#it was a pretty stable system as these things go

[whetstonefires]

Thinking endlessly about how the classical Athenians were like, so, on the one hand, many administrative tasks on which our civic apparatus relies require expertise.

But on the other hand, if we appoint leaders to necessary positions on the basis that they're the ones who are best suited to that work due to knowing all about it, that's putting real power in their hands, for an extended period instead of a safe little increment, which sets up our nice democracy of Every Free Adult Native Male Who Can Afford Armor to collapse very quickly into a narrow oligarchy.

But the fact remains that administration actually is skilled labor, especially on the tens-of-thousands-of-people scale they were dealing with, and also involves situations where it's impractical to run every step of a process through a committee. Not that they really wanted to acknowledge this but they were stuck with it a bit. If nothing else, people have day jobs, they can't always be voting.

But fulltime governators for whom this is their day job have too much power.

And the way they solved this was, most of the institutional memory and expertise and even exercise of force in the name of civic order was invested in slaves.

Mint workers? Executive accountancy clerks? Cops? All state property.

Very Important Job of distinguishing counterfeit coinage: public slave. Fifty lashes if he shirked or fucked up or cheated. Considerable authority in the context of the job. Could live quite a comfortable life. Absolutely no chance of his using this role as a springboard for building a political base and usurping authority, because he didn't have legal status.

This freed the actual executive positions up to be filled by people given one-year terms by lottery who had the authority to make (routine) calls but no personal power associated with the office; they didn't have to know shit to do the job and this kept them interchangeable.

Except generals, apparently. The Athenians were like, okay generals really do have to know what the fuck they're doing or we'll all die, but we can't make military service the defining feature of citizenship, and then put ourselves under the command of a non-citizen.

(Not even because like they couldn't entrust a slave with so much power, although being under threat of a lashing if people don't like your decisions probably isn't great for making strong strategic and tactical calls; it's the cognitive dissonance.)

So they had ten elected generalships, with less term limitation, and it was in fact a good avenue by which to build a political career.

But like, what the fuck huh?

[carlyraejepsans]

do you. have any charisk fic recommendations. i’m so close to shipping them but i’m on the fence tbh

no tbh, i just ship the hyperspecific, highly self catering version of charisk that only exists in my brain

[murobrown]

.

[rafeandonlyrafe]

carnival

this fic is 100% inspired by this edit from rafesins, please go watch and support it on tiktok!!!

words: 1.7k

warnings: 18+ only, smut, dealer!rafe, reader does coke, blowjob, p in v sex, unprotected sex (but reader is on birth control), kinda sex as payment??

“what you want, pretty?” rafe asks, already tugging you towards the back room. “some white, and then you.” you smirk at him, pulling your lower lip between your teeth.

“yeah?” rafe smiles at you, shutting the bedroom door behind you, usually off limits for those seeking some of his stash, but not for you. 

“here baby.” rafe tosses a small baggie at you, filled with white powder. you tap it out onto the back off your hand in a jagged line, but it doesn’t matter the presentation as you sniff up the coke, barely able to put the rest of your bag in your purse before it hits you.

“how much i owe you?” you ask.

“you should know better than that.” rafe shakes his head. “i don’t need your money.” you don’t bother to respond, sinking immediately to your knees, glad for the plush rug keeping them from bruising. “just need your mouth.” rafe undoes his belt, allowing your hands to take over and pull it free from the belt loops. 

“good thing im a pro.” you make quick work of rafes pants, tugging them down for him to step out of, knowing the night isn’t going to end just from you sucking him off.

you rub your hand over his length, the material of his underwear still blocking you, but he’s already hard, was the second he saw you at the party, knowing you would eventually come to him.

“cmon, pretty.” rafe encourages you, his voice soft but you know its not a request, but rather a command for you to stop teasing.

you pull his underwear down, mouth immediately surrounding his cock before its even all the way down his thighs. rafe lets out a moan, not caring who could possibly hear him.

“thats it.” he groans when you suck lower, being careful not to let your teeth accidentally scrape against his length.

“so good.” you mumble when you pull back to kiss at his tip, licking your tongue over his slit to collect any precum that has leaked, moaning when you taste him on your tongue.

you don’t savor it for long before sinking your head again, setting up a fast rhythm, pushing his cock all the way down your throat and then pulling back until just his head is between your lips.

your gag reflex doesn’t make an appearance, it hasn’t since you first started sucking rafe off for blow, gagging only once when you realized how much bigger he was than anyone you’ve had before. you’ve never made a mistake since.

rafes moans are like music to your ears, the song pumping from the speakers at the party going on throughout the rest of the house also filling the bedroom.

go, go, go, go

head so good, she a honor roll

she’ll ride that dick like a carnival

i done did the impossible

you pull away to blink up at rafe, unsure if its the influence of the song or the drugs in your system mixing with the alcohol you pregramed. “let me ride you, rafe.”

“fuck, yeah.” he nods without a second thought.

“cum in my mouth first? i do owe you for the coke.” you want to make sure rafe is down for getting it up twice in one night, but he doesnt use his words to confirm, instead wrapping his hands in your hair and shoving your head back down.

you moan around his cock, knowing how much rafe likes feeling the vibrations as he starts to press his hips forward. you stop your motions up on down, covering your teeth and relaxing your throat.

“fuck yes.” rafe groans, thrusting forward while holding your head still, allowing him to fully shove down your throat.

you place your hands on his thighs to keep yourself stable as he fucks your throat, making you even more excited to get inside of him later, to feel him thrusting up into you while he’s on top.

“close.” rafe warns, your mouth far too good to last any longer, especially not with the promise of your pussy next.

you glide one hand up his thigh, cupping his balls, and its what sends rafe over the edge, groaning out your name as he cums, releasing into your mouth. 

you suck him gently through his high before pulling off, opening your mouth to show rafe your cum covered tongue.

“jesus, baby, you deserve all the blow in the world for that head.” you swallow before smiling up at him, “thank you, rafey.”

rafe helps you up, your legs a little numb from kneeling down, but its out of your mind as rafe wraps his arms around your waist, hauling your body against his in a strong kiss.

“get on the bed.” you pull away from rafes mouth. rafe is slow in unbuttoning his shirt, his fingers moving slowly as he watches you grab your purse from the floor, inhaling some more of the white powder before you step out of your heels, revealing your perfectly painted white toenails.

rafe licks his lips as he climbs onto the bed, now completely naked as you stand in front of him, moving slowly to the music as your hands run over your body, dress not hiding anything as it fits you like a second skin. 

you don’t tease rafe for too long before you begin to strip your clothes off, revealing that you’ve just got a bra on underneath your dress, having forgone panties like you always do on nights out, not caring if anyone sees your pussy.

you crawl onto the bed, watching rafes cock twitch, already halfway hard again just from watching you get naked for him.

“love these tits, come here baby.” rafe says, his back propped up by the headboard. you crawl onto his lap, hovering your cunt over his cock to tease him as rafe cups your chest, smirking when you jiggles your boobs in his face.

“you could do lines off them sometime.” you offer rafe, his eyes lighting up as he looks at you.

“damn, you really work for your free stash, don’t you baby?” he laughs. you know you’re going above and beyond, but its not truly about the free drugs and rafe knows it.

you reach between your bodies as rafes thumbs swipe over your nipples, watching them harden before his eyes as you grasp his cock, only having to give it a few strokes before he’s ready to go again.

“clean?” you ask rafe, hoping you can have him without a condom.

“yeah. pill?” he asks you.

you shake your head and tap the side of your arm. “implant.”

rafe nods. “i’m taking you raw then.” 

“damn right.” you nod, raising your hips to line up your entrance with his cock, sinking down with a soft moan, having to move slowly with rafes cock stretching your walls.

“oh shit.” rafe groans, his head falling backwards against the headboard. “youre so fucking tight.”

you make a point to clench around his dick, tightening your pussy even more around him before beginning to move, starting slowly as you move back and forth, rafes hands moving down to hold your waist as your hands press against his abs to give yourself some stability.

you lean in to kiss rafe, needing his mouth back on yours as you begin to bounce faster, thighs straining as you ride him.

rafe moans into your mouth, letting you move however you please, knowing this won't be the last time he has you naked before him, not going to be able to hold back now that he's got a feel of your pussy.

“so big.” you coo out, hips moving from side to side, almost in a dancing motion as you ride, occasionally pressing all the way down to grind your clit into his body. you can feel his abs clenching underneath your palms as rafe gasps and groans, making you smile, realizing how good you're making him feel.

you suddenly pull off, making rafe cry out at the loss, but you quickly turn and line your pussy back up with his cock. you place your hands between his legs on the bed and lower your cunt over his cock, ass now facing rafe.

“oh fuck.” he moans, hands gripping your bum as you begin to bounce it up and down, using every trick you have in your book, loving the way rafe feels inside of you, long and thick.

“love your dick.” you look over to your shoulder to tell rafe. “want you to cum in me.”

“keep going like that baby and im gonna.” rafe warns. 

you smile and face forward to put all your effort into riding rafe, knowing your ass must be bouncing deliciously from the way he grips and slaps at it while you move.

you gasp when rafe suddenly pushes you forward, falling to your stomach as his body covers yours, chest pressing into your back as he cums, lodging his cock deep inside you to release himself, making you shudder as your pussy pulses around him, milking every last drop.

“oh, fuck.” rafe groans, flopping to the side, his cock slipping easily out of you.

you can't help but giggle at his heavy breathing, his eyes closed as his chest rising up and down.

you shimmy closer, trying to keep your thighs squeezed shut to not leak all over the bed. “that was so good, rafey. can't believe we hadn't done that before.”

“never gonna settle for just your mouth now that ive felt that.” rafe laughs out, placing his hand behind your head to bring you in for a kiss. “although you do have a hell of a mouth on you.”

“well you'll have to have both because there's no way im gonna stop sucking you off.” you laugh.

“i think that can be arranged.” rafe smirks, sighing when someone knocks at the door, probably barry needing him to keep selling.

“find me after the party?” you question, sliding off the bed, knowing you'll need to find a bathroom as soon as you leave the bedroom to clean yourself up.

“of course.” rafe nods, standing up as well and quickly getting redressed before helping you with your dress and heels.

someone knocks again and you go to head for the door, but rafe grabs your hand, slipping another baggie of white powder into it.

“you've earned it.” he smiles at you.

you grin back, pulling him in for one more kiss before heading out into the chaos.

taglist: @drewstarkeyslut @forstarkey @f4ll-for-you @dilvcv @drudyslut @jjmaybankswifes-blog @rafescokenostril @jjsmarijuana @seeingstarks @angelofcigs @cece45450 @babygorewhore @cutielando @kamninaries @buckyswhxre @rafeinterlude @bellbottombaby @deeaardiary @rubixgsworld @wearemadeofstardust0 @leighbronk @starkeysheart @pradabambie @tobesolovelysstuff @alexiskirkland @rafestar @brioffthegrid @juniebugg @magicalyoura @die4niyahhh

[nostalgebraist]

Honestly I'm pretty tired of supporting nostalgebraist-autoresponder. Going to wind down the project some time before the end of this year.

Posting this mainly to get the idea out there, I guess.

This project has taken an immense amount of effort from me over the years, and still does, even when it's just in maintenance mode.

Today some mysterious system update (or something) made the model no longer fit on the GPU I normally use for it, despite all the same code and settings on my end.

This exact kind of thing happened once before this year, and I eventually figured it out, but I haven't figured this one out yet. This problem consumed several hours of what was meant to be a relaxing Sunday. Based on past experience, getting to the bottom of the issue would take many more hours.

My options in the short term are to

A. spend (even) more money per unit time, by renting a more powerful GPU to do the same damn thing I know the less powerful one can do (it was doing it this morning!), or

B. silently reduce the context window length by a large amount (and thus the "smartness" of the output, to some degree) to allow the model to fit on the old GPU.

Things like this happen all the time, behind the scenes.

I don't want to be doing this for another year, much less several years. I don't want to be doing it at all.

----

In 2019 and 2020, it was fun to make a GPT-2 autoresponder bot.

[EDIT: I've seen several people misread the previous line and infer that nostalgebraist-autoresponder is still using GPT-2. She isn't, and hasn't been for a long time. Her latest model is a finetuned LLaMA-13B.]

