#ant rant

[queenoftheantz]

It's that time of the year again…I'd love to get some audiodrama recs!

i cannot list all i have already listened to, but count on that i know the classics like wolf359, unwell, bright sessions, hallowoods, greater boston, nightvale, alice isnt dead, tma etc. All genres (EXCEPT ANTHOLOGIES) are welcome!

(please dont rec your own, rather one you have listened to and liked!)

(just a note: I listen A LOT and will not be put off by length/high number of episodes)

[antpony]

My hungry ass could never be left alone with a parallelogram

[parcheesi]

i love teddy so much it hurts. that’s all

[angyfishes]

BIGGEST MADDED YET?! JUST FOUNDE OUT THAT FLUFFIEST BUGGE EVER HURTES IF GIVE BITE??? WHY MAKES IT FLUFFED IF NOT FOR PET???

[futurebird]

Please don't forget the ants!

STOP STOP STOP Stop, making festive "bug print" fabrics, quilt patterns, children's books and drawings that include "mix of bugs" but don't contain a single ANT.

I know how you artists are. You never skip the butterfly because of the colors. You never skip the beetle because of the ... shape. You never skip a centipede or millipede because of the legs. You never skip the spider because of the LORE. But ants are "boring" --right? NO WRONG

Ants are everything. Ants are the most successful members of the most successful group of land animals on the planet!

A nature drawing without ants is like a forest without leaves. Like night sky... without any stars. Do not forget the ants. Know the ants have not forgotten you!

[unknownmongrel]

Ants are such little assholes

At least roaches and shit are polite enough to wait until you've thrown your food away to start finding things. Ants? Ants just waltz up like "heya buddy whatcha got there? A slice of cake!? Oh pal you shouldn't have!" While crawling on the plate your currently eating off of like come on man can you at least let me finish?

Not only that but they linger around like they're WAITING for something. What do you want you little bastard I have nothing here what are you plotting shitlord.

And they invade on your personal space like bro you know I can remove you from this moral coil with a THOUGHT right? And they do. They do know. But they also know my next point...

They are numerous... There are so god damn MANY that unless you get like 12 traps and set them up around the house you cant just kill em' by hand (but god do I wish I could) and then you do set them up you have to deal with the BOSS WAVE AS EVERY DAMN AND IN THE NEXT FIVE MILES ANSWER YOUR SUMMONS TO EAT LITERAL POISON BECAUSE THEY ARE STUPID THEY ACTIVELY SEEK IT OUT.

I AM SO NOT OK I AM GOING TO TAKE THESE INSECTS TO COURT.

This felt so good to put into words

[biohazard-inevitable]

How about we NOT use people’s autism sensitivities as a prank???

Like, I noticed a weird smell in a room and asked where it was coming from, it was faint but im hyper sensitive to smells and my dad gets this grin and goes, “here it might be this! Smell it!” Sliding a bag of salt to me, And of course, I trust him and think its regular salt so i know what smell to expect to compare it to the one in the air and open the bag and take a sniff only to be ASSULTED with the EXTREMELY STRONG smell of Eukalyptus and nearly keel over gagging and retching because of how horrible it is while my dad just laughs his ass off like- that isnt funny!!!!

[macadam]

Fully of the belief that Miko is only seen as an annoying character because of the dynamic between her and Jack.

Miko in isolation isn’t an annoying character. She’s reckless, and unwise, and has to be bailed out of trouble every five seconds, but this isn’t really an issue for any of the bots because as far as they’re concerned, this is Normal Human Behaviour™. They are constantly having to work with and around humans or bail them out of trouble.

Bulkhead adores Miko. He is exasperated by her like a parent is of their toddler, sure, but I wouldn’t say he is annoyed by her in any way. Her interaction with wheeljack is another example. When she exists with the bots by herself, she doesn’t come across as burdensome. She’s just limited, as every human is, by the curse of being small.

It’s only through her interactions with Jack, and his continuous challenging and calling out on her behaviour, that Miko becomes an annoying character. Frankly, it’s the tension between them which annoys the audience. We can only watch the same cyclical bickering between children before it gets old.

