#only the big ones survive

[tenrose]

Romantasy is the new bit-lit

[mothinflamesdoodles]

Crossbones The Starlight Savior and his archnemesis Koffin K

[uncanny-tranny]

So much love and recognition to the people who don't know how they feel about recovering. To the people whose scars are fading away, and there's a sinking feeling, despite knowing that it's a good thing. To the people who miss when they were "worse," when they felt "broken." To the people who mourn losing their coping mechanisms, even the ones that were destructive, scary, or unpleasant. To those who feel guilty they're healing because their past self wasn't ready.

Whatever it is, there is nothing wrong with any of those feelings. It's a natural reaction, something you don't have ultimate control over. There is nothing shameful about yourself, and I admire the strength it takes to recognize how you feel, even the parts that do feel like the "wrong" reaction to a Good Thing.

[kirby-the-gorb]

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

a lil while back i had a dream where there was a giant hippo in the road with moose antlers. i've never climbed a tree faster

[magistralucis]

Love that despite Oltyx's grumping about how every other necron around him sucks and he only likes maybe 2-3 other people, he's the one necron in canon who's had guardians and protectors from every walk of life. First his family (Djoseras, and once upon a time, Unnas), then the nobles of varying stations (e.g. Yenekh and Parreg), all the way to those of lowborn origin (Neth and Pakhet) who are dearly devoted to his well-being. Outsiders too, like Mentep and Zultanekh, not to mention every Flayed One by the end of his story!

It doesn't surprise me that the final mode of society he settles on as Valgûl is more egalitarian than literally any other necron dynasty out there. Despite the universe trying its best to crush Oltyx's ability to relate to other people out of him, Oltyx was more cared for than he let himself believe, and had more respect than he gave credit for. When it comes down to it, this was a boy who was very loved, and I'm glad he came to terms with it at the end 😭💖

[johnbly]

the first time he vocalizes his feelings vs the last moments he ever sees her

[tangibletechnomancy]

One big point where I find people talking past each other in the AI art debate is that in art, there are a lot of things that aren't illegal - and shouldn't be - but are rude.

It's not illegal to use a sample of someone's copyrighted material in a sufficiently transformative way, and it should never become so. I could photomanipulate an image of Mickey Mouse into a landscape if I wanted and sell it as a print and not even Disney could stop me. It never has been illegal to do this. It never SHOULD be. If it was, we'd start seeing a ton of SLAPP suits over vaguely similar poses because...hey, guess what, referencing is using someone's copyrighted material in a transformative way. We all recognize the idea of trying to copyright a pose or sue someone for using a similar color palette to you or for looking at your art as inspiration as patently absurd - so much so that it's regularly brought up as a bad-faith argument in other copyright discussions! - but imagine if someone could. Disney sure as hell would - imagine no longer being able to write about public domain fairy tales because you publicly mentioned you liked the Disney movie about the same fairy tale once. That is what you're opening the door for when you try to manage the dataset ethics issue by copyright law.

However, on the other side...it's still really fucking rude to use someone's work in a transformative way outside of the bounds of 1) what is broadly socially permitted, and 2) what that artist requests.

Even though it would be decidedly not illegal for me to go and copy-paste a single pixel from a dozen other people's work into a canvas of my own and make my own piece out of it using only the scale, copy-paste, and smudge tools, it still has the potential to be extremely rude depending on who I'm taking it from and why. I'd love to do a piece like this to open a dialogue on how transformative a piece must be to no longer constitute "stealing", but I'm not going to sample those pixels from small-time illustrators who are already scared for what sampling could do to their livelihoods as a "ha ha~ I took your wo-ork and you ca-an't stop me~" because that would be incredibly fucking rude, well beyond the level of emotional impact needed to make the statement.

