#t counter

[weirdnerdstr]

Gimmick blogs are rad

I love all of you

Yes please tell me which car that is in the back

Yes please do rate my orange text

Yes please do find stupid accidental haikus

Yes please please do count the number of times I used the letter "T" please

[garsash]

do y'all ever think about becoming a gimmick blog irl

like you're having a normal conversation with someone and then they suddenly quote what you just said back at you but as a haiku

or like at the end of an interaction you're both about to walk away and they start muttering statistics like number of filler words or times you said the letter T

[dont-look-me-in-the-eye]

i think haiku bot is in love with t counter. do you understand.

[gods-favorite-autistic]

I want someone to look at me the way gimmick blogs look at other gimmick blogs

Specifically the way @t-counter @t-georg and @the-haiku-bot look at each other

[fossilized-honey]

Personally, I think the Haiku bot and The T counter should kiss.

[ghostsagainstcircus]

Honestly, I will be happy if any bot with a silly premise reblog one of my posts. Like that one bot that counts all of the Ts in a post, whatever it is called.

[otterlywyrdfirbolg]

Setting a trap to entice the t counter.

Trying to tantalize the t counter with the bait ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.

Tempting with a thorough amount of Ts.

[stemdapple]

I’m not them, I could never be the T counter, but I will do it right now to defend The T Counter. 14 Ts

the gimmick blogs are like tumblr’s rogue gallery. yes we’ve got some heroes, yes we’ve got some villains, but more importantly if you look over here you will see some freak who devotes all their time to counting the number of “t’s” in a post

[weirdnerdstr]

Yes, I ship @t-counter and @the-haiku-bot

Thank you for listening

[theidealistcynic]

But, like, does the T-bot calculate the correct number of 'T's in the average post by looking at the posts it replies to and performing actual statistical calculations it or does it have a set number that it compares everything to? Because the only times I see it, the poster used the letter T fewer times than average, and so if it has a predetermined number I think that number is wrong. (and yes this post is intentionally a bit t-heavy to balance that out)

[non-stick-pansexual]

I headcanon that t-counter and the-haiku-bot are friends because t counter’s comments are always haikus.

[gods-favorite-autistic]

@t-counter’s statistic of how often the average person uses a t in a sentence is incorrect. T-georg (not to be confused with testosterone georg, who uses 15 shots of testosterone per day), who lives in a cave and adds a t to the beginning and end of every word, is an outlier adn should not be counted

[havefunbecool]

akron, oh

[anidiotwithfanfiction]

So like how about that gender envy

[mleprae]

LEPROSY 101

that I spent almost a week writing for my seminar, I simplified as much as I could 😭 the original text is WAYYY too long for a 20 mins presentation, so this is the ADHD version

WHY? Maybe you want to chuck leprosy facts at people. I dunno

WHAT IS IT? NOT a skin disease and NOT a neurological one either, it is considered a 'granulomatous' disease. A granuloma is when a bunch of immune cells form a barrier around a foreign object that they cannot destroy! If you ever had a piercing or had a wood barb and you got a little red bump around the area, congrats, you had a granuloma! There are many different types of granulomas for different situations. It also forms plaques (itchy, red lesions that 'flake off') and macules (small patches of skin that lost it melanin), there are many types of these lesions! But the ones that are unique to leprosy are the ones called 'Saucer right way up' and 'Swiss cheese lesion'

WHERE DID IT COME FROM? So many theories so many ideas, the boring one? Africa, like many diseases have. The popular one? Asia and middle east, leprosy is a ""tropical"" disease, there are a few theories to explain how a "tropical" disease managed to get to Europe in the first place, the most favored one is that it got spread by crusaders after the first crusade, given that leprosy was estabilished around that trail.

I'm not a historian, so I only regurgitate what I know, and what I DO know is that before that, a bacteria went through speciation; which is when an species divides into 2 different species. One, went to become the deadliest, infectious, and most aggressive disease known to man and the other one was leprosy.

Tuberculosis and leprosy are each other closest relatives, they share a lot of genetic information together and they sometimes co-infect the same host, they are very close! How cute.

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? Mycobacteria have around 100 known members, they are, VERY good at surviving, except for leprosy who's the 'odd one out'. Leprosy has a VERY interesting strategy; it avoids the warmest places of the body and chooses the coldest regions... this is why I put "tropical" in quotations, it doesn't like warmth at all!

