#even if only virtually

[doctorsiren]

Hatsune Miku being on the Coachella lineup for this year is amazing and great and so very silly but it’s so bad that tech bros are trying to spin it in favour of their “virtual AI influencers”

No. Like actually shut up?? Do you not know anything about Miku?? She is an art tool. She is a musical instrument. She isn’t being paraded around like she’s some sort of Metaverse influencer.

Stuff like that really grinds my gears. Do your research next time, hm? (looking at you specifically, Wendy Lee from the LA Times.)

[miraneko19]

"Peak shounen" this, "epic battles/romance" that, I cant look for recs like this anymore. My brain and its wants are so specific. It wants things to get OBSESSED with. I dont care if the show is great or if it's barely even that good. If there's something in there that has gotten people obsessed with it, be it the world or the characters (but being attached to the characters is a must for me) I want it. I want it now. My brain won't watch things that are just "really good" rn I need something lovably stupid to happen in the series that makes me laugh and turns my brain into a frothing BLENDER

[superbellsubways]

yapping (affectionately)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

also that evan's idea of how to be lifechangingly successful at a first impression with his crush involves dryly going up & talking to her while also seeming so profoundly unrattled by doing so that he doesn't already know her name & will get it wrong even the first time due to how concerned he is with so many other things, & this will appeal so much....& then there's jared's approach to talking to evan on the first day of school going up to him with a practiced swagger only the deeply insecure can truly pull off & sure it's established he knows evan's name & secrets but he so obviously is coolly unconcerned with all evan's shit despite initiating this exchange. & what an asshole

[taraxippos]

There's a LOT of things people do wrong when constructing fantasy beliefs in pantheons of gods, but one of the more specific is having only one god related to fertility and it kind of being just a horny sex thing.

Like you'll have one in the entire bunch whose sphere is listed as fertility and it's basically like Yeah this is the sex one. She's always depicted naked (but not TOO naked because censorship and/or the writer's own skittishness). She's going to have the exact body type epitomized in contemporary western beauty standards and there's usually no chance in hell that she's gonna be fat (unless MAYBE they're referencing 'venus' figurines). Her thing is fertility, which means having sex and making babies. Might be a goddess of beauty or love or marriage too, because these are kinda sex things, but that's probably it. And yeah that sort of thing is virtually nonexistent in real life.

Like the concept of fertility is so fundamentally important to the function of most societies in human history in ways that it is just Not in industrialized imperial core countries. Most people are getting food from stores, and not having to worry about harvesting crops or breeding livestock or foraging for food or having enough animals to hunt, so fertility only really comes up as a concern if you're trying to have kids (and there is certainly societal pressure to have children, but your wellbeing and survival is rarely going to Depend on it). And I think writing only from that perspective and not even trying to learn about WHY fertility is so conceptually important is why you see this trend.

There's no absolute universal statement about how people believe in gods but it's broadly accurate that systems with many deities will Usually have more than one deity associated with fertility, and these associations will certainly include human reproduction but also the fertility of livestock/hunted animals, plants, the land itself.

Some fertility deities may also be heavily associated with seasonal changes or environmental factors that agriculture or foraging is dependent on (spring/summer/fall, seasonal rains, seasonal flooding, rain itself, sunlight, good soil, rivers, wetlands, etc). Some certainly might be related to love, marriage, sex, and beauty, but that's VERY RARELY going to be the sole way the concept of fertility is embodied. And they'll often will have other associations not directly about fertility, or related to fertility in culturally specific ways.

[wendytestabrat]

tb to when stan finally had enough of kyle’s selfish ass lol

[bunnyboy-juice]

i have had such an urge to pamper a girl for a full day. like. planning an entire day just for her with activities i know she'd love starting with a special breakfast just for her. picking outfits for her to choose from, all highlighting my favorite parts of her body. showing her off in public while we go pick up toys or clothes or something she's been wanting for a while. constantly putting my hand on her hips or waist or looping my fingers with hers. the route planned perfectly with multiple stopping and resting points. sitting with her on benches, in cafes, wherever when we end up - holding her close and making sure she knows just how much i love her and how happy i am to be here with her. taking her home and helping her undress, get cozy and comfy. maybe even give her a bath. letting her relax while i grab anything she wants so she doesnt have to lift a finger. cooking her favorite dinner, feeding her her favorite desert, watching her favorite movie with her. just. all about her.

[tracing-lines-in-the-infinite]

if you could change one canonical thing about your Blorbo, what would it be?

Is making the ot3 more overtly canon an option?

But even with that the most immediate thing I would change Hardison's stance on tipping. I know most people I interact with here also find his behavior during The French Connection Job OOC and disregard it. He would tip the peopl who transport his gadgets safely so well! There's no world in which Hardison would question why he should tip someone for doing a service.

