#zero standardization

[motleyfam]

It was supposed to be an easy night.

“—With this serum, I shall finally free my atoms of their dimensional prison, allowing me to freely traverse the very fibers of our universe!” the mad scientist proclaims as Red Robin, who is seated in a chair across from him in the makeshift laboratory, works furiously to undo the knots binding his hands behind his back. “The laws of physics shall govern me no more!”

“Don’t you do it, Frank,” Red Robin warns as he struggles with the ropes. “You know what happened last time.”

“That’s Dr. Nexus to you!” the third-rate villain declares as he tips the neon purple liquid into his open mouth.

Tim swears. Tapping his ear to his shoulder, he activates his comms. “Anyone near the abandoned warehouse on 28th and Laremont?" he demands. "We might need some backup.”

“Seriously?” Red Hood snorts incredulously through his earpiece. Tim can hear gunfire in the background. “For Nexus? You’re off your game, kid.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a little tied up at the moment,” Tim bites back irritably. “And Frankie here is about to go into anaphylactic shock. Again.”

“DR. NEXUS!” the villain bellows, then promptly breaks into a coughing fit.

“You’re a community college drop-out, Frank! You do not have a doctorate!”

“Screw you, I’m going back! I’m just”—Frank wheezes—“taking a semester”—wheeze— “off!”

With a final tug, the ropes slip from Tim’s wrists. Jumping to his feet, he jams a hand into the eighth pocket of his utility belt, retrieving a plastic autoinjector.

Doubled over with his hands on his knees, Frank holds up a defensive hand as he approaches. “Wait, no!” He coughs a few times. “Just a little more time! I’m so”—he wheezes—“close! I can”—wheeze—“taste it!”

“You’re tasting the inside of your own airway, that’s what you’re tasting…” Tim mutters under his breath, ripping off the blue plastic cap with his teeth.

“Go to"—wheeze—"hell!”

“Pro tip,” Tim says as he swings the uncapped Epi-Pen in an arc over the villain's thigh, “try not to insult the guy who's saving your life!”

The needle plunges into Frank’s leg for the second time in as many weeks, eliciting a howl of indignation and pain.

“You know, that’s gotta be the most hypocritical thing you’ve ever said."

“Yeah, yeah,” Tim grumbles into the comms, “just send the freaking ambulance…”

[sher-ee]

[collophora]

Do yourself a favor and go read the entire fanfic work of @fanfoolishness

(In order: Under sun and shade, Blind Side, and Breathless (patching up is one of my fav too, I just had no cool sketch idea for it)

[satans-knitwear]

Super quick pics, before I return to my blanket cocoon ✨

Treat me ~ Tip Me ~ More of me

[calamitys-child]

Actually one of the most frustrating things about working is that many jobs require you to work on Saturdays and Sundays while still society at large refuses to count those as working days. If I order something and it will be sent "in 2 working days" why must I work for 4 days until it arrives. Public transport runs less on Sundays because "that's not a working day" oh is that so. In that case. Pray tell why I am waiting on this train. Because I'm pretty sure I'm going To Work.

[penaltyboxboxbox]

i try to stay out of this all but like. i just think its really interesting how it matters so much for a team to see out a contract/think of the drivers mental health/look at their full body of driving work as opposed to the recent results when its a driver you like but suddenly all of that goes out the window when its a driver you dont like. and also, how throwing around sponsor money/connections/pr image to benefit career and make you more lucrative to teams is fine and just part of the sport when a driver you like does it, but sacrilege apparently when its a driver you dont like is doing it...

[gundamfight]

[rubywolf0201]

I’m probably not going to get Zhu Yan anytime soon but she’s kind of funny and cool.

[girlballs]

damn you're really gonna have a character ostensibly be in a car and not go through the effort to model a car for them to be in. that's like. hilariously fucking lazy

[meowsticmarvels]

one of the most insane things about carlos is like. based on how you are introduced to him in ztd you think he's gonna be the most normal character in the game especially when teamed with AKANE and JUNPEI of all people. and he is the hero type main character archetype guy. but then you play suspicion where he literally kills himself with an axe because he's worried about being dangerous to others (? Is he okay actually. What the fuck). and then there's also get back/apocalypse where he waits 10 fucking months for akane and junpei to save them instead of stopping zero at all. What is wrong with him

[askthekirbysquad]

hey wait a sec

[whetstonefires]

I think a part of the reason I feel so connected to JGY and XY is that I, too, think everyone is lying about what a good person they are. Sure, there may be a few genuinely good people, but those are in the minority and never claim the title.

