#we've put proper research into this

[daintydolldiary]

I want someone to cut pieces of my flesh out as I'm awake, feeling every single agonizing cut through my flesh. Just so they can eat me! Don't you know meat lasts much longer if you keep it alive? The freshest meal whenever you want a bite~

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

Top 10 Things I Love About the QL Tumblr Community 2023

I'm loving everyone's end of year lists, and decided to make up one of my own.

I haven't been on Tumblr for very long and was originally just lurking. 2023 marks the year where I finally started posting, after I read a take that made me feel compelled to come to a fictional character's defense. (Saengtai, my poor little blorbo).

So in commemoration of my first proper year of active tumblring, I present what I love about this community (in no particular order).

(Side note - Technically I know this is still primarily a BL community, but I like to say QL because I am trying to manifest more lesbians for us.)

1) The Gifmakers

Y'all are a good 70% of the reason I joined Tumblr in the first place. There are so many show moments that I want to relive, but without having to search through videos. Sometimes I want to appreciate the aesthetics. Sometimes I want to remember adorable or goofy moments. Sometimes I just want to see cute boys eating each other's faces. Our gifmakers give all of that to us, with the addition of so much creativity and style.

There's too many amazing ones to mention everyone, but I have to shout out @sparklyeyedhimbo, because the way your brain works makes me so happy.

2) The expertise

The other part of why I joined Tumblr was to learn more about what BLs were out there and what I might be missing. And holy hell. Y'all are putting in the work. Not only lists and resources for finding all kinds of QLs, like these fabulous monthly breakdowns by @gunsatthaphan, but also amazing posts that add additional context, like @absolutebl's incredibly helpful breakdown of Asian honorifics. There is so much research people do, for fun! And then they share it!

3) The meta analysis

I frickin love reading people's takes and analyses on series. I love learning, I love seeing perspectives from people with different cultural backgrounds to my own, it's all so fascinating! There's so much context we can miss due to our own privileges, or lack of knowing about various cultures, or due to whatever bubbles we've been living in. People here are just so smart, and nuanced, and willing to reflect and think about things, and also push back at each other, but generally with respect (except when you call out the dumb shit you see, usually on Twitter or TikTok, where people are being reductive and dumb about gender and sexuality).

And I've seen a few takes where people complain about analyses, and say that the director/production doesn't do everything deliberately, and we're all reading too much into it. To which I say, eh, lighten up. How people connect to and relate to media has relevance beyond what was intended. The point is we get to think and discuss and learn and grow. That doesn't happen if we don't analyze.

Special shout out here to @respectthepetty because colors mean things!

4) The wild theories

The other side of the analysis coin, the clown cars y'all drive around in with the wildest of theories. I have happily climbed into an occasional clown car, and usually I am utterly wrong (*cough* Saifah *cough*). But it's a super fun ride. I love seeing how people's brains work. I love it when y'all are wrong. I love it when y'all are right. It's beautiful.

5) Immediate acceptance

I am one of those people who knows that I have a lot of good qualities, and also, always kind of expect rejection. Blame the childhood bullies, I guess. Anyway, whenever I delve into a new space, I still feel like a total dork that no one will want to talk to. It's kind of a fraught way to move through the world, but I manage.

Anyway, I started posting my thoughts as they came up, and people are just totally cool with it. People even follow me sometimes. Even my silliest thoughts and dumbest jokes get at least a couple likes. It's so validating.

And my very silly joke about gay mafia in Kiseki has over 800 likes. I feel very seen.

6) Mutuals

I still kind of can't believe I have any. This ties in to the dork feeling above, but seriously - they are soooo cooooool. They're smart and awesome and funny, and they somehow find me worth following back, which is baffling yet wonderful. I want to squish their faces and give them many kisses (if they're into that kind of thing).

7) The self-exploration

I really appreciate how it's become more talked about how a lot of people are discovering queerness through BL, because that is so the case for me. I think it's both that I was in a bit of a hetero bubble before, and also that I'm evolving a bit as I age. I had figured out I was demi, and maybe a little bit gay, before getting in to BL, but being in this community, and seeing so many of you share so openly and freely, has made me realize it might be more than a little bit.

Either it was a new realization, or being around y'all has made me more gay. Win win, either way.

8) The weirdness

I'm weird. Y'all are weird. I love it.

9) The thirst

So many in this community are thirsty as fuck, and as someone who is in that same condition, I love that it's not just me. There are not many places where I can freely admit how horny I am as a part of my general existence.

Here? I could post about wanting to lick some random BL actor's face, and it would get a bunch of likes and some tags like #lickable, and it's just not remotely a big deal.

Also the gifmakers understand this, and give us beautiful cuts of our spicy scenes. They are genuinely too good for us.

10) The communal watching experience

There is absolutely nothing like watching along with people in the community. It is so worth the torture of having to wait week to week for new episodes. Seeing the show trend, watching the theories fly fast and furious, or the way everyone collectively loses their minds over particular moments. In a world that can feel very isolating, it's a very warm experience.

So there you go. Thank you all for being you. Here's to another year of QL shenanigans and losing our collective minds!

[thefirstknife]

Hi! I was wondering if you could explain the lore surrounding Saint and how he says he looked up to us? That whole time fuckery always confused me + the Vex apparently made him a tomb? What was that about? I really just have no idea what happened in Season of Dawn

Yes!

So, we should start with Osiris being exiled from the City (some time around the Twilight Gap, unclear when exactly, but vaguely at that time). Osiris packed his stuff and left to go do his research in peace; he went to Mercury for the Infinite Forest.

This upset Saint a lot and he decided to go after him. He even left a letter for him which destroys me every time:

Ship's Final Log: Osiris. I hope whatever you find in this place is worth it. My recommendation to install you as Vanguard Commander was not a gesture to stroke your ego. It was an order to stay and help the City achieve all that it could. An order you refused to follow. News of my demise will no doubt reach you late. I can already see your response—the guilt that will follow, however fleeting. I thought you had changed after Six Fronts; that seeing your people on the brink of destruction and spared from death would be reward enough to stay. To fight. I'll fight in your stead one last time.

However, note the following at the end:

To my inspiration. Your final gift to me I now send back to you. It will be good to see you again.

This was very bizarre at the time because there was no context to this. While we knew some little bits and pieces of Saint's story before, it wasn't until Curse of Osiris that we got the proper introduction.

Fast forward, Saint entered the Forest after Osiris and got lost in there. He wandered a lot, fought the Vex, eventually got them so upset that the Vex put all of their resources into constructing a special Vex Mind that was capable of draining Saint's Light. When they succeeded, Saint died in the Forest. The Vex were so impressed that they came to respect him enough to make a tomb for him in the Forest:

Finding this tomb was a quest in Curse of Osiris: links to the full questline. When we got to the tomb, we took information from Saint's body and used it to forge his gun: Perfect Paradox. The lore on it is also very peculiar, addressing someone that Saint looked up to. Again, we could only speculate at the time because we didn't have the whole story, but it appeared there was some sort of weird shenanigans here that potentially involved us, the player. Important:

All I have left is this weapon. The Cryptarchs say you crafted it yourself, built it out of scraps and Light and sheer will, inside the Infinite Forge.

We did indeed do that. But how can Saint know that and why is he addressing us? We've never met him; he disappeared into the Forest long before we existed.

It would take 3 years for this to be resolved, in Season of Dawn. In Season of Dawn, Osiris revealed that following our discovery of Saint's tomb, he went to work on creating the Sundial. The sole purpose of the Sundial would be to essentially allow entry into Saint's personal timeline and past, to find him in the right moment, and save him from certain death. Osiris tried to do this himself and failed. For some reason, he could not find the right Saint in the right moment. He begrudgingly gave up and put the Sundial away.

When it was discovered by the Psions and used for their nefarious purposes, Osiris told us about this briefly and let us give it a shot to try and find Saint. He advised against it and deemed it "an impossible task." However, unknown to him (and us), we were the link needed to make this possible.

We went in there and we found the right Saint in the right moment. We found him desperately fighting against the Eliksni on Mercury in his personal past, during the Dark Age. We met up with him and helped him win. After that, we talked to him. Saint seemed super defeated and hopeless, but Ghost then told him about the future where people are safe and showed him a projection of the City from the future. We also gave him the Perfect Paradox. Our Ghost pulled our weapon that we made and gave it to Saint.

The Shotgun you crafted in the Infinite Forge is reacting to the Sundial! An onboard transponder is broadcasting coordinates: a path through the Sundial, crossing two time periods. The prophecy blueprint you used to create the Perfect Paradox must have included this broadcast.

