#put way too much time into this haha

[heliads]

and here's another conversation 🗣 for you, because my curiosity and love for yapping knows no bounds: cym as the f1 grid? not as pilots on the grid, but who would be teammates with whom and on which team. create a grid with your mutuals basically, i think that could be so fun asfjdjsj

wait this is absolutely incredible. clara your MINDD. moots who don't follow formula one, know that everything about this is positive

red bull racing: @mayfieldss and @musicallisto. you're funny, you're confident, you know what you're about. winners all of the time. world champions of my heart <3

ferrari: @schuvries and @diorsluv. hot girls. we all wish we were you. red is your color and you deserve millions of tifosi supporting you.

mclaren: @faerieroyal and @hiya-itsamber. you're my unproblematic faves. you experience happiness and you look good in bright colors. every day is a joy because you know you have nothing to worry about (my unwavering affection or a contract renewal).

mercedes: @zaypay and @spideyanakin. i have such fond memories of both of you that have lasted for many many months. this is a narrative parallel to the long-lasting success of the mercedes amg petronas formula one team. even if we haven't talked in a little while i will always be happy to see you winning.

aston martin: @retvenkos and @eclliipsed. i see you as responsible people. although fernando is not responsible (known war criminal) his status as one of the most experienced drivers on the grid gives him credit. i see you as experts in your field so this makes sense to me.

williams: @neewtmas and @mxltifxnd0m chaotic but friendly duo. the team i would take on a road trip. irl they gave these two a podcast, which was an incredible move. i wish i could hear you two on a podcast we would have such wonderful things to say.

alpine: @marmar-c and @mystic-writings. you are a classic team even through different themes and different years (similar to how alpine has been renault and lotus in the past). you will always be famous to me.

vcarb: @kobbiesmainoo and @w1shes43. you are people i wish i could talk to in real life. even when we haven't talked in a while i see your posts on my dash and i know that if we ever got dinner together we would have a lovely night, similar to how i could totally get takeout somewhere with yuki or danny and get along splendidly.

sauber: @reinekes-fox and @swanimagines. people from totally different fandoms who i think would get along, quite similar to current sauber drivers zhou guanyu and valterri bottas. the grid goes crazy and you two would simply be living life to the fullest.

haas: @kuromibrainrot and @sirofreak. i trust you two to channel the spirit of kevin magnussen and commit vehicular manslaughter on the daily. plus you two are crucial members of the unwind fandom so i know you'll have the unbreakable bond currently displayed by the members of this team.

[turtleblogatlast]

Leo learns something about himself 🏳️‍⚧️

Based roughly on this old post.

Bonus:

[Leo is taking the fact that he was born biologically female simultaneously very well and also not so well but overall he’s mostly coping with the fact that it was Draxum that just essentially gave him the turtle equivalent of ‘The Talk’.]

[cobaltfluff]

suuuuper late pocky day akeshus ;w;

[vii-doodles]

My very first animatic and it's radiosilence bc I love that dynamic very much

[lynn-tged-posting]

a contemplative knight... and his noble going blehhh!!! :P

based on this

they're so silly . also i think lloyd would really like lorasia rain bc way less air pollution -> less acid rain, probably. idk it's been like eight years since i've taken bio

[scificrows]

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

[sysig]

Growing closer than expected (Patreon)

[sluckythewizard]

had this thought rotating in my mind since arthur had to wear that Anti-Sun disguise. and well. now u see it too

[steamedlotusroot]

I translated Lego Monkie Kid’s Cantonese Extended Opening

In the tags of my first post I said I wanted to translate the lyrics of the extended OP of the LMK Cantonese dub and I did it :D

Translation notes: (some translations are wonky bc either the og lyrics are ambiguous, I didn’t have enough space to translate the phrases fully, or my Cantonese is rusty)

“All reveal your true forms to me immediately!”— 現形 means to appear/reappear. I personally interpreted it as the spirits/demons showing their true forms when SWK is fighting them, but simply “reveal yourselves to me” works too

“I truly can’t help how popular I am these days.”— One of my wonky translations I think. The og lyric is more like “really, I’m trending right now, I can’t stop it even if I wanted to / even if I tried.”

“But now I have to hide away,”— The lyric for “hide away” 神隱 very specifically refers to gods/immortals/spirits going into hiding

“From now on, keep the Golden Staff with you at all times,”— In the original JttW text, SWK’s staff is called the 金箍棒 “gold-hooped staff/rod”, but in Cantonese the staff is more commonly called the 金剛棒, which doesn’t have the “hoop” character. It’s just a gold stick 

“Only rely on having enough audacity,”— I think it’s supposed to be “have a lot of/enough courage” but it can also mean “audacity”, and since this song is about SWK and MK I think the word “audacity” fits them much better haha

“I will reach the peak for a competition of skill.”— This is an instance of Cantonese being so compressed and concise that I have no idea how to structure the sentence in English

“Endure for the sake of loyalty,”— 捱義氣 means doing a favor out of personal loyalty that you might not want to do (eg. you help your friend clean his car when you hate cleaning cars cuz he’s your bud!). I think “endure for the sake of loyalty” is a goofy way of translating this but I dunno what to write instead

“Assemble surprises.”— I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. This is a very literal translation

“The me today,”— Longer version: The me I am today

“Chock-full of abilities.”— OG lyrics 一身本領 go a little bit like “the whole body is full of skills/abilities”. I wanted to just write “full of talents” but “talent” isn’t quite accurate. I went with “chock-full” cuz it sounds funny

“Clash with fire in a duel,”— I like to think that this line refers to Red Son and I like Red Son :]

“Carrying an endless mission,”— I originally wrote “shouldering” instead of “carrying”, but because 懷 means “embrace/chest” or “harboring”, I thought “carrying” sounds less grueling and more accurate than “shouldering”

“Eyeballs looking around,”— “eyes staring wide and round” probably fits 眼仔睩睩 better, but hopefully “eyeballs” sounds wide and round enough?? And I wanted to turn it into an action so I described the eyes looking around like they’re on guard!

