#aka November of last year

[cloudbattrolls]

Another Drop

Jikiro Takami | Present Night | Takami Estate

Jikiro didn’t think anything of it when Hanabi left for several nights at a time.

She had her own business to attend to, her own friends and life outside of the estate. He knew she’d always come back eventually; it had been her home longer than it would ever be his, though he was in no hurry to go to space. Jamie couldn’t go, Viltau didn’t want to, and he doubted Velour had any desire to leave yet either.

What reason did he have to move on when everyone he knew and cared about was here? His staff and his other friends like Sarang and Ullane showed no desire to leave Alternia. He didn’t know Linnae as well, but he imagined they weren’t interested in joining the fleet either.

Plus, there was the business. He couldn’t just leave it...though he was starting to wonder if Viltau wasn’t right, and he should try to negotiate with his signmates about sharing its management.

It wasn’t that he hated running it. Quite the opposite; he’d had some good times, was having them again now that things had cooled down.

It still took him away from his quadrants and his true passions far more than he would have liked.

He wanted it to succeed, for his own sake and because it was expected of him, but the sheer time drain was becoming less and less appealing. All he wanted to do, if he was honest with himself, was manage the ink-making department. It would still take plenty of attention and energy, but god, he’d have so much more fun. He’d have so much more freedom - to be with Jamie and Viltau, to train Velour, to travel. To paint, to explore, to learn more magic.

He rubbed his eyes, not caring that he slightly spotted them with ink, and looked down at the current mix he was perfecting from the nettles Linnae had helped him gather. It still wasn’t quite right; the consistency was too thin, and the color wasn’t the exact hue he wanted. But he’d get there, and he could tell by how his mind was wandering that he wasn’t going to make much more progress at the moment.

So the tealblood cleaned his desk and packed up his tools, leaving his workshop neat as always. He yawned as he walked outside and back to his hive, just about ready to fall into his recuperacoon without even taking his clothes off -

“Jikiro.”

“Mmffwhat?” He mumbled, blearily registering that it was his lusus’s voice. He stood over the green slime, then backed away from it with a sigh because he realized her tone had been quite serious.

He turned around to face her troll form and the wriggler she had with her, who stared up at him with big gray eyes and small, almost unnoticeable horns.

Wait.

“Who’s. That.” He said slowly, blinking and squinting through half-asleep eyes. 

Was it some wriggler one of the lowbloods had clinging to their heels, or a kid separated from their lusus, or -

“Her name’s Kanako.” Hanabi said lovingly, if with some tiredness. 

“I suppose Iza made good on all her promises, even in death.”

Oh no. Oh shit.

Jikiro woke back up as surely as if he’d had cold water thrown over him, his dark eyes widening.

“No way. You can’t be…”

But even as he trailed off, Hanabi bent over to gently pick up the wriggler, who squirmed, and presented her to the ink maker.

He saw that her tiny horns were simply a miniature of his own, and he was sure that when she bled she’d be as teal as any Takami.

The wriggler reached out with her little arm and slapped him on one scarred cheek.

Stunned for a moment, Jikiro then broke into helpless laughter. So this really was happening.

“Damn, okay, kid.”

“You stop that.” Scolded Hanabi. “No swearing around her.”

“That’s gonna be a hard one and you know it.” He groaned.

“You will manage.”

“Guess I have no choice, huh.” He said, dragging a hand down his face. “F - darn, where’s she gonna sleep?”

“She’s in one of the guest rooms for now. But you’ll have to start moving out to the mentor’s hive.”

Jikiro blinked. Fucking hell. He’d known it would happen one night, but he wasn’t even twenty. This wriggler was at least a sweep old, from the look of her. Had Izanam known about Kanako the whole time, keeping her in reserve for when she finally made him lose every scrap of credibility he had left?

His mother must’ve guessed his thoughts, for she sighed and put Kanako back down, putting her hand to his shoulder.

“I wasn’t sure until recently, little Ji…and as far as I know, Iza never knew about her.”

“You said no one else in the bloodline knew what I was either, and she did.” He grumbled.

A rare moment of regret crossed the tanuki’s round face.

“I should have guessed. It was…the last inscribed before you, the one I mentioned before? Chiiyo was Iza’s mentor. Iza must have found out about her without me knowing. I had thought otherwise, because Chi pushed everyone away as she grew older…” Hanabi sighed.

Jikiro winced. Goddamn, he hated feeling a little bad for Izanam of all people. 

Not enough to regret Vil killing her, though.

“Man. Okay. I need sleep.” He said, finishing the sentence with a yawn. “I’ll figure this out in the evening. What a news blast this is gonna be for everyone.”

He tried to climb into his recuperacoon, but became aware of a small weight clinging to his leg.

He looked down.

“Your signmate needs to sleep, you little mochi ball. Scoot.”

Kanako looked up at him with big gray eyes and said nothing. Nor did she move.

He groaned as Hanabi laughed softly. 

The tealblood sighed deeply and leaned down to pick her up…which made her detach herself, kick him in the shin, and attempt to push him over.

Mystified, Jikiro watched all this with blinking eyes.

“I think she wants to sleep on you.” Said the tanuki with amusement.

“I’m not a - “ The midblood paused. “Okay, just because Jamie and Viltau do it…”

“It seems you have a third customer.”

“Man, I’m not actually a bed.”

“Hush. Lie down and let her rest.”

The tealblood could not believe this was where his night had gone, but he dutifully walked over to the nearest couch, arranged it so he’d at least be marginally comfortable, and laid down.

The wriggler nigh-immediately clambered on his belly, laid down, and closed her eyes.

Of course. This was his life now.

The undead sighed, and finally passed out as well.

[britishchick09]

little rewrite erik and his parents, gerard carriere and madeleine destler :)

[breadbrobin]

GOD i want to listen to christmas music SO BAD but i CANT bc it’s not DECEMBER YET and that’s a CRIME FUCK—

[the-universal]

man november has such a gymnopédie no. 1 vibe my mental health can't handle it

[kedreeva]

Okay, I haven't wanted to talk much about the peafowl lately, been just kinda dealing with Stan's passing, but! I have news I don't want to keep quiet, so here we go with a little announcement.

I've been helping a friend of mine with a bunch of peafowl genetics work lately, as he's trying to prove out a really neat phenotype of speckled and white peafowl that showed up in his breeding stock, and he just spent tens of thousands of dollars importing two new morphs from Europe: European violet (aka, my dream morph) and Ultramarine (pretty and only otherwise being produced by TWO breeders in the WORLD). When Bill heard about Stan, he asked if I was going to go to a large farm auction that's a few hours from my house. I don't, normally, since it's a few hours from my house and the auctions usually make me kinda sad when it comes to peafowl (they stress out SO MUCH) even though it's cool to see how much they're going for at a wider audience auction.

Then he told me he would be going, and that if I wanted to come down the day before the auction, he'd bring me another male, to replace Stan. I had already made plans to hang onto Bismuth, at least for a few years, and to pick up babies from Indie x Arcana/Eclipse this november, including a male, so I didn't really need another male, and don't have the cash for one anyway. He said no, he meant one of the split EUV males from last year's first-USA breeding. For free. As a thank you for helping him.

To put this into perspective, importing the birds is a ~$10k affair, per bird. I had fully resigned myself to never even SEEING one of these birds in person, much less ever owning one. Even if someone else got them imported, they would remain thousands of dollars for the first few years, and quickly become mixed with other stuff, potentially even be lost by people breeding to purple. He went in on a group import with another breeder and they have both just started selling the full-color birds for over $2k apiece (alongside Ultramarine, which before their import was bred by TWO people in the WORLD, and babies from that are going for almost $7k each, but EUV is more widely spread). Splits (like the one I will be getting) are being let go for $750. This is also the color I have desperately wanted since I first saw them 8-10 years ago (though I believe they've been around slightly longer), but that I had resigned myself to never actually having.

To put it mildly, I'm probably going to burst into tears when I see Bill and this bird. It's going to be super embarrassing. And then I'm going to have to build more pens. And then I'm going to have to get as plain-blue, pure-indian blue hens as I can find, and become one of the most serious curators of plain pure EUV in the US, because I know the other two who have them currently will be outcrossing to other patterns/colors immediately and the people buying them will likely be doing the same, and everyone will be clamoring to make them into high Spaldings ASAP, or won't know not to cross them to purples and wreck the color.

Here's the sire cock, the one imported:

You will notice that this bird is purple in full sun, from the sunny side. That's the main difference between European violet and US purple- a US purple looks blue until you get the right angle on the sun vs the bird vs the camera, and you have to get the bird between you and the sun, so the purple is often in the shadow side- visible to the eye but not the camera. EUV is just purple. Even from the sunny side!!

And the Ultramarine, in case you were wondering about their color:

(pics reposted w/ permission from Bill)

The breeder is Spring Creek Peafowl, and in case anyone is secretly a peafowl breeder or knows other peafowl breeders with too much money that want in on a new color morph, he DOES have UM pairs and EUV hens (and more split males) for sale currently, for less than the only other person in the US that has them. They're still pricey, but cheaper. I WISH I had the extra to have my friend add on an EUV hen, but alas, I will have to wait to make my own in a few years. Even just the opportunity to do so is something I never expected to have!

