisted his pinkie between his fingers and let a single drop of blood fall onto the paper. He narrowed his eyes at Damas.

"And this is supposed to take...how long?"

"Two months if they're not busy."

Jak unfolded his legs and slid off the tabletop. "Months?! What good does that do me? They'll probably have found a way to guilt me into going back to Haven by then!"

Hm.

Damas leaned back in his chair and studied the boy with a new perspective.

"You're a runaway. Aren't you?"

Jak scowled and folded his arms.

"I'm not! I'm just...there's something I have to do out here. And I can't go back yet."

Suspicion trickled in cold at the back of Damas’s mind. He folded the edge down over the bloodied paper and tucked it into his belt.

"And what," he asked warily, "is this "something" you intend to do?"

The boy's ears dropped, broadcasting uncertainty despite his belligerent posture.

"I...don't know yet. There's just...something was calling me. And I can't leave until I know what it is."

This boy was going to be a walking migraine trigger, wasn't he? But unfortunately there was a reasonably high probability that he was Damas’s kinsman, which meant that under no circumstances could he just toss the kid back to Haven and say "not my circus, not my moncaws".

Just get through this until the blood tests come back. Who knows, maybe the guy will find a place here in the meantime. Or he might decide to fight the squid and die horribly. One step at a time.

Damas opened the door and beckoned to one of the district guards down the hall. Commander Shui left her subordinates immediately to respond.

"Sir?"

Damas nodded back towards the trespasser.

"Have someone show him to the showers. Once he's cleaned up, see if you can't determine his age."

Shui glanced at Jak, but never lost her stoic expression. "Understood. Is he a candidate for the trials?"

Damas ignored the harsh whispering between the boy and the...okay that was called an ottsel apparently. Didn't have those out in the desert.

"I doubt even he knows. For the moment, we will proceed as though he is a refugee."

He sighed.

"I have matters to attend to. Inform me if he causes any problems."

Jak wasn't sure how to feel about this turn of events. Six days of maddening dreams of eco comets and a broken string of beads. Five days of something pulling on his eco core, or his soul, the way the Precursor Stone had.

He wasn't sorry for leaving Haven in the middle of the night. The Grand Council had been getting more and more vocal with their more...Praxian...views on his right to life and liberty, and Samos just kept telling him to focus on what was "more important", fighting metalheads and new Krimzon Deathbots.

When the Call took him down that ancient eco mine, it had felt like an escape. He'd told himself he'd go back after he found what was at the end of the tunnel. And he'd meant to, if only because he thought he had nowhere else to go. After all, Daxter had built a life in Haven. He had a mentor. A girlfriend. A whole business!

But regardless of all the pretty lies Samos and Onin and Ashelin filled his ears with, Haven was not Jak's home. He would not take responsibility for their evil. And even if he was descended from their founder, they all let Praxis kill whatever blood relatives he might've had! They decided the line of Mar had no say in government, so who was Jak to contradict them?

It was strange -- almost unfathomable -- how his perspective could have changed with a rebalancing of eco. The Oracle down in that desert temple, it had pushed through old scars, given him access to light eco, when he'd thought the substance didn't exist anymore. The constant aches that ruled his every waking moment when it was even slightly cold out, the irritability, the burning in his core, it was gone.

How had he become so accustomed to at least low levels of pain as a daily companion? Jak hadn't realized how bad his condition had been until it was gone. And his mind felt clearer than it had in months. Maybe even years. Home was far behind them now. Sandover was forever lost to them, along with all remains of Jak's innocence. Because of Onin. And because of Samos.

Without his thoughts dulled by pain and lack of sleep, Jak thought of his heartfelt thanks to the manipulative old sage and wanted to be sick.

And now he was on an island, eighty nautical miles from Haven. A wild, living, sanctuary of Wastelanders and open wilderness. They called it "wasteland", but Jak couldn't understand why when it was so beautiful.

