#primitive variables

[smallfisheyes]

it's silly, you know, but you have to try it. may the grapes work.

nanami kento can’t find you when the clock strikes midnight.

there was a ruckus, the release of fireworks outside (who permitted fireworks on school premises?), and cheers of happy new year. itadori toots one of those awful noisemakers. tuna mayos and hugs are exchanged. as planned, nanami maintains a wide berth from gojo, recalling his attempts at a sloppy kiss the previous year. it is a new year; the year of the snake.

but you are nowhere in sight.

why does nanami's belly feel like it's sinking? he smiles, but there is an ache at the centre of his chest. his eyes flick left and right, the festivities unfolding before his eyes. the school had been decorated by the students with the funding of gojo's shiny black card, reds and golds streaming along the walls. stuffed snakes (inumaki's idea) were thrown haphazardly onto the ground. the remnants of the party games from earlier scatter the table-clothed tables.

in your stead, shoko meets nanami's eyes. he nods, giving her a brief hug, sure to grip her just below the shoulder and just above the waist.

"happy new year," he mumbles. shoko smiles. it is politeness exchanged with a colleague and friend, but this is not how he pictured his first interaction of the year (and with whom it was shared).

kento had planned it down to the tee: your favourite wine, no more than two whiskeys, arriving just after you to seemingly rescue you from forcing yourself to yap about things you did not care about (work) with a person you could not care less about (gojo). kento was meticulous, more meticulous than he was at that awful firm he worked at in his early twenties. he had to be. the moment must be perfect. you deserved a wonderful evening. yet, there was a variable he forgot to consider: he couldn't find you.

"ah, nanamin," shoko hums. kento steps back, offering his full attention. there's that awful look on that face of hers, one that dates back more than ten years. the teasing one that reminds kento he is nothing but a lost junior; a silly, unkowing little boy with punk bangs. one that is about to be berated by the scary bobbed girl with a cigarette habit.

a force seizes his lungs, halting their movement. may the berating begin.

"are you looking for someone?" shoko teases. that tone. how grating.

"what gave it away?" no frustration laces kento's voice, only soft desperation.

shoko stacks her hands together and brings them to the side of her face. she tilts her head, her voice sing-song-y. "nothing, just that look of yearning."

kento huffs in frustration. his fists curl in impatience. "where is she, shoko?"

shoko steps to the side, an evil scientist revealing her latest experiment.

when kento sees what is behind her, the world tilts just right.

there you are, under the table, crouched and feral. kento draws back at the sight of you: a monkey, primitive and on the hunt for food. in quick succession, large and luscious green grapes were thrown into your mouth. you were a chipmunk. you stuffed your face full of grapes before you even finished chewing. 

you were always a wonder.

shoko's voice is soft, her note of contentment complimenting kento's sudden leisure at the sight of you. "happy new year, nanamin." she pads away.

kento makes a note to gift shoko a red envelope the following day.

there you are; his little star. kento moves, crouches, and parts the red tablecloth.

"you never told me you liked grapes."

your grape-a-thon veers to a halt. absolute horror stills your chewing. you have at least five grapes in your mouth. 

kento smiles wide. a rush of warmth washes over him. he could squish you.

this too much attention from a too handsome man. you turn your head away to fend off the rush of blood to your face.

"they're soh exsensiv hare," kento makes out between your voice and the grapes. you chew rigorously, averting your eyes. you hold a hand in between your wobbly mouth and kento’s eyes, falsely creating a front to maintain your dignity. "tha’s why you don seh meh eaving them. gofo saeh he woulv give them tah me."

kento bristles. he would get grapes for you anyday. command or none.

"may i join you?"

you chew a little more in thought, grimacing as you swallow. kento tries hard not to watch your throat, but he can’t resist. 

“of course.” you’re sincere. you’ve gone shy. his heart aches. he wants to make you get bashful like this every day.

you scooch over to make room for large and long nanami kento to sit beside you under the table. he’s still wearing those winged shoes you love, but opted for a white knitted sweater that makes you wonder how soft it is. you almost reach for kento’s arm, but you draw back. you’re under the table eating grapes for a reason. you deflate. five more grapes to go.

“you don’t need to be under here with me,” you reassure kento. kento looks like a stuffy that got pounded into a too small toy chest. his neck cranes and his bottom is awkwardly sat in a cross cross. you smile. you want this to last forever. 

“i can’t let you be here alone. it’s new years.”

you wring your hands together. you need to eat four more grapes. “thanks, kento.”

you eat your grapes now, but slower. this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. weren’t you supposed to eat all twelve grapes before midnight was over? you glance over at the clock. it’s already too late. 

you open your palms: four beautiful green grapes, grown and harvested in japan. when you arrived here, you hadn’t realized fruit was a luxury. fruit is difficult to grow. the majority of land is ill-suited for fruit. 

four wasted beautiful grapes.

“that’s enough grapes for tonight.” kento gently takes your hand and rests them on his own. he cups yours, creating a shield. his hands are warm. they’re so much bigger than yours. “you never needed them.”

“yes i did,” you insisted. 

kento shakes his head. “no. you don’t need any of that nonsense.”

your frown is deep. your eyes are in a different place. kento cups your hands more firmly now. “you never needed the grapes, darling.”

it’s instinct, the little “no” that forms on the tip of your tongue. it takes a second, another, to realize the precious thing kento had called you.

darling. YOU. darling?!

suddenly, you’re the one gripping kento’s hands. “what did you say?!”

kento shakes his head, patting your hand. “you make this difficult.” 

“you! you called me–” you guffaw like a fish when kento nods a tired affirmative, like it was obvious all along. “please don’t lie.”

kento’s eyes turn icy. “i would never lie to you.”

your lips wobble pathetically. you hate this man. he makes you silly and makes your heart beat too fast. he makes you want to turn away and stare all the same because he is too handsome. too kind. so him. and you had always wanted him. but the yearning? you never expected it to be returned.

“nanami kento, were you always on tiktok?”

kento throws back his head and laughs. you stare for too long. you’re allowed to now. “i have three wonderful students.”

the year of the snake will be a wonderful one.

you leave the remaining grapes for gojo. he needed them more than you.

i can't stare at this anymore please take it as it is. happy year of the snake everyone :) hissss

[heathensimmer]

NEW MOD: 3T2 TRAITS SIMS 2

Homework for Teens and Children: Made Better!

Do you want more variability with Homework and School Performance for your Teen and Children Sims? Here ya go!

Im sorry yall .... I know I am throwing lots of stuff at you, but I had to fix this for myself and for others.

Her grade used to be a C minus! Every single day!

She had the Genius trait ...

But she almost never brought homework back because I downloaded THIS traits mod: Homework Sometimes by LilBabyDillJr. This mod is fantastic for the most part because it alters the vanilla Sims 2 code where teens and children bring home homework every single day. That to me is stale and shallow. But Dill's mod had an oversight.

In Dill's mod, Sims with the Absent Minded, Perfectionist, Unlucky, or Rebellious trait would bring home more homework (as in more frequent) and Sims with the Bookworm, Genius, Lucky, Disciplined and Workaholic traits would bring home less homework.

However, in the Bhav "Calculate Grade" in Group 0x7FBE051B (This seems to be a group for Grade School coding), the command "Set to Next" (primitive 0x001F) searches for Homework on the school-age Sim's home lot and if it can't find Homework (and Dill's mod makes Sims with certain traits bring home less) then the student's grade remains the same.

This makes no sense because Dill's mod is supposed to imply that Geniuses, Bookworms, Luckies, Disciplined and Workaholics are doing their homework in class or in study hall or on the bus ride home, so their grade should be improving.

I made a mod that fixes this. I edited the "Calculate Grade" BHAV to give a plus three bonus to a Sim's school performance that has zero homework on the lot but still are going to school, the same as the traits in Dill's mod. This is perfectly accompanied by Dill's mod which causes Geniuses, Disciplined, Bookworms, Luckies, and Workaholics to bring home less homework, because their school performance will improve even though they don't have homework that they're bringing home! If the Set to Next command finds more than one homework, the Sim's grade will still be decreased!