This was the link between us and Saint that allowed us to use the Sundial to save him in a way Osiris could not. The gun is a bootstrap paradox: it exists "out of nowhere" basically. We give it to Saint in his past and we pick it up from his body in the future and then we take it back to the past and give it to him. Saint had information needed to craft it because we gave him the gun, but we only gave him the gun because he had it in the first place.

Saint takes the weapon and we leave him in his personal timeline, but to him, at the time, we're a hero who saved him and showed him a future where the City thrives and people are safe. He kept that hope with him and considered us someone who inspired him to do better and to fight. He could never explain who we were, because for everyone else we did not exist yet: Saint only met us because we showed up from the future to meet him.

We end up going back to the Sundial to find Saint again in the right time when he's found by the Vex Mind designed to drain his Light. Only this time he doesn't fight alone and we save him, essentially changing the course of time. Saint doesn't die; we save him and he's able to stay in the Forest until we can open it from the outside years later in the present day.

Saint never forgot about us and how we saved him and gave him the shotgun. He spent his life with us as an inspiration; someone who appeared out of nowhere and promised him that one day the City will be safe and people protected. It kept him going, even when nobody really understood what he was talking about. Osiris also mentions this when we finish the quest:

In his youth, he talked often about the Guardian who inspired him. I should have guessed it would be you.

Osiris I promise that it's okay that you couldn't guess that Saint was talking about a Guardian time travelling from the future.

I definitely recommend checking out both quests for this whole thing, they're really cool, especially the ones from Dawn because they're more expansive and also Saint is alive there. But the setup from Curse of Osiris is really neat because they heavily hinted at Saint coming back since then. Both the exotic ship and the shotgun itself have lore that clearly reference Saint having already met us, a plotline that we waited 3 years to resolve.

Hopefully that makes a bit more sense!

[cerastes]

Do you think at some point early on in Arknights the intent was to be a buildup to a more critical look at Rhodes as more morally grey than it first appears? Because when I started the game I was so sure that's where it was going. Popukar probably being one of the first characters you get, the idea of SWEEP, the understanding I had at the time of darknights doctor and y'know, the villains being who they are. I just thought it would be more of a thing.

I don't think necessarily, I think the intent was always to posit Rhodes Island as "as good as you can get while still being a relatively major power but not quite as big or resourceful as a state". I do think it bears mentioning that child soldiers/children and teenagers with a job as a concept don't seem to really carry a stigma as they do in the real world: The only real times in which these are painted in negative lights are when the conditions or results of these decisions end up in something negative:

Popukar was clearly indentured labor at the lumberyard. The part that's condemned is that she was miserable and practically a slave, not really that she was working per se, and she's given a job by RI later after Kal'tsit personally gets her out of there.

Frostleaf's being a child soldier even before Rhodes Island isn't really all that condemned, the effects it had on her psyche is.

Absinthe, just orphaned, is made a Rhodes Island Operator. This notion isn't rejected or truly contested, no more than "maybe we can send her somewhere proper for care". Hell, all the Ursus kids also get made into Operators.

Even outside of this, we hire children frequently: Bubble, Suzuran, Shamare, you name it. Sure, each has a context, especially Shamare who is Fucking Haunted, but the matter of the fact is that Rhodes Island isn't just housing them, it's also showing no real qualms with them taking the Operator Testing Battery and, if they succeed, hiring them. It's mentioned several times that Rhodes Island has many non-combat roles -- Angelina used to be a Messenger for Rhodes Island before taking the Operator test, Orchid was offered a desk job at Rhodes Island initially, and Weedy was a Rhodes Island researcher who explicitly worked out and trained so she could pass the physical components of the test -- but there's no real turn of eyes when a child says mmmm yeah I'll do the Battlefield Supporter Battery please, thank you.

Amiya is, you know, the CEO of Rhodes Island, and that IS pointed out in a "damn, fucked up" way, but what's being lamented is not her having a job, it's her having a BIG difficult job. I think no one would bat an eye if Amiya was a regular Operator under Theresa instead (granted, because she's the owner's daughter, but even without that link).

These are some examples of in-universe logic regarding the whole child soldier and kid with a job. I'd wager it's because life expectancy in Terra is pretty damn low from what we've gathered: Armed conflict, crime, Catastrophes, Oripathy, there's plenty of ways to kick the bucket in Terra, much like it was in Ye Olde Ages in real life, which is coincidentally an era in which by 16 you already were an adult and were expected to start having adult responsibilities.

Pre-Amnesia Doctor was definitely not a stellar person but it's always understood that they weren't bad as much as broken: Scout put it best that it broke his heart to have seen this kind educator and fun, loving individual become a heartless tactician. Even when described this way, though, it wasn't like Doc became this Brooding Evil Mass, it's still mentioned plenty that they were pretty beloved by most people and a person they liked being friends with -- Ace, Scout, and Amiya all corroborate this, and in flashbacks, you have Theresa being pretty warm with Doc -- but if you were a footsoldier, Doctor was probably your worst nightmare because you were disposable -- W, Ines, Hoederer and Flamebringer can tell you as much -- so we had less a villain or a vile individual and more a broken individual who was remolded into someone that could withstand the immense psychological pressure that came with having their role. That's not to sanitize pre-amn Doctor, it's to echo the game's own words on them as per the characters in the setting that knew them from back then, and who held both positive and negative opinions on them.

Looking at all of these from an in-universe lens, they all have coherent in-universe explanations. I also think they would have foreshadowed any sort of Rhodes Island Insiduous Vileness with characters or actions by now: Less than stellar, antagonistic high command, dubious orders to do some vile stuff, other such things. The closest we get to this is Kal'tsit hating Doctor's guts, but also Kal'tsit is a really good person and her hatred of Doctor stems from her knowing them pre-amnesia, seeing how that happened, and what Doc did in those times, particularly one big event that's pretty lore relevant.

You may have noticed the elephant in the room [SPOILERS FOR PEOPLE NOT DONE WITH THE REUNION ARC YET]: I didn't address the enemy part yet. That's because that's the part that I still have some conflicted feelings over: The real enemy, in the end, isn't Reunion's ideals -- which are shared with Rhodes Island -- but rather it's what Reunion has become, a false flag operation for the Ursus Empire to justify a war. On one hand, I like that, on the other, I do think it's something that should've been more graciously hinted at in the very early chapters, because in those very early chapters, you REALLY are rent-a-cops in essence, putting down the people you set out to help. Of course, it's not that simple and there's a nuance as to why and the business dealings and all that, but given the relative simplicity and pace of the early chapters, it really is easy to see it come across that way.

It does, however, ring consistent with what we were previously talking about, though: The essence of, more than the act or thing in itself. Or, in other words, in Terra, the onus of things seem to be placed on the result or context surrounding something more than that something in itself: Child soldiers are fine, unhappy and in-risk child soldiers are not. Teenagers with jobs are fine, teenagers with huge stressful jobs way out of their league are not. Revolutionary movements are fine, revolutionary movements with civilian casualties are not. And so on. There is DEFINITELY commentary that can be had about this, mind you, but that can be for another post in another blog.

With this in mind, I go back to what was first said in this post, I think the idea was always to posit Rhodes Island as "as good as you can get while still being a relatively major power but not quite as big or resourceful as a state".

[ihopesocomic]

You said that I Hope So is not a "My Pride but better", it's an original story of yours. Fair. I don't disagree. But do you really think you're SUCH a better writer than tribble? 😭 Because every time someone PMs you in a way that isn't negative, you start to completely shit on it, and compare it to how you decided to do it differently in your own story and how it's so much better. Hold on there. I just think artists/writers should be careful when they worship and praise their own works too much while shitting on others works that often were born from a similar idea. But I'm not hating, it's just funny tho.

It's not about us "thinking we're SUCH better writers than Tribble", it's more that's your interpretation of what we're saying. I'm willing to bet that if we didn't have this comic, the argument would be more along the lines of 'well, I'd like to see you do better!' instead. This is just the flip side of the coin, I feel.

I say this because you seem to have this idea that she and her writing are untouchable to criticism vs. something like Warrior Cats, (which is where a lot of MP's narrative structure is inspired from), which even the self-admitted fans can find fault in. Still doesn't mean they can't find the potential in those books and make their own AUs or w/e without also suggesting they're better writers than the Erins. (Either way, certain expectations come with being a professional writer.)

