#so at least there's kind of a solution for that

[magicrainbowkitties]

I will also point out that these people see us showing them kindness as a weakness to be exploited. The fact that we want an equitable solution for everyone is the fundamental thing they take umbridge with. They believe hierarchy and oppression are fundamental to human nature, and that our trying to spread power out is hopeless, stupid, and destructive. They WANT the people "below" them to have less so they can assert control and say "at least I'm not that."

Our willingness to be kind is, to them, a weakness they can exploit. Because kindness and cooperation is, in their mind, the aberration and the exception. It is not, it is a fundamental part of existing as a social species. But they are attacking us for it. We MUST defend ourselves, as painful as that is.

One of the most important things to unpack and unlearn when you’re part of a white supremacy saturated society (i.e. the global north) and especially if you were raised in an intensified form of it (evangelicism, right wing politics, explicit racism) is the urge to punish and take revenge.

It manifests in our lives all the time and it is inherently destructive. It makes relationships and interactions adversarial for no good reason. It undermines cooperation and good civic order. It worsens some types of crime. It creates trauma, especially in children.

Imagine approaching unexpected or unacceptable behavior from a perspective of "how can this be stopped, and prevented" instead of "you’re going to regret this!”

Imagine dealing with a problem or conflict from the perspective of “how can this be solved in a way that is just and restorative” instead of “the people who caused this are going to pay.”

How much would that change you? How much would that have changed for you?

[gallusrostromegalus]

Do you have any plans for what happens with Urahara's shop once Aizen is dealt with? I mostly ask cus the other day I binged the AIEWAM tag, then had a dream about the Shinigami using it as a base of operations in Karakura. I don't know if that is likely, or plausible, but it was fun to picture random shinigami doing customer service.

No that's more or less what happens to it!

After Aizen is dealt with, Urahara is facing some pretty significant personal problems: his rejection by the 12th division, being pregnant with his first child (and Yoruichi's nervous breakdown of impending parenthood) and Nihofornia's National Tax Agency finally catching up to him. As a shinigami, Urahara is aware of the many ways to shimmy around death, but there is no certainty like Taxes.

It's Don Kanonji, the most reasonable and level-headed adult in the whole damn fic, who proposes the solution: between his careers of swimsuit model, UN Translator, exorcist and fashion designer, Don is also a Certified Accountant. After going over she shoebox full of miscellaneous receipts and assorted Papers That Might Be Important, Don negotiates a deal with the tax agency around Kisuke's dubious status as a citizen and even more dubious bookkeeping: kisuke will sell the business to someone with a real social security number and pay up a large percentage of the staggering amount of money he owes in exchange for being allowed to rent the building from the new owners and continue his path to legitimate citizenship and no further financial chicanery.

"Okay, but who's going to pony up the cash? I don't have that kind of money!" Kisuke wails, fully in the grip of second-trimester hormone swings.

"Urahara-san. Kisuke. Sandalhat. Buddy. Pal." Ichigo's classmate Keigo sighs, fondly patting the man on the shoulders as he sat down on the couch beside Urahara. "We're friends, right?"

"We're people who know each other's home addresses." Kisuke sniffles.

"Close enough!" Mizuiro waves, sitting down on Urahara's other side. "-and you're former second division, real cloak-and-dagger stuff. So you know that sometimes it's best to not ask so many questions, right?"

Kisuke frowned with growing suspicion. "I might have been..."

"Great! All you need to do is make Tessai clean out the garage, turn the paperwork over to me and Mizuiro, keep an ear on the line to soul society, and focus on getting this place ready for your little bundle of joy-" Keigo smiled, gesturing around the decidedly bachelor padded living room.

"-and don't worry about where this came from!" Mizuiro chirped happily, hefting a large briefcase onto the table with a loud thud that popped open the lid, revealing a frankly alarming amount of cash inside.

"I'm worrying." Kisuke grimaced.

"We very specifically requested the opposite of that." Keigo pouted.

"That's at least thirty grand in there." Don remarked with a casual glance at the carefully packed but decidedly used bills inside.

"There is Thirty-one thousand, two hundred seventy-eight point oh-six Troyen, which is exactly two and a half times this shop's discretionary income last year, and a very generous price for the business!" Mizuiro beamed.

"Why can't you guys use a normal currency like Kan?" Kisuke pouted, trying to do conversion rates in his head.

"Well for one thing, fiat currency is a hell of a lot better than anything based on the value of rice." Keigo nodded. "Though it is kinda stupid that we didn't update the name after we went off the gold standard during world war three."

"There was a third world war?" Kisuke yelped.

"A cold one, back in the eighties. You didn't notice were busy making sure Isshin and Masaki Kurosaki didn't implode." Tessai called from the kitchen.

"Oh." Urahra mumbled.

"Look, it's really quite simple- you'll go on basically as you have been with the candy shop-" Mizuiro smiled with the soothing demeanor of an unexpected adder. "-only I'll be your landlord and Keigo will be your manager!"

Urahra stared blankly at the boys, then looked up at Don Kanonji, who was reading over the contents of the file folder Mizuiro had handed him when the boys came in. "...That can't possibly be legal, right?"

