#of course this is totally objective science

[nefelegies]

IMPORTANT ROUNDUP: asks, statistics, "good science", and "the follow up video". i would really appreciate if you gave me your attention span for this one.

an update i gave on youtube that i don't know if people here saw: i may be doing a follow up after all now that i'm slightly less freaked, because my data was way too much of a mess and i would feel guilty if people began taking it and running with it while unaware of the informality and weakness of my study. i am potentially working with some people on discord to do a pedantically objective demographic study that will help clear the air but it will take some time to come out. the sampling methods and the questions being asked are very different, but/as such, the percentages that are coming out of that one are admittedly less bleak; this is of course a good thing! i am not a defeatist i am not blackpill or whatever i WANT things to not suck. i very badly want them to not suck. this new study (at least in its current stage) is more about objective demographic measures and not necessarily the far more subjective or qualitative or "investment gauging" measures i considered in my original; although i believe strongly that these measures matter, i don't know if any metrics i originally considered can give an accurate picture. i guess in a way i wish i had either taken way more time on the data gathered, engaged with it differently, or presented the video solely as a matter of opinion, but i felt that no amount of talk piece would get me taken seriously. to be clear: all the data presented is the data i collected. the data i collected was collected in the exact way described by the video. i just am not sure that my methods produced results i may "responsibly" draw conclusions about, especially when people start taking them as gospel (guys please i tried to disclaimer not to do this....).

regardless of whether you agree with my rhetoric (and i of course agree with my own rhetoric), the truth of science is that research conducted with the intent of proving a truth the author is already convinced of (see: anything published by BYU about you know. lol.) is not good research. again, even if intentions are pure and that truth was held to be objective, setting out to prove it would be contrary to the philosophy of science and "good practice". even if these things are abstract to you, they do matter greatly to me, as this is my career path, and if i knew when i started that i'd hit 100k and not like. 500 people total, i wouldn't have taken the tongue-in-cheek approach i did.

i worried about whether or not it is irresponsible to leave the video up in its current form but i am also worried that with its current spread, any move on my part to take it down would see it reuploaded by someone else, at which point i would be powerless to provide disclaimers such as these. so it remains up, but with some added context like this in the description, and comments are still disabled to try and .... slow down the spread. i guess.

all that being said: as i will likely mention in my follow up, the inability to objectively measure "who cares about what characters" does not change the reality so many people have come to me to talk about. i don't know yet if i'll compile for the video the legitimately HUNDREDS of testimonies of people telling me they've been noticing this attitude in artist circles for years, but it will be trivial to do so if i want. even if these things resist the clear quantification i would like to be able to provide (i've always been a literal thinker), the impact on countless artists' and creatives' lived experiences is undeniable. there is also something ironic about the fact that, in making a video claiming the community secretly harbored misogyny, i have been targeted by all manner of explicitly misogynistic and homophobic harassment. i wonder if the video may have been received differently if i had clarified that i am dysphoric, or that i use any pronouns, or if i had made my cishet brother do my voiceover.

i don't really know where i'm going, this got meandering. i guess what i mean to say with all of this is: i am grateful to everyone who has felt touched or even vindicated by my video; i am grateful to everyone who has approached the topic with deep self reflection; i am grateful to everyone that has reached out with a newfound commitment to be the change. i stand by every opinion presented in my video and maybe one day i will make a pure opinion piece on this same topic where i really try and grapple with "why". i just wish i had been more careful to shove messy numbers into the world i suppose.

also, about asks:

good lord there is Many Asks. um. like Many A Lot. i don't know if i should reply to them individually publicly because this is meant to be an art account and presumably none of you want your dashboards flooded with them but i also don't know if people would be underwhelmed to receive private replies????? i considered grouping at least all the positive asks into one big post but i didn't want that to come off as dismissive(?). i hope everyone knows i have been reading them as they arrive but i just. it's a weird time for me right now mentally and i somehow picked the busiest irl period of my life to instigate all of this and the idea of how long it will take to actually reply to everyone is becoming a looming threat.

thank you to everyone that actually read all this. p.s. someone made a really thoughtful response that you should watch--it's in spanish but has english subs.

[dweetwise]

Haven't made my yearly dbd shitpost yet so here you go

Template under the cut!

[meganegatari]

im so obsessed with medical dramas and constantly read about conditions and treatments and operations and assessment methods etc etc etc, my google thinks im a doctor LMAOOO

[communistkenobi]

I was looking for a book recently on an online storefront and was recommended a book written by a physicist about the history of humanity. this was a popular press book that was not intended to be read by other academics, but it reminded me of this niche genre of books, with experts from the physical sciences writing about human behaviour or history or what have you. Could you imagine coming across the inverse? A popular press book that purported to explain physics written by a historian?

There is some deep imbalance in how public perceptions of “general intelligence” seem to work - those in STEM are generally recognised for their competence, expertise, and intellectual acumen, and this recognition can be generalised, that at some level a demonstration of your expertise of eg astrophysics is a demonstration of your abilities of investigation writ large, that you have figured out some central underlying element of science that allows for basically limitless intellectual extension to any field or subject. A physicist can write a book about human history and be taken seriously by the general public on the assumption that physics is more difficult to understand than history, so any lower domain of investigation is open to them. The reverse is often not extended to a lot of the social sciences, particularly the theoretically-heavy social sciences; theory is just making bullshit up at the end of the day, it has no real practical application because any questions about the philosophy of thought or knowledge - how did we come to know what we know and under what conditions do we know these things - is just the indulgent wankery of people who can’t find a real job.

And of course it would be silly to insist that because you have read Hegel, an infamously difficult thinker, you know how to interpret the lab print-outs of electrochemists - I don’t want this goofy concept of general intelligence to be applied everywhere, I want it to go away entirely, but its current uneven applications across scientific fields indicates a broader problem with public conceptions of expertise and knowledge.

This probably has something to do with anti-communism on some level - social science is not generally regarded as “real science” (in no small part because social science is often the field of bureaucrats, and while animosity towards bureaucrats is deeply sympathetic, I suspect the reasons for this animosity are not themselves scientifically grounded), that while there is a public understanding of “objective facts” that exist prior and external to human interpretation, the politics of knowledge are hegemonically oriented around liberalism, to such an extent that any critique of the assumptions of knowledge are viewed as a dogmatic denial of reality done for the purposes of political infiltration and brainwashing. And I don’t feel totally unqualified to say this, given that this is basically the de facto response from students encountering Marxism for the first time in university. “Marx is too dogmatic” may as well be inscribed above the doors to lecture halls. Hell, Jordan Peterson made a nice little public career for himself railing against “post-modern neo-Marxism,” a phrase so nonsensical that the fact he was not immediately and permanently laughed out of the public arena for saying it is an indictment of how politically illiterate we are as a society!

And the infuriating thing is that a lot of social science scholarship (not just from the US but especially from the US) is complete horseshit, just pure evil garbage motivated solely by a desire to justify the fact that we do really need to keep killing tens of thousands of people a year to keep this whole party going. Every sociologist who calls themselves a “methodological individualist” is contributing to the long-standing tradition of eugenics scholarship but is too craven and vain to admit to this. If you had to describe the sum-total of the social scientific scholarly output of the west in a word, it would be ‘mysticism.’ Because it is the case that anti-colonial, anti-imperial, and anti-capitalist investigations of the political-economic conditions of the world have produced social scientific knowledge on par with the discovery of the atom, but it is not treated as such. “It is right to rebel” is not just a moral claim about violence but a scientific summary of human history.

But I think it is precisely this reactionary state of affairs that makes people devalue the social sciences as an actual site of legitimate investigation, that understanding the historical trajectory of ideas or the political conditions of life are valuable pursuits for any just society. Because social science deals with the social world, the political conditions under which the social world is investigated and understood are themselves bound up in questions of political and economic power. But this equally extends to the physical sciences - I know at least in environmental sciences, there is an ever-growing reckoning with climate change as an imminent threat to all life on earth, and environmental scientists cannot avoid talking about the political conditions of our planet even if all they want to do is study a river. Genocide is measurable in soil samples taken in the American continent. The separation of the environmental from the social is itself a historically contingent arrangement of knowledge.

But this is infuriating to even complain about because I don’t want to sound like an entitled academic or ego-bruised professional. I have no desire to start a faculty war with the STEM fields. I feel secure in my own expertise. I do not want anyone to “recognise my greatness” I am just profoundly lonely in this whole affair. and it just so happens that we exist in terribly anti-intellectual conditions for the most cruel and ugly reasons possible, and so we (me, I) have to suffer seeing books on sale claiming to give a general account of human history written by a physicist

[ckret2]

please more evil ford please i stare with my puppy eyes for this i am obbsessed

Yeah all right, I've been working on some art. (For context, we're talking about this Evil Ford.)

Evil Ford is Evil as in "cheerfully works with Bill even after learning his full plot" and "is totally ready to conquer and/or destroy the world." But other than the shocking lack of basic ethics and the supervillain objective he's mostly the same guy—which means he still cares about his family. He's hoping to get them to join in on the world conquest plan.