Even without the badly-handled topics, her show just isn't written well. Dialogue is clunky and non-conversational, things get mentioned but never get followed through on, character motivations are all over the place. We have a whole three hour video talking about this if you'd care to watch it. But there are other things that I feel make Tribble an objectively bad writer. This isn't us "shitting on her". These are just fundamental factors that go against How to be a Good Writer 101:

Tribble never listened to criticism and she used serious issues as entertainment value. No one can argue that even highly-rated writers can produce incredibly sloppy work when 1) they feel they don't have to listen to criticism and 2) they feel they don't have to do proper research with a topic they want to cover in their work while knowing next to nothing about it.

As well as being a professional in her field, Tribble also had resources at her disposal that most indie creators cannot access. She had an editor and beta script readers helping her. In short, she had plenty of opportunities and guidance to stop and look back on what she had produced and make improvements. She did not and, what's more: she put on a show of doing so via asking for criticism but not taking it on board.

We know this because I tried to give her advice on several occasions, only to be shot down. For example, Tribble was very much aware of some of the underlying issues within the show (i.e. how bad it looked that Hover allowed Nothing to be assaulted by Quickmane in Episode 5 with zero reaction) because we brought it to her attention, she proceeded to not take our suggestions on how to improve things on board for one reason or another.

And I don't think I need to go into how it feels very backhanded that an able-bodied creator is producing a "pro-disability" show and yet refused to take on criticism by disabled viewers. (I would say that thinking so highly of oneself to the point where advice goes ignored even when asked for does not a good writer make.)

I also don't know if you're under the impression that we're tearing into some hobbyist's passion project but that's not what this is. My Pride was a professional production, made by a team and it had a budget of around 140-150k CAD, which was funded by Canadian taxpayers. We've had to repeatedly point this out because Tribble has failed to gone out of her way to make this clear. Presumably so people like you feel bad for her.

So, I'm sorry but it's perfectly fair game to criticise MP and how Tribble went about producing it. She had plenty of opportunities to improve what many deemed to be shortcomings. She did not. She thought she knew better, even better than those who have experienced the actual oppression she sought to depict in an edgy, disrespectful manner.

And that's why we feel she's bad writer. Her fans are free to disagree with us, but I've yet to come across any real argument outside of 'y'all r just mean!', even though we've been courteous enough to not get personal when criticizing her as a writer/director.

Our writing isn't perfect. We've always consistently made that clear. We have had several instances throughout the process of making this comic where readers have made good points that we have brought on to improve the writing. Hell, I've discovered things I didn't even know about my own conditions via some of the readers of this comic. The overreaching lesson is that you should listen to your readers, because they just want you to produce a better narrative. Unfortunately, I feel Tribble did not feel the same way about her audience, and I'm also getting the same vibes from you, anon. Purely by your notion that criticism of a show or not scolding our fans when they say they have a preference like the MP fans do = "shitting on MP". Which is fine but I'm going to have to say I disagree. It's not mean or problematic for me or any of my disabled readers to have strong opinions about a show that misappropriates our oppression.

Or that I think my writing is amazing when it's more that I'm improving what I personally feel needs to be improved. Such as how the disabled are always depicted in mainstream media. And I'll continue to do so. You can come at me with the reductive gatekeeping that is that I - as a disabled person - do not have the right to have an opinion on an able-bodied creator writing ableism badly and how it can be improved all you want, but I think that's ultimately more of a commentary on you than me. c: - RJ

[femmesandhoney]

i've said it before on here, but too many people think dogs are starter pets and culturally we've made people think an untrained dog is a totally fine way to treat those animals just because people want a companion but so many dogs have shitty lives because they're not trained properly or exercised properly. if you want a companion but cannot put the time or energy into meeting their needs, get literally any other animal beside a damn dog. in fact, i think society has made getting pets seem way too easy and blasé when pretty much all pets have high social needs and tasks demanded from the owner that most people just do not meet, ever! people have such whatever attitudes towards pets that people put no thought into what taking care of an entirely separate life requires of them, no research done, no care towards a healthy and proper environment, nothing. for like all the pets you can think of, most people take care of them wrong or badly even without meaning to. it's terrible. most people do not deserve pets.

[wirewitchviolet]

That thing about 'the arc of history bending towards justice...'

I'm pretty sure I've gone on about this before, and I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir, but I just had a well-intentioned acquaintance try to give an inspirational speech about American trans people's fears right now, and his heart was in the right place, but all his facts were wrong, in some really important ways. I feel like the perspective he has is the same one as... basically every decent person who isn't like, intimately familiar with WPATH, so please spread this around, and please if you only read one rambling history lesson from a trans person about the current state of things, make it this one.

So here's the big problem. Trans people get brought up in the mainstream media a LOT these days, but the framing is totally wrong. The impression people get is that there is presently a big push for new trans rights, where we want proper government recognition, and trans women in particular want to be able to use public women's restrooms, and play on girls-only sports teams, and a dozen other things. That is a lie you are being fed. These are all rights we ALREADY HAD, for decades. Possibly centuries depending what we're talking about specifically and where we're talking, even. The big issue right now is that a bunch of bigots just woke up one day about 10 years ago and decided that nothing else they were angling for was getting them anywhere with the general public, so hey let's make a boogieman out of this minority of a minority nobody knows the first thing about and act like all the horrors they're inflicting are just them enforcing some totally fictional status quo.

Speaking personally, I can say that The Trans Agenda in like 2014 was something like: 1- I'm gonna make a nice big pot of chili. 2- I'm gonna maybe replay some old video games from the '90s I haven't taken down off the shelf in a while. And OK maybe 3- It'd be cool if it weren't just the medical professionals who specifically specialize in trans stuff had enough of an education to know that when there's a difference in how a drug is going to effect men vs. women, it's for reasons directly tied to the levels of various hormones, or would at least trust their trans patients to know what we're talking about and not give us the wrong doses of things and maybe kill us as a result. And also like, treat us for regular things like broken arms (real example) without weirdly panicking about some prescription we're on they don't recognize.

There was absolutely not a point where some trans woman started petitioning the government or whatever to let her pee in a toilet with a little placard of a stick figure in a dress in front. We've just been doing that the whole time. Nobody's ever had a problem with that. You didn't know we were in there? OK. If I'm like at a restaurant and have to use the bathroom, I don't know how many of the other women in there have like, type O blood. I also don't care, and I think everyone would agree it was weird if I suddenly did care, and demand they post a guard out front asking to see driver's licenses. Just completely out of the blue some nutcases from the UK started foaming at the mouth and writing weird tabloid articles about their completely unfounded fears that... I don't even know. Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs might put on a wig and follow them into the bathroom, dose them with chloroform, and drag them to some basement dungeon through some series of secret passages or something.

This was based on literally nothing at all, to be clear. Like, people pushing for this went and did serious research for anything even anecdotal to back them up on this, and didn't actually find anything. Then they started walking into public restrooms with cameras throwing doors open on people and going "see? See? Some creep could totally do this if we don't ban trans people from using bathrooms!" And... somehow this got traction? I figure it's because coincidentally there was this whole other thing going where people were looking at how every building had equal numbers of men's and women's rooms and saying "you know, like, 90% of people who come in here are the same gender and we end up with really long lines, what if we just took the signs down and told everyone to just use whichever?" which... when it's happening at the same time Chicken Little is ranting and raving about the boogieman wearing a cheap wig, wires got crossed? And suddenly we've got waves of legislation passing all over about who's allowed to use what bathrooms with weird standards that'd involve like DNA tests to actually enforce properly. Absurd stuff.

Meanwhile, your average trans activist at the time was just like... sitting there eating a sandwich and going "huh, they're making a TV series based on Fargo? That's an odd thing to happen out of the blue. And yeah we started going "hey, what the hell?" when this stuff started passing because like... yeah that's what you do when you see an article in the local newspaper that says you can't go to the bathroom at work or whatever without swabbing your cheek and waiting for lab results for 3 weeks first or whatever.

Same deal with sports. Major sports organizations like the Olympics have been weirdly paranoid about men pretending to be women since 1950. And there have been, to the best of my ability to research... zero men who have actually done this. And while the weird standards used for this have been used to kick a good number of women out over the years, none of those women have been trans, for what that's worth. Really, the whole gender testing thing has only ever been used for horrifying stuff like forcing women to strip in front of random creeps, or let them do "invasive internal exams" and of course so many incidents where some woman who isn't white wins at something and people move the goalposts to in some way to get her specifically banned. You may be thinking, "wait didn't I just see a whole bunch of news coverage about someone getting banned after some gender testing thing? She was trans right?" No. You're thinking of Caster Semenya. She's a woman. A cis woman. F on her birth certificate, born with standard issue female genitals, has periods, all that. People are just being weird racists there and crossing the streams with random transphobia. That and just... half-reading stories and making stuff up.