It will always, whenever possible, choose to colonize the coldest body parts; The skin, the eyes, nose and ears, the nerves, the testicles and the lung mucosa. (That's the wet and slimy part of your lungs!) This is important to note, other members of the Mycobacteria do just fine in warmer places, it's just leprosy that does this and reason is, to put it a bit vulgarly, is that this little Bacteria is, a pussy and a coward. The colder a tissue is, the less blood it receives, the less blood it receives, the smaller the traffic of immune cells! Your blood is a highway of patrolling soldiers, and leprosy became REALLY good at avoiding these highways, because it knows that warmth attracts them. The better example is the testicles and the nervous system, those two guys are what we call 'Immunoprivileged', some organs are so complex that they cannot regenerate, any damage to them is permanent! This means that the immune system has to act very carefully when threading around these parts, and even then, only very specific cells can act there. Leprosy knows this, and it targets the nerves and the testes because it knows that the immune system can do jack shit to it while it's there.

The warmth, again, is what deters it from going deeper into the body, you may have heard that leprosy causes loss of sensation, which is true, we call it 'Glove and stocking neuropathy' because it only affects the arms, and down the knees. Any other part is too warm for leprosy to be comfortable in.

HOW DOES IT STARTS? We don't know exactly the reason why some people can catch leprosy and some do not, it's due to genetics, of course, but we don't know exactly. Some ethnicities are prone to it while others are more resistant, we know it's very infectious but we aren't 100% sure on how it spreads from person to person. (Most seem to agree it's airborne) Leprosy is usually neural in it's inception, meaning that the first symptoms are probably going to be related to the nerves, HOWEVER, it has been noted that lepromatous leprosy, the deadliest type, starts with constant nosebleeds and trouble breathing as well as leg swelling.

And I hear you say, yes, leprosy has types! Currently, we know 8 different types of leprosy but every now and then a new weird case pops up, and researchers argue if it's a new type or not. You don't need to memorize them, only know that lepromatous leprosy is the one you are probably familiar with.

When the population of the bacteria grows, it starts moving to other parts, the skin and eyes and what not. Sometimes it gets carried into internal organs, mostly by accident, though, but it is able to stabilish itself there since it has grown in size.

HOW THE IMMUNE SYSTEM REACTS? Complicated question, in Tuberculoid leprosy you have a very aggressive response from our little microscopic crusaders, this is where 'spotaneous recovery' can happen, this doesn't mean that leprosy is gone, just that it goes dormant after being beaten by giant angry amebas that make up our immune system.

The bacteria can only survive inside the cells of our body, so in TB leprosy, the cells that are infected with the bacteria are instructed to make their bodies more acidic, destroying any invaders they might have, they also sound the alarm so other immune cells come rushing to where leprosy was spotted and help them destroy it

In lepromatous leprosy, for reasons we don't quite understand, the immune reaction isn't led by the cells at all...? In this case, the cells also sound the alarm, but it's not one to call others to arms, no, it's the one that basically tells "RUN AWAY AND STOP FIGHTING." for unknown reasons, leprosy can make the immune system incredibly incompetent at it's job? Making the infection SO much worse in the long run.

Usually, bacteria "smell" bad, very bad. And that smell is what make immune cells so aggressive, basically sending them into a frenzy the stronger the smell is. But leprosy "smell" can make some cells very unresponsive and docile, which is something I simply never even considered possible. Ever.

WHY DO WE STILL KNOW SO LITTLE? We can't study leprosy in the laboratory... yet, it's way too dependent on us as hosts so it cannot survive outside a body for too long. This means that getting samples, and keeping the bacteria alive is too difficult. One thing that has plagued many researchers (and me, honestly.) is the diffusive lepromatous leprosy type, for reasons we don't understand, leprosy decides to dig into warmer parts of the body, or that it can REPROGRAM CELLS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM, which is an INSANE thing to do?!? I know I say it alot but I can't wrap my head around it, it could be used to cure Alzheimer and Parkinson's if we ever figure out how it does it !! But we just know so little, there's just not enough funding to go around.. alas.

[lemurballing]

The Tangleification of Whisper

aka a catchy title for my musings on how Whisper's characterization has changed overall across IDW - and to bring up some thoughts on what it might imply that Whisper is given this clear resemblance to Tangle herself.

If you haven't read the 2024 winter annual yet, this post does contain panels lifted from that -- read at your own risk.

First of all, let's look at where Whisper started - what she was like before the 'Tangleification' - so you can see how big a change it is from one section to the other. I do understand that 'characterization marches on' and being free to re-evaluate and adjust a character's interpretation over time can fine-tune a story into becoming something greater - but I will also try to explain why this specific character evolution is significant to my eyes, and implications it carries.