Forty-odd years ago he went off to college promising someday he'd be a big shot scientist who changes the world and he'd make his family a fortune. If taking over reality doesn't qualify he doesn't know what does. The family can join him and his buddy Bill and rule the universe together. Pines Pines Pines Pines!

Unfortunately for him, the rest of the family still has normal moral compasses. And also they've met Bill.

Bill can't currently possess Ford due to Reasons; but even though he can't get in the driver's seat he still has permission to ride shotgun at any time. Ford talks to him pretty regularly. He HAS been caught doing this. Stan thinks he's just gone a little nutty from thirty years of isolation.

Naturally, since he was always on Bill's side, Ford's perception of events during Weirdmageddon is a bit different:

I finally made an official Evil Ford New Costume Character Design, check out his exciting totally different brand new look:

I decided that, since Ford is still basically the same person aside from his terrible life goals, he'd probably have the same fashion sense. And so... nothing changes except two tiny details lmao.

But he DOES have tattoos:

I traced a canon character model and took off its top to get a base to slap tattoos on, and then went dang... they gave him a big head and arms. He looks goofy. Anyway,

His forearms have less incriminating tattoos—just a birch tree and a sunrise. (The sunrise looks like the Journal 3 "The Muse Has Spoken" page.) The red text is the "triangulum entangulum" ritual; if anyone asks he'll go "it's uhh an ancient Sumerian poem about how great science is." It's not until he's topless that it's like "oh so he's a CULTIST cultist." The one exception is an unconcealed Eye of Providence on his right palm—but it's in an ink that's only visible in certain lighting. It's there so at any time he can point his hand at something and go "Bill are you seeing this BS?"

Of course, he still has the "hey now, you're an all star" neck tattoo. I didn't have room to draw it.

As you can see, he's made being Bill's right hand man a core part of his personality. Rather than spending 30 years scrabbling around the multiverse desperately searching for a way to destroy Bill, he spent 30 years chilling in the Quadrangle of Qonfusion as Bill's specialest favoritest Henchmaniac, and only scrabbling around the multiverse occasionally for fun & profit.

Here's a photo Bill & Ford took at a Nightmare Realm house party like fifteen years ago, three minutes before Bill started an argument and set the house on fire.

Most people have their wild party years in college, Ford has his in his 40s.

[hummingbird24220]

The Ace Effect (Part 2)

One Piece x Reader

You were trying to be scientific about this. Objective. Measured. Data-driven. But science had failed you. You’d run every test, logged every variable, and the conclusion was clear:

Portgas D. Ace was too hot.

An adorable, freckled, emotionally catastrophic hottie.

He smiled too easily. He leaned too close. He listened when you spoke like you were explaining the secrets of the universe—even if it was just about your favorite pasta shape (it was cavatappi, for very good, very passionate reasons).

So, you’d decided to distance yourself.

Emotionally.

Mentally.

Physically.

You now spent most of your time in enclosed spaces, like the crow’s nest. Or the fridge. Or the bathroom with a blanket over your head.

Robin had stopped offering you tea. She just slid you calming herbs and whispered, “Breathe.”

Currently, you were hiding in the observation room with your notebook, furiously scribbling page after page:

“Romantic Threat Assessment: Portgas D. Ace”

Smile lethality: 9.5/10.

Freckle density: unreasonable.

Sweat glisten under direct sunlight: I’m suing.

Eye contact duration average: 3.7 seconds. Heart rate spike detected.

Potential danger to emotional stability: catastrophic.

You were about to add “Dangerous himbo energy” to the weaknesses column when the door creaked open behind you.

You froze.

“…Y/N?” a voice called.

It was him.

Of course it was him..

You slammed the book shut like it owed you money and spun in your chair. “Hi! Hello! What a surprise! How did you get in here?!”

Ace blinked. “The door was open.”

You nodded. “Right. Doors do that. Open. Yes. Physics.”

He stepped closer, hands in his pockets, smiling that smile—the one that turned your brain into pudding.

“I was looking for you,” he said. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I—I haven’t—I mean I’ve just been—researching.” You grabbed a paper nearby and held it up. “Did you know swordfish can swim up to sixty miles per hour?”

He tilted his head. “That’s cool. But you’re kinda sweating.”

“No I’m not,” you lied, absolutely glistening.

He sat on the bench beside you, leaning forward with elbows on his knees, watching you with infuriating softness. “Y/N,” he said, voice low and sincere, “are you okay?”

You looked at him, really looked, and the truth fell out of your mouth before you could stop it.

“No. Because you keep smiling and talking and being shirtless and I think I’m in love with your stupid face and I hate it.”

There was a beat of silence.

“…Okay,” Ace said slowly, blinking. “That’s a lot. But… good?”

You frowned. “Good?”

“I was worried you were mad at me or something. But if it’s just that I’m too hot, I can work with that.”

Your eye twitched. “You are infuriating.”

“And you’re adorable.” He grinned and poked your cheek. “You drew me with a flower crown on Slide 14.”

You gasped. “You looked through my slides?!”

“I had to! Sanji said there was a whole chart of me kissing a sword and I had to know.”

You buried your face in your hands. “Kill me. Please.”

Ace chuckled and tugged your hand down so you’d look at him.

“You wanna know my favorite slide?” he asked.

“…Is it the one where I seduce a sword?”

“Nope.” He tapped your nose gently. “It’s the one where I’m standing next to you. You look happy. I like that one.”

Your heart tried to explode. You coughed like a dying Victorian child.

He stood up and offered you his hand.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go do something totally unscientific.”

You blinked up at him. “Like what?”

He grinned. “I dunno. Sit under the stars. Hold hands. Maybe kiss a little.”

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Considered diving out the window. Then, slowly, you took his hand.

Later that night, Robin passed by the deck and spotted you both under a blanket, giggling like kids, faces close in the moonlight.

She sipped her tea and murmured to herself with a smile:

“…Hypothesis confirmed.”

-

You’d hidden the folder. You swore you’d hidden it.

Labeled innocently as “Botanical Thermodynamics (DO NOT OPEN),” it was buried three subfolders deep in your cabin’s desk drawer, under your more boring research—like “The Migratory Patterns of Sea Chickens” and “Cloud That Looks Like Sanji.docx.”

So of course, Ace found it.

You came back from the galley with snacks—for bonding, nothing suspicious—and froze in your doorway.

Ace was sitting on the floor of your room, cross-legged and wholly entranced by the contents of your secret folder. Pages everywhere. Scribbled notes. Diagrams. Charts. Several graphs comparing the ratio of shirtlessness to your heart rate. A few pie charts. A Venn diagram titled “Ace’s Personality: Golden Retriever vs Arsonist” with a big overlap labeled “Dangerous to My Sanity.”

He looked up.

Your soul left your body.

“Hey,” he said, grinning, holding up a page. “So, quick question—how did you get this accurate of a sketch of my back muscles? Did you use mirrors or…?”

“…you were napping,” you croaked. “And I made estimations based on your shoulder width. And science.”

“Hmm.” He flipped the paper over. “Didn’t know science used glitter pens.”

You screamed internally.

Ace shuffled the pages again, pulling one out like it was damning evidence. “Also, this one? The flow chart titled ‘Why Ace is Probably Flirting With Me (But Also Might Just Be Nice)’—very thorough.”

You snatched it, horrified. “That one’s a draft!”

“Sure.” He chuckled, clearly enjoying himself. “Y/N, there’s a six-page case study in here comparing me to various fire-based deities.”

“They’re thematic parallels! It’s literature!”

He held up another sheet. “And this?”

You groaned. “That’s Slide 12. The Compatibility Matrix.”

There were at least 23 names on it. Sanji, Zoro, Robin, the sword again, one very romantic dolphin you met on that weird island. All color-coded. Each had stats listed beneath: chemistry, aesthetic, emotional synergy, cuddle probability.

Yours was at the bottom.

Labeled “Me (Accidental Participant??)”

Next to it:

“Blush Index: Catastrophic.”

“Response Time to Flirting: Delayed.”

“Viability: Unknown.”

“Risk of Heart Failure: Elevated.”

“Desire to Kiss: Redacted.”

“Hair Compatibility: Excellent.” (underlined twice)

Ace didn’t say anything for a moment.

He just looked at you.

Not laughing now. Not teasing.

“...So,” he said, voice quieter. “I’m not imagining this, right? This… thing between us.”

Your breath caught.

“I mean,” you said, trying to keep your voice light, “according to the data—”

“I don’t care about the data,” he said softly. “I care about you.”

The room spun.

Ace scratched the back of his neck, glancing at one of your messier pages. “You’ve been overanalyzing this so hard you forgot to just… feel it.”

You blinked. “That’s not very scientific.”

“No,” he said, stepping closer, “but it’s honest.”

He was in front of you now, close enough that your brain short-circuited.

“I like you,” he said, simple and devastating. “Freckles, flirt crimes, and all.”

You swallowed. “Even the page where I tried to calculate what your hugs would feel like?”

“…Especially that one.”

You blushed so hard your ears burned. “I labeled it ‘Theoretical Warmth.’”

He leaned in, smiling. “Want to make it empirical?”

You stared.

Then nodded.

He pulled you into a hug—warm, safe, a little too perfect. Your knees nearly gave out.