Hardly anyone else was doing anything like it. I wasn't the most qualified person in the world to do it, and I didn't do the best possible job, but who cares? I learned a lot, and the really competent tech bros of 2019 were off doing something else.

And it was fun to watch the bot "pretend to be me" while interacting (mostly) with my actual group of tumblr mutuals.

In 2023, everyone and their grandmother is making some kind of "gen AI" app. They are helped along by a dizzying array of tools, cranked out by hyper-competent tech bros with apparently infinite reserves of free time.

There are so many of these tools and demos. Every week it seems like there are a hundred more; it feels like every day I wake up and am expected to be familiar with a hundred more vaguely nostalgebraist-autoresponder-shaped things.

And every one of them is vastly better-engineered than my own hacky efforts. They build on each other, and reap the accelerating returns.

I've tended to do everything first, ahead of the curve, in my own way. This is what I like doing. Going out into unexplored wilderness, not really knowing what I'm doing, without any maps.

Later, hundreds of others with go to the same place. They'll make maps, and share them. They'll go there again and again, learning to make the expeditions systematically. They'll make an optimized industrial process of it. Meanwhile, I'll be locked in to my own cottage-industry mode of production.

Being the first to do something means you end up eventually being the worst.

----

I had a GPT chatbot in 2019, before GPT-3 existed. I don't think Huggingface Transformers existed, either. I used the primitive tools that were available at the time, and built on them in my own way. These days, it is almost trivial to do the things I did, much better, with standardized tools.

I had a denoising diffusion image generator in 2021, before DALLE-2 or Stable Diffusion or Huggingface Diffusers. I used the primitive tools that were available at the time, and built on them in my own way. These days, it is almost trivial to do the things I did, much better, with standardized tools.

Earlier this year, I was (probably) one the first people to finetune LLaMA. I manually strapped LoRA and 8-bit quantization onto the original codebase, figuring out everything the hard way. It was fun.

Just a few months later, and your grandmother is probably running LLaMA on her toaster as we speak. My homegrown methods look hopelessly antiquated. I think everyone's doing 4-bit quantization now?

(Are they? I can't keep track anymore -- the hyper-competent tech bros are too damn fast. A few months from now the thing will be probably be quantized to -1 bits, somehow. It'll be running in your phone's browser. And it'll be using RLHF, except no, it'll be using some successor to RLHF that everyone's hyping up at the time...)

"You have a GPT chatbot?" someone will ask me. "I assume you're using AutoLangGPTLayerPrompt?"

No, no, I'm not. I'm trying to debug obscure CUDA issues on a Sunday so my bot can carry on talking to a thousand strangers, every one of whom is asking it something like "PENIS PENIS PENIS."

Only I am capable of unplugging the blockage and giving the "PENIS PENIS PENIS" askers the responses they crave. ("Which is ... what, exactly?", one might justly wonder.) No one else would fully understand the nature of the bug. It is special to my own bizarre, antiquated, homegrown system.

I must have one of the longest-running GPT chatbots in existence, by now. Possibly the longest-running one?

I like doing new things. I like hacking through uncharted wilderness. The world of GPT chatbots has long since ceased to provide this kind of value to me.

I want to cede this ground to the LLaMA techbros and the prompt engineers. It is not my wilderness anymore.

I miss wilderness. Maybe I will find a new patch of it, in some new place, that no one cares about yet.

----

Even in 2023, there isn't really anything else out there quite like Frank. But there could be.

If you want to develop some sort of Frank-like thing, there has never been a better time than now. Everyone and their grandmother is doing it.

"But -- but how, exactly?"

Don't ask me. I don't know. This isn't my area anymore.

There has never been a better time to make a GPT chatbot -- for everyone except me, that is.

Ask the techbros, the prompt engineers, the grandmas running OpenChatGPT on their ironing boards. They are doing what I did, faster and easier and better, in their sleep. Ask them.

[astrologydayz]

ASTRO SEXOLOGY NOTES🔞 - NATAL CHART7🍒

💋 KISS ASTEROID - 8267 IN ARIES = into rough, bold, passionate, & fiery kissing/makeout sessions<33. They can also be a big fan of tongue teasing, & lip biting/nibbling🫦. They really want2feel all that passion someone has for them when they're being kissed<33. It can also get kinda clumsy here sometimes because it can happen on such an impulsive/or they can suddenly get the need2act, 2 just follow their "instincts asap"🫰🏼. 💋 KISS ASTEROID - 8267 IN CANCER = into vulnerable, intense, & emotional kissing/makeout sessions<33. Kissing can mean a lot 2 these people/or when they really kiss someone, there has 2 have some type of feels✨ - can be any type tho<33. They can also be the type 2 looooove long intimate makeout sessions/or just really like 2 take their time/not rush it<33. They want their kisses to be felt an eternity afterwards.

💋 KISS ASTEROID - 8267 IN LEO = into confident, heated, & powerful kissing/makeout sessions<33. Kissing can be like some kind of artform 2 them - they want 2 show u that they're the best of the best💅🏽 - "no lips move like theirs"<33. They can be big on taking charge/"leading the moment"👄 - deciding the pace, etc. Usually very confident in their kissing skills here/ready2show off<33.

KISS ASTEROID - 8267!

MARS/8TH HOUSE IN TAURUS IN A WOMAN'S CHART = typically sexually attracted 2 people who are "conventionally beautiful"/"classic beautiful people"/2people who takes real good care of themselves - looks good, smell good, etc. She can be very big on being with/or finding someone who's eager 2 please her a lot sexually/show her how much they really want 2 keep keeping her<33. 8th house in Taurus women could want/seek 2 be provided for - in, & out of bed<33. She's sexually attracted 2 people who's secure in themselves/in life, & 2 people who ain't afraid of getting shit done. She finds tact, security, & sincerity sexy as hell! Her neck can be one of her most sensitive zones, so go crazy there👅💋. She can be a big fan of food sex/fruit, & cream sex🍒🍓. She can also find people that cooks real good really attractive, or worth keeping!😻 Sexually attracted 2 artistic, charming, stable, & romantic people<33. SUN CONJUNCT/TRINE/QUINTILE MARS IN A MANS CHART = these men are strong, courageous/bold, sexy - very very sexual individuals/very sexually charged, they're also charismatic, & confident - usually Alpha men. These men are not afraid of going after what they want sexually😼 - if they see something they want = they go after it 100%. They don't want it 2 be 2 easy tho, they really dig a challenge<33 - they love the hunt/the chase in the beginning!🏃‍♂️ Men with this aspect feels truly alive/powerful, & strong when they're using their dick/getting off - it's like their own "personal thing thing"🫶🏼. The conjunction can cry a little bit if they get rejected tho😭😂 - their ego can take a big hit. MARS CONJUNCT/SQUARE/QUINCUNX URANUS IN A MANS CHART = these are the men that can have trouble with controlling themselves sexually/they can literally get horny/hard out of nowhere2, or just not really think about what they're actually doing until after they've already done it🤔 - they can be very quick on it/quick 2 act without truly thinking. This aspect gives a lot of "self control" as a reward in the end, or rather - "the ability 2 choose yourself", but it takes a ton of failed tries/loss of self control a lot at first<33. Oh, & these men are very experimental in bed usually - always willing 2 try new shit for the betterment of pleasure. Their turns ons can be unheard of tho, or just kindaaaa/really unusual/eccentric. They can be into some pretty wild/freaky shit/they can also use sex as a way of letting go of their frustrations/aggressions.

MARS/LUST ASTEROID - 4386 IN 2ND HOUSE = a person who can be really sexually attracted 2/turned on by people who's secure in themselves/2 people with a certain value system - "a strong sense of self2"/or turned on by money💰/by people with money💵/by people who's got serious financial goals/turned on by people who's into making bank<33. Can also be sexually attracted 2 mouths/neck areas, or that can be some of their own big turn on areas👄<33. MARS/LUST ASTEROID - 4386 IN 4TH HOUSE = a person who can be really sexually attracted 2/turned on by people from their own home country/sexually attracted2 people with the same ethnicity as them<33. Can also be very sexually attracted 2 chests/stomachs/or breasts, or again that can be some of their own big turn on areas<33. They can also have sexual partners who can resemble some/one of their family members/or remind them of them. MARS IN 7TH HOUSE people usually doesn't do one night stands. It's not really "their thing"/it's not something they like 2 practise - & if they do = it's because they still feel some type of connection 2 the other person✨ - yeah, even if they've just met<33. They're also the "give, & take kind" in bed🫰🏼 - they want it 2 be 50/50, always - they never just take. They would honestly prefer 2 give, rather than 2 take💋.

MARS CONJUNCT/SQUARE/QUINCUNX SASSI ASTEROID - 7500 = can be very sexually attracted 2/turned on by sassy/bratty people<33 - basically into people who can't keep their mouth shut😻. They can also be VERY bratty themselves tho - they loooove crossing lines/love doing the opposite of what they're asked/told<33 - not everyone can handle them🤷‍♀️. They can definitely be too much for some people.

MERCURY CONJUNCT/TRINE MARS people can be really sexually attracted2 certain hands🖐🏽/fingers/turned on by dirty talking/or talking under sex<33. Certain voices🗣️/languages, or certain things said can also show up as a big turn on<33. Oral sex can also be something they're really into/or just really enjoy doing! Sexting could also be something they're a fan of doing📱<33. People with 5th house in Cancer usually doesn't do just "casual sex", & if they do = there's still some type of feelings/emotions revolving around that certain connection/person✨<33.

MARS CONJUNCT/TRINE SATURN can show a person not having that NEED4sex. Like they can ofc still REALLY REALLY love it🫶🏼, but can show up as them not having any problems with going without - self control, check✔️<33. MARS CONJUNCT/TRINE EROS people exudes sexual confidence!💅🏽😻 These people are the ones who are very big on fulfilling their sexual urges/desires - each one they have/get<33. They can also receive a lot of praises from others on their sex game - they can be very very erotic🫦<33.

WOMEN WITH CUMMING ASTEROID - 14348 SQUARE/QUINCUNX SATURN can show them having a harder time with getting orgasms - could have been especially hard in their teenage/young adult years/or it can be something they're not really comfortable with in general<33.

CUMMING ASTEROID - 14348 CONJUNCT MC can show a person making a name for themselves/being a star in the adult entertainment industry👄<33.

PEOPLE WITH MARS/5TH/OR 8TH HOUSE IN CANCER can hate having sex with protection - they can feel like it takes away from really "feeling" each other/takes away from really enjoying the sex 2 full capacity💋.

MARS CONJUNCT/SQUARE/QUINCUNX PREY ASTEROID - 6157 can show a person getting sexually preyed upon a lot throughout their life🙄🫠. MOON CONJUNCT/TRINE MARS IN A MANS CHART can show him not having any issues with getting/gaining sexual attention/attraction from women💋 - women notice him a lot, & respond very well 2him, & his energy🫶🏼<33.

THANKS4READING<33 APPRECIATE U, ALWAYS!❤️🍒

MASTERLIST

[celestialtarot11]

Solar Return Observations ☀️✨

Hi friends! Today we’re discussing solar return notes + what I’ve observed from them. I’ve been observing for three years, but I’m not able to fit all of the details in one post. I can always make another 🦋 enjoy and feel free to like, comment and reblog.

Chiron in the 7th house 💌- Healing through partnership and connections. I’ve had this placement last year and went through a breakup which taught me a lot about self worth (Aries ruled 7th house SR) and I learned to stand up for myself. I learned to be my own best friend and start over after a loss. Everything in terms of my relationship and how I viewed it changed completely. It was a pretty long journey, being that Chiron is the wounded healer, I’d say about a year the cycles were going on. Anyone who has this placement in their SR chart, you can expect for healing to occur in your relationships. Not necessarily a breakup always, but definitely wounding will come up that year.

Neptune in the 6th house 🌷- Routines can be heavily centered around spirituality. Meditation, yoga, occult practices become a theme in the daily life. Incorporating this can help the native grow and develop a consistent routine, and eventually connect with a higher source of love (deity, religion, universe, etc) because Neptune is the higher octave of Venus. With Neptune here there’s an emphasis on romanticizing daily routine and self care. Certain day to day events can feel whimsical, ethereal, and fated even! The native may question that year their beliefs and want to start something new, or reignite spiritual passions ✨

Moon in the 4th house 🌙🌟- Romanticizing the past, viewing things from a nostalgic lenses, daydreaming about a family. The native may deal with family illusions around this time, manipulation, or themes surrounding the family this year. The native might find it difficult to balance their life as family is an important theme for the year, whether it’s their own, or biological. The mother could be significant this year, and the mother may try to build a close bond with the native. The past is viewed from a bittersweet lenses, as there’s an element of moving on but honoring the past for what it was.