Image synthesis is, unquestionably, transformative enough to constitute fair use under current copyright law, and any amendment to the law that would make it not so opens the door to far more harm than it would ever prevent - but, as it transitions from being a fun scientific novelty to an actual useful product, it becomes rude at best to ignore artists' wishes in model training. In fact, it becomes rude on a level that may be best managed with privacy laws, since, let's face it, there are a lot of entities out there that not only don't CARE about not being extremely rude, but REVEL in being jackasses because the law can't stop them (looking at you, Unstable Diffusion).

[dustteller]

Reading He Who Drowned the World and honestly Baoxiang has no right to be as bitchy as he is about Ouyang squandering Esen's love or whatever. Baoxiang is genuinely convinced that Esen loathes him. No you dumb bitch, your brother loves you and the reason he's giving you a hard time is because he wants you to be safe and happy and healthy. Yeah, he sucks at expressing it, and his efforts are misguided (bc the toxic masculinity gender rolesis fucking up Esen as much as it's fucking up everyone else), but Esen very much does love Baoxiang deeply. Every time Baoxiang remembers a time when Esen "enjoyed his fear" or whatever, I can only think of these parts of Esen's POV from the first book:

Esen's first instinct is to defend his brother. The only reason he doesn't is bc Baoxiang leaves before he can. And Baoxiang glares at him bc he assumes that Esen agrees with Altan and won't defend him, but no, Esen WANTED to defend him and it's Baoxiang that took away his oportunity to do so.

And a bit later, we have this interaction. Baoxiang assumes (again) that Esen would hate him if he was gay, and immediately goes on the defensive. Meanwhile, Esen literally does not care about this except for how it would affect his brother's reputation. He's just WORRIED. He doesn't care if Baoxiang is gay or whatever, but he's deeply aware that if he IS it would put him in more danger. Because, again, he cares about his brother, and he hates seeing what he assumes is Baoxiang making his own life harder.

And it's heartbreaking bc Baoxiang will probably never realize how much Esen adores him. He's so jealous of Ouyang for having his brother's heart without realizing that Esen sees him as his beloved baby brother and is desperately trying to protect him from a world that he KNOWS is cruel to him. Baoxiang will never know that his greatest supporter and the only person that loved him unconditionally was Esen. And maybe it would be WORSE if he realized how dear he was to Esen, because the realization that all thise things that caused him pain were borne out of a deep, unconditional LOVE and not the disdain he's convinced himself Esen felt for him might break him. Baoxiang has deluded himself into simplifying Esen's feelings for him into those of hate and disdain because its so much harder to accept that the person you love the most has destroyed you out of love. Baoxiang is doing the exact same thing Ouyang does in convincing himself that he's unlovable and relishing in the world's response as a form of self-harm. And Esen, who is genuinely trying (and floundering horribly) is a great tool for Baoxiang to use to tear himself apart.

And, on the other hand, Esen will never realize how much damage his attempts to help Baoxiang caused. He loves him so much, bc that's his baby brother! It's his job to protect him! But Esen has been raised as the golden poster child of a Mongol Warrior Man, a perfect pinacle of masculinity, and is thus doomed to only being able to express his love and acceptance for Baoxiang through a tough love, lets sand down all the edges to remove friction approach. For him, pushing Baoxiang into a box IS an act of love. It's the act of saying I love and accept you, and so I will help you succeed in all the things you're bad at so that everyone will love you too. Except by doing this, he doesn't realize how awful he's being and how he's asking someone that CANT ever fit the mold to break himself in the attempt. He's a perfect Mongol Warrior Man after all, and as such he has never been given the tools to express his affection in a healthy way. He will never truly understand how much he's an asshole, not because he is lacking in love (as Baoxiang assumes) or because he is incapable of sympathizing (as ouyang thinks), but because understanding is not something allowed of him and his role in society. At the end of the day, Esen is as much a slave to his role as all the other characters are, and now he's dead he will never be able to break free of the assumptions people have made of him. He went to his grave having destroyed the people he loved most, and now he will never have the chance to prove their assumptions wrong as be better.