To the best of my knowledge, the total count of trans athletes who have competed in the Olympics would actually be... three nonbinary people, who so far as I can tell all competed against people with the same gender they had on their birth certificates, nothing done medically, so, nobody should have any problem there. Caitlyn Jenner, who didn't come out as a woman until like... 40 years after competing, on the men's team, and Laurel Hubbard, the first and only trans woman to compete at the Olympics as a woman, who placed... dead last, flubbing all three of her lifts.

If we just look at sports in general, OK, there WAS one big famous where a trans woman wanted to compete in a major sporting event, was banned from it, took the organizers to court over it, and the eventual ruling was there was no reason at all she shouldn't be allowed to play against other women. Renée Richards. And this was all the way back in 1976. Nearly 50 years ago now.

And of course in more recent years, again, after a bunch of random bigots just completely out of the blue started losing their minds about trans people with no prompting and started lobbying for new laws banning us from all kinds of things nobody had had a problem with us doing forever, there was Mack Beggs, a trans guy, who was forced, by one of those aforementioned baffling reactionary new laws, to compete on his high school's girl's wrestling team. He didn't want to be there, they didn't want him to be there, but the law said hey, F on your birth certificate, we're classifying you as a girl despite how clearly wrong that is. And then there's been a bunch of other weird cases like that like one state banning trans girls from playing any sports with other girls which only affected one single girl in the entire state, who was playing lacrosse on a team that wouldn't have even existed if she hadn't personally organized it.

But the point here is, trans people aren't asking for anything here. We're just standing here, and people are flipping out and banning us from doing all these things without any prompting. And hell, I THINK this one got shot down in higher courts, but when Florida got the brain worms on this and started passing all the anti-trans legislation they could think of, they actually included a ban on us just standing there! The wording was something like (and I apologize that I can't find it, search engines are useless now), "if a child can potentially see someone who was assigned male at birth who is wearing women's clothes, it's considered sexual assault."

It's important to understand what's actually going on here, both because what's going on here is just plain terrifying, but also because there is this huge segment of the population who has this weird idea that people's rights only ever get better, there's just some weird arbitrary ratcheting where you have to take a number and get in line. Like, "hey, used to be only white men could vote, then eventually the Progress bar filled enough that we let white women start voting too. Then we had to wait for it to fill up again, hey, we're ending this whole segregation of black people thing. Gotta give it another 30 years or so to fill up, now hey, gay people can get married! Don't be impatient trans folks, you just need to stay in line and wait for it to fill again for your turn!"

That's not how anything has ever actually worked. It would frankly be absolutely insane if it actually did, but like, this is an idea people get in their heads because history textbooks really like to gloss over all the stuff that makes the country look pretty bad and promote this whole "stuff is just always getting better!" vibe. But no, sometimes, things just straight up get worse for people. Ten years ago I could go to the damn bathroom, I could have social media accounts, I could access all the medications I need to live, I could safely set foot in any given state in the country... at least if I kept some witnesses around at all times to verify I was not in fact hitting on my would-be murderer in any of the black states on this map.

The problem is NOT that with Trump in power, the pause button is getting hit on trans people climbing towards some state of finally getting to be regular people. We were (largely) already there, and there's been a huge push over the past decade to strip that away from us. And Trump plus the rest of the Republican party in general have made very specific promises to make that way worse real real soon, including several things that will straight up kill a ton of us.

Like, when I'm talking about losing access to necessary medical treatments, I'm not talking about "THE SURGERY" and magic pills that give you boobs or beards. A lot of trans people are trans because there's weird medical stuff that in addition to messing with what does and doesn't grow mess with things like whether your blood flows properly and whether various organs do what they should. Just one of those many things the average person doesn't know, because everything written about us is from deranged bigots making crap up.

[formerlycookierunauprompts]

AU Ficlet(it's more of a whole fic really) #3 - 250 Follower Special 💔

LOG - #025 A new employee has come to work for the corporation, interestingly enough the witches actually gave her a name. Yet, she hasn't disclosed what it is to us yet so we've simply dubbed her 'Marshmallow Fluff Cookie', since her hair is made out of the stuff. I, personally, find her rather interesting. Why would the witches give her a proper name? Especially one of their own kind. I'll have to put in a request to the manager to have her work with the less... dangerous abnormalities so I can proceed with a study of her. - Blueberry Milkshake Cookie

----

LOG - #037 A much more personal log than my previous entries, but it relates to my studies of Marshmallow Fluff Cookie so I suppose that I can spare to keep this. Notably, she seems to be a lot more capable than I and my fellow team managers thought. In the last few days she's been producing majorly good work results out of all the works she's been assigned to. It can be noted that she dislikes having to work with Tear of the Witches, I don't know why but I hypothesize that she may have a... distaste for the witches. I asked her what she thought of our creators, she claimed to not really have an opinion on whether she liked them or not. I decided to change the subject and we ended up talking for a while until the manager sent her off to do a work process with Parade of Smiles. Yet, during our conversation I could tell that she was withholding something from me. Just who are you really, Marshmallow Fluff Cookie? - Blueberry Milkshake Cookie

----

LOG - #042 She's finally told me her real name, 'Mackenzie'. Though she prefers that I just call her 'Kenzie' instead, it rolls off the tongue a lot nicer. I fear that I might be becoming rather... attached to her. I can't exactly help it, she's like a nice little puzzle that fits in my hands yet refuses to let me solve it. I simply cannot let anything unfortunate happen to her before my studies of her are over. I'm sure that things will return to normal once my curiosity is sated. Fragment of the Stars breached today, I finally got to bare witness to Kenzie in action. To put it simply... I was certainly intrigued. Surely this is just a mere fascination, it will pass. I hope it does. - Blueberry Milkshake Cookie

----

LOG - #051 I believe that Kenzie may be suffering from Distortion Disease. I could tell when her sanity got low, I could see eyes ( not Cookie Eyes mind you) peeking through her dough. I fear that if I don't hurry with my research into reversing the disease's effects that she may turn into one of the many abnormalities held within the facility. As far as I know, she hasn't had contact with a Soul Jam like myself and my fellow team manager's considering that we use ours almost daily. Our Soul Jam contains distortion within them, it's what gives me my strings and ability to levitate. We all knew that there was a chance that we would become abnormalities when we were selected to wield them, yet we took that risk. All roaming causes of Distortion Disease that we know of have been contained, so how did Kenzie contact it? I suppose it doesn't matter at the moment, I'll have to focus on supressing her symptoms should they appear. - Blueberry Milkshake Cookie

----

" Blu?" He quickly snaps himself up from his log book, turning to face the pink haired cookie standing in the doorway. They'd gotten friendly over the past few weeks, maybe even months that they've spent working together in the corporation. He couldn't say that he hated her company, because it simply wasn't true. He could feel his soul jam thrum from where it was placed on his chest, it was almost like his heart in a sense, working to keep him alive and... mostly sane. It liked that nickname, and so did he. " Ah! Kenzie." He mused with a bit of an embarrassed smile. " What are you doing here today? I thought that the Manager wanted you to work in the Control Department." " Oh, they assigned me to work on Dream of the Moonlit Sea." She hummed, propping herself up on the table of the break room within the Information department. " Though... you could probably tell from the tear-streaks in my dough." She hummed, pointing at her face. Ah, right, Dream of the Moonlit Sea almost always caused employee's working on it to cry during the work process. And yet... he could tell that this was only somewhat true. There was something being withheld from him, something that she wasn't saying. But what could it be? She's such a mystery, he can't wait until she let's him solve her. But what happens after that? He doubts that he could just... go back to normal. Not with the way his small cookie heart beats in his chest whenever he thinks of her, is he becoming obsessed? Falling in love with someone who could die any day? What a foolish decision. So call him a fool then.

----

LOG - #078 Eheheheh... The Manager was quite foolish today. Sending Kenzie in to use Creation Machine when they knew it would yield a bad, terrible and horrible result. Treating her like the rest of the rather expendable employee's when she's so much more... So, I did what I had to~! I had him terminated... immediately. Do I feel any regret about that? Hah! Not a single shred. They were such a fool anyways. - Shadow Milk Cookie That's not my name. - Blueberry Milkshake Cookie.