I don't know about never; some people are pretty straightforward.

And in some ways the whole point of the concept of 'a good person' is that the feeling of losing the right to consider yourself one can impose instinctive recoil from doing wrong, in situations where you don't have the leisure of working your way through an ethics diagram and choosing the logically moral path before reacting to a situation. It has practical utility.

But that system can backfire pretty horribly too, in a lot of ways. It can be hijacked by definitions of 'good' that actually make you recoil from ethical acts because they're deviant. It can lead to disappearing up your own ass lmao.

And definitely the threshold for 'talking about how you're a good person' enough that it makes you suspect as either a) a liar or b) someone who values that self-image over objective reality and other people's wellbeing is. Not very high.

Jin Guangyao, ironically, is one of those people who's so performatively A Good Person in his public life that in retrospect it looks like a red flag. Which knowing this about himself in an ongoing fashion ofc just reinforces his own cynicism about everyone else lmao.

Even Lan Xichen, who I think he may see as a genuinely good person, he also sees as an easy mark who will reliably choose what is comfortable over what is 'right,' if you just structure the scenario to make that an easy choice that's easy for him to justify.

Xue Yang's bitterness is in many ways more exciting than Jin Guangyao's because he has a way more unusual relationship to reality, but it does share a lot of notes.

The role of deception in his psychology fascinates me because as far as I can tell he's as instinctively straightforward a person as Lan Wangji, albeit along quite different lines involving a total lack of impulse control, but has adopted 'deceit' as a weapon against the wicked world in the same way he has adopted 'murder.'

But when he feels someone is not merely lying but papering over bad behavior with principles they are not living up to he is livid.

People claiming to be better than him because they're 'good' when 'good' is a construct of privilege, is the underlying idea he's not equipped to articulate. Except he takes that and applies it to 'hitting me to interrupt my random murder of some guy who happened to be within arm's reach when I wanted to hurt someone.'

Which isn't like philosophically perfect, but the underlying problem he's actually reacting to is that he understands the social contract as a lie that has never protected him but seeks to control him, while protecting rich men it has no power to control.

Which it is fair to be mad about, but then his feeling is that since that's the nature of the world and all people, he is entitled to amass for himself the power to inflict hurt without consequences as much as he possibly can, and to use it against the vulnerable for fun, and no one is entitled to interfere.

Which brings him to a place where he is violently angry at anyone talking about trying to treat other people well as a value, because either they're a hypocrite and a liar or they threaten his entire system of rationalization for why he can be The Worst and still In The Right.

'Everyone is equally bad, actually' is like, an understandable take for anyone who's had cause to become embittered. Everyone is free to make whatever philosophical peace they can with the world and by and large there's no ethical weight to any such opinion, in itself.

But it's an ideological crutch people tend to wind up leaning on very heavily when they can't or don't want to take responsibility for their own behavior.

Which is an approach that Xue Yang, Jin Guangyao, and Su She all share, and which not only is shitty of them, it...traps them in a wheel of doubling down on their own worst impulses because rather than going 'that was bad and I shouldn't do it again' they've repeatedly invested all this energy into making what they did actually the correct thing, according to their interpretation of the context. Which means they're more likely to do it again.

(I think this is how Jin Guangyao became a serial killer, for example. He followed a doing-a-murder-impulse and then internally doubled down on how he had nothing to be ashamed of, so he was more likely to do it again, every time.

Wei Wuxian's strain of self-righteousness about his revenge was less...thorough than Jin Guangyao's, because he had the benefit of going after people on the opposite side of a war from him while Meng Yao's first known murder plot was against a shitty boss. But it probably didn't help him not try to solve army-shaped problems with mass murder, even after that stopped being allowed.)

If any of them had just like, zero moral sensibilities they would have created very different problems, and very possibly fewer of them. It's making a central goal of your operations 'self-vindication in your own internal narrative, created retroactively via reframing' rather than 'figuring out what I think I should do and trying to do that' that traps them in the self-reinforcing murder pissbaby vortex.

So if you look at it one way, these three villains are themselves perfect examples of how pursuit of the 'feeling of being good' (or at least 'not the bad guy') can make you worse.