[knightofleo]

[lemongogo]

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

okay weird q incoming but what ways do you think speedsters can get sick? Like to my understanding, they can’t really come down with normal virus’ like the flu, right? But they could get things like chronic migraines?

NANOBOTS!!! This is one of the best pieces of canon lore ever. I did a whole post on it but TLDR: normal human metabolisms have so much shit going on that they don't even notice nanobots in their body BUT speedsters have hyper accelerated metabolisms that are the equivalent of the straight A's overachiever in school on meth. So speedster metabolisms do notice nanobots and they attack full force, triggering all of the body's defenses and responses.

But the nanobots are metal so it obviously doesn't do anything. It just leaves the speedster lethargic, feverish, vomiting, dizzy, with a headache, sore muscles and a runny nose, ect. It's basically an allergic reaction.

Now, poisoning them can work depending on what the poison is/what the dosage is. You would need a 100% fatal poison and you would need a fairly high dose. Because speedsters heal fast and they have a hyper accelerated metabolism, so any poison that is based on toxicity (alcohol poisoning for example) would be out of their system faster than it could even take effect.

But poisons that can't be cleared out/processed by the body (take cyanide for example, it binds with the chemical receptors in your body making it physically impossible to use oxygen) wouldn't really be affected by their metabolism at all. So while the speedsters could heal the damaged tissues from these poisons fairly quickly (making it seem as though they were only slightly affected) they would ultimately need time to do so, time they would not have if it kills them first. This isn't technically what you are asking because there would be no substance that 'makes them sick', there would only be 'fine', 'not fine for like a minute and then fine again' and 'dead'. (... unless they were hooked up to a steady supply of the toxin)

Likewise, (this is getting more into theoretical territory, less canon) there might be some illnesses that would affect them? Not for long but if you got something super fucking fatal like Rabies, it might make them display mild cold symptoms for a day or something.

I don't know though. They have really fucking good immune systems. And even super fatal diseases can be fought. Take my example of Rabies, while it is commonly thought to be 100% fatal once symptoms show up there actually have been cases of people surviving it. Rabies is a very stealthy and fast disease, so the main problem with treating it is that your body's immune system isn't fast enough to stop it. People have survived by being placed in medically induced comas (slowing their bodily functions and thus the disease) for long enough that the medication can eradicate it. So for a speedster? That's gone in a minute tops. You would need an insane disease that I'm not sure even exists.

There's also like... pregnancy and menstruation. Growing pains, muscle pain from running is a BIG ONE, being dehydrated/starvation, blood loss, ect. Lots of ways to fuck with a speedster in a way they can't immediately fix.

There are also speedster specific ailments. It's basically 50/50 if a natural born speedster gets a weird highly fatal aging disease. Sometimes speedsters can be born without a kinetic energy shield which makes using their powers at all incredibly fatal to them. All speedsters will have connectivity issues at some point that can be fatal. Sometimes Time Gets Bad™ (shout out to when Barry kept chronically stealing time from people/things every time he used his powers). Sometimes they have too much energy and can't maintain human form (shout out to when Wally didn't know what the speedforce was and was accidentally cosplaying Ghost Rider). Velocity 9 is a highly addictive drug that works on speedsters and makes them display typical addiction behavior (and withdrawal). V9 can also cause a speedster to 'overdose' (burst into flames/lightning/energy). They all have the constant urge to yeet themselves into the speedforce. Ect.

[cinna-bunnie]

lol i love how yesterday morning i was like “i love nightmares pls send me one” and i had 3 back to back 💀

*hesitantly* i ... i love nightmares..? send me one... once a week? no, twice a week

[retconomics]

babygirl you are my EVERYTHINg..!!.,1!1!

[strawberrybyers]

got diagnosed with autism yesterday!!

i’m now going to refer to my brain as ✨the winx club (mental asylum version)✨🧚🏼‍♀️

[kingdom-creatin]

just before going off grid for a week is not the ideal time to start having so many thoughts about these fictional gay old men