"Hm?" Don hummed, looking up over his glasses. "Oh, yes. The government would really prefer a check but cash is perfectly legal tender to settle all debts with."

"But they're kids!" Kisuke gestured hysterically between them.

"Okay, Mizuiro might be babyfaced but he turned eighteen last spring and I'll be an adult by the time we turn in all this paperwork in April." Keigo groaned.

"And- and this is clearly Mob Money!" Urahara continued, waving at the briefcase of cash.

"Mister Urahara! I would NEVER-!" Mizuiro gasped with great offense. "I'll have you know all this money came from Perfectly Legitimate Enterprises!" He sniffed, arms crossed and lip pouting.

"That's the name of the Mobile Tech Support business Mizu and I have been running since freshman year!" Keigo beamed. "Makes a good packet, you wouldn't believe the kind of tips the old biddies will give a Nice Young Man in a Smart Uniform who scrapes malware off her online mahjong machine!"

Urahara stared at them blankly, gaze slowly tipping down to the briefcase full of money. "I should learn how to use living world computers."

"NO." Every single person in the building, including the shop kids and Ichigo, who had been passed out under the table after training, but was stirred to consciousness by an impending sense of danger before passing out again.

"Killjoys." Urahra muttered, sulking under his hat.

"Regardless, its a perfectly legal and honestly very generous offer for this heap, and as your financial advisor, I urge you to take it." Don Kanonji glared over his glasses at Urahara.

"So what, you boys get a cut of the candy money and rent? Cause that ain't much of a savvy deal on your end. This place runs at a debt."

"Oh no, you can keep the candy revenue and I'll only ask for enough rent to cover utilities." Mizuiro smiled. "What we want is a cut of your commission as a licensed Gotei-13 outlet contractor!"

"...But I'm not a contractor?" Urahara blinked.

"...Do you just. Not read things before you sign them?" Keigo glared.

"Yeah, you're not just in hock to the NTA, the Soul Revenue Service is after you too for running a fake Gotei-13 service center, and bailing on a century's worth of filings by faking your death." Mizuiro frowned at him with concern. "So e of those papers you signed when you resumed your identity and job as captain- however briefly were the result of Captain Kyoraku cutting you one HELL of a parole deal with the SRS, but the agreement was that Urahara Shoten would be the base of operations for ALL the shinigami operating in Karakura, under the direct supervision and control of the Gotei-13 and he sure wasn't stingy with the budget he gave you! Well. The budget he gave me and Keigo to spend since I'd be the property owner and Keigo would be the business owner."

"Aaaand since you also signed the soul society official secrets agreement, it's not like you can ask someone else to buy you out from the NTA, so not only are we your best offer, we're your ONLY offer!" Keigo grinned.

Urahra stared at them blankly. "You've set me up." He mumbled.

"You sent yourself up for this when you failed to do your due diligence when signing contracts." Don Kanonji corrected him, pulling some documents out of the folder and signing them, before pushing them across the table. "Please actually read these before you si- you've already signed them." Don Kanonji groaned as Urahara slapped the pen back down on the table with spite.

"Fine, fine- I guess I'm back to following orders instead of giving them. What do you want, Boss?" He glared at Keigo.

"Put your feet up and finish putting together that gift list for the baby shower." Keigo nodded. "We weren't kidding that your first priority is getting this place ready for baby... Does it have a name yet?"

"...No." Kisuke wilted despondently. "Yoruichi still isn't answering my texts!"

"Hm." Keigo nodded. "Okay, put your feet up, finish that baby shower list and think of a name for the little rugrat. Just leave the rest to us for now!"

"You guys are good kids." Kisuke smiled weakly.

"Would you be willing to make a sworn statement to that effect, so we can have it on file for any future HR disputes?" Mizuiro smiled.

"Absolutely goddamn not." Kisuke glared.

[thissying]

Max Verstappen is starting a Formula 1 season in which he has to mind his words. The FIA ​​has tightened the screws with sky-high fines for swearing. "I'm not going to say very much anymore, that's for sure."

Rally driver Adrien Fourmaux was the first victim of the stricter rules. The Hyundai driver said "We fucked up", during the Swedish Rally, in a live interview on TV. The result was a 30,000 euro fine, although 20,000 euros of that was eventually made conditional.

Verstappen got into trouble with the FIA ​​last year because he used a similar term in the press conference for the Singapore Grand Prix. He had read the statement about Fourmaux.

"When you see what it says and what that rally driver said, I think you better keep your mouth shut from now on. But then there won't be many interviews anymore, that's true," Verstappen predicted on Tuesday in the run-up to the F175 event in London.

"You have to be very careful what you say, that much is clear," Verstappen replied when asked if he can still be himself. "And you can give your opinion, but you have to be careful with that too. Then you can also get a penalty, because it can be insulting," he said about the rules tightened by FIA president Mohamed Ben Sulayem.

It is of course a topic of discussion among the drivers' guild. Drivers' union GPDA already issued a statement last year. "People are now looking at what we can do about this," Verstappen explained.

