#that system is the only one i know

[viablemess]

Bc this got me wondering:

I just found out one of my favorite AO3 authors of all time is a fucking neurosurgeon which was surprising initially just because I often forget AO3 writers are real people and not smut angels sent down from the heavens to make us feel alive, but in hindsight it makes perfect sense.

they are a fucking genius so. they just apply that genius to multiple fields.

[egophiliac]

So.... what are your thoughts on Ace's UM, if you haven't been asked this already?

sneaky magic for the sneakiest boy

no but really, I think it fits him really well! I had thought his UM would probably involve something kinda sleight-of-handy or pickpockety! and I looooved that it made such a nice loop-around back to episode 1. ❤️ I was. kind of half-expecting him to just run out and punch Riddle in the nose again. but instead this time 'twas he who offed the queen's head! it was great! and he did it while stone-cold terrified out of his mind! because Ace is the only remotely normal or well-adjusted person at NRC and therefore the only one who is like "we're going to literally die, this is super effed up". but he did it anyway!!!! I AM SO PROUD

[fairsweetlonging]

i'm absolutely weak for liu qingge returning fans in fics and eventually there being a part where shen qingqiu is given a fan that isn't his but not saying anything because he doesn't want to "embarrass liu-shidi", especially if the author doesn't elaborate so we never know if liu qingge is giving shen qingqiu gifts or if he accidentally stole someone else's fan out of habit.

[inbabylontheywept]

Soviet Birds.

The secret facility that I work in has holes in the ceiling. We don't know how to get them fixed.

We tried asking the government to fix it, once. We told them that the holes in the older parts of the facility had gotten large enough to fit birds through, and that birds were getting through, and that, perhaps, a Soviet Spy could fit through as well.

After all, it is well known that Soviet Spies and pigeons are approximately the same diameter.

Our hope was that that this vague and nonsensical threat would put a little fire under Uncle Sam's feet. If the fed couldn't be bothered to give a shit about the giant gaping holes in the roof of our facility, perhaps they could be persuaded to give a shit about... Soviet Spies.

This attempt at manipulation 100% blew up in our faces.

See, the government does not need to be persuaded to give a shit about Soviet Spies. It still wakes up most nights, drenched in cold sweat, terrified and confident that a Soviet Spy is hiding in their nightstand. If it sees a rock on the ground, it flips it over, pistol drawn, ready to shoot the Soviet Spy it fully expects to slither out from underneath. Which is to say: The government is crazy. So when we dropped those two words - inflitration risk - in the repair request, they came in guns-a-blazin'.

Does that mean that they fixed the roof? Of course not. Don't be stupid. No, instead of performing basic maintenance, they installed a state of the art alarm system throughout the facility - lasers, sonar, the works - and told us to always be on the guard. Because of the roof holes.

Then they left.

So now we had an extremely good alarm system... and birds. Which have combined in incredibly obvious and predictable ways to produce an unending fountain of problems.

For Example: About once a month, someone gets called in by the local airforce dispatch because AAAAAAAAAAA a Spy is in the Rad Lab! We're all gonna die! Except every time, it's a bird. And I get why we have to check, but every time, the dispatcher is panicked and the person going out has to be like listen, listen: It's a bird. It's always a bird. It's been a bird every month for the last fifteen years. It will be a bird next month. All this stress? Bad for your heart.

Second Example: Sometimes, birds get in while we're actually working. And when it's in the morning, you know, it's a nuisance, and it stops testing (we are not going to risk irradiating a bird) but it's not an all-hands-on-deck situation because it doesn't take ten hours to get a bird out. But surprisingly often, the bird gets in riiiiight at closing time, and in that situation, everyone goes feral because nobody can leave until the alarm is set, and we cannot set the alarm while the bird is there, because the bird would immediately trigger it and then we'd have to stay another 4 hours to confirm that it was not a Soviet Bird.

So in order to go home, everyone's top priority is Get That Bird. And we have a system for it.

Step 1: The test stands tend to be located in rooms with 30+ foot ceilings. We can't catch birds in places like that - so we have to lure the bird into the relatively low ceilinged (8 feet only) upper offices.