Notably Wei Wuxian was also extremely sensitive to hypocrisy in his youth; it was the only part of Madam Yu's behavior he was ever shown objecting to. But he's sufficiently mellow and cynical from regret and burnout by the 'present' timespan after his resurrection to just get disgusted and alienated about it, rather than outraged.

He wasn't even all that mad at Xue Yang, though honestly that may be partly because he stopped entirely characterizing him as a person at some point during their interaction. Like, there's no point being angry at someone whose moral sensibilities operate exclusively on the plane of 'is this unfair to me' for manipulating and destroying people who were good to him, and then getting obsessed with his own self-pity about it. This is not a person who understands how not to be, metaphorically speaking, a cannibal.

And Wei Wuxian did know better and still got roughly the same result, so what business does he have getting angry?

Anyway yeah those two villains are both delightfully relatable if you sit down and put their perspectives together; they are clearly operating with the same basic suite of human needs and emotions as everybody else, without that being in itself particularly exculpatory, which is honestly refreshing. They've just got the most fantastically toxic interpersonal habits that knowing them counts as some level of Suffering A Curse.

Jin Guangyao and Xue Yang do both stand as scathing rebukes of the society that created them. But within the narrative, wherein they're people, the fact is that each of them had agency and one of the things they chose to do with it was develop rationales for why they were the most special little guy and everything was someone else's fault.

And their moral nihilisms, while also grounded in serious trauma, ping me as emotional masturbation of this variety.

[geomimetry]

some more sillies

[octothinq]

If you guys get to thirst over the wolf man then I get to thirst over the big fat bear man. There will be no judging here.

[baddybaddyadardaddy]

a knife in the dark

[adar/oc]

This is a slightly unhinged WIP AU for my longfic, Awake, Arise or Be For Ever Fall'n. Highly recommend (ask/beg/implore) you to read at last the first like, 8 chapters of that first or you'll be... um... maybe a lil confused? PREMISE: Erenyë is reembodied in Valinor, but Mandos shrouds her memories of Utumno, hoping to spare her pain in her new life. But she is restless in Aman, sensing that something is missing... She boards a ship heading for Middle Earth, hoping to discover just what that is. [DON'T @ ME ON REINCARNATION MECHANICS, THIS IS PURELY A NONSENSE DRABBLE THING THAT WILL HOPEFULLY EVENTUALLY LEAD TO SMUT BUT MORE REALISTICALLY WILL JUST BE A LOT OF RIP-YOUR-HEART-OUT ANGST BECAUSE APPARENTLY THAT'S ALL I DO HERE. 🫠 ]

She makes her voyage on an elven ship that is nearly empty.

Why would you go across the sea, the other elves ask her, mouths agape, in the days before her departure. Bliss lies here in the West—you will find little comfort on the shores of Middle Earth.

Erenyë cannot answer them, cannot explain why the eastern expanse calls her so. She has heard many among the eldar who made passage home from the Hither Lands speak of the sea-longing that precipitated their journey—but this feels like something even stronger, a yearning for a place, yes, but something more… something that she cannot name.

Whatever it is, she surmises it must be the reason she has never felt quite at home in Valinor, even surrounded by her Noldoran kindred, the ones who had remained after the terrible kinslaying of old.

As she watches the waves pound against the sharply angled bow, wind whipping through her hair, she speaks a silent promise to the waiting horizon: I am coming.  

...

The tides of fate flow, and the sea is treacherous.

Their vessel is beset by perilous storms that rage by day and night, and no prayer to Ulmo seems capable of assuaging them. Their instruments fail, and the gale proves too powerful to hold their northward course to Lindon.

She asks how far off course the storm has flung them.  

Toward the Southlands is the answer.  

...

They make port in an abandoned Numenorean harbor that the captain calls Pelargir, and it is here that Erenyë takes her first steps into Middle Earth.

The landscape is lush and green, and different from Valinor—for it strikes her as more rugged and wild than the place from which she’d come. The climate is temperate and the air is moist, the trees here are massive, with thick trunks and sprawling branches, growing as they do only in Oromë’s woods across the sea. The forest calls to her—as all forests do—and she wanders eagerly toward the treeline, ready to lose herself in this new world.

But she is stopped by raised voices as a party of men emerges from the woods with warning. They are downtrodden, starving and traumatized, bearing the scars of war and disaster. In due course she learns that they have fled their homeland, several leagues to the east and over the mountains.

