#they've had this functioning system since the start

[murky-tannin]

As Badboyhalo said, it’s not what they are running on or what is important to their candidacy, unlike Cellbit and Forever’s campaigns! Baghera DID offer an idea as well, as much as Cellbit tried to claim it didn’t count lol. But again, whether they have ideas for community projects or mods or whatever themselves doesn’t matter. Because the whole point is to promote those who DO have passionate plans like Cellbit or Mike and guarantee that those individual ideas are not only heard, but what the community (and not one person in power) wants.

I think what Cellbit was trying to ask BBH and Baghera was what were their personal ideas. Like, sure, let's say you make a council. What are the ideas *you* are going to propose to the council?

I was also getting frustrated with them not getting in depth with that, and understand why Cellbit would come to the conclusion they don't have ideas.

It seems a bit idealistic to me personally and to the brazillian candidates, and I was wondering if there truly is cultural difference that made us inclined to think that.

[pokemonshelterstories]

Hi, love the blog!

I don't think you've written about this before (if you have you can just ignore it), but is it okay to use ancient pokeballs for catching pokemon in this day and age? Some context: I recently found a journal from my great-grandmother while helping my grandparents downsize, and she had copied the crafting recipes for multiple items from another family member's journal, who copied from a different family member who lived in Hisui not long after Jubilife Village was fully built (apparently meticulous notes runs in the family lol). According to my grandmother, she kept the recipes for posterity, but no one since that first family member has had any interest in using the recipes.

I've decided to try my hand at making these Hisuian pokeballs, just to see if I can do it. A buddy of mine has an apricorn tree that he said I could get apricorns from, and my rock-loving nephew's already found tumblestone deposits during our weekly nature walks. I even bought some tools to get started. If this works out, I'd even like to use the pokeballs to catch a pokemon of my own if I can (I've never had one before).

My question is if there's a downside to using them in the modern day. Obviously there'll be some technological features missing, but it'd be fine to use the Hisuian pokeballs, right?

Also, a bonus question: if I can use the Hisuian pokeballs, do you have any suggestions for pokemon to catch? I like the idea of having a crafting buddy to work with me (I live in an apartment in Unova if that helps).

Thanks!

yes, you can! these pokeballs are still made today by heritage craftsmen like kurt of azalea (though i think his granddaughter recently took over the business?)

they're perfectly safe to use if they've been made properly and are well cared for. however, it's highly recommended to have the apricorn-based pokeball shell fitted with modern storage system chips. these are cheap to get- i think my sibling pays about 1500 poke for a pack of 100 of them, and installing them isn't too difficult from what i hear. this will give you access to the international pokemon storage system on that pokeball.

they function pretty much the same as mechanical pokeballs, but they do require more maintenance. i purchased one as a souvenir once, and i was told to apply an abrasion- and weather-resistant coating every couple of years if i planned to actually use it for a pokemon. apricorns are naturally very durable, but getting thrown around on a regular basis takes its toll.

i can't really recommend a pokemon for you with just these details, but if this is your first, just make sure that you really know what you're getting into before you catch a pokemon! unova has some great pokemon, but not all of them are suited for your first time raising a pokemon, and you also need to make sure whatever pokemon you catch is allowed in your apartment and can be comfortable living there.

[tgmsunmontue]

Caring, Keeping and Collecting Transformers - A Guide 18/?

Maverick is unknowingly surrounded by Transformers. He knows something is up though. Just not quite what it is exactly.

Bradley and Jake, having never met, are embarking on their own journeys and will have to learn to deal with the fact that they've both been adopted by Transformers.

Despite having years more experience, Maverick is no help at all.

ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN FIFTEEN SIXTEEN SEVENTEEN

PART EIGHTEEN

                When they go back to the hangar the next morning there is light behind Jetfire’s eyes and he is sitting up and talking to Starscream. Tom doesn’t think he’s ever seen Starscream look as happy as he does right now. Seresin is already there, sitting beside him, knees pulled up to his chest, grin wide as he also talks. As Tom gets closer he hears that Seresin is recounting the fact that he has been gathering Jetfire’s parts since he was a child and to see him whole and alive is beyond his wildest imagination.

                “Don’t think your imagination stretched to Transformers…” Bradley mutters with a grin, shoving at Seresin a little from where he’s sitting beside him.