[k-hippie]

WELCOME TO ... SAN SEQUOIA & COPPERDALE K-505 UPDATE AND K-707 NEWS :)

As we are still in the Bold November, here come San Sequoia and Copperdale K-505, both with their make-over, both ready to fill your need of pixels :)

SAN SEQUOIA ... as you know, the city is based on the San Fransisco Bay and the first thing we remade in this world has been the bridge :) It has to be red. No question :D Then, we made the grass and finished with the streets and roads. In that order ...

As we made a lot of textures work this month, we'll come back with more details in the coming weeks in each world since, you know, ALL the K-505 and other K-Mods have to be updated ;)

COPPERDALE ... frankly, I was quite surprised. Because I didn't expect such a town. Very agreeable to watch and play BUT very complicated to transform with true pixels :D So ... we remade A LOT of things, including the road signs ... many many details to review, many many files to work on, we hope the result will fill your expectations !

We already worked on the trees of the city, and all this is very promising. Which makes me talk about the K-707 ...

The terrible K-707 ..................... :) Already there are some trees from the last 4 worlds that are reworked ( such as the palm trees of Tartosa and San Sequoia ) and indeed I think they are much more interesting than the original ones but the K-707 is a difficult and tricky one and we really have to take care of it from the beginning, aka the base-game ... So, be patient about ;) because it will be super cool.

More news next week with the coming arrival of ... Chestnut Ridge rework ---> At first look, no particular obstacle arise. It should be fairly easy to cover all basics.

So, we're already working on K-707 and some special K-303 we're eager to get out.

Stay tuned, have fun, support our work :D

Give us some caffeine : ko-fi // paypal

k-505 High School Years : Copperdale download

k-505 Growing Together : San Sequoia download

xoxo

[simply-ivanka]

How the Biden-Harris Economy Left Most Americans Behind

A government spending boom fueled inflation that has crushed real average incomes.

By The Editorial Board -- Wall Street Journal

Kamala Harris plans to roll out her economic priorities in a speech on Friday, though leaks to the press say not to expect much different than the last four years. That’s bad news because the Biden-Harris economic record has left most Americans worse off than they were four years ago. The evidence is indisputable.

President Biden claims that he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, but this isn’t close to true. The economy in January 2021 was fast recovering from the pandemic as vaccines rolled out and state lockdowns eased. GDP grew 34.8% in the third quarter of 2020, 4.2% in the fourth, and 5.2% in the first quarter of 2021. By the end of that first quarter, real GDP had returned to its pre-pandemic high. All Mr. Biden had to do was let the recovery unfold.

Instead, Democrats in March 2021 used Covid relief as a pretext to pass $1.9 trillion in new spending. This was more than double Barack Obama’s 2009 spending bonanza. State and local governments were the biggest beneficiaries, receiving $350 billion in direct aid, $122 billion for K-12 schools and $30 billion for mass transit. Insolvent union pension funds received a $86 billion rescue.

The rest was mostly transfer payments to individuals, including a five-month extension of enhanced unemployment benefits, a $3,600 fully refundable child tax credit, $1,400 stimulus payments per person, sweetened Affordable Care Act subsidies, an increased earned income tax credit including for folks who didn’t work, housing subsidies and so much more.

The handouts discouraged the unemployed from returning to work and fueled consumer spending, which was already primed to surge owing to pent-up savings from the Covid lockdowns and spending under Donald Trump. By mid-2021, Americans had $2.3 trillion in “excess savings” relative to pre-pandemic levels—equivalent to roughly 12.5% of disposable income.

So much money chasing too few goods fueled inflation, which was supercharged by the Federal Reserve’s accommodative policy. Historically low mortgage rates drove up housing prices. The White House blamed “corporate greed” for inflation that peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, even as the spending party in Washington continued.

In November 2021, Congress passed a $1 trillion bill full of green pork and more money for states. Then came the $280 billion Chips Act and Mr. Biden’s Green New Deal—aka the Inflation Reduction Act—which Goldman Sachs estimates will cost $1.2 trillion over a decade. Such heaps of government spending have distorted private investment.

While investment in new factories has grown, spending on research and development and new equipment has slowed. Overall private fixed investment has grown at roughly half the rate under Mr. Biden as it did under Mr. Trump. Manufacturing output remains lower than before the pandemic.

Magnifying market misallocations, the Administration conditioned subsidies on businesses advancing its priorities such as paying union-level wages and providing child care to workers. It also boosted food stamps, expanded eligibility for ObamaCare subsidies and waved away hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt. The result: $5.8 trillion in deficits during Mr. Biden’s first three years—about twice as much as during Donald Trump’s—and the highest inflation in four decades.

Prices have increased by nearly 20% since January 2021, compared to 7.8% during the Trump Presidency. Inflation-adjusted average weekly earnings are down 3.9% since Mr. Biden entered office, compared to an increase of 2.6% during Mr. Trump’s first three years. (Real wages increased much more in 2020, but partly owing to statistical artifacts.)

Higher interest rates are finally bringing inflation under control, which is allowing real wages to rise again. But the Federal Reserve had to raise rates higher than it otherwise would have to offset the monetary and fiscal gusher. The higher rates have pushed up mortgage costs for new home buyers.

Three years of inflation and higher interest rates are stretching American pocketbooks, especially for lower income workers. Seriously delinquent auto loans and credit cards are higher than any time since the immediate aftermath of the 2008-09 recession.

Ms. Harris boasts that the economy has added nearly 16 million jobs during the Biden Presidency—compared to about 6.4 million during Mr. Trump’s first three years. But most of these “new” jobs are backfilling losses from the pandemic lockdowns. The U.S. has fewer jobs than it was on track to add before the pandemic.

What’s more, all the Biden-Harris spending has yielded little economic bang for the taxpayer buck. Washington has borrowed more than $400,000 for every additional job added under Mr. Biden compared to Mr. Trump’s first three years. Most new jobs are concentrated in government, healthcare and social assistance—60% of new jobs in the last year.

Administrative agencies are also creating uncertainty by blitzing businesses with costly regulations—for instance, expanding overtime pay, restricting independent contractors, setting stricter emissions limits on power plants and factories, micro-managing broadband buildout and requiring CO2 emissions calculations in environmental reviews.

The economy is still expanding, but business investment has slowed. And although the affluent are doing relatively well because of buoyant asset prices, surveys show that most Americans feel financially insecure. Thus another political paradox of the Biden-Harris years: Socioeconomic disparities have increased.

Ms. Harris is promising the same economic policies with a shinier countenance. Don’t expect better results.

[prettyinpwn]

I know I'm gonna sound like a crazy old broken record... but hear me out. Lots of speculation as to the true purpose of the thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com thing beneath the cut.

So... does anyone else feel like the ARG website is... odd? Like it's leading to something more coming? And before anyone screams, "Well, ackshully, Hirsch said he doesn't want to do a Season 3-"

YES. I KNOW. He said no Season 3 a million times. I was there when he told us Season 2 was it for the first time. But what he didn't say, however, was, "No more Gravity Falls anything... EVER.". Hence why we've gotten Journal 3, Lost Legends, and now The Book of Bill. Hirsch is veeerrrrry comfortable making more GF stuff.

And as someone that studied programming in college, I can tell you, this website does not seem like it was easy or cheap to make. It's effectively a single screen point and click game in a browser. Looking at the code, it seems they did use a framework called Bridgetown, lacing in looped animated MP4 files with clickable assets on top that make up the interactive elements (e.g the computer), with a lot of content made for the website itself from image files and text for each prompt a user might type. Sure, it's not the most difficult thing to program, but it's a lot more complex than, say, the searchfortheblindeye site back in the day.

That, and as someone who has worked in the corporate world, I'm sorry, but you don't pour this much effort/money into something that is just "lol cool things after product for funsies". If this was just for The Book of Bill, the smart marketing decision would have been to make the lofi album and the website, tease fans with both of them, and let them lead to an announcement of the book itself to tempt them into buying it, not the other way around. Like... Disney ain't gonna do that just out of love for fans. It's Disney, come on. They do things for money.

It's possible that Hirsch paid for it himself just for the fans, but I doubt it. Wanna know why? Because of the website's security certificate and ownership. Let's take a gander at this:

There are two odd things here. One, the range of the expiration. Most security certs last 1-2 years, at least they did at one of my previous places of employment (and we had like 50+ of them). This one expires November 7th, 2024. Odd, but maybe they only want the website up for a few months? Anyways, as an aside, everyone keep an eye out for November 7th, 2024. Could be nothing, could be something.

The other weird thing is the domain holder. Looking it up on ICANN, it gives this address:

Look that up on Google Maps, and it takes you to a company called Dun and Bradstreet. Long story short, the company does a bazillion things, but the main thing we're talking about here is:

Oh gee, Sales and Marketing. And their Sales and Marketing tools? Basically, they use data to tell companies who their audience is, so that they can market to them. Now, why would Disney care about this for a fandom for a show that's been done for almost a decade, just for a book that was released before said website (so we know they're not gathering marketing data for the book)?

Well, if I were to guess... long story short, all this stuff is a tactic to gauge who the Gravity Falls audience is now. Release the book, make some dough and fans happy, tie in a secret marketing data collection gimmick (AKA the website) using D&B as a vendor to hook the data into your CRM, send fans to a website to collect marketing data, and shabam. Now you know who the target market is all this time after.

And why in the hell would a company care about that? You tell me. Why care about who a target market is if you're not planning on marketing something to them later?