“New variable unlocked,” you mumbled against his chest.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” you squeaked.

Outside, Robin passed the door and paused.

She heard muffled giggling. A thump. A very undignified squeal.

She sipped her tea with a knowing smile.

“…Hypothesis upgraded,” she murmured. “To fact.”

-

Sanji found the folder two days later.

You were still reeling from The Hug. Ace had gone back to his own ship for a few days to handle “logistical stuff” (you didn’t ask; you were too busy trying not to combust every time you remembered how warm his arms were).

So when Sanji burst into your room holding your Ace Compatibility Research Binder 2.0™, cheeks pink and eyes wide like he’d just found holy scripture, you didn’t even try to lie.

“Have you seen how detailed this is?” he gasped. “Y/N. Y/N. You measured his SMIRK RADIUS. You calculated the gravitational pull of his hip dips.”

“It’s called dedication to the craft,” you muttered, snatching a loose sticky note labeled ‘freckle constellation patterns (my death is imminent)’ and shoving it back in.

Sanji placed a reverent hand on the binder.

“…Can you run a compatibility chart for me?”

You blinked. “With who?”

He gave a suspicious shrug. “Oh, I don’t know. Hypothetically. For science. Maybe the hot marine waitress in Shells Town. Or, you know—” (he looked away dramatically) “—anyone who finds me devastatingly attractive but emotionally complex.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Do you mean you?”

“I always mean me,” he said proudly.

You sighed.

Then grabbed a pen.

It became a thing.

You and Sanji, hunched over the table like mad scientists, surrounded by half-eaten snacks and glitter pens, arguing over whether eye crinkles or jawlines were a higher compatibility asset. The charts grew. The equations got complex. You started adding variables like “voice timbre” and “mid-battle sexiness.”

He brought you coffee. You brought him lipstick-stained rating stickers.

At one point, Robin passed by, saw the two of you laughing with ink on your faces, and whispered to Chopper, “I think they’ve finally snapped.”

Zoro just muttered, “I told you they were weird.”

The folder became… massive.

Color-coded.

Tabbed.

Glossy cover.

You laminated it.

It was beautiful.

It was terrifying.

It was everything.

And then.

Nami found it.

She flipped through it once.

Then twice.

Then closed it.

And threw it off the ship.

“NOOOOOOOOO!” “MY DATAAA!” “MY HEART MAPS!!” “MY MIDRIFF METRICS!!!”

You and Sanji leapt over the railing like widowed scientists. You held each other in grief. Sanji sobbed dramatically. You actually considered diving in after it until Brook gently pulled you back.

“It’s over,” Nami said, brushing off her hands. “You two need help.”

“But it was a work of art,” Sanji sniffled. “You don’t understand. We mapped emotional compatibility by season!”

“I was a (Starsign),” you whispered, glassy-eyed. “Ace was a Leo. It made sense.”

“It’s literally astrology,” Nami deadpanned.

“SCIENCE,” you hissed.

That night, sitting on the deck in a towel like a war survivor, you stared up at the stars and sighed.

“…I think I was using science as a shield.”

Robin hummed beside you. “Mmm. Defense mechanisms often wear lab coats.”

“I spent so long trying to define it. To label it. Ace makes me feel like I’m on fire and floating all at once, and I kept trying to call that a chemical reaction.”

“Maybe,” she said, “it’s just… chemistry.”

You looked at her.

Then stood up, shaky but determined.

“No more analysis. No more charts. No more math.”

Robin sipped her tea. “How revolutionary of you.”

You turned toward the edge of the ship—and right on cue, Ace was arriving back, hopping from his little boat, a wide smile on his face and wind in his hair, like the universe had heard your dramatic declaration and queued his entrance.

“Hi,” he said breathlessly. “I missed you.”

You didn’t say anything.

You ran.

And then jumped.

Straight into his arms.

He caught you effortlessly, laughing against your shoulder as you clung to him like a starved scientist to the truth.

“No more variables,” you murmured, pressing your forehead to his.

“No more equations,” he agreed, cupping your cheek.

You kissed him.

It was messy.

Uncalculated.

Absolutely beautiful.

Somewhere, Sanji sighed longingly as he watched from the kitchen window.

“…I should’ve laminated my feelings.”

-

The folder—the last folder—sat in Ace’s hands like it was ticking.

Nami stood over you both like judgment incarnate, arms crossed, hair glinting like fury under sunlight.

“You promised,” she said to Ace. “We’re putting this weird phase behind us. Burn it. All of it.”

You looked up at him, heart cracking like paper held too close to a flame. “It’s fine,” you said, voice small. “She’s right. It’s time to move on. No more graphs. No more compatibility tables. No more glitter pens.”

Ace looked between you and Nami. Then down at the binder. It was a Frankenstein’s monster of data—he’d added his own notes in the margins. Compliments on your hair. A post-it that said “Y/N’s laugh: better than fire.” Another by your graph titled “Back Muscle Density vs Hug Quality,” where he’d written: “Can confirm. Hugged subject. Results: glorious.”

He smiled gently.

Then, very deliberately, pulled two pages out—your drawing of the two of you smiling, and the back muscle chart—and tucked them inside his vest.

Nami narrowed her eyes.

Ace grinned. “Sentimental value.”

You sniffled. “Scientific value.”

Nami rolled her eyes. “Whatever. The rest goes.”

He nodded. And then, with a flick of his fingers, fire danced across his knuckles. You both watched as the paper edges curled, then ignited, flames licking away hours of analysis, overthinking, insecurity.

You stood beside him, watching it burn.

Not sad, exactly.

Just… letting go.

Your fingers brushed his.

You didn’t pull away.

That night, you sat side by side on the deck, legs swinging off the edge, bare feet over calm water. The sea shimmered with stars, and the moon painted his freckles like constellations.

“You okay?” he asked, voice soft.

You nodded. “Feels weird. Like I’ve been wearing goggles for so long, and I finally took them off. Everything’s clearer. A little blurrier, too.”

“Real life usually is.”

You glanced at him.

Ace was leaning back on his palms, head tilted toward the sky, hair wind-tossed, and you were ruined. By him. For life.

“You kept the drawing,” you said, nudging him lightly.

“I like how you drew me smiling,” he said. “And the eyelashes you gave yourself. Accurate.”

You flushed. “Shut up.”

“I also kept the back muscle graph,” he added. “For… fitness purposes.”

You laughed. “Of course.”

The silence that followed was warm. Not awkward. Not uncertain. Just two people sitting together, a spark glowing softly between them.

Your hands found each other again, fingers interlocking naturally this time.

No fanfare.

No charts.

Just feeling.

“Hey,” you whispered.

“Hmm?”

You rested your head on his shoulder. “I think I like you.”

He smiled.

“I know,” he whispered. “I like you too.”

And under the stars, no graphs, no hypotheses, no research—just two hearts, fluttering and new—young love bloomed quietly. Sweet. Simple. And maybe just a little bit inevitable.

[classic-blue]

Nature of the Arcane- Positive and Negative Energy

(For reference, Arcane = the series; arcane = the magic) Come help me figure out how the heck the magic system of Arcane works.

What is the anomaly? Why was it born? Why is it that other mages in the series don't seem to cause anomalies, but Hextech does?

I refuse to be content with a magic=good or magic=bad explanation, and Arcane loves to play with nuance. I was trying to sort out my thoughts on why some magic has bad side effects while others don't, and this is where I'm sitting now. My (spit-balled, half-baked, and probably leaking) thesis:

The arcane/using magic has 2 separate outputs: the order you placed (Hextech) and the resulting exhaust (wild runes; the anomaly). Hextech can use runes to control magic, but there's a second output of natural, wild magical energy, that Hextech doesn't account for. Both of these energies can build up, and when they're reunited, they have explosive reactions (see: Mage Viktor's world, the final blip that takes Jayce and Viktor, and possibly various smaller explosions throughout the series).

For example, when positive and negative charges meet, lightning strikes.

Justification below the cut.

Science break! Ever been shocked by static electricity? That's because of a buildup of one charge, say positive, on you, and a buildup of negative charge on another object. Nature loves balance, so when you two touch, the charges discharge in a shock that connects the positive and negative charges and allows them to balance out. Size this idea up big enough, and you get lightning- powerful, fast, and destructive.

More importantly though, you can't just charge positive energy, without also charging negative energy at the same time-  creating one by necessity creates the other, so that there's an overall balance of electricity types (hey look, a metaphor, creating one inevitably leads to the other…).

Let's carry this idea over to the arcane. What if there's a 'positive' magic and a 'negative' magic output?

(Note, I use the electricity words here intentionally- positive/negative do not mean in a cosmic/moral/ethical way, but in a scientific, 'hey we need 2 connected words to separate these concepts' sort of way.)

Positive: Hextech; runes; the intended output. Teleportation, levitation, everything we see it accomplish.

Negative: the wild rune, the anomaly; the unintended output.

And, when the two come together, lightning strikes.

