#confused ramblings

[gl1tt3r-gutz-and-r0b0tz-sl]

Okay. Stay with me, babes. But after five hours, and half a brain aneurysm, I did it.

SO

One Cybertronian day, let's call it a Rotational Cycle, is 1000 human hrs.

Rotational Cycle: 1000 hrs

There are 41.667 human days in a Rotational Cycle.

9^9 gave me 387,420,489.

There are 387,420,489 Rotational Cycles in a Cybertronian ‘month’.

There are 9 ‘months’ in a Revolving Cycle or ‘year’.

So, multiplying 387,420,489 by 9 gave me 3,486,784,401 Rotational Cycles in a ‘year’

This means there are 145,283,845,636 human days in a Revolving Cycle.

Which means each cycle is roughly 398,037,933 human years.

And because every Cybertronian's spark is linked to a star, their life span is roughly ten billion years, which means they live to be about 25 Revolving Cycles.

Speaking of those 25 Revolving Cycles, they're broken up into five different categories, kind of.

The first Revolving Cycle is the incubation period, when the parental figures combine reproductive energon and fill the tank of the ‘carrier’ i.e. the Dame/maternal figure (it doesn't have to be female), and then put that tank into a pod for the sparkling to form.

Once developed into the shape of a smaller, weaker Cybertronian, the sparkling reaches its infant period, then child, then young adult, then adult. All in five cycles.

Think of it as going from 1 to 20 out of 100 years in five instances.

After that, they just age and age until they hit 25 Cycles and go supernova with their assigned star.

Like I said before, a Revolving Cycle has 9 months in it, all representing the nine primes as each month's Zodiac.

There are three seasons in a year:

Ruby, Citrine, and Sapphire.

Ruby is the coldest season because it represents the red stars. It's also the darkest period of a Revolving Cycle.

Citrine is like a Spring or Fall, being the middle period between Ruby and Sapphire. Representing yellow stars, it's still cool, but not near as cold as Ruby.

Sapphire is the hottest season of the Cycle. It represents blue stars, which are the hottest.

If a sparkling is produced in a Ruby month, they will have red optics and will typically possess a bigger, stronger body type, due to red giants of course.

If they were to be born in a Citrine month, then they would be smaller but more intelligent.

If a sparkling is born in a Sapphire month, then it will be “closer to Primus” due to him being a blue star himself being the star the planet revolves around from about 10,000 or more Astronomical Units away. Those of the Sapphire months will be the strongest, but most average appearing, due to being in “God's image”. It's also why now more typically those who become primes in the newest eras have blue optics.

These seasons carry three months within, though I'm still working on names for them, we'll just use their zodiac to define them.

These three are the Ruby season

Megatronus Prime Nexus Prime Onyx Prime

These three are the Citrine season

Solus Prime Quintus Prime Alchemist Prime

These three are the Sapphire season

Alpha Trion Zeta Prime Prima

The beginning of Ruby and the end of Sapphire are where most clash. Take D-16 and Orion Pax. D-16 was produced on the Megatronus month while Orion was produced on Prima's. Both are the most intense of these seasons and don't mix very well.

Cybertron is split into three territories relating to the seasons. Ruby's territory is the coldest and darkest despite it getting plenty of sun, its inhabitants have exceptional night vision and typically have darker paint jobs.

The Citrine territory is more of a goldilocks kind of area, with little to no overexposure to heat and an overall advance in technology.

The Sapphire territory is the hottest and its inhabitants are typically lighter in color due to the stars fading their paint.

Well, I haven't slept at all and it's 6:40 AM here for me. Bye for now, pooks~!

[confusedshades]

well now you gotta write it-

@deepwithintheabyss why. Just why. Please don't curse me with more plot bunnies. I'm drowning as it is. You know what, here's an off the cuff snippet.