That Call still pulled at his heart, told him he wasn't done here yet. And he was relieved, because the longer he spent under clear, blue, sky, the more he hated the thought of returning to that corrupted city.

Just because he'd told Ashelin it was worth saving didn't mean he belonged to it.

Damas -- the angry man he'd startled when they came up out of the catacombs -- left, and a well-built woman about his height entered the interrogation room.

"Holy crap, a lady Sig!" Daxter hissed in his ear.

The Wastelander did have a prosthetic eye -- her left, not her right -- of the same make, but that was really the only similarity. She carried herself like Ashelin -- someone in command, used to cooperation if not obedience -- and that alone put Jak on-edge. He met her searching gaze with a hard stare, determined not to be the first to flinch.

"Hm." The woman clicked her tongue disapprovingly.

"I see what he means. When's the last time you washed?"

"Do pools of water count?" Jak asked. If there was sarcasm in the tone, so what? "Expendables don't get time to wash."

"Eesh." The woman curled her lip. "Well that's not going to fly in my garrison."

She turned to shout down the hall, "Strom! Get the rookie to the showers before the flies move in!"

"Oh rot you!"

[gxlds-doodles]

they're playing dress to impress on roblox

[askingtherapybill]

He has a laptop? How is that allowed? What is the story here

[vultures-and-scavengers]

i feel like property flippers could just follow around cullen. like, wherever he goes, you know there's going to be Events, and things are going to need to get wrecked and then need rebuilding.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[blu-ish]

I swear that the hedgehog couple would be the nosy neighbors EVER if they lived next door to them.

They are on the couch watching the movie, and they arrive at the door just to chat. The next thing they know, they've made they at home and are eating their food.

HELP THEY WOULD ���

Then Sonic and Shadow now occasionally babysit the couple's kid because yes.

They find themselves also looking over their flower shop when they go on vacation.

Then ONLY find out they get some of their flowers from Silver and he loses his shit when he finds them behind the store counter.

[crystal-mouse]

If you still need a distraction, I present this for you to think about:

Jim being in an area that sells Vulcan incense and easily finding the kind Spock uses despite Spock never telling him the name, because he always stands so close to him that he gets a whiff of it after Spock meditates

He then starts agonizing over getting Spock a gift he knows he’ll use but he’s worried about his feelings being apparent if he does and what Spock will think about Jim just *knowing* what incense he uses

- theshadowrealmitself

(Spock has already picked up a bottle of whatever Jim uses without a second thought because it’s only logical he get his friend a practical gift and if anyone calls him out and noticing Jim’s scent he already has a “Vulcan’s awareness/sense of smell/etc” in his pocket to use)

Hey! This is very good thank you sm :'))

I really love the idea of jim hunting down something special for spock and the idea of spock having done the same is really cute :')

Depending on which spirk it is as well there's definitely interesting ideas to apply to the idea.

aos spirk and vulcans destruction meaning that Jim's gift is so precious (and because it is, the weight of giving/ having being able to find that gift) the pressure of keeping the giving "platonic" but after finding it he KNEW that he had to buy it. (Also interesting if they were at the point of not being super close so that adds to the pressure)

vs tos spirk being very much "well I'm the captain I can't give my first officer this kind of gift.." etc etc so it sits in his room for ages and ages while he deliberates until spock comes over to play chess and notices the smell more clearly (he could smell something familiar on him before but figured it was cuz they were close in the turbolift/bridge) and it gets revealed and Jim realises it was all silly because now spock has this soft look in his eyes

Meanwhile during all this spock has been experiencing the same thing next door trying to tell himself it's purely logical and that gift giving is a practical idea to show his captain his appreciation for his work ethic (definitely no other reason...)

Thank you for this very good soup >:)) 10/10

(it's definitely helped, I feel a lot better now thank you :') )

[britneyshakespeare]

do you ever feel like people only like chick-fil-a so much because they're not supposed to

[moonchild-in-blue]

Oh, why am I checking the times? No reason at all haha. ha. ha.