#please TELL ME if i need to tag anything

[arctasy]

shelby’s recent statement on twitter

[natjennie]

okay, bear with me this requires a lot of context. imagine that you wake up on a space ship with an alien species capable of telepathic communication with you. they are also capable of instilling you with the knowledge that everything they say is completely true, there is not a hint of uncertainty in your mind. they have weapons capable of obliterating earth pointed at the planet, and are forcing you to do one of two things in order to not fire. within the fiction of the scenario you are not being given the choice, but you the real you is picking which one of these things you'd rather have happen.

you must eat an 8 ounce serving of human baby meat, by default prepared like a steak (different preparations can be requested). you do not have to keep the meat down once you're done, but you have to get all of it in your body at one point. they do not provide any information about where the baby came from or how it died. if you complete this, they will deposit you back on earth and you will be free from legal repercussions of cannibalism, and it is generally agreed that you are also free from moral blame as it was against your will.

you will be surgically impregnated with a human embryo and must carry it to term and give birth. the embryo does not contain your dna, but otherwise you don't know anything about its origins. the aliens have advanced medical technology that gives you sufficient anatomy to carry and birth the baby, and keeps you healthy throughout, with no risk of long term complications or death. you have the choice to keep or give away the baby once you have given birth, and will be deposited back on earth.

if you refuse to comply in either situation, they destroy the earth and you are forced to live the rest of your life aboard the space ship as a prisoner, until you die of natural causes.

so,

[57sfinest]

theoretical entroponetics: the post

okay. LONG post incoming. i have summarized all available information on the pale, separated into confirmed objective truth & in-canon speculation that may or may not be true, and then appended my own very detailed theory on the pale! this post is meant as a resource; please feel free to add things of your own in replies/reblogs (please tag me if you do!) or point out any errors i may have made. you’re welcome to use any of my personal theory in your own work but please credit me if you do!! (and tag me in that/send it to me, i really want to see what you do with it!)

Here’s what we *know* about the pale, according to in-game and concept art: 

It erases data, at least the kind stored on radiocomputer filament and magnetic tapes.

It has no dimensions of its own- pale latitude compressors serve to force dimensions on raw pale and allow navigation. 

The pale is referred to in the context of entropy

It arrived with mankind, but not immediately- there are 8000 years of written history, but the pale was first recorded 6000 years ago, implying that pale either didn’t start forming immediately or that it was so insignificant/distant that it went unnoticed for 2000 years. 

There exists a group of people who are actively trying to expedite entroponetic collapse; the ideology is called entropolism

To this point, pale isn’t immediately visible. Pale has molecular structure, but manifests as a waveform, and only becomes visible at a certain distance from the origin, once wave frequency is sufficiently high. 

During pale exposure, people experience “sense objects”: visual or auditory hallucinations and/or vivid physical recollections of memories. These hallucinations may originate from their own consciousness or someone else’s. c

People require physical and mental examinations before interisolary travel and are allotted a certain number of days per year as their pale exposure threshold. 

Overexposure results in a pale “addiction”- these individuals crave pale exposure, and it’s unclear if this addiction can ever be broken. It’s also unclear whether there is a point at which pale exposure becomes lethal, but given that it dissolves matter, we can be fairly certain that a given length of continuous exposure will kill. 

Radio signals, cold plasma torches and anodic sound are all used to manage the pale to permit travel through it. Plasma torches destabilize the molecular structure of the pale to create gaps, anodic sound widens and maintains these gaps, and radio signals rationalize the pale into recognizable dimensions.

Radio signals are, in return, susceptible to corruption by the pale, resulting in entroponetic crosstalk, where signals from the past or the future are transmitted to the present. CCP is one such phenomenon and is directly related to the formation of new pale through magpie interpretation.

