#stunted development

[jbfly46]

I feel like the only way redundant software platforms, especially refundant social media software platforms like Threads, and kinda like Tik Tok, wouldn’t be able to maintain operations, due to low user rates, unless there are a significant amount of people trying to maintain their delusions by continuing to look for new echo chambers, aka, safe spaces, anytime one of their delusional echo chamber bubbles starts to deflate, as a lot of them clearly have bodily processes involved with survival tied up with their delusions, and this may actually be the reason for the formation of their delusions in the first place.

[noodles-and-tea]

For the twins in time AU, I genuinely wonder what kind of people the young twins grow up into because of Stan’s/Ford’s influence. Especially if it takes years for the portal to get fixed.

(Sorry if it seems like I already sent this question, I don’t know if it got sent the first time I asked)

I haven’t fully fleshed out how Ford grows up in the past but I do have thoughts on Stan presently

[aflockofravens]

Also, Jinshi in "How to Buy Out a Contract" was hilarious.

Do you think he's prettier than me

I was contemplating your murder but my future wife cat thinks you'll make a good brother in law so I'll let you live

My future wife cat trusts you, so I trust you. Don't fuck it up.

Have some money to leave my future wife alone forever go marry her sister

Did you see that Gaoshun? I did a socializing. Do you think Maomao will be proud of me?

Also Lihaku is precious. What an adorable golden retriever of a man. He went from absolute disdain at Maomao when she approached him for an escort to being like "help me little sister, I'm in love".

[robo-milky]

Who to Go? [Fragmentation AU]

[Read: Left -> Right] [CW: (slight) Angst]

Hehe, remember them?

[edorazzi]

Page 3 of my Miraculous Mentor AU comic A Matter of Trust! In which Felix adjusts to life in Paris and grows up to be a perfectly normal, emotionally healthy teenager! 😬

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Weekly updates each Sunday! You can also read ahead early on Patreon, and/or buy me a Ko-fi if you'd like to support my work! 💖

[lydiduh]

I performed a trick a couple months ago where I turned from STRAIGHT....

...hhhUh...

....tuhGay!

[oetscop]

GUYS IT JUST HIT ME. ARE THE TWEEZERS IN PETSCOP AN ALLEGORY FOR GROOMING.

[timegears]

god please remind me never to go into the balls-deep shipping side of the utdr fandom because obviously this is not exclusive to this fandom but the way some of you talk about noelle's "obsession" with susie just feels like you're desperate to call her a predatory lesbian lmao

[charmwasjess]

you know the drill

💔&🖤

Ohh, Boli, my love, you got me comin' in hot here:

💔: If you had to remove one major character from the series, who would you choose?

Honestly? It’s Dooku. 

The films fail him as a character. He’s there to kill time between villains, foreshadow Anakin's fall, and because Lucas wanted a respected film icon in his prequels the way he had Cushing and Guinness in the OT.

"But Jess, he's your fav and you're uncomfortably horny about him on main?!" you might ask. Yes, Dooku has an incredible backstory, a huge amount of narrative and emotional complexity, and a burning pile of potential, but it is never addressed or expanded on in the films. He has no arc or dynamic development - even his political scenes with Padme hit the cutting room floor. His motives for leaving the Order or joining the Sith are confused at best, shunted to supplemental canon, and the fake war plot is arguably one of the weakest and most confusing aspects of the prequels. He isn’t even given last words; fitting in the scene, also a perfect summary for how the character is used in the narrative. 

Imagining him gone is also an interesting possible fix-it recipe. So: lil' baby Doo gets turned into a spinewolf snackpack back in bby 101 or whatever and never exists. Okay, without Dooku there to save his life, teenaged Sifo-Dyas is either a. smashed by a falling city, b. drowned in hospital basement bacta flood, or c. tortured to death by Evil Moss (holy shit Dooku rescues him a LOT in that damn book). Between the two of them, that means the clone army is out. And if Qui-Gon had a different Master, one who actually put their foot down about the prophecy holocron instead of codependently indulging him, would he still have gotten obsessed with it to the point that it built into his obsession with the Chosen One and actions with Anakin? Maybe, maybe.

🖤: Which character is not as morally good as everyone else seems to think?