[sketchupnfries]

Trying out the new options for the Cyberpunk 2077 photo mode since the most recent update came out! I really like that now you can drop in NPCs into your pics, as well as adjust the screen ratio. Also I'm just amazed how much the photo mode has improved over the years for this game!

[gloryride]

Born to be Cute

even wild people can be cute. And when Vanessa wants to do a selfie to have memories of this day, Valentin prefers kissing her <3

But she still succeed to have her pic :

[starlightseraph]

comrades, don’t kill yourselves.

edit april 2025: as i’ve learned more and become more radical i see huge issues with what i said here. i viscerally recoiled just reading it, lol. revised below the cut.

my views aren’t actually too different from what they were when i wrote the original, but i’m now far less concerned about the possibility of hurting the feelings of usamericans who still subscribe to a mythologised view of “our nation” or “our values” or “the constitution” that has never truly existed. all of that “what is happening to america” is pure bullshit. internally, i felt just as blunt and harsh as i’m about to be now, but i was a coward and i didn’t want to alienate myself from the vast majority of the establishment-loving people that surround me.

(as i indefinitely live in the usa, which, don’t get me wrong, i love and it is now just as much my home as my actual home, but still, it’s insane just how deluded the average person is without realising it. it’s like that joke where the cia agent congratulates the kgb agent on the quality and quantity of soviet propaganda and the kgb agent says that it’s nothing in comparison to american propaganda. and the cia agent is confused and says “but we don’t have propaganda”)

my more developed line goes something like this: fuck trump and fuck harris and fuck both democrats and republicans and if you honestly think that democrats are even slightly left wing or in any way progressive or working towards change, you’re either propagandised to the high heavens or just wilfully blind.

democrats are disgusting, spineless, posturing idiots who have no clue how to even pretend to care about people. and they honestly don’t. why do you think like half of their campaign platform for decades on end was “we’ll codify roe!” but they literally never did, even when holding as much power as possible? because it was a bargaining chip. as long as they could make a promise like that, people would keep voting for them, hoping that this time it would really happen. but it didn’t, because they care more about not upsetting people and maintaining their careers and the absurd amounts of funding they get from every kind of lunatic lobbying group you can imagine.

democrats fund the right. democrats are funded by the right. democrats are the right. this shouldn’t be surprising, if you’ve been paying any attention at all. the democratic party is not and has never been representative of any minorities or marginalised groups and it has never actually tried to make things better for them. people often say “but oh, this or that issue would’ve been so much worse under republicans” and that may be true, but it misses the real point: democrats grudgingly give concessions, they don’t enact change.

obviously the maga-qanon crowd is particularly demented and i so have a special hatred for the nordic-aryan-alien-space-nazism thing that they have going on. but the point is that just because republicans are bad, it does not mean that democrats are good.

there’s a crucial difference here: a very mildly lesser evil versus an active force for good. democrats are an active force for bad. being in ostensible opposition to republicans just mean that they want to carry out their atrocities with a reassuring smile. republicans are just saying the quiet part out loud, and, if you’ve been listening, the quiet parts have never even been all that quiet.

if you actually wanna be of help to any oppressed people in the united states and especially if you want to help the literal billions that the united states oppressed abroad, you have to let go of the attachment to this idea of america as a place that could ever have turned out as anything but an evil, imperialistic genocide fanatic that’s badly masquerading as benevolent.

this is the inevitable outcome of the ideological foundations of the united states. a party, an election, all the votes in the world won’t change that. this is the system working as intended, slaughtering and enslaving and torturing incomprehensible numbers of people to line the pockets of ceos and politicians, just as it has always done.

get your head out of the sand. open your goddamn eyes. marching with a sign or posting on social media (unless promoting fundraisers) doesn’t do shit. if your “dissent” is in any form that the ruling class doesn’t try to stop, it’s because you pose no threat to their establishment. resistance has to be disruptive, it cannot be anything that gets support from the very same systems you are protesting against. i don’t know why people think that any movement protected by cops or that involves politicians will have any effect. it’s obvious that it won’t.

no matter how much they smile and say “oh but we love women and gay people and muslims” they’re not actually going to do anything but enthusiastically support the genociding of muslims, the pseudoscientific queerphobia, and the forcing of women into a box. they’re all part of the same money and control driven machine that has sadistically ended or destroyed the lives of countless people in a lost every single nation, including at home.

anyways, peace and love on the planet earth and all that. i love my fellow humans so much, i want nothing more than for us to just be chilling together like picking berries in a field and drinking tea or something. i’m so tired of this essentialist civilisation vs savagery or this nation against that one shit. we’re just a bunch of creatures trying to exist and be safe and not miserable and the people of the world fundamentally have the same interests at heart. constructed divisions have made us so focused on how we can dominate, when the natural tendency of humans is to cooperate. if your ideology isn’t fuelled by love, it’s worthless. i don’t mean this as some lofty flowery shit, i just mean that our end goal in everything should be the ultimate decrease of suffering and increase of happiness on as large a scale as possible.