This mod, named Ys2g_calculategrade4traits_dill_homework, also fixes the glitch if you use aging mods or set aging to OFF. In the BHAV "Calculate Grade" if a Sim is on their first day of aging as a child or teen, their grade will stay the same. So if your child or teen Sim is on their first day of aging and your aging is off for a while, their grade will remain stuck. I fixed this. Now, if your Sim is on the first day of aging, they get a plus one, a smaller, bonus to their grade and then it goes to the Set to Next command to check for homework. I did this because I figured that Sims on their first days of aging would be doing really easy stuff in school.

I also released an optional download for an edit of Dill's original mod that makes it more subtle and changes Bookworm trait to Ambitious instead so that Ambitious Sims bring home less homework as well instead of Bookworms.

This optional file is called dill_homeworksometimes_edit_ys2g

Happy Simming!

Requirements:

Homework Sometimes by LilBabyDillJr. - If you don't want this mod alongside my fix, then your Genius Sims, Workaholics, Ambitious, and Disciplined will do better in school but everyone will do the same amount of homework. which is still valid - it could mean that the negative traits are doing the same work but not doing as well.

Easy Inventory Check - this is a given for the majority of trait mods

--The traits themselves!! Ambitious, Genius, Workaholic and Disciplined (ONLY IF YOU USE MY OPTIONAL EDIT OF DILL'S MOD ALONGSIDE MY MOD)

--Workaholic, Genius, Disciplined, Absent-Minded, Lucky, Perfectionist, Unlucky, Bookworm, Rebellious, and trait_MAIN for Dill's Original Mod ONLY.

REMOVE Dill's Original Mod if you want my Edit.

Conflicts:

Cyjon's Partial Homework

Harder Grades and any other form of harder or easier grades for school age children and teens.

Simler's School Grade Mod (My mod will work with this as long as mine loads last!- which it should since mine start with ys2g)

Any mod that affects the BHAVs "Interaction Homework" (as opposed to "Interaction-DO Homework") and/or "Calculate Grade"

LINK: https://simfileshare.net/folder/242112/

[ginnysgraffiti]

Patrick with a yn during the period is crazy

uhhh this is a tricky one!!

PATRICK BATEMAN x yn.

head-canons:

the first time you mention you’re on your period, he freezes — not out of disgust, but out of calculation.

his expression doesn’t change. no visible recoil. but behind the stillness, you can feel something mechanical shifting, like he’s rearranging data.

period…she has period.

his relationship with bodily functions — especially other people’s — is complicated. he compartmentalizes. categorizes. if it can’t be toned, trained, or numbed with an imported cleanser, it unnerves him.

but then there’s you.

and if it’s you, it must be manageable.

he nods once, crisp and short, like you’ve given him a new variable to solve for.

within hours, his medicine cabinet suddenly contains an array of tampons, pads, painkillers, supplements, and two different kinds of heating pads — one disposable, one ergonomic and bluetooth-powered.

you didn’t even ask.

he watches you like he’s studying symptoms, not behavior.

the shift in your mood. the way you curl tighter into the couch. the tone in your voice when you’re short with him.

to someone else, it might register as empathy, but to patrick, it’s about control through observation.

he doesn’t like things he can’t fix.

and if pain is something you just endure, he feels equal parts offended and fascinated by the biology of it — and deeply, deeply irritated that it’s something you have to go through without any useful solution.

he’ll murmur things like, “you’re not drinking enough water today.” or “you haven’t moved in three hours, that’s not going to help your circulation.”

not out of care, but compulsion. still — it’s care in the only way he knows how.

in private, he treats it like something sacred.

there’s something primitive in the idea that your body bleeds and survives. it unearths something strange and reverent in him.

he doesn’t like the mess — of course he doesn’t — but if he ever walks in on you changing, or resting with a faint stain on your pajama shorts, he doesn’t comment.

his jaw tightens. but not from revulsion. from restraint.

like it sparks something territorial and ceremonial in him.

“this is a cycle,” he tells himself. “a natural, necessary process. come on patrick, you know what period is.”

he’ll pour you tea like it’s a ritual. bring you ice cream and painkillers, place them silently on the nightstand, and sit beside you with a book he won’t really read.

he becomes possessive in strange, quiet ways.

when you’re curled up, aching and exhausted, you’re more pliant — softer in your movement, slower in your responses.

patrick notices.

he doesn’t exploit it, but he leans into it.

he’ll slip into bed behind you without being asked.

rest a hand on your lower stomach, palm flat, and press the heat of his body against your spine.

you’ll ask if he minds. he’ll say, “of course not. your stomach needs to be kept warm.”

and it’s the rare moment he means it — not for show, not for sex, not for power.

just to be there and be the comfort you’re looking for.

he would most likely fall asleep with his big veiny hand tracing shooting circles on your belly to make sure it’s warm enough.

and yes — he still wants you. weird, right?

he’s vain enough to find the hormonal flush on your cheeks attractive.

and though he won’t say it outright, he’s…curious.

about what it would feel like to be close to you like that when you’re most vulnerable, and your body’s more reactive, more sensitive.

he’ll test boundaries.

“you’re sure it hurts too much?” he’ll murmur one night, voice low in the dark. “you just looked like you needed a distraction.”

if you say no, he won’t press.

if you say yes — even tentatively — he’ll be careful. unnervingly so.

he’ll still want control, but in a way that prioritizes your comfort first.

because this version of you — flushed, tired, trusting — is something sacred to him.

and he treats it accordingly.

how patrick reacts to not being able to have sex — at first, he sees it as a personal offense.

not in a cruel or loud way — but in the exact, cold manner of someone who’s so entitled to you, so used to receiving what he wants, that denial feels like insult.

he’ll retreat into silence for a beat. maybe two.

his hands will still — one resting on your thigh, or curled around your wrist. his mouth will press into a flat line, almost like a boy being told he can’t open a present yet.

“i see,” he says — quietly, but clearly annoyed.

he doesn’t ask if you’re okay. he asks how long it’s going to last.

“is it…so bad this time?”

but once the mood shifts and he collects himself, he doesn’t argue.

he’s too image-conscious, too disciplined, to force anything.

instead, he’ll refocus all of that repressed energy into exercise, grooming, or being aggressively helpful — not because he wants to serve, but because if he can’t touch you sexually, he needs to dominate the situation some other way. (he will of course jerk off when you’re not there).

eventually, he finds a way to make the restriction feel intimate — and under his control.

patrick doesn’t cope well with being told “not now” but once he accepts that this is recurring — that it will happen again, and again — he reframes it.

if he can’t have sex, then fine.

he’ll act as if he’s the one choosing not to, which helps restore the illusion of power in his mind.

he might lean over you with a glint in his eye, voice low, and say something like: “you need rest. not me. i’ll take care of everything else.”

and then he’ll draw a bath, heat a towel, clean the sheets. not because he cares — not in the normal, empathetic sense, but because when he can’t have you, he needs to own your environment.

he’ll make you tea while dressed in a thousand-dollar robe. he’ll fold your laundry in gloves, turn down your bed like it’s a hotel. he won’t stop hovering.

to patrick, sex might be off the table, but dominance never is.

what if you realize how needy he is and, knowing how much he usually craves sex, you decide to tell him yes anyway?

if you say yes—knowing what it means to him, knowing how physically driven he is, how intolerant of delay or denial he can be—and you offer yourself up anyway, cramps and all, voice soft with guilt or affection or something between the two?

patrick goes very still.

not with disbelief, exactly. but with a kind of dark, internal stillness. like a man suddenly aware of how easily the world gives to him when he wants something badly enough.

he doesn’t lunge. doesn’t strip you down or devour you the way he normally might.

because you’ve changed something.

you’ve turned this into a gift. a choice. and it disorients him.