It could be that Disney is planning something similar to Gravity Falls and wants to gauge if there'd still be a market for that kind of show. Or... it could mean that Disney is planning on something more substantial related to Gravity Falls or Hirsch pitched it, and they were like, "Well, wait, let's collect data on this, first, so we'd know if it'd be a good business decision.". Not sure.

I mean, maybe I'm crazy, but doesn't this seem fishy to anyone else? If anyone else has any hypotheses as to why Hirsch and Disney have a Gravity Falls website owned by D&B, let me know, but to me... this smells... very... marketing oriented. And Hirsch doesn't seem like the guy to pour his own money into hiring an outside company to gather marketing data, that seems more up Disney's alley.

[kataang-week]

Trick or Treat, Kataangers!🎃

Katara and Aang sprites from Distant Horizon. Graphic created by Mod Belle @itsmoonpeaches.

🦇What is Kataang Halloween?

Kataang Halloween is a one-time, three-day mini-event hosted and created by @kataang-week on Tumblr for the first time this year. (However, there is potential for it to happen again in the future.) Kataang Halloween celebrates Kataang with a Halloween theme. All prompts were chosen by the mod team.

🦇Cool, when is it?

Kataang Halloween starts on Thursday, October 31, 2024, and ends on Saturday, November 2, 2024.

🦇What are the prompts?

In honor of Halloween, we're using lucky number 13! There are 13 prompts for each adventure.

"Trick" prompt list:

Old Spirits

Family Secrets

Altered State

Moonlight

Teeth

Demon Claws

The Deep

Offerings

Inner Palace

Lost

Grotto

Cliff Edge

Poison

"Treat" prompt list:

Taffy

Candied Haws

Lanterns

Mid-Autumn

Mooncake

Crunchy Leaves

Warm Drinks

Pumpkins

Chrysanthemum

Sharing

Toadstools

Apple Picking

Paint

🦇So how does this work?

Choose your own adventure! You can take inspiration from the Trick prompts, Treat prompts, or both! Feel free to mix and match prompts to create spooky and/or sweet Kataang content.

Anything you can think of counts as content as long as you fill one or multiple prompts at a time. Fanfics, fanart, gifsets, metas, edits, playlists, moodboards, music, etc.—the sky's the limit.

🦇What are the rules?

Please create your own original pieces. We do not accept AI-made fanworks.

We only accept new works created for Kataang Halloween, not works that are retroactively said to be created for Kataang Halloween. However, you may create something that fills a Kataang Halloween prompt for an ongoing work like a chapter fic or an ongoing series. See this ask for more information.

We accept all range of works. However, bear in mind that this is an all-ages event. If your work contains themes or imagery that may be intended for older audiences, tag and warn people thoroughly. Works with adult content must have an all-ages appropriate preview.

Do not repost other people's works. Reblog their original post if one exists.

If a creator/author/artist has requested you to post their work for them, remember to credit the original and link back to their page.

Be respectful in your fanworks and to others participating or enjoying the event.

🦇How should I tag my work?

The easiest way for us to find your work so we can reblog it to this blog is by using the tag “kataang halloween”. Using “kataang” and “kataangtag” also help. You must tag one of the three in your first five tags otherwise it doesn’t appear in the search. It is also helpful to tag us directly with @kataang-week.

Sometimes even properly tagged posts may not appear when we search the tags, so if you do not see your content reblogged, please let us know.

Once we’ve reblogged it to this blog we add our own tags (a prompt tag and a user tag) for easy organization. This means we can find all the work for one prompt or all the work from one user in one easy click (this also means that if you have changed your username since participating last year you need to let us know so we can update your tag!).

🦇Can I post my stuff other places online too?

Of course you can! However, we won’t be able to reblog anything that isn’t a Tumblr post.

For those of you who will be posting your works on AO3, feel free to add your fic to our Kataang Halloween AO3 collection.

🦇What if I have late submissions for Kataang Week 2024?

While we will not reblog any late submissions for Kataang Week 2024 during the Kataang Halloween event, late submissions for Kataang Week 2024 will still be accepted up until Kataang Week 2025, so don’t be shy and don’t worry about giving the world more Kataang content 💖 We always welcome it!

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to submit an ask to the Kataang Week blog. See you on Halloween, Kataangers!

🦇Who are the mods?

@airbender-dacyon AKA Mod Dan: A Kataang fanfic writer who prefers fluff, but also loves some drama and angst. Mod Dan started writing Kataang stories in 2013 and has helped organize Kataang Week since 2016.

@penguinsledder AKA Mod Atarah: A writer, gif maker, and musician–she enjoys fluffy young adult Kataang and all the ways they complement and parallel each other. She first joined Tumblr for Kataang Week 10 years ago, and started helping out with writing posts and making banners as a mod since 2016!

@itsmoonpeaches AKA Mod Belle: An avid Kataanger with a penchant for angst and mild violence who likes writing. Mod Belle has been a mod since 2021 and helps write posts and social media.

@chocomd AKA Mod Celes: Fanfic writer who adores Kataang for their fun and flirty side but also their bond forged through grief and loss. Mod Celes joined in 2023 and helps with a little bit of everything - whatever needs to be done!

[adhdtsukasa]

tsukasa tenma has ADHD!! except it's an actual analysis because 1. look at my url 2. i'm mentally unwell (and i started to love tsukasa mostly because i immediately recognized my ADHD traits in him). which is a thing i should probably leave for ADHD awareness month, HOWEVER!! it was my birthday yesterday and i wanted to spoil myself (i just kinda overlooked how much time writing it from scratch would take me, so i'm a bit late with it). and i reaaally don't wanna wait until november when i finally wrote it down because i'm so HYPED because i was preparing for it like what? two years? somewhere around it. and that's a LONG time.

please keep in mind that i'm no psychologist, psychiatrist nor a neurologist and while i do use some sources (cannot really confirm if they are true, though... because i forgot to write credits down... so i'm really sorry for that), most of this analysis was just based off on my personal experiences with the disorder (and i don't really have the full professional knowledge of what i struggle with i'm just a Boy). i mean, i am analyzing a character from a hatsune miku game. i think i'm already putting way too many effort than i should.

also the examples of tsukasa's behavior here are not all of the things, because i wrote down only the things i remember off from the top of my head. sorry, guys. my hyperactive ass is not sitting thru all the stories again just to get my crumbs, unfortunately.

anyways, with this a little bit unprofessional and messy introduction, let's get it started!

1. THE MAIN PART OF THIS WHOLE THING, AKA HOW THE ADHD SYMPTOMS CORRESPOND TO TSUKASA'S BEHAVIOR

i wanted to write it down in my own words, but i think the screen above has summed it up perfectly; there are some established symptoms of ADHD, but to be an ADHDer you don't have to experience them all. and this is going to explain why i'm gonna show a lot of these symptoms later, yet gonna connect only some of them with tsukasa. it's only these i have evidence for, and yet i think they're good enough to point at tsukasa and already say woah! an ADHDer!!

in short, there are three types of ADHD: hyperactive, inattentive (ADD) and combined. the combined one is the most common iirc, so that's also what i'm going to focus on today. especially since for a rep of the other types, i could say that shizuku's a rather great representation of ADD — but that's not the point of my ted talk today, so i'm not going to go into the detail about it. i'm sure some momojan or shizuku oshi would do better than me in this field, so i'm leaving it to the experts.

these are the symptoms that i managed to gather — the first two screens being about the symptoms viewed in children, the last one being about the symptoms viewed in adults. "in which one of them tsukasa belongs to?" that's a good question, because i actually don't know. calling a high schooler a child doesn't sit quite right with me, yet a freshly turned 17/18-years-old is not exactly an adult, either (although most of the symptoms i'm analyzing come from these that are viewed in adults). and while i do think tsukasa has more of the symptoms viewed in adults, we're gonna analyse them all! because i'm putting my all into this.

FORGETFULNESS

i believe there's not much left to say, as this is the most obvious one and everyone already knows that. even though it's not touched that much anymore for some reason, tsukasa's forgetfulness is his very apparent trait. it varies in severity a lot of times: from him basically forgetting both his childhood and true feelings in the main story to him, for example, forgetting his own phone and lunch (in the same day!!) in hinamatsuri. even saki in the same event, while they were arguing, called him a "big, dumb forgetter" and assumed that he forgot what happened the day he brought her the hinamatsuri dolls to hospital. while forgetting basically half of your life is not exactly normal and can be a sign of something bigger, like dissociative amnesia, his forgetting of just the ordinary things and it happening a lot definitely still fits this trait.

EXCESSIVE TALKING/PHYSICAL MOVEMENT

while this is something that you'd rather connect to emu (and for a good reason), it's not like tsukasa is completely devoid of it either; he talks a lot. he moves a lot. it's not on emu's level of hyperactivity, but it's also not "a lot" that's taken as a social norm, based on how the people around him react. he's putting the 1 in oddball 1 2, after all.

in holy night or some side stories connected to it (it might be meiko's side story? but i'm not exactly sure) it was also said that tsukasa moves in his sleep a lot to this point that his parents have to leave his christmas presents under his door instead of next to his bed.

oh, and he also talks to himself a lot. even in class, which was confirmed in chapter 6 of dazzling (or maybe even earlier, it's just the one moment that i remember). (but i'll get to this moment later on)

he says his long monologues, he strikes his poses at every occasion — and while i don't think that's the first thing you think of when you have "excessive talking/movement" in mind, for me it sure does count as it.