It’s ironic that my man Qui-Gon has become the canon poster child for The Only Truest Goodest Jedi, the exception to the so-called arrogance of the late stage Order, when his actions in Phantom Menace are a laundry list of things people routinely blame the Jedi for doing. Now, I love Qui-Gon, he’s my first favorite character, but let me just give a quick bad faith summary of his actions in TPM just to prove my point before I round back around:

convinces an enslaved child to participate in a deadly race, then buys the child from profits gained from betting on the race’s outcome

blatantly ignores priorities of intergalactic crisis to pursue the goals of his own fringe spiritual beliefs and conspiracy theories

takes said untrained 9 year old child into active combat after being told expressly not to train him 

Of course, this is a bad faith summary: all those decisions have greater nuance and narrative context. (Tho, actually, why did Anakin come to Naboo... nevermind) This is not to say I think Qui-Gon is secretly bad or something.

But I think people reduce Qui-Gon down to:

Qui-Gon follows his instincts to commune with plants and rescue cute animals :3 

When the reality is (also!):

Qui-Gon follows his instincts to do some morally dubious bad optics shit that works out for him by the end, which is a thing he learned to do from watching Dooku break shit with no consequences btw, and not a uniquely different approach from all other Jedi

I've said it before, I'll say it a thousand times: let Qui-Gon be a beautiful problem, that is part of the joy of the character!  

[warlenys]

the glenn macdennis comment hurt obviously but also so necessarily cause i’d gotten too delusional i was too obsessed with the potential final prize instead of fully enjoying what i love about what macden is rn which is the saddest awfulest gay tragedy ever written this is such a good catalyst for lowering my expectations and just living laughing loving in the doomed queerbait this is what shipping’s about what fandom’s about what life is about let us rest peacefully knowing that we absolutely will still get shit and it’ll be crazy and funny and sad but ultimately the power to make it beautiful lies with us. as the queerbait gods intended

[jbfly46]

"Long term thinking ability" refers to the cognitive skill of being able to consider and plan for future consequences of current actions, essentially looking beyond the immediate present to envision and work towards a desired future outcome, making decisions based on potential long-term impacts rather than just short-term gains.

Key aspects of long term thinking ability:

Visionary perspective: The ability to see a bigger picture and imagine possible future scenarios.

Strategic planning: Deliberately considering different pathways and choices to achieve long-term goals.

Future-oriented decision making: Evaluating current actions based on how they might affect the future.

Resilience and patience: Understanding that achieving long-term goals may require sustained effort over time.

Risk assessment: Identifying potential challenges and obstacles that could impact future plans.

[bucephaly]

Amazing take on the dash tonight. 'I think most people actually don't want or value or need romantic affection or attachment and that most people are aro' uhhhhhhhhhhhh????

Also like. I'm p sure what constitutes the difference between romantic and platonic and sexual affection and attraction is purely cultural and different to everyone. I wish people would stop focusing so hard on the idea that these labels are like actual objectively true things about people. Like, would some people probably be happier without feeling forced to pursue relationships by society? Sure. But saying that most people are Actually Aromantic and that 'very few' people actually want or value romantic attachment ???? I'm honestly kinda tired of these like 'most people are Actually bi lol' 'most people are at least a Little ace!!' Etc etc type takes. 'No one is Actually cis' like can you shut upppppp these words are just WORDS for extremely abstract cultural concepts that mean different things to everyone yall do not need to take them this seriously. And im just so tired of people being like 'man knowing about this identity helped me, im sure Everyone feels like this and Everyone actually secretly hates this common thing' like uhhhh no. They don't. Lol.

[kevin-the-bruyne]

pray for my son bison he’s about to engage in teenage rebellion at the impressionable age of 24 against his brother who is simultaneously experiencing his sexual awakening at the age of *checks notes* nearly thirty

[radioactivepeasant]

Free Day Thursday:

"Responsible Adults", the sequel: Jak tries to do a regular Jak Stunt and is shocked that it doesn't go over well

(Roughly a week after this one ends. Long post warning, as most of these are lol)

Night terrors were not an uncommon experience for Jak. They may not have been his nightly companions anymore, but when he did have them, they were intense. He woke up in a corner of his room, wedged beneath the sink. There was a vague sense that he was taking cover from something, or someone.