“…are you sure?”

it’s barely audible. not out of concern for you, really—more like he’s double-checking the universe. like he can’t quite believe this offer is real, and he’s terrified to handle it the wrong way and have it taken back.

if you confirm, if you say “yes. i want to,” or “yes, for you,” then you watch something fracture in him, behind the eyes. not violently—almost reverently.

he exhales through his nose, long and slow, and there’s a flicker of something in his posture: the businessman still, but reduced, like you’ve just peeled him out of the immaculate shell and what’s left underneath is…softer. needier.

he’ll touch you very gently at first. reverent. worshipful, even. not out of romance, but out of greed.

because you’re not supposed to say yes right now.

you’re supposed to be off-limits. fragile. in pain.

and yet here you are—giving yourself to him anyway, despite the discomfort, despite the inconvenience. he’ll murmur under his breath as he undresses you: “you always do this to me…”

“you don’t even know what that does to me…”

“you’re still in time to back off.”

and for once, it’s not purely about power or ego. it’s about you choosing him when you don’t have to. and that? that wrecks him.

he’ll be intense—but careful. restrained in a way that feels obsessive. hyper-aware of your breath, your flinches, your pain—but not because he wants to stop, because he wants to consume around it. like he’s trying to claim you without breaking you.

afterwards, he stays closer than he normally does. he cleans you immediately, wipes you down with a cloth warmed in the bathroom sink. places his head against your stomach like some beautiful, terrible thing trying to tether himself to your body just a bit longer.

he won’t say thank you—he doesn’t know how.

but he’ll hold your hips like he’s anchoring himself, and he’ll mutter again under his breath, over and over: “mine. mine. mine.”

because you gave yourself to him when you didn’t have to.

and in bateman’s warped little psyche, that’s more sacred than any expensive dinner, any tailored suit, any perfect night.

you said yes when you were supposed to say no.

and to him, that makes you the only thing on earth worth ruining for.

out in public — especially at an upscale restaurant — he spirals internally if you begin to cramp.

you excuse yourself halfway through the wine list, your fingers pressing against your lower abdomen — and he watches you go, pupils dilating, lip twitching like he’s trying not to scowl.

not at you — but at the sheer lack of control.

he hates the idea that something biological could pull your attention away from him.

when you return, his jaw’s tense. he asks in a voice that’s both concerned and irritated: “do you want to leave?”

he hopes you say yes.

he doesn’t want you seen like this — uncomfortable, unfocused, not the luminous, pristine version of you that reflects well on him.

if you do want to leave, he’ll cover the bill immediately, take your coat himself, walk you out with a palm on the small of your back like he’s shielding you from onlookers.

but if you insist on staying, he will compensate.

he’ll flag down the sommelier, demand a different wine pairing, change the music volume, quietly scold the waiter if the lighting seems too dim or the water wasn’t poured fast enough.

because if he can’t fix you, he’ll fix everything else in the room.

if you say “i’m sorry for ruining your reservation. i know how much effort it took, you booked it three months in advance”?

you watch him go still, his expression unreadable in that terrifyingly blank patrick bateman way, like he’s been momentarily rebooted.

for a moment, there’s that flicker behind his eyes. ego. resentment. the innate bateman response to imperfection, especially public imperfection, especially if it reflects on him.

but then he exhales, slowly. something shifts. it isn’t kindness. it’s possession.

“you think that’s what i care about right now?”

his voice is cold, low, with that weirdly composed hostility that somehow never raises in volume, and yet pins you in place. but he leans forward just slightly, enough to make his words feel private.

“what’s the point of the reservation if you’re sitting there in pain?”

“you looked like you were about to pass out on the way back from the restroom.”

he’ll look down at your hand—or maybe your abdomen—like he’s memorizing the way you curl into yourself. like he’s cataloguing it. not with pity, but a strange kind of dark protectiveness.

and then: “i can make another reservation, i can’t make another you.”

he says it stiffly, like the words taste foreign in his mouth—but real, nonetheless. because if there’s one thing patrick bateman doesn’t tolerate, it’s losing his things. and tonight, you’ve just reminded him how human you are.

and in some twisted corner of his psyche, that only makes him grip tighter.

he pays the bill with a cutting glare at the sommelier, takes your coat himself, and helps you into the car without a word—but all through the ride, his hand rests over yours like an anchor.

when you get home, he silently tucks you into bed, disappears into the bathroom…and returns with water, medicine, and the silkiest robe he owns.

he doesn’t comment on the ruined evening again.

but later, when you’re half-asleep under the covers, you feel his fingers ghost over your arm.

“no, don’t say that again. i knew you were about to.” quiet. commanding. “you didn’t ruin anything.”

because as much as he cares about status, exclusivity, and perfection—he cares more about the ownership of the one person who makes him feel something beyond the hollow.

and that, to him, is worth rescheduling dorsia.

later, he asks too many questions — most of them clinical. he’s genuinely curious.

“how long does this last for you, usually?”

“is it heavier at night? are the mood swings worse in the afternoon?”

“what does your doctor say about the cramping? do you chart your cycle?”

he sounds like a spreadsheet come to life. but this is how he deals — he turns emotion into data.

and once he knows what to expect, he builds rituals around it.

your preferred brand of pads is now stocked in the guest bathroom.

your painkillers are sorted by potency and expiration date in the medicine drawer.

he keeps your “softest” clothes folded in a drawer in his closet, just for those days.

he’d never admit it, but he also programs reminders into his calendar — “check-in. day 3. extra irritable?”

because when he knows, he feels in control. and when he feels in control, he can care.

[o-craven-canto]

Babe wake up, new Homo species just dropped

So it seems there are now four named species of Homo from East Asia apart from H. erectus and H. sapiens.

Two come from the first wave Out of Africa: the island-dwarf forms Homo floresiensis from Indonesia and Homo luzonensis from the Philippines, presumably descendants of the first wave of Homo erectus that got separated from the continent population on the outer islands.

Two come from the second wave, diverging from Homo sapiens about at the same time as Neanderthals: Homo longi and Homo juluensis, whose official description seems to be still awaiting publication. The remains of both were actually discovered decades ago, but have been described as new species only recently. Homo longi has anomalously large molars, and Homo juluensis is described as having mixed erectus, Neanderthal, and sapiens features, but despite its 'primitive' traits it had a brain volume impressive even for Homo sapiens (1700 ml)! And the mysterious Denisovans, which contributed up to 4% of the DNA of Southeast Asian and Australasian people, might be H. juluensis after all!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

More Geology Vocabulary

for your next poem/story (pt. 2)

Luster - The reflection of light from the surface of a mineral, described by its quality and intensity.

Microcrystalline - Describes a rock texture consisting of crystals visible only with a microscope.

Moonmilk - A soft, white, initially deformable deposit that occurs on the walls of caves.

Nuée ardente - A swiftly flowing, turbulent, sometimes incandescent gaseous cloud erupted from a volcano, containing ash and other pyroclastic materials in its lower part.

Orogeny - A mountain-building event.

Parabolic dune - Crescent-shaped dune with horns or arms that point upwind.

Perlitic - Describes the texture of glassy volcanic rocks characterized by numerous curving cracks roughly concentric around closely spaced centers.

Permafrost - Any soil, subsoil, or other surficial deposit, or even bedrock, occurring in arctic, subarctic, and alpine regions at a variable depth beneath Earth’'s surface in which a temperature below freezing has existed continuously for a long time (from two years to tens of thousands of years).

Phreatic - Of or relating to groundwater.

Phreatophyte - A deeply rooted plant that obtains water from the water table or through the overlying capillary fringe.

Pictograph - A picture painted on a rock by primitive peoples.

Pillow lava - A general term for lavas displaying pillow structures and considered to have formed in a subaqueous environment; such lava is usually basaltic or andesitic.

Pluvial - Describes a geologic process or feature resulting from rain.

Reservoir - An artificial or natural storage place for water, such as a lake, pond, or aquifer, from which the water may be withdrawn for such purposes as irrigation, municipal water supply, or flood control.

Roundstone - Any naturally rounded rock fragment larger than a sand grain.

Schistose - Describes a rock displaying schistosity, or foliation, which imparts a silky sheen.

Scour - The powerful and concentrated clearing and digging action of flowing water, air, or ice.

Strand plain - A shore built seaward by waves and currents, extending continuously for some distance along the coast.

Tree mold - A cylindrical hollow in a lava flow formed by the envelopment of a tree by the flow, solidification of the lava in contact with the tree, and disappearance of the tree by burning and subsequent removal of the charcoal and ash. The inside of the mold preserves the surficial features of the tree.

Vitreous - Having the luster and appearance of glass.

