#dense topics

[raffaellopalandri]

Beyond the Surface: A Dive into Dense Delights

While many seek breezy escapes in their reading, I find myself drawn to the opposite end of the spectrum. Light, fluffy narratives hold little appeal for me. Instead, I crave books that demand my full attention, challenging me with intricate sentence structures and dense, thought-provoking themes. This isn’t just a random preference; it stems from a deep appreciation for the power of…

[deus-ex-mona]

ngl i want lxl to double down on the whole “we’re lovers” thing that they have going on in meoto and continue acting as lovers in their future songs. they’ve given their fans enough love, now it’s time for them to love each other on main!!! and hey, maybe they’ll finally be canon—

[scarletiswailing347]

discliamer since i havent really done that for these kinds of posts and i feel like this one is worded in a more demanding way than i usually do: any post of mine regarding what the ccs "should" do is less me actually wanting them to do what i say and more me speculating on the kinds of actions that they could take, not cause i think im smart or tactical or anything but because this is my idea of what fun is

im watching the tower vod rn and i think the only real way to deal with minute and jumper at this point in the server is to. not

like it probs wont be satisfying to the PlayersTM considering the kind of ppl they are (proactive, confrontational, plays along with the spirit of the server, self-focused morals) but considering the kind of ppl minute and jumper are (reactive, avoidant, prioritizes survival even if it means not great content, normative morals) i think its the only real way to engage with them when it comes to this kind of recursive conflict

like everytime they confront one another it keeps circling back to this moral debate regarding the ethics of killing ppl on fucking Lifesteal of all things and i highly doubt its ever gonna stop (at least for this season) considering none of the new members have really been traumatized the lifesteal way, i dont mean regular smp trauma like war and betrayal and all that jazz cause theyve already got that, i mean Lifesteal trauma: the realization that everything is a cycle, that good and evil doesnt matter, that feeling of hope shattering over and over again, that realization that in the grand scheme of things your ideals dont matter and the only thing you can truly hope for in the server are teammates and allies that wont backstab you, and that even then thats a tall order

so back to Not dealing with jumpertech, i dont mean forgetting what they did, i mean actively avoiding them, acting irrationally scared of them even when theyre being civil, fully putting them in the role of big scary villains, basically still putting what they did at the very forefront but acting like its an insurmountable trauma, planting doubt in their status as heroes, continually being the aggressors just cements in their minds that yes they are the heroes and that yes they are doing the good things

like whether the PlayersTM like it or not this is an unstoppable force vs immovable object kind of situation except the unstoppable force has more to lose by virtue of having a goal that can easily be tided by the immovable object

and i do think they can pull it off, they can lose a fight and lose so much that it breaks their spirit, like jumpertech have both been in kings, they both know how determined at least zam and mapicc are, surely it would be really offputting to see someone youre so used to seeing never giving up to do just that

[a-concert-just-for-me]

Is this guy braindead. The population of Rolling Fork is in the Mississippi Delta. The town itself is ~70% Black. ~37% of the population is under the poverty line. The county it’s in leans heavily democratic. Rich, white, transphobic/homophobic republicans are not the ones you’re owning, here, dude.

[steelycunt]

ten books 2 know me!

thank for you the tag @pancakehouse @fruity-individual @serethereal @rollercoasterwords !

-> skulduggery pleasant, derek landy.

starting with this one because this WAS my childhood i was. i never read percy jackson never read twilight read [redacted] and it wasnt even good but my dad thought id like these so he bought me the first skulduggery pleasant one day...oh man oh boy...these were. i was eight queuing up outside a whsmith with a schoolbag full of books for the author's booksigning...also he was so nice ta derek x

-> giovanni's room, james baldwin.

cannot get into this too much before i start wailing and biting and stuff but well. giovanni's room is my favourite book of all time i read most of it. last year in june laying on brighton beach while the sun was going down and i have never recovered from and will you bring me home again / yes. i'll bring you home again since and fear i never will. also! first james baldwin book i read who has come to be an author whose writing style i adore and carry in my mind whenever i try to write something myself.

-> young mungo, douglas stuart.

not the first book i ever cried at but. first book i ever experienced disgusting full body sobs while reading and fierce competitor also for. my favourite book. had to reread so much of those final pages because i couldnt concentrate with all the crying and after that i am so excited to never have to experience the physical chest-aching worry that i did for the duration of reading this. also i think the very quiet way love is written here through. very trivial small things is something i loved very much and that has stayed with me!

-> wuthering heights, emily bronte.

read this when i was about eleven, and then again a few weeks ago with my mum (whose favourite book it is) and it was still so. absolutely sickening i just think its excellent xx and without it we wouldn't have kate bush's 1978 single wuthering heights so xx think on that xx

-> the autobiography of malcom x, alex haley.

when i was a child my younger sister joined a sunday league football team and my dad used to give her a tenner every time she scored a goal. to even things out since i refused to get up at the arsecrack of dawn to contract hypothermia on a frozen football pitch, he started giving me books exclusively on malcolm x to read and would give me a tenner every time i finished one. this one was the first i read and was indeed the first book that ever made me cry at the end xx

-> my brilliant friend, elena ferrante.

so many of these are recent reads because it was only jan 2022 that i made a genuine effort to get back into reading for leisure and mbf is no different but well. the way friendship is written here is just unhinged and incredible and the series in general so far has been. there is nothing like it i fear

-> the raven boys, maggie steifvater.

gansey unfortunately.