                Hmm. They do look comfortable together, maybe there is some truth to Maverick’s wild theory that they’re a couple. Except why would Bradley simply not tell them? Well. Actually he’s only recently back in their lives and he’s only known Seresin… well. It’s over four months now, nearly five. So it’s not a reason but it’s maybe an explanation for not sharing.

                “He will need rest. As his circuits continue to fuse they will become stronger. He should not attempt to transform until at least a week has passed,” Sally is explaining, and both Seresin and Bradley are listening to her intently, and Maverick has joined them.

                “Are you not staying?” Mav asks, and Tom can tell he’s torn. Because Tom is pretty sure Mav was planning on trying to ask Sally to ferry him back and forth between his hangar and here.

                “My work here is done. Staple can carry out any further work.”

                Oh. Ice feels a spike of disappointment at that, that his own little Transformer will not be travelling back with him.

                “How do you know all this anyway?”

                “Jetfire is not the first of us I have assisted bringing back from the brink of existence. I did not think I would ever need to use my area of expertise again, however I am glad it proved useful.”

                Tom blinks at that, feels like he maybe hasn’t been asking the right questions given that he never thought Sally might have had another purpose other than the mediator position she had stepped into. He hopes he has a chance to talk with her further, now that he has yet another line of enquiry to follow.

…            …            …

                Jake is so fucking happy. He can tell Starscream is, but also Jetfire is quietly recalibrating and he can hardly believe that this is his life right now. That this project he started well over a decade ago, that kept him company so many days and nights through his teenage years is now whole, functioning and talking. Is also a lot less sarcastic and biting than Starscream, clearly grateful to be alive and in a soon to be fully functional body.

                Staple is skating all over Jetfire’s body, peering into joints, sparks occasionally appearing and sometimes parts of Jetfire will jerk unexpectedly and Sally has reassured that it’s normal, the systems all testing themselves out. They have to trust she knows what she’s talking about, and that Staple knows what he’s doing. She’s flying back to the hangar this afternoon, taking Dustdrift with her and Jake wonders where their loyalties lie, if anywhere.

…            …            …

                A few days pass and things have sort of settled back to normal, given that their normal includes Transformers and flying. Fuck he loves his life. Mav has gone back with Ice for a few days, although Ice had insisted on flying, which means that Ninja is busy kicking around, driving around solo and getting so bored he’s started offering the other scientists and personnel rides up and down the airstrip. He and Jake continue joining the Top Gun classes whenever they need bogeys, and he knows their flying together is becoming seamless, something others are commenting on. Jake has speed but Bradley has precision, making them a deadly combination in the air.

                His need to go and get laid hasn’t lessened at all. Has in fact gotten worse, and he knows he needs to go and do something about it because sometimes he finds himself watching Jake and wondering what his fingers would feel like on his skin. He knows he shouldn’t be thinking about a friend not like that. Not one he wants to keep having as a friend anyway.

…            …            …

                It’s late. Well. Not that late, but late enough that he’s thinking about going to bed. Bradley disappeared into his bedroom about an hour ago, although he hadn’t said goodnight; that’s not unusual considering Jake usually ends up in his bed within an hour or two of him going to bed anyway. He’s trying to give Bradley some space, because he’s been acting a little weird.

                “I’m… uh. I’m going out.”

                He’s wearing clothes Jake hasn’t seen on him before, tighter and darker jeans for a start and a black t-shirt that also looks tight, emphasizing his biceps and it’s a simple outfit, however he looks good. Has done his hair and maybe trimmed his moustache.

                “Fuck. I just… I really need to get laid.”

                Jake doesn’t quite choke on his drink but he does have to cough. He gets where Bradley is coming from though, they’ve not exactly got a huge range of social activities and while he enjoys Bradley’s company Bradley has made no indication that he might be interested in anything more than the friendship they have. And even if he was, they have to work together, and live together, and to throw a relationship into that seems like far too much of a risk. It’s not like they can be split up and deployed elsewhere.

                “Uh, don’t drink and drive I guess?” Jake offers, not entirely sure what other well-wishes he can use, feeling a little twist of hurt that Bradley isn’t even offering for Jake to come with him. They could go out together and pick up surely? Jake wouldn’t cockblock him.