Capricorn 4th house 🦋✨- Structure, evolution, and discipline is needed regarding the home. Things may be slow, sluggish, or even depressing in the house. Saturn slows things down and when Capricorn is in the 4th, it can point to restrictions, boundaries, and limits. The native will learn to have boundaries with the family that year, and the value of alone time. The necessity of independence, and rebuilding structure in terms of roots. New job, new ways of managing finances, moving homes even. The native may feel uncomfortable that year within their home, they could feel detached even more than usual, and may long for an actual home of their own. Their own independence apart from family. Family could be stricter that year, and family events may be limited.

Saturn in the 6th house 🤍🌹- Structure, routine, discipline through health. The native may develop a stable gym routine and eating habits that year, and their health will improve with dedication and practice! They may choose a better diet, and learn about proper nutrition that year, and take care of their digestive system especially. Even energetically, the native will find themselves not wanting to consume shows or channels that are stressful. The native is meant to build a stable routine with their health.

11th house stellium 🌷🥂- Emphasis on networking, friends and meeting new people. Lots of people will want to meet the native, and will try to talk to the native. It’s easier to meet people this year, and to form new connections. Even strangers will randomly strike up a conversation with the native. Potential for meeting a marriage partner or best friend is strong! Potential for growing famous online is also strong, you may start an online business or be online a lot more this year.

11th house sun ☀️✨- Finding others is how you come back to yourself. What kind of community will you center yourself around? This year the native will try to figure out what kinds of friends they want, and where they belong. Through others the native comes to themselves, and people will teach a lot to the native. Not necessarily handing out wisdom, but there will be situations in which the native has to choose their own community and their beliefs compared to what everyone else wants.

11th house Venus 🦋🤍- Having friends and community becomes important, and the native realizes the importance of it all this year. Lots of people may want to date and get to know the native, as the 11th house is public. The native will be seen a lot more by others, around the place and people may actually make comments about that (I’ve had that happen with this placement many times!) The native will find that somehow the people around them come the right time when they need help too. Almost as if they’re blessed 💘 The native learns a lot about detachment from others expectations, and opinion. It’s about finding what works for them not for others this year. Potential for dating online is strong! And meeting someone through a dating app or social media.

Mars in the 12th house 💗🌹- The natives abilities and effort may struggle to be seen and recognized. There’s a sense that the natives effort is hidden, and the native feels unseen. It’s important this year the native keeps their plans and goals hidden as there could be others who want to criticize negatively. Especially with virgo 12th house! People may expect perfection from the native this year, or the native will struggle with perfectionist tendencies, and eventually will be the self undoing (12th house) Perfectionism is the natives enemy this year, and the native will have to find ways to understand themselves and work on their tendencies. There’s a chance to end up injured or hurt this year, so be cautious. The zodiac sign in that house will tell you where. For example if you have Virgo 12th house, your stomach in some way could struggle this year or be injured.

North Node in the 8th house ☕️💌- Leaving behind the material realm for the spiritual. Native is involved heavily with healing, releasing, and esoteric practices. The native eventually finds balance towards the end of the year with the material realm, but will likely find 6-8 months of deep inner work. Boundaries regarding spirituality get muddled as the native explores their psyche, uncovering new experiences! Healing and transformation through the past, to be in the present. Certain relationships can fall apart as it’s not aligned with the natives growth. Jobs may change as the native adjusts to their needs.

Libra Ascendant 🥂💗- Focus is on beauty and seeing the world through a connective lenses. Connection everywhere, with nature, people, communities, spirituality, etc. the native will fill more in touch with their fair and balanced side. This year the native will focus on balance, and not doing too less or too much. The act of balancing means things will be out of balance, so this year the native will go through upheaval as well. They will learn about discipline and structure throughout these changes, and work on mending things that were out of place. Going back and rebuilding. Or starting new if needed. The natives peace is important, and the native could find a partner this year! Depending on the other SR placements. The native is looking for ways to be connected to whats around them and within them.

Pluto in the 7th house 🌟🌷- Transformative relationships and unhealthy dynamics can come up this year in the native. Power dynamics and upheaval of roots in connections. The natives relationships with others is changing tremendously, and likely they could attract someone healing as well, and the two can heal. But with pluto here it can get intense and chaotic, if the two aren’t consistent working on themselves. People from outside could try to get into the natives relationship, adding gossip. It’s important to stay private this year with relationships.

Venus in the 12th house ✨☀️- Some I knew actually met a soulmate that year, the potential for a deep bonding connection came up. It was long distance given the 12th house ruling distant lands. If Venus is in a water sign for that year, the connection is a psychic one and very intuitive. Her house had cancer over it, and she developed a close bond with someone. They did things for the first time she’d never done before like traveling to another place! Everything was kept private, as Venus fell in the 12th house. Although this happened, they both mirrored wounds and did inner work to sustain the connection, and had a connection that was incredibly intimate. So Venus in the 12th can bring up a romantic interest, a connection that will be profound in terms of inner healing. It can also mean the native will choose to heal and do inner work, and not have the desire to date that year. It can mean codependency is the natives undoing that year in their relationships.

Sun in the 1st house ☀️🥂- Focus is on the self, growing and improving the body. The native could go to the gym and explore new routines, or be athletic that year. Participating in a sport they enjoy. Their appearance will go through a massive change too, someone I knew impulsively cut their hair after drinking lmao. It was super long, and then they went short! The father could be in the natives life a lot more, whether thats through spending time and bonding, or being intrusive and invasive. The native will realize a lot in terms of their strength, depending on which zodiac sign falls in the sun. For example, if its Leo, the native will realize a lot of their determination; strength, resilience and their self esteem will improve.

Venus in the descendant or 7th house 🤍☕️- Dating someone! Or meeting someone who is a potential partner. Venus was in my 7th house for my SR when I got into long term relationships. Conj. NN will be an impactful relationship, NN is also associated with destruction in a way because it rebuilds, and what doesn’t work must leave, so that relationship I had was incredibly chaotic 😅 But for those who have Venus in the 7th house, you will potentially meet a long term partner that year. Check the zodiac sign and that’ll tell you how! Someone with Gemini Venus 7th house met someone online.

Venus in the 1st 🌟🌹- Appearance changes! A glow up will definitely happen that year, and ideals of your relationship will change a lot. What you expect, want, desire will go through changes. You may prefer healing therapy of some kind for the body, like massages, or yoga. Something to restore the body physically. You could absolutely be in the gym too!

Saturn in the 1st 🌙🦋- Having to be more structural and disciplined within yourself. Setting new routines and maturing personal boundaries. You may struggle with dissatisfaction and apathy this year, because you’re moving towards what fulfills you. Check the zodiac sign to see what will be maturing most within yourself that year. For example if its in Pisces, you’ll be maturing the part of you that has wishes, dreams, but has been passive in taking an approach to make them happen.

Venus in the 5th house🌙🥂- More fun and romance this year! The chance to get to know someone and friendship. However your approach to dating will differ depending on what zodiac sign falls in the 5th house. For example, if it’s in Capricorn, you’ll take on a reserved and detached approach to relationships. You’ll show up practical.

Capricorn Venus 🦋🤍- Material matters are important and you’ll likely pick up extra hours this year. Your approach to relationships are practical, refined and you have a long term focus. You don’t want anyone or anything unnecessary, as you know it’ll hinder you this year. There’s a need to mature when it comes to relationships and understanding how they work, because Capricorn is ruled by Saturn. There will be lessons on emotional intimacy this year!

Leo Venus 🥂🌟- This year there will be a focus on attracting the one potentially, and going big. Not playing small in relationships and attracting abundance. Loyalty is important, and the native wants a commitment within their friendships or romantic interests. The native steps into their worth and their value. By valuing themselves, they learn to realize their value in other peoples life. Lessons regarding self worth and value will come up, and the native will find themselves having to speak up for what they deserve in relationships!

Thats all I have ya’ll! I hope y’all enjoyed and please support this blog 💗🤗 it’s very much appreciated! If ya’ll would like I’d love to do more of this!

[hillbillyoracle]

So you can't get out of bed...

This is a resource list for all those who are having trouble getting out of bed. Whether that's because of injury, disability, or mental health, this collection of resources should help address some of the common pain points I've experienced over the years. Some will require modification if truly bedbound but my hope is this sparks ideas and gives you a place to start.

A warning: this is a *long* post. I went for thoroughness over brevity so people had options where possible.

Food

This video from Sarah McGlory of Adaptive Cleaning details her system.

It is excellent. I have a similar bin to her first in my room for high pain and low mood days. Prioritize high fiber and high protein shelf stable foods. Make sure electrolytes and water are within easy reach.

If grocery trips are too much, it's worth looking into pick up or delivery. In my experience, the delivery services through stores are better than Instacart and the like. The retailer who must not be named also has a great snack selections that hold up pretty well in transit.

Fruit + veggie pouches, baked chips, and RXBars are some of my favorites to keep on hand.

Clean Space

This video from KC Davis of Struggle Care details her "Five Things Tidying Method".

If you can't tidy your whole space, focus on the walkways. Make sure you have a walkway to your bedroom door, to your front door (or other way to leave your house), to the bathroom, and to the kitchen or where you store food.

Another tip from KC Davis - if you're struggling to get your plates back to the kitchen before they stick or attract bugs, get gallon sized plastic bags and seal the plates inside of them. You can always wash and reuse them once you've delivered it safely to your sink or dishwasher. When you're just surviving, it's just as okay to toss them after.

Bonus: This no-mess method of decluttering from Dana K. White is low energy friendly. You can stop whenever and your space is still better.

Hygiene

This post details my care kit that I use.

If you're unable to shower regularly, I'd add in some baby wipes. Yours probably won't look exactly like mine but I hope it can be a jumping off point. If I could only pick two items, it'd be the disposable toothbrushes and a good facial lotion (since it can also be used on the body). If you can't bare to change your clothes, just change your underwear. This helps prevent health issues down the road.

Movement

Arm Workout in Bed: [3 Min] [5 Min] [10 min]

Core Workout in Bed: [3 Min] [5 Min] [10 Min]

Leg Workout in Bed: [3 Min] [5 Min] [10 Min]

Yoga in Bed: [Morning] [Anytime] [Evening]

Stretching: [5 Min] [10 Min]

If you're able to stand + move but not up for leaving your room, then Rick Bhullar's walking workouts are great in a small space.

For a long time, I thought that you could only get exercise by getting dressed in specific clothes and going outside or to a gym. Now I know that there are lots of options for getting a little movement in bed. Even a short 3 min workout a day can help decrease muscle atrophy. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.

Bonus: I also just walk laps around my room/apartment. You don't have to go outside. It can get a little boring sure. But quick 5-10 min walking breaks through out the day add up.

Spirituality

This is ultimately going to be specific to you and your tradition. Even if you are not religious at all taking a moment to think about your bigger picture values is important. Since my core spiritual path is Buddhism, here are some recommendations in that vein. I could not find good links for all of these. I don't necessarily do all of these everyday but I try to do a few.

Three Refuges by Plum Village

The Five Precepts by Access to Insight

The Five Remembrances on Wikipedia

Chanting Om Mani Padme Hum

Chanting Namo'valokiteshvara

Reciting the Heart Sutra

Bonus: A pagan practice I enjoy is reciting the hymns to the planet of the day. Offering water and incense is great but optional. Praying to and thanking ancestors and land spirits is also a great practice.

Alternatives to Social Media

It's easy to get stuck in the black hole of scrolling. It's good to have something enjoyable to pivot to.

Cozy Games

My favorites are Stardew Valley, Wingspan, and Animal Crossing. The first two aren't terribly expensive. A lower cost alternative to Animal Crossing would be Cozy Grove which regularly goes on sale. Sims can be cozy as well - minus any pool shenanigans.

Slowly

This is an app that allows you to send messages but delivers them on a delay based on how far away you are from someone. It makes it fairly easy to find penpals though, as with anything, it can be hit or miss. I've even convinced a few of my irl friends to try it and write them little letters on there. The delay makes receiving them more special. It's a great way to play letter writing rpgs with friends. I'm currently using it to play Grandpa's Farm with my partner.