LITTLE OR NO SENSE OF DANGER

this point can seem rather weird, because "isn't tsukasa always riddiculed at rui's weird inventions"? well, yeah, he is, that is not a thing to deny. but he also agrees to try out most of them, if not all, if it's for the sake of the show. he's aware of what can happen, but he also doesn't back away if it means that he'll be one step closer to achieving his dream of stardom.

does it count as "little sense of danger"? well, i'm actually not sure, for me it doesn't, but maybe for someone it does. i'd say that's a rather weak point, but i wanted to include the explanation for the counterpoint of it — that's why i even mentioned it in the first place. i don't have a lot to say about this tbh.

update: oh, actually no, wait, i just remembered. remember how tsukasa in phoenix decided to not eat anything for three days just to be able to resonate with rio, while also having to do straining exercise on top of that? you certainly cannot say that's a safe thing to do, but he still went along with that in order to get the role. it makes me come to a conclusion that tsukasa actually has a sense of danger, but sometimes chooses to willingly ignore it if only it makes him get closer to fulfilling his dream. i think it's coming close enough to the little/no sense of danger to be actually considered an ADHD trait.

DIFFICULTY KEEPING QUIET

while i'm not sure if what i'm going to talk about is a difficulty keeping quiet in a traditional sense of way, it definitely counts as it, somehow: tsukasa is loud. like, really loud. and that's another obvious fact both for us and for characters in-universe, especially when thinking of tsukasa shiho's first thought is that he's kinda noisy, which can be seen in the "a friend's brother" 1koma. (and probably a lot of other cases. free shiho.)

tsukasa doesn't seem to realize that he's way louder than he should be and that him being loud is his first impression in most of the cases, though, or at least i don't remember any moment where it happens (and it's a possibility. then that's on me, i guess.). and yeah, i know what's the reason for it, obviously — he's supposed to be a comic relief character. because wansho's stories are mostly supposed to make you smile, as this is what wansho's aspiration is. however, as much as being intended to make the viewer laugh it wouldn't be, it still is a part of tsukasa's character, and a rather important one on top of that. his constant loudness is something that's definitely not considered normal by the society and could very well fit into this symptom.

and since i promised to elaborate on the mentioned before scene from dazzling chapter 6: when tsukasa talks to himself in class, it always ends up to be loud. and it already happened a few times.

(tl by tsukasa's #3 fan on youtube because i don't have proseka on my phone wah)

if it's not a difficulty keeping quiet, then i don't know what is. bro can scream up to 120dB as measured by robonene for god's sake.

IRRITABILITY/QUICK TEMPER

again, this is something that was more apparent with early game tsukasa, maybe he just got medicated. idk man. but even if it happened three, almost four years ago, it still happened, i don't make the rules. back in the early game, tsukasa was really easily losing his temper and getting annoyed, mad even — i mean, that was the whole point of the main story argument: tsukasa's first response to nene accidentally messing up their show, which was not even her fault, was to shout at her. and while this was obviously very important thing to him and being upset at this is a rather understandable reaction, taking this as far as screaming at a poor girl for not being to face the audience because of her anxiety is not something a person who can control their anger would do.

it could be also easily seen by his reaction to emu and rui's antics back in the early game, which were often stained with irritation.

another example is his hinamatsuri argument with saki, where, despite loving her so much, he still got slightly mad at her for not liking the new dolls he bought her. he started to regret his harsh words and actions soon enough, obviously, but it doesn't change the fact that it was rather easy for him to get him across.

INABILITY TO DEAL WITH STRESS

if i'm not mistaken, tsukasa has once said something along the lines of "is it anxiety? there's no way a star like me would feel anxiety" — but i cannot recall for the love of my life in which story it appeared, so i don't want to take it as a face value when i don't have a solid proof for it.

other than this vague mention of "something that's in the story but i don't remember where", i'll admit, i don't really have anything backing me up for this tbf. i mean, i guess maybe tsukasa doing his best to appear strong as a child to not worry his parents could work? because the stress of saki being in the hospital definitely was also present here, although i just see this more as a coping mechanism for his situation than a reaction to stress, so that's not a solid evidence either.

so, yeah. take this one with a grain of salt, actually.

from the symptoms that weren't listed here, i remember reading something about people with ADHD enjoying to show off more, which is certainly what tsukasa does often — and while it actually applies to me too, it wasn't on an english site so i didn't screenshot it and i cannot really find it anywhere in english... so even though i treat it just like my whole argument for the inability to deal with stress, i thought it's just worth mentioning.

however, there is obviously one more thing...

HYPERFIXATION/SPECIAL INTEREST

obviously, i'm talking about acting here: for tsukasa, acting aligns with all these criterias. it is his deep passion; it is something highly engaging for him; it is sometimes all-consuming for him; he tunes out the world around him when he thinks about how can he possibly improve his acting (see: the dazzling moment i showed earlier. yeah, i like to use it as a backing point a lot, as you can see.); and it is something that is his life-long interest.

is it his special interest or his hyperfixation, though? well, it's hard to tell...? because while according to screen two, spinterest revolves around a topic and hyperfixation revolves around an activity, so it would qualify what tsukasa feels towards acting as a hyperfixation, it's still kinda hard for me to call it so because of its length. yes, screen three clearly says that hyperfixation can last years, but they mostly revolve around shorter periods of time, after all (my longest hyperfixation was just a year long, for example). i think it's up to you to determine whether you'd call tsukasa's love for acting a hyperfixation or a special interest, but it's something from these two most certainly.

i'm also a big fan of the headcanon that tsukasa's other spinterest is kaito ww it's in no way a canon evidence (unfortunately!), but kaito's 1* side story, where tsukasa and emu are watching kaito's show and tsukasa is explaining to her why kaito's wearing a scarf somewhat implies that tsukasa knew a thing or two about kaito before the main story. and i'm all for it. colopale let tsukasa be a kaito fanboy pleaseee.

2. I REALLY LIKE ANALYZING SONGS, IF YOU CAN'T TELL

those who have already read a few of my things probably know what i love to do the most — analyzing songs!! so i wouldn't be myself if i just left tsukasa's commisions without analyzing them under the angle of neurodivergence, especially since the sole reason i became obsessed with the thought of ADHD tsukasa was that one sekahaji line (there's too much noise, so much noise and it keeps getting worse you will always be famous).

of course, remember that only the world hasn't even started yet should be taken as a canon value! producers are often given space to do whatever they want in the lyrics of the songs they are commissioned for, so they're not canonical in any way. i think it's still fun to look at their lyrics and ramble about them for a bit, though. i've already got too carried away anyways.

won't be posting photos of the lyrics since i'd hit the images limit, but you can check them yourself — all the translations i'm taking, as always, from the vocaloid lyrics wiki. (since filament fever has two tls on there, i want to clarify that i've only looked at and considered in my analysis the official english one, because it's, well, official.)

THE WORLD HASN'T EVEN STARTED YET

besides the mentioned earlier there's too much noise, so much noise and it keeps getting worse, which i think of as a representation of overstimulation (since i used to see people asking "oh but why tsukasa has something about there being too much noise in a song made out of his feelings when he's such a loud person himself". because he likes the noise he makes, not the overwhelming, overstimulating noise from the outside!!), sekahaji also has a rather good amount of quotes that could be read as something connected to neurodivergence (based on the fact that it's not supposed to be a song about this topic): the main theme of these are procrastination, which can be seen in let's cross the end of all of this, partying forever and the world hasn't even started yet line itself. the thought of the world not even starting implies that there's still a lot of time left to do something, while "partying forever" can refer to deciding to give up on doing the things you should do and going to drown in something that indulges only you and yourself for the rest of eternity. while procrastination is not counted as an official ADHD symptom, it's a trait that people with the disorder very often have (for reasons obvious).

other lines, which i couldn't entirely fit into a box of a certain symptom, are there's too much conflict, so much conflict and it keeps growing (a parallel line to the noise one, so it means something! right) and let's break the plans for a harmonious future. in my personal interpretation, they both can be viewed as your typical neurodivergent struggle in a neurotypical society — "too much conflict" refering to an internal struggle of not being completely normal, while the "harmonious future" that's going to get broken are just the social norms that are going to be broken because of an off-putting, neurodivergent behavior. something that some neurotypical people dooon't really like.

TONDEMO-WONDERZ

since i've just talked about breaking the social norms, "why?!" and "do it like this!!" aren't like you, huh? line from tondemo-wonderz is going to go first, because it revolves around the same topic. it's the same case: it's about (subconscious, not intentional) fighting what's accepted by the society by just being yourself — because you're neurodivergent, you're different.

from the other lines in tondemo-wonderz, i have only one and it's take an eraser to your memories?!, which is pretty much self explanatory. as always, a mention of forgetting something in tsukasa's commision. who would've thought.