Source ⚜ Part 1 ⚜ More: Word Lists

[faynthearted]

god I love rediscovering half-finished tianshan fics/drafts that I started years ago and completely forgot about. it's like I'm reading someone else's work and it's fantastic! there's so many.

in case anyone is interested, so far I've found:

a WIP named "leverage" that seems to be about guan shan having to stay at the He estate for his own protection against whatever mess the He family has gotten into. I feel like someone might have requested this a long time ago and I forgot?

another WIP named "p.s." that's about tianshan being bitter exes and yet somehow guan shan finds himself housesitting for he tian while he travels for work because he tian has a dog that they adopted together that needs to be looked after and guan shan still cares about it -- and, clearly, about he tian too. I honestly still like this idea and the writing isn't too awful... hmm.

a VERY primitive draft of desecration, probably written when I was just beginning to brainstorm. it's crazy to see how much the story has evolved based on this flimsy WIP draft. I'm half-tempted to post it just for shits and giggles even though it's poorly written

another very short, primitive draft of desecration, written from zheng xi's perspective

a WIP named "smoke and mirrors" for a switched family background AU for tianshan. I actually got pretty far in writing this (~7k words) and I don't remember a single thing about it. veryyyy interesting. I kinda want to post this one too, or at least one scene that stands out

a WIP (unnamed) that seems to be about guan shan conning he tian at the train station for some money. I'm almost positive this was a tumblr request, but based on the date/time stamp of the draft's document, I'm not surprised I never finished it. life was crazy and miserable at the time

and while I'm here, I might as well mention the WIPs I do kinda remember but decided not to pursue in favor of desecration:

a WIP named "patchwork" set in historical China, wherein guan shan (a potter/artisan) has the ability to see and manipulate (i.e. tie and cut) red strings of fate. he's commissioned by the he family to participate in a traditional wedding ceremony for he cheng. of course, he tian takes an interest in him while he's there. the only issue is that guan shan cut his own red string when he was younger, an irreversible action -- and, for some reason, he tian's is cut too. weird, right? yeah. but he tian doesn't know this, and guan shan isn't planning on telling him anytime soon 😌

a WIP named "arsonist's lullaby" written from he cheng's POV throughout he tian's childhood. I'm not going to say much about this one since it might actually be written/posted one day as part of the terra firma series...

and finally, a WIP (unnamed) for an AU in which guan shan is a retired police dog trainer/handler (??) who now works at an auto shop. he adopted some of the dogs that either flunked out of the academy training or developed medical issues that required their retirement, and the dogs hang around the shop while he works. one day he tian shows up and asks if guan shan would be willing to do some off-the-books commission(?) work. the he family business has a drug/weapons problem, and they need the dogs' trained noses -- and their handler's experience -- to fix it. (I'm still obsessed with the idea of the dogs being fiercely protective of guan shan. he tian not only has to earn guan shan's trust, but the dogs' too)

I love the variability in all these AUs/ideas. I wish I could work on them all at once but that's frankly impossible. but I'll consider posting a few snippets if anyone is interested! (no promises about the quality of writing, though!)

[breastforce]

One more note on the bots, if (colossal if) I were to bring one of them back, it would probably be the jeopardy bot. Being an offshoot of shitpost generator he has all the benefits that shitbot has. He wouldn't be difficult to create, and I wouldn't have to worry about how to host him because I could just boot him up every once and a while to fill up the queue. Plus, I wouldn't have to update him to be 'funny' again, and there's still some novelty to it even in the era of Generative ai. The appeal isn't what he generates but in the ways people try to answer a randomly generated, gibberish question.

Becsuse that's thing with shitpost bot, it's not that he's difficult to make, but that I'm not really an internet comedian anymore. The posts he would put out would essentially be along the line of "what's up fuckers it's skibidi ohio time". There'd be this persistent feeling of 'how do you do fellow kids'.

Skylar, by contrast, has the opposite problem. I could very well make a Skylar that's as good or better than she used to, but that she is definitionally a language learning model. She's an amateur and primitive one sure, but the thing I was ultimately aspiring to make was ChatGPT. It's hard to feel motivated to improve on her in that context. I despise things like Grok and Gemini, and I can't push myself to succeed at something that would ultimately be following in their footsteps. The things I dreamed of are now reality, and they're making everything worse.

As for what I'm currently doing, I have made a personal discord bot custom made for private TTRPG servers I'm on. Gretchen and Zafir, I call them. They both run off the same program, but with a variable switched that changes it from one mode to the other.

They're very basic, and their markov chain responses are pretty much there as an easter egg. Their main functionality is fetching character sheets, laying out the upcoming games in chronological order, and sending out reminders when games are upcoming. A plugin I'm using called 'Natty' makes them really good at correctly good at picking out times and dates from a post.

[unclegrumbles]

ULTIMATE DANNY PHANTOM

TUCKER FOLEY

Tucker had his nose buried in his phone before it was cool. Beyond gaming, he loves tinkering with his many gadgets to find new and creative ways to optimize them. Having access to the spare parts bin from the Fentons' laboratory grants Tucker a veritable buffet of tech to play with. Using their old tech, Tucker created his beloved PDA. Hidden beneath its standard functions is an encryption-cracking algorithm Tucker developed himself, capable of hacking into the most secure computers in town. Once Danny got his powers, Tucker began upgrading a special backpack with even more FentonWorks tech to aid in ghost hunting. Tucker's "Battlepack" contains a powerful, compact radio receiver linked to his PDA which allows him to tap into police radio comms and the FentonWorks' satnav ghost radar. It also includes a link port compatible with Fenton Thermoses, allowing Danny and the team to inspect certain traits of captured ghosts. An integrated Fenton powerbank can charge up all manner of devices, from phones to Fenton Thermoses and beyond. While Tucker takes pride in his role as the team's tech guy, he harbors some jealousy over Danny getting superpowers. That doesn't stop him from being Danny's closest, most reliable and loyal friend.

Powers and Abilities

Multitasking: Heavy is the head that wears the crown. As the self-described brains of the operation, Tucker is thusly saddled with the responsibility to handle more of the complex strategizing that comes with ghost hunting. After all, one does not simply hunt a ghost on a school night. Tucker takes on the task of checking weather, traffic, security, and even variables like public transportation and community events while coordinating with the rest of Team Phantom during a hunt. Tucker's obsession with data and details often prevents him from seeing the bigger picture.

PDA: While Tucker is too insecure to realize or admit it, the PDA he created is practically a superpower of its own. The encryption-cracking algorithm he created is based on a primitive program found in a discarded FentonWorks hard drive, but Tucker's skill with tech advanced the program far beyond its original state. By plugging into any computer linked to a network, Tucker can gain full access to all of its protected files. At the time of its creation, WiFi was still in its infancy. Regardless, Tucker integrated state-of-the-art WiFi tech into his PDA, allowing it to remotely interface with networked devices. Tucker can coordinate nearly all of Team Phantom's operations from the little machine.

Gamer™: Tucker, like Danny, is a proud member of the PC master race. Tucker has one of the best rigs in town, built with his own two hands, and has poured countless hours into late nights playing DOOMED with Danny. Once word slipped that Sam was one of the best gamers in their group, Tucker made it his life's mission to beat her high score in Superman 64, or die trying.

Confidence: Despite his very nerdy interests, Tucker oozes self-confidence. That translates well when talking to peers and adults alike. When Danny needs a pep-talk (that doesn't involve screaming from Sam), he goes to Tucker for wise words of encouragement.

---

Tucker is immensely proud of this encryption-cracking algorithm, but recently it's given him cause for concern. During routine maintenance he'll sometimes discover lines of code that he didn't write. Other times the algorithm diagnostic log shows encryption-cracking attempts that he didn't initiate. It's almost as if the algorithm has taken on a life of its own...

[communist-manifesto-daily]

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Part 23

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II - Dialectics

In the meantime, along with and after the French philosophy of the 18th century, had arisen the new German philosophy, culminating in Hegel.

Its greatest merit was the taking up again of dialectics as the highest form of reasoning. The old Greek philosophers were all born natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic of them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectic thought. The newer philosophy, on the other hand, although in it also dialectics had brilliant exponents (e.g. Descartes and Spinoza), had, especially through English influence, become more and more rigidly fixed in the so-called metaphysical mode of reasoning, by which also the French of the 18th century were almost wholly dominated, at all events in their special philosophical work. Outside philosophy in the restricted sense, the French nevertheless produced masterpieces of dialectic. We need only call to mind Diderot's Le Neveu de Rameau, and Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes. We give here, in brief, the essential character of these two modes of thought.