There is a dedicated Union for people who work in and with the pale (the Pale Workers Union). They have two slogans; “The light purifies; The sound absolves; The pale no more” and “Son et Fureur” (sound and fury)

Here’s what we may choose to believe about the pale, based on the thoughts and beliefs of in-game characters:

In conversation with Soona, the pale is described as a “curdling milk” phenomenon: “repulsive, but natural”

In this same conversation you can theorize that the churches were meant to contain the pale origins; out of the seven churches, six were destroyed during the suzerain or the revolution

The phasmid and whatever other lifeforms it’s communicated with believe that entroponetic collapse is comparable to an oxygen holocaust (i.e. the great oxygenation event), implying mass extinction due to a toxic overabundance of sapient thought

Harry refers to it once by saying “The wolf is at the door. It’s going to eat the sun.” so take that as you will

It’s likely that Tiago’s “Mother” is some manifestation from the pale, if you choose to believe that the 2mm hole is in fact a pale origin point (the concept art does confirm it’s a pale origin, but the game offers other explanations, so I won’t say it’s the only answer)

Inframaterialists believe that revolutionary action (NOT thought) may create a counter-force that will prevent the spread of pale; it’s unclear if any reversal is possible.

The world will be fully consumed by the pale in 27 years (I put it here because you may or may not believe that shivers and harry are reliably sourcing this information)

And now my personal speculation about the pale:

A quick and easy point: it’s confirmed that the pale has a measurable EMF “exhalation” frequency that varies with proximity. Strong enough EMF pulses can actually tamper with magnetic storage- radiocomputer filaments! Electronics! Fortress Accident data loss! This gives us a tangible explanation for why pale can delete data :)

This may also explain its ability to cause radio interference- radio frequencies are just a subset of EMF frequencies, so it’s possible that pale exhalation on *just the right frequency* is what’s responsible for the entroponetic crosstalk we get on radios sometimes

The pale canonically has an atomic structure, but it also has wave properties, so it’s possible that the pale has wave-particle duality on its subatomic level, like photons do

Based on this, entroponetics is likely a very similar field to quantum mechanics, which might be an interesting source of ideas for anyone (like me) who wants to explore pale-related possibilities

The pale could be a manifestation of raw patterns. That’s why math “forces dimensions” on it- it rationalizes or “tames” the patterns, which allows it to be manipulated to a certain degree.

There are several references to the pale that refer to mathematical concepts and patterns, saying that the world dissolves into “a tangle of azimuths and cosines” as it blends into the interisolary pale- more on this later

Steban comments that the pale is commonly theorized to be nostalgia or “historical inertia”, but it’s largely agreed that it’s “the past” in a broad sense. Thinking about the idiom that history repeats itself, it could be that history/the past is part of the pattern that comprises the pale, and that it’s also the type of pattern most readily perceived by people (people don’t viscerally *perceive* math, for example, but we experience memories)

To first define entropy: Chemically speaking, “the measure of a system’s thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work. (per encyclopedia britannica).” Physically speaking, it’s a measure of randomness or disorder in a system. Less work/less order = more entropy; it’s a physicochemical “winding down” of a given system

It’s commonly thought that pale is the entropic force, but what if it’s the opposite? (Keep in mind the chemical definition: less ability to do work = more entropy) Consider: the pale as less entropic, a cleanup force, recycling the potential lost by death and destruction in the universe. This in part explains why a dead person’s memory is present in the pale- their potential has been recycled into the pale in the form of their memories (their life’s *pattern*)

Enthalpy is a related concept to entropy and is defined as the total energy contained within a system. Holding the system enthalpy constant- saying the universe will always have the same amount of total energy, no matter what, according to thermodynamics- results in an entropic tug-of-war between the pale and the world. The pale wins through sheer inertia (again, inertia is mentioned specifically in game)

Overall: think of the world as “cooling”, losing heat and energy through war and death and complacency. Think of the pale as steam and heat, melting down old materials to start it all over again. (Kim says, *through entroponetic interference*: “it’s been a long, cold winter.”)

Consider: the pale as a sinusoidal function, eternally repeating. The pale recycling the universe to start a new cycle, “spending” itself, resulting in pale not being present in the beginning. Then, as the new things begin to settle- with the advent of the human mind, specifically- the pale reforming, slowly reclaiming potential, eventually ending the cycle to start again.