the earth is beautiful and humanity is beautiful and we really can do something beautiful together. stay alive, stay fighting as hard and as tangibly as you can for days when the capitalists of the united states and imperial core no longer have a monopoly on the most basic elements of human existence.

in the words of our comrade yugopnik: my homo sapiens patriotism can no long be held at bay. lol

[ssruis]

My unpopular ruikasa take is that tsukasa (if given encouragement and a good enough pep talk) would say something. His confidence in himself and the strength of his bond with rui would hard carry in this situation even if he would prefer to not say anything. “I shouldn’t run from my feelings and if I’m rejected it’ll be fine.” but rui would saw off his own leg if it let him escape a situation where he had to even come close to confessing to tsukasa. Rui “deep seated fears about being too much & losing his friends over it” “zero desire to risk shaking up the group dynamic and having it turn negative” “it’s selfish for me to want to keep my loved ones by my side” kamishiro would absolutely go “he will hate me forever im not saying shit I will never speak of this to anyone ever” unless he was 100% confident the feelings were reciprocated. & even then it’s a 50-50.

[cozygaymes]

???? I'm sorry but do we still not know what Tomodachi Life's gameplay is? After all these years I thought we understood what type of game it was? Why am I still seeing people equate the gameplay to the Sims?

You don't have the option to control any of the miis, you look after them. You know... Like a virtual pet. Almost like you could put them on your backpack or the belt loops of your pants.

Guys... It's in the name.

[sojourner-between-worlds]

.

[lunarharp]

back to drawing days

[oddygaul]

Chain Gang All-Stars

Great book.

I sort of hope Chain Gang All-Stars is never adapted into a show or movie. It’s certainly possible that it could be done with proper deference to the tone and message of the book, but I think it’s far more likely that it would end up essentially being what Chain Gang is in the story itself - a hyper-violent spectacle that people tune into because they think it’s cool and action-packed. I think Chain Gang All-Stars is very successful at walking the tightrope line of drawing the reader into the story and letting them flirt with what it must feel like to be a viewer of the program, while presenting enough reminders of its grim reality to prevent you from being totally sucked in. While there were times during the LinkLyfe segments where I was drawn in the way a viewer absorbed in a reality show would be, the battles themselves never give in to ‘just’ being badass. They were tense, certainly, and I was on pins & needles reading them, worried about the characters, but there’s a certain utilitarian brutality to the writing in those sections that keeps them grounded. I’d be worried any adaptation would make everything too stylish and exciting, thoroughly missing the point*.

*To say nothing of any potential dilution of the politics to appeal to a wider audience.

— “All other sport was just a metaphor for this.” —

Chain Gang All-Stars is incredibly good at giving every single character a depth and fullness, even ‘antagonists’, so that even the characters who infuriate us, we understand to a degree. The book doesn't justify evil deeds - there’s no excusing Wil’s dumb ass self - but it shows how easy it is for someone to placate themselves, to keep themselves on a surface level and not dig too deep into their own morality, to convince themselves that they’ve done what they could and that all those who have wrong done to them deserve what they get. The fluid perspective switches it accomplishes this with are fascinating, too. We get chapters dedicated to different characters, of course, be it our leads, our deuteragonists, and plenty of one-off side stories - standard stuff. But Adjei-Brenyah also rapidly switches between multiple perspectives within the same page, hell, the same paragraph at times, which gives us insight into a much wider breadth of viewpoints than we normally would.

By getting to see into the inner thoughts of quite a few Links, we get to see how, while their individual experiences are different, their imprisonment has broken them all in tragically similar ways. From Bishop to Sunset to Thurwar to Staxxx, we see a consistent, crippling lack of self-worth. The A-Hamm chain is unique in preaching a vision of solidarity, accepting one’s past mistakes, and focusing on how they’ve grown and changed as people. Despite this, at their core, none of them can truly find it in themselves to be forgiven, because Chain Gang grinds their lack of perceived value into them unceasingly - ultimately resulting in what is essentially suicide. The carceral system does not allow for or encourage rehabilitation, only suffering and self-hatred.

I thought it was a compelling decision to make the majority of the imprisoned characters we follow legitimate violent offenders. A lot of the abolitionist / prison-critical literature I’ve read often focuses on, or at least begins with, incarceration that is plainly, nakedly unjust, like long-serving non-violent offenders and mandatory minimum sentencing. Conversations about the treatment of murderers, rapists, etc., are naturally more fraught - it’s harder to get someone to imagine an entirely different system, rather than just adjustments to the current system.