Lightning 1- Viktor vs Ekko's Z-drive. Viktor spends S2 becoming a centralized conduit of 'positive' magic, via the Hexcore and top ups from the crystals under the Hexgates. As the Machine Herald, the claw is continually using runes and doing magic behind him. In short, he's been building up a lot of positive magical energy. When Ekko chucks the Z-drive at him, it's powered by an anomaly, or 'negative' magical energy. Put the two forces together, and let the fireworks happen; a part of the Machine Herald's mask gets struck off in the blast. (But the Z-drive has less negative energy than Viktor's positive, so it doesn't totally wipe him out.)

Lightning 2- Viktor and Jayce's rainbow time. Jayce's acceleration rune might be the negative magical energy in this case (since it travels with him via Mage Viktor's anomaly), paired with the anomaly that Viktor grabbed beneath the Hexgate. That works in opposition to Viktor's compiled positive magical energy via the Hexcore and similar products. With these together, the balance between positive and negative is reached, achieving net neutral magic dispersion, and of course, an implosion that sucks in (or teleports, we can be happy) Jayce and Viktor, ending the conflict.

Perhaps in Mage Viktor's timeline, a similar explosion occurs, resulting in the destruction that we see Jayce traverse in the alternate timeline. But in the main timeline, Jayce and Viktor were able to contain that explosive potential to just themselves, via Jayce's acceleration rune.

"Pass me a tome" Jayce's (quoting Viktor) explanation of the anomaly/wild rune (S2:E3)

Jayce says that Viktor theorized that wild runes are "patterns that would occur naturally where the border between our world and the Arcane is thin." By the theory, wild runes are expressions of magic not quantifiable by traditional runes- natural outputs of magic that are uncontrollable and untamable.

This still works with my positive vs negative theory- it's just that Hextech, and by extension the boys, are only viewing it from the perspective of positive energy (they accessed magic, but really only half of it). From that view, negative charge, which they can't interpret why it's building up or that it even is, might look pretty wild and untamable- however, we see mages control this negative magical energy. Mage Viktor uses the anomaly to send Jayce back to his timeline. The Machine Herald is able to transport it and start to destroy/convert the world.

Because it's still a useable product, so long as you understand what it actually is, I'm not fully content to say that the anomaly is an entirely wild thing, or an unpredictable force. It's possible that Mage Viktor intentionally manipulated it to send Jayce, Ekko, and Heimerdinger to their temporary alternate universes to set in motion events to save the main timeline. I think the anomaly definitely has somewhat volatile characteristics, a bit more chaotic perhaps, but it's still controllable.

(Additionally, Ekko breaks time using both hex shards (assuming they're still in the Z-drive, I'm not sure off the top of my head), and a tiny anomaly. The fact that he's able to control it to a degree also shows that the anomaly is not fully wild and untamable.)

I suppose my overarching feeling is that the anomaly is not necessarily better or worse, or more dangerous, than the 'positive' magic of Hextech- it's just a different, inevitable byproduct of magic use.

Then why don't mages cause anomalies and 'lightning strikes'?

Simple- they know how to account for both positive and negative energy in their spellwork. They know how to equate a balance, so nothing blows up in their faces.

Granted, the only mages we really see in Arcane are Mel, the Black Rose, and Mage Viktor, and the only real discussions we get about magic is from either the Hextech nerds or Heimerdinger, who may not be working with the full picture of how the arcane works. Our sources with regards to actual mage work in Arcane are pretty thin (and I probably need to rewatch Mel's S2 scenes).

But the Black Rose mentions as Mel leaves that (paraphrased) 'it's a dangerous world out there for a solitary mage.' This seems to imply that mages work best in collaboration- perhaps that allows for a balance between positive and negative energies, preventing 'lightning strikes.'

The real point- The Need for Collaboration

While the obvious theme to be drawn from this is the need for balance, another interesting one is the need for collaboration. If mages in Arcane indeed do work together to prevent destructive magical fallout, this again points back to a core element of Arcane's relationships:

Things (magic in particular) work best in collaboration.

That's how the boys crack Hextech

That's how Jinx and Vi start to bring Vander back and reconcile

That's how Viktor and Sky work in the commune

That's how Ekko, Powder, and Heimerdinger crack Hextech again

That's how Caitlyn and Ambessa start to work, and how the lack of honest collaboration exposes Ambessa's selfish gains and weakens Caitlyn emotionally and politically

That's how Mel literally does everything politically (and why her arc narratively suffers when she's on her own against the Black Rose for so long [I still love her tho])

That's how Piltover and Zaun fend off Ambessa's assault

That's how Viktor and Jayce end it- together.

More assorted thoughts on this topic:

This theory somewhat requires that the arcane is not conscious, not retaliating for Hextech using magic improperly, which is debatable. The Black Rose says "the arcane is waking up," which could imply a sentient force, or simply a natural force like how the world 'wakes up' to spring after winter. Ekko also claims that Jayce 'pissed off' the arcane, which Jayce is cutely embarrassed about, which is a possibility, but not one that I'm getting into here- it's entirely possible that Ekko is also wrong! Jayce and Viktor frequently are! (also, the hexcore being sentient does not necessarily mean that the arcane is sentient- Viktor describes it as a learning matrix, so it could very much be a Flubber situation. He done taught the rubix cube science before ethics.)

As Viktor brings Jayce up to the top of the Hexgate, Viktor winds the anomaly in his staff and talks about the balance between order and chaos- maybe positive magic is one and negative the other?

@avelera and @linddzz were throwing around some awesome thoughts similar to this strain, including how it looks like Mage Viktor 'cleans up' the smoke output of the spell in the snowstorm. Their theory is that what I call positive and negative energy is actually constructive vs destructive force in equal output from the Arcane, and that balance between those two types is needed (i.e. if you want magic to do what you want, you also need to let it blow up some stuff) which would also explain what I've called lightning here. Definitely worth a read!

There are so many holes in this theory, but I still wanted to organize my thoughts about the anomaly, Hextech, and how Arcane tells the audience to view magic. In S1, Hextech is all good and great, possibly dangerous, but in S2, Hextech and its byproducts are all infectious, destructive, and never productive. I found the switch a little jarring, and went searching for a deeper meaning.

Also… does this mean that Arcane is actually a big metaphor for the dangers and impacts of technological advancement on natural society and how Mother Nature will come back to bite us all in the butt? Has Arcane been a secret Ghibli film all along???

[astriiformes]

Hi, i just learned about the scientific revolution in europe at school. Can you tell me why you dont think scientific revolutions exist? im curious!

So I feel like I have to lead with the fact that I'm kind of arguing two different points when I say scientific revolutions aren't really a thing

One is that I'm objecting to a specific, extremely foundational theory of scientific revolutions that was put forth by the philosopher Thomas Kuhn, which I think really misrepresents how science is actually practiced in the name of fitting things to a nice model. The other is that I think the fundamental problem with the idea is that it's too vague to effectively describe an actual process that happens.

It's certainly true that there are important advances in science that get referred to as "revolutions" that fundamentally changed their fields -- the shift from the Ptolemaic model of the Solar System to the Copernican one, Darwin's theory of evolution, etc. But there are historians of science (who I tend to agree with) that feel that terming these advances "revolutions" ignores the fact that science is an continuous, accretional process, and somewhat sensationalizes the process of scientific change in the name of celebrating particular scientists or theories over others.

Kuhn's model that he put forth in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (which is one of those books that itself stirred a great deal of activity in a number of fields) suggests science evolves via what he called "paradigm shifts," where new ideas become fundamentally incompatible with the old model or way of doing things, causing a total overturn in the way scientists see the world, and establishing a new paradigm -- which will eventually cave to another when it, too, ceases to function effectively as a model. This theory became extraordinarily popular when it was published, but it's somewhat telling who it's remained popular with. Economists, political scientists, and literary theorists still use Kuhn, but historians of science, in my experience at least, see his work as historically significant but incompatible with how history is actually studied.

Kuhn posits that between paradigm shifts there are periods of "normal science" where paradigms are unquestioned and anomalies in the current model are largely ignored, until they reach a critical mass and cause a scientific revolution. In reality though, there is often real discussion of those anomalies, and I think the scientific process is not nearly so content to ignore them as Kuhn thinks. Throughout history, we see people expressing a real discontent with unsolved mysteries the current scientific model fails to explain, and glossing over those simply because the individuals in question didn't manage to formulate breakthrough theories to "solve" those problems props up the somewhat infamous "great men" model of history of science, where we focus only on the most famous people in the field as significant instead of acknowledging that science is a social enterprise and no research happens in a vacuum!

Beyond disagreeing with Kuhn specifically though, I think the idea of scientific revolutions vastly simplifies how science evolves and changes, and is ultimately a really ahistorical way of thinking about shifts in thinking. Take the example of the shift from Ptolemaic, geocentric thought to the heliocentric Copernican model of the solar system. When does this supposed "revolution" in thought actually start, and when does it "end" by becoming firmly established? You could argue that the publication of Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543 was the beginning of the shift in thinking -- but of course, then you have the problem of asking where Copernicus' ideas came from in the first place.