                “Bronco has my back…”

                “Oh yeah, of course,” Jake mutters, because how could he have forgotten. “Have fun I guess.”

                “Uh. Thanks. I’ll see you later.”

                And he leaves. Just like that. Jake knows he’s pouting and he sucks in a breath and lets it out. Settles in to watch whatever movie is currently playing.

                Fuck it.

                He doesn’t want to be here alone.

                He pulls on a pair of shoes and starts walking toward the hangar. Starscream will be there, and since Jetfire was reanimated more and more of Starscream’s time has been dedicated to spending time with Jetfire. Jake gets it. If he had a best friend who suddenly came back from the dead he’d also want to spend every possible moment with them. He sidles into the hangar and walks over to where both Starscream and Jetfire are, although it looks like Jetfire is asleep. Or in a rest cycle. Whatever it is that they’re called while he continues to finish healing.

                “Hey Starscream…”

                “Jake. Are you not usually asleep at this time?”

                “Couldn’t sleep.”

                “Does that… that is not normal. You sleep a lot.”

                “I sleep a perfectly normal amount for a human,” Jake mutters, glad that Bradley and Bronco’s education is ongoing, because Starscream is more understanding now of what humans need, and food and sleep are right up there.

                “Hmm. And it is usually now. Jetfire is in a rest-cycle,” Starscream muses, and he’s studying Jake with unusual intensity and Jake shifts from foot to foot, wonders what it is.

                “Jake. Do you want to go flying?”

                Jake blinks.

                “Um. Now?”

                “Yes.”

                “Like… how?”

                “I will take you up. With me.”

                Jake is pretty sure his eyes bulge, because Starscream has never offered this before. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask. It seemed like a line in the ground. But it’s being offered now. Freely. All his ill feelings about being left behind by Bradley fade away because he’s going to get to go flying.

                “Oh… okay. Really? Are you sure?”

                “Of course. What is it you say? I would not have made the offer if I did not… mean it?”

                “Yeah. I guess. Are you… strong enough? After giving Jetfire you energon and everything?”

                “Of course. And darkness is our friend, yes?” Starscream asks, and he looks sly, like they’re planning a grand heist in secret.

                “Yeah. I guess it is,” Jake says, although he suspects that they still need to somehow let someone know that there is going to be an unidentified aircraft taking off and then landing nearby.

                “We need to let them know we’re going up. So they don’t crash into us.”

                “I have superior stealth technology. They will not see me on their sensors. And I do not crash.”

                “Will it cloak me?”

                “Of course. You are… organic.”

                He says the word organic like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth and Jake hides a smile.

                “Why now?” Jake asks, because it’s been over four months since they met, nearly five. Wonders if it has anything to do with Jetfire being successfully reanimated, safe and whole once again.

                “If I am going to plummet to the ground I would like to do it with a friend rather than on my own.”

                “That’s… tell me that that’s a joke. You’re joking right?”

                “Wouldn’t you like to know…”

                “I think you need to stop spending so much time around Bronco and Maverick.”

                “And the movies. They are helping too.”

                “Of course they are. Fantastic.”

                “Jetfire. We will be back shortly.”

                “Have fun. Please do not plummet to the ground.”

                “I will try my best.”

                “You guys are hilarious.”

…            …            …

                Bradley doesn’t know why, but he still feels jittery. On edge. Despite receiving a passable blowjob and giving one in return he still feels like he’s missing something. He gets back to the house and Jake’s nowhere to be found and he wonders where he’s gone. There’s no note or message and he worries for a brief moment before reminding himself that Jake is a grown adult. He probably expected Bradley to be out all night or something.

                Of course, he could already be in bed asleep. In his own bed. It’s a possibility, although a slim one. He pushes the door to Jake’s bedroom open slowly, not wanting to wake him up, but then lets the disappointment wash through him as he realizes Jake’s bed is as empty as the house and his own bed. The room smells like Jake though, and he doesn’t even think about it before he’s kicking off his shoes and tugging his jeans off and crawling into the bed.