Blessedly, he remembered no details of the nightmare. But the terror still sent his guts quivering the way they had in the prison. Huddled under the cot both for warmth and silently praying the boots wouldn't stop at his door. That he wouldn't end up Tyber's new punching bag when he got bored of the old man in the cell above Jak's.

Tyber is dead. Errol is dead. Praxis is dead. I watched them die.

Jak repeated the words like a mantra until he could move his limbs again. He crawled out from beneath the sink, but the lingering fear made his room feel claustrophobic. Smaller than it really was.

At least he hadn't woken Daxter this time.

Jak put on his boots, but didn't bother getting fully dressed. He didn't even know what time it was. Why bother if the doctor and the king guy were just going to nag him about being sleep-deprived anyway?

It must have been early morning, before dawn; the moon had vanished and people were outside doing repair work on houses and fog-catchers.

Early morning was the best time to get any outdoor work done in Spargus. A small girl led a flock of caprids out of the stables and towards one of the other districts to graze on the cactus there, and a gang of trainees only a little older than Jak were taking advantage of the temperature to do an endurance run around the city.

Personally, Jak didn't see the good of such things. You learned to be fast enough or smart enough to escape your enemies, or you didn't. He'd learned through life and death experience, not a footrace with no winners.

"Easy with the straps there!" A stocky man backed into Jak, calling up to a team of three people.

"Ope-! Scuse me there, pipsqueak." The Wastelander stepped to the side as if Jak was barely worth noticing.

"Howland, that thing ain't cinched tight enough!"

They seemed to be trying to remove a corroded beam from the supports of one of the multi dwelling houses. It was already leaning at a precarious angle, as big around as a grown man. If that beam came down the wrong way, it would take a lot of the adobe structure -- and probably a lot of people -- with it.

"It's fine, Daru!" Howland complained, "I just cinched it!"

"Well cinch it again! That sucker’s leanin'!"

Jak frowned, but let his curiosity wash away the dregs of the night terrors.

"What's wrong with it?"

The unofficial foreman tugged at a bushy red mustache and shook his head. "Don't rightly know yet. Could just be age. Sand storms and salt air will do a number on this kind of metal after a while."

Jak wondered if that had anything to do with Sandover using wood and stone almost exclusively. He was about to ask why it had been anchored to a mud wall when there was a loud metallic clang. The last bracket holding the beam snapped under the weight, and the straps weren't enough to hold it.

Jak didn't remember moving. But then he was there, with the beam on his shoulders and the foreman on the ground, having narrowly avoided being crushed to death. Cold metal dug into his hands, pressed down against his head, and Jak knew that by rights he should've been dead.

There was a thrill of revulsion in his chest when he reluctantly acknowledged that the only reason he was standing right now was that the dark eco experiments had lengthened his muscle strands to twice the size of a normal hu'men's. It wasn't just in his dark form. That element of...unnatural...was just with him. Every moment.

"Frith! Oh my- HOWLAND! GET DOWN HERE!" Daru roared, "YOU COULDA KILLED SOMEBODY!"

"I got it," Jak said through gritted teeth. "Is there a place to put this thing down?"

"Not yet," Howland admitted as he shimmied down a ladder.

"We were going to cut it into pieces once it was secure, transport it that way to be recycled."

Jak craned his neck, but the motion jarred the beam. Hastily, he adjusted his grip.

"What's- What's around me?"

"Too much," said Daru grimly. "Just- Hold on, kid."

He winced at the boy's flat stare.

"Er...no pun intended. We're gonna, gonna get you out from under there, I promise!"

"Get it cut up first," Jak grunted, "And you won't have to worry about getting me out."

"And what if your hands get sweaty, huh?" Daru demanded, "Fat chance, little man! We're going to find something to hold this up!"

The other two men hurried down from the roof with saws in hand.

Oh gods. Handsaws. This was going to take a while.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Honestly, Damas should have been expecting trouble when he didn't start his day with a free heart attack after seeing eyeshine in the kitchen. The kid was diametrically opposed to the concept of sleep, so he wouldn't have been in bed. If he was off his routine -- and by now Damas had learned to dread something interrupting the kid's self-imposed routine -- then there was probably going to be trouble later.

