#mostly....

[phantomrose96]

Haunting

prompt idea from @zillychu, set in the same universe as the rest of the Ghost Speak series (as in, Ryan Finn is here).

...

“Thanks for coming all the way out here, Ryan. I know it’s a long trip.”

“You kidding? A chance to see my buddy Edward, investigate some ghosts with him, and cap off the day with Eddy treating me to a basket of fries? I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Ryan Finn answered, one fry between each finger of his right hand in a sort of Wolverine parody. Edward Lancer would say he looked a bit wired from the 9-hour drive, but Ryan always looked like that.

“Still,” Lancer responded, though he didn’t feel all that bad about calling Ryan out here. He traced the rim of a heady glass of beer with his right index finger. Bass music wubbed from the speakers overhead, and in the dim light of the grill it built a small cocoon around Lancer and Ryan. It kept their conversation private.

Lancer sipped his beer, and he was not usually a drinker, but these things on his mind lately had him on edge. And they were so much more potent now that he’d dragged Ryan along to witness it, now that he had another person who had seen it and made it real.

Ryan jammed his arsenal of french-fries into his mouth. Lancer took another sip.

“So what do you think?”

“Hmm?”

“About Danny?”

“Ah, yep, I mean he’s definitely doing that.”

‘That’…was a way to phrase it, Lancer supposed. He’d taken Ryan back to Casper High, room 209, about half an hour after sunset. Lancer had wiled away many a sunset seated at his desk there, grading papers while the sun stole away from the sky. He wasn’t sure if it would happen, this time. If maybe it was a phenomenon only he could witness. But after 10 minutes of standing in silence, darkness cut only by a desk lamp, they’d seen it.

A shimmer. Glowing eyes. A warble cutting air not unlike the bass pumping overhead. It left a shape like an oil stain on space and time, and its eyes found them, and watched, and then shorted away. Gone. It took only another 7 minutes for the thing to reappear, farther back in the classroom, facing the opposite way. A warbling stain, here, eyes, up, staring, gone with a noise that left Lancer’s ears ringing just faintly.

“Am I haunted, Ryan?”

“Oh yeah, definitely. Well you or the room. You say it only happens in the room? Then the room, and you too probably, together.”

The confirmation sat heavy in Lancer’s gut. It left him feeling unsettled in a way that all the ghost activity of Amity hadn’t managed to plant in him.

“…So do you know how to make it stop?”

Ryan blinked, momentarily taken aback. “Well, yeah I do but—” He planted a hand firmly on the table and leaned heavily over it, elbow twisting out at an odd angle as he interrogated Lancer with his eyes, “do you really want it to stop?”

It was Lancer’s turn to falter. “I’m haunted, Ryan. Of course I want it to stop. That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“Only if you think it is.”

“It’s… not bad?”

“Well it can be bad. If the ghost haunting you is bad. Which this ghost—”

“—is not. It’s Danny.”

“It sure is.”

“So why is it happening?” Lancer pressed.

Ryan laughed. “Because he’s comfortable with you.”

Lancer seemed to miss a beat. His eyes shot a little wider. The silence settled between them. Ryan shoved another fistful of fries into his mouth and spoke through his chewing.

“I mean, he’s gotta feel comfortable around you, if he’s haunting you—your classroom—whatever all the same.”

“But why is he doing it?”

“Oh he probably doesn’t know.”

“So it’s not intentional?”

“Nah.”

“And he doesn’t realize he’s doing it?”

“You could ask him, but I’m guessing no.”

“So then… why?”

“Oh hard question, Edward. I mean, why do cats stare at you all soft and squinty when they’re comfortable? Why do rats do that bobble-bobble thing with their eyes?”

“This feels different, Ryan.”

“Trust me it’s very similar.”

Lancer ruminated on his glass for a moment. “Is this normal?”

“Oh, very.”

“And it’s not dangerous?”

“Nah.”

“Usually when you hear about a haunting, it’s dangerous.”

“Usually when you hear about a ghost, that’s dangerous. Do you think Danny’s dangerous?”

“No.”

“Well there you go. Harmless ghost. Harmless haunting.”