In comes CCP and magpies. Consider: CCP as a backwards transmission from the next “cycle” (after all, pale has no sense of time). Magpies as *pattern-sensitive* people who are able to decode CCP into something useful called novelty. They reach into the potential of the next cycle to build the potential in their current one- this paradox could be what creates more pale, because (and this is where it gets weird, I apologize) doing this retroactively increases the total amount of energy/work/potential in the current cycle to have been reclaimed by the pale for the next one.

Think of the pale as the compost bin for every single thought in the universe. The pale is the exact right size to compost every little atom and thought in the universe, and can hold nothing extra. But magpies reach into the future, the next cycle, and bring in extra. This paradox forces the pale to grow to accommodate the additional material, which also increases the starting potential of the next cycle. This process allows each cycle to accumulate minor changes from the previous one, which can snowball over many cycles.

Furthermore, to the inframaterialists’ point: revolutionary action would be such a radical shift in inertia that it would increase the potential in the world, forcing the pale to pause/shrink to “balance the equation” in terms of pale-vs-world thermodynamics. So maybe they’re right after all :)

And some diagramming, to explain the utter bullshit I’ve just dropped:

[marblerose-rue]

click for better quality!

are you gonna start climbing, or what? / needletail

[beinghuman11235]

Late to the party but here’s a frosty Tango Tek.

[eudaemon-m]

,,,

[breadhalfburnt]

RID ME OF THESE FEELINGS LEST I CUT THEM OUT MYSELF

[gooopy]

engineer listen to me. you need to let pyro superheat the gunslinger. you need to watch it get covered in soot and heat up as pyro blasts it all giddily. you need to feel the heat, feel it grow hotter than you can handle. engineer listen to me you need to let the metal burn you you need to wince and feel the pain and tell pyro not to stop and let them hold your arm down as the fingers start to glow red. something something stress testing. and it NEEDS to be a psychosexual thing

[saintsinthecity]

you don't remember what they looked like?

[mousetrappart]

No escape. No sense of time but an intimate understanding of just how little space Ingo was confined within.

More art for @evtraininguniversity! This time from For Whom Tolls the Bell; the first fic to air for Friday Horror Movie Night: The Sequel. The first one had to be one of my absolute favorite series I had ever read, so suffice it to say I am very excited for what's to come this year. Oh, and ignore Ingo, he's perfectly fine.

[elumish]

What Medical Stuff Feels Like (The Stabby Bits)

Content warning for needles, blood, general medical stuff.

Also strong caveat that all of this is exactly one person's experience (mine) and so 1) may not be what you experience, 2) may not match up with other descriptions you've read, and 3) is not being written by a medical professional.

Blood Draw: Blood draws are generally done with a fairly thin needle that they stick in the crook of your elbow. It hurts, but from my experience it hurts the same way getting a flu shot hurts, just for longer--kind of a sharp pinch. If they're taking multiple things of blood, it takes longer, but they're not taking the needle in and out; it's one needle and then multiple vials that they attach, fill with blood, and then detach. If you're getting multiple tests, they'll take multiple things of blood.

Generally when it starts they'll ask you which is your better side, but often they'll check both sides anyway by looking at them/hitting the crook of the elbow with their hand to make the veins pop up. Then they tie the stretchy blue tourniquet around your upper arm (which kind of hurts) and have you make a fist. And then they stick the needle in.

For me, having the needle taken out is the part that hurts the most. After that, they have you press a little swab thing to it to stop it bleeding, and then they either put a band-aid over it (ideal) or tape the swab thing to your arm (less ideal, sometimes it involves wrapping something around your elbow, which then bunches up when you bend your arm, and it's annoying). This bleeds very little, but sometimes there's a small amount of blood on the band-aid.