Although a number of drivers stated in London on Tuesday that they understand that swearing is being restricted here and there, according to Verstappen the drivers are on the same page; his page.

"I think that the majority of what I read, and not everyone responds of course, finds it abnormal, those kinds of fines," said Verstappen, who was keen to emphasise that despite a salary of millions, no one likes to pay tens of thousands of euros in fines. For Formula 1 drivers, the amounts can amount to 80,000 euros.

"You lose money anyway. It is of course never nice to pay. I have had it a few times, that I had to transfer those kinds of amounts. But I am not going to suddenly change because of that," he pointed out the lack of an effect.

"There is emotion and passion in it," he described his regular swearing over the radio. "Of course I understand that swearing is not okay. But if you use the example that young children are watching, then I think: what did you do yourself at school, or while gaming or when you played football on the street? Everyone does it."

"And of course you have to be careful at certain times, I understand all that too," he added. "But I don't think it has to be described so clearly. It can also be a bit of common sense."

At least that is not the case with the FIA. Violations of the swearing rules can ultimately lead to exclusion from races. It is theoretically possible that a driver misses races due to swearing penalties and therefore misses out on the title. "That would be something, yes," Verstappen stated.

The Limburger had a playful solution to the problem "Maybe I should just swear in Dutch, or in Limburgish. Almost nobody understands that." Verstappen has mastered his regional language quite well. "Although I don't speak it that often anymore." Which Limburgish swear word he would use, he kept to himself with a laugh. "Of course I'm not going to say that now."

Verstappen is therefore starting the Formula 1 season with the handbrake on his language use and fines hanging over his head. "It still depends a bit on what you say and who it is aimed at. But I'd rather spend that money on something else," he pointed out, referring to the pregnancy with girlfriend Kelly Piquet. "A nursery, for example, new paint."

- nu.nl

[kangaracha]

QUEENMAKER | CHAPTER 26

---

pairing chan x reader

genre ninth member au, angst, fluff, coming of age, social media, cancel culture, anxiety, depression, forbidden love,

summary To JYPE, the solution is simple; take the sole trainee that will not debut with your brand new girl group, and use her to replace the missing vocalist in your male group that insisted on starting as nine.

Unfortunately, to the fans and the members themselves, it isn't that simple.

status ongoing

taglist OPEN

a/n my cat is very sick this weekend so leave some comments to distract me, thankyou. have a lovely weekend, cuddle your pets

previous | masterlist | next

---

Your phone drops from your hands onto the floor of the practice room, thunking softly against the hardwood. Your head follows, falling backwards in a controlled motion that ripples pain through the sore muscles of your abdomen, your legs, your back. The bright lights of the ceiling are little relief, even when you throw an arm over your tired eyes.

Your whole body aches, but that's nothing new. You've been at it for hours - and days, and months. You work hard and the crowd won't cheer, and you work harder and the company ask for more, and you put your every waking moment towards it and the fans don't see the difference, and the voices online are never happy, and the work just keeps coming, one performance after another, opportunity after opportunity to make a fool of yourself.

Your body hurts. It's inevitable. 

It's fine, even. It's been six years since you traded in youth for the promise of fame, after all; pain becomes a constant companion after a point, every dancer knows that. If your body doesn't hurt, then you're probably doing something wrong.

You have to get up. 

It's your own voice that gives the order, your mind that knows you have another performance to run through before you can be done, but your body doesn't move, the heat of it soaking into the lacquered floor. The will to dance has leeched out of your bones with it, and it feels guilty to admit that even to yourself, but there is nothing in you that wants to dance again. You kind of hate dancing right now - but this is your dream and there's one chance to get it right, and you cannot hate dance for even one moment.

You have to get up. You don't move.

The door opens, but you barely notice it, your breath settling and your eyes blocked from the light. You don't open them until the toe of a shoe nudges your side; then, you squint up at the blurry figure above you, waiting for your tired eyes to adjust again.

It's more the shape of his shoulders and the stout figure that give him away than the details of his face. "Binnie," you greet him with a sigh and rub at your face. "What's up?"

"Nothing," he answers. "Were you asleep?"

"No." You look up into his face again, but you're not sure he's convinced. "I'm just...resting."

A wry grin crosses his face, laughing out at you even as he offers you a hand up. "You looked more like you were dying," he tells you as he pulls you up into a sitting position.  "Or in a crisis."

"I am in a crisis," you quip. "I'm not very good at my job."

A finger flicks your forehead. You stare up at him accusingly, but he only shrugs. "People who say bad things about our noona get flicked," he informs you, and he doesn't sound the least bit remorseful. 

"You've got a lot of Stays to flick then," you grumble; and then add, "Slacker," to cover up the guilt that stabs at you so hard you nearly cringe at yourself. Ungrateful, he's going to say, or whiny. It's all you can think, so surely he would too. 

All he does is smile though. "After lunch," he promises. "Are you coming to eat with me?"

You stare at him, bemused. "I'm in the middle of dance practice."

Changbin frowns. "You said in the group chat that you were done."