750 Words

Ever wished you could do morning pages digitally? That's what 750 words started out as being but you can ultimately use it however you want. Some people use it to hit word counts on their writing projects. I'm a fan of using it to brain dump and then micro journal. It does cost a small fee after 30 days but it's by far been worth it to me.

FeederWatch

Getting outside - even if it's just for 5 minutes - once a day is a great goal. But if you can't, take a break and watch one of these feeder streams for a while. Even just seeing images of the outdoors, is calming. I sometime throw this up on one screen while I'm playing a cozy game or doing some non-screen activities.

Screen Breaks

We all know it's important to take screen breaks - but it's extra important to do it when you're in bed and you're screens are a big part of how you spend your day. Below are some of my favorite ways to take a break. 10 minutes every two hours or 20 minutes every three hours can make a big difference.

Postcrossing or writing letters to friends

Solo RPGs - here are some of mine, here's a D&D example

Free adult coloring pages

Read a Book - reading challenge, get personalized recommendations

Play a solitaire card game - there are so damn many now

Walk around for 5-10 minutes, bonus if it's outside.

Volunteer

One of the big feelings that come up for me when I'm mostly in bed is that I feel like a burden to others. Rather than trying to "be productive" I've found it's much better to try to positively contribute to others even if it's in small ways - sending a text to someone remembering/thanking them for something kind they did for me, ordering a little present for someone I know who's had a rough time, sending a card to someone who has a birthday coming up. The little stuff really helps people.

If you don't have many people in your life like that to help or you'd like to help some strangers too here are some other options.

Sigma Phi Eta

This is a 100% online and free greek service org I'm trying to get off the ground. 3 hours of service to become a pledge which count towards the 10 needed to become a member. 10 hours each year to stay active. We maintain an updated list of online/distanced volunteer opportunities as we find them. We have service awards for those who want to go above and beyond. Plus once you're a member you can wear our letters.

We're small right now but if you want a group of people to talk service and grow with - come join us!

Letters Against Isolation

LAI is probably my favorite charity I volunteer for. Volunteers write cards and letters to people in nursing homes, assisted living, and those connected to senior centers through Meals on Wheels and other programs. They're always adding new facilities so the need is always growing. They have facilities in multiple countries they write to and could use people who speak another language especially.

Warm Up America

Mostly for crocheters and knitters - this org accepts donations of all kinds of patterns and distributes them to smaller projects and charities who otherwise wouldn't be able to access these kind of goods at scale. I've made a few things for them - simple hats - and greatly enjoyed the process. Great use for your cheaper acrylic yarns.

7 Cups

I've had a mixed experience with 7 Cups. I really have enjoyed my experiences chatting with people on there but it can be really hit or miss as to whether I feel like I've helped people. There's also the usual people who try to use any chat service for sex. That aside, I still think their training is pretty good and it can feel meaningful when you're able to connect with someone who's not doing so hot.

Checklist

Have you cleaned yourself + changed clothes? [ ]

Have you tended to your spirituality? [ ]

Have you fed yourself? [ ] [ ] [ ]

Have you tended to your space? [ ]

Have you gotten some movement in? [ ]

Have you taken a social media break? [ ] [ ] [ ]

Have you taken a screen break? [ ] [ ] [ ]

Have you volunteered or done something nice for another person? [ ]

[astercontrol]

If KOSA passes

Or if any other form of censorship (there are many in the works!) ever succeeds at stepping in to impede our ability to communicate online:

We have to make plans.

Now, I dunno who'll even see this post. The few followers I have are TRON fans (who despite the fantasy we live in, tend to have realistically dismal views IRL about Disney and the various corporate uses of software).

And this fandom, on average, is pretty tech-savvy. It's where I've encountered the most people under 20 years old who actually know how to use a desktop or laptop computer.

So, if there's any hope for what I'm thinking about, this is prolly a good place to start with it.

(As with all my posts, I encourage reblogging and containment-breaching.)

(Gifs are clips from TRON 1982, mainly the "deleted love scene," from the DVD extras.)

Anyway.

Current society has moved online communication much too far onto major social media sites for my comfort. Whoever you communicate with over the internet, chances are you do it through a service owned by a big company: Tumblr, Twitter, Discord, Telegram, Facebook, whatever. Even TikTok (shudder).

These sites, despite their many flaws, can provide experiences that are valuable and hard to get otherwise. And once all your friends are on one site, you can't just leave and stay in touch with them all, not unless they all go the same place. It's easy to see why it's hard to abandon any social media platform.

But a backup plan is important. Because, as we've seen over and over, social media sites can't be relied on. They change their policies suddenly, without good reason-- and are inconsistent, even discriminatory, about enforcing those policies.

If they're funded by ads, the advertisers are their main customers, and your posts are the product. Their goal is that the posts most valuable to the advertisers get seen by people the advertisers consider desirable customers.

Helping you communicate-- making your posts get seen by the people you want to communicate with-- is optional to them.

Not to mention that the whole business model of an ad-funded website is generally unsustainable. Many of these sites are operating at a loss, relying on shareholders in a fragile bubble, doomed to fail soon just from lack of real profit.

And the more restrictions --like KOSA-- that the law puts on freedom of online speech, the likelier they are to go down or just become unusable. Every rule a site is required to follow is another strain on its resources, and most of them are already failing badly at even enforcing their own self-imposed rules.

If we want any control over our continued ability to stay in touch with our online friends-- we need to have a backup plan. Maybe it'll be simple at first, a bare-bones system we cobble together-- but it's gotta be something that will work. For a while at least.

There are lots of really good posts about ways to build your own website, using a service like Neocities. I VERY MUCH recommend learning this skill-- learning to make websites of the very simplest, most stable, glitch-resistant type, made of html pages-- which you can upload to a host while you store backups on your home computer. If you value the writing and art that you put online, this is probably the safest you can keep it.

But that's for making your own creative work public.

As for communicating with others-- for example, receiving and answering other people's comments on your work-- that gets more complex. I personally haven't found it worthwhile to troubleshoot the problems that come with having a system that allows visitors to comment publicly on my website.

But what we do still have-- and likely will for a long time-- is email.

Those of us who came of age before social media's current hold... well, we might take this for granted. Email was the first form of online contact we ever encountered… and thus it can seem to us like the most ordinary, the most boring.

But in the current world, it is a rare and precious thing to find a method of communicating that doesn't require everyone in the chat to be signed on with the same corporation.

Email is, as of now, still perfectly legal-- as much as social media companies have been trying to herd the populace away from it. I'm sure there are other ways to share thoughts online that are not bound by laws. But I am not going to go into that here.

Email service is provided by law-abiding companies, which will comply with subpoenas if law enforcement thinks you are emailing about doing illegal things. So, email is not a surefire way to be safe, if laws become dystopian enough to threaten your freedom to talk about your own life and identity.

But it's safer than posting on a public social media page.

For now.

Email is beautifully decentralized. You can get an email address many different ways-- some reliant on a company like Gmail, others hosted on your own domain. And different people, with all different types of email addresses, hosted in all different ways-- can all communicate together by the same method.

Of course any of these people, individually, can lose their email address for some reason or other, and have to get a new one. But as long as they still know the email addresses of their contacts, they can reconnect and recover from that loss. The structure of a group linked by email is reliant not on a single company-- but on the group itself, the friends you can actually count on.

This is why I am trying to promote the idea of forming email lists, as a backup plan to give people a way to stay in touch as mainstream social media sites prove to be unsustainable.

I'm envisioning a simple system of sending emails to several addresses at once, and making each reply visible to everyone in the chat by using "reply all" (or, if desired, editing the To field to reply to only some).

If enough people get used to using email in this way, it could fill most of the needs met by any other group chat or forum …without depending on a centralized social media company that's taking dystopian measures to try and make the business profitable.

So here are some thoughts about how I personally imagine it could work.

(Feel free to comment and bring up any thoughts I haven't addressed, or suggestions to customize how specific groups could set it up. This is meant as more of a starting point for brainstorming than a catch-all solution.)

As I see it, here are the basics of what you and your friends would each need to start out:

An email address. Any kind, hosted anywhere. You should use a dedicated email account just for this group, one that you do NOT use for other communication. Being in this group will result in things you don't want happening to your main email address-- like getting a TON of email, one for every post and reply. Or someone could get your email address that you really don't want any contact with. Use a burner email account (one that you can easily replace) and change it if needed.

The knowledge of how to "REPLY ALL" in your email. This will be necessary in order to add a comment that everyone in the group can see.

The knowledge of how to EDIT THE "TO" FIELD in your email, and remove addresses from the list of all recipients. This will be necessary if you want to CHANGE WHICH PEOPLE in the group can see your comment.

The knowledge of how to FILTER WORDS in your email. This will be necessary if a topic comes up that you don't want to see any mentions of.

The knowledge of how to BLOCK PEOPLE in your email. This will be very important. If someone joins this email group who you do not want to interact with, it will be up to you to BLOCK them so that you do NOT see their messages. (If they are bad enough to evade the block with multiple burner accounts, that's what you have a burner account for. Change it, and share the new one only with those you trust not to give it to them.)

Every person in the group will be effectively a "moderator" of the group, able to remove people from it by cutting their email addresses out of the "To" field. Members will all have equal "moderator" privileges, each able to tailor the group to their own needs.

This means the group may naturally split, over time, into other groups, each one removing some people and adding others. Some will overlap, some won't. This is good! This is, in my opinion, what online interaction SHOULD be like! There should be MANY groups like this!

In this way, we can keep online discussion alive, no matter WHAT happens to any of the social media websites.

If the dystopia got bad enough to shut down email, we could even continue with postal mail and photocopies, like they did in the days of print-zine fanfiction.

If it looks like the dystopia is gonna come for postal mail too, we'll use the connection we have to preserve whatever contacts we can with people who live near us.

Not saying it's GONNA get that bad. But these steps of preparation are good no matter exactly what kind of bad stuff happens.

As long as some organized form of communication still exists, we'll have a place where it's at least a little safer to be your true self…

to plan events and meetups…

and maybe even activities a little too risque to make the final cut of a 1982 Disney movie.

They're trying to censor us. We want a Free System. So we're gonna fight back.

For the Users. Not the corporations.

Peace out, programs. <3

[five-rivers]

Welcome Back Home

Phic Phight Fic for Avi!

Danny may have been a superhero.  He may have been annoying.  He may even have been ‘practically an adult.’  He was still Jazz’s little brother.  The one who had once begged her for play time and increasingly baffling milkshake combinations.  The one who helped her fight reanimated turkeys every Christmas.  The one who painstakingly researched what books to give her for her birthday.

So, it wasn't so much a choice to throw herself between him and her parents’ newest and most worrying weapon as it was a reflex.  If any thought crossed her mind while she dashed across the parking lot and into the path of the beam, it was either this is going to hurt or I hope I'm fast enough.

Well, it didn't hurt. It did drop her in the Ghost Zone. Immediately, She whirled, trying to find the portal.

Way back, when she and Danny had come clean about their respective secrets, Danny had sat her down for what he called his ‘Ghost Zone Survival Guide.’

“Okay,” he'd said, spinning in his spinny chair, “Ghost Zone survival, part one.  Don't go there.”

Tucker had snorted.  Jazz, who had taken out a fresh notebook and her special note-taking gel pens, glared at him.  

“I'm serious,” Danny had defended himself.  “The Zone isn't a good place for humans.”

“Why?”

“Do you want some reason other than it operating under different laws of physics and being full of super-powered people who don't care if they kill you by mistake?  The radiation, maybe?”

“Never mind.  Go ahead.”

“That's what I thought.  Anyway, if you wind up going through an unstable or temporary portal, the first thing you need to do is go back through that portal.  Like, forget about anything else that's going on.  Fights, escapes, your car, other people, get yourself back through.”

“That seems a bit callous,” Jazz had said.  

“Well, maybe.  But the Ghost Zone is huge, and natural portals and temporary portals aren't just unstable in space, they're unstable in time.”

“They could spit you out in my first life, the middle ages, a thousand years in the future, you name it,” Tucker had helpfully added.  

“First life?”

“Don't worry about it,” Danny had said.  

“Pharaonic Egypt,” Tucker had answered.  

“The point is,” Danny had continued loudly, “you don't want to take a chance with portals unless you know they're stable or have the Infi-Map.”