----

LOG - #079 In regards to the previous log... I believe that I may have temporarily lost myself and succumbed to the powers of my Soul Jam for a brief moment last night. Do I regret what I did? ... I still don't, that concerns me. I thought that I'd feel the slightest bit of remorse but... there was nothing. A new Manager came in to replace the old one, I have no idea how the corporation found one so quickly and yet I don't want to ask. Though this new Manager seems more... competent than our previous one. Kenzie appears to be doing better today after last night. My research, however, doesn't seem to making much progress... Hopefully it yields some results soon. - Blueberry Milkshake Cookie.

----

LOG - #099 I'm not exactly sure how to describe what happened today. For starters, Kenzie seemed a lot more... panicked than usual. And by that I mean she was actually panicking about something. She wasn't fit to work with any of the abnormalities so I kept her with me and notified the manager. Her condition is worsening, and I fear that I won't be able to save her before the distortion takes hold. I've learnt... quite a bit about her as well. For instance, I know why the witches gave her specific name of their own. She's said (albeit during her maddened rambling in her panicked state) that she's supposed to be dead, so it's entirely possible that she has the soul of a witch within her... one that was supposed to have passed on to the afterlife. I believe that that may be the source of her variant of distortion disease. Walpurgis Night is approaching, and I fear that something horrible may happen when it comes. Something always goes wrong, horribly wrong upon Walpurgis Night. Perhaps it's a curse from the witches for the hubris of Cookiekind. I just hope that I can keep her safe through it. - Blueberry Milkshake Cookie

----

LOG - #101 I was right. Why did I have to be right? The worst possible thing happened and I couldn't even prevent it. I hate this. I'm so sorry. ... That's all it says, it appears that Blueberry Milkshake didn't sign off on this one. It looks like the pages are stained with tears.

----

LOG - #104 I think I'm going insane, I keep on seeing glimpses of her and yet I know that she's not here anymore. Not like that, not as a Cookie. I still can't bring myself to go see her, what she has become. But I know I'll have to face her one day, I can't run forever. - Blueberry Milkshake Cookie

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LOG - #115 It's not her, none of them are her. They may look like her, but they aren't her. They're only forged from her fleeting feelings, yet it hurts to see them being viewed as expendable. It's like seeing her die over, and over, and over and over and over again. We're up to Kenzie-14 now, as the manager says. I don't know why they keep getting us to use her over and over again just to get more employees. I almost feel sick whenever I look into their hollow eyes. The voice telling me to let go of myself is getting louder and louder, I don't think it wants to shut up anymore. Burning Spice and Eternal Sugar have already succumbed to their own distortion, I'd follow them if it wasn't for Silent Salt and Mystic Flour's support. -Blueberry Milkshake Cookie

----

LOG - #125 They're all gone, I'm the only Team Manager left. Burning Spice, Eternal Sugar, Mystic Flour, Silent Salt... All of them. There isn't really any point in holding back anymore, is there? This will be the last time I use this log. It may even be the last time anyone reads it~! I'll be destroying this facility, it's nothing more than a seal to prevent me and my comrades from causing chaos within the real world. From this day forth, all of us will be set free. Do I really care what happens to the employee's here? Nah, not one eeny weeny little bit! Not anymore, I guess. Well, it's been rather entertaining to be here. Observing tragedy and comedy... mostly tragedy, but I digress, it was entertainment nonetheless. May the witches burn in the oven for forsaking us all. - Blueberry Milkshake- Hmm, that doesn't feel right anymore. - Shadow Milk Cookie The page is littered with doodles of eyes in blue pen.

----

ABNORMALITY FILE Beast of Deceit B-01-05 - ALEPH Observation level - I The Abnormality that caused the Breach of [REDACTED DATE]. Some say that B-01-05 used to be a Team Manager at the Corporation, though it isn't certain. Though it is certain that this being, like the rest of the Beasts, came from the corruption of Soul Jam. Since that fateful breach of every abnormality in the facility, we have worked hard to re-contain all of them. One-by-one we will contain them all again. Though, as of [date], we have managed to wrangle it into a containment cell. The beast seems complacent for now, we'll be sending Kenzie-25 in to work on it soon as she is one of our more capable employees(probably because she comes from T-01-34).

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ABNORMALITY FILE Selfish Heart T-01-34 - ZAYIN (?) Observation Level - III Attack Type - ??? E-BOX output - 25 Qliphoth Counter - 3 / Non-escaping entity Managerial Tips 1 When the work result was bad, the Qliphoth counter lowered with a high probability Managerial Tips 2 The above happened when Repression work was performed on the abnormality. Managerial Tips 3 When a good or normal work result was achieved, Selfish Heart would produce a clone of [redacted]. These clones are useful employees, but abnormalities class HE and lower will produce less positive E-boxes when working with these clones due to feeling threatened. Managerial Tips 4 When the Qliphoth Counter dropped to zero, a random clone would be sent into a panic. All employees adjacent to the clone will also go into a panic. Managerial Tips 5 The Qliphoth Counter lowered whenever three or more abnormalities breached at the same time. Managerial Tips 6 *Locked* Managerial Tips 7 *Locked* Work Favor List Instinct I - Common II - Common III - Common IV - Common V - Common Insight I - Common II - Common III - Common IV - Common V - Common Attachment I - High II - High III - High IV - High V - Very High Repression I - Low II - Low III - Low IV - Low V - Low (technically this should be locked but I'm putting it down anyways because silly) E.G.O. Equipment E.G.O. Gift ; Fragment of Self Effect : Increases all stats by +5 Drop Chance : 0.01% E.G.O. Suit Fragment of Self Grade : ALEPH Cost : 100 Eboxes Red DEF : Normal (1.0) White DEF : Resistant (0.4) Black DEF : Endured (0.5) Pale DEF : Resistant (0.3) Max Amount : 1 Requirements : Agent Level 5, Attachment Level 5 E.G.O. Weapon Fragment of Self Grade : ALEPH Cost : 250 Damage : PALE 20-24 Attack Speed : Fast Range : Medium Max Amount : 1 Requirements : Agent Level 5, Attachment Level 5

----

It seems that they've fortified the containment cells since he's last been here, a shame, truly. Oh how he'd love to roam about, but alas, he had to be a good boy and stay put. Not that he had any choice in the manner. He glances at the jam stain on the floor, oh yeah, he'd gotten a bit too excited the last time an employee came to do work with him. He ripped them apart, but he did piece them back together as a new puppet for his collection. Maybe he gnawed on a piece or two but only because he'd been so bored prior to the entertainment they provided him. He hears the door open, oho? The manager was sending in another employee so soon? They must be rather desperate. He looked up from the floor, his collection of shadowy tendrils twitching with excitement at he looked at his new... prey? "... Oh?" He muses, standing up from his reclined position. He eyed the employee with intrigue, though just calling her an employee wouldn't do her justice. Calling her a clone would fit better, yet it somewhat feels like an insult at the same time. He can see something in her eyes after all, something that isn't hollow like that in the eyes of her fellow kin. This Kenzie-clone may be the closest thing he's seen to a person out of all of them. " Why hello there my dear!" He chirped with a small bow, and after a few seconds he almost immediately bounced up to her. " What's an interesting creature like you doing in a place such as this? Let me get a closer look at you..." He hummed, letting two shadowy hands hold the clone's face as he pulled them in for a closer look. " Wh- Oi! Stop that." The clone hissed, oh she was certainly a lot more lively of a character as well! Closer to Kenzie's personality than just a feeling attached to a memory of some kind. She batted away the hands, an action which he found rather interesting. " Aw, afraid of a little bit of touch, little cookie?" He teased, to which Kenzie-whatevernumberthisonewas deadpanned. " Don't call me little, I'm literally taller than you." She said with a twinge of maybe annoyance? Well, she was certainly a lot more like Kenzie than the others had been. " Either way, I'm supposed to be working-" " Do you have to?" He said in a bit of a whiny tone, tilting his head a bit too much to the side. " Hey, why don't we do something interesting instead? Wouldn't that be more fun?" " And what would your definition of 'fun' be?" She asked, his mood instantly brightened to her surprise. " Hmm..." He pondered, though it didn't take long for an idea to come to mind. " How about releasing a few abnormalities? It'd be funny seeing them chase some clerks around." He suggested, a grin stretching across his features. " And I suppose that you want me to release a WAW level Abnormality or two?" She asked, to which he gave an eager nod. " Not happening." She immediately shut down the notion, causing him to crumple to the floor in a sulking manner. " Aw boo, you're no fun Kenzie." He whined, dropping to the floor and letting his shadows catch him. They curled around his limbs, subjected to the will of their master, with one wiping at the crocodile tears forming in his eyes. " It's... Kenzie-25." " Kenzie." He insisted, looking up from the floor. There was a silence between the two cookie in the room, but could they even be counted as cookies anymore? He was a beast, and she was a clone. Could that make the answer any more obvious? Maybe not. Kenzie was the first to speak up again. " Well, if you're going to insist..." She murmured, looking away from his sharp gaze. " I'd assume there's something you want me to call you by?" She asked, turning back to him. " Ah! How could I have forgotten to introduce myself properly?" He stood up with a bounce, feigning shock. " Well, your wait is over. You're face to face with the world's best playwright, poet, director, actor, clown... Everyone's most beloved trickster!" He bowed, tilting his head back up solely to look into Kenzie's eyes. " ... Shadow Milk Cookie!"