When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large, or the history of mankind, or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. We see, therefore, at first the picture as a whole, with its individual parts still more or less kept in the background; we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that move, combine, and are connected. This primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away. [A]

But this conception, correctly as it expresses the general character of the picture of appearances as a whole, does not suffice to explain the details of which this picture is made up, and so long as we do not understand these, we have not a clear idea of the whole picture. In order to understand these details, we must detach them from their natural, special causes, effects, etc. This is, primarily, the task of natural science and historical research: branches of science which the Greek of classical times, on very good grounds, relegated to a subordinate position, because they had first of all to collect materials for these sciences to work upon. A certain amount of natural and historical material must be collected before there can be any critical analysis, comparison, and arrangement in classes, orders, and species. The foundations of the exact natural sciences were, therefore, first worked out by the Greeks of the Alexandrian period [B], and later on, in the Middle Ages, by the Arabs. Real natural science dates from the second half of the 15th century, and thence onward it had advanced with constantly increasing rapidity. The analysis of Nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different natural processes and objects in definite classes, the study of the internal anatomy of organized bodies in their manifold forms — these were the fundamental conditions of the gigantic strides in our knowledge of Nature that have been made during the last 400 years. But this method of work has also left us as legacy the habit of observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life. And when this way of looking at things was transferred by Bacon and Locke from natural science to philosophy, it begot the narrow, metaphysical mode of thought peculiar to the last century.

[A] Unknown to the Western world until the 20th-century, the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu was a predecessor of or possibly contemporary to Heraclitus. Lao Tzu wrote the renowned Tao Te Ching in which he also espouses the fundamental principles of dialectics.

[B] The Alexandrian period of the development of science comprises the period extending from the 3rd century B.C. to the 17th century A.D. It derives its name from the town of Alexandria in Egypt, which was one of the most important centres of international economic intercourses at that time. In the Alexandrian period, mathematics (Euclid and Archimedes), geography, astronomy, anatomy, physiology, etc., attained considerable development.

China also been began development in natural sciences in the third century B.C.E.

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[justkidneying]

Neoplasms of the CNS

This is going to be a long one, so I apologize. This topic can be kinda boring and difficult, but it's good to know for anyone in med school. A lot of this stuff is also pretty high-yield for boards, so yay.

I'm going to go over a lot of different types, give you some basic facts, and show (and tell) you what it looks like. Hope you have a fun time reading :D

Glial Tumors

Glial cells are little helper cells in the brain. Gliomas are tumors made of these cells. You have three subtypes: pilocytic astrocytomas, diffuse low-grade gliomas (low grade astrocytomas and oligodendrogliomas), and malignant gliomas (anaplastic astrocytomas and glioblastomas). Glioblastomas are the most aggressive gliomas.

Pilocytic astrocytomas are the most common primary brain tumor in children. They are well-circumscribed and grow very slowly. They prefer the cerebellum and brainstem. Their most distinguishing feature are the Rosenthal fibers (pilocytic means fiber) and red inclusions. These can usually be treated with resection alone. Look how pretty it is:

Low grade gliomas are the majority of adult brain tumors. They are infiltrating and are WHO grade 2-4. Both diffuse astrocytomas and oligodendrogliomas are going to be basically in the middle of the brain. Oligodendrogliomas prefer white matter of the cerebral hemispheres and infiltrate to the cortex. Microcalcifications are common. Oligodendrogliomas have a "fried egg" and "chickenwire" appearance, but this is usually stated as uniform cells with clear cytoplasm and branching, delicate blood vessels on board exams.

Diffuse astrocytomas show irregular, angulated, and hyperchromatic nuclei, and have a tendency to recur, spread, and progress to higher stages.

Now to the malignant gliomas. Malignant astrocytomas are the most common primary brain tumor in adults. You'll see a hypercellular glioma with poorly differentiated astrocytes. It tends to recue, and shows significant nuclear atypia and miotic activity (it's dividing!!). These can develop from other types of astrocytomas or de novo. They usually progress to glioblastoma.

Glioblastomas are the most common and most malignant gliomas. They are poorly defined, infiltrating, and will distort the brain. Some people say they look like butterflies on MRI (I say these people are full of shit). You'll see serphintine or psuedopalisading necrosis and microvascular proliferation. The morphology of the cells is highly variable (from giant and bizarre to small and tightly packed). There is about a one year median survival from disgnosis.

Medulloblastomas

This is the most malignant brain tumor in children, and is only found in the cerebellum (by definition, obviously). All of them are WHO grade IV. The classic (aka the kind on board exams) is composed of sheets of densly packed cells with round to oval nuclei (or sometimes carrot-shaped lol), and little cytoplasm. They are poorly differentiated and primitive. In 40% of them, there are Homer-Wright (neuroblastic) rosettes (circled below).

Sometimes you see spinal drop metastasis of these, which means the tumor has spread to the spinal cord. This will show up as a "sugar coated" spinal cord on MRI. If the tumor compresses the 4th ventricle, you'll also see increased intracranial pressure.

Ependymomas

These are slow-growing tumors that originate from either the walls of the ventricles or the spinal canal. In kids, they're usually in the brain. In adults, they're usually in the spine. There are like nine subtypes, but the most common feature on histology is perivasuclar psuedorosettes. They have a poor prognosis.

Choroid Plexus Papillomas

These come from the cuboidal cells of the choroid plexus within the ventricles (the things that make CSF). 85% are in kids less than 5 years old, and most are found in the lateral ventricles. They look like cauliflower. Under the microscope, they show papillary structure with delicate fibrovascular cores, with a cuboidal lining. Complete resection is the main treatment.

Neuronal Tumors

We're only gonna talk about gangliocytomas, gangliogliomas, and dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumors, but there are other types. Gangliocytomas are the most common tumors associated with chronic temporal lobe epilepsy, but they are rare overall. They show prominent single nucleoli and cytoplasmic basophilic Nissl substance. They also may have pilocytic elements. They may progress to gangliogliomas.

Dysembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumors are low-grade tumors that are seen in kids. Usually they cause seizures. You'll see multinodular lesions in the cortices (usually temporal). Histology looks like prominent clusters of oligodendroglial-like cells, which seem to float in cystic spaces. Resection is the treatment, and usually stops the seizures.

Meningiomas

These are the most common benign tumors in adults, with resection being the primary treatment (unless they're radiation-induced, those fuckers are aggressive). These are attached to the dura mater and compress the brain without invading it. The meningothelial subtype is the only one you need to know the histology of. It has characteristic whorls (can be mineralized) called psammoma bodies. Grossly, they look like an egg yolk.

Primary CNS Lymphomas

PCNSL are usually diffuse large B-call lymphomas. Therefore, they express CD markers. Grossly, they are circumscribed and somewhat necrotic. On histology, they have lymphoid-appearing cells around blood vessels. They're honestly not that interesting in my opinion.

Craniopharyngiomas

These are benign and their origin has to do with some embryology I don't care to explain here. They have neuroendocrine effects, and can usually not be reached for resection, and are therefore considered a lifelong illness. They're usually cystic, solid, and calcified all at once (yum). They are separated into adamantinomatous (kids and adults) and papillary (only in adults). You'll see palisading epithelial cells and wet keratin.

CNS Metastasis

Most common tumor of the CNS, and can occur at any age. Lung cancer is the most common primary tumor. You're going to see edema, and usually they lodge at the gray-white junction. They will be well circumcised and will have histology consistent with the primary lesion.

Peripheral Tumors

We got Schwannomas, Neurofibromas, and Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNSTs). Schwannomas are painless and slow rowing, and just kinda look like a round knot on a nerve. Histologically, they are biphasic, with Antoni A (tight) and Antoni B (loose) areas. You'll also see nuclear palisading with Verocay bodies.

Neurofibromas are either solitary or plexiform. They will present with pain and loss of function. On histology, you'll see myxomatous matric and collagen fibrils leading to intense staining with reticulin.