“Or time grandpa has your back.”

“Stop calling him that.”

“Who is–”

“It doesn't matter.  He doesn't have your back.  He doesn't have anyone's back.”

Tucker had made a noise of negation.  “He has your back.”

Danny had responded by beaning his friend with a pillow.  

Somehow, despite being genuinely informative, Jazz had come away from the ‘lesson’ With more questions than answers.  None of which were pertinent to her present situation.  

She turned on the spot again, surveying her surroundings in more detail.  It didn't help.  No matter which direction she turned in, there was no portal.  

So.  Step one: failed.  

Onto step two.  

“What if I can't get back through the portal though?” Jazz had asked.  

“Well, if you aren't being actively attacked–”

“You should definitely take care of that first if you are.”

“If you aren't under attack, see if you can spot any landmarks.  If you can see one, you'll at least have a general idea of where you are.  Mostly.”

“We're making a map,” Tucker had said, “but it sucks.”

“That's not a comment on our self-confidence or whatever,” Danny had said before Jazz could interject.  “Stuff moves in the Ghost Zone.  It's kind of like trying to make a map of the solar system.  If you're sitting on Jupiter, you know where the sun is, and you've got a pretty good idea about the inner planets, but unless you have a model you can put the time into, you're not going to have any idea where Pluto is.”

“And you wouldn't know the right time, either,” Jazz had said, contemplatively.  

“Exactly.  But landmarks are still good.  They'll give you your general area, at least.  And maybe what else is around, too.”  He'd given her a photo album full of Ghost Zone landmarks, then, and they'd spent the next half hour going through them.

Jazz was on a floating island.  It was medium-sized, perhaps a dozen or so acres square on this side, full of softly rolling hills covered with purple grass and pale green flowers.  As far as Jazz could tell, there wasn't anything else on it, although that didn't mean there wasn't.  It didn’t look like any place she'd seen or heard of.  

Offshore, the Zone was a moderately-familiar green-on-green.  Foggy ectoplasm and the lack of anything like a horizon made it difficult to judge distances.  

There were a few other islands Jazz could see.  Something like a mountain range, a floating sphere, and, just on the edge of her vision, a slightly more regular conglomeration of shapes that could have been a town.  

Bingo.  

“If you don't recognize anything, do your best to head towards civilization.”

Jazz had raised an eyebrow at that.  “Despite the super-powered people who don't care if I die?”

“She’s got you there, Danny my man.”

“Ugh, why couldn't Sam have been here?”

“Gasp, don't tell me you forgot the mega-ultra-turbo grounding already?  How could you?”

Danny had thrown another pillow at Tucker.  “You're so unhelpful.  Anyway, people are dangerous, but they're also the only place you're going to get directions.”

“And if I see something, how do I get there?  Considering everything is a flying island.”

“That’s a bit tricky.”

Jazz bounced on her the balls of her feet, staring down the green void between herself and her destination.  She’d never done this before, and despite Danny and Tucker’s attempts at an explanation, or even Sam’s later on…  Well, she felt like she should’ve convinced them to bring her to the Ghost Zone to practice.  

There was nothing she could do but try.  She closed her eyes and jumped into the air, believing she could fly with all her might.  Her feet hit the ground again.  Damn.  

One, two, three, she tried again, and again, and again, and then, finally, when she got mad, when she got frustrated, her feet left the ground and stayed off the ground.  She was flying, like only a human in the Ghost Zone could fly.  

She opened her eyes and looked over to the distant probably-town.  It was just as distant as before.  And now she was exhausted from jumping.  Both the jumping right now, and the jumping into the line of fire she’d done earlier.  

Well, no time like the present to get going.  She took off.  

The little details of Danny’s advice hadn’t stuck with her - he’d really waxed poetic - but she was still able to move forward.  She also spent a lot of time moving down whenever her concentration slipped.  Of course, she knew it wasn’t really down, thanks to those same conversations with Danny.  It was just the direction she perceived as down, or something like that.  

Danny liked flying like this.  Danny liked every method of flying to ever exist.  Jazz, personally, hated it.  A lot.  Every minute that passed, every time she slipped, she was terrified that she would go plunging into the murky depths of the Zone, never to be seen again.  

Danny hadn’t been wrong about the Ghost Zone not being good for humans.  

Thank goodness the town really was a town.  She wasn’t sure what she would have done if it wasn’t.  

“If I do get to civilization–”

“--or what passes for it–” Tucker had said.  

“--what do I do then?  Be polite, I assume, but what’s polite for ghosts?  What are the cultural touchstones?  The social norms?”

“Dunno,” Danny had said.  “It’s not like ghosts are just one big group that’s all the same.  But if you get to a group of ghosts, like, I don’t know a village or something, they’ll all probably be fairly tolerant.  To live together without fighting, you know?  Normal politeness will be fine.  Probably.  Assuming they can speak English.”

She managed a landing at the edge of the town.  She hit too hard, and her knees buckled.  A few ghosts stopped what they were doing - she didn’t know what, couldn’t spare the attention while flying - to stare at her.  With an effort she smiled at them.  Closed lips.  Many cultures considered smiles with teeth to be aggressive or rude.  

“Hi,” she said.  “I was wondering if you could help me.”

“Kio?  Kio ŝi diris?”

“Mi ne scias, mi ne parolas la francan.”

Ah.  She should’ve taken up Tucker’s offer to teach her some basic Esperanto.  Danny was never going to let her live this down.  

“Okay, so, what do I do if they don’t speak English?” she’d asked.  

“Get good at charades?  You probably won’t be able to get good directions without speaking the language - I have no idea how you’d do the portal in charades - but you can trade stuff.  Bargain, barter, whatever you want to call it.”

“For food?  Supplies?”

“Eh, not food, actually.  Ghost Zone food is mostly ectoplasm.  Not good for humans.”

“Then what?  Well, you’ll think it’s crazy, but…”

Somehow or another, she got the idea of marketplace and trade across to the ghosts.  Apparently the Esperanto word was related to the English.  Cousins.  Brothers.  Whatever, it didn’t matter.  

What did matter was what she was going to trade to the ghosts.  All she had was her purse, and for a teenage girl, she traveled light.  She had her wallet, parking change, a small handful of coupons, number two pencils, a pencil sharpener, a pen, various hygiene products, lipstick, laser, lipstick laser, sunscreen, the universal pocket psychology guide, granola bars, a screwdriver, a couple of bolts from the Peeler - if only she kept that in her purse - spiked bracelet from Spike, phone, and, okay, she didn’t pack that light.  There should be something in all this that the ghosts here would probably like.

The ghosts who had seen her less-than-stellar landing ushered her to a colorful, cloth-covered stall, the contents of which looked like the detritus of a million flea markets.  The ghost… manning it?  Ghosting it?  Haunting it?  What was the terminology in this case?  Whatever.  The ghost at the stall was pale green and nondescript except for the swathes of polka-dotted cloth wrapped around their body.  

They stared at her with wide eyes.  “Ĉu tio estas homo?  Viva homo?”

She smiled, forcefully.  That didn’t sound like a hello, but she’d take it.  “Hello,” she said.  “Do you have any boxes?”  She made the shape of a box with her hands.  

“The Box Ghost?  You’re saying that if I can’t get directions, my next step is to try to summon the Box Ghost?”

“Hey, believe it or not I’ve got an agreement with a lot of the regulars.  If they bring back lost humans, they get, um.  A nonlethal free day.  In Amity Park.  I can get you a list.  And even if you end up in a weird time, like, before I made the deal or something, the Box Ghost is pretty easy.  Worst case scenario, you can even let Walker catch you.  He always sends humans back.”

Jazz sat on the edge of the town, a cardboard box in hand, purse lighter by a novelty pencil sharpener and the spare screws and bolts.  “Oh, great and powerful and completely terrifying Box Ghost,” she said, feeling ridiculous.  “I have an offering for your awful, terribleness.  It’s cubical and cardboard-ical.  Cardboard.  Whatever.”  She sighed.  “This isn’t going to work, is it?”

“DID SOMEONE CALL UPON THE FRIGHTENING AND FRIGHTFUL BOX GHOST, MASTER OF RECTANGULAR CARDBOARD PACKAGES?”

Jazz shrieked and almost fell off the island.  

The Box Ghost blinked down at her.  “Beware?” he said.

“Hi,” said Jazz.  “A gift?”  She held up the box.  

“THE CARDBOARD IS MINE!”  He leaped on the box and held it to his chest like a baby.  “What do you want from the HORRIFYING BOX GHOST?”

“So, uh, I know you have a deal with my brother?”

“WHOMST?”

“My brother,” repeated Jazz.  “Danny.  Phantom?”

The Box Ghost stared at her blankly.  

“To get humans back to Amity Park?”

“THE BOX GHOST DOES NOT KNOW THE REALM OF WHICH YOU SPEAK?”

That wasn’t good.  The opposite, really.  If the Box Ghost didn’t recognize Danny’s name…

“What if I am in the past?” Jazz had asked.

“Get back to Earth anyway, and survive.  Find a way to get a message to the present.  Between the Infi-Map and, um, other contacts I have–”

“Time grandpa,” Tucker interjected.  

“I should be able to go get you if I know where and when you are.  But I need to know when and where you are.”

Then, Jazz had asked why he couldn't just pick her up at the exact moment she'd arrived, if he was going to time travel anyway, and that had spurred a migrane-inducing argument about paradoxes.  Jazz had gotten the impression that the real reason was more along the lines of ‘Danny isn’t allowed to have any more paradoxes’ than ‘the universe won't let paradoxes exist.’

Jazz smiled thinly.  “Can you get me to Earth?” she asked.  “Please?  It’ll be worth your while.”

“Worth the while of the GREAT BOX GHOST?”

“Yep.  It might take a while, but you’ll get more of those.”  She nodded towards the box in the ghost’s arms.  “Consider it an investment in future, um, fear.”

“FEAR?”

“Yes.  As in, um, fear me?”

“No, you shall FEAR ME!”

“Exactly,” said Jazz.  “Just like that.  Can you do it?  Or… is it beyond the powers of even the Box Ghost?”

“NOTHING IS BEYOND THE BOX GHOST!  I AM EXTREME IN EVERY WAY!  THE BOX GHOST WILL SHOW THE STRANGE GIRL WITH GIFTS THE WAY TO HIS SECRET PORTAL!”

At least something was going right.  “Thanks,” Jazz said.  “That sounds great.  I really appreciate it.  Where is it?”

“FOLLOW ME!”  The Box Ghost paused.  “AND FEAR ME!”

He flew off, and Jazz struggled to keep up.  Luckily, the Box Ghost was courteous enough to stop for her every once in a while.  The flight seemed to go on forever, but, eventually, they came to a stop in front of a twisting, spluttering portal.  

“Does this really lead to the Earth?” Jazz asked.  

“THE BOX GHOST DOES NOT LIE!”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean to imply that.  It’s just… is it always so sparky?”

“IT IS UNSTABLE!  ONLY THE BOX GHOST IS BRAVE ENOUGH TO USE IT!”

Which meant that it could spit her out anywhere, at any time.  But at least she’d be on Earth, AKA somewhere she could eat the food and drink the water.  

“It doesn’t come out above an ocean, does it?”

“THERE ARE NO BOXES IN THE OCEAN.  THE BOX GHOST HAS NO USE FOR IT.”

“What about crab pots?” asked Jazz.

“THE BOX GHOST DOES NOT INTERFERE WITH THE COUNCILS OF CRABS.”

Jazz… wasn’t going to examine that too closely.  She braced herself and flew into the portal.  The transition this time wasn’t the smooth, blink-and-you’re-in-another-dimension it had been with her parents’ weapon.  It had turbulence, and lots of it.  It was like being in a washing machine.  Or a blender.  A really fast blender.  One that pulsed and shook and sang a song while it was at it.  

It spit her out ten feet above ground.  It wouldn’t have been a problem for a ghost, but for a human…  Well, at least she didn’t break any bones.  Instead, she laid, winded, on the ground.  Tall grass framed her vision on all sides.  The sun was hot overhead.  Which was… less than ideal.  It had been Autumn this morning.  However long from now that was.  

Jazz rubbed her temples.  All she had to do was send a message, satisfy Danny’s no-paradox rule, and then she’d be home.  Until then, she would survive.  She refused to saddle Danny with the guilt associated with her disappearing.  