IV: IVs are done with thicker needles and are left in your for longer periods of time. The three places I've had IVs are the crook of my elbow, my forearm, and my hand, and from my experience that is also definitely the order from "least bad" to "most bad". If you're admitted to the ER, they'll sometimes give you an IV to give you saline; that's actually a smaller bore than is required to give contrast, apparently, so if you then need to do an imaging test that requires contrast they may need to give you a second IV on your other arm (very not ideal).

Sometimes it'll be cold where the IV is, especially if they're giving you something like saline, because that spot is where the colder-than-your-body-temperature liquid is entering you.

From my experience, I have good veins for blood draws but not great veins for IVs, and they often have a hell of a time successfully getting a vein (which is, again, not ideal). If that goes poorly enough, it starts to bleed when they eventually take the IV out, which can be kind of scary.

If they're having a lot of trouble finding a vein, sometimes they'll use a vein finder, which is a really cool thing that projects a light on you that shows where your veins are. It's supposed to do something when the needle hits the vein so they stop poking around in you.

Like with blood draws, there's basically a port that's left attached to you, and they attach whatever they need to to it, like a saline bag or direct medicine. There doesn't need to be something attached to it, so often they'll detach you from something long before they actually remove the port. They don't to have to put it back, so it's left until the last minute.

IV marks will last longer/be visible for a while--I think it was months before the little dot on my hand finally faded. If they aren't done well or if it takes some poking around, they can also cause huge bruises.

Needle Biopsy: A needle biopsy is one type of biopsy, where they basically extract a piece of whatever it is that they need to study (this is as opposed to something like an excisional biopsy, where they take out the entire thing). From my experience, there are generally two types of needles actually involved here: lidocane (or some equivalent) and then the actual needle to remove the sample.

First, they inject the lidocane. Different people take different amounts of lidocane, so they usually have a few and will add more as necessary (to a point). This (mostly) stops it from hurting, though it doesn't stop it entirely, and it doesn't stop the feeling of pressure (which can be fairly strong depending on where they're taking the sample from).

Next, they use the needle to take the sample. At this point, it (mostly) doesn't really hurt, but from my experience you can still feel it. It also makes a noise, which they show you beforehand, I think mostly so it doesn't freak you out and so you don't flinch. It sounds like a stapler.

They take a few samples; if they're pulling samples from multiple things, I think they take a few from each. This means that each time, they stick the needle in, they make the staple noise, they take the needle out.

At least for what I was having, this was done aided by an ultrasound--I'm not sure if that's standard for all needle biopsies.

For at least a few days beforehand and after, I was told to only take acetaminophen (Tylenol) and not NSAIDs or aspirin, and I think that's pretty standard.

[moeblob]

Deacon loves two things: Ymber and digging himself a grave.

Fulj hates one thing: Deacon.

[enhanced-operatives-division]

Junicrane/Starstruck Ramble

I will not be brief, all under the cut

To clear some things right off the bat:

No corpse, no proof with Juniper. Obligatory this is set in a canon where he's alive and adjacent to the agency in some way.

Reggie & Juniper are just gay to me, but I don't mind any interpretation of their sexuality

The games are set in 1967/68 to me (based on a couple bits in game) which is before it was legal to be gay in America at least (1971), which is relevant to how I interpret canon as being somewhat grounded in reality, despite unrealistic elements.

This is just an insane amount of headcanons/elements of and AU all culminated into one post. I will talk about some headcanons like they're just facts because they are established in my head, and it saves me over explaining literally everything, however I will explain some parts a little bit for clarity.

Alright. Actual beginning of the ramble:

Juniper is a character to me who had gotten so lost in his job as an actor and a social presence that in the end his whole life revolved around that 'role'. Because of this, by the time he's put into the situation where he's around the Agency, he basically knows nothing about himself, though he doesn't realise at first. Furthermore, what little identity he had has changed in so many ways. He's no longer a beloved famous actor in the prominence of public light, he's legally dead and he tarnished his career just before he was supposed to die, with the bonus of that making him lose the majority of his estate. From that, he also has horrific facial scarring from the electrical burns from literally having his face fried. I believe a friend of mine made a post about this a while ago (I also think they were the first to think it up also), but, to me, Juniper has a permanent trimmer in his right arm (aka his dominant hand) from the electrical current and it is messing with his nervous system.