Lancer thought about this. “Okay, okay so just—hypothetically—you said you know how to make it stop? How would that work?”

“Oh, simple,” Ryan said. “Make Danny not feel comfortable around you anymore.” He picked up some more fries in his greasy grip. “You could get mean with him, fail him, stop getting his ghost papers translated, stop giving him leeway with the ghost stuff, and bam! I bet this would stop.”

“You don’t think I’d do that, do you, Ryan?”

“It’d break my heart if you did. I’d never speak to you again. I’d disown you and adopt Danny.”

“He has parents.”

“And they’re hunting him. He needs someone in his court.” Ryan crammed the rest of the fries in his mouth and swallowed. “Unfortunately I live 9 hours away. I hear you’re much closer.”

Lancer nodded, and he nodded harder, finding the tightness in his chest easing.

…

5:30pm came sooner than Lancer could have expected. The sun had vanished about an hour ago, sweeping away in a wash of pale pinks and deep reds. Lancer sat alone, halfway through a stack of English tests, desk lamp buzzing faintly at his side.

He heard it before he saw it—the wub of wobbling air. Then the oil stain followed, a shivering shimmering something which spilled into the air, and dropped the temperature a few degrees.

Lancer looked up. The thing’s glowing green spherical eyes looked back at him, mop of pure black hair providing the faintest of silhouettes to the thing’s shape.

Lancer offered it a little wave.

And it vanished.

[occultradio]

I clicked on a blood tag once and now tumblr is sending me therapy bots

[neverendingparable]

It is always morally correct to beat up Cas

[zelmoe]

I'm sick, send nudes to make me feel better

[jedimastre-archive]

I wake up and my wife is writing a rodent....... can't leave her alone for one minute.

[arcxnumvitae]

“You’ve made quite the interesting connection.”

Oh great. He had to resist the urge to roll his eyes as he turned to face his king. “What, you speak about the Aeserean fae ruler? Er, Your Majesty.” He quickly added on. No need to risk stirring the other man’s anger, although thankfully he barely seemed to notice the slip-up.

“Yes, Aislan. As you know, I’ve been trying to establish more connections between our land and others. Inviting Aeserea’s fae ruler to my engagement galas for example.” Aodh found himself biting his tongue to keep from making any comments on how that entire fiasco had turned out or else then the man would truly have his head. It was difficult to gauge the king’s moods on the best of days and difficult to read what was going on behind Camhlaidh’s two-toned eyes. But he had always been like this ever since they were all young, and it was probably a boon for the man himself to always have his expressions schooled to perfect neutrality.

It never failed to make Aodh uneasy however, even now.

“Yes, yes, hence our trip to meet with Aislan’s sister,” one where the king arrived with two retainers, and yet notably left without either, “but what are you getting at exactly by bringing this up to me?”

“I simply ask that should you ever be there on a...visit,” was he trying to make a joke?” and you happen to hear anything of interest, especially if it would affect Seelie, that you would bring it to my attention.”

Something unpleasant roiled through his gut. His eyes narrowed, pinpricks of flame flaring within his gaze. “You want me to spy on Aislan for you? The same way you have Eilidh reporting back on the nightwalkers’ movements?” Simply speaking her name was enough to burn his tongue, but he shoved the unpleasant feeling aside for now in face of the king’s implacable expression.

“No, spying would require you to snoop around and gather information and all I ask is that you tell me if you hear of anything pertinent to Seelie’s interests. We have opened ourselves to friends, yes, but I am acutely aware that we could have opened ourselves to enemies in the same stroke.”

“Aislan wouldn’t--!” Aodh’s words froze when the king’s brow rose. 

“Oh? I wasn’t aware that it would make you uncomfortable to be asked this about them. If you feel like this would be a betrayal of some trust or relationship--”

“No.” Speaking so quickly that he didn’t even realize he had just cut the king off, Aodh quickly shook his head feeling a burst of annoyance. “Fine, I’ll do it.” 