When he refilled the fuel in the Beacon, fed the birds, and actually had a cup of coffee uninterrupted, he was suspicious.

When the sun rose and there were no echoes of truncated curses in the halls from guards running into Jak, he started to wonder if the kid had decided to work outside. Unusual, but as long as he didn't do anything that would make Dr. Petros yell at them both, more power to him.

But when the talking ottsel showed up in the throne room about an hour after dawn, frantically demanding to know where Jak was, Damas was concerned.

Those two were attached at the hip! Jak wouldn't have gone to look for work without Daxter.

There was a small crowd forming by the time Damas stepped outside. People were shouting encouragements, or conflicting advice about pulleys and snatchblocks. Had something fallen? Damas hadn't heard any impacts. As he began to pick his way through the crowd, the shouts took on new meaning.

"He's slipping! Somebody get under there!"

"How many more hands do you want? There's ten people holding the beam up!"

"Why won't he just let go?!"

"Standing this long, maybe his arms locked up-?"

A beam? People holding a beam-?

An accident. There'd been an accident and night watch hadn't caught it.

Thoughts of crushed citizens and mangled houses circled Damas’s imagination as he pushed through the rest of the crowd, close enough to hear the rasp of handsaws and the buzz of a lone angle grinder.

"Get the cart back in!" Someone yelled, "Next piece is almost off!"

From the looks of things, a crew of four had reduced a two-story high support beam by a third.

Ten Wastelanders were beneath the colossal pole, hands and shoulders braced against the metal as it shrieked and groaned. If even one of them slipped-!

Damas threw down his staff without thinking to join them, racing to catch the end beginning to slide.

"What happened?" he demanded, straining with the others to keep it from crushing the houses and themselves.

"Tie straps broke!" a man three people down called back, "If it weren't for the kid, it woulda come down right through the roofs of a couple houses!"

Kid?

Oh gods don't tell me...

Jak was standing in the very center of the line. His arms trembled, and sweat poured down his face. He didn't seem to hear anything happening around him, too focused on keeping his grip. He was beginning to pale.

"What's he doing here?!"

"Dunno!" A woman to the left answered. "He was already there when me and the girls showed up, but that was two hours ago."

"Hours?!"

Jak had been out here for hours, trapped, and Damas had been none the wiser?

"Why hasn't anyone gotten him out yet?!"

"We tried! The poor kid froze up!"

Damas gritted his teeth and pushed away images of the kid standing alone under that crushing weight for hours until help had woken up.

"Get a truck and winch out of the pit!" He ordered, "Forget damage to the streets, we'll fix it later! I want this thing taken care of now."

It took a full twenty minutes to get the Dozer through the narrow streets of the tower district. By that time, those who had been holding the beam first had cycled out for fresh arms to allow for water and eco. All except Jak. He'd accepted some water that someone poured into his mouth earlier, but still seemed to be unable to let go. He was at the fulcrum point, he insisted, and he wasn't going to let it tip. (Not that he thought he'd actually be able to move at this point.)

Fifteen people attached pulleys and cables to the beam from above, careful not to dislodge the hands of those below. When the cables had all been hooked to the Dozer's winch, the weight began, at last, to lessen.

There was a ragged cheer from the assembled Wastelanders as the end of the beam tipped up and the rescuers eased the other end to the ground. There would be extensive damage to infrastructure to deal with. But nobody had died, and there were no major injuries, and Damas would count that as a victory. Shaking out aching arms, he hurried to the center of the line, where someone was physically holding Jak upright. Damas took hold of the boy's stiff arms carefully.

"It's gone," he said, easing the limbs down, "It's gone, let go, Jak. Come on, you're done."

The kid made a sound, a soft rasping whine that might’ve been words. Then he collapsed.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

When the world drifted back into focus, Jak didn't know where he was. The smell of eco lingered around him, confusing the other scents that could have identified his location. He couldn't move his arms. Why couldn't he move his arms?!

It took a massive effort just to pry his eyelids up. Jak’s breath caught harshly between his teeth as he forced himself onto his side.