"With that performance, yeah," you say, your hand drifting unconsciously towards your phone. "I still have the MAMA performance to try."

"It can wait until after lunch."

"Lunch can wait until after practice too."

"Not if it's that new place around the corner," he argues. "They close so early, this is my only chance."

You don't mean to, but you know your face tightens and your belly rumbles, suddenly aware of how hungry you are. "I have a diet, Changbin," you remind him gently. "There's at least four of the other kids at the company, they'll go with you."

"You've been suggested a diet," he amends without missing a beat. "Doesn't mean you have to do it."

"Do you come from another planet?" you scoff, squinting up at him. "Did we not sign the same contract?"

The smile he gives you is impish, spelling out trouble all over his face. "If you just ignore them long enough, they give up," he informs you proudly.

Your gaze runs over him again critically, tight shirt and loose pants cutting a figure you could never hope to mimic. "You're all muscle though," you point out, your finger jabbing accusingly in the direction of his chest, "even though you eat like a garbage can. Some of us are just fat."

"Garbage can?" he repeats incredulously, his voice rising with every syllable. He steps back, shaking his head, and you climb to your feet yourself, reaching back to fix your hair as you stand. "I eat like a normal person."

"Like three normal people, maybe."

"Come to lunch with me and I bet you'll eat more than me."

"You can come to lunch with me, in the cafeteria, sure."

He stares defiantly as he chooses his next words. You meet his gaze evenly. "I don't want to eat chicken and salad in the cafeteria," he whines after a moment. "Who even said that you were fat?"

"JYP himself," you deadpan, only cracking a smile at the anguished laugh that comes out of his mouth in response. "I don't know. A manager somewhere. Does it matter?"

You can see the teasing spirit drain from his face as his smile fades, his face turning to things that are softer, more serious. "As long as you know that you're pretty enough to make most of us look ugly, it doesn't matter."

You scoff again, your tongue tasting acerbic against the embarrassed red of your cheeks. "Pretty enough to be here," you reply. "Not the prettiest."

Changbin's arm is a heavy weight across your shoulders, squeezing you tightly as he all but drags you towards the door. "You're the prettiest girl I've ever seen," he says; and somehow, it is so friendly a comment that it doesn't heat your face again, nor come off as awkward; but that is Changbin's effortless charm, his friendliness. His ability to listen without judging.

Anyway, your lips curve up into a smile, your elbow digging into his side just long enough to make him let go of you so that you can open the door. "It's all plastic, buddy," you quip as he steps through, and pull it closed behind you. "I'm a modern scientific miracle."

For several seconds, he just looks at you, unsure whether to laugh or not. "Have you done anything?" he asks, just to ask, ambling along casually beside you. "You have such a nice face shape."

You contemplate your answer before you give it, your mouth opening and then closing again. "Maybe a little here and there," you say and let a little grin slip onto your face. "Maybe not. You know I was dropped from Midnight for being 'the wrong look', right?"

"I didn't know that," he says, cutting a glance at you. You wonder if, under the genuine astonishment that plays out over his face, he can see the way that acknowledgement still guts you like a knife. You'd managed to say it out loud without cringing away from it, at least; maybe the hurt is starting to dull. Maybe one of these days you'll be able to look forward at what you've got without also looking back at what they'd taken away from you.

"Well don't go changing now," Changbin says, pushing straight past the whole dilemma. "They think you're the right look for us; don't ruin it."

"I only aspire to look like you, Changbin-ssi," you assure him. 

He laughs at you; actually, properly laughs, his voice echoing down the hallway. "You can start by actually going to the gym," he tells you. "And going to eat ramen at the new place down the street. You can't claim to be Changbin when you're so small."

"Bit rich, coming from the smallest person in the group," you mutter under your breath, and you can't help but snort a laugh at the affronted shout that sounds from beside you as he tows you towards the elevators.

---

TAGLIST

@kokinu09 @rainfallingfromthesky @lixie-phoria @mysweethannie @chlodavids

@hanniemylovelyquokka @tfshouldidohere @lauraliisa @puppysmileseungmin @kalopsian-thoughts

@puppy-minnie @readerofallthingss @dvbkie099 @kthstrawberryshortcake-main @acker-night

@d-chagi @lynlyndoll @borahae-reads @ihrtlix @yienmarkk

@minhwa @i2innie @jinnie-ret @conwunder @amesification

@starssongs98 @weirdhumanbeinglol @morinuu @the-weird-mold-in-the-sink @bokkiesplace

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@jabmastersupriseee @kayleefriedchicken @hynjinswrld @duhgurl @cheshireshiya

@keepswingin

[wemlygust]