“Grappling arduously with the enemy,”— Lots of ways to translate 搏命: fighting for your life, wrestling for your life, blah blah blah. I hope “grappling” is evocative enough 😭

“Quick-witted actions, be clever,”— I’m not sure if it’s “quick-witted, actions sharp and clever” or “quick-witted actions, be sharp and clever” 💀 靈活 means “mentally flexible”, sharp醒 means “smart, clever, alert, quick-witted”, something like that

“It’s called the NSoFFM,”— The lyric lacks a pronoun in Cantonese so I’m not sure if it means “call me/you the NSoFFM”, “call for the NSoFFM”, “you’re called the NSoFFM”, or something else. I interpreted it as SWK listing a bunch of traits and saying “someone like this will be called the NSoFFM”

“Skyrocket to ascension / I rise at Flower Fruit Mountain.”— 飈升 means shooting up really quickly/suddenly. I’m not sure what “shooting up” means in this context so I kept it as vague as possible. I also translated 飈升 in two different ways “skyrocket to ascension” and simply “rise” even though both lyrics mean the same thing in Cantonese. “Skyrocket” is most accurate IMO, but it sounds weird by itself

“I always strive for self-improvement,”— The og is just “I forever self-strengthen”, which sounds weird to me so I expanded it

“When I wedge into the crack,”— No idea what this means?? I’m guessing it’s supposed to evoke the image of SWK jamming a weapon into a crack? Also I wanted to write “wedge into the fissure” but when I googled “fissure” it showed me results for anal fissures and I was so put off by it I just used “crack” instead, even though “crack” sounds much sillier than “fissure”

“Demons please relax, lest you lose control.”— Nothing to note, I just really like the original lyric. It’s so cocky and badass and SO Wukong (or MK!) /pos

“Use kindness as the mark of recognition,”— Not sure what this really means? I interpret it as “kindness is my goal/principle”, but 記認 means both “marking” and “recognize/remember” so uh

“Evildoing is difficult to regard as the elder brother,”— The og lyric sounds fine but trying to understand it is?? It’s not “evildoers”, it’s “the way/path of evildoing”, but then it says “it’s difficult to be an older brother (non-familial)” like who is it difficult for??? Also “brother” here means a fellow disciple/classmate under the same teacher/master/school, so like the relationship between SWK and the other pilgrims (except their master, of course)

“I can’t be beat to death, swim carefree at the edge of the sky.”— The most egregious lyric IMO. I have absolutely no clue what it’s supposed to mean so maybe I’m just not that good at Cantonese??? It could be “I can’t beat to death swimming carefree at the edge of the sky” or “I can’t be beaten to death, swim carefree at the edge of the sky”. The swimming part lacks a pronoun so idk who’s swimming? What is happening in this sentence?? Help??

“Risk your life when taking action,”— 拼命 either means “as hard as you can” or “risking your life”. I’m only assuming it means the latter because I interpret this as SWK lecturing MK on how to be a hero

“And the battle lineup is again full of wit,”— I can sorta grasp what this means, but idk how to write it in English. 陣容 means the appearance/formation of your battalion and can extend to mean the array of abilities in a certain lineup. Not sure how to actually describe this though 😭 also I used “clever” for sharp醒 earlier but changed it to “wit” here so it’d be a noun and sound like an ability or something

[spotaus]

Posting this pre-emptively since I might doodle in the meantime- Happy new years eve y'all!

And my shenanigans? The ones I mentioned? Got my hair dyed! N is going to need a new upgrade in her aesthetic in the coming year and I'm going to enjoy my new vibes <3

[redyarns]

HELL WEEK IS OVER HOLY SHIT HAHAHAHHAHAA I LIIIIIIVE

[vaguely-concerned]

I was just ambushed within the turbulent halls of my own mind by some headcanons about rye ingellvar's childhood that did 15000000 points of psychic damage to me and my heart personally and also made me almost sure of how I want to play it all at the end (very very differently from how I imagined going in!). some 'oh holy fuck this changes everything' rocking my own world bullshit going on in my neurons right now I'm reeling

[sainz100]

a few Carlos moments from the 2024 Azerbaijan GP

[gopher-jade]

just watched the episode where naruto meets minato, and. idk if it's because i completely skipped the battle beforehand & therefore tense battle atmosphere or if i'm just older and more resentful now, but.

if i were an orphan who had no adult guardian most of my life and had to fight for respect, and then train my butt off to survive because my dad sealed a fucking wanted monster inside of me, and then said dead dad said "😀 i did it because i believe in you. you're my son after all. idk how you're going to solve the systemic problems of our world but i blindly believe in you because that's what parents ought to do". i think i would have puked and also aimed at his shoes.

[vii-doodles]

The Vees getting group piercings ✨

[flamestar126]

Snuggling near the fire

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