----

Hoo boy that was long. Anyways, welcome to the Lobotomy Corperation Cookie Run AU! Am I really properly introducing a new AU for my 250 special alongside the competition? YES!! Mainly because this is my brain child and I love and it's full of angst.

Quick disclaimer i only play lobotomy corp for the gameplay and I don't know too much of the lore so some stuff here may be a bit inaccurate by mistake. But some stuff is on purpose.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for breaking up with someone over fishkeeping and cat food? I know how the title sounds but hear me out. This happened a couple years ago and I'm still friends with the people this happened with but it still weighs on me. So I have always been kind of militant about husbandry when it comes to the animals I keep(autistic, it' a special interest) and I don't really like to deal with people who don't take caring for living creatures they willingly bring into their home seriously. I sold a fish tank to my, then, partner J who wanted to get into fish keeping. J and D, our other partner, lived together. After taking the tank home and cleaning it up we were throwing around ideas for what to put in it. It wasn't too big but also not small, but he kept throwing out species that would far outgrow the tank or species that would fight and kill each other. Every time I shot these species down J took it well, realizing the space was either too small or they would die and didn't want the fish in improper conditions but D kept telling me not to "squash his creativity" and he could "do whatever as long as it made him happy". At this I obviously hopped on my soapbox about how it's our duty as animal owners to give the animals we keep proper conditions and D went absolutely off on me and mentioned how I care "too much" about how other people keep their animals and had always made her feel bad about how she feeds her cats and now I was doing this. For context my cat eats a raw diet. I did a lot of research and talked to my vet and he's doing wonderfully while one of her cats is extremely overweight to the point he waddles instead of walking and the other two are getting there as well, both of which I've brought up concerns about but I have NEVER shamed the way she fed her animals. She had been interested in the interest I had taken and had ASKED for better quality food recommendations, so I gave them, but NEVER told her she had to feed them a certain way. A majority of our conversations were just me info-dumping and her being happy to listen and ask questions occasionally. Anyway J kind of backed out of the conversation at this and D and I went back and forth a bit before D finally said "I don't think this relationship is going to work out if you won't let this go"(This being I have pointed out one of her cats is grossly overweight a couple times and it's extremely unhealthy, especially since he's aging now) so I said "Yeah I think so too. This is something I clearly care a lot about and I'm not going to be with someone who puts their own or their partner's feelings over the well-being of the animals they are responsible for"(referencing when she said a few times when talking about the fish that it was okay if the fish killed each other or died from improper conditions as long as J was happy with how the tank looked and "it's not like we're putting kittens in with sharks, they're Just Fish") and we broke up there and then. Since then we've still stayed close friends after a short break from each other(I'm actually her Man of Honor in her upcoming wedding to J!) and she's actually made moves to better the quality of the food she buys her cats and is working on getting her obese cat's weight down and J's fish tank hobby is going very well(with proper keeping standards!!). But the situation at the time still weighs on me and even though we're genuinely too busy with work and life to make a relationship work anymore anyway and that was also a factor of the breakup.... AITA for beginning a breakup over animal husbandry?

What are these acronyms?

[loganswdc]

Hi! I just read through your post defending Logan (I reblogged it with a kinda-long addition haha) and I just wanted to say thank you for putting that out there. I hadn't done all the research or known any of the specifics, I just knew about his insane ability and potential. I love that you said you'd defend him with your life, because I feel the exact same way. I feel like there's so much power in your post, if that makes sense... it's one thing to see reblogs of logan videos with captions saying "how could you hate him 😢" and stuff (which no hate to anyone who does, I'm guilty of doing this too and I don't think there's anything wrong with it!!) But I just think it's so special and so important that you actually went out of your way to do the research, learn the info, and share and demonstrate just how remarkable he really is.

I'm sorry this ended up being so long!! All this to say, truly thank you so much for defending him, and honestly I'd love to be your friend because you seem like such an amazing person and I need more LS2 defender friends 😅

I hope you have a great day 🫶🏻

hi !! thank you so much for your kind words , this was so lovely to read in response to my logan post 🥹 i genuinely did not expect it to gain as much traction as it did , i was just upset one day and decided i needed to write that post about him so that others can gain some perspective on him and his situation . and i fully agree about what you said concerning reblogs of logan videos !! yes i agree , there's nothing wrong with reblogging videos / photos of him and captioning them "how could you hate him :(" because i , too , have done the same ! but not everything knows the full scope and extent of his career and talent capabilities , hence the need for further explanation on why we could never hate him . logan haters see posts about logan with captions like "how could you hate him :(" and don't get an explanation for why he's better than everyone thinks . often times , they end up thinking we just love him because he's cute and has a good personality -- which he does , and i love that about him !! but there's more to him than just those things , and understanding WHY he's a good driver and WHY we love him outside of the surface level version of him we've seen thus far in f1 is so so so important .

and it becomes especially important when logan haters only see his career in f1 so far and don't see the little wins he's had along the way . they focus solely on his crashes , the "destructor's championship" , and how alex is doing in comparison to him . they seem to forget that alex has been in formula 1 longer than logan . they seem to forget the hardships that alex had -- must i remind us of his redbull years ?? they seem to forget that alex has had more time to develop his skill and become a better driver than logan . and it's such a frustrating thing , because logan is then immediately credited as a "bad driver" when he's nothing of the sort !! he just needs support from his team , the proper amount of experience before getting into f1 (though by now that's a little too late because of how quickly williams jumped him up to f1) , and he needs to be getting the same upgrades as his teammate ???? it's genuinely ridiculous that they're having him drive a car that's heavier and has outdated (2023 !!!) parts and expect him to do as well as his teammate who has a MUCH lighter car and new parts .

and no worries about your message being long !! i'm sorry that my response ended up being super long , too , haha -- i am just so so passionate about people knowing drivers' past before they jump to conclusions and hate on them . the drivers in f1 are there for a reason and they're the top 20 in the world . they were chosen for a reason . that means that logan sargeant was chosen for a reason , and they're treating him like crap currently . williams needs to shape up so that logan can start showing the most of his potential and show how good of a driver he is , rather than constantly being pushed out of a moving car onto the highway -- aka what they're doing to him now !!!

i would love to be your friend , too !! i love making new friends who love logan the same way i do , and who have the same interest in formula 1 as me !! just send me a dm :))

you have a wonderful day, too !! <3

[unsoundedcomic]

What would make re-embodied Lady I so powerful? The way you described her in the ask (about her and Ruck) she sounds like she would (will?) be vastly more powerful than a Senet like Ruck or Shaensigin seem to be. Is she being granted some kind of additional power through this reincarnation? Is she just extra epic from training montages during her Khert imprisonment? Was she always some kind of ridiculous badass?

First Silver is the most powerful extant First Material. It is the most capacious and most khert-resistant. We've repeatedly seen what Cutter did with the stuff. He's laid cities to waste, murdered countless, and that's with a bunch of angry but kind of dumb ghosts powering it.

You get one of its proper owners back in the driver seat, one whose very will this substance was designed to extend, and you've got an extremely free agent with not only some of the most profound knowledge of this world, but the means to put it to whatever use she likes. The khert will not be able to check her, and nothing human will be able to get within range of her without losing their mind.

Generally when you find someone of this calibre imprisoned, it's because her aggressors were not able to destroy her. Otherwise they would have, right? Think about what this creature said she used to do. She claims she steered evolution itself. She was something far beyond Ruck or Shaensigin.

But there's a lot we don't know about Lady Ilganyag, or even about what the heck her kind (agib) was. Our heroes will have to do some research.

[fitnessnirvana]

How can getting more sleep improve my gym success?