Luke looked up when the bell rang. And then stared because the only person who usually came in around this time of day was Jessica. The man wearing a red and black leather mask, a German milkmaid outfit, with katanas and guns was most definitely not Jessica. Nor was the man wearing a shiny metal knock off Iron Man helmet who followed after. The last person who walked in wasn't legal by any stretch, but the thousand yard stare that took in the details of everything gave away the fact that at least they were definitely a vigilante of some sort. And probably had been a while.

Luke looked back to the first person and sighed. "Deadpool, you know the rules. No weapons in my bar."

"Aww don't be like that Luke!" Wade twirled his way to the bar before propping his head up on his hands. "These two needed some defenders and I couldn't think of a better place!"

"For the last time. I don't need any defender. What I need is to get back so I can finish my own business." Luke blinked at the knock off Iron Man helmet. It seemed it wasn't just a knock off helmet. The vocoder voice that emanated meant there was probably some tech built in there.

A scoff had Luke - and knock off Iron Man - turning to the last person. "Speak for yourself Hood. Unless you want some more duffle bags to fill, your plan isn't going to go anywhere. Trust me I lived through it. I actually have a time constraint on my agenda."

Looked like those two knew each other. To an extent. Something was still off though. The kid didn't turn his back towards anyone, in fact he had it turned to a corner - away from the doors and windows. Luke frowned as the second man, Hood, turned with what was supposed to be a snarl on the third man.

"Just because you survived doesn't mean shit Robin." he sneered. The kid twitched though whether at the name or the tone Luke wasn't sure. "My fight is with Bats and his incompetence to change the status quo. But from the looks of things, it looks like he abandoned you too. Sucks being on the outside, doesn't it?"

The kid twitched again, and pressed his lips together.

Deadpool slapped his hands to his face without moving from his spot on the bar. "Gasp! It can't be! Inter dimensional and time travelling shenanigans meet Daddy issues!" He jumped between the two people who had frozen at this declaration and smooshed both their faces into his chest - just where the barmaid costume's corset would've created breasts Luke noted in amusement.

"I can be your new Daddy if you want! I even promise to listen carefully and pay for things if you want! Oh! Oh! Luke! Play some Daddy Cool please! It'll be most appropriate for this! We can start this off with a theme!"

Luke just laughed at the equally horrified and shocked expressions on Hood and Robin's faces and turned to find glasses. He had a feeling the two would be needing drinks soon.

[confusedbuddyboi]

I need to get into drawing longan or wrotimg cause him and pitya regressed together, but longan is younger and seems almost sleepy, and pitayas a bit older and more energetic. But pitaya still wants to play so when they gets a chance theyll pull out some blocks and build or smth

[confusedshades]

Thanks for the tag @gaddaboutgriffon,

I was watching either Dungeon Meshi or The Rain (a 2018 post apocalyptic Dutch show) last night as I was editing. I genuinely cannot remember.

Either ways, I'm not holding much hope of a successful rescue...

Low pressure tags,

@redbirdandbluebird23 @zorilleerrant @myheartwillsing

[foreststarflaime]

Sure sure romantic pairings are fine and all. But more people should perhaps consider two characters loving each other to the point of incomprehensibility. To the point that there is no simpler way in english to define or describe it than just to say those characters’ names together, joined eternally by the vague conjunction ‘and’. There’s so many types of love and dependencies and emotions in general thrown in there that you can’t tell what colors they are anymore, they’ve just joined into a giant blobby mess that’s almost black, but when you look closer glistens with more colors than there are names for. Just a thought

[tis-i-german-potato]

What is a bonbon?

I was listening to an american podcast and they were talking about bonbons being chocolates which - as a german - confused me, so I decided to look it up.

Apparently the word bonbon in english means what we call Praline??? Huh????

So now I am asking once more: Tumblr what is a bonbon to you?

A: a type of hard candy

B: a type of chocolate

[secretmellowblog]

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[confusedshades]

Dick heard the zeta tube activating. Without looking away from the computer screen with the case he'd been working on, he said, "Hey B. You're back early. I've almost got the Gold Dust gang transportation chain figured out. The key was figuring out the delivery trucks if you're curious."

When Dick didn't hear anything in response he looked back and froze. That wasn't Batman. That was members of the League.