I have noticed that there actually are a lot of people who do like Miko, and find Jack super annoying instead. It seems like people pick one or the other depending on how you interpret which one is causing the tension. When I watched tfp as a kid, I loved Miko and hated Jack. Like, hated hated him. Because I saw Miko as a fun punk rock kid and Jack as the one needlessly calling her out. Upon rewatching tfp as an adult (who works with kids a lot) I related far more to Jack, and so the situation flipped; I saw Miko’s actions as more frustrating to watch.

The writers did eventually try to fix this, with the one heart-to-heart scene between Miko and Jack. But it was kind of rushed, and didn’t leave any lasting change to their dynamic. They went right back to arguing.

Tldr: Miko and Jack are annoying together. Fans usually pick one of em as the cause to be annoyed at but honestly, they are both fine on their own. Children bickering is annoying even in a fictional cartoon lmao

[swampstew]

Choke and die on my dick, kellyanne

[huntingblossoms]

Ants are the most fascinating creatures on this Earth. They started off as wasps and evolved into their current form. There are over 12,000 species of ants and ants are the longest living insects.

They capture the essence true teamwork in their ant colonies. The largest territories can house millions of ants. There is a perfected structure amongst the colonists as well. They have a society full of roles such as soldiers and workers—they use division of labor in order to solve complex problems. Moreover, in a manner completely different from human’s individualism, these ant colonies can function as a “superorganism”, all ants performing tasks to sustain the home. Their reach is international, far superior to many other living organisms, due to these communal traits.

They don’t even need a formal language to communicate. Instead, ants use pheromones, sounds, and touch. It is difficult to miscommunicate or lie using these senses—much more efficient than speech. However, that is not to say they cannot manipulate the enemy if they need to. Ants use “propaganda pheromones” in order to rattle the enemy forces. I will have to mention this to the rest of the Hunting Dogs to see if deployment of similar tactics will be of use.

[antpony]

I don't know about anywhere else, but at least here in the south if you need a bucket, never buy one. Driving to work in 40 minutes I probably see three or four buckets, you could just take those. They're just on the side of the road empty free buckets I have taken a road bucket before

[parcheesi]

i have put so much thought into peppinoise and their dynamic that i feel like a mad man. incomprehensible at times.

[gaystonerdragon]

sometimes i feel like the people reading black butler forget that the whole premise of the narrative is a boy who saw his entire family and household massacred on his birthday is tricked into forming a revenge pact with a demon that was summoned by the cult that killed his brother after abusing the two preteen boys for weeks on end, to bring equal humiliation, pain, and suffering to everyone responsible for the aforementioned horrors committed against him. “its so dark” like yeah… what gave it away? “the subject matter is so heavy” again… what part of the narrative set up made you think it wouldn’t be? like you know how this is ending, right?

[futurebird]

The Queen is Dead!

There is this tiresome old trope in any science fiction that deals with ants, (or aliens that are stand-ins for ants or termites or bees or any other eusocial insect,) where the queen dies and then, suddenly none of the workers can function anymore. The workers in this theory of what a "hive mind" is are all just automata that extend the body of the queen. This is, of course, totally backwards. It's the death of human queens that leaves their subjects disoriented. We misperceive the order and smooth functioning of eusocial colonies for authoritarianism. No society could function so well without a tyrant, a single central mind, we assume. A great man or woman who drives their history must exist. This is all human mythology applied to the alien world of ants. What happens when the queen dies? Well let me tell you, because I've seen it happen... sadly. Queens are the longest lived members of ant colonies. So, naturally if you keep ants, you grow attached to the queen. And it's true that without her the colony has no future in the long run for most species of ants (there are exceptions, who can gain new queens, or who have multiple queens... but most ant colony have but one) So, when the queen dies it's sad. But, when she dies the workers ... keep going. You see the advantage of a "hive mind" isn't that there is one central node doing all the thinking, no, the colony is a distributed organism. And when the queen dies it's like menopause for a human body. There will be no new children. (though all eggs and larvae alive when the queen dies will be raised fully.) The ants without a queen continue to care for each other, continue to grow their fungus gardens, or heard aphids, they keep storing seeds and feeding the young. With time, the last of the eggs and brood are raised to be adults. The nest is cleaned and tidy, everyone is fed, with all these tasks done the ants huddle together to conserve energy. They will keep tending the nest and eating when they need to... possibly for years. Menopause isn't the end of an individual life, it's just the closing of a particular door.