88 SHOOTING STARS

another self explanatory line that i have written down as first: it's okay if you only remember a little part of it sometimes. another mention of tsukasa forgor™, and while it corresponds with what happened in dazzling, it's still a line mentioning forgetfulness — so it's worth mentioning.

aren't we just inevitably going around in circles? and it's okay if you take a rest for a little bit sometimes can be interpreted as another mention of procrastination and while it's not that apparent as it was with sekahaji, because going in circles can refer to something else and taking a rest sometimes is not a bad thing at all, i still wanted to mention them here. for the record.

you ought to slip and fall in panic in the final moment is connected to a symptom that i showed, yet didn't elaborate on it (because i didn't have anything to work with) — making careless mistakes. the same case, yet with another symptom goes with is this not enough yet again? is this not how it's supposed to be? couldn't we go even further than this?, which can be seen as a reflection of unability to listen to instructions. a bit of reaching with this one (like this whole part damn), but as i said earlier: for the record, i'm leaving it here. to show that i had some intense thoughts.

tbf, when i think about it now, maybe the mentioned earlier "why?!" and "do it like this!!" aren't like you [...] could very well fit this symptom too.

MR SHOWTIME

mr showtime you will always be famous, because this is a song that gave me a looot of things to work with. i was so flabbergasted when i read these lyrics for the first time. tsukasa tenma why are you like this. /aff

there are a lot of lines hinting being easily distracted, and these are basically the very first ones, too: you know what? i just can't make up my mind, it's so messed up that i can't put my thoughts together and a merry-go-round (my thought process) goes round and round are all about it. like you cannot deny it this time, if it's not about being unable to stay focused then i really don't know what is [insert the tsukasa don't look away stamp here because i love it and it's my biggest motivation to actually focus whenever i do something]. the more i mess around and waste time, the more i become hungry / and i can't handle it can be seen as about procrastination again, and even not "can be seen", it's literally being frustrated at yourself for wasting time, that's the sole outcome of a procrastination!! being bothered by feeling anxious, meanwhile, is resonating with the inability to deal with stress once again.

also jumping the gun. driving in a zigzag manner can actually connected with the little to no sense of danger. because, as far as i'm aware, driving in a zigzag manner is certainly not a safe activity. don't do it at home.

from the symptoms that i haven't yet mentioned to this point, am i taking a long way? am i making a fruitless effort? can be reflecting difficulty organizing tasks — since the poor planning of your activities can make you take a long way and can make you do a fruitless effort. then, where's the fun in taking shortcuts all the time? can be read along the lines of something coming close to extreme impatience and while a person that's extremely impatient would actually enjoy taking the shortcuts to get closer to their goal or destination, said impatience can be also connected with the desire for something interesting to happen. a task can make you impatient not because it's long, but because it's simply boring — avoiding shortcuts can make it less boring, even if it extends its duration. with this explanation, it makes the unexpectedness (unexpected program) is the best part of the show (my life) perfectly fit into this category, even though i wouldn't call this line a sign of impatience on its own.

i have some issues with i'm pathetic. i can't satisfy myself, because... at first i thought of connecting it with either mood swings or inability to deal with stress, however i'm not sure if that's really it. i'm pretty sure it connects to neurodivergence in some way, but i just can't put my finger on it, so... i'm just leaving it here for the record, once again.

oh, and there's also i got lost in the world (stage) and / the end credits rolled (the curtain fell), which also is pretty much summing up the experience of being neurodivergent in the neurotypical society. in the middle of trying to stay true to yourself and having to mask just to be accepted, it's easy to get lost — and once you do so, there's no going back. the curtain falls.

to end this part of the analysis, i'd show the lyrics from filament fever and sekai wo terasu tetrad here. i won't do this, however, and the reason for it is fairly simple — they don't give me much material to work with and i'm not really surprised, because mr showtime has succesfully sucked all of the neurodivergent coded lyrics into itself. there just won't be another song like mr showtime, i fear.

i can just say that in filament fever there is running away from the flow of time — which got me thinking of either procrastination and unability to stick to time-consuming tasks, with the former being more plausible as a potential interpretation... but that would be it.

3. NAKAYAMA IS A METAPHOR FOR NEURODIVERGENT MASKING AND IT'S THE STUPIDEST THING I'VE EVER SAID BUT YOU HAVE TO HEAR ME OUT ON THIS

listen, i know how it sounds.

i'm not actually a fan of trying to fit every thing a character does into a box of a metaphor, symbol or allegory, i really am not. i think some things should just stay as simple as they are, but this thought has been bothering me ever since i've first seen spoilers of what's happening in a story where you're the star for the very first time. i'm in no way saying it has any canonical meaning, but i just thought it would be fun to include. because maaaybe someone sees my vision.

for those who haven't seen tsukasa4 yet or want to have a recap of what has happened in it: the whole event story revolves around tsukasa trying to grasp his role (as always). wxs got recommended to shunmei-za by shousuke and went there to practice their acting skills, immediately getting thrown onto the preparation for their next performance. tsukasa, however, is not a lead this time — he got the role of a supporting character and has got basically three lines to say on stage total. since tsukasa's used to playing lead roles, he obviously has issues with grasping the role — it's hard to use method acting in regards of a character that says three sentences total and nothing more. with help of bakuno reki, one of the actors in shunmei-za, and the rest of wxs, he manages to create a portrayal of nakayama that would make him "come to life" and "be a protagonist of his own story", something that would make it easier for him to get into role, however...

he gets a little bit too carried away with his acting during the actual performance.

and this is not something that would ruin the whole play, obviously, he's just a supporting character, the less invested audience would probably forgot about his impact on the story after five minutes of his last appearance — but he still made a slip-up. he still resonated with his role, but didn't achieve the utmost perfection. he still did well acting, after all, he managed to receive praise from the director in the end... but it's still a very apparent mistake that was made.

(tl, once again, by the awesome tsukasa's #3 fan)

and that's where the nakayama masking metaphor theory (it's not even a theory but it sounds cooler this way) comes in.

nakayama is supposed to be just a man. from what we know about him, he's in his late twenties and works as an editor — and even though tsukasa makes up a whole backstory for him later on, he's still supposed to be ordinary. nothing special. he's coming nowhere near the other roles that tsukasa has played, he's not on the same level as miles, torpe and rio. and while you could possibly consider torpe and rio as rather ordinary, they still had something interesting to happen to them, the main reason why they were lead roles for their respective plays. in the tsukasa4 play, nakayama has nothing like that. he's literally just a guy, he's normal. and "normal" is a keyword here.

tsukasa did everything he could to fit into nakayama's role. he followed the script, he took the advice from a more talented and professional actor that is bakuno, he didn't do any mistakes during his preparations — and yet he still managed to mess up in the end. why?, besides of the fact that he just let himself become one with nakayama during the performance and it resulted in a supporting character outshining the lead?

if we take as a fact that tsukasa is, in fact, neurodivergent, it would make sense that he's having troubles with playing a normal person — because he's not exactly normal either. and this would very well work out as a metaphor of masking; even when you try your best, even when you mask yourself perfectly, you can still make slip-ups. you can still accidentally drop the act in middle of something that absolutely required it, or, similiar to what tsukasa did, can accidentally overdo it and end up perceived as even more weird than you'd be without masking. something something i got lost in the world and the end credits rolled. rings a bell?

and i'm not saying that tsukasa has a problem with masking, because he doesn't. he tries his best to pass as a normal member of society, but he also makes no effort in actively masking his weirdness (or else he wouldn't be a part of oddball one two). however, if you want to neurodivergent code your character, it would make sense to include a possibility of it in some way, right? especially since wxs stories' already had the theme of dealing with being perceived as weird (eg. rui's whole backstory, obviously). even if it's not affecting tsukasa directly, i think it would be cool to include something that indicates this issue's existence in his story and, in a way, his struggles.

however, as i said earlier, this is a very stupid thought and that's why i left it for the very end. i don't actually think that how tsukasa played nakayama was supposed to be a metaphor for masking, it's just a pure coincidence that it could be interpreted like that when you think about it too much.

aaand with this, we've finally come to an end!! (finally. i'm so exhausted.) i don't have anything more to say about this topic. maybe i'll retweet it with some more evidence in the future if we ever get more ADHDkasa content. for now, it would be all!

is tsukasa actually intentionally written as an ADHDer? Who Knows! there's a possibility that he is, but even if he's not, he's still one in my heart. regardless of the status of his possible neurodivergence, analyzing his behavior in this light was still very fun! and maybe i even converted someone into the ADHDkasa hell.

feel free to add something if you want to, and feel free to correct me if i got some things wrong! i still hope that even though of how messy this whole thing is written, i did tsukasa justice and didn't accidentally say too much nonsense lmao

...i hate ending analyses.

[qqueenofhades]

All jokes aside, Americans do owe a seismic debt of gratitude to Jack Smith, especially if it is true (as has been reported) that the DOJ initially slow-walked or stonewalled the investigation into Trump himself (at least until the J6 Committee). He was only appointed to the job last year, and he's already secured indictments for two separate sets of federal crimes, in two different (and wildly politically different) jurisdictions, with felony charges numbering in the dozens. These charges include espionage, conspiracy, obstruction, etc -- aka all the things we saw Trump do in real time, but have been relentlessly brainwashed ever since to try to make us forget that he did.

So it's just... Nice that our collective trauma of 2016-2020 has been legally validated, yknow? That grand juries of private citizens in both DC and Florida, when they actually have to look at the (overwhelming) evidence, do really, empirically agree that the son of a bitch is in fact really fucking guilty. These indictments were not easy to get, we should and must thank Jack Smith for working at speed to get them, and now especially with the trial in DC being assigned to an Obama appointee who won't favor Trump endlessly like Cannon in Florida, there is actually a real chance he goes on trial before November 2024. And while we don't know what will happen, there's no reason to think that Smith and his team will stumble at the last hurdle and somehow fail to secure a conviction. That, especially considering the magnitude of the threats and MAGA rage he has been faced with, takes considerable courage.