All in all, he's not doing great, but he's too proud to admit that he's not doing great, because if anything, what's left of his ego is all he has as a defense since he's deep in unfamiliar water.

Before ending up around the agency (I have multiple interpretations of this, so I'm just going to bring it up generally), he'd never actually seen Reggie, and his only impression of him is a single voicemail, which was his only reference he had to later impersonate him. Juniper probably has very little feelings other than the ones he projects onto him because of Phoenix and that, at the very least, he's physically attracted to Reggie to some degree (that's like the beginning of how everything else would tumble into place in this sort of interpretation at least).

And on Crane's side? His feelings towards Juniper are probably very intense and muddled. On the one hand, he adores musical theatre, and that's his now ex-favourite actor. The thought of just casually being around him blows the bit of fanboy in him away at first because THAT'S the GUY, plus the inklings of a celebrity crush which still poke at him. And then there's the rational side of him, which knows Juniper has committed absolute atrocities on the side of Zoraxis, and hates him for that. Then there's how much Juniper comes off as an asshole at first because he refuses to cooperate with anything the Agency tried to put in place. He finds Juniper endlessly frustrating, and yet he's stuck working with him since, afterall, he's the one who knows the Agency's history with Juniper the best. I imagine him acting a lot like how he does IEYTD 1 around Juniper.

At this point, I'm just describing the pitch for a romcom.

I think the start of their relationship with one another largely started with Juniper trying to wind Crane up. It was a way of getting his attention, and I don't think Juniper knows why he's so dead set on that at first, because I don't think he realises he has a crush on 'this grump' at first. (I think that's actually the fun part about these two, because it's almost like a role reversal of the celebrity crush dynamic. This ex-big name actor has a TERRIBLE crush on an average joe and it is KILLING HIM.) But of course the Agency keeps them together because Juniper is at least conversing with Crane, so it's a start.

Through one way or another, they actually get talking casually, at least mildly at first. It takes Juniper a long time to fully deconstruct the wall he's built, and the thing is, Crane isn't the one trying to deconstruct it, at least at first, because yeah, Juniper realises if he wants Reggie to actually like him in any way, he can't keep winding him up. So they talk. Small talk at first, something rhythmic and almost easy to keep to a script. And over time that turns into actual conversations. Genuine ones in which Reggie rips out the occasional one of his jokes which Juniper is endlessly endeared about. The way he smiles just before he makes them, like he wants to chuckle at what he's about to say before he says it. That's probably when Juniper realised that he does have some vague crush on him, and that it wasn't going away.

This is what kickstarts John I can't-buy-you-things-to-impress-you-so-acts-of-service-it-is Juniper to do little things for him. It mostly starts off as him trying to make Reggie his tea how he likes it. However, the nerve damage in his arm makes that hard, as the weight of the kettle and trying to pour is hard all of a sudden. And he refuses to accept that, so he tries for a very long while. Long enough that Crane would go to investigate what was going on. And when he does see Juniper leaning over a cup with the kettle as he uneasily tries to pour it, and when Crane asks Juniper responds so matter-of-fact that his intention is nothing but genuine. And it catches Reggie off guard because Juniper hadn't done anything like that up to that point, and his very apparent vulnerability is so clearly on show.

It shifts something between them.

From that point on, conversations are longer, more familiar. Both of their attitudes soften, and Reggie makes more jokes. Juniper learns how to better use his left hand while strengthening his right back to a point where it could be used again. Slowly, they're both spending time with one another not because they have to, but just because they can. Little bits at first, not too far outside what they already were doing, but those little bits turned into long bits to a point where the other person's company was genuinely desirable.