The "great men" model of history would suggest Copernicus was a uniquely talented individual who managed to suggest something no one else had ever put forth, but realistically, he was influenced by the scientists who came before him, just like anyone else. There were real objections to the Ptolemaic model during the medieval era! One of the most famous problems in medieval astronomy was the fact that assuming a geocentric model makes the behavior of the planets seem really weird to an observer on Earth, referred to as retrograde motion, which had to be solved with a complicated system of epicycles that people knew wasn't quite working, even if they weren't able to put together exactly why. There were even ancient Greek astronomers who suggested that the sun was at the center of the solar system, going all the way back to Aristarchus of Samos who lived from around 310-230 BCE!

Putting an end point to the Copernican revolution poses similar challenges. Some people opt to suggest that what Copernicus started, either Galileo or Newton finished (which in and of itself means the "revolution" lasted around 100-150 years), but are we defining the shift in terms of new theories, or the consensus of the scientific community? The latter is much harder to pinpoint, and in my opinion as an aspiring historian of science, also much more important. Again, science doesn't happen in a vacuum. Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton may be more famous than their peers, but that doesn't mean the rest of the Renaissance scientific community didn't matter.

Ultimately it's a matter of simple models like Kuhn's (or other definitions of scientific revolutions) being insufficient to explain the complexity of history. Both because science is a complex endeavor, and because it isn't independent from the rest of history. Sure, it's genuinely amazing to consider that Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and the anatomist Andreas Vesalius' similarly influential De humani corporis fabrica were published the same year, and it says something about the intellectual climate of the time. But does it say something about science only, or is it also worth remembering that the introduction of typographic printing a century prior drastically changed how scientists communicated and whose ideas stuck and were remembered? On a similar note, we credit Darwin with suggesting the theory of evolution (and I could write a similarly long response just on the many, many influences in geology and biology both that went into his formulation of said theory), but what does it say that Alfred Russel Wallace independently came up with the theory of natural selection around the same time? Is it sheer coincidence, or does it have more to do with conversations that were already happening in the scientific community both men belonged to that predated the publication of the Origin?

I think that the concept of scientific revolutions is an important part of the history of the history of science, and has its place when talking about how we conceive of certain periods of history. But I'm a skeptic of it being a particularly accurate model, largely on the grounds of objecting to the "great men" model of history and the idea that shifts in thinking can be boiled down to a few important names and dates.

There's a famous Isaac Newton quote (which, fittingly, did not originate with Newton himself, but can be traced back even further to several medieval thinkers) in which he states "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." I would argue that science, as an endeavor, is far more like standing on the shoulder of several hundred thousand other people in a trenchcoat. This social element of research is exactly why it's so hard to pull apart any one particular revolution, even when fairly revolutionary theories change the direction of the research that's happening. Ideas belong to a long evolutionary chain, and even if it occasionally goes through periods of punctuated equilibrium, dividing that history into periods of revolution and stagnancy ignores the rich scientific tradition of the "in-between" periods, and the contributions of scientists who never became famous for their work.

[secondbeatsongs]

how to make neon signs in inkscape!

I lost my mind and spent a large amount of hours yesterday perfecting my methods and figuring out how to do this, so if you're interested in making something like this:

here's how to do that!

step 1: cover your workspace in a dark grey rectangle, and lock that layer down.

I've been using 80% or 90% grey - you want this so you can see your neon effect, but you don't want it entirely black at this stage, or you won't be able to see your shadow layer.

step 2: create some text!

pro tip: rounder sans-serif fonts look the best for this, because think about what a neon sign is made of - it's tubes, bent into shapes! so if your font or design looks too sharp and pointy, it'll feel unrealistic when you make it neon.

(this is, of course, a perfectionism thing on my end, so feel free to ignore any and all rules in order to make the thing that you want to make. as with all art, you can do whatever you want forever!)

bonus pro tip: if you, like me, have over 1400 fonts installed and programs tend to lag when you browse through all of them, nexusfont is a great free software that lets you sort your fonts into categories, search them, and preview what any text looks like in different fonts! I love it. it is my best friend

now I'm going to do this with a few different fonts, so that you can see how it works with them. so today, I'm picking Futura Round, Harlow Solid Italic, and then to challenge myself, Beauty School Dropout and Block

make the text white, and also select the text and go to Paths -> Object to Path, because some things don't work right if they're not paths.

let's start off easy with Futura Round!

Step 3: duplicate your text layer

now bear with me here. but you need to take the text you're working with, and either right-click duplicate or copy/paste the layer until you have seven total copies of the text you're working with.

arrange them like this, making sure the top one is the first layer on the list (and so on), and then in the layers tab, label them like so:

pro tip: if you don't have the layers tab open, go to Objects -> Objects and Layers, and that'll pop it right up

Step 4: blur time!

switch to the Fill and Stroke tab, and make these changes to the paths:

glow small: 15% blur, 100% opacity

glow medium: 20% blur, 90% opacity

glow large: 50% blur, 70% opacity

glow xlarge: 70% blur, 70% opacity

your workspace should now look like this:

this is good!

pro tip: these numbers are just loose guidelines! at the end, mess around with everything to make sure that the glow looks right to you! nothing is an exact science

Step 5: shadow and outline

for the shadow layer, make it solid black, and then change the opacity to 50%

for the outline layer, we're doing something fun and weird. so right now it's a fill object, but we want it to be an outline instead! so let's hit the X in the lower left to make it empty, and then shift-click on...for the sake of this, let's say blue. to make our nice blue outline.

now's the weird part

now. use the align tool (Objects -> Align and Distribute), select the outline layer and the main layer, and align them so the outline text is exactly centered on the main one.

then go to Paths -> Path Effects, and when the tab opens, select just the outline layer, then click the drop-down arrow in the Path Effects tab and select Offset

here's our goal right now:

we want to offset the outline until it fits inside the text underneath it, and also mess with the stroke layer settings until you have a nice thick outline that doesn't overlap itself.

mess around with the plus and minus buttons. there are no exact numbers here; you just have to know when it looks good! but for me, the settings were a -0.34mm offset, with a stroke width of 0.700mm

this is roughly what you want it to look like:

now, with the outline layer still selected, blur it out just a bit until it looks fuzzy, and like the white center is a highlight rather than a separate layer. for me, the right number was about 8.3% of blur, to get a result like this:

Step 6: layering and changing colors

okay! at this point your work should look something like this:

you now want to select every layer except the shadow layer, and use Align to center them all on top of each other.

pro tip: make sure to untoggle "move/align selection as a group", otherwise this will not work.

you should now have something that looks like this, with the shadow layer sitting all by itself somewhere off to the side

now's the fun part: colors!

since we've decided that this neon light is going to be blue, it's time to change the glow to reflect that!

here's what it looks like when you change all of the glow layers to be that same, #0000FF blue as the outline layer

and here's what it looks like when you take the glow small layer and make it just a bit lighter (#4343FF) using the stroke and fill tab

in general, mess around with the layer colors until you like how they look! I find that it generally looks better if the glow small layer is a bit lighter, and the glow medium layer is as dark as the original color. everything else is fair game.

also the main layer can stay white (if you want it to seem very bright), or you can make it a very very light blue if you want it to be a bit more subdued.

Step 7: final steps

take your sad, neglected shadow layer, and move it slightly up and to the right of your main layer, so that it works...well, basically like a drop shadow.

then take your original rectangle, and switch it to 100% black.

now. gaze upon your masterpiece

that's a good neon sign if I've ever seen one.

but now. now's when we lose our minds

Steps 8-??: perfectionism and nonsense

so let's move the Futura one aside (and hide it! inkscape lags if there are too many blurry layers visible at once, so hide anything you're not using!), set the rectangle back to grey, and move on to Harlow Solid Italic.

I've sped through a few of the steps here (out of order) so you can see what I'm doing. I've added outlines to the large glow and xlarge glow, and bumped them up a bit so they'll have a larger glow area in general

this time I've made the large glow a little bit lighter than the xlarge glow and medium glow, and made the main layer a very pale pink instead of just white. I also blurred the outline layer just a bit more, because this font needed a bit more fuzz to make it look good.

hell yeah. this rocks.

now, one detail for perfectionism: in neon signs IRL, if you look closely, there are wires attaching them in the back, often connecting each letter to the next. so...let's do that!

get your pen tool, set it to spiro path, and then make little droopy lines connecting each letter.

make these thin, 100% opacity, and a very light (almost white) grey color. then group all of them together, and move this group under the small glow layer

pro tip: some of the cords might go mostly through the shadow layer. if this is the case, just put the cord group one layer above the shadow layer instead, and then it'll be fine. but you might make the cord color a pale-greyish pink to make it look like there's glow hitting it.

ultra advanced technique: duplicate the cord group, make it black and 50% opacity, position it slightly up and to the right of the original, and then move it one layer below it. you've got cord shadows babey!

lookit that. stare at that beautiful perfection. I love it. this brings me joy.

and now: the one that will be the most work

let's gooo Beauty School Dropout!

this one I'm using as an example for what to do with a font that's a bit too pointy to look realistic

this font is really fun and bendy, but the ends of the letters are flat instead of rounded, and the corners are a bit too sharp. so...let's fix that!

now, there are several ways we can do this (after doing Object to Path ofc).

one way is to edit the path yourself, going slowly, and making sure everything is perfect, editing the nodes individually.

or, you could select the text layer using the node tool, then click the button in the top bar labeled Add Corners LPE, and then drag the little circles and triangles around to smooth out the corners

I've decided to do the LPE method, but the problem here is that if you apply the LPE effect before making sure all of the corners look good nodes-wise, it's hell to try and fix it. so before LPE-ing, look at all the spots that you're going to apply the effect, and make sure each has one point at each sharp corner, with no weird overlapping bits. okay? okay.

also for the line beneath the text, it looks like it's made up of a bunch of different segments

and since I want to keep this line because I think it looks cool, we're going to have to deal with that, and make sure that it's all one solid piece, otherwise the outlining won't work. so I've gotta delete all the extra segments, and then move the points on just one of those segments until it's the full original line width, before rounding those corners as well.

basically I've got my work cut out for me here, this will all take a bit.