“Wonderful.” A small smile spread across the other’s face, and he had to wonder if that whole outburst had been a part of his plan. Damn him. “And of course, I will have to ask that you swear you will not divulge any of what I’ve requested you to the Aeserea Court. We are not snooping, but it could, of course,” Camhlaidh sighed, “ruffle some feathers if any were to find out.”

The unpleasant feeling was back, but, just like with the mere mention of his wife, Aodh pushed that back as well. “Fine, I swear that I will not speak to Aislan or any member of their court about what we have talked about today.” A million more cutting remarks lay on the tip of his tongue, but those too he swallowed back as the oath took hold. “There, is that good?”

The king nodded pleasantly. “Yes, thank you.”

[charlesoberonn]

It's gonna be such a funny mess when Donald Trump dies of a stroke on April 1st, 2024.

Naturally everybody will think it's fake because of the date only to lose their minds (both positively and negatively based on their opinion of trump) when realizing it's real

There will be massive celebrations in the streets and on social media and lots of predictable "don't speak ill of the dead" discourse about those celebrations

Weird evangelicals will pull some weird number trick talking about how Jesus was conceived on April 1st and that makes Trump a sort of messiah and people will make fun of that

The Republicans (after they're done with the faux-sadness and faux-outrage) will stomp over each other to be his successor but none of them will succeed. They'll tear each other apart and have no single nominee for the November elections.

There will be discourse about if Biden and the living former presidents should go to his funeral (they won't, he was a traitor insurrectionist)

The Ukraine-Russia War immediately goes in favor of Ukraine as morale in the Kremlin is reduced. China similarly backs off from its threats on Taiwan.

Ten thousand new memes are made, some sticking around for years to come.

Not a month later a bunch of unofficial biographies of Trump hit the bookshelves, many with new details about just how awful he was.

[professor-pants]

Genre of character: submissive like a guard dog is submissive

[shesnake]

full offence but I do NOT watch movies so I can "turn my brain off" I take this shit so seriously

[funkbun]

go play bugsnax

[mzcain27]

I think game studios should just release their character creators online. For the times when I don’t wanna play the whole game, just the lil dress up part

[fox-guardian]

"maybe if i dress more boring i'll get gendered correctly by strangers" that's the devil talking

[chromegnomes]

the most frustrating thing about AI Art from a Discourse perspective is that the actual violation involved is pretty nebulous

like, the guys "laundering" specific artists' styles through AI models to mimic them for profit know exactly what they're doing, and it's extremely gross

but we cannot establish "my work was scraped from the public internet and used as part of a dataset for teaching a program what a painting of a tree looks like, without anyone asking or paying me" as, legally, Theft with a capital T. not only is this DMCA Logic which would be a nightmare for 99% of artists if enforced to its conclusion, it's not the right word for what's happening

the actual Violation here is that previously, "I can post my artwork to share with others for free, with minimal risk" was a safe assumption, which created a pretty generous culture of sharing artwork online. most (noteworthy) potential abuses of this digital commons were straightforwardly plagiarism in a way anyone could understand

but the way that generative AI uses its training data is significantly more complicated - there is a clear violation of trust involved, and often malicious intent, but most of the common arguments used to describe this fall short and end up in worse territory

by which I mean, it's hard to put forward an actual moral/legal solution unless you're willing to argue:

Potential sales "lost" count as Theft (so you should in fact stop sharing your Netflix password)

No amount of alteration makes it acceptable to use someone else's art in the production of other art without permission and/or compensation (this would kill entire artistic mediums and benefit nobody but Disney)

Art Styles should be considered Intellectual Property in an enforceable way (impossibly bad, are you kidding me)

it's extremely annoying to talk about, because you'll see people straight up gloating about their Intent To Plagiarize, but it's hard to stick them with any specific crime beyond Generally Scummy Behavior unless you want to create some truly horrible precedents and usher in The Thousand Year Reign of Intellectual Property Law

[cqcophobiq]

alright listen spiderverse fandom. love hobie’s design, but why’s he’s always in his work outfit in group art or fics even when the others are in casual clothes? punk fashion is so cool. look!! look at the things he’d be wearing when he’s clocked out

[taffybuns]

started watching mlp for the first time i dont know why i havent ,anyway