As time passes, Juniper probably realises that he doesn't genuinely know much about himself or what hobbies he's into, because he never really had the time when he got big, and his home life in his youth wasn't bad, but it wasn't picturesque. I think Reggie would pick up on it, and absolutely try to introduce him to some things he's into. Some things stick, other things don't (corn husking very much stays Reggie's passion, and John will go with him sometimes because it's him, but it's not something he strongly cares for). Crane introduces him to a lot of music, and it's something that becomes a staple between them, with tracks they listen to more than others (tragically, I know relatively little about 60s music so I couldn't really say what). Occasionally they dance, never anything intense, think slow dancing, but the closeness is nice.

Through all of it, Juniper is battling the worst crush of his life, and he can't stand it, because I think he struggles to read people since he doesn't have anything like a script or a director to refer back to, so he has no idea if Reggie likes him back or if he's just desperate for that to be true. I think because of that any sort of confession between them would be incredibly raw, not only because of the time they live in making it hard for them to be truthful about how they love, but because it's a complete show of Juniper who's worked to be this better person. I don't exactly know how that would go, mainly because I don't have one set version of their dynamic, this post is just a generalisation of main consistent points.

Reggie does like him back, because he's gotten used to Juniper being just this guy, not a figure in the public eye, not a Zoraxis lackey, and not any sort of Agency operative (despite being under their care to some degree). He's someone he genuinely cares for, because they've given one another the time of day to learn one another, and I think because Reggie was a field agent, he was a lot better at reading Juniper than Juniper was at reading him. Eventually Juniper's company becomes something he could see around him for the rest of his life, and I think he accepts that he likes Juniper a lot more gracefully.

I think any affection directed at Juniper would at first be met with him feeling a little muddled. Reggie was a very physically affectionate person when he could be, and sure the initial flirting with one another came with the occasional little touches, but everything now was so deeply intentional. I also don't think Juniper would almost ever get over the novelty of being able to kiss him, or many other gestures, because it made the fact that they were together so very real, and it was great. I do think it comes easier to Reggie, and it's a big way of showing how much he cares, so it's important for Juniper to try and show it back because he knows how much it means to the other.

I like the idea of them eventually living with one another, too. I think Juniper would have always had a quiet little daydream of sorts where he does just live a domestic quiet life, and he can with Reggie (well, as close as they can get between the Agency and Zoraxis always being at odds), and he loves that, and he loves him, and it's immense.

I think they cook for one another a lot, it helps Juniper work on his dexterity in a controlled environment, which means a lot because it's a huge point of insecurity (that and his scars). He does improve, and Crane is proud of that and shows it and it's great. I also think they'd probably cook together too, because they can deal with being in the kitchen together and they work well with one another. It's probably a good way for them to unwind because over time they can do it in relative silence.

As I said before, I also think music is a staple in their household, and that Reggie listens to things on vinyl almost all of the time because he likes the background noise. Sometimes Juniper will catch him chuntering along to the music which he finds endlessly endearing. I wouldn't put it past his dramatic ass to also join in to fluster Reggie, but I also don't think Reggie would mind that terribly because Juniper has listened to the music enough to know the lyrics, and that's huge to him.

I don't think they are without rough patches, no relationship is, but I think the good part about them is that they're willing to talk about it (... eventually). They're used to long conversations, and while they're often less fun conversations, they're needed and they know that, and it works out.

Alright. I think I'm done for now. I haven't mentioned everything, but this definitely got the worst of it out of my system. If you ever want to hear any specific thoughts my ask box is open but other than that, behold my general dynamic for these two which has been festering in my head for years. I think they're great

[maxthesillyy]

based on the prompt: lies

YAYAY LITTLEPAW WHIPPAW COMIC FINALLY DONE :3 now i can do asks :333

if anybody has any questions you can straight up ask i dont find hiding lore fun/lh

whippaw belongs to @askwhipandcrackle

littlepaw and that Thing belong to me :3

@mommyclan

[b4kuch1n]

dip pen ink comm batch 4 complete! for Ezechiel, @ohwwhuv, and Leo :]

[illgiveyouahint]

this brings me joy: mental health + My Mad Fat Diary