And that, all reflexive Dooming and Glooming and endless (and at this point, profoundly inaccurate) moaning that Trump will never see an actual systemic repercussion quite aside, means something. We will still have to deal with his crazed fascist followers, but it's been a string of three high-profile indictments now and nary a peep, far less the promised rioting in the streets. It's almost like bullies are cowards and fold when you challenge them, and that we might actually get through this terrible, terrible time by the skin of our teeth and still have a democracy, however flawed, in the future. And I don't know about you, but I think that is, and remains, incredibly fucking important.

[zharaely]

On the topic of birthdays...

We don't know the Original Cale Henituse's birthday, but just imagine the Henituse Family celebrating Cale's birthday. And Cale has to awkwardly play along even though he knows it isn't HIS birthday they're celebrating. While the Henituse Family is also awkward because it's been years since they got to celebrate Cale's birthday properly, but they wanted to take the chance this time now that they've gotten closer (except it's too late now). But they notice Cale's discomfort throughout the entire celebration even though he tries to hide it. Things snowball from there.

Or maybe when the day comes, Cale isn't aware that it's his body's birthday. So while everyone else is dropping hints about it being a special day, Cale is just confused about why they're acting so weird. It eventually leads the Henituse Family to misunderstand thinking Cale got so busy during or after the war that he forgot his own birthday.

(After Cale realizes, he'd also send Kim Rok Soo a gift via the God of Death. Fortunately, no churches were harmed after that conversation, but only a god's pride.)

This also works vice versa with the Original Cale Henituse in Kim Rok Soo's body. Maybe the Original Kim Rok Soo wasn't known to celebrate his birthday (with other people, or at all). So Kim Rok Soo doesn't even realize anything weird that day, except the increasing glances sent his way by his team members and other people from the company ("The team leader still went to work today even though it's his birthday…sighs"). Kim Rok Soo only finds out by the end of his shift, when he's about to go home to his niece but is stopped by someone unexpectedly giving him a small gift.

(The next time he meets with Choi Jung Soo, he asks the guy to send his birthday greetings to the man he swapped bodies with, along with a birthday card drawn by his niece. ("I don't know about over there, but I found out it was your birthday here on Earth. Happy Birthday, Cale.")) (Extra: Choi Jung Soo becomes nostalgic after remembering all his shared birthdays with Kim Rok Soo, before remembering all the birthdays Kim Rok Soo spent by himself after their deaths.)

Or, the other characters find out it was Choi Han's birthday (not knowing it's also Cale's birthday). Everyone helps to plan a birthday party, with Cale even giving Choi Han a gift during the celebration ("I wasn't able to give you a gift last time, so…Happy Birthday, Choi Han.").

Once the celebration was over, or maybe when everyone else was too busy to hear or disturb the two of them, Choi Han was the first to greet Cale a happy birthday ("…Happy birthday to you too, Cale-nim. Kim Rok Soo."). Of course, Alberu does not forget to secretly give both his instructor and his dongsaeng gifts as well, aka, "a happy birthday to the two punks who gave me headaches".

((There's also an easy solution to this entire thing: Original Cale Henituse's birthday was ALSO on November 8. Now we have 5 people sharing the same birthday.))

[mysticstronomy]

CAN WE MAKE A BLACK HOLE IN A LAB??

Blog#426

Saturday, August 10th, 2024.

Welcome back,

Black holes are notoriously difficult to study, as they are both far away and so massive that not even light can escape.

So, scientists from the University of Nottingham created a “giant quantum vortex” using a helium superfluid with 500 times less viscosity than water.

These Earth-bound vortices could help experts understand black holes—or even inch closer to a Grand Unified Theory.

Observing a black hole is a bit of an oxymoron. After all, our eyes require photons to make sense of the world, and seeing as photons (aka light) can’t escape a black hole, the whole “observing” thing becomes pretty impossible pretty quickly.

But over the decades, scientists have developed techniques to study black holes by observing their effects on surrounding matter. And now, scientists from the University of Nottingham in the U.K. have developed a novel new approach to studying these hugely important—yet observationally elusive—celestial objects.

By using superfluid helium (with a viscosity 500 times lower than water), the researchers managed to create a quantum simulator by placing the helium in a tank with a spinning propeller.

Due to the extremely low-friction and vortex-like environment, this particular helium begins exhibiting “unusual quantum effects,” according to New Scientist. These effects allowed the team the team to observe black hole-like phenomena, such as “ringdown mode” and cosmic fields interacting with the gravitational vortices. Their latest work was published on the preprint server arXiv in 2023, and was last revised this past November. The paper has yet to be peer-reviewed.

“Physics repeats itself in many places. It’s a set of mathematical models that are very universal. And if the maths is the same, the physics ought to be the same,” University of Nottingham’s Silke Weinfurtner told The Guardian last year. “To me, the analogues are a gift from nature. There is a whole class of systems that possess the same physical processes.”

Understanding black holes is imperative from both an astronomical and a general physics perspective. That’s for a few reasons, but namely because black holes are hugely important in regards to the formation of the universe, and because the objects are where Albert Einstein’s well-worn General Relativity and the time-tested Quantum Field Theory appear to contradict each other.

And if there’s one thing scientists hate, it’s contradictions.

While the diameter of Sagittarius A* (that’s the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy) stretches some 14.6 million miles in diameter, these human-made quantum vortices are decidedly puny—only a few millimeters across. But their diminutive size is actually much larger than previous vortices created from quantum fluids.

Originally published on https://www.popularmechanics.com

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, August 14th, 2024)

"DOES TIME STOP IN A BLACK HOLE??"

[redshoes-blues]

Emotional Time Travel: How Will Byers Controls Time in the Upside Down

"We are all time travellers, if you think about it."

Buckle up, everybody, this is gonna be a long one! :)

Over a year ago I wrote an analysis on the references to clocks throughout Stranger Things, and looked at how this connects to the show's specific form of time travel. This post is a bit of a redo of that original analysis, but this time I'm focusing on the idea that emotions have the power to alter the movement of time. And not only this, but Will Byers specifically has the power to control time in the Upside Down.

From the clock symbolism throughout the show to the time travel references, it’s clear that S5 is going to delve fully into the way the Upside Down operates; more specifically, I suspect we'll finally get answers to the question raised last season—why is the UD stuck on the day Will vanished?

I have some ideas on how that might work, and it has to do with emotions, which are described in ST as a way to time travel, as El says it best herself in the opening of S4: "We are all time travellers, if you think about it."

[CW: this will delve into the various forms of trauma and abuse faced by Vecna's targets in the show]

The Vanishing of Will Byers: Time Travel and Dimension X

First of all, let's deal with the obvious. The Upside Down, aka Dimension X, is a dimension that is stuck in the past. This is tied directly to Will Byers, given that it exists perpetually as the date he vanished. Therefore, entering the Upside Down is a form of interdimensional time travel.

To me, this could work in one of three ways, although a combination of these factors could also be at play here.

First, the UD could be a fixed point in time. A place where time doesn't work. It acts as a set piece, where characters can move around and exist within, but otherwise, it remains the same. In this case, it is quite literally frozen from the moment Will is taken. However, there are some things in the UD that do change. The weather, for example. Or vines that move and grow. So it's really hard to say how the fixedness would work. Perhaps, if this is the case, time is fixed and frozen, even non-existent, but space isn’t.

Second, is the idea that the Upside Down exists as a time loop. How long the loop would be, we don't know for sure. All we know is that the UD is stuck, somehow, on November 6, 1983. Maybe the loop is a single day long. Maybe it goes on for the entire duration of Will being missing. Either way, the time loop is certainly a plausible theory for how time operates in the UD.

Another important thing to consider is S5's use of A Wrinkle in Time as a source for inspiration, which brings me to the third way that time could operate in the Upside Down. Now, it has been awhile since I read AWIT, but there's an important concept in that novel called a tesseract. This is basically a way of travelling through time and space, to a fourth dimension. Looking at ST, this seems like a likely culprit for what's going on with the UD, which would be a sort of fourth dimension in this case. Vecna as much as says the UD is a fourth dimension himself:

"I became an explorer. An explorer of a realm unspoiled by mankind. I saw so many things, and one day, I found the most extraordinary thing of all."

But Vecna isn’t the only one to explicitly refer to the Upside Down as another dimension/realm. The government call it “Dimension X,” and the Party refer to it as the “Shadow Realm” pretty early on, an analogy to D&D’s location of the same name.

Now, I went googling for a description of the Shadow Realm, and I found this one that is very telling: “The Shadow realm is a realm caught between the realms of the living and the dead, a place where the boundaries of time and reality blur.” [link to article]

Looking at the UD, this absolutely makes sense as the location of choice that the Party (aka, the writers) chose to compare it to. As we’ve discussed, time does blur in the UD, and things don’t always happen as they would in Hawkins (there are strange storms, cosmic horror style monsters, etc.). Perhaps, in this realm, time itself doesn't even exist in a way that makes sense to us.

Now, going back to Vecna, we see that this sort of fourth dimension where time doesn’t exist as it should is exactly what he wishes to achieve.

On his motivations, Henry Creel says this: "Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Years. Decades. Each life a faded lesser copy of the one before. Wake up. Eat. Work. Sleep. Reproduce. And die."