I do think ant colonies like this, like my own queen-less colony can seem a little sad. Eggs and larvae and pupae are such joys for ants. They lavish food and attention on their little sisters. No more little sisters means a less active colony, it's like winter has set in permanently. But ants live through winters. Sometimes many winters. If you give a colony in this state brood from another queen they will raise them with great excitement. But there is no peaceful way to move the workers to a colony with a living queen.

This situation happens rarely in the wild. There are so many other things that can kill a colony long before a queen lives so long that she dies of old age. In the wild there are also parasitic species of ants that look for colonies without a queen, or with a queen that is weak and easy to kill. These sneaky queen ants will "steal" a colony. Though, from the perspective of ants without a queen, this is almost a mercy. But, there is none of this... everyone falling over and dying or everyone going crazy you see in stories about hives. The queen is just one part of the colony... a critical part... but still only a part. And each individual ant still has her own life to live.

[painandmovies]

Sorry to those of you who are misinformed but despite what the show says Malakai did not gaslight Amerie. This show's cringe a$s lines are generally nothing to take too seriously, but some of you do not know what that word means. Say he wasn't perfect, but what Malakai did was not gaslighting and it's clear that none of you have actually been gaslit if you think anyone treating you badly is them gaslighting you like it's a common descriptive verb. In season 1, I thought this show generally used teen-cringe language to be tongue-in-cheek, but words like narcissistic (s1) and gaslight are not just used as synonymous with lying and being a jerk.

[irrealisms]

when i said i would have deranged rant abt c!zam yesterday i thought i was going to have derangements abt s4 zam. and that wasnt entirely false i am also having derangements about s4 zam but im also having derangements about s3 (just rewatched the finale with some friends and remembered why zam's s3 finale was the video that made me go Oh. i CARE about lifesteal now huh)

anyway i'm thinking about s3 finale era zam showing up to meet with spoke ready for a fight. his inventory full of gapples and cobwebs and potions. eighteen hearts. and he uses them! he throws regen on spoke and he puts cobwebs beneath spoke so spoke can't kill himself by jumping off the mountain and he throws spoke two hearts and gapples and begs him to use them. i'm thinking about, after spoke comes back, zam spawntrapped. refusing to give up, hitting spoke over and over again with a stone axe that does nothing as spoke kills him over and over. i'm thinking about spoke, a bit earlier, saying: doesn't this sound familiar? and he's talking about zam's own suicide-by-execution after the fall of the princezam empire, and he's not wrong, but his words also echo into their future, into s4: vitalasy in the end base, putting subz in cobwebs, throwing him hearts and gapples, begging him not to kill himself; zam with a stone sword, hitting roshambo over and over. i'm thinking about spoke, even earlier than that: lifesteal works in cycles. because it does, doesn't it? it's all the same thing. they're not the same people but also they kind of are. thinking about zam yelling i ruined it! it's all my fault! if anyone should be banned, it should be me! because he's the same person as the one who banned himself earlier in s3, the same person who almost banned himself twice in s4. because even though spoke's his enemy spoke's also his friend and he doesn't want spoke to die. he brought stuff to kill spoke but he doesn't want to ban spoke, doesn't want spoke to kill himself. he's trying to save the server from getting banned (even his enemies) and spoke is trying to ban the server (even himself). in voiceover in his video zam says "i couldn't save spoke." he couldn't save spoke. he tried to save spoke. his enemy! his enemy who spawnkills him twice in the same video! zam couldn't save him. spoke asking why zam is still trying. but zam has to save things just like spoke has to destroy things. zam can't give up because he just-- can't, it's not his nature, across seasons and servers zam Does Not Give Up. even when it kills him. maybe especially when it kills him. i keep coming back to the cobwebs and the gapples and the regen pots. he brought them to kill spoke and he's trying to use them to save spoke's life. MAN. man! in conclusion. sorry for being stuck on a thing that happened in s3. as if it's my fault