#...fuck it.

[agentravensong]

who wants to hear a new story idea i just came up with this morning? no one? cool, let's do it.

inspiration-wise, it's a kind of more meta take on the stories of choice-based "interactive drama" horror games like the quarry - not meta in the sense that the characters become aware they're literally in a video game (this story idea isn't meant to be a game; would probably work best as a tv show tbh), but in a more indirect sense. it would also be better written /lh

the premise is we have a group of young adults who were all in high school together, and the youngest of them has now just graduated from college. to celebrate, they organize a meet-up with all their friends at a camp in the woods where they all spent a weekend as high schoolers, as a "let's reconnect and see how far we've come" sort of thing.

now, all the characters have slightly different memories of what happened that weekend those years ago, as they discover when they first arrive for the reunion and start reminiscing. they've even had nightmares - some more frequently and more harrowing than others - of terrible things that happened there. but none of them* believe those nightmare versions with supernatural elements to be true (because otherwise why the hell would they go back?). * except for potentially a character one or a couple who decide to risk going back to see what the truth actually was and/or to settle unfinished business

unfortunately for them, it's not long into their reunion when they start finding hints of a supernatural horror haunting the woods, and those "false" memories start resurfacing. the truth they eventually uncover is that, as teens, they not only lived through a quarry or until dawn -like scenario in these cursed woods, but they were also trapped in a time loop.

you see, the forest is home not only to [insert monster type here, still working that out, will take suggestions], but also some guardian spirits, who used their powers to guide the teens and rewind the events to try and minimize their suffering (they're, essentially, player analogs). the spirits ultimately saved the kids by taking on the curse of the forest in their steads, and were able to lock away their traumatic memories in the process. unfortunately, because of that choice, the spirits have grown weak in the intervening years, and the amount they'll be able to help the characters now is much more limited. this time, the humans are, for the most part, on their own.

with their four-to-eight years of additional life experience (will work out the specifics later), and their sporadic memories of how things went last time (blurring the lines between past and present), can our protagonists succeed in not only re-surviving the horrors of the woods, but also ending the curse for good? will their weathered bonds with each other get them through, or will they unravel from the stress, time apart, and unearthing of secrets both old and new?

and are the forest spirits truly the noble protectors they appear to be, or are they concealing ulterior motives of their own? after all, does every person stop playing these games once they get a good ending... or do some of them go back to see just how badly things can go?

all questions that could or could not be answered, in this story i will probably never write.

some bonus fun stuff:

i figure the characters would all have been fairly trope-y as teens, for the sake of creating a contrasting with their (slightly) more grown-up, developed selves. i would have to do more research for this, cause i'm not typically a consumer of this genre

potentially, one or two of the teens actually got left behind in the past (either having died with the spirits unable to save them and/or having in the intervening years become a grizzled survivor type). the other protags, of course, don't know this, with their memories telling them the lost souls simply stopped being in contact shortly after the trip. lots of angst potential for when they learn just how wrong they were.

as mentioned above, i'm not sure what type of monster would be most fitting for this story. i like the idea of it being a type that can infect humans such that they turn, ala werewolves or vampires, for the purpose of having at least of the protags having gotten infected in the past and not knowing until it resurfaces at the reunion. plus then the monsters hunting the group could be other humans who have gotten trapped like this and suffered a less fortunate fate. could also be the case with the spirits, regardless of the rest of this.

that's all i have for now. very up to hear what anyone else thinks of this concept :)

[galacta-phantasma]

Had a revelation

[jesterbots]

genuinely one of the saddest parts of this new era of the internet is how hard it is to rick roll someone now. with people's attention spans shortening so much, they wouldn't even get through the first few bait seconds before clicking off the video. like i saw a comment that ended with "btw i made all of this up" and the replies kept treating it so seriously because none of them finished the entire 4 sentence comment. and We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I (do I) A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

[littlegoldfinchh]

lord the peasants are so loud today

[scretladyspider]

“If you have time to watch Netflix you have time for a side hustle” my side hustle is relaxing so that my body and brain can heal from by this nose-to-the-grindstone bullshit. I refuse to feel guilty for being a human with the need to relax sometimes. my side hustle is no.

[daylighteclipsed]

ENTRY LEVEL MEANS NO EXPERIENCE. IT MEANS NO PORTFOLIO OF RELEVANT SAMPLES. ENTRY LEVEL IS ENTRY LEVEL

[cidthecoatrack-blog]

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

[mayhemchicken-artblog]

in the hour or so it took me to draw this op turned reblogs off

EDIT: reblogs are STAYING OFF. op was right and correct and i have never regretted making a post as much as this one. if you want to reblog my art you can reblog something else from my blog. or commission me, lord knows i deserve financial compensation for the nightmare this post has put me through

[azimuthalis]

Good news, fellow artists! Nightshade has finally been released by the UChicago team! If you aren't aware of what Nightshade is, it's a tool that helps poison AI datasets so that the model "sees" something different from what an image actually depicts. It's the same team that released Glaze, which helps protect art against style mimicry (aka those finetuned models that try to rip off a specific artist). As they show in their paper, even a hundred poisoned concepts make a huge difference.

(Reminder that glazing your art is more important than nighshading it, as they mention in their tweets above, so when you're uploading your art, try to glaze it at the very least.)

[skenpiel]

i hope i never ever ever see this image while im high or it will also straight up kill me. it would make me so scared my skeleton would run away And id be a boneless scared heap on the ground

[tagedeszorns]

This machine kills AI

[nando161mando]

[ourlordapollo]

The zoo in my hometown posted this picture of one of their cheetah cubs and I'm obsessed

HIS NAME IS YAM ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDINF ME

[apollos-boyfriend]

having such an obvious favorite character trope is life ruining bro

[persephinae]

://www.dreamstime.com/ ://www.freepik.com/ ://www.craiyon.com/ ://stock.adobe.com/ ://storybird.ai/ ://www.dinosaur.org/ ://pngtree.com/ ://creator.nightcafe.studio/ ://www.123rf.com/ ://lumenor.ai/ ://neural.love/ ://www.vecteezy.com/ ://openart.ai/ ://www.artpal.com/ ://generativeai.pub/ ://promptbase.com/

Block these sites in your uBlock Origin so you won't see that shit in your searches

[profeminist]

"The Don't Say Gay Law has been cut down to size in more ways than this.

- LGBTQ+ students and staff may now be protected by anti-bullying and anti-discrimination measures

- Libraries are free to restock LGBTQ+ books

- LGBTQ+ topics may be discussed freely

GO CRY IN A CORNER RON

Florida teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender ID under ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill settlement