With terror-laced voices, they speak of a fire mountain, lately awakened, belching fire and cloud so high that it swallows the sunlight, rendering the land a waste, overrun by orcs. They answer to a single leader, the men tell her—a villain who calls himself Adar.

....

Adar.

It is a perplexing name for a servant of darkness, an elvish word.

She ponders the mystery late into the night, after the newly established encampment falls still. The elves had wasted no time in offering aid to the refugees, and Erenyë had done her part, though the forest still calls to her, insistent.

She considers going off alone, but the threat of orcs roaming the hills seeking captives to return to this Adar gives her pause. She knows enough of orcs to understand that the safest time to move through their lands is in daylight, and though she has never encountered one, memories of the stories that had reached her ears in Valinor, and the accounts of the Southlanders strike a deep chord of fear within her breast. She passes the night restless, yearning to roam.

At dawn, a small party of elves from the ship sets off toward the mountains, and Erenyë accompanies them eagerly, taking up a sword and dagger from one of the men who had not survived the night. The elven leader, Telemnion, tells them they must discover as much as they can about Adar and his legions so that a report can be sent north with all speed to High King Gil-glad.

They set a northeastern course that takes them up steep hills as they near the borders of the Southlands. As the day wanes, she catches the scent of smoke upon the air—ash and scorched pine, the smell of instantaneous destruction. Without warning, she doubles over, bracing herself with one hand against the nearest tree, retching.

“Are you well, Erenyë?” Telemnion hurries to her side, his eyes wide with concern.

In truth, she cannot say why the smell affects her so—she only has the keen sense of having experienced it before.

Her mind is filled with visions of ruined land—even before they emerge from the trees on a high precipice just before nightfall and see the blackened remains of the Southlands for themselves—and she knows that the visions are not simply abstractions. They feel like memories.

But it does not make sense—there had been no destruction of that kind in Valinor. Yet as they stop to rest, she cannot shake the sensation of touching ruined ground: of trailing her fingers over blackened, hollow trees, over the bleached bones of dead animals, over ash-laden earth.

As day gives way to night, she watches the skies above turn color. It is not the natural, blue-black of a peaceful night, but a wicked orange glow, cast by flames and smoke. It is yet another strangely familiar sight, and it fills her with blackest dread.

...

Several nights later, they are attacked by a band of orcs.

They are far outnumbered, and Telemnion cries out to them, telling them to run. With a pounding heart, Erenyë flies as fast as she can through the trees. When she’s confident there is enough distance between herself and the skirmish, she climbs, seeking for the safety of the upper branches of a great oak tree.

In the distance, she sees torches gleaming, and the sound of orc horns pierces the night air. She hugs the trunk of the tree, pressing her body close as though hoping it might open and absorb her into the safety of its bark as the orc army presses closer.

They are chanting something in unison—something that sounds victorious—and it is not long before they are close enough for her to understand it.

Adar… Adar… Adar…

The orcs continue their advance toward her tree. She considers climbing down and fleeing, but the chant soon falls silent, and the flickering torches stop moving.

A new voice fills the air.

It is low and husky, speaking the guttural language of the enemy. She cannot understand a word, but she tips her ear toward it, for there is something, some phantom quality about it that she cannot place. The trees are close in the glen, and with great care, she makes her way from one to the next, sidling toward the voice.

The orc army comes into view, and she can see their leader standing before them. His back is toward her—she can see only his silhouette against the torchlight. He is tall and slender—strangely elven, compared to the other orcs, the majority of whom are stooped and stocky. His presence is commanding, though he does not raise his voice beyond what is required to adequately fill the clearing.

He finishes his address with what is clearly a command for the uruks to set up camp, for they break out into groups, busying themselves with assembling tents and unfurling bedrolls.

Adar, for his part, watches the flurry of activity, then retreats into the shadows of the treeline. He is outside the torchlight now, but Erenyë follows his shape in the dark as it moves deeper into the forest. Keeping a safe distance, she scrambles down from her tree, closing her hand around the dagger she carries. Her heart begins to thrum again, pounding with a mixture of intrigue and terror.

He weaves gracefully through the trees, making no sound. There is something about his bearing that seems ancient, as though he is a part of the old forest itself and she creeps closer, fearing that at any moment, he might be swallowed by the trees, absorbed into them.

Dawn is breaking when he pauses in a clearing, and she realizes that the trees around them have started to thin, their leaves charred. The scent of smoke is stronger here, and with a soundless gasp, she discovers that they have reached the line of the fire-mountain’s destruction.