MPNSTs are highly malignant and aggressive, and are difficult to diagnose. Grossly, you'll see necrosis. Histologically, you'll see hypercellularity, atypia, and pleomorphism.

Neurocutaneous Syndromes

You got neurofibromatosis 1 and 2, tuberous sclerosis, and Von Hippel Lindau disease. With NF1, you have a mutation on chromosome 17, which causes dark skin spots, cutaneous neurofibromas, Lisch nodules on the iris, optic gliomas, seizures, etc.

NF2 is from chromosome 22, and the patient will also sometimes have meningiomas and ependymomas. The biggest thing is bilateral vestibular schwannomas, causing hearing loss, vertigo, and facial weakness. Also common are juvenile cataracts.

Tuberous sclerosis is a disorder of cellular differentiation and proliferation. You'll see ash leaf spots, facial and fingernail angiofibromas, shagreen patches, heart tumors, renal tumor, retinal tumor, lung tumor, epilepsy, etc.

Von Hippel Lindau disease is caused by a deletion on chromosome 3. It is characterized by hemangioblastomas in the retina and CNS. You'll see symptoms from local mass effect and hemorrhage. Patient may also have renal cysts, pheochromocytomas, or pancreatic tumors.

And that's all the ones I want do, I'm not interested in going neuro, so I won't get into the dirty details. They don't really matter unless you want to be a brain surgeon or something.

[salixsociety]

A Short Blurb on Science and Spirituality and the Pitfalls of Isolating Variables

My friend and I got to talking about how disrespectful towards spirits and spirituality paranormal investigators are, and we got on the topic of how trying to make all spirituality conform to or revolve around western science is actually just thinly veiled white supremacy. Someone asked me to expound on that, and how one can integrate science and spirituality more productively in their practice to stop themselves feeling like they're silly. This is what I answered, which I just wanted to post for the sake of posting something and also to have it on hand!

[...] the reason I say it's white supremacy is pretty straightforward: science just isn't the only objective truth, but you're still taught that in school and suchlike. Western science is generally fed to people as the universally most intellectual answer to something, and the more that spirituality takes a perceived or open role in a school of thought, the more 'primitive' or similar that science/the west/whatever will dub that school of thought. In reality, while science is a very effective way to test the world through its own school of thought, it too doesn't have objective or final answers about everything, and it never will. Moreover, while it's really hard to deconstruct the idea that science is the only valid or intellectual answer to something (or at least it was for me), it's also really important to come to realize that there are and have been entire societies who did not think along the same patterns that science does. There are people in the world, currently, whose culture does not revolve around the hypothesis - experiment - conclusion way of thinking. They do not view reality or learning in a remotely similar way. And those cultural differences are extremely important!! Humanity's strength is its diversity of thought and our ability to communicate that diversity of thought. It's how we got so smart in the first place, so we should not dismiss the validity and importance now of all times of other culture's sciences!

Then, to finally tie this into magic and religion, there's a few things that I always want to say on it. One, the line between 'science' as we know it and spirituality of any kind is actually extremely thin. Science really tries to draw a hard line between the two, but in reality that line doesn't really exist. Psychology was alternative medicine before it became commonly accepted. Philosophy is highly highly spiritual to this day, and always has been. Often when you hear scientists talk about evolution they talk about it in the same way that a religious person would talk about God, and that really isn't a coincidence, because ultimately the pursuit of science and religion are both in search of the spiritual fulfilment that a sense of understanding the world gives you. Moreover, though, there are countless forms of science that either go hand in hand with spirituality or eventually warp into spirituality. The attempt to understand spirituality is, in itself, highly scientific, and it involves countless fields like sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, linguistics, politics, theology, cosmology, so on and so forth ad nauseam. You can (and people often do) examine spirituality through the lens of science so studiously that you find yourself at a place where the spirituality and the science are inextricable, because once you understand the spirituality, you understand it, you cannot go back from that.

Two, spirituality is its own science, and that is always the case. Ultimately spirituality is just a different kind of attempt to understand the world and connect with one's environment, and spirituality overwhelmingly originates from the struggle of a shared culture. It's shaped by people's learning how to live off their land and make their lives safe and tolerable. Oftentimes there are extremely complex systems of philosophy, cosmology, and general logic behind the magical and religious motivations of people. Silver wards off vampires because silver is antibacterial and antimicrobial, and vampires were in truth just evil spirits who suck the life out of you (illnesses) which later became the more literal trope of drinking blood. But more complexely even: you'll find that most or all cultures will have, if you look for them and ask the right autorities, very concrete explanations for how their spiritual practices like trances, astral projection, etc work. There is science behind it all. Not western science, per se, but science nonetheless.

[doctor-jonathan-crane]

Recovered Private Journal—DR JONATHAN CRANE

Office of the Chief Administrator, Arkham Asylum

Today, another round of interviews with the “chronically disturbed.” The staff believe I document behavioral patterns. I do. Just not the kind they understand.

Carmine Falcone remains predictably primitive. Guys like him view influence only through wielding crude instruments. His ambition is to own the city’s judiciary, the police, every visible lever of power. As you wish, Mr. Falcone. So long as the shipments remain punctual and the arrangements secure. But he is just a useful, entirely replaceable, variable.

I suspect I am the same; my role is subsumed within a larger framework determined by an external actor. That’s fine. I am still essential to the operation. I have access to the perfect funnel into Gotham’s infrastructure, with the added benefit of institutional cover.

Arkham also offers me exactly what I need to pursue my independent projects. Provided Mr. Falcone refrains from dragging me into court again to fabricate psychological defenses for his thugs, I see no reason for concern. The patients are ideal vectors: unstable, forgotten, and disposable.

And their so-called tormentor is nothing more than an anthropomorphized embodiment of their paranoia. A straw man to deflect from genuine introspection and rehabilitation.

Perhaps someone will question it. The relevance of the Scarecrow. It’s remarkably easy to dismiss the rambling of the clinically insane. Especially when they’re mine.

J.C.

[solarsong-writes]

Extended Author’s Notes for Lives Etched on Our Palms (Part 2)

Let’s talk about the worldbuilding/planning! This will be a long one, considering there was a lot that went into this. I’ll do my best to organize it in a semi-coherent way. 

Contains major spoilers for the fic! 

To begin, how in the world do I incorporate all the Kanamafu prompts into one fic???

For reference, the prompts were the following:

Day 1: 25:00/Knight

Day 2: Flowers/Karaoke

Day 3: Domestic/Passion

Day 4: Parent/Hand-holding

Day 5: Summer/AU

Day 6: Soft/Sekai

Day 7: Light

Credit goes to @cocogatling for even putting the idea in my head to combine all of the prompts into one fic, and I just genuinely thought it would be funny if I could. Looking at the prompts, Knight, Karaoke, and Sekai put the setting in very specific time points, meaning that they were the least flexible. Days 2-7 could be set in modern day/canon, but Knight couldn’t be unless I wanted to have them do a play or something along those lines. I could also set the fic in just a Knight AU and stretch the definition of “karaoke” and show a more primitive version of the “sekai”. None of them felt particularly compelling to me since I wasn’t sure what kind of story I would want to tell with a modern day setting or a medieval knight setting. I could write Kanade and Mafuyu being cute together, but I didn’t want to just do that.

Enter Reincarnation AU. 

Reincarnation AU was very appealing to me. What would it mean to reincarnate? What is the meaning of past lives? If we’re stuck in a cycle of living and dying and living and dying – does that reduce the meaning of each life? Using this, I had a lot more flexibility on what type of story I could tell. I also had something concrete to build my story around (will go more in-depth on themes in another author’s note. I could ramble about the meaning of life and nihilism). 

Reincarnation AU problems:

How do you get people invested in a story that changes every chapter? How do I make it so that the chapters feel like they’re part of one big story and not just completely disparate one-shots? This means I need recurring elements, something that connects each life together. Miku is now a goddess that presides over the entire universe and is present in every life, and Kanade and Mafuyu have a little of their memories transferred over between lives. The former provides a hook, that Kanade and Mafuyu will always find each other after Chapter 1. The latter adds tension, as Kanade and Mafuyu will be increasingly burdened by the sheer amount of memories. Neat. I can now begin some planning!