Why were they there?

What did they want?

Dick stared at the three people standing near the zeta and they stared back. When the woman raised her hand to wave, Dick jerked in reaction.

He dropped from the chair, hitting the lockdown alert as he did so. He rolled out the other side of the desk and dashed off into one of the various tiny cave exits. He threw down a bunch of smoke pellets before he ran down the twisting pathway that was hard to navigate, nevermind, track people in.

He finally found the little crevice he'd been aiming for and looked at the tiny box he'd grabbed from under the desk. Clambering up he dropped some of the green crystals there before dashing away again.

He turned around when he reached the junction where 4 different pathways diverted from the one he was in before climbing up one wall, through a crevice in the ceiling, up to the tiny ledge he'd found during one of his explorations. It was impossible to see from most angles and absolutely impossible for an adult to reach, nevermind fit in.

Bruce had drilled into him from the start, "You see a meta and you hide. You hide, and wait. You only fight if you're cornered."

Dick had asked why, and Bruce's response had chilled him to the bone.

"You don't know what their powers are and if they get distracted for even a microsecond, you can end up dead or crippled for life. I can't keep you safe from that. If something like Joker gas or Tetch's tech gets involved, it'll be worse."

imagine the “Robin meets the JL while Batman is away” trope but it’s inverted. instead of being funny and interesting and extroverted all of the Robins just bolt. bolt, hide, or fight. B told them not to ever let themselves get cornered and to run if a meta sets eyes on them. so they run, they hide, and they fight back with a tiny shard of holdout Kryptonite B had embedded in their gauntlet. they dig their boots in, clench their fists, and prepare to be immovable at <100 lbs.

[oobbbear]

I want to post this here too because I’ve seen it happen a few times

Please understand that there are cultural differences and language differences, if you see this happening let the person clarify what they meant, that person might just not be familiar with words the western side of the internet use

[raviollies]

Just who are you, Councilor Medarda?

[screambirdscreaming]

Something that peeves me whenever I see another post going around with some variation on "autistic people take things literally which means we are the only people who communicate Clearly and Directly" is that - for any given statement, there is not one singular, agreed on, universal Literal Interpretation. If there was, none of this would be a problem!

The nature of language is that there's always some degree of interpretability. Words have several different meanings, often overlapping, and there's nuance of context, cultural references, and so on.

Faced with a statement, most people will quickly come up with an interpretation that to them makes the most sense. But if you asked a roomful of people to explain in detail their interpretations, everyone's would probably be a little different, even for a pretty simple statement. Regardless of whether those people are autistic! Everyone conceptualizes the world a little differently, and everyone has a unique personal history of all the language they've encountered, and these things effect our interpretations.

In order for communication to be workable, given this slosh in interpretability, there's another couple of processes that go on. As conversation goes on, people reassess if their initial interpretation matches up with additional context. If it doesn't, they revise it, or ask clarifying questions. And on the flipside of this process, the other person in conversation is tracking if your reactions make sense with *their* understanding of what they're trying to convey to you, and offering context or rephrasing things if it seems you're out of alignment.

These processes are social skillsets that are, like most social skillsets, not ever directly articulated or explained. Many people are bad at one or both. Sometimes you encounter someone who is really, notably good at it - the vaunted "good listener", who puts in the effort to really understand what you're trying to say, or that really excellent teacher who engages with you back and forth until you really get it. But a lot of the time, it's a sort of passive social friction - people just not getting each other.

Sometimes, you encounter someone whose brain works so much like yours that talking to them feels almost effortless - you just get each other. But that's a pretty rare occurrence for anyone. More often, as you get to know someone, you start to understand the shape of the way they interpret things and learn to account for it, so over time it's easier to make sense to each other.

It's honestly not uncommon in society for people to aggregate in groups of people who interpret things similarly, and who are thus easier to talk to, rather than actually building the skills of communicating across interpretation gaps. Particularly egregious are those groups of men who talk about Women as an incomprehensible monolith, but it turns up to a greater or lesser degree on a lot of levels.