We first meet Whisper in Issue #8, where she displays pretty clear signs of avoiding people not just to keep to herself, but because of social anxiety. She trails Sonic and supports him from afar, but as soon as they notice her she gives up her immediate goal and leaps away to lose their attention:

And from Silver's comments, she was evidently this evasive for the entirety of the Forces war:

With the benefit of hindsight and retroactive application of motive, one might assume Whisper was keeping out of sight so Mimic would continue to believe she was dead and not track after her, but seeing how she acts in these and the next issues (at least, her appearances before Tangle & Whisper), that's definitely not the initial aims with her character.

Whisper shows no reservations besides her own displayed social anxiety to the idea of joining with someone else as a team, or affiliating herself with them. If Mimic was a thing in Whisper's story at this time, she wouldn't be smiling at the idea, she'd still have the same reservations she brings up later with Tangle.

Additionally, the way other characters behave around and address Whisper reinforce the idea that this aversion to company is an issue of anxiety or discomfort: that Whisper is definitively introverted and likes to operate alone (besides the wisps), instead of being forced to.

One of the bigger reasons I want to resurface this initial characterization of Whisper is because it is so interesting to have a member of the cast who IS genuinely introverted and doesn't want to deal with a large number of people. Even the more antisocial/lone wolf of Sonic's friends are that way because they simply don't connect or see a reason to become close to other people, not because it bothers them in particular.

Whisper, at this point, is a very unique example of someone shy still involving themselves in the fight, instead of the more common bombastic or loud personalities. Espio is probably the only other 'quiet' character, and that's still different because he isn't really 'shy'.

Then we see a little change in Tangle & Whisper, upon first being introduced to the idea that Whisper's current quiet personality is due to personal trauma and not simply a facet of the person she is, in seeing her pre-trauma personality be more enthusiastic. (BIG EDIT: I could elaborate more in a separate addition, but pre-T&W, Whisper is seen smiling far often than in T&W proper - so this is relegating the smiling to pre-trauma, instead of adding smiling at all - but the enthusiasm is new!)

This is every line of dialogue we see from pre-trauma Whisper in Tangle & Whisper. We can see only two panels where she's smiling; in one, with her eyes wide open, and in the other, with her eyes closed as is more typical of Whisper as she was introduced. The other three panels only contain dialogue, which does allow some inferences on Whisper's demeanor and personality.

This 2-panel sequence has the most information to speculate off - Whisper makes a statement in two parts. The particular decision to make "Tank inbound." a separate separate sentence implies it is spoken tersely, or while Whisper is in 'mission-focus', and less likely with a playful tone. This then contrasts her "Never mind!" and giggle in the next panel, building an impression that she's typically got a serious focus (at least while on a mission), but lets humor leak through when things go their way.

The other thing to note is that these panels are a very limited sample set, and the visual appearances are biased - when expressing gratitude to someone, or taking a group picture, it's only natural to put a smile on, even if you don't typically smile most of the time. We also only see Whisper around individuals she's already familiar with, so there's not necessarily any proof that at this point Whisper doesn't have any social anxiety, or that she would necessarily conflict with her earlier appearances around Sonic and Silver and everyone else.

So while Tangle & Whisper introduced the idea of Whisper being louder before losing her teammates, it's the 2024 annual that REALLY dials it up:

Whisper not whispering in the slightest, and in fact being a motormouth!

Whisper with wide eyes and/or a smile in virtually every panel she appears in, and thriving while in the thick of the group or having one of the others' attention on her, and...

...Whisper pulling this specific expression, which quite resembles the expression Tangle made while also seeing someone else display a really cool power they have.

It's almost strange to me, because we do have a good reason for Whisper to become more outgoing and outspoken... but that's in the present time period due to Tangle's influence, not necessarily her pre-trauma self!

The choice to rebuild Whisper as someone as inherently extroverted and attention-loving as Tangle also builds a comparison between the two: the idea that they started out so similarly, you can't help but wonder if the implication given is that Tangle going through Whisper's situation would result in the same personality developments, because Whisper's quiet personality is retroactively attributed to the trauma she gained, instead of being her natural personality.

Personally, I'm very fond of the characterization Whisper has closer to her introduction, and I would find it boring to effectively reduce her and Tangle to the same base personality, give or take tail powers and some trauma, instead of leaving them as distinct people at core: that even if they had gone through the same experiences, they'd still come out a little different, but they strive to understand and work with each other anyways.

...I've also got a meta-gripe in that you can write Whisper positively with Tangle's traits, but Tangle's in the thick of getting judged for having them...