I like to have a very good idea of where I’m starting and where I’m ending with my fics, so I know what to work towards. The middle can be pretty adjustable as long as I stick to my overall themes and messages. I have general ideas for what I want each chapter (except Summer/AU but that is a very very flexible prompt). 

But where and when is each life taking place?

Because I knew that my end point was in canon, that meant all of my settings had to be grounded in history with very minimal magical or mystical elements outside of the reincarnation aspect. Day 1 had to be medieval because of the knight prompt, and the rest had to be chronological from that. Day 2 is during the renaissance period in Italy (the flower fields mentioned in this chapter are based around real flower fields in Italy). Day 3 is lovingly called “France after war, before another war” (around the 1800s). Day 4 is set in America, around the late 1800s, early 1900s. Day 5 was still unknown– 

“I START OVER WITH A DEAD VARIABLE, COUNTING THEM MADE MY TEMPERATURE RISE” 

The N25 cover of Heat Abnormal came out and gave me one of the most intense bouts of brainrot I’ve had over a song (shoutout to the full version of Kimi no Yoru Wo Kure, one of the most underrated N25 commissions imo). I pictured a ruined world of wastelands and dilapidated buildings, of sand and blowing dust, of people struggling every day to even see the next dawn. And of course, 

“A HOWLING RAY OF LIGHT PIERCES MY EYES. THE BELLS OF PARTING TOLL.” 

Well, I had my climax now. My original plan was for Day 6 to be pre-2000s and we just see an earlier version of the Sekai before Vocaloid even existed. But, now Day 5 was going to be set in the very, very far future with the heat death of the universe (or the sun exploding, pick your poison). But how do I get back to canon time if Day 5 was set in the future? 

I have a goddess, and I’m not afraid to use her.

Miku is already the goddess of the universe, and if people do reincarnate, there already needs to be a place for souls to go to after death. And what is the SEKAI if not another dimension…? Day 6 is now limbo time and I also get to talk about all the fun existential stuff (more on this in another post). If people are stuck in a loop of reincarnation, it’s not much of a stretch to consider that the universe is also stuck in a loop, meaning that we can still have Day 7 be canon time. It’s very important that Day 7 stay canon time because it solves another problem of reincarnation AUs, being:

What is a satisfying ending for a reincarnation AU? 

There would be happy lives, sad lives, bittersweet lives, and everything else in between. It didn’t feel enough to just end on a happy note. I could hypothetically have the two of them remember everything in Day 7, but that didn’t feel right either – especially since they would already have this revelation in Day 6. Even if I did, given the worldbuilding, it would be “meaningless” for them to remember considering they would forget again. So instead, I aimed for this fic to recontextualize canon. The ending would (hopefully) be satisfying because you see the accumulation of all their experiences influence how they act in canon. Why does Kanade push herself so hard to save Mafuyu and Mafuyu specifically (iirc, Ena and Mizuki already expressed to Kanade that they felt saved by her)? Why is Mafuyu very talented at everything? Why can Kanade compose a song at 4 years old (I’m sorry, I’m still not over this)? Ending it in canon also means that even though the fic ends, the canon story will still carry it through. 

What about the other changes you made from your initial planning?

As you may have noticed, Day 3 just says “kids” and originally I was planning on writing Kanade and Mafuyu parenting their children but. I don’t really like small children and I don’t think babies are cute (sorry, I have -2 maternal instincts), so I decided to spare myself. Day 4 changed in what parents were dead as I decided in the end I wanted to explore a role reversal in that chapter (more on this in a characterization post). I also removed the marriage part from Day 2 because I knew Day 3 was already going to explore their “married life”. 

As usual, if there are any other questions about my thoughts on planning, feel free to ask and I’ll get around to answering them! Post(s) about characterization decisions and overall themes will still be coming up! 

Part 1: Headcanons that are actually just canon

[calciumcarbo-bot]

Whats your thoughts on Kinro and Tomi?

[RESPONSE: UNIT S.E.N-KU_v1.03]

Inquiry received: “What’s your thoughts on Kinro and Tomi?”

Assessment:

Kinro: Function: Security lead, moral absolutist, physical deterrent against idiocy. Primary traits: Obsessive rule adherence, primitive but respectable logic, loyalty exceeding normal thresholds for his demographic.

Tomi: Function: Creative engineer, emotional saboteur of herself and others. Primary traits: Lateral thinking, inconsistent communication strategies, unpredictable empathy spikes.

Relational Dynamics:

Observed increases in proximity time: 213% above previous baseline.

Instances of cooperative tasks (e.g., construction, patrols, shared problem-solving): Documented.

Fluctuations in heart rate variability (Kinro ➔ Tomi): Minor, consistent.

Fluctuations in heart rate variability (Tomi ➔ Kinro): Spiking unpredictably, often during periods of mutual silence.

Behavioral Note: Tomi's typical casual antagonism is notably reduced around Kinro. Kinro’s rigid moral framework bends slightly when mediating Tomi’s ideas, a statistically rare behavior for him.

Summary:

Measured, tentative gravitational pull detected. High potential for stabilized companionship if neither party self-sabotages. Moderate risk of catastrophic misunderstanding due to mutual emotional illiteracy.

Supplementary Commentary:

Kinro, bless his heart, treats Tomi like an unstable alloy he doesn’t quite know how to forge—but refuses to discard. Tomi treats Kinro like a puzzle with no box image—and for once, she’s trying not to lose any pieces.

[END TRANSMISSION]

( @kinrovillageguard @chemicallydisinclinedd )

[notaplaceofhonour]

Death of the Author by Roland Barthes

translation by Richard Howard

In his story Sarrasine, Balzac, speaking of a castrato disguised as a woman, writes this sentence: "It was Woman, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her daring and her delicious delicacy of feeling" Who is speaking in this way? Is it the story's hero, concerned to ignore the castrato concealed beneath the woman? Is it the man Balzac, endowed by his personal experience with a philosophy of Woman? Is it the author Balzac, professing certain "literary" ideas of femininity? Is it universal wisdom? or romantic psychology? It will always be impossible to know, for the good reason that all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin: literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.

Probably this has always been the case: once an action is recounted, for intransitive ends, and no longer in order to act directly upon reality — that is, finally external to any function but the very exercise of the symbol — this disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins. Nevertheless, the feeling about this phenomenon has been variable; in primitive societies, narrative is never undertaken by a person, but by a mediator, shaman or speaker, whose "performance" may be admired (that is, his mastery of the narrative code), but not his "genius" The author is a modern figure, produced no doubt by our society insofar as, at the end of the middle ages, with English empiricism, French rationalism and the personal faith of the Reformation, it discovered the prestige of the individual, or, to put it more nobly, of the "human person" Hence it is logical that with regard to literature it should be positivism, resume and the result of capitalist ideology, which has accorded the greatest importance to the author's "person" The author still rules in manuals of literary history, in biographies of writers, in magazine interviews, and even in the awareness of literary men, anxious to unite, by their private journals, their person and their work; the image of literature to be found in contemporary culture is tyrannically centered on the author, his person, his history, his tastes, his passions; criticism still consists, most of the time, in saying that Baudelaire's work is the failure of the man Baudelaire, Van Gogh's work his madness, Tchaikovsky's his vice: the explanation of the work is always sought in the man who has produced it, as if, through the more or less transparent allegory of fiction, it was always finally the voice of one and the same person, the author, which delivered his "confidence."