In the earliest few Riddler comics at least, he's just a chronic cheater. He cheats his way into being thought of as a genius as puzzles, and he starts believing it himself, at least to some degree. Then he starts designing "puzzles", except the puzzles he makes have ambiguous answers/more than one possible valid answer, so Batman and Robin basically just have to guess the meaning and can get it wrong by pure random chance. And Riddler tries to guess which answer is the one that Batman and Robin will decide is correct, so that he can make a different interpretation the "right" solution. And Batman and Robin try to predict what Riddler will predict they will do lol. It's like Riddler weaponizes shitty game design. Entirely unfair questions that cannot truly be solved. Which, to be fair, is the kind of thing that feels diabolical and maddening when you're playing a badly designed puzzle video game. Also, Riddler locks them in a bulletproof glass maze and tells them to find the exit, but he designed the maze to have no exit. Then Batman and Robin manage to break out (iirc I think they take out one of the supports/joins between the glass panels instead of attacking the glass? hard to remember), thereby solving a puzzle Riddler intended to be unsolvable by finding a solution he could not imagine. Because he is just a cheater and is bad at puzzles. Honestly it's a fantastic and fun idea for a villain imo. A lot more fun than I imagined him before I went and read some of those very early Batman comics. P.S. Two-Face is WAAAAY more fun as originally imagined than in the Dark Knight movies, too. Like oh my god, they murdered that character's entire concept. Unless I'm misremembering those movies, I guess. But if I'm misremembering those movies, then the very unmemorableness of their interpretation of this character is in and of itself a damning feat. /ramble ramble ramble I imagine the characters may have changed a lot in later iterations however. I haven't gotten there yet though so idk.

Starting to think we told children that The Fair Folk were out there to trap you in twisted words and doublespeak and clever traps that take what you say and turn it against you for cruel and mischievous purposes just to drive home the importance of critical thinking and analytical skills

If we don’t start putting funding back into the education system I’m gonna invent a creepy pasta that steals your face if you can’t recognize media bias

[mari-lair]

You know what i'll be petty, this will be my complain time, feel free to skip this post:

I don't like how easily Nene got inside the clock keeper's boundary.

They made a big deal of how hard it is to get there in the last arc, of how time needs to be stopped for the entrance to even show up.

And even then, only Akane, Teru, and Tsukasa had been able to move while time was frozen.

Nene could not. Even Hanako could not.

So her just following the cat (regardless if the cat is just a familiar or a yugi twin, it doesn't matter) I don't like it.

Cause the clock keepers should still be powerful (or else they would lose the op power of rewriting the world). And Aidairo is at least pretending their rules are the same, considering Akane was right and only he could use the clock/key.

So it feels less like weaving a new set of rules in this brand new world to explore, and more like "this is convinient to move the plot were i want" with no care for consistency.

Why did Aoi never remembered about the new timeline even when everyone explicitly told her during their dinner hang out? Is it because she wasn't in the keepers boundary? Then why did Mitsuba and Kou did? Neither of them were inside the keeper boundary when it reset either. What about Hanako and Tsukasa? They were in the clock keeper's court, but they don't have the clear memory Teru and Yashiro do of the old timeline, is it because they are ghost? Twisted into brand new forms compared to their old selves? But then we are back to wondering why mitsuba (who was a supernatural stitched up by remains) remembered.

The sad thing is that Aidairo spend so many months building up interesting ideas in this new world, ideas for things that wouldn't be able to be explored in the old one, and instead of giving the characters internal comflicts, moral comflicts (which we know they can do, picture perfect is right there) or exploring anything, they just used the dramatic "THIS WORLD IS BAD!!! NO NUANCE ANYMORE, IS JUST BAD NOW! LET'S GET OUT!!" solution to get everyone to go back.

Which isn't my personal favorite approach, but I usually wouldn't mind. I mean, everyone know they need to go back to the old timeline at some point! No problem there!! Except nothing was explored. We got the news the minamoto mom is back but we didn't get a single dialogue between her and Teru or her and a Kou that remember she used to be dead. We got the news Aoi and Teru are in an arranged marriage but didn't explore that wild comcept much. They set up a deadline of three days before the cast start forgetting the old timeline but it haven't even been one day in this new world before something conviniently awful happened.

Why set up a stage if you just want to move the characters out of it as quickly as possible?? Mitsuba and Kou whole relationship in this new world was basically sumarized to us in a single chapter, which was the same chapter where they died to rush the rest of the cast out. Yes is tense in the moment but the more time passes the more it just feels rushed. Like a million ideas thrown in a table and now that they are in the open is time to move on.

I bet a million dollars this won't be talked about.

Why would it? Aoi and Teru are probably dead, so who cares about their engagement and it shadyness? this world is 'fake' so who cares about anyone in it?

Sure, I want to go back to the original world too! but idk, I kind of cared about this world.

Wasn't that the point? To care about the world? If it wasn't the point then what was it? Yugi lore?? Show exactly how evil the entity that originally possessed Tsukasa is?? That's it? Brand new world created ONLY to focus on Yugi twins lore? No Minamoto family moment now that they are all together (an impossible feat otherwise!), no comflict or temptation at all? When Kou remember his old memories he goes 'omg sousuke was dead' but doesn't even bat an eye that his mom was dead too?? Was the mom reveal really just a cheap shock value moment for the audience??