She got up.  Looked around.  There was a dirt road.  She staggered over to it and flipped a coin to decide whether to go left or right.  Left it was.  

She grew steadier as she walked, but the heat was punishing.  She took off her sweater and was tempted to take her shirt off, too.  She was wearing a sports bra underneath.  It wasn’t like it’d be indecent.  

Unless she’d been dropped into the eighteen hundreds.  Best not to risk it.  

The dirt road became gravel, became poorly-paved asphalt, merged onto another, bigger road… A road with a recognizable name.  Jazz wasn’t that far away from Amity Park.  She could probably even call… home…

“I’m stupid,” she said out loud.  She pulled out her phone.  No service.  Typical.  She kept walking.  And walking.  And walking.  

And then she saw the smoke.  Right where Amity Park should be.  She ran, then.  

She crested the hill, passed the Welcome to Amity Park sign - something was off about it, but she didn’t stop to try and see what it was.  She hit the top of the next hill and stopped.  

That– That wasn’t Amity Park.  At least, it wasn’t her Amity Park.  The buildings were bigger.  Shinier.  Whiter, even.  The logo for the GIW sat proudly on one of the tallest ones.

And so many of them were smashed.  Burning.  Green blurs swirled and fought with white ones.  She sat down.

“And what if I wind up in the future instead?”

“I don't know, hope the rest of us don't cause the apocalypse before you get back?”

There was one more explosion, and then a high-pitched wail, a ghostly wail, threw all of the shapes back and away.  The white ones didn’t come back.  

Jazz… wasn’t sure what to do.  She watched.  She waited.  

And then a familiar shape appeared out of the air in front of her.  It was Danny, but… not.  He was thinner.  Sharper.  There was silver and ice in his hair, and blood and ectoplasm on his face.  “Hi, Jazz,” he said, smiling sheepishly despite the dark gleam in his eyes.  “Well… it isn’t the apocalypse, so…”  He spread his hands to either side, and the GIW building behind him fell over.  “Welcome home?”

[nerdykorgi]

GRIMWALKER BIOLOGY & ANATOMY STUDIES [pt 1 / ?? ]

(aka, my ideas and thoughts on how these bad but sad boys work!)

with pictures :D !

ok for starters! I tried my best to make real life connections with actual biological stuff and yeah but there are some things ima have to bullshit lol

i hope yall like rambling

[ ^ Basic ideas ]

Lets talk about anatomy!

From what i can tell from the grim walker ingredient book they have some pretty ... interesting ingredients...

GALDORSTONE:

Heart and Power apparently. What i can make of this is that the Galderstone not only powers and animates the non-organic materials but acts as a circulatory system, flowing blood and nutrients to keep the body stable by creating magical pulses of pressure that makes the blood flow. Blood is kind of ideal for homeostasis and living and om pretty sure we've seen hunter bleed at least once... Perhaps the Galderston can create an artificial vascular system to carry oxygen, magic, and nutrients throughout the growing body instead of just making veins from scratch. I want to say the Galderstone can generate energy for the grimwalker but that would mean they wouldn't need to eat, and I don't think that's true. I think its main purpose is just activate the magic materials and is like the generator to a car, keeping it running. If the Galderstone were to break or fail, the grimwalker probably come unglued and fall apart to its components (which would be pretty horrifying)

ORTET BONE:

Very key component! The ortet bone kind of helps form the blueprint for the species of the grimwalker, as well as supplying blood, a skeletal system, and components of DNA. The most basic definition of the word ORTET is as follows: the original plant from which the members of a clone have descended. Fun fact: since were using cloning terms, Hunter is to Caleb as Ramet is to Ortet (Ramet is an individual clone) I did research for cloning and as it turns out you kinda need a complete genome for cloning but for bullshitting reasons (which will be explained) we can clone with incomplete DNA and make synthetic dna from scratch! I hypothesis that the reason grims can look different from the ortet instead of just straight carbon copies is due to the bone that is used and how much of i there is. Like example a grimwalker made using just a toe phalange is going to look A LOT less like the ortet compared to a grimwalker made from something like the cranium and bigger bones and such. Basically smaller bones dont carry as much dna info and leads for room to fill in the blanks. Sadly this means alot of Grimwalkers had A LOT of health problems (this can range anywhere from immune system problems to liver failure which is quiet typical in clones, that and it is often that clones appear different from the ortet due to enviromental factors and influences)

[ As the image above shows, subject #103 has a very close resemblance to the ortet due to the bones that are used ] There are pros and cons to using bones! Pros being that they can hold DNA for much longer than tissue, but the thing is bones can degrade really easy if not preserved, and i don't think belos had a bottle of hydrogen peroxide laying around that he could dunk Caleb in, so let's just assume he made sure his brother's corpse was well cleaned and kept. Biggest con is the human body only has so many bones (about 206) I believe that the reason Grimwalker can generate organs is by using the ortet and making the stem cells created from bone marrow. Stem cells are very important because they can turn into different types of cells like blood and tissue cells as well as repair tissue. I believe the process of growing grimwalkers is kind of like "Self-renewal" the process in which stem cells divide and make more of the body

STONESLEEPER LUNGS:

Im just gonna assume stone sleeper had very small lungs because aint no way those t rex lungs fit in a teenage boy. I originally thought The reason that Grimwalkers can stay underground for so long is because the lungs, similar to how a stonesleeper hibernates for centuries (kind of like how wood frogs can basically cryo-hibernate) by petrifying but a grimwalker IS growing and therefore needs resources to grow, like how a baby does in the womb. So it has to be actively getting said resources so it cant be petrified. I now think the reason that grimwalkers have these lungs is because theyre easily compatible to the galderstone, which needs oxygen for the blood and that they can be easily harvested and stored in stone form. But that does give room for cool adaptations like self-petrification! (which i will get into next time :D )

PALISTROM WOOD:

Ok its says that the wood is used for keratin, which is a fiberous protein which can make all kinds of things like scales, hair, nails, feathers, horns, claws, hooves, and skin! And since its also a plant means it can grow 4 times as fast as normal keratin can! This explains why hunters hair grew so ridiculously fast in season 3, was because his hair can produce its own carbohydrates and nutrients on its own... This means his skin and surface wounds can heal quite fast! (down side is it might give him something similar to PSS (Peeling Skin Syndrome ) ...) I think Palisman is very important becasue of several reason! 1 Like palisman, it can "animate" if you will, more or less help pull off the illusion that he is alive. 2 Like mentioned before, Grimwalkers need nutrients to grow and I believe the palistrom wood aids in that! Using a process called cellular diffusion, the grimwalker can take in nutrients from the ground around them (which i theorize to be highly fertilized) through THEIR SKIN! and into the veins and flesh of the grims 3 I believe that in the process of forming, the galderstone "activates" the palistrom wood, forming into skin or hair but this process of rapid growth leaves the skin all undone and fragile because a proper cutaneous barrier was not formed yet (which is useful for being malleable. This is why Hunter's ears are so 1 .god blessed big because they are fake and molded to look like that. Its also why The grimwalker Belos possessed fell apart so easily, like he said "It wasnt ready")

SELKIEDOMUS SCALES:

This one kind of confused me because... well why do we need the seal flesh when the ortet can just regenerate it?? I think its kind of like the stuffing if you will, it also speeds up the process of producing flesh by a lot! Especially if you want to make grown grimwalkers! Im thinking that Grimwalkers don't have a set "age" theyre just as big as however many materials they are given to work with. Even though the book says they can start as babies, if you look closely there is a check mark towards the more adolescent figure, so im thinking that they are not ready to be unearthed until they reach a certain growth ima guess around the age of over 10-ish?? We don't know how young Hunter was pulled out of the floor but it seems like he was fairly young, or atleast younger. This means while Hunter appears to be 16, he might have only been living for around 5 years or so.

Now typically normal seals have a lot of blubber which is a thick layer of fat, also called adipose tissue, directly under the skin of a marine mammals. Its used for insulation. The thing is tho, it says Selkiedomus Scales, not flesh... Dont worry there are mammals that have scales like Pangolins but i dont know if these scales are like thick plated or small and stretchy. Magic bullshitting time, Im goin to assume Selkiedomus scales refers to a layer of scale-like flesh that protect the creature from boiling but is also highly malleable and easy to work with. Maybe the reason they can withstand such heat is due to unsaturated bonds of butadiene molecules mixed into the blubber that are highly heat resistant Selkie domus flesh is molded and into the relative shape of desired body and using the DNA of the ortet the flesh is reshaped and reused into the desired muscles shapes. The vascular system created by the galderstone spreads throughout the flesh and binds with it. healing together and becoming flesh, kind of like a speed up version of skin graft maturation! This is useful for growing them quickly because they don't have to grow an entire adult body from scratch so this speed up the process by eeeerrm 20 years or so lol

Thats only the basics for now, sooner or later i shall get into the more fun stuff, like adaptaions of Grim walker, the growing process, ad more!

Hope you guys enjoyed my ideas, if i got anything incorrect let me know, my research isnt exremly searched through.

last question ill leave you all with, it kind of stumped me while i was working...

i have a theory but i wanna know your thoughts...

(i worked hard on all this btw, i really hope people read it lol /lh.)

[kneelingshadowsalome]

Like everybody else, I love young!recruit, but lately, the absolute treasure that is the Colonel is utterly taking up residence in my brain and refusing to leave. Pleeeeease, if you could indulge a simple anon, I'd be forever grateful 💜💜💜

Look… Colonel König is a gift from God!!

Imagine a calm, confident, emotionally stable and intelligent man who's worked on himself, Colonel König is the opposite of young recruit (who's basically a lovesick fuckboy), he calms a woman’s nervous system simply by entering the room. His colleagues respect him, his subordinates aim to please him, men want to be him, and women want to be with him... But he only has eyes and loins for you!

Man has a nice, healthy layer of fat on top of his muscles (unlike the young lean recruit who really ought to eat more) – it’s a shallow thing to do but you can't help but compare these two!Even his musk is somehow different, it’s better, less pungent... Nice and mellow, manly, robust, you sometimes pout when he says he has to take a shower :/

Colonel has a few scars on his neck, chest, abs: old wounds that have long since healed, but he absolutely loves it when you caress them like a maiden about to swoon. And it’s only natural that you worship his war-torn body, because Colonel König worships you.

Pulls you into his arms when he comes home, giving you a passionate, unhurried kiss. Takes a good, long look at you – his darling precious wife, look at how beautiful you are… Has to inhale your scent, good and deep, God, he has missed you so much...

And the way he makes love to you :// It's like he makes love to your soul, too. You could almost cry from how well he's attuned to your needs, man’s so present that you feel shy, even after all these years. Imagine getting flustered when he’s inside you, because you do, the attention is too much.

Colonel König looks deep into your eyes while he fucks you, with a small smile on his lips. Of course he sees how hot and bothered his pretty little wife is, getting sweaty and breathless even if it’s him who’s doing all the work. How did he even end up with such a needy woman...? He must’ve done something right…

And if you’re in need of a rougher ride, he’ll fuck you against a wall, sure, no problem! Man’s as strong as a bull, his stamina is not as through the roof as younger recruit’s but what the older Colonel lacks in desperate quickies he makes up in skill and quality loving <3

Strolls into the kitchen in the morning when you’re making coffee, large hands disappearing under your (his) shirt as he comes behind you and rumbles that he loves you. You find him staring at you, at the store when you're picking your favorite pickle jar, at home when you're reading a book. When you stop and smile and ask him why he's looking at you like that, he tilts his head and says: “Just admiring my beautiful wife :)”

Calls and checks up on you often, laughs huskily at the other end of the phone when you tell him about your silly work day. You get a feeling that you brighten his days with your adorableness, and when you send him cute cat videos, he likes every single one of them. Just imagining the respected, sometimes even feared Colonel watching cat videos in his office in the middle of the day, smiling and double tapping the screen before rerurning to his work, makes your heart hurt.

Young recruit only sends you dirty memes and suspicious gun videos... He only likes your selfies, and begs you to send him naughty videos while he's deployed :( If you sent him a cat video he'd probably joke about making a hat out of that cat...

When you tell the Colonel about young recruit's latest antics, he just sighs and says that the boy has a long way to go. Your husband is mainly interested in that the pup has managed to please you, and asks if he needs to give the rascal an earful... or a warning. You find yourself protecting the poor recruit who would, in truth, never survive the wrath of his older version. It's not that the Colonel enjoys unnecessary violence or would beat younger König into a pulp, it's just that he can get a little intimidating when it comes to the issue of pleasing and respecting his wife.

