#that's an essential to me but idk if that's universal

[unopenablebox]

i can't actually bring myself to name the post i was originally thinking about for various reasons, some cowardly and some reasonably intellectually honest. so instead i'm going to air a bunch of uncoordinated grievances culled from a wide variety of sources

unfortunately i have spent several years being driven insane by random one off tumblr comments about science that i took incredibly personally and now i have a million deranged complaints about how no one is nice enough to me about my job

like. idk. it would be nice if people were willing to extend the benefit of the doubt for ideas like: maybe scientists also know that measurements we use are proxies for the underlying thing, and that might have something to do with why we often try to have three or four different ways of checking for what we hope is the same phenomenon. but ultimately we do just have to try to use the tools that currently exist to look at the world and report honestly on what we think it looks like. "can you believe scientists think x is the only thing that would show whether something is y" look we're just trying to figure something out that we can get to work repeatedly so that literally anyone else can actually check our work. and that's actually very hard to do. ofc these concepts are themselves culturally and historically contingent and a lot of other factors go into the formulation of what an experiment is or how things get solidified as canonical methods etc. but i don't think "we would like to do things that have a hope of being consistently doable so that things can be compared to each other, and people can meaningfully describe things to each other and be understood, and that shapes what experiments we in practice do" is some kind of deeply suspect motivation on either a personal or institutional level and it would be nice if people acknowledged that that is often a driver for what actually is done. sometimes you do what's possible and describable.

or. idk. this one is also kind of about my own interpersonal experience and not a tumblr post, though still kind of about tumblr posts. but like. scientists absolutely make what are essentially personal judgments based on aesthetics or sensibilities about what to study. because there's so much fucking stuff. and it can't all be "what kills the most people" or "what has money available", not least because some of us can't actually keep going day to day on the basis of either of those, but also because even within those the universe is full of stuff. and 1. yes, in fact this means expanding the set of people making those judgments and what kinds of experiences shaped their sensibilities is very valuable, as one of several arguments for improving diversity in science but also 2. we're not, like, automatons gleefully doing Soulless Nonsense while cackling about how we're keeping everyone from learning about the true beauty of the world that real people care about. we're real people also. (it's also, incidentally, not a sick burn to explain to us that we were using human judgment and impulses while we were studying science. we have all lived inside our own brains while doing this and also attended so many seminars where someone helpfully explained it like it was new information.)

like, personally, i think it's really exciting when proteins can consistently arrange themselves on only one side of a cell. because it looks really cool and it's exciting to think about and doesn't obviously fall out of what we already know proteins do. this isn't, like, a sign of a fundamentally corrupt and cold nature that doesn't understand the world's beauty. no one is ever going to pay me lots of money in exchange for my thrilling new results about cell shapes i just think they're really beautiful and interesting. but i resent having to piously announce that i'm really interested in the World's True Beauty and Animals and the Mystical Wonders of Nature in order to communicate this point. i intrinsically value and care about what proteins do and that's the framework i'm operating in and that's the kind of thing that motivates a lot of people in science and it's simply not reasonable to act like that's some kind of evil alien motivation unmoored from the true human impulse. like i actually am mostly doing this because i also really like that kinesin animation where it walks on a microtubule. i just got really into it.

on a separate point, i know that reading scientific papers is hard and a trained skill, and contextualizing them is really annoying, but unfortunately we are just going to have to maintain a saintlike state of mild skepticism about strong claims made in university press releases that are then breathlessly repeated on tumblr. nothing to be done about that right now they'll just say whatever unfortunately. i promise to continue writing bitchy four-paragraph posts about their conceptual limits if and when i happen to notice one i know enough about to evaluate and then also have time to do it

[petorahs]

Aventurine and Sunday doomed soulmates in a yuri way... does no one else get the vision...

[lilacerull0]

i haven't even seen the episode yet, but learning about the fact that they didn't include such an essential aspect of the story is making me feel so irrationally sad

[gregmarriage]

today is my first day being alive. apparently, it’s a lot of gritting your teeth, and trying to get on with things. mainly saying ‘moving on!’ when the thoughts get real weird

[touchlikethesun]

okay so this is not about anything specific just a response to some back-and-forths i've been been seeing recently but it can be true that some americans are entitled and ignorant when encountering other cultures AND that some europeans have a superiority complex towards americans that make them hair triggered against any comment from americans about their experience in europe. like trust that i really try hard to see both sides, but sometimes, when an american talks about their experience in europe or (god forbid) complains about it, some europeans will respond with such vitriol and condescension that really isn't warranted in the slightest. in the end, we really are so much more alike than we are different. people are the same everywhere, they really really are. everyone complains, everyone shit talks, everyone has their own form of ignorance. it's just that the particular flavour changes from place to place. everyone is so defensive and i don't get why we have such violent reactions when talking about cultural differences. please, can we stop the fighting it's so pointless.

[supersymmetries]

i've finally reached the part in the semester where we're covering the second law of thermodynamics. matt bellamy we're in it together now

[gravesung-moving]

(sighing dreamily) chiaki in an awakened state is Fucking Terrifying.

[stunnedswallow]

they should let the master of masters mess with the subtitles like how beatrice from umineko can use different colored text to convey different meanings

[lighthouseas]

sometimes i think about the implication that the ud was probably always meant to remain untouched - it was human interference (vecna's) that caused the mind flayer to Look Like That™️. it was vecna's interference that made the demogorgons/demodogs so aggressive. he opened the gates, so they started feeding on the first things they saw. what else were they supposed to do? their world had changed completely, and now there was an opportunity to feed. they took it.

thinking about the ud untouched by human life. thinking about how earth and the ud are parallel universes - and parallels are not supposed to touch. they exist alongside one another and are never supposed to meet. no wonder shit was fucked up when they did. humans were NEVER supposed to touch that place!!!! hell, they weren't even supposed to find out about it!!!

the upside down was YELLOW before vecna touched it. now it's red and blue. vecna interfered. vecna destroyed it, colonized it, essentially. actually, no, fuck it. EVERYONE who touched it took part in its destruction (unintentionally or not).

humans were never supposed to make contact with the upside down - and because they did, their world is coming to an end.