We've already discussed how doing out can improve your sleep, but did you know that obtaining the proper amount of sleep can also improve your ability to work out? This is the approach...

Sleep is when the body really recovers:

Any kind of exercise works by putting the body under stress and creating little injuries that must be healed. The body will recover stronger and better equipped to withstand the burden the next time around if the repairs proceed as planned. Your body seems to go into full recovery mode as you sleep. Research has shown that growth hormone levels jump dramatically at night, but only when participants are soundly asleep.

It doesn't matter if you lift weights or run—sleep is necessary for both recuperation and improvement. Make sure you allow adequate time for your body to rest and recuperate from your workouts if you want to know whether your efforts in the gym are paying off. Not only should you think about getting enough sleep, but you should also schedule frequent rest days to avoid working out every day.

2. Poor sleep promotes fat gain:

Lack of sleep is directly linked to higher levels of the hormone ghrelin, which causes hunger, lower levels of the hormone leptin, which causes satiety, poor insulin sensitivity, which causes fat to be deposited more readily, and other factors, according to a 2009 analysis of the scientific literature. In the end, this means that lack of sleep can set off a series of negative events that culminate in weight increase. Making sure you're getting enough sleep is a smart idea if your gym goals are centered around losing weight, as for many of us, the last thing we want is to increase our appetite while simultaneously storing more fat.

3. Sleep deprivation means 'hitting the wall' faster:

Studies have revealed that while mild sleep deprivation doesn't seem to have a direct effect on cardiovascular response or muscle strength, it does shorten the duration until fatigue sets in. Furthermore, people who lack sleep always have higher levels of perceived effort, which means that whatever activity they undertake will feel far more difficult and uncomfortable regardless of their actual condition.

The main takeaway from all of this is that not only will you feel much worse about getting up, going to the gym, and starting your workout in the first place, but you won't have as much energy to get in a quality workout or for a prolonged workout, which is particularly bad for endurance athletes.

[hellobitchlet]

I've seen a few people mention Liyue as an example to show that Hoyo is perfectly capable of doing proper research into cultures. I want to expand on my opinions about Liyue and culture a little, with some stuff I've been thinking about for a while.

So, my main interest in Genshin atm is that I've been rewriting the story. One of the main things I'm doing is putting more important lore into the main story. This has led me to looking at each nation from the perspective of "what important things are connected to this place? What can Traveler learn from here?"

Liyue is the first nation Traveler goes to in which the Archon War happened in full force. And with that, we have the adepti, immortal creatures from Chinese mythology that ruled over humanity. Adepti lore is more fleshed out than any other immortal archon group by far, thanks to having multiple characters from that group being playable 5 stars, and Genshin being more willing to make plotlines about them.

And of course, there's the culture stuff. There are two 4 stars who exist to show off Chinese culture, and we get a Lantern Rite every year. There's also Chenyu Vale, whose main draw (aside from more adepti lore(sort of)), is showing off Chinese culture through this brand new city and town.

So, obviously, Liyue's main selling points are adepti lore and Chinese culture. This is both bad for Liyue from a story perspective, and the other nations from a culture perspective.

Let me explain:

It's bad for Liyue because one of the main points having nothing to do with the story, combined with the amount of focus it gets, fills the nation up with so much filler. Aside from Baizhu and Yaoyao, we've gotten 5 new Liyue characters since Inazuma started! Those characters?

Yun Jin- filler 4 star whose gimmick is Chinese opera.

Shenhe- I'm sorry to say this, and I promise that I like her too, but she's mainly Razor if he was raised by a different immortal. Not exactly the same by far, but she functions in the same way. We didn't need another Razor. Razor and Andrius already don't get much screen time.

Yelan- honestly could've been super important with her Pantalone connection, but is instead just reduced to sexy 5 star with a gambling gimmick, to the point where she might as well be filler.

Cloud Retainer- ...ok. I don't have a huge problem with her. Other than being used to make fat jokes about Ganyu, she's neat. But she was fine as an npc, and her moving into the Harbor wasn't all that necessary when she seemed perfectly fine with living in the mountains.

Gaming- filler 4 star whose gimmick is lion dancing.

You get my point, right? The last time I remember something notable story wise coming out of Liyue was the Chasm and Perilous Trail, all the way back in Inazuma. Yet, we've gotten 4 characters, 2 Lantern Rite's, 3 LR skins, and a massive new area from Liyue since. It's so much filler. And we already have enough filler as is.

We've sure gotten more adepti lore, mainly in LR, but.. you know we're only getting that as set up to make more Liyue characters. We've learned almost everything we need to know about their story already, we have pretty much everything except for Zhongli and Guizhong's origins.

And it's bad for the other nations bc Liyue's treatment makes Natlan and Sumeru being like that, mashing European cultures together in Mondstadt and Fontaine when they're supposedly based off of 1 country, and only paying a little attention to Japanese culture in Inazuma look even worse.

They CAN, in fact, show off cultures they have researched. They've never been good at accurate designs, both with a character's appearance and their clothing, but they've still put so much more care into Liyue than other nations! There's no real reason why they can't do that for other nations. And there's no reason why they can't be even better, and make their playable characters look like the people of the cultures they're based on.

I don't have much of a point that I wanna make here. This is just an analysis I've gradually made about Liyue and it's effect on other nations.

[brandwhorestarscream]

Skywarp helping Thundercracker get over his depression by telling him to write fanfiction 🤌🤌🤌 like I’ve never considered it before but it’s now been ingrained in my brain that he’s a fanfic writer bc it’s very in character for him. And now skywards gotta figure out how to get Starscream to feel alive. Who knows how he does it. Is it science? Is fashion? Is it G1 starscreams favourite hobby of being a bastard?

It’s probably not that…

I'm glad you asked! I think we've got a pretty great idea for what he does for Starscream

So, Vos is a flying city, right? It's way, waaay up in the atmosphere, barely a gleaming speck when viewed from the ground, and it has no set day or night cycle due to it constantly moving independently of Cybertron's rotation. As a result, though the acid rains they produce nourish the vast crystal flora on the planet beneath them, Vos is entirely barren. It's environment is entirely unfit for crystals and they can't thrive, bleeding their color til they turn gray and shattering to dust within mere hours. Because of this, most Vosians have never even seen a real crystal flower before.

This is where Skywarp comes in. Starscream can only pursue his love of science, of exploration, of the unknown in the palace's vast library. This sort of thing would put Skywarp to sleep, but there's always fire in the prince's optics when he's glued to a textbook or meticulously scanning through advanced theories, and it's clear he's boundlessly curious. He'd love to do some proper hands on science, but it's not necessary for his future as the Winglord to know advanced physics or xenobiology, so the current ruling trine wouldn't approve. In a perfect world, Skywarp would love to see a laboratory space installed in the palace, but seeing as that's not going to happen anytime soon, he sets his sights elsewhere

The idea comes to him after a portrait catches his eye in the halls while he's escorting the prince and his fiance. It's a beautiful painting, lovingly crafted and flawless perfection down to the tiniest detail. It depicts Starscream's carrier, visibly sparked, his chassis glowing softly with the life he carries and belly perfectly round. He's seated in his throne, a regal, serene smile on his face, posture perfect and arms tenderly cradling the swell of his midsection. It was a commemorative painting to celebrate the Winglord's first concieved children, but that's not what garners his attention. No, it's the background: the second Lord of Vos is surrounded by glistening white crystal flowers, reflecting light in rainbow dapples. They're gleaming and glittering and only serve to make him glow with a heavenly backlight.

He asks Starscream if those were real flowers, and he responds that of course they were. It may have been before his birth but he knows perfectly well that his sire would never spring for anything less than the real deal. Skywarp asks if he's ever seen a crystal flower before, and Star kind of sighs, rolling his optics and shaking his helm. Of course he hasn't.

And that prompts Skywarp to suggest that maybe he should.

Starscream scoffs because that's ludicrous. Importing flowers has an asanine price tag, and they shatter within mere megacycles. The dust gets everywhere. He's seen pictures, that's plenty.

But Skywarp jumps in, insistent, "No, I mean, you should grow your own!"

Starscream barks a single, bitter laugh, because surely he must be insane. Crystal flowers dont grow in Vos, it's impossible!

...wait.

Is it impossible?

Skywarp can practically see the gears turning in his head, and goes in for the kill.