...aaand an episode and a half of Supernatural later, here's this!

look at how nice and round that is! perfect for the rest of the neon process

and with cords, shadows, layering, etc

hell yeah.

more things: it's block font time

let's make an outline-style neon sign!

my seven layers:

for all but the last two, I've not used the fill option with them at all - I have simply used the stroke outline.

now don't be worried! the stroke-to-path still works just the same way even using an outline to begin with! so it's easy to get an outline of an outline, and do the offset thing just like you did before

however, because this font is more complex-looking, there will probably be some errors when you offset it

for example, it didn't fully outline the second half of the Os, so I just copied the left halves, mirrored them, and replaced the right half with the complete left half

pro tip: keep in mind that you have to re-apply the offset to any bits that you add to the outline layer!

doing the same steps as last time, editing the glow blurs as I see fit, once again we end up with beauty and perfection.

another thing you can do: turn off the lights!

I'm going to use Beauty School Dropout and Harlow for this, but after making your beautiful neon signs, here's how to make it look like a turned-off sign, for if you want to make...idk, a gif of a light turning on and off, or a burned-out sign, or something like that.

so start with (ideally, duplicated copies of) your neon signs:

and then simply delete every glow layer, change the outline layer to 90% grey and your main layer to 70% grey, change the cords' color to a darker shade of grey than whatever it already is, and lower the opacity of the shadows by about 10-15%.

doing that, you end up with this

bam! lights turned off!

last thing: logos and other stuff

you can make neon signs with images as well as with text! the steps are essentially the same, though you may have to do more editing to make it look good, and use simplify on the path if it's too detailed.

and if you're using anything besides an .svg, you first go to Paths -> Trace Bitmap to turn your image into a vector! but unfortunately I've already used 29 images in this post, so here, just look at this Keith Haring thing I made as an example:

is it messier than the text? yeah for sure. does it have some pointy bits I could smooth out more? definitely. but, I've watched three episodes of Supernatural today, and that is more than enough time spent on this. so this is what you get.

but yeah, that's how I make neon signs in inkscape! I used to do it in GIMP, but this works much better, and looks so nice and clean! <3

(man, graphic design really is my passion)

[sukioyakio]

LOSER!BOYFRIEND

Me and my pookie talking about things and then one thing leads to another😏

AND THEN LOSERBOYFRIEND THOUGHTS KEPT COMING THOUGH!

PARING: LOSERBOYFRIEND! Miguel x Reader

WARNING:May have smut content,but will be mostly FLUFF

SUMMARY: LoserBOYFRIEND!Miguel headcannons 💓

DID NOT PROREAD DID NOT EDITED

LOSERBOYFRIEND!miguel who works at an lego store because it was the only job his gym rat looking ass found,but he enjoy the job non the less,and plus he's the cashier meaning the front view of everything:)) (of course he love it,since he can get free Lego sets for him and for you)

LOSERBOYFRIEND!Miguel Who is Hardly more then happy to see you,come by his work job to say hi.Just your smile would make him down bad for you like you have no idea.But what makes him happy even more is That you come to give him some home made lunch.And then there he just got hard the tightness in his pants was unbearable,it felt like at any moment he was going to release his steman in his pants. He was lose in the thought of you being his wife and how he'll be abke to have that smile to wake up too.

LOSERBOYFRIEND!Miguel Who is hella nervous when you went over his house,especially in holiday days.My guy would sweat the most before you even arrive,he'll clean his house not once not twice but four times just to be prepare,he know he an absolute Loser,but he just want you to know that his trying and that even if he doesn't have the best of relationship advice (which is none 😅😢) HE WILL BE THERE!!!

LOSERBOYFREIND!Miguel who know after dating you for like 5 mouth,he will and know that he is gonna go inside your pretty little apartment,and knowing that makes him nervous.One because your smell it addicting to sent, and two it because he really never been at an girl apartment or stuff so he reallly doesnt know how to act.And so his cute loser ass search up "how to act when your in your girlfriend"s house" (HE IS SUCH AN TOTAL DORK AND dont tell me he would be all night researching about these things) and so when he finally got inside your house.

THis man is hard already,it like you put an drug on the air in your house.He was for sure that you could see his dick bulge through his pants.Already he has his flush out face and he barley inside your place.

"are you ok babe?" you asks sweetly,with your big doe eyes looking that him.The same eyes he has dreams about in dark hours of the night.

loserboyfreind!miguel nodded to your sweet question,As he hide his stuipd (big) little boner from you.He would get embrassed if you saw,and or so overthinks that you would leave him because of him thinking of you in an sexual way (My guy overthinks an lot but cant bring himself to tell you how he feels and really want to make himself feel like an good boyfreind even if he an total loser about it )

Walking around your place was like an new terrioty for him,he would particauly look and study each object in your room through the living room.

But when you took him to your room his dick got more stiffen in his pants and so he quickly ask where is the restroom to "use the bathroom",

WHERE HE IS AN TOTAL GREEK FOR VIDEO GAMES AND SCIENCE, but when you come into his life,he had no idea how to be a boyfriend.BRO WOULD HAVE AN NERD LOOK BUT would tried so hard to look presentable for you. 

CUZ YOU DESERVE IT,but he’s broke and work in an Lego store and so GET AN SET OF THE FLOWER AND Chocolate BOX LEGOS SET AND WOULD BUILT IT FOR YOU,and would be embarrassed TO SHOW HIS FACE when his shoving his gift to you,HAVING A BLUSHING FACE. 

GRUMBLING UNDERNEATH HIS mouth 

“I-ii- I know is not the b-best gift,but please accept it”he says while looking down with a shy expression and shoving it to you.

you wonder how an built gaint is an such an adorable loser.boyfriend You had an smile on your face. 

“Thank you for your gift” As you crane your neck and you were on tipped toes and gave him a kiss on the cheek. 

HE LOOKED SO HAPPY SO APPRECIATIVE,the second later he would have a nose bleed from your kiss.THIS MEN NEVER HAD PHYSICAL TOUCH. 

(That all I have 😭😭😭)

HAPPY VALENTINES 💝

[cc-nadama]

A Modern Retelling of Viktor

Author’s Note: This style of writing is not representative of my usual work. These are my notes for what I imagine is a modern portrayal of Viktor. In addition, it serves as an outline for future stories I may write that are set in this au. Below, you will find my thoughts and headcanons on the subject.

Expected Content: There are no sexual imagery depicted in this work. However, there are themes of obsession, unhealthy working habits, stalking, and quite possibly, a hint of yandere Viktor.

Pairing: There are multiple relationships mentioned/implied in this work. I will certainly explore my options, perhaps even create poly pairings. However, the main course includes: Viktor x reader, Jayce x Viktor, and Jayce x Mel.

———

Viktor Petrov

— AN OVERVIEW

When he received a scholarship and admittance to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Viktor traveled to the United States on a student visa. He is currently majoring in Engineering and Applied Science, with a minor in aerospace engineering.

Originally from the Czech Republic, Viktor is fluent in three languages: Czech, English, and Russian. He had never traveled outside Europe before, so his first months in the States were filled with homesickness. Luckily, there was a place a little ways away from campus that serves decent bramboráky and trdelník. It’s a bit overpriced, but it helped ease his heart when he missed home.

Everyone who knows Viktor swears he is a genius. One look at his GPA and any Asian mother would weep and wish her kid was like him (totally not based on personal experience).

Once he finishes his education at Caltech, Viktor will most likely look for a job at NASA. He aspires to specialize in robotics and work with other complicated machinery—especially if it is space-related.

Viktor lives a few miles away from campus. Jayce Talis, his charismatic roommate, is also a student at the university. He has the same major and classes as Viktor, so they are often together on and off campus.

— PERSONALITY

Viktor is an introvert, but he is not unfriendly. He will engage in class and interact with the other students, but he chooses to keep friendships minimal. It is his choice to be alone, not his lack of socialization. Well, at least that’s what he tells himself to sleep easier at night.

Naturally, Viktor has a rational and objective mind. When he speaks, it is very articulated and blunt, never withholding an ounce of sarcasm when allowed. Oftentimes, people view him as an insensitive or callous man—though it’s mainly because he keeps his emotions checked.

He has a strong work ethic. Viktor is the kind of student to work on a project five months earlier. Almost always, the man is seen in the library studying until midnight, replaying his recordings from the latest lecture to add to his notes.