Well, that explained the lack of mobility in his arms. He ached like he'd been fighting beyond his limits again. The injection sites would be agitated again, he knew without looking. The pain radiated from his shoulders to his fingertips, skin, muscle, and bone.

The room was a blur. Brown and yellow slowly settled into more colors, ending in something either white or pale blue in front of his nose. The longer he stared at it, the more detail he could see. Pills of thread, clinging to loosely woven fabric. The texture and shape of the warp and weft shifted as he tried to move his hand.

He hissed in pain.

"Well that's what happens when you try to make a career as a load-bearing wall."

Jak tensed. Not alone. Not with Daxter.

Biting down on the pain, he dug his fingers into the pallet beneath him and forced himself upright.

This wasn't the hospital -- small blessings -- but it wasn't his room either. There was a low wooden bedframe on a wall a few feet away, on the other side of some kind of half partition full of plants.

"Where...?"

"Well you're about to think of it as prison," Damas answered from the opposite direction.

He was sitting at a table, hunched over a cup of coffee. The empty pot beside him was a story of its own.

"By the way, you're grounded."

"What?!" Jak sputtered. He started to get up, but fell back onto the pallet with a grunt of pain.

"Like rot!"

Damas glanced back over his shoulder. "Take it up with the doctor. He put you on bedrest, not me. Better yet, blame your own self! You could've let go at any time once the rest of the district turned up to help!"

"The whole...district?"

Jak blinked.

"I don't...remember that..."

Damas sighed and peered into into his mug.

"You've been sleeping most of the day, I'm not surprised. Even with the eco you'll probably be sore for a while."

"How -- ow! -- long was I out there?"

Jak cringed at the look in Damas’s eyes when the man turned around fully.

"Four. Hours. Four hours! Why didn't you let go when others arrived?!"

Was this a trick question? It had to be a trick question.

"Be...cause...I'm not supposed to let other people get hurt?" Jak answered with slow confusion.

Damas stared in complete silence for several seconds. Then,

"You're insane. My foster-son is insane. That's insane! In what world is "throw the youngest under the pillar" a rational solution?!"

"Uh. Haven?" Jak muttered peevishly. He tried to sit up again. "Look, just. Tell me which way my room is and I'll get out of your hair."

Damas pushed his chair back with a scraping sound.

"Mn. No. What part of "bed rest" didn't you hear?"

In brusque motions, he knelt and pulled the blanket back over Jak.

"You are not to do anything even mildly strenuous, or Petros will strangle me. And since I apparently can't trust you not to willingly walk into harm's way unsupervised, you get to camp out in here, and I get to work from home for the next few days to make sure you don't go try to lift a car or something!"

Jak was appalled. "You can't do that!"

Dry as dust, Damas retorted, "First of all, I'm king. Secondly, I'm your legal guardian. Yes I can."

Jak groaned in frustration.

"Where's Daxter?"

"Not grounded."

"Oh come on!"

[unopenablebox]

also, like, just for everyone's reference, that "ai effects on brain engagement with writing" paper is from the MIT media lab specifically, a bizarre department composed of a mix of different labs from different fields which ostensibly are meant to allow for unusual crossdisciplinary or otherwise out-of-the-box research, and in fact are mostly very self-consciously designed to a very specific vision of what "out of the box" means that hit a small set of very trendy research topics. often they do very hype-conscious slightly fluffy conceptual work about popular topics (AI, robotics, consciousness, human-tech interactions, etc) that get very widely promoted in order to encourage funding by the kind of individual philanthropist who's really into that kind of thing.

those labs do sometimes produce good research, but it's very conspicuous that they're not actually situated in a research department where they would be surrounded by their actual peers in the discipline and receive feedback and supervision by other experts. like, it's not that any given work from that department is definitely suspect in its methods or anything. it's just that, if your main interest was in doing good neuroscience, there is a whole MIT neuroscience department already, and the choice to instead be in the flashy self-promotion department and frame all your questions in the flashy self-promotion framing is. at least kind of notable.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Outdrawn

f/f contemporary romance

two cartoonist who’ve been rivals since uni, and now have competing webcomics online, have to work together on the relaunch of a cult classic at the comic press they both work at

they both struggle with art-related physical and mental health issues, and complicated families