We do this by turning all the lights off in the test rooms, then putting floodlights by the exits. I don't know why this works - some kind of evolutionary brain fragment shared by both Bugs and Birds - but work it does. The birds almost always follow after the lights. From there, it’s just two guys moving the floodlight and a third guy to turn off the lights.

Step 2: Everyone else has been waiting for this step. There is this long stairway up from the basement level into the offices, and in the final stage, the floodlights are brought to the base of the stairwell to bring the bird up. At the top of the steps there will be a group of tennish people, waiting for the signal. The light guys will set up the final transfer, everyone will tense, and then, swish...a bird will flit up the stairs and into the offices.

It's like watching werewolves on a full moon. Before the bird cometh, we are engineers. Nerds. Pale and skinny things, trembling under the fluorescent lights. After the bird, we are beasts. Feral, gnawing things, glowing under the orange sunrise of the 70's halogen floodlights.

And like all beasts, we cannot help but give chase.

Step 3: The were-engineers begin the hunt. The goal at the start is not really to catch the bird - just exhaust it. So the pack simply does not relent. Because the stakes are going home on time, the group is basically given free reign to go anywhere in the building. If someone's door is open, and the bird goes inside, they're going to have to deal with ten sweaty panting maniacs leaping around their office. They don't get to say that they're busy, or remark on how all this movement is a terrible distraction. They are allowed to sit in silence during the chaos, and perhaps thank the war party for chasing the bird while they sat comfortably on their ass. This has been explained several times, and it will continue to be explained until cooperation is achieved.

Anyway.

The chase can go on for quite some time. Sometimes, the bird will get tired and find a crevice to hide in, where it can then be reached through standard cornered-bird catching techniques.

Other times, it will slow down enough that someone can actually yoink it out of the air. But this will go on until someone catches the bird and triggers Step 4.

Step 4: The Finale. This is the get-the-bird-out-of-the-building stage, and it requires someone to adopt a specific role: To Become the Sacrificial Vessel of Bird Removal.

This job is both coveted and feared. It's coveted, because holding a wild bird in one's hands is a precious thing. To feel how small, and fragile, and scared it is, only to free it from the building? That is what it's like to be a benevolent God. But the cost! Oh, the cost. The entire time the Vessel is in motion, the bird will be biting the hell out of their fingers. And I cannot emphasize enough just how painful bird bites are. Their entire face is a set of needle posed pliers, and they know tricks the even the cartels haven't figured out yet. So there's always a little hubbub about who shall be The Vessel while onlookers, stranded outside The Office of Bird Capture, can only look on. Quiet arguments and pleas are heard, little fragments of fear and pride and glory trickling out of room like the silver dust left behind in a bag of well shook quarters. The sound of concensus is silence, and the argument will go on until that's all that's left. And then, from the darkness of the final office, the chosen sacrifice will step forward: Hands gently cupped, tears streaming down their face, fingers trembling from the pain of the ongoing bird chomps.

And this scene is what organizes people. Not leadership, not truly. No one can think and coordinate a crowd while their fingers are being attacked with a combination nutcracker/ear piercer. But the crowd sees the suffering of their annointed, and it is driven to do everything poossible to make the process flow. People instinctively flair out, finding the fastest path outside. Doors are held open. Paths are cleared. Someone, somehow, always knows the way forward and can describe it to the sufferer. Left, left, forward. Corner closet. Yep, there's a hall in there. Forward. Two-hundred more feet man, you're doing great. Just hold it together a little longer. You're killing it.

Then the final door swings open, and the bird flees out into what remains of daylight. And yet, even here, the deed is not yet done. I cannot explain it in words, but the crowd that helped is never content until they can see and speak on the Bird Vessel's wounds. They all have to pull the fingers back and see what was given. Estimate the price: One day to get better - No, three - No, a week! Are you blind? Do you see that blood blister? -Yeah, that's not going away anytime soon - Damn, can you believe how feisty those things are? Like wolves without teeth.

(They cannot help but touch as they go. It has always been this way. Even Thomas was not content until he felt the wounds in Christ's hands.)