Speaking of notes, Viktor is a stickler for notes. Even with his unreadable handwriting, it remains meticulous and detailed. He even draws diagrams! Because of this, many of his classmates would borrow his notes—only to learn that they could barely make out a word, let alone a phrase.

When Viktor feels especially sociable, he loves to engage others in spirited debates. He loves a good challenge, specifically if it tests his intellect and reasoning. Whatever the topic is—from scientific to philosophical—Viktor always has a stance. He has an aura of subtle confidence, self-assured in his ways but not to the point of egotism.

In simpler terms, Viktor has Type A tendencies with a 5w4 on the enneagram and an INTJ on the Myers-Briggs

— FLAWS

It is difficult for him to maintain a relationship—platonic or romantic. Oftentimes, Viktor believes it is implausible for someone to like him as a person. He has experienced rejection plenty of times before, so he feels it necessary to end a relationship before it blossoms, fearing that the other person already hates him or is only with him for undisclosed intentions. Although Viktor hates irrationality, he still has irrational fears based from past experiences.

If there is one flaw he is often in conflict with, it’s his discipline. He may be a genius, but Viktor still has trouble setting his limitations. It is an obsessive need that overtakes him—an inkling he cannot exactly ignore. If he feels compelled to work later into the night, he will. If he feels he needs ten shots of espresso, he will buy and drink it. If he feels he has a crush on a certain student, he most likely would… stalk them.

Oftentimes, if left unchecked, his ambitions would blind him. Due to his obsessive tendencies, Viktor would pour all his attention into work and research, neglecting his state of being. If he ever took a break, it was most likely because he was starving, parched, or needed to use the bathroom. Still, it could take days, even weeks, before he returns to sanity and society.

— RELATIONSHIPS

JAYCE TALIS: If they weren’t roommates, Viktor would have never befriended him. Everyone on campus knows Jayce—he is a literal social butterfly—always liked by most students and teachers. Still, Jayce remains a constant in his life. They have partnered on several projects and received stellar reviews. It is obvious that the two of them are great friends. Viktor would never admit it, but Jayce is one of the few people in his life that he actually likes and trusts.

PROFESSOR HEIMERDINGER: Even if the professor won’t say it, everyone knows that Viktor is his favorite. He goes out of his way to support him, always wanting to know what wonderful contraption he has built as of late.

MEL MEDARDA: Initially, only acquaintances, Viktor and Mel later became friends due to their relationship with Jayce. After hours, Mel would drop by the apartment and hang out with Jayce while also displaying an interest in Viktor and his studies. Their relationship is more akin to a sibling relationship, like an older sister and a kid brother.

READER: Another student in Caltech who takes the same classes as him. Within a matter of days, Viktor became infatuated with you. Every time you entered the lecture hall, you could see the man stiffen in his seat—blankly staring at you then embarrassingly looking away. It was sweet, knowing that you had caught his attention. Not many of your classmates could say the same thing. Viktor was quiet during class, only speaking unless spoken to or if he was keen on answering a question. Yet, it came as a surprise to you when you received a single rose on your doorstep—you never told anyone about your address.

— INTERESTS

Even as a kid, Viktor loved Star Trek. He dreamt about the plausibility of interstellar travel and the intricacies of warp drive. He spent nights imagining himself working in the engineering deck and tinkering with transporters. Almost single-handedly, the franchise inspired him to become an engineer—to work with the complexities of science and invent something anew. If he had to pick a character as his favorite, Viktor would select—without a doubt—Lieutenant Commander Data. His ongoing arc of seeking human connection in spite of his inability to understand human emotion—was what endeared Viktor. In many ways, he had the same troubles as the android. People viewed him differently because of his disability and brilliance. Like Data, their uniqueness was both a gift and a curse.

If he has no plans for the weekend, Viktor would spend his day playing chess against himself or Jayce. Naturally, they would take turns being white, often forgoing the use of a timer—unless they were feeling competitive that day—and play a few games while talking about life. If Viktor was playing white, he often opens with a pawn on e4 and then implements the first moves of the Spanish Opening (knight on f3 and bishop on b5). If Viktor was playing black, he would use the Tarrasch Variation of the French Defense, with 1. e4 e6, 2. d4 d5, 3. Nd2 c5. Although it is not exactly aggressive, Viktor focuses more on positional play.

(I am not a chess player, but I watched a few videos from GothamChess and live feeds from Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura for research)

His taste in music varies on his mood. However, Viktor favors the classical and contemporary genres the most. He is especially fond of composers such as Tchaikovsky and Chopin, and jazz musicians such as Stan Getz and David Benoit. He does experiment with other genres, but faithfully, he returns to his favorites after a long day in the laboratory.

———

[apilgrimpassingby]

So, I recently saw an atheist meme that went "Imagine if all the money spent on religion went to science and medicine. This is the world religion took from us."

This is dumb for a lot of reasons - for starters, the first public hospitals (at least in the Western world) were founded by Christians. But there's another one I thought of in church this morning. There's a lot of money spent on blockbuster films, which they don't object to.

So, I looked up the twenty-five highest-grossing films of the 21st century and added their box office grosses and budgets (the latter found on Wikipedia; if there was a budget range I took the lowest one). This is, of course, only a fraction of the actual money spent on these films (producers spend a lot on advertising while customers spend a lot on merch, DVD, Blu-Ray and streaming), which is in turn only a fraction of the total film market, or even the total bl. But it's still a decent slice of the film market, and so it's useful.

The combined budget and box-office gross of the twenty-five highest-grossing films of the 21st century is $46,113,000,000.

To give some idea of what you could do with just a slice of the blockbuster market, the average federal student loan debt in the USA is $37,853. With 46 billion dollars, you could pay off 1.2 million student loans.

Or for another metric, raising a child in a single-income home from the crib to the age of 17 with a before-tax income of less than $40,000 will cost a total of $157,410. With 46 billion dollars, you could pay for the rearing of 293,000 children from lower-income families from birth to the age of seventeen.

This is the world blockbuster movies took from us.

[crookedkryptonitebeliever]

If I arm wrestle with Yves, would he let me win or nah?

Tl;dr: Yves lets you win if you manage to overcome his normie strength, but he will teach you how to win against it

It depends, could you overcome his forearm torque of 160Nm in total? Yves can absolutely handle much more intense forces, arm wrestling an entire hydraulic press and winning without breaking a sweat. But for the sake of appearing "normal", he would tone his abilities down tremendously. Even his "normal" strength is a little jaw dropping, as a torque of 160Nm is as powerful as the higher end of an electric mountain bike.

Regardless of your personality, he would let you try your luck and strength on him without giving any pointers. You would find that he is an immovable object, staring at you dead in the eye as you're fighting for your life. It's as if he was elegantly holding a martini glass in the air, while you're close to popping a vein in your forehead.

The scenario above is only if you're untrained; the average person. If you're a professional arm wrestler and are able to beat his grossly undermined arm strength, he would put up a show and pretend that you're genuinely beating him in the game. After that, Yves will shower you in praise for succeeding, but also checking your arm if you had accidentally broken a bone or injured yourself in any way.

After humiliatingly losing (or painfully winning) to him, Yves would thank you for trying and of course, praise you for your efforts. As Yves is a man of Physics and science, he would lay out exactly how to best him at arm wrestling.

He would tell you the length of your forearm matters, and the pushing force you apply must be exactly perpendicular to it. The shorter your forearm is, the more force you have to apply, on top of that, remembering to keep it perpendicular.

Yves would take the chance to teach you about moments in physics, pulling out his reading glasses, some pens, calculators, protractors and papers. He also made sure to remind you that your bones and muscles can only handle a certain amount of pressure until they tear or break.

Let's say, for example, if you have a forearm length of 23.5cm, or 9.3 inches; you would need to exert around 70 Kilograms or 155 pounds of force just to get a torque of 160Nm. Before you could even achieve such a feat, it's incredibly likely that you would either fracture a bone or dislocate a shoulder. Or die from an aneurysm.

Yves loves to think, he enjoys exploring such topics and hypotheticals with you; welcoming any and every absurd idea you have just to win in a match of arm wrestling. You could suggest lengthening your forearm by either using a bionic prosthetic or taping a metal rod, he would do the maths and run his predictions for you in real time; enthusiastically explaining its likelihood to succeed or fail.

He would also love discussing about the ethics and integrity, what constitutes cheating or unfairness in a game. If you're the type to indulge him in these debates, it could go on for weeks. Even months or years.

But chances are, as soon as you see him holding a notebook and a set of stationery in his hands, you would probably run away and give up trying to win. Not everyone fancies a good physics lesson.

And he would expect that to happen, but it doesn't make him any less disappointed.

He shows his love in many ways, one of which is imparting some of the vast reservoir knowledge he has onto you.