One wrong move, and the young recruit will fly out the door and won't be let in. Nope, not even if it rains and the sorry dog is whining and scratching at the door :((

[ugh-yoongi]

can i request Yoongi drabble? where a random member is Y/N's brother and Yoon is his best friend, but Y/N has a big fat crush on him

hiii, thank you so much for the request! it gave me an excuse to get rockstar yoongi out of my system (and make an actual banner for once), so i hope you enjoy. <3

playing with fire

pairing: yoongi x f. reader genre: brother's best friend au, rockstar au; suggestive warnings: extreme thirsting. a moshpit and moshpit-related injury. mentions of blood, alcohol, and weed/cigarettes. swearing. an unrequited crush (or is it). tension. unedited. rating: this is slightly suggestive but not explicit so 16+ wordcount: 1k listen to: i'm on fire by bruce springsteen

with this, i am finally done with bee's birthday drabbles! a huge thank you to everyone who sent in requests. i did save a few, so if i didn't get to yours this time, hopefully some inspo strikes in the future.

see all beeday drabbles here

have a favorite? let's talk about it!

It’s been a while since your brother’s band played in a nice venue.

Been a while since your boots didn’t stick to the floor, each step feeling like a glue trap. Since you could go home at the end of the night and pull a t-shirt over your head that didn’t reek of weed and cigarettes and someone else’s body odor. Been a while since you could just exist in peace; not feel like you were taking up room in a space that didn’t belong to you.

Been a while since you’ve seen Yoongi, too.

His hair is longer—half-formed curls framing his face, some trendy kind of shag. Chipped black lacquer on his nails. Fresh ink up and down his arms. Silver hoop through his nostril. A leather jacket and heeled boots, because he doesn’t have a thing to prove to anyone who might have something to say about it.

(You, least of all.)

Somehow, you’d forgotten that some people are magnetic. Some people are meant to be looked at, put on all those impossibly high pedestals, and that Yoongi is one of them. False idols be damned, everyone in this fucking room is wrapped around his finger. Even as he screams into a mic, shoots a sleazy grin at your brother to his left, every single person in this place would drop to their knees as soon as he gave the order.

(You, most of all.)

And you know it’s dangerous; know where that particular road dead-ends. You know that if you try to reach out and touch him all you’ll do is scar, but it doesn’t do a damn thing to quell the urge. There’s still just Yoongi and you and the millions of daydreams that have played out in the dead of night and the boundless distance between you.

The haze makes him beautiful, ethereal, like some kind of demi-god. Imposing, you think, because Yoongi’s up there looking down on you, as stable and immovable as all those shrines they built centuries ago. Places where people would gather to worship, just like now.

You’re distracted. Don’t hear Yoongi when he commands the crowd to move, and there’s a split-second just before the chaos where he finds you—sets his siren gaze on you and smirks out of the corner of his mouth, presses his tongue into the fat of cheek—and then there’s a searing pain blooming in your skull.

It’s hard to say what happens after. Hard to see through the fog and the frenzy, let alone make sense of amorphic shapes. There’s just the aching in your head and the jarring, dissonant ringing in your ears, and someone’s arms wrapped tight around your shoulders.

You come to in a bathroom.

Stinks of piss and disinfectant. Has one flickering, fluorescent light strung above the sink. Dingy tile on the floor and the walls. Paper towels overflowing from a trash can by the door.

“You with me, darlin’?”

Yoongi’s voice. He’s the only one who calls you that. Puts some exaggerated twang on it because he thinks it makes him sound cool. Doesn’t give a fuck about anything, especially what people might think, and he doesn’t have to.

“Not sure,” you answer truthfully. “What happened?”

“Some piece of shit elbowed you pretty good in the side of your head. Got a nasty gash—don’t look, doll. Got fuckin’ blood all over the fuckin’ place.”

You exhale. Nod your head as best you can. Unsteady. Find it hard to breathe when Yoongi’s fussing over you like this, calling you these little pet names. When he gently cradles your face in his ink-stained hands and says, eyes on me. Like you could look anywhere else. As if you’ve looked at anything else in years.

“Wha—what’re you doing?”

“Cleaning you up. Deep breath, darlin’, this is probably gonna sting.”

You barely react, still too dazed by the feel of his hands on you. You wish, briefly, that whoever had hit you had done so harder. Just enough to rewire a few things. Get rid of this juvenile crush you’ve let go unchecked for far too long. “Where’s Hoseok?”

“Went after that guy.”

You scoff. Roll your eyes. “Hoseok can’t fight.”

“Nah,” Yoongi agrees. Bites his lip as he concentrates. “But Jungkook can.”

Another press of an alcohol pad. This one stings, has you sucking in a breath through your teeth. “Don’t you think this is a bit much? I’m sure it was an accident.”

Yoongi is so close. Fits himself in the space between your thighs, presses you further into the sink, the faucet digging into your back. Doesn’t matter. Not when he’s close enough for you to count each individual eyelash, the scars that dot his face. Yoongi’s close enough for you to smell the nicotine that clings to his clothes, his skin, his hair. Close enough to smell the cheap beer lingering on his breath.

“Too much?” His brows knit together, head tilts like a confused puppy. “Why would it be too much?”

“S’not the first time I’ve nearly got my teeth kicked in at one of your shows. I just—is it worth all this fuss? My brother’s gonna get all fucking weird about it, and fuck knows what Jungkook’s gonna do to that guy.”

Yoongi’s close enough that you nearly speak the words against his mouth. Fuck, it’d be so easy to kiss him. So easy to give in and let the world burn down around you, the consequences be damned. It’d be so easy to be ruined by him that it has your hands twitching at your sides, wanting so badly to reach out and touch. Grab him by the belt loops and learn how he feels when he’s pressed flush against you. Learn what he sounds like when he moans, whimpers. What he looks like when he’s hurried and desperate.

"Stupid girl." But Yoongi doesn’t look hurried and desperate—he looks like he wants to devour you. “I would’ve done much worse.”

[bobacupcake]

Hi Rob! After the events of last year I was really saddened by what happened with Unity, and haven't checked on it since. It feels like people are talking about Unity like normal again... Did things change back and it's okay to use again, or should I completely scrap my project?

unity walked back some of the changes, main points being

fee is no longer retroactive, only applies to unity 2024 and up

fee only applies to games with over 1 million in revenue over the course of a year, AND 1 million users

fee is now a choice between either self reported downloads, or a flat 2.5% revshare, whichever is lower, over the initial 1 million

ceo resigned

what that means for you is up to you ! most people are still pretty unhappy about the initial breach of trust. for bigger companies this also still means the per-seat cost that they were used to PLUS revshare, so a lot of them are considering switching to unreal since thats just revshare, but, i assume most of us here are not bigger companies, so its really just a case of, what you want to do with it

personally i am sticking with unity because i just cant really afford to learn another engine right now (which would probably be godot since getting away from unity just to go to unreal seems counterproductive for me . also i just dont like using unreal ..) godots also still a bit in its early stages, and this will absolutely change with all the attention its gotten, but again i cant really wait for that to happen.. and while some of my 8years of unity experience will carry over, id have to relearn a lot too and its just not feasible for someone who needs to launch a game like. Last Year

a lot of people still are switching though just because of the initial breach of trust, knowing that something like this could happen Again , jumping off a sinking ship, etc etc . a lot of people have been unhappy with unity for a While, it has a ton of different half-finished systems in place, some of them overlapping with eachother, while people really just want them to iron things out, focus on the structural issues people have when trying to launch a game with unity (unity was actually doing something like this, they were making a whole full fledged game in unity internally and going to release it as an example project. it got cancelled because they ran into structural issues trying to launch a game with unity . )

SO, basically . long story short its complicated . a lot of the initial issues got reversed, but the fact that they thought it was a good idea in the first place reveals larger issues that are going to take a while to address and build back trust of developers again . do what you feel is best for you. i Want off the unity ship but for me its going to have to be when im in a more stable place to actually do that... some day i hope to try out godot

[makethatelevenrings]

Story Time // J. Todd x gn!reader

Requested? Yes!

Warnings: none!

Summary: Jason became a frequent patron at the local library a few months ago and struck up a friendship with you, a librarian. Things change when you need an assist in a time of need.

A/N: after watching my roommate play all of Gotham Knights as Jason, I have come to appreciate this big himbo appearance of him and I would be the big spoon to him always

“I’m looking for this book. It had a red cover and was about lions, I think?”

Jason had to cover his mouth to silence his laugh at the other library patron’s question. The blank look on your face wasn’t making it any easier. You sighed, almost imperceptibly, and plastered a smile on your face.

“Are you perhaps thinking of elephants? Water for Elephants?”

“Is that the one with the Twilight guy in the movie?”

“Yes, that is Robert Pattinson.”

“Perfect! Thanks.” The patron darted off to the adult fiction section, leaving Jason at the head of the line. A smile, a real smile, spread across your face at the sight of him. Jason had become one of your favorite patrons ever since he came in to get a card three months ago.

“I’m looking for a book,” he teased. “It’s got a purple cover and I saw it once eight years ago.”

“Please don’t,” you groaned as you dragged his stack of books towards you. “They seriously think I can mind read.”

Jason chuckled and leaned against the counter. “Hey, you’re pretty good at figuring out what they ask for so…”

“You’re thinking about the shawarma food truck over on Davidson Avenue.”

He cracked a grin. “Damn, you really are a mind reader. Not my fault that it’s got the best hummus in town.”

“And tzatziki sauce.” You nodded as if he gave you some kind of sage advice. Your nimble fingers swiped the books under the beaming red laser, eliciting a chirp from the computer before you. You paused at the final book at the stick and raised an eyebrow.

“It’s for my brother,” Jason said in explanation. You studied the children’s picture book about different types of birds.

“How old is he?”

“...Twenty-seven.”

You snorted at his answer and scanned it into the system. Pushing the books across the desk towards him, you opened your mouth to ask a question but he waved you off.

“Don’t need it. I’ll have these books back by next week, I guarantee it.”

You winked. “I’ll be holding you too that, Mr. Todd. See you next week.”

He was back precisely seven days later with all the books read and finished, including the picture book that Dick had strangely enjoyed and poured over it with Duke and Cass. Damn, Jason would need to think of a better way to embarrass a man who willingly wore a v-neck spandex suit with a mullet.

You were behind the desk, as per usual, but there was a wide-eyed panicked expression on your face that he hated to see. Jason bypassed the shelves, tossed the books he was returning into the drop off bin, and headed straight towards you.

“Hey, hi, sorry,” you blurted out when you saw him approach. “Our children’s librarian has the flu and one of the main librarians fell on ice and broke her ankle yesterday so it’s just me and Denise and she’s currently trying to get holds ready and-”

“Breathe,” he ordered. His voice came out sharper than normal, much more like his Hood voice, but it did the trick. Your jaw snapped shut and you blinked up at him, surprised that it worked.

“Deep breath in. Hold. Out.” Jason coached you through that once and then flattened his palms against the counter. 

“I’m sorry,” you whispered once you were more stable. “We just have a reading event planned today and so many parents RSVP’d. Our library doesn’t get a ton of funding from the city because they think Bowery kids don’t need the same amount of resources as other neighborhoods since these kids aren’t expected to get out of here, but they deserve a fighting chance, y’know?”

You groaned and buried your head in your hands. Your voice was thick with tears and stress and frustration. “I’m going to have to cancel it.” Miserable. You sounded miserable.

“I can read to them,” he said. Jason immediately cursed himself out mentally the second the words tumbled from his mouth, but he couldn’t retract them now. Your head raised from your hands and he caught the spark that lit up in your eyes. It eased the discomfort a bit. Hell, he’d kill to make sure he never saw you panic like that again.

“Oh, can you?” Hope lined your voice right now and he shrugged.

“Sure. I used to read to my little brother.” He wouldn’t mention it was because Damian was incredibly docile thanks to being on heavy duty pain meds and the book in question was The Art of War.

You bounced away from the desk and rounded it, appearing at his side with a bright grin on your face. Your smaller hand enfolded itself around his and he almost choked on the warm, soft touch of your skin. Jason didn’t have time to pull himself together before you were tugging him towards the brightly painted children’s section.