-> macbeth, william shakespeare.

okay i know i know but. when you are studying it in englit class for your gcse it might as well be a book innit. anyway of all the texts i did for english both at gcse + a level macbeth is still my favourite and probably the most effort i ever put into an english essay. special shoutout to frankenstein which i can enjoy in hindsight but unfortunately it fucked me on the exam so out of bitterness it doesnt get a place here x

-> the secret history, donna tartt.

i did inhale this book but also it gets a place purely for being my first exposure to donna tartt's writing and style in general which is so very distinctive and has. undoubtedly had an effect on me for better or for worse we shall one day see but for now. who can say!

-> foster, claire keegan.

it is a little pamphlet of a book at eighty six pages but. i read it just over a month ago and havent properly stopped thinking about it since it was just everything quiet + mundane + understated that makes my brain start sparking and whirring and. im bringing it on holiday in the summer so i can read it again in the appropriate season xx

tagging. but no pressure. @gaewaren @dykefever @emerqldv @fastasyoucan1999 @forlorngarden @writteninverses @boyjoan !!

[nintendoteuthis]

A question that has been lodged in my brain like a porcupine quill since the dawn of time... how would transitioning work for transgender inklings & octolings? Do you think that the ability to dramatically change their voice & their bipedal form's appearance with the player customization menu is something they can actually do at will, or are such changes more involved, like they are for humans? And would medication analogous to human HRT be a part of transitioning for any of them? I have tried to research that one myself, but for some reason there's very little information out there about how a cephalopod might medically transition.

The reason why is because we don't know a whole lot about hormones and secondary sex characteristics in cephalopods. We don't even know if they have chromosome-based sex differentiation! We do know that octopuses at least seem to have the same sex hormones as in humans (i.e. testosterone, estrogen, progesterone) but we don't know if they have any effect on secondary sex characteristics. I found a paper that reviewed mollusk sex hormone studies and concluded that there's no evidence they have much of an external effect at all.

So what ways to medically transition would there be for an Inkling or Octoling? I don't think that they can dramatically change the appearance of the humanoid form at will - the system that I have for their shapeshifting is more or less a fast-acting, two-way metamorphosis, a shift between two forms that themselves do not change. We don't have strong evidence for hormonal control over how the body looks, so it's unknown how effective HRT would be. There's always surgery, and I think puberty blockers would also work, but I've been tossing about a headcanon for how Inklings/Octolings would medically transition based on something we do know about cephalopod biology.

You know how cephalopods use RNA editing to modify how their genes are expressed?

So the idea is: doctors have developed molecular cocktails that we can call, for the sake of the bad pun, Gender Fluids. Inject some of that into your body, and your blood and ink will distribute it all across your body. It induces a RNA modification pathway that changes how certain genes are expressed, with the end result being feminization/masuclinization of the secondary sex characteristics. So it's a bit like both HRT and gene therapy. It's fast-acting - the modification begins as soon as you transform to swim form and back - but you need to keep up the injections if you want it to hold.

(on an unrelated note, while doing research I learned out something neat. Apparently a sizable contingent of individuals of the sharpear enope squid (Ancistrocheirus lesueurii) are intersex. They have fully-developed male reproductive systems, but are also larger and bear nidamental glands like females)

[pasteltoast]

"Intermissions" in long video essay style videos where it's just like. Unnecessarily long side tangents that are only slightly related to the topic but add nothing to the general video statement but padding runtime because weirdly long videos on niche topics are the hot topic rn......

[octahyde]

the island of woe is so fucking scary but I somehow. haven’t seen anyone talk about how fucking scary it is

[fuckdamn]

contrapoints twilight video is very very good

[louisdotmp3]

that pipeline of anti-intellectualism to the worst/most lukewarm political opinions on leftist politics. like actually maybe you guys should know a little bit about what you're talking about and then you won't sound so foolish or have to constantly reinvent theory & discourse that was already covered extensively in the 20th century

[durchdenspiegel]

Whoops life lesson don’t finish a presentation ten minutes before you have to give it 😶

[lavendorii]

[humanmorph]

apartment search is tough because.well i havent even really started yet in earnest so its literally on me but its getting to the point where im so impatient to do anything i make an impulsive decision & that can go good or bad

[effervescentdragon]

arjun appadurai im in your fucking walls

[sun-stomach]

Can anyone teach me how the hell to stop getting so stressed out over having a difficult time with a cognitively demanding task and maybe not be so hard on my self???

[prisonpodcast]

Why don’t c!techno antis try using arguments that aren’t made up of lies, misused buzzwords or things taken so out of context all you need is a 5 second clip to debunk it. Maybe then we’ll take you seriously 😊