[ridgystacis]

imma write down some quick thoughts on narratives as living things real quick

Deltarune has got itself a really healthy narrative, alright? It's thriving, its guiding the path in the background, tangible yet invisible. It's the ferris wheel scene for Noelle and Susie -- a convenient set-up marks the deft hand of fate moving to direct the pieces and roles into their correct places, narrative framing, art. Its vigor is its emotion, the satisfaction one feels and it fuels within a desire to live and experience with it. You can feel it within every sequence, the warmth of a song for you.

And then you got the narrative in something like Devil May Cry 5. This narrative is rotting, full decay. The characters must play roles that don't fit them, it's oozing and slippery and they fall into patterns, moving further along with no ability stop what is mundane now. It's later seasons of sitcoms, stories repeating again and again except that it's not a cycle, it's a spiral, and it's been spoiling this entire time. Why do Dante and Vergil have to fight? It's because they're the protagonist and antagonist of an action game that refuses to ever let them die because it has one story it wants to tell. As the narrative dies they corrode with it, continuing to play out their roles and awaiting to be fossilized in them.

so like, games where the narrative is a living, breathing thing am i right?

[hoperays-song]

Some of my OCs with the most chaotic descriptions I could think of

Eijiro and Leki: Gay enemies to lovers lawyer editions

Lila and Ellie: The best moms™

Jia: Looks like a cinnamon roll, will kill you

London: Electro music personified

Hira and Quentin: Former class president and near dropout turned tired parents

Perry: A living cactus with the personality of a wet cat

Raghubir and Thao: "You're our brother now, were having soft tacos later!"

Lorrel: Cries at horror movie descriptions

Amy and Bella: Bouncy balls with hyperfixations and a surprising amount of blackmail

[ossifer]

any time i feel like saying “hey, how do you not like [thing i like]? what's wrong with it?” i remember that i cannot stand the smell nor taste of cheese and that somehow every destiny's child song makes me want to claw my skin off and eat it. sometimes people just dislike things and that's something you have to accept

[maraeffect]

started watching hopecore right before bed and MAN. what a life it is we live on this earth.

[tardis--dreams]

I hate small classes. I feel like i should let my lecturer know i won't come to class today just because we're already very few people

[antimnemonic]

[screams-of-the-damned84]

(flops on stage) i now present to you my very silly swap au,,,

essentially jasper is now the co-leader of the society who was bitten by a werewolf and is trying to hide it, jekyll is the uni student who got kicked out due to his experiments and then picked up off the streets, etc. jasper and rachel can’t communicate and jekyll and lanyon are living the world’s weirdest horror romcom you’ve ever seen. more info under cut hehe (feat. bad explanations and doodles)

in simpler terms, jekyll and lanyon swap narrative positions (?? is that the right term) with jasper and rachel respectively. (lanyons and rachels swap doesn’t technically work as well as Jekyll’s and jaspers does but shhhhh). Frankenstein becomes the mad scientist that attacks the society and moreau becomes jaspers idol.

longer explanation but WARNING!! it is 3am when i am typing this and i am terrible at explaining. it may be slightly incomprehensible.

so like jasper and rachel founded the society after jasper publishes his research and gets semi famous. two years before current events jasper is out on a research venture and gets bitten by a werewolf. he doesn’t want to scare rachel or the lodgers so he keeps it a secret (to his own detriment). flash forward to now and jasper gets a call to investigate a “creature” terrorizing the streets of london only to find hyde.

before jasper can process the dumpster man he is looking at hyde transforms back into jekyll. jekyll explains that while trying to prove his theory of spiritual alchemy at his university he may or may not have split his own soul. and got kicked out. and is now living on the streets.

jasper, not really knowing what else to do and kinda relating to the poor guy, takes him back to the society. he introduces his co-leader rachel, who pretty much keeps this entire thing up and running. (rachel and jekyll still become friends but she especially takes to hyde. that little brother shaped hole in her heart is still very much present!) then theres the lodgers (idk how they all swap) and then there’s lanyon, a university student at the society because it was mandatory for one of his courses. he is not enjoying it and would very much rather be breaking boy’s hearts back at school. lucky for him tho, there’s jekyll!

this goes about as well as you would expect. lanyon then spends the rest of his stay at the society trying to understand (and woo) the conundrum that is jekyll and hyde. it’s very fluffy and they learn to communicate like jasper and rachel in canon (yippee!)

unfortunately for jasper and rachel, they have been playing the “just friends” game for the last decade. im having a bit of trouble trying to flesh out swap rachel so i don’t really know if she’s in a lavender marriage like canon lanyon is or is estranged/divorced or just single but whatever the case is she likes jasper but thinks he just sees her as a friend while jasper is madly in love with her and is too scared to tell her. this problem has only worsened since jasper got bitten. everyone else tho is aware of how they feel about each other and are stuck witnessing their tortuously long slow burn.

(hyde and lanyon at some point probably come up with a scheme to try and get them to confess. it goes horribly wrong.)

so yeah. this au has been floating around in my head ever since i read the comic for the first time. it mainly came to be because of how well jasper and jekyll parallel each other and because i wanted to draw stupid fluff and older jasper lol.

if anyone has any ideas/questions/etc TELL ME!!!!! this is just a rough idea if you have a better concept go for it awhdvgevd