Ratty bean bags and threadbare rugs dotted the floor. Jason understood what you mean by lack of funding. He made a note to guilt Bruce into donating a few thousand to this library and the local schools.

You ushered him over to a small plastic chair seated at the front of the room. “Okay, the reading doesn’t start for another thirty minutes, but I figured you could take that time to get familiar with the books. We have The Colors of Us, A Boy Like You, and King for a Day. Oh, shit, shoot.”

You cast a glance nervously over your shoulder at the two kids sitting quietly with books in hand over by the window. Jason repressed a snort of laughter and you rolled your eyes.

“Listen, I focus primarily on the adult books. I’m not a children’s librarian.” Despite your protest, you chuckled at your slip up. “We also have a book in Spanish, because we have a large bilingual community and Mary wants to include as many kids as she can. Next month we’ll have someone who speaks Korean, and then the month after that it’s Bengali, but-”

“Breathe,” he ordered again. You inhaled deeply to match his pattern and then slowly exhaled, a small smile flitting across your face.

“I speak Spanish,” he assured you. Jason picked up the book from the small pile and studied it for a second. “La Llama Llama Rojo Pijama. Yeah, I can easily read this.”

God, you were practically beaming. You bounced on your toes and then leaned forward, pressing a kiss against his cheek. “Thank you so much, Jason! You’re a lifesaver.”

Well, hell, that might be the first time he’s been called that.

Kids began to stream in with fifteen minutes to go. Exhausted parents looked positively grateful for an opportunity to explore the library and take some time for themselves as a small army of thirty or so elementary schoolers settled on the worn seating around Jason. They stared up at him expectantly and Jason Todd, someone who had faced down the likes of Killer Croc and Bane before was sweating bullets under the scrutiny of these little terrors.

But then he glanced up and saw you standing at the edge of the bookshelves to the kids area, a cart of books pressed against your hip as you stocked the shelves, and he suddenly felt at peace.

“Alright, kids, my name is Mr. Jason and today we’re starting off with A Boy Like You. Which, hey, it’s good you’re all learning about how fu- messed up toxic masculinity is at this age. Lemme tell you, that sh- stuff will control your life.” He propped the book open on his knees, ensuring that it mainly faced the crowd. “Can we all see the pictures? Are we good?”

The crowd of heads nodded and he dove into the story.

Jason liked it a lot more than he thought he would. He raised his voice when the books crested into exciting moments and he lowered his voice into a deep bass when dramatic moments occurred. The kids squealed and shrieked as he used funny voices along with animal characters. By the time he finished the final book, a smile had found its way on his scarred face.

“Alright, time to go,” one mother announced. She and her wife thanked Jason, but their son bounded right up to him and wrapped his little arms around the vigilante’s legs. Jason froze for a moment before he leaned down to pat him on the back and then direct him towards his moms.

“Thanks, Mr. Jason!” the little boy exclaimed. As the kids all darted away to tell their parents about the books, you sidled up next to Jason.

“I can’t thank you enough. Seriously,” you gushed. “And you were so good at it!”

He shrugged, heat rising to his cheeks at your praise. “It was nothing.”

“Please,” you brushed off his humility. “Let me buy you a drink after my shift as a thanks.”

“There’s no way in hell I’m letting you buy me a drink,” he said quickly and immediately regretted it once he saw your face fall. “I mean, we can get drinks, but Alfred would kill me if he knew I didn’t pay for your drink.”

“Alfred?”

Jason chuckled and ran a hand down his face. Truly, you might be the only person in Gotham who didn’t know who he was.

“What time do you get off work?” Changing the topic was the safe idea for right now. He could explain later.

“In about four hours. I’d hate to make you wait so long. I can just meet you later or-”

Jason nudged you and jerked his chin towards the circulation desk. “Got more books to shelve? I think I know the layout of this place well enough to help.”

You lit up. “Yeah! Let me show you how it works…”

He had a feeling he would be seeing you more than once a week.

Tag List: @khaetiin​ @mcrmarvelloki​ @gone-batty-fics​ @someoneimsure​ @perpetual-fangirl900​ @visagebrise​ @cursedandromedablack​ @alexxavicry​ @havingarebelliousstage​ @the-wayward-daughter​ @raging-trash-of-mind​ @kat-nee​ @khaylin27​

[gffa]

Okay, not to defend Gotham War or anything, but I think I'm talking myself into liking what I see it's trying to do. Starting with some great tags on this post:

#i get why people are hating on it i really really do. trust me#but TO BE FAIR... zdarsky has been making it overwhelmingly clear that bruce is SERIOUSLY unwell right now#like it's been nonstop Horrors for him for like. over a dozen issues straight. with no rest or time to process. and he doesn't have alfred#who was a HUGE part of his support system not to mention the finances etc etc#iirc there's even a panel that pretty much outright states that this is more of an issue of control than morality#and that includes the choosing sides thing like the batkids seem more concerned w how bruce is going off the fucking rails than#just the moral aspects#anyway (via @clownprince)

#Batman#Bruce Wayne#REAL#REAL REAL REAL#LIKE. Zur En Arrh is a LITERAL Defense Mechanism going Malignant at this point#Not only that but throughout Zdarsky's run there's been allusions to illnesses and Bruce Not Having A Good Time#Not Having a Good Time and Not Having Time At All to take stock of the sheer What The Fuck-ery that's been going on recently#Because it's been a CONSTANT steam of What The Fuck-ery nonstop#And the Worse is yet to come if one considers the future issues synopsis and the ''I am a Gun'' story by Zdarsky#(At most I'm a little bit concerned over how Zdarsky will try to wrap this up‚ but that's a normal concern especially about Comics)#(Especially Batman Comics considering how often Editorial likes to... do things) (via @kaosvrow)

I agree with so much of the criticism of Gotham War, especially that the arguments for or against Selina's plans are absolute garbage by characters who should be making better arguments and that the other characters are being used as bobbleheads instead of actually giving them their canon personalities--and, okay, I will also point out that in the VERY FIRST ISSUE, Selina's plan gets someone killed and so I'm willing to extend some grace that the story isn't trying to push forward that either way is actually right, I honestly don't think it's about that. I think it's a story about Bruce Wayne's mental state, because Zdarsky's been building this up for awhile now, like the issue immediately prior to Knight Terrors? Shows us Bruce's mental state is ALREADY absolute TRASH right then:

Zur-En-Arrh was already leaking through the seams of his mind, he was already feeling the impending doom of everything he cared about being burned away, that his mind literally couldn't watch his kids being happy and together and getting along without feeling like it was all burning to ash.

And then Knight Terrors happened, which was one more thing digging hard, boney fingers into his trauma, and he handled it pretty well in the moment, but it's such a giant, non-stop pile of stress on a mind that is already damaged to hell and back because of his trauma.

Further, the very first issue of the Gotham War storyline? The very first panel, the one that sets up the stage of what's going to happen, makes a very clear point about how this is about Bruce fracturing:

And then on the very next page, Zur-En-Arrh is literally stalking at the bars of the cage around Bruce's mind.

And then Bruce wakes up and it's immediately more establishing just how worried everyone is about him because so much has been piled on lately:

Bruce hides his missing hand from his family, just like he's trying to hide how scraped thin he is right now, and goes out on patrol.

Where his internal monologue is all about how defensive he feels lately, how he feels like the years are catching up to him, how nothing feels right but this, making it clear that Bruce is hanging onto Batman with a death grip because it's the only thing that feels stable to him right now.

And all of this is in the first TEN PAGES of the first issue, this is our set-up, this is our foundation, this is what we're being given to understand what this story is about. Then Batman #137 happens and it's literally ALL ABOUT BRUCE'S MENTAL SPACE, that Selina's plan is the catalyst, not the driving point behind all of it. Again, I'm in 100% agreement that the Batkids are acting like cardboard cutouts because you will never get me to believe that they didn't notice crime going down or that they wouldn't be pointing out that Gotham's wealthy are just going to start making their security lethal in response or that the Court of Owls won't step in, that this is not a long term solution to giving these people lives beyond crime, or even that a lot of them should be agreeing with Bruce, that they don't get to decide who is an acceptable victim. But the story isn't really about changing up the way comics deal with crime, it's about even the Batkids are framing it in terms of how it's about Bruce. Jason is really the only one who seems onboard with trying out Selina's plan, but even his confrontation with Bruce isn't really about that, it's about all their baggage, their fight immediately becomes about how angry Jason is at the way Bruce has treated him. This fight isn't happening because Jason's a true believer in Selina's plan, it's happening because he's angry at Bruce and Bruce is in a shitty mental place, after all the non-stop horrors AND feeling like he's been betrayed by the kids who he thought understood that people being victims wasn't acceptable, and so he lashes out at Jason.

When they fight, it's not because they're siding against Bruce, it's because he's become unstable and dangerous. The why of it doesn't matter, it's not about that.

(And I'm actually okay with the way that fight happened because I can buy that, for example, Cass might be holding back against him, she's a stronger fighter than he is, but he's being ruthless because of the state he's in, while she might be feeling more cautious.) When they fight, it's not because they're siding against Bruce, it's because he's become unstable and dangerous. The why of it doesn't matter, it's not about that. Even further, when Bruce fights against his kids, he's wrong and biased, especially in the fight with Dick, who he thinks has a sloppy offensive and doesn't know darkness like he does--to which Dick just immediately cracks him in the face because, yeah, Dick Grayson does know darkness and Bruce isn't as untouchable as he's trying to make himself seem (because being Batman is all he has right now).

I think it's important that it's Dick who defies his expectations here, because this story is building off context of what happened between Selina and Bruce, that they were truly together for awhile, they were about to get married--Selina mentions that it the first issue, it's a major thorn in that conversation when she throws out how she doesn't believe that Gotham needs Batman anymore, it needs her.

She's giving him what he said he always wanted, she's giving him the thing that kept them apart, he should be happy, should they head to the church now? Saying that he won't because he wants to be Batman more than he wants to solve the city's problems.

The failed wedding between them is important in part because of what Selina's saying here, illustrating that both of them are bringing a lot of baggage to the table but also because of what else happened during that storyline, why the context is so important. Because that storyline dovetailed into one about Bane wanting to take over Gotham and he needed Batman unstable and distracted, which was working after Selina left him at the altar, he was a mess. But you know what was saving him at the time, bringing him back from the ledge? THIS KID:

Dick was the one poking and prodding at Bruce with jokes and warmth and care and it was working. He actually got Bruce to cry in front of him, to release some actual genuine emotion!

Dick makes Bruce more emotionally stable, to the point that Bane had to hire KGBeast to shoot Dick in the head just because he was so good at stabilizing Bruce--this is also why Dick's the one who says he'll go talk Bruce down off his moral ledge in Batman #137.

So, it's Dick that has to be the one to defy his expectations in the fight, has to be the one who breaks through Bruce's offense and knocks him down in what feels like a betrayal even when it isn't, because this isn't a story about who's right and who's wrong, it's a story about Bruce isolating himself because he's mentally fractured to hell and back, because he's not trusting his kids, he's still hurt by Selina leaving him, he's still grieving Alfred's death, he's run ragged physically and emotionally and mentally by a series of exhausting horrors piled on him, he's lost his family's fortune, he's not even living in his own family home anymore. (I focus on Dick here as an illustration of tying this back to previous examples of Bruce crumbling and important context that the storyline is drawing on, but Gotham War isn't really specifically about Bruce and Dick's relationship, but more about Bruce's relationship with all his kids, like Tim and Jason and Damian all have equally important moments. But it's a very direct example of how his children are a huge part of his support system and draw him back from the ledge of being just Batman and back into being Bruce.) That's why the issue ends with Bruce getting the papers telling him that the bank sold Wayne Manor to Vandal Savage, because it's one more thing that's stripping Bruce Wayne away from the character, and leaving him with nothing but Batman and Zur-En-Arrh. Gotham War isn't actually a story about a war for Gotham. It's a story about Bruce Wayne going out of control and everything is written to serve that. The characters' fights are catalyzed by Selina's plans, but they quickly become about Bruce's relationship with the characters. The narrative makes heavy-handed points about Bruce feeling like he's losing his grip, that he's hallucinating and talking to himself, that he is extremely mentally unwell right now. Everything Zdarsky's been writing (like especially the "I Am a Gun" storyline right before Knight Terrors) has been building up to fracturing Bruce Wayne.