He kneels down, and she is struck by how suddenly small he appears. The sight of his silhouette stirs something in her—something that originates from that same place of strange recollection.

Why, her heart cries in anguish, does he seem familiar?

Without a thought, she steps closer.

He is crouched beside a green sapling that the fire had somehow spared, fingering the delicate leaves with a reverent—almost loving—tenderness.

She takes another step, disturbing the ground in her wake. A twig snaps beneath her foot; his head whips around toward the sound, and she flies at him, unsheathing her dagger with a cry.

They collide, tussling in the ashes. Erenyë scrambles and struggles with all her might until she lands on top with a dagger to his throat, gasping to reclaim the wind that was knocked out of her in their skirmish. His face comes together in her field of view: grey, mottled skin, covered in scars, thin lips, and shockingly deep, green eyes. She loses herself in them for a moment, as she steps seemingly out of time itself, spellbound by their depths. Her heart accelerates, threatening to batter itself out of its cage within her chest. She leans closer, bearing down on the dagger that is still pressed against the flesh of his neck.

He draws in a sharp breath as the blade bites into his skin, drawing a few drops of black blood. His eyes close, and his exhale is a soft moan, she presumes of pain, but she recognizes it as excitement, somehow. Pleasure.

She squeezes own her eyes shut, striving to steady herself, for it seems as though the ground itself is now swaying beneath her. She feels it again—the familiarity, the certainty that she has heard that sound before—no, not just heard it, she has been the cause of it.

He is no longer struggling—his body is languid beneath her, boneless. She clenches her teeth, confused, weighing her next move. He is the enemy; he and his army are responsible for the fire-mountain, for the destruction of the forest, for the torment of the Southlanders. She should let the dagger finish its work—drag it across his throat, spill the rest of his black blood here upon the ashen ground.

He murmurs something, something in a language that sounds like elvish, but it is older: an archaic form—one that she has only ever seen preserved on ancient scrolls. A dream, this is a dream, he rasps over and over, in that same low, husky tone that sends a shiver rolling down her spine, but not one borne entirely of fear.

The sound of the ancient language comforts her. Inexplicably, she thinks of stars, and the sound of water falling gently over stone. 

She feels him shift and opens her eyes, preparing to defend herself. But he does not attack—instead, his hands seek for her hips, sinking softly into her flesh as he drags in another quaking breath. He wears an iron gauntlet on one hand, and it digs into her side, stopping just on the edge of pain.

Her stomach roils at the sight of this creature, this thing, this orc touching her, but her skin tingles beneath his fingers, even through her tunic.

She lets the dagger drag another quarter of an inch across his throat—she isn’t sure if she intends it to be a warning or an invitation—and he groans again. Tremors roll steadily through her body now; she feels she is dancing on the edge of a dangerous precipice, and she does not know whether to seek for safety or let herself fall into it.

He opens his mouth, and breathes a single word:

“Erenyë…”

Fear wins out—the sound of his name upon her tongue sends an earthquake through her body and she moves automatically out of shock and terror. With a strangled yell, she yanks the dagger into the air. He tries to rise, but she is too quick, slamming the butt of it against his temple—hard.

He falls back, unconscious, and she clamps a hand over her mouth to stop the scream that threatens to break free.

tagging @catz4ever @toddthekiwibird @eowyn7023 HERE YA GO MY FELLOW BADDYDADDY BRIGADERS

Read part 2 | part 3

[balkanradfem]

you're a m*n and you do something nice for your spouse/kid/relative/stranger: instant internet fame and glory, people celebrating your good deed internationally, not only you are one of the best in existence now but complete strangers are personally declaring their love for you. This good deed will be remembered forever and brought up frequently to up your 'nice m*n' status, and you will never be expected to do anything of that sort of grandiosity ever again.

you're a woman and you do something nice for your spouse/kid/relative/stranger: You've been doing these every single day of your life, you've had to do most of them in order to get everyone thru the day. It's the least everyone expects of you. If this is something new you've done that you don't already do on a regular basis, now this is expected from you on a regular basis. Nobody notices, brings it up, it's demanded on the regular, and if you fail to deliver you will be shamed and called names. If you bring it up ever, you will be shamed into silence and pressured to give more credit to that m*n who did a nice thing once, he is the actual hero of the day.