Only when the last of the helpers has seen, and commented, and commended, will the engineers scatter. It is their return from the underworld that announces to the sun living surface dwellers that they too can go home. (@somerunner tolja it needed to be a post.)

[rainscenes]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

At your side [End of Season 2]

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[cat-dragron-arts]

It's my art style and I can draw Miki however I want! Also having fun with Dr. Mensah and TargetControlSystem :]

[methoughtsphantom]

Jason “my family doesn’t know im alive” Todd and Danny “my family doesn’t know I’m dead” Fenton going alongside each of their plans my beloved. like Danny will absolutely go head-to-head with all of Gotham to support his new best friend on all his crime lord endeavors while he drags Jason to also attend collage with him. They are roommates and there never seems to a mention of family from either side. It’s an unspoken understanding they have. They met because Crime alley as a ghost lair thrummed with so much loneliness, it was at first the perfect place for Danny to hide his ecto signature in. But then he saw the dumbass whose lair it was lean his motorcycle just a tad too much when making a sharp turn to an alley, he sweeped the floor through a lifted chain link that passed his body but not his helmet. Yep that’s right the red thing got stuck. Danny who at the moment happened to be watching through his window snorted. Much to his horror because if not a ghost that dude could’ve gotten his head flung off.

Still, the scene was ridiculous.

On a whim he irrationally sees the police closing in on the guy and panicked at the thought of the guy using intangibility to free himself so Danny phased them both through his apartment wall and left the guy sprawled in his couch. Jason didn’t freak out but that’s normal when one’s got a concussion, one the guy immediately denied having as Danny laid out the medical supplies. The idiot proceeded to almost flatten four steps to the door with his stubbornness. He also said “I’m asexual” in the most deadpan voice as Danny dropped him back in the couch.

Danny sighed. Clearly though, he’d done so too early in the night because the guy kept trying to go, kept trying to knock Danny out, kept trying to slash him with knifes Danny didn’t know he had stashed. He’d only disarmed the guy from his guns. The visible ones apparently, cause at one point the guy did take out a gun and shoot until the ammo ran out and then teetered the thing like it was an art prop and hit his moon lamp.

Danny "yeah you aren’t officially my friend until you’ve tried to kill me" fenton my guys.

Anyways both keep having the same argument over if Danny technically kidnapped Jason or not. Danny holds the fact that the police at least didn’t see the guy make the ridicule. Jason argued that happened cause he was sporting a concussion. Danny argued he got that after.

Jason at first thinks the guy's a meta, but no. Danny introduces himself, sheepily now that he recognizes this is who the lair he invaded is from. He bandages him and tries to cook for him. If Danny didn’t have ice powers he most certainly would’ve burned the apartment. Jason then proceeds to kick him out of his own kitchen and make them both enchiladas. It’s the most normal both had in a while with another person and the air seems oddly settled. From then on, Jason constantly invited himself over, under the pretense that this was his territory and therefore he could drop in unannounced. Danny who has actual powers says he only allows this because Jason cooks very well.

Danny stays away from the crime fighting business unless his buddy is in deep shit he can’t get himself out. Also it’s Danny’s turn to cover for his vigilante friend which Sam and Tucker give him so much shit for. (but also advice)

And they were roommates. (omg) Danny effectively derails Jason’s big comeback plans by casually dropping ghost lore every two days. Like,

Jason, talking about how he doesn’t want Bats snooping on his territory:

Danny: Just don’t let them in

Jason: ??

Danny: yeah!! Hasn’t Batman died and got revived??? You can totally kick out death touched people you don’t want entering on your lair.

Jason: …I can?

Danny: Yep dude, your lair’s supposed to feel safe.

Jason: wait does that mean I can kick you out?

Danny: First this is my apartment. Second, im dead, not dead touched. Third, it’s too late to get rid of me. bitch.

Anyways Jason is super excited. You mean to tell him he can actually deny people over to his territory haunt?? (Yes it’s only to people who have died and came back but still!! The sample size is exactly the type of people he doesn’t want to see—!)

Joker my beloathed can’t step foot in Crime Alley.