Clearly, he feels burdened by the limitations of how time functions in the real-world. This is why, he explains, "I became an explorer."

Now, the Upside Down we see him enter is very different from the one that Will is taken to, and the one we see from S1 onwards. There are two people we know that may be responsible for this change in appearance. Either Vecna shaped the world to his liking, or Will did.

Maybe it's a both/and situation. After all, we know Vecna has powers and has been communicating with the Mind Flayer (who seems to be a sort of eldritch/cosmic god/force of the UD) for years. However, it is Will's vanishing that shapes the "time" of the Upside Down.

Will vanished on November 6, 1983, which is the same day that the UD is stuck on. This means that the Upside Down is inexplicably tied to him. Why it's tied to him is hard to say. He's the first kid Vecna kidnapped, and it is very interesting that he didn't just kill Will like he does his other victims: there's something different about Will.

I'll get into that later, but for now, what does this mean for Hawkins, where the UD is beginning to leak out of the gates?

As I mentioned previously, it's clear that one of Vecna's goals is to create a world that is "unburdened" by time's constraints. As the gates open up, we see a clock turning backwards (see: gif above), which may represent how time is slowing down or ceasing to exist the same way it always has.

If we want to get metaphorical about how time functions in Hawkins vs. the Upside Down and Vecna's mind lair, just look at the first sign of someone's Vecna vision, which is represented by a chime of the Creel house clock. For Vecna's targets, time is literally running out. Not only because they're about to die in Hawkins, but because they're about to enter a dimension where the passage of time does not exist.

"We Are All Time Travellers": Emotions Alter Time

Let's back things up a little bit.

Last spring, I was rewatching S4 to look for any references to time travel (turns out there's a lot of them when you go looking for them). It didn't take long for me to get a reference. In fact, there's one in El's opening monologue, as part of her letter to Mike.

"Dear Mike. Today is day 185. Feels more like ten years. Joyce says time is funny like that. Emotions can make it speed up or slow down. We are all time travellers, if you think about it. For example, this week is going very fast because I am so busy..."

In one sense, El's line here is describing how time can literally feel fast or slow depending on how we feel. For example, if we're busy and happy, time often goes by fast, but it we're upset, time can feel slow. Of course, I believe this line also has a deeper meaning that foreshadows what we later learn about the Upside Down being tied to Will’s vanishing.

It's no coincidence that in the season whose villain is represented by clocks, who is tied to a dimension where time is wonky, and who feels burdened by the existence of time, this opening scene mentions time travel directly. It's also important that El says this line. She's the one who opened the gate in the very first scene of the season, after all. She's also the one who goes through the NINA program, which is essentially sending her back into time (through her memories) to access her powers again. Isn’t it interesting that revisiting her traumatic experiences is what restores her powers?

If we take what El says literally, emotions actually have the power to speed up or slow down time, and not just our perception of it, depending on which emotions are felt. This bit about emotions is vital. As we know, the UD is shaped around Will's vanishing, which is a traumatic experience that he continues to deal with for years after it has occurred.

Now, this begs the question: did time in the UD slow down because Will left an emotional imprint on the landscape via his childhood trauma?

Again, it isn't a coincidence that Will's vanishing is the day that the Upside Down is stuck on. The "demogorgon"—which is pretty obviously going to be revealed to be Vecna—took Will into this fourth dimension, traumatizing him in the process.

All of Vecna's victims in the 80s timeline are also victims of trauma and/or abuse in their childhoods. Chrissy and Patrick have an abusive parent, and Fred has trauma from the car accident. Max has mental health issues and a complicated family life that we see in detail—an abusive brother whose death she blames herself for, suicidal ideation, a dad who isn't in the picture, a mom who becomes an alcoholic, and that's not to mention the inherent traumatizing circumstance of living in poverty. Will is also implied to have been abused by Lonnie, who called him homophobic slurs and turned into an awful deadbeat who doesn’t accept that his son doesn’t follow traditional masculine gender norms; he's also bullied at school for being different.

Each of these victims of abuse and/or trauma are all targets by Vecna. They have that in common. And we know that Vecna is targeting these kids on purpose because we see him sifting through his mind lair to select his next candidate. How does he do this? By looking at these kids' experiences and selecting someone vulnerable.

After Patrick is killed, Lucas and Max say as much when they discuss Vecna's motivations. To them, to be hurt us to be haunted:

Lucas: "It's like everyone Vecna targets has something in their life...something that's—"

Max: "Hurting them. Haunting them."

With this in mind, it begins to look as if Vecna is using the trauma and hurt of these kids because their emotions are strong enough to create gates, and therefore to alter—or even slow down—time.

Interestingly, the psionic powers of the lab kids seem to be impacted by their emotions as well.

Dr. Brenner tells the kids in the NINA memory to not use their emotions, but it’s One’s advice to El—to focus on something that makes her angry and sad—that helps her win the battle against Two. Brenner is so angry at One’s interference here that he tortures him for it. We know that Henry Creel was the original kid with telepathic powers who was experimented on. Somehow, Dr. Brenner learned to develop powers in these other kids, but it’s Henry/One who first received his powers from the Mind Flayer. Even as a kid, he understands that channeling negative feelings makes his powers grow stronger.

Before we look at why I believe Will is the only one truly capable of restoring the Upside Down to the way it was before, aka Dimension X, I want to dive a little bit deeper into Vecna’s targets themselves.

The Trauma of Vecna's Targets

There isn't a single main character in this show who isn't traumatized, hurting, haunted, or a victim of various societal pressures and/or forms of oppression. This isn't an accident. These themes are built into the show on purpose. Sometimes they aren't handled as well as they could or should be, but they're certainly present.

When we look at Vecna's victims, the reason they were his "perfect" targets is because of their vulnerability.

Lucas suspected Patrick was dealing with abuse at home, but Patrick never talked about it with anyone. Same with Fred's guilt about the hit-and-run. He's terrified of the idea that he'll be found out, so he never tells anyone about his visions. In the case of Chrissy, her own boyfriend has no idea about what she's going through, and she turns to drugs for an escape from her pain. If Max hadn't confided in her friends about her visions, equipped with her knowledge of Vecna and the Upside Down, then she would have had the same fate as them.

So, not only are Vecna's victims people who have something in their life that is hurting or haunting them (trauma, abuse, mental health issues, etc.), but they are also actively repressing these emotions. With this, I think the writers are trying to say that opening up about what you're going through with other people who care about you is vital to your survival and well-being.

Healing from trauma requires you to confront the emotions and/or experiences many people would rather suppress. I think El is a good case study for this. She is very clearly a traumatized character who is a victim of child abuse. Much of it is stuff she doesn’t actively remember, because she has repressed it, as we see in the NINA project. But despite her repression, the trauma, those memories, are still with her. She believes she's a monster, and she carries this guilt around with her for years. But El is also very resilient.

In fact, she confronts her trauma head-on in the NINA project. She relives her abusive childhood, the bullying she experienced, and the massacre, and she comes out of it a stronger person—even though she doesn't beat Vecna this time around, because she’ll require the help of someone else who is deeply tied to the UD if she wants to beat him.

Looking back at what Henry Creel knew from a young age, that his pain and experiences could be a source of his power, it becomes clear why he’s killing all of these traumatized kids. He’s doing so to harness the power in those experiences, perhaps because their emotions will affect the UD and cause time to slow down.

However, when El talks about emotions as a way to time travel in the beginning of S4, she isn’t just referring to negative emotions like boredom or sadness, etc. She also refers to positive emotions which make time move faster. If Vecna used his targets’ trauma to slow down time—originating with Will’s arrival in the UD—then maybe it is positive emotions, like love, acceptance, and healing, that will undo the changes Vecna has made in the UD.

Will The Wise: Why Will Byers is the Antidote

Will's connections to the UD are my main reason for believing he is the key to defeating Vecna. It began with Will, and it will end with him, too.

This is also supported in the text.

D&D always forms a direct analogy to the events that happen in any given season of Stranger Things, and it's through the lens of D&D that the Party describe the happenings in the Upside Down. For example, Will rolls a 7 in the first episode of the show, and tells Mike that "it [the demogorgon] got me." Later, the creature we're told is a demogorgon does get Will.

So, that's why the D&D campaign run by Eddie in S4 is very interesting, as it serves as foreshadowing for the rest of the season. An 11 is rolled first. This is a miss. It isn't until Erica—who is an unlikely hero in this campaign—rolls a 20 that Vecna is defeated.

It's crazy foreshadowing that an 11 is rolled, which isn't enough to defeat Vecna, in the season where Eleven is not able to defeat Vecna on her own, despite her powers being stronger than they've ever been. That's because power isn't the only thing at play, here. And we don't know yet who will be the Erica in this story, the underdog who will swoop in and join the fight, being the unlikely hero to defeat Vecna, but I think the missing piece will be Will.

It's like Dustin said in reference to his drawing skills (interesting, because when Will drew to solve the puzzle before, it was directly related to his connection to the Upside Down): "we need Will."

This brings me back to the main point of this analysis. If emotions alter time—with traumatic memories causing time to slow down, and causing Vecna to gain power—and if the Upside Down is shaped around Will's trauma, then confronting Will's trauma is crucial to Vecna's defeat.

Everything goes back to Will. To the moment he entered the UD on November 6, 1983. The very day the Upside Down is frozen on is the same day that Will's trauma began. By experiencing his trauma and imprinting those emotions onto the dimension, did Will quite literally grind time to a halt in the UD?