I still have no idea where yooko and satou are, I guess mitsuba is Kou's only friend in this timeline? hard to say since we only focused on Kou and Mitsuba's relationship with each other, barely interacting with the world as a whole (what is Kou's relationship with Aoi now that she is his brother's fiance? Or with his brother now that Teru have more free time?? Who cares, am i right??). They made Mei alive but there is no interaction with her so what? is it a cute fanservice too? A way to show how powerful the 'curse of the house' is? Is that it? It feels so hollow. This rush will make them go back to their old timeline faster, sure, but it takes away the characters depth.

I am glad many people like this arc but I see it as a big waste of potential :/

[starlos-art-stuff-lol]

Wouldn't it be messed up if Portal was like, a time loop or something

Chell escapes in Portal one after a few hours of puzzles, but she immediately passes out and get dragged back in. Chell's sent to sleep for [9999999-] And when she wakes up, she spends another few conscious hours escaping again, but for real this time.

At least, that's what seems to happen in the story.

As a player, you experience the game very differently from Chell.

For example; imagine you're a new player. You start Portal 1, and after the tutorial/easy section, the puzzles start to get harder. They take longer, one of the puzzles seems to require timing in a way that almost feels like it goes against the game rules. You take a lot of time to complete the puzzles, you die multiple times, and that's fine. The game is meant to be played that way. You beat gladOS and escape. This playthrough is for fun.

You start up portal 2, you watch a few cutscenes/scripted events. It's fun that you get to walk around and look at whatever you want, though the room is a bit dim, and Wheatley is kind of the same color as most other things, so it's not Immediately easy to find him when he's talking to you. You solve more puzzles, get betrayed by Wheatley, learn to never love anything, solve more puzzles, shoot Wheatley into space, get broken up with by GladOS, and you're confused by the turrets singing some opera song at you before you leave. You assume it's the devs saying "good job" but like, it's kinda out of place.

...

...So that was fun. Really fun actually. The humor was great, the characters were endearing, and you check out the multiplayer campaign.

You decide to play again.

...

You wake up in that one room again. You question why this bedroom is covered by glass from 3 sides. You hop through the easy levels with ease. You poke a stick at some of the levels, seeing if there are other ways to beat them, and you don't find any. You hop skip and jump through the test chambers, remembering the solutions to most of them. You don't fall for the fire pit near the end, which you didn't the first time, but you didn't know how to escape it and didn't think to portal out of the chamber. You beat gladOS pretty fast now, after figuring out how to beat her the first time. You try to explore, you think about this game know knowing the context of Portal 2. This playthrough is for lore.

You start Portal 2. You try to see if you can do anything in the starting room, which you can't. You know Wheatley's fate, you try to avoid getting attached, but you still hesitate to plug him into gladOS's body. You solve puzzles, trying to explore but find that this game is a lot more streamlined than you previously thought, despite it's scale. You try to save the defective turrets from incineration, but after a certain point, you run out of patience as they just keep coming. You decide to jump into Wheatley's Pit during the part where he kills you, just as a bit, and discover that he has unique dialogue for that. You hear the adventure core tell you to make Wheatley say a certain thing so he can snap back with a quip, and then Wheatley says that thing. None of that happened in your last playthrough. You realize that the turret symphony is GladOS's love letter to Chell, and it's kinda beautiful. You tear up a bit.

...

You finish again. Now what? You love these characters now, but there's not much left to discover. Do you play the game again? Just because?

Sure, why not?

But what's the goal now? Maybe you can try to blast through the games as fast as possible? Sure, you think you've memorized the test chambers by now.

...

You boot up portal again, pushing against the wall until the portal opens and co.pleting the tutorial as fast as possible. You dash through the levels, but end up on several hangups. You think about how you could have done this thing faster, or how you could have avoided that death. You beat the game in only a few hours. This playthrough is about speedrunning.

You start Portal 2. You frantically run around the starting room, unable to skip the cutscene as it's an in-game event. You hop through the wall, grab the portal gun, and blast through the puzzles. You're slower here, you feel like you're getting snagged on ledges more often, and the puzzles are harder to both remember and perform. By the end of the game, you feel like you could have gotten a much better time. Regardless, the whole ordeal is only a few hours.

...

You could have done less, you could have gone faster. You need a better time.

Again.

...

You press start, you speed through the levels. You run face-first into the corner of a wall, but otherwise make few mistakes. This run is about better speedrunning. You shave half an hour off your time.

You press "new game", you still can't escape the first cutscene, but you ignore everyone's dialogue, you figure out the physics of the game and stop getting stuck walking into ledges, you shave an hour off your time.

...

You're content with this. You aren't a professional speedrunner, but you went pretty fast.

...You're still not ready to let go of this game, yet.

You look online for exploits. Maybe you can find some deleted content.

You figure out how to activate debug mode, and realize you can use this to look behind the scenes.

...

You start the first game again, and turn on noclip. You give yourself the 2-portal portal gun immediately, and start checking out the out-of-bounds areas. You're freaked out by the giant white angelic glowing void beyond the game, but get accustomed to it quickly. You find an unused cake room, you look in the "scientist-examination" rooms outside of most of the chambers, which aren't that interesting, but it's nice to see them. You attempt to teleport between levels, but you find it easier to travel by elevator, if only because you don't have to type as much. Honestly, there's not much to find. This playthrough is about going beyond the bounds of the game.