He suggests that Starscream experiment. Research. Learn. He's read plenty of books on botany, right? Sorted through academic papers and knows Vos's atmosphere extremely well. If anyone could figure out a way, it would probably be him. Crystal gardens are a common sight amongst the houses of grounders nobility; why should they have anything the seekers don't?

It takes him a long time, a lot of trial and error and a lot of research, combing digital foreign libraries and maybe even writing to botany professors from Praxus or Crystal City. Starscream noticeably changes, becoming brighter and more exuberant now that he has a hobby he truly enjoys. The shelves in his room start filling up with various pots of ground metal soil from the surface, full of seeds and withered half-sprouts, and he's always got his face in a notebook, scribbling away new theories and notes and recording data, tweaking his hypotheses and trying everything he can think of. Thundercracker is always nearby reading his latest romance novel or writing his own fantastical ideas down, and Skywarp is always there too, watching over them and thoroughly enjoying just how happy they look.

And sometimes 🤭 multiple nights a week, Skywarp takes him down to Cybertron. Checking out the gardens and wild fields of flowers around Praxus, maybe even wandering through the delicate forests surrounding Crystal City. Star takes samples and observes them with intense scrutiny, and buys hundreds upon thousands of seeds for his experiments. Skywarp has never seen him so happy, so excited, when his first crystal seed sprouts.

It's after months of work and trial and error, but miraculously, it finally happens: a shy little blue crystal sprig, poking out of it's pot by less than a pinkie's width, but it's there! Starscream is overjoyed, mumbling to himself a mile a minute and rushing to triple check the sample ID and write everything down, as well as begin mass replicating that batch to see if they can get more to grow! He's smiling so widely it looks like his cheeks may become sore, and his wings are fluttering behind him, actually fluttering, he's so pleased with himself. Skywarp lends a hand preparing more pots and flower boxes, and when Thundercracker arrives he congratulates his fiance wholeheartedly. Maybe his endeavor even inspires the blue seeker to write some more 🤭 it may not have been the chemistry lab work ups Starscream used to dream of, but the thrill of scientific experimentation and discovery feels just as good as he thought it would, and for the first time in a long time... he truly feels happy. Content. Fulfilled. And it's all thanks to this lovely courtesan. That night Skywarp puts on the best show he can, and who knows? Maybe someday, he'll be able to dance for them with petals falling from the sky 💖

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Hubble watches Jupiter's Great Red Spot behave like a stress ball

Astronomers have observed Jupiter's legendary Great Red Spot (GRS), an anticyclone large enough to swallow Earth, for at least 150 years. But there are always new surprises – especially when NASA's Hubble Space Telescope takes a close-up look at it.

Hubble's new observations of the famous red storm, collected 90 days between December 2023 to March 2024, reveal that the GRS is not as stable as it might look. The recent data show the GRS jiggling like a bowl of gelatin. The combined Hubble images allowed astronomers to assemble a time-lapse movie of the squiggly behavior of the GRS.

"While we knew its motion varies slightly in its longitude, we didn't expect to see the size oscillate. As far as we know, it's not been identified before," said Amy Simon of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of the science paper published in The Planetary Science Journal. "This is really the first time we've had the proper imaging cadence of the GRS. With Hubble's high resolution we can say that the GRS is definitively squeezing in and out at the same time as it moves faster and slower. That was very unexpected, and at present there are no hydrodynamic explanations."

Hubble monitors Jupiter and the other outer solar system planets every year through the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy program (OPAL) led by Simon, but these observations were from a program dedicated to the GRS. Understanding the mechanisms of the largest storms in the solar system puts the theory of hurricanes on Earth into a broader cosmic context, which might be applied to better understanding the meteorology on planets around other stars.

Simon's team used Hubble to zoom in on the GRS for a detailed look at its size, shape, and any subtle color changes. "When we look closely, we see a lot of things are changing from day to day," said Simon. This includes ultraviolet-light observations showing that the distinct core of the storm gets brightest when the GRS is at its largest size in its oscillation cycle. This indicates less haze absorption in the upper atmosphere.

"As it accelerates and decelerates, the GRS is pushing against the windy jet streams to the north and south of it," said co-investigator Mike Wong of the University of California at Berkeley. "It's similar to a sandwich where the slices of bread are forced to bulge out when there's too much filling in the middle." Wong contrasted this to Neptune, where dark spots can drift wildly in latitude without strong jet streams to hold them in place. Jupiter's Great Red Spot has been held at a southern latitude, trapped between the jet streams, for the extent of Earth-bound telescopic observations.

The team has continued watching the GRS shrink since the OPAL program began 10 years ago. They predict it will keep shrinking before taking on a stable, less-elongated, shape. "Right now it's over-filling its latitude band relative to the wind field. Once it shrinks inside that band the winds will really be holding it in place," said Simon. The team predicts that the GRS will probably stabilize in size, but for now Hubble only observed it for one oscillation cycle.

The researchers hope that in the future other high-resolution images from Hubble might identify other Jovian parameters that indicate the underlying cause of the oscillation.

IMAGE: Using Hubble Space Telescope data spanning approximately 90 days (between December 2023 and March 2024) when the giant planet Jupiter ranged from 391 million to 512 million miles from the Sun, astronomers measured the Great Red Spot's size, shape, brightness, color, and vorticity over one full oscillation cycle. The data reveal that the Great Red Spot is not as stable as it might look. It was observed going through an oscillation in its elliptical shape, jiggling like a bowl of gelatin. The cause of the 90-day oscillation is unknown. Credit NASA, ESA, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

[loveislandthegame]

thoughts on today's volume! this was certainly an experience. 🙂 for real tho, we've definitely reached the point of the season where everything starts flying off the rails

i'm putting my clown costume on & continuing my natasha route, she told MC that her and stefan are just friends (i was getting mixed signals in this volume tbh, but if stef/natasha are actually romantic if you're off their routes , i'm just gonna assume it's glitches or FB being too lazy to branch rather than her being dishonest)

unfortunately for those who thought uma being a returning islander was going to be a fake-out , hamish brought her ass back in a friendship couple (granted he would've been dumped if he didn't twist, but he seriously couldn't have picked anyone else ? 😭)

then we play whatever this challenge was, i was mentally checking out . i hyped all the guys up except finn. it really bothers me that he keeps flirting with MC no matter how many times i've pied him off, it's giving suresh

i also thought that uma was going to be dumped due to her lack of a redesign ... perhaps fixing her weirdly long broken arm & "5 seconds away from pissing herself" pose is asking too much of FB, but they could've at least given her a new hair & outfits 😭 it wouldn't fix her personality but jeez (slightly off topic but i think uma's face is gorgeous, FB did her so dirty in so many different ways)

i picked all the chill options with her. side note, i'm so bored with these rivals that just go after whoever you're coupled up with . i'd be much more invested if the drama was like: stefan trying to have a proper relationship with natasha, hamish trying to win her back, or even uma wanting to pursue her

speaking of the drama, chen randomly decides that he's somehow more compatible with somebody he's known for a grand total of two days than the person he's been madly in love with for this entire season ... really bad paraphrasing here but my jaw was on the ground when he was like "uma is actually interested in melbourne and did research about it, you shouldn't move to my home city because of me, what if you hate it🥺." mind you, my MC is also australian

FB keeps reusing this "LI and MC fighting because they had a disagreement over the most miniscule bullshit" plot point and i don't understand why . later on he apologises but it's just so...ugh . Overbearing i guess ? idk how to describe it but i think i'm done with him

my tinfoil hat theory is that FB is trying to ruin everybody's route to make finn look good by comparison, and that's just not happening for me luv, but i will say that it made me appreciate hamish more . he's a hot mess but his scenes with MC are very sweet (love a friends to lovers moment)

at least the chen drama gave me the strength to go to the hideaway with natasha without feeling guilty (that damn hyperempathy lmao)

of course we get The Box™ again, but this time there's sexy...crossword ? 😭 (like i've said before, i don't care about these scenes so i can test out whatever FB adds without being like "damnnn that was a waste of time")

it's definitely better than dice, it's not some super spicy thing, just (at least with natasha, idk if it can change) neck kisses before the option of going all the way/bits/cuddling . sexy crossword is a deeply unserious concept but i would go with it if you're tired of the other options

next up is movie night, my MC is a hoe (mainly in the sense that anybody on a wlw route can't officially be with their LI until the final recoupling, but i'm also on hamish's route now) but i didn't do anything in casa, so i wonder what her clip will be. my prediction is that it'll end up being something that can apply to all players e.g. the PDA awards drama

(can't wait for everyone to clutch their pearls over MC turning down finn for the one millionth time 😍)