I suspect this is the root of a lot of parenting problems - people who have never built this communication skillset, and relied on choosing friends who make sense to them without a lot of effort, and who are then totally unprepared to interact with a child who interprets things in ways they don't expect.

Obviously I can't speak to The Universal Typical Experience, not least because it doesn't exist. But in general I would posit that:

Most people, give or take a few assholes, are not trying to say things that are confusing. Most people think they are communicating clearly, because the first interpretation *they* would come up with on hearing one of their own sentences is the correct interpretation.

Many people are not very good at accounting for different ways people could interpret things they're saying. However, it is normal and polite social behavior to be somewhat flexible about this and forgiving of misunderstandings. If people are being shitty to you about not understanding them, they are assholes. And I wouldn't assume that the rest of the communication they have with everyone else they know goes totally smoothly for them.

I suspect there is a bit of an unfortunate feedback loop, where people have bad experiences when someone gets mad at them for not getting something, and learn to hide when they're confused. Which then leads to larger, more complicated misunderstandings, which other different people get upset at them about, because those people think they should have asked for clarification in the first place.

Truly you can't win with everyone. No one can win with everyone. There is no monolith of "neurotypical communication" which resolves all these contradictions - all those people you're lumping in together under "neurotypical" have just as much trouble with each other.

[gl1tt3r-gutz-and-r0b0tz-sl]

So, my brain is fucking weird. I'm just rambling now while working on a request. BUT TELL ME WHY-

I watch my fav character (Starscream) eat shit and die like a fucking loser, taking L after L, and yet I don't feel a thing.

BUT THE SECOND THE SLEEPYTIME EPISODE IN BLUEY GETS SO MUCH AS REFERENCED, I WILL BAWL MY EYES OUT SO HARD THAT I MAKE THE FUCKING GREAT ASS FLOOD FROM THE BIBLE LOOK LIKE A GODDAMN DROP OF WATER. 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭

EXPLAIN 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭

[confusedshades]

Trick or treat!

Here's a little snippet from an outlined only fic which I'm temporarily calling the Titans Tower and Uncle Eddie Mash Up.

"Tim! Your friend is here!" The woman called behind her, while Jack Drake attempted to intimidate Jason. Granted, in any other scenario it probably would've worked. Unfortunately, Jason wasn't the least bit threatened by a man who had ignored his son for most of his life, and still didn't seem to follow through on almost all his grandiose announcements of doing better and mending bridges.

The thundering footsteps must've been for the two people's benefits because Jason had seen the kid sneak across rooftops and behind goons backs when the occasion called for it. (No, Jason wasn't a stalker. He just did thorough research.) Tim arrived, and Jason took particular delight in the absolute tomato red his successors face turned when Tim saw who exactly stood outside.

Let ut never be said that Jason Peter Todd wasn't a bastard.

"Hey kiddo! Did you forget our plans or did you lose track of time? Anyways, hope you're ready to get your butt beat, I have a winner's doughnut with my name on it." If Jason didn't miss his mark, Tim's ears just turned red too.

"Uncle Eddie! What are you doing here? I thought we'd agreed to meet up at the arcade." Tim responded, though given the half darting glances he kept throwing towards Jack, he was hoping the ruse would work.

[madbard]

Watching Gravity Falls for the first time in 2024 is certainly an experience.

Because there is a lot of fandom overlap, so of course I’ve seen fanart before, but I didn’t have the context for it.

So I entered Gravity Falls with two key pieces of knowledge:

1. There is apparently toxic triangle yaoi.

2. Everybody is a CHICKEN.

[wynandcore]

Saw the sonic 3 trailer are you telling me the movie based on Sonic Adventure 2 is Not anti-military??? No anti-authority theming here?? Nothing?? The game where a kid gets gunned down? Where Shadow’s grief and hate for humanity is BECAUSE of the military?? Where Sonic runs from the cops and is consistently annoyed at their existence?

[rowan-on-the-moon]

so uh. how about that blocking in the next to normal proshot