I certainly think so. And we've already seen a little bit of how positive memories can be used to fight against Vecna. Music is shown to carry positive memories and emotions, almost forming a shield around a person, as was the case for Max and Will, who were able to fight back through the power of music. If we take this a step further, it makes sense that healing from his Upside Down trauma, would work as a sort of antidote to Vecna, who feeds off of people's trauma. He only targets people, haunts them, if they are hurting. Heal the hurt, and he has no use for you any longer.

Functionally, this could work a number of ways. I think it could work by Will re-entering the UD and bringing positive emotions with him. Maybe the UD would reshape itself again, this time in a more positive way, removing the "rot" that has existed there since Will first entered. After all, Dimension X does not appear to be inherently evil like the Upside Down, it’s only when it begins to shape around trauma that it changes and rots.

Some Final Thoughts

If we consider that it was Vecna who took Will, then it’s clear that Vecna's goal isn't to kill Will. In fact, in S2, Dr. Owens asks Will if the evil wants to kill him, to which Will responds that the Mind Flayer wants to kill "everyone else."

Why? Because Will has powers that Vecna wishes to exploit for his plan. Because, by keeping Will and his strong connection to the Upside Down alive, he caused the Mind Flayer to enter Will, giving him the ability to feel what it feels—and later, in S4, to feel what Vecna feels.

My speculation, given all of the similarities between Will and Henry Creel, is that Vecna hopes Will will come to see his view as the correct one. He recognizes that Will is treated differently, that he’s an outsider, and he wants to exploit this to have Will join his side. Like the Emperor to Anakin, and later Luke, Vecna doesn’t actually care about Will: he’s manipulating his emotions to access his power. He didn’t keep him alive out of the goodness of his heart. He kept him alive because he knows that Will’s emotions have the power to alter time in the UD.

Killing Will simply wouldn’t serve his purpose of using his trauma to keep the UD stuck in time, grinding it to a halt.

Because, if Will’s emotions have the power to imprint on the Upside Down to the degree that he shapes the way an entire dimension appears and operates, everything begins to make sense. That’s why Vecna kept him alive: to continue his plan of removing the burden of time from the world. That’s why the UD is shaped around him. And that’s why Eleven could not defeat Vecna on her own.

Will controls time in the Upside Down. He shapes it through his emotions and experiences. His fear and trauma slowed down the movement of time, so, if Vecna is to be defeated, it only seems plausible that healing from his trauma, learning that he is loved and accepted for who he is—that he’s not a mistake—will have the opposite impact. By doing so, time will speed back up in Dimension X, healing it in the process.

In the end, everything began with Will. It was his vanishing that kicked off the story we’ve followed for what’ll be five seasons. And it’ll be him that brings an end to everything, as well.

Author’s Note

Thank you to everyone who stuck around and read this whopper of a theory/analysis! Writing it has been a long (but very fun) process. I started writing this about three weeks ago, as a rewrite of my old clock theory with more of a focus on how I think the UD functions, but then it grew into a beast of its own. I just couldn’t help it! When I get a meta idea about Will in my head, I can’t not write thousands of words about it lmao.

That said, I always love to read other people’s thoughts on these theories—it’s truly the best part of our little community on here. So please, feel free to add onto this if you have any ideas! :)

—Em

[frozen-snowflakesandsunflowers]

D23: Frozen: What to expect | Discussion

D23 is just a week away, coming next weekend and we're expected to get a lot of Disney content! But will Frozen be a part of it? I believe so, yes. Frozen has two films coming out, Frozen 3 and 4 and also has a series coming out called Frozen: Winter Festival based on the leaked dolls so it's a must that Disney feeds us new Frozen content!

Please note that I'll just be guessing at what they could announce at the panel. Nothing's confirmed yet. These are my thoughts and opinions based on the evidence we have. What kind of Frozen content could we be expecting exactly? Let me break it down.

Frozen 3 and 4

With the announcement of Frozen 4 earlier this year with Frozen 3 already in the works, it's likely Disney will give us the full release date for Frozen 3 and 4. So far we know Frozen 3 will be released in 2026. Given the previous two films release dates, the third and fourth installment will also most likely be in November. Earlier this year (or was it last year?...) a few release date slots were leaked and one of them was 27 November 2026. Same for Frozen 4, except the date was 24 November 2027, a year after Frozen 3 like i expected given it's a two set film. So we assume Frozen 3 and 4 will have those as its release date but that has not been confirmed as of yet but it should do during the D23 expo.

Series

A few months back, we were all surprised by the leaks of brand new Frozen dolls with will be available on 15th September (A day before my birthday!). The shorts are set to release this fall. What's so special about dolls? Well it's also the information that comes with it. The info can be found in the link above but it states that the dolls, with new outfits, are part of Frozen: Winter Festival. We all thought at the time that this was a short like Frozen Fever, Olaf's Frozen Adventure and Once Upon a Snowman. But later on with another set of dolls, in the same outfit but included Olaf, the Nokk and a carriage. The description of the set reveals Frozen: Winter Festival is a short-form series. Short-form series are series with episodes under 20 - 30 minutes.

This is one of the doll packs in a box:

The box is what I want to draw attention too because it includes the recent new Elsa render/ still and a new logo design for Frozen. The title is the same but what it's in, the diamond shape with a detail pattern on the sides. The box has a blue purplish pink colour on it and the background seems to be of the woods we see in the first film. It can't be the Enchanted forest because it doesn't have a lake, and this is not the dark sea because that's part of the beach. Some of you might be like what's the big deal but for some it might feel a sense of nostalgia because this aesthetic of the box is similar to Frozen's aesthetic. Frozen 2 had the autumn leaf and a lot of things felt different. Change was the element of the movie anyways. But this short could be a mix of Frozen and Olaf's Frozen Adventure which I'm super excited for!

With this series set to make the beginning of Winter we expect a similar vibe to Olaf's Frozen Adventure with the holidays theme. Here are the descriptions for Elsa and Anna's dolls:

What we'll see in the short, based on the dolls and their description:

• The main Frozen gang will host an inaugural (mark the begging of winter) Winter Festival to celebrate Arendelle, family and friends

• Some familiar faces

• Two new looks for Elsa and Anna: A ball gown and a festival attire

• The Nokk will take part in the event

I also just realised Elsa's birthday is on the Winter Solstice, December 21st aka the beginning of Winter! So I would love to see Elsa's birthday addressed in the series! We have Anna's birthday and now we could have Elsa's birthday! And it's a double celebration because we should have Elsa's birthday and definitely the Winter Festival.

At the expo, we should have an update about this short-form series and get a full release date. A trailer and first look with a poster is possible too if it's set to come this fall, which is just around the corner. And also the cast reveal and story synopsis.

The series will be animated like the movies and shorts. Short-form series usually, as far as I know, air in TV but I'm not sure if this will air in TV or go straight onto Disney plus.

Any other new Frozen content?

Other than the movies, Frozen 3 and 4 and the short-form series, Frozen: Winter Festival, nothing else has been leaked or confirmed at this point with regards to the franchise so I can't say what else to expect. The team are good at revealing unexpected surprises with Frozen 3's announcement than Frozen 4's and then we have doll leaks revealing an upcoming short-form series (could be accidentally on purpose) so who knows what else is in store for us. (Though I know not many of you will want to expect or have high hopes which is fair)

The series is probably there to keep us fed until we have the big meal (Frozen 3 and 4) in two years. After the series is over, we'll probably have to wait til Frozen 3 and 4 for another big Frozen content. Announcements like casting could be released in 2025, next year and trailers we'll get in 2026 if it follows the same pattern as the previous two films. But then again you never know. We never expected the series so who knows, Disney could surprise us at any time.

And that's all I believe will be announced Frozen wise as far as we know. Anything else they've got planned will also be announced unless they're saving it for a later event. If you guys are expect anything else to be announced in D23, let me know!

[aroace-kodama-sakuko]

Hi, I decided to try something new.

The Aspec Year is a writing challenge to write one fic per month with at least one aspec character in it. It lasts twelve months, aka the whole 2024.

It's got prompts, too, but you can choose to ignore them; the important part is the aspec character, the prompts are just here to offer some more inspiration. You'll notice some of them are usually seen as romantic: that's on purpose, as a challenge to explore them in atypical ways.

The idea is to post on Ao3 in the collection linked above, but if you want to only post on tumblr that's fine, tag me and the challenge (#theaspecyear) so that I can reblog your works.

Basic rules:

1) Every story must contain at least one aspec character. Canon and headcanons are both fine, but while canon orientations don't need to be explicitly mentioned, I do ask that your characters' orientation is either mentioned or described in your story if they're not canonically aspec;

2) Use appropriate warnings tagging your stories;

3) If I find that your stories are not respectful of any category of people (be it by gender, sexual/romantic orientations, race, religion, and so on), I'll remove them from the collection. Be respectful with what you write. This doesn't mean that you can't write hard topics or morally black characters, but it should be clear that your characters' beliefs do not reflect your own.

The prompts:

January: Love potion (does it work on aro people? does it not? what effects does it have?) February: Valentine's Day March: Friendship April: First date May: Kids June: Mermaids July: Beach August: Birthday September: School October: Autumn November: Break-up December: Cuddling

I hope to read lots of aspec stories in 2024! 🧡💙