[emeraldspiral]

Imagine if instead of creating Clembrane to replace Dib's dad Zim cloned Dib himself to try to replace him with a harmless fake while he kept the real Dib trapped in his lab where no one would look for him. Kinda like the comic where GIR replaced Dib. Where Zim programmed Clembrane to make pudding and ground Dib, Zim has programmed Clib to act like he and Zim have buried the hatchet and become best friends. Dib is forced to watch on the video screens in Zim's lab as Clib goes to skool in his place and spends all day telling everyone that Zim is super cool and definitely not an alien and he was a dookie-brained dirt monkey for ever thinking so. Zim sends Clib home to Dib's house in his place and Dib has to watch his dad totally accept Clib as his real son without out an ounce of suspicion and even praise him for saying what he wants to hear about giving up on the paranormal. Gaz sees what's going on but just doesn't care. Clib invites Zim into the house so he can tear apart Dib's room, destroy his evidence, and put some evil alien science doohickey on Membrane's latest invention.

Of course, as you'd expect, inevitably that Dib DNA proves just too strong for Zim's programming and he starts behaving more like the real Dib. He randomly starts throwing insults into the mix when he's supposed to be singing Zim's praises, acts like he's giving him a friendly pat on the back but then pushes him into traffic, and deliberately fucks up and sabotages Zim's latest evil scheme he was supposed to help with. Eventually, Clib breaks completely free of Zim's influence and rushes to the lab to liberate the real Dib.

At first Dib and Clib are a little unsure how to feel about the situation. How are the two meant to both exist at once? What do they tell their dad? Will he accept both of them? Maybe he will, and that'd be kind of awesome. It'd be like having a twin brother, except it's another him, which means they like the same things and think the same way, so they'll always get along. But just as the two of them start getting excited about finally having someone in their life who gets them and who they can share their passion for the paranormal with, Clib deteriorates into a puddle of goo, due to being an unstable creation. Zim shrugs, "Oh well." Dib is devastated. He slunks out of Zim's house. Zim cluelessly asks if they're still on for some activity he and Clib promised to do together later. Dib chucks an object at Zim's head. The final, incredibly disturbing gag of the episode is GIR licking Clib's remains off the floor.

[centrally-unplanned]

Since I am discussing anime academia today, I was reading another paper that was equally frustrating, along a different axis:

“Do female anime fans exist?” The impact of women-exclusionary discourses on rec.arts.anime

This as a premise is a good concept; someone mining the 90's Usenet anime communities for how the fandom saw female fans back then (the article title is quoting one such thread). So of course, the opening line of this article about the anime fandom in the 90's is....sigh....a reference to Donald Trump:

Commenting on the 2016 American presidential elections, multiple news reporters noted that a relationship could be found between Donald Trump supporters and online anime fans

It of course goes on to discuss Gamergate, 8chan, online right-wing radicalization, references to the "Fascist" themes of Attack on Titan, and on and on. The obvious problem with this is that it is irrelevant; the "methodology" section involves this aside about how they pulled this data from Google Archives but Google is an advertising firm and not a replacement for a real archive and we need to Fight The System and buddy my dude that is not germane to your sample size!!! But more importantly, it is backwards. I don't need to explain the argument here in detail; the article is positing a throughline from 90's anime discourse to modern right-wing internet politics through a sort of 'lock-in' effect of built culture norms around misogyny. Which is fine, you can make that argument - but why is all this future stuff in the first section? You haven't really presented the argument yet! This isn't a book, its not the intro chapter - literally 30% of the text of this article is stating a conclusion upfront, justified not through the text itself but citations to other articles about its truth.

This is something media studies pulled from traditional science - traditional science states "established facts" up front that the paper is building on. But that is because - a thousand caveats aside - in chemistry those facts are....facts. They may be wrong facts, but they can, ostensibly, be objective descriptors. This paper cites "anime is still synonymous with far-right ideologies of white and male supremacy, and events of anti-Blackness" like its citing the covalent bond count of carbon. That is not and never will be a fact one can cite, that is an argument; and its not one that is important for understanding this analysis of Usenet groups. This structure is pulled from other sciences, but it flourishes because it lets you pad the citation count of your peers. Its embarrassing how often you can skip the first 1/3rd of a paper in this field - really the worst possible thing to copy from economics (ding!)

This paper also does the insane thing of jumping between citations from 1992 and events in the 2010's like anime culture is continuous between those time periods. Its an extremely bold claim it just does in the background... but lets set that aside.

This hyper-politicization & hyper-theorizing leads to the second issue of extreme under-analysis. This is the actual value-add of this paper:

From this search, I was able to find the discussion threads “How many females read r.a.a.?” (135 messages; opened on July 13, 1993), “Question: Girls on r.a.a?” (23 messages; opened on February 25, 1994), “Female Otakus” (221 messages; opened on June 25, 1994), “Women watching anime” (72 messages; opened on October 4, 1994), and “Female fans - Do they exist?” (61 messages; opened on October 26, 1995). While these discussions may seem like they were spaces for marginalized users to discuss their experiences, they were often started and overwhelmingly occupied by identified male users. In total, I extracted 252 messages from 1992 to 1996 that were relevant to the gendering of anime fandom, and among those, I classified them as 7 kinds of negative networking discursive practices: (e.g. Table 1. Negative networking practices on rec.arts.anime).

252 messages, five threads - later on it will name other threads, so its more than this, but you get it. It has a bunch of data. And from that data, the article quotes...less than half a dozen examples. There are no quantitative metrics, no threads are presented or discussed in detail from this data set. Some other event is discussed in detail, but again it quotes essentially one person once. The provided "Table 1", the only Table, is a list of the author's categorizations of the data; the data itself is not present. Its file format is a CSV, presumably to mock me for clicking it.

There is, from top to bottom, a complete lack of engagement with the data in question. This would fail an intro anthropology seminar; the conclusion is simply presumed from 1% of the sample size while the rest of the messages are left on read. I just don't think there is any value in that, a handful of messages from 1996 divorced from their context and stapled onto modern politics as a wrap-up. What did the people on this Usenet value? How did they think of women collectively? As anime fans, as outsiders, as romantic partners, as friends? What subfactions existed? Questions like those would presumably be the point of this investigation, but they are treated as distractions.

And this article was, in anime academic circles, a pretty well-trumpeted one. I'm not cherry-picking a bad one here, it was the "hot paper" of the month when it came out. Its just that the standards can be so low, its a field that simply lacks rigor. Which doesn't stop a ton of great work from being done btw, that isn't my point at all. My point is that the great work is not selected for; it goes unrewarded, bogged down by academic standards divorced from discovering real insights.

(I do not think the question "why are they misogynist" ever crossed the author's mind. That should be your literal thesis, and its a ghost. Just ugh.)

[thetriggereffect]

Nothing About the Stargate Is Intelligent

Don't get me wrong, I love all three Stargate shows, and I regard them as some of the best science fiction on television.

But the Stargate itself is a mass of technobabble whose operation is not just ridiculous, but impossible. And I don't mean technically, I mean logistically.

A standard Milky Way Stargate has 39 glyphs. Each glyph represents a constellation. A standard Stargate address involves seven of these glyphs-- six of them identify the location in three dimensional space, and the seventh is the point of origin.

This is several entirely distinct flavors of stupid.

Constellations are not points. One of the stars in Orion's belt, for example, is more than a thousand light years from either of the others.

Even if this weren't the case, the Stargates are millions of years old. Stellar drift has changed the constellations in the ~10,000 years that mankind has been aware of them.

You only need three points to identify a location in three dimensional space. Requiring a second position for each axis does nothing except for drastically limit the locations that can be addressed.

If every address requires the same seventh symbol at a given gate, there's no reason not to make the gate automatically supply it.

If you can identify the point of origin with a single glyph, why can't you identify the destination with one? (There is actually a bit in the original movie where Daniel tells the natives, "we're from here" and shows the symbol that corresponds to earth and they get it.)

Also, if the point of origin is one symbol.... there can be a maximum of 39 total gates. There is no such limit in the shows.

Of course, there is also the magic eight-symbol address that somehow, despite being made up of coordinates in the milky way galaxy, points to the Pegasus Galaxy. Or the nine-symbol address that can only be dialed from one gate (that apparently isn't even in the right place, affecting its ability to dial), which points to Destiny, which doesn't even have a fixed location.

And while we're on the subject of Destiny, how does THAT gate work? If the glyphs on a gate are constellations, how does that work on a ship that moves between galaxies?

How does dialing even work? The whole spinny thing is just our gate, because we don't have a DHD, but, like... why does spinning it even work? And how is it that, by the end of the show, we've developed the technology to build our own gates, but we're still dialing the main gate with the equivalent of a hotwire?

That's not even getting into the physics of the "wormhole" itself, or, rather, the lack thereof.

An incoming wormhole spits out a vortex that, in a violation of all known laws of physics, completely destroys everything it comes into contact with.

Unless it's the iris, which is just really close to the event horizon.

Or you just bury it, but that seems to have only worked the once.

The iris that we built, because the ancients who created them didn't seem to think anyone would need to be able to lock the goddamn door (until they got to the Pegasus Galaxy).

The iris that nonetheless seems to be completely integrated into the gate so seamlessly that you can't see the mechanism or where the parts go when not in use.

Wormhole travel is one-way. Except, of course, for radio waves.

It is an explicit plot point in several episodes that an object passing through a stargate is de-materialized as it passes through the event horizon, and is not re-materialized until (and unless) the entire object passes through.

Which begs the question-- how can you step through? Once your front foot is through the horizon, it can't bear weight. How is your back foot lifted up?