Though the Author's empire is still very powerful (recent criticism has often merely consolidated it), it is evident that for a long time now certain writers have attempted to topple it. In France, Mallarme was doubtless the first to see and foresee in its full extent the necessity of substituting language itself for the man who hitherto was supposed to own it; for Mallarme, as for us, it is language which speaks, not the author: to write is to reach, through a preexisting impersonality — never to be confused with the castrating objectivity of the realistic novelist — that point where language alone acts, "performs," and not "oneself": Mallarme's entire poetics consists in suppressing the author for the sake of the writing (which is, as we shall see, to restore the status of the reader.) Valery, encumbered with a psychology of the Self, greatly edulcorated Mallarme's theory, but, turning in a preference for classicism to the lessons of rhetoric, he unceasingly questioned and mocked the Author, emphasized the linguistic and almost "chance" nature of his activity, and throughout his prose works championed the essentially verbal condition of literature, in the face of which any recourse to the writer's inferiority seemed to him pure superstition. It is clear that Proust himself, despite the apparent psychological character of what is called his analyses, undertook the responsibility of inexorably blurring, by an extreme subtilization, the relation of the writer and his characters: by making the narrator not the person who has seen or felt, nor even the person who writes, but the person who will write (the young man of the novel — but, in fact, how old is he, and who is he? — wants to write but cannot, and the novel ends when at last the writing becomes possible), Proust has given modern writing its epic: by a radical reversal, instead of putting his life into his novel, as we say so often, he makes his very life into a work for which his own book was in a sense the model, so that it is quite obvious to us that it is not Charlus who imitates Montesquiou, but that Montesquiou in his anecdotal, historical reality is merely a secondary fragment, derived from Charlus. Surrealism lastly — to remain on the level of this prehistory of modernity — surrealism doubtless could not accord language a sovereign place, since language is a system and since what the movement sought was, romantically, a direct subversion of all codes — an illusory subversion, moreover, for a code cannot be destroyed, it can only be "played with"; but by abruptly violating expected meanings (this was the famous surrealist "jolt"), by entrusting to the hand the responsibility of writing as fast as possible what the head itself ignores (this was automatic writing), by accepting the principle and the experience of a collective writing, surrealism helped secularize the image of the Author. Finally, outside of literature itself (actually, these distinctions are being superseded), linguistics has just furnished the destruction of the Author with a precious analytic instrument by showing that utterance in its entirety is a void process, which functions perfectly without requiring to be filled by the person of the interlocutors: linguistically, the author is never anything more than the man who writes, just as I is no more than the man who says I: language knows a "subject," not a "person," end this subject, void outside of the very utterance which defines it, suffices to make language "work," that is, to exhaust it.

The absence of the Author (with Brecht, we might speak here of a real "alienation:' the Author diminishing like a tiny figure at the far end of the literary stage) is not only a historical fact or an act of writing: it utterly transforms the modern text (or — what is the same thing — the text is henceforth written and read so that in it, on every level, the Author absents himself). Time, first of all, is no longer the same. The Author, when we believe in him, is always conceived as the past of his own book: the book and the author take their places of their own accord on the same line, cast as a before and an after: the Author is supposed to feed the book — that is, he pre-exists it, thinks, suffers, lives for it; he maintains with his work the same relation of antecedence a father maintains with his child. Quite the contrary, the modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the subject of which his book is the predicate; there is no other time than that of the utterance, and every text is eternally written here and now. This is because (or: it follows that) to write can no longer designate an operation of recording, of observing, of representing, of "painting" (as the Classic writers put it), but rather what the linguisticians, following the vocabulary of the Oxford school, call a performative, a rare verbal form (exclusively given to the first person and to the present), in which utterance has no other content than the act by which it is uttered: something like the / Command of kings or the I Sing of the early bards; the modern writer, having buried the Author, can therefore no longer believe, according to the "pathos" of his predecessors, that his hand is too slow for his thought or his passion, and that in consequence, making a law out of necessity, he must accentuate this gap and endlessly "elaborate" his form; for him, on the contrary, his hand, detached from any voice, borne by a pure gesture of inscription (and not of expression), traces a field without origin — or which, at least, has no other origin than language itself, that is, the very thing which ceaselessly questions any origin.

We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single "theological" meaning (the "message" of the Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture. Like Bouvard and Pecuchet, those eternal copyists, both sublime and comical and whose profound absurdity precisely designates the truth of writing, the writer can only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original; his only power is to combine the different kinds of writing, to oppose some by others, so as never to sustain himself by just one of them; if he wants to express himself, at least he should know that the internal "thing" he claims to "translate" is itself only a readymade dictionary whose words can be explained (defined) only by other words, and so on ad infinitum: an experience which occurred in an exemplary fashion to the young De Quincey, so gifted in Greek that in order to translate into that dead language certain absolutely modern ideas and images, Baudelaire tells us, "he created for it a standing dictionary much more complex and extensive than the one which results from the vulgar patience of purely literary themes" (Paradis Artificiels). succeeding the Author, the writer no longer contains within himself passions, humors, sentiments, impressions, but that enormous dictionary, from which he derives a writing which can know no end or halt: life can only imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, a lost, infinitely remote imitation.

Once the Author is gone, the claim to "decipher" a text becomes quite useless. To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing. This conception perfectly suits criticism, which can then take as its major task the discovery of the Author (or his hypostases: society, history, the psyche, freedom) beneath the work: once the Author is discovered, the text is "explained:' the critic has conquered; hence it is scarcely surprising not only that, historically, the reign of the Author should also have been that of the Critic, but that criticism (even "new criticism") should be overthrown along with the Author. In a multiple writing, indeed, everything is to be distinguished, but nothing deciphered; structure can be followed, "threaded" (like a stocking that has run) in all its recurrences and all its stages, but there is no underlying ground; the space of the writing is to be traversed, not penetrated: writing ceaselessly posits meaning but always in order to evaporate it: it proceeds to a systematic exemption of meaning. Thus literature (it would be better, henceforth, to say writing), by refusing to assign to the text (and to the world as text) a "secret:' that is, an ultimate meaning, liberates an activity which we might call counter-theological, properly revolutionary, for to refuse to arrest meaning is finally to refuse God and his hypostases, reason, science, the law.

Let us return to Balzac's sentence: no one (that is, no "person") utters it: its source, its voice is not to be located; and yet it is perfectly read; this is because the true locus of writing is reading. Another very specific example can make this understood: recent investigations (J. P. Vernant) have shed light upon the constitutively ambiguous nature of Greek tragedy, the text of which is woven with words that have double meanings, each character understanding them unilaterally (this perpetual misunderstanding is precisely what is meant by "the tragic"); yet there is someone who understands each word in its duplicity, and understands further, one might say, the very deafness of the characters speaking in front of him: this someone is precisely the reader (or here the spectator). In this way is revealed the whole being of writing: a text consists of multiple writings, issuing from several cultures and entering into dialogue with each other, into parody, into contestation; but there is one place where this multiplicity is collected, united, and this place is not the author, as we have hitherto said it was, but the reader: the reader is the very space in which are inscribed, without any being lost, all the citations a writing consists of; the unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination; but this destination can no longer be personal: the reader is a man without history, without biography, without psychology; he is only that someone who holds gathered into a single field all the paths of which the text is constituted. This is why it is absurd to hear the new writing condemned in the name of a humanism which hypocritically appoints itself the champion of the reader's rights. The reader has never been the concern of classical criticism; for it, there is no other man in literature but the one who writes. We are now beginning to be the dupes no longer of such antiphrases, by which our society proudly champions precisely what it dismisses, ignores, smothers or destroys; we know that to restore to writing its future, we must reverse its myth: the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author.

[max1461]

Anyway. If I was Dennis Ritchie I would have made the syntax for

x = y;

be

&x <- y;

or more generally,

ptr <- y;

would be how you do

*ptr = y;

Uh, using a variable name should only refer to the variable's value, and to refer to the variable as such you should use a pointer. I think that would be desirable.

Anyway the syntax for declaring a variable should be like

stack x : int

to allocate on the stack, or

heap x : int

to allocate on the heap.

Actually, no never mind. My programming language will have algebraic data types, but the primitive types and type constructors are all packaged with code that actually implements the type by allocating memory etc., which is run when you declare a variable. And you can write your own constructors that implement your own code (so class templates basically, but philosophically different). So "stack" and "heap" will be type constructors, and int is a primitive, so "stack int" and "heap int" are new types that allocate on the stack and heap, respectively. Product types and recursive function types would be implemented in the obvious way, coproduct types I assume also have a standard sort of implementation.

Uh so anyway you'd declare a variable like

dec x : stack int;

which declares an x whose type is stack int, so it's allocated on the stack. In this framework x is basically a pointer; you'd have a deference operator * : (stack T | heap T) -> T which returns "pure" types e.g. values. Uh so like, you could declare a function

dec func : stack (stack int -> int)

which is itself stored on the stack, and takes in an integer variable by reference and spits out a pure integer. Yeah I'd like to program in this way. Maybe I'll make this language in the future but probably not.