You start the second game again. The setpieces for this game are a lot more expensive. You finally escape the apartment at the beginning of the game, and realize it's fully modeled from the outside too. You spend hours just looking at the gigantic setpieces from the outside, marveling at how gigantic and beautiful everything is. You don't think to look for Easter eggs more than thrice, as you're so dedicated to simply looking at all the complicated functions of everything. You also notice the light bridge is humming, like it's literally singing. It sounds familiar. The moon exists upside-down, below the boss battle, which didn't even occur to you until you saw it. It seemed like a cutscene up until now.

...

You've gained a new complex appreciation for this game. But you can't help but wonder if this was how you were supposed to experience things. Probably not, but like, whatever. You go into Tumblr and look up portal 2 fanart

...

...

...uhh, where was I going with this?

OH RIGHT TIMELOOPS

Uhh ok so. Thanks for reading all that. Bonus post time

So, what would The Portal Series's gameplay loop look like in-universe?

I mean, it wouldn't look like anything, the characters keep forgetting, but like

Chell remembers, in theory

I mean, she learns, you learn when you die, she should too, since you're controlling her

Imagine waking up in a mysterious place, not knowing where you were before this point or how you got here, so you have to escape.

And you die in a pit of acid.

And then you're not dead. You're at the point right before you died.

First of all, fucking ow. Second of all, how do you not die again? How did you undie just now? (You don't know you're a fictional character in a video game lol idiot)

You die over and over, eventually, you beat the person who keeps killing you, but you're so exhausted and starved that you pass out immediately after getting flung outside.

You wake up, in a small apartment. An electronic voice is telling you want to do. Your last memory is setting dragged backwards, supposedly into the facility again. You don't want to die, but you can't seem to open the door out and your robotic male not-gladOS caretaker doesn't seem to want to harm you. You go back to sleep, exhausted.

You wake up, and this tiny cute robot-

Look I'm not writing a pov fanfic for you, let's skip to the good stuff

You wake up, back in the fucking building again. You escaped, she kicked you out. She doesn't seem to remember. You don't die this time, and the same shit happens.

The blue fucker, you feel kinda bad for him, but he also punched you into a pit, so-

He doesn't remember anything either.

...

Like, that's a whole story there. Chell going crazy because her life is following Undertale RESET rules except she can't change anything without fundamentally breaking spacetime (again, she doesn't know she's a videogame character so that's what no clipping looks like to her)

That'd be so messed up right?

[squorkal]

I love this because there are so many reasons why I think people think he's weak.

1) His appearance isn't exactly threatening. He literally looks like a marshmallow. He's white and never dirty, implying he doesn't place himself in the center of action often. And he's very fluffy.

2) He's an absolute sweetheart. (Warning: Spoilers ahead for IDW) I mean, when he was accused of malicious intent with Duo, he just walked away from the Diamond Cutters. No ill feelings toward them. Just disappointment. And then when it's revealed that Duo WAS a threat, no one approached him to apologize. Yet he took the time to check on the team to make sure they were ok. He was wronged!! He had every right to say "serves them right", but he didn't. Everyone incorrectly assumes his kindness is a weakness, but it's not.

3) He, himself, believes he is weak. Or at least he believes he's not helpful. Confidence goes a long way and he doesn't have much of it.

4) Despite not feeling very useful, he does at least try to be helpful. But in his desperation to be a part of the solution, he rushes into things and can become part of the problem. On top of that, he's a little clumsy from time to time. And like, I mentioned before, he doesn't have a lot of confidence, so he tends to dwell on the things he does wrong. And that can cause others to also dwell on his missteps and ignore his accomplishments.

This juxtaposition in his own character is what makes him so great. I love dark horse characters. There's something very inspiring about their journey of self love and community acceptance.

Everyone talks about how randoms get startled by Silver's incredible power, but nobody talks about how literally everyone else gets freaked out by it as well.

Like, everyone figures he's a marshmallow and then he shows off a bit and everyone pisses themselves.

Just saying, Silver may be my favorite character.

[catgirltoofies]

i think saints row 4 did something extremely good but in the wrong genre.

so, basically, saints row is a non-linear gangster open world game, similar to grand theft auto, mafia, and red dead redemption. it takes itself a lot less seriously, being full of jokes and gags, the quality of which are up to interpretation. more importantly, though, it was still mostly pretty sane with its broad theme - it was silly, sure, but it was still taking place in believable, grounded cities with gun stores and lots of cars and what have you.

in saints row 4, however, most of the game takes place in a simulation of the city saints row 3 takes place in, and one of the major abilities is just straight-up superpowers. you get to run super fast, jump across blocks at a time, and even fly, along with the myriad combat abilities. for the purposes of this argument, though, i want to hone in on one single ability: super-speed.

saints row, for all its silliness, is still a game based on driving stolen cars and making them look pretty. this is not the case for saints row 4, because while those systems are still in place, there's no reason to ever drive when you can just super-run and fly wherever you want, for free. this is why i think it's in the wrong genre; because of the super-speed, you're discouraged from using the major system of "steal cars and pimp them out".