Chain Gang All-Stars does not shy away from it one bit. We get self-reflection from multiple different Links, both those who regret what they’ve done and those who don’t; we get conflicted thoughts from family members who recognize that their lives have been fundamentally changed by the imprisonment of their kin, but are still ambivalent about forgiveness; and we get, of course, the fearmongering and appeals to pathos used by government and the media to try and stop any ideas of abolition from even beginning to take root in the minds of the public. The book understands that there’s no easy answers, and instead brings all of these perspectives to the reader, demanding they grapple with the issues themselves.

It does, however, make clear the absurdity of pretending that taking someone whose life has been indelibly touched by violence and putting them into a system that encourages and requires additional violence, by the state, by their peers, is somehow rehabilitation. It’s brought to an extreme in the novel, of course - Thurwar’s overriding instinct that every problem can potentially be solved by violence due to the constant killing she’s done is more reminiscent of a soldier returning to peacetime than anything else - but the message stands.

Some of the most powerful parallels shine through as-is, though. Even when you put aside the horror the Links are put through on a daily basis and the rampant normalization of state-sanctioned violence, the base lack of freedom and personal autonomy is what breaks people. Both during Chain Gang and our looks at other prisons, the regimented days, planned schedule, and inability to spend time or talk with the people they care about are basic human rights that are removed from prisoners every day. Hendrix’s silent prison (an idea I was horrified to find has been enacted before) shows this in one extreme - after being robbed of something as simple as his own voice for so long, Hendrix is willing to risk everything just to be able to reclaim that part of himself. Most heartbreakingly, the morning of the final doubles match, Thurwar’s only desire is to stay in bed longer with Staxxx. Leisure time with your loved ones, one of the most basic luxuries a person ought to have, seen as an unobtainable prize. Don’t need a dystopian near-future novel to see that happening.

Speaking of Hendrix Young, the voice Adjei-Brenyah uses for his sections was absolutely beautiful and oozing with character and I loved it. The way he speaks is simultaneously poetic yet so pragmatic - there’s an idiosyncratic turn of phrase in nearly every paragraph, and his love for the world and its beauty is never eclipsed by his cynicism and the horrible things happening around him. His sections were handily my favorites, despite the looming dramatic irony that overshadows them all.

— “I thought of how the world can be anything and how sad it is that it’s this.” —

As a literary device, the interspersing of worldbuilding notes and Actual Fucked-Up Prison Facts was a genius touch. By priming your brain to expect something more fantastical, the more grounded notes become something of a sucker punch. The first few are all in-universe lore explanations - they’re not entirely necessary, you could’ve pretty much got the gist through context, but the thorough explanation written almost as an ad read pulls you into the mentality of this world… so then, when it drops, say, the net worth and founding members of the Corrections Corporation of America and you get the inkling that this tidbit feels a little too specific to be made up, the lines between the book’s world and our own start to blur.

In addition to the unique cognitive dissonance it invokes, I think it’s a pretty effective strategy to convince or teach a reader who perhaps hasn’t done as much digging about the nightmare that is the American prison-industrial complex. Especially given that the main conceit of the book is a little outlandish, it’s very easy for me to imagine such a reader enjoying the story for its plot, but deflecting or doubting the themes with the classic “Oh, but this is an exaggeration - it would never happen like this! It would never be that sadistic”. In some way, the footnotes feel like the author directly responding with a “Yes, it would, and in fact has already happened this way previously”.

I do wish the footnotes stayed as dense throughout the entire book as they were at the start. In the beginning, they come hard and fast, blending the real and the fictional, keeping the reader on their toes. About a third of the way through, though, they slow to a trickle, becoming a rarity. Adjei-Brenyah keeps experimenting with what the footnotes can convey (“Don’t look down. Help me.” was particularly chilling), but the infrequency starts to make them feel like an afterthought.

— “Just jump.” —

The closer I got to the end of Chain Gang All-Stars, as fewer and fewer pages remained, I was increasingly desperate for something to break. Even as the story continued towards the inevitable, even as it showed me there could be no other way for things to go, I hoped for something else. Anything but what happened.

And yet… the ending gives this book’s message a lot of its power. It’s not a story where things always work out and the good guys always win - it’s a reflection of real problems, and those real problems don’t have such a simple solution. Chain Gang All-Stars is about people living in an unfair world, working within a cruel, unjust, system, and still finding the strength and conviction to believe that there can be positive change. It’s about knowing that progress can be slow, and that the system can feel daunting, and feeling powerless to enact change, and still imagining and pushing for the world to be better anyway. And somehow, that it faces that hopelessness head-on makes it more uplifting than a safer story with an easier ending.