(Jason’d feel a lot safer if the clown was dead but the possibility of his murderer turning into a ghost and their little loophole not applying on the clown is too scary to contemplate.)

Anyways, Jason loves experimenting with the power. It can go from simply making people shudder and not want to enter crime Alley to straight up not letting them enter like there’s an invisible wall blocking the way.

Jason because he’s hurt that Bruce never even patrols Crime Alley and also because he’s petty put B under the category of ���invisible wall” blacklist. His reasoning is that the man doesn’t even attempt to enter Crime Alley. To him it’s surely just a place shadowed in tragedy. (anyways that’s it’s the place he met Jason)

Ironically, Jason totally forgets that Batman does venture into Crime Alley one day in the whole year. The day he met Jason.

Okay. He didn’t forget at first. The first year Jason remembers cause it was only a few months till then but then the next— Jason forgets that today’s the anniversary of the day’s Bruce’s parents died. He forgets to allow B in when he feels a slight tug and dismiss the feeling that prompts Bruce to investigate because he literally can’t enter Crime Alley. He starts the trialsTM, he scouts on the very edge and sees people the whole day enter and get out and cross with no problem but Bruce can’t.

It’s literally just Bruce.

Time to call Constantine, i guess.

[jojea]

airplane shooting towards the sky coming to ur local holmat next saturday ✌🏼✈️

[jajanvm-imbi]

My two favorite anarchists 🥰🥰

[starchbean]

AU where Shen Jiu Qingqiu is forced to confront just how messed up his body and cultivation are

He realizes he's one bad qi deviation away from being a goner, and that qi deviation is basically inevitable in time

So he goes and snatches a suitable body with good spiritual veins. He wanted to put his demonic cultivation behind him, but this is an emergency, and in a matter of life and death, he ALWAYS will find a way to endure.

Except when he performs the ritual to transfer his own consciousness into the acceptable body candidate, something gets messed up, and he transfers someone else into the body instead. Another Shen, so the new inhabitant of the body says, who was dying of food poisoning until Shen Jiu performed the ritual.

This ridiculous Shen Yuan is saying that Shen Jiu saved his life, even though Shen Jiu TOLD him that he was a mistake! He is offering knowledge of the future as thanks, which is only more suspicious!!

But this horrible, spoiled little man does definitely hold a secret close to his chest of some kind, and Shen Qingqiu is determined to figure out what it is before being rid of Shen Yuan.

So Shen Jiu repeats the process of finding a suitable body for himself, repeats the transferal ritual, and--

ANOTHER FUCKING SHEN YUAN SHOWS UP IN THIS BODY TOO!!

((*Slaps roof of this AU* This [Qing Jing Peak] can fit SO MANY fucking [Shen Yuans] in it!))

And then the expected fatal qi deviation... it finally happens. But when it does, the Shen Yuans catch him early on and don't let him die. Shen Jiu isn't sure exactly what they do to him, but his mouth tastes like blood. They definitely transfered energy, alerted Mu Qingfang and Yue Qingyuan, and some unidentified third thing. The Little Beast is clinging to one of the Shen Yuans like a barnacle now, but that's hardly Shen Qingqiu's biggest concern at the moment.

He's alive. His qi is flowing. It hurts like a bitch, even now, but his spiritual pathways seem to be opening up again somehow???

[devestatedutterlydevestated]

tianlang jun is such a fucking simp i see where luo binghe got it from jesus christ

[yeonjune]

Yeonjun about the strain he felt while preparing for his debut solo project ✙ "GGUM" MAKING FILM

[xxplastic-cubexx]

was talking to my brother the other day after i rewatched dark phoenix and he was like 'why is everyone so mean to charles in this movie?? were they always this mean to him ?? is it cause he's bald now- he lost his pretty privilege??' and i fear i havent recovered

[ectocosme]

"do wooden snakes dream of shedding their skin?"

happy lunar new year to those who celebrate!! 🧧

[fairsweetlonging]

just saw a comment on tiktok saying that the bamboo house is called that because it's set in the bamboo forest, and not because it's made of bamboo, and i uh. i feel betrayed. and very dumb