which brings me to where i think it WOULD work. and that's the open-world rpg genre. of particular note, I'll call out the elder scrolls and assassin's creed.

first, elder scrolls: fast traveling is a good option to have, of course, but it almost completely negates exploring on foot. when's the last time you used a horse in skyrim? have you ever done mounted combat? both of them SUCK. horses are slow and clunky and mounted combat is finicky at best. enter super-speed. naturally, this would be disabled during combat, to avoid totally trivializing any encounter with just super-speed and a bow, as well as while overencumbered, but with super-speed, you no longer have to slowly trudge everywhere that doesn't have a fast travel marker. you get a shortcut to travel that doesn't disincentivize exploration, and it's not like this idea doesn't have precedent. look at morrowind, where you can down a dozen skooma and more than double your movement speed. this was how people got around! just bring back a method to boost speed, perhaps arbitrarily capping it to avoid clipping through walls.

next, assassin's creed. there's no kind of super-speed in any assassins creed game that I'm aware of, but it would WORK. horses, of course, give you the means to travel around with speed, and they're at least faster and easier to use than the horses in the elder scrolls, but once you get into combat you have to dismount, use overpowered horse archery, or use the godawful mounted melee combat. if there's a location only 300m away, summoning my horse is a chore just for a short jaunt, but running that distance on foot is agonizingly slow. simple solution: replace the mount with an Animus hyper-speed mode that makes time speed up until you disable it or get into combat.

please tell me any problems with this idea because i know my truth

[natreads]

woke up with a sore throat. the WORST of timings

[reasonsforhope]

People ask me sometimes how I'm so confident that we can beat climate change.

There are a lot of reasons, but here's a major one: it would take a really, really long time for Earth to genuinely become uninhabitable for humans.

Humans have, throughout history, carved out a living for themselves in some of the most harsh, uninhabitable corners of the world. The Arctic Circle. The Sahara. The peaks of the Himalayas. The densest, most tropical regions of the Amazon Rainforest. The Australian Outback. etc. etc.

Frankly, if there had been a land bridge to Antarctica, I'm pretty sure we would have been living there for thousands of years, too. And in fact, there are humans living in Antarctica now, albeit not permanently.

And now, we're not even facing down apocalypse, anymore. Here's a 2022 quote from the author of The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells, a leader on climate change and the furthest thing from a climate optimist:

"The most terrifying predictions [have been] made improbable by decarbonization and the most hopeful ones practically foreclosed by tragic delay. The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse. Over the last several months, I’ve had dozens of conversations — with climate scientists and economists and policymakers, advocates and activists and novelists and philosophers — about that new world and the ways we might conceptualize it. Perhaps the most capacious and galvanizing account is one I heard from Kate Marvel of NASA, a lead chapter author on the fifth National Climate Assessment: “The world will be what we make it.”" -David Wallace-Wells for the New York Times, October 26, 2022

If we can adapt to some of the harshest climates on the planet - if we could adapt to them thousands of years ago, without any hint of modern technology - then I have every faith that we can adjust to the world that is coming.

What matters now is how fast we can change, because there is a wide, wide gap between "climate apocalypse" and "no harm done." We've already passed no harm done; the climate disasters are here, and they've been here. People have died from climate disasters already, especially in the Global South, and that will keep happening.

But as long as we stay alive - as long as we keep each other alive - we will have centuries to fix the effects of climate change, as much as we possibly can.

And looking at how far we've come in the past two decades alone - in the past five years alone - I genuinely think it is inevitable that we will overcome climate change.

So, we're going to survive climate change, as a species.

What matters now is making sure that every possible individual human survives climate change as well.

What matters now is cutting emissions and reinventing the world as quickly as we possibly can.

What matters now is saving every life and livelihood and way of life that we possibly can.

[qoldenskies]

i think about raph in CL a lot for various well-discussed reasons but mannnnn the fact that he didn't get involved in the final chase at all until leo got hurt fucks with me so bad. the fact that he didn't actually want to kill donnie fuuuucks with me so bad. the fact that he was crying when he thought he HAD to kill him FUCKS WITH ME SO BAD

[lazer-exe]

hey guys, I have nothing against roleplaying, but it usually entails a lot of posts in succession and to those of us who aren't into rp, it can get kind of overwhelming in the main jse tag

so I just wanted to suggest maybe making a separate tag for rps as an alternative solution? it would both make it easier for you guys to find each other's posts, and it would make the main tag less cluttered

I just want to open a conversation I guess? how do you guys feel about this?

[lokh]

every day im reminded that though my parents may have wanted a dog they clearly did not want to take care of a dog

[worstloki]

Thor 1 is fun because Loki suffers from overthinking before he does stuff and Thor suffers from not thinking until after he’s done stuff and they both end up with the same results: making bad decisions

[dontmindmejustafangirl]

There is another kind of rage and despair you will feel when you are an artistic person studying and working in technological fields and you keep seeing your peers and people you are supposed to look up to blatantly using artists' hard work for training text-to-speech models.