…            …            …

                He’s absolutely buzzing, hours of flying does that to him, and Ninja had given him a ride back. His skin feels extra alive all over and he knows it’s the adrenaline pumping through him. Fuck it feels good. He wants to tell Bradley about it, will wake him up if he has to. He pushes the door open to Bradley’s room, his stomach sinking when he sees that it’s still empty. He hadn’t realized that Bradley had maybe meant to stay out all night. Hadn’t thought that was a possibility. He thinks about going to his own bed briefly but then dismisses it. He can’t sleep yet anyway, he’ll wait up a little, wait for Bradley to come home.

                He’s jolted awake by the bedroom door thumping open and Bradley staggering in, looking… well, he’s doing the little dance that mom’s of toddlers know everywhere, but he’s never seen Bradley doing it and he finds himself grinning.

                “Morning…” Bradley greets, voice tight, clearly not expecting to see Jake in his bed and he feels a pang of sudden unease.

                “Hey. Where… uh. You look half asleep.”

                “I am half asleep. Nearly pissed in your wardrobe.”

                “What?”

                “I went to sleep in your bed and woke up and didn’t really remember where I was… so… fuck I need to piss…”

                Jake blinks. Stomach churning, the feeling of unease growing. Did Bradley come home and not want to sleep in the same bed as him?

                “Uh… sorry about being in your bed last night.”

                “What?”

                “When you got home. You must have…”

                “You weren’t home when I got home. I just… felt weird being in the bed by myself. Went to sleep in your room.”

                “What?”

                “What?”

                “You slept in my bed?”

                Bradley shrugs, and then he’s shuffling at speed toward the bathroom and Jake just has to laugh.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Faction: The University of Taloncliff

"Enter with open eyes and behold the truths of the world unending" -Inscription beneath the fountain of the pensive sage, in the gatehouse courtyard.

Founded by dedicates of Ioun who wished to study where the land met the sea and sky, the institution that eventually became the University was founded three centuries ago when the sages of Taloncliff found themselves inundated with eager pupils who had travelled far and wide seeking their wisdom.

Growing quickly along with the coastal village that supported it, the university is today one of the most famed and foremost centres of learning on the continent entertaining scholars of what seems like every discipline imaginable. If the party needs to know something, Taloncliff is the place to go.

Adventure Hooks

Gaining access to the halls of knowledge is not as easy the heroes may hope, as only those who have joined the university are allowed to peruse it's near endless archives and deep vaults of lore. That said there are other options: they might find a sympathetic ear at one of the tea-houses wherein students and faculty partake in the boisterous debate discouraged in the august lecture halls, or persuade a smuggler of forbidden literature to clue them in on the tunnels beneath the university's walls.

The easiest way to gain entry by far however, is to simply join as a student, bypassing the yearly enrolment process by earning an invitation as a renowned seeker of knowledge... or by having the party's noble patron purchase your way in.

Alternatively, you could start your campaign with students already enrolled as students of the University, engaging in a few apprentice level adventures before flashing forward to when they've graduated to doing fieldwork.

Also, I'd be remiss if I made a whole faction dedicated to learning and didn't mention my advice/system for how you should let your players research in campaigns, which you should check out before exploring the University's inner workings below the cut.

Though it appears stately and unified from outside, behind its alabaster walls Taloncliff is in fact a contradictory mess of overlapping "Curricula" like a dozen different organizations of varying sizes dressed up in a wizard's robe trying to look important. Each Curricula is named after one of the original Sages and follows generally in their footsteps, here are some of the most relevant:

Curricula Endaris: The prestigious institute of learning to which the noble families of nearby realms send their learning minded scions. Endaris gave council to kings, and her followers teach statecraft, diplomacy, history, as well as the good governance of the land itself. One of the largest factions and the one most likely to receive outside donations, Endaris maintains a strong influence over the rest of the university as holding onto its coin purse.

Curricula Jadek: Adherants of the knowing mistress who maintain the campus as part of their devotion and studies into more mystical forms of knowledge. They tend to be inward focused and act to balance out the other voices, giving them a respect that superscedes rivalry.

Curricula Gazerette: a wizarding school that functions like a music conservatory, looking to instill a basic level of competence in all students while hunting for talent that could be refined into something prodigious. Gazerette wanted only the best from his apprentices, and the cutthroat rivalries between Gazerette wizards are the stuff of legend, going back nearly as far as the university's founding.

Curricula Oddolgyn: Still headed by the ancient eleven astronomer of the same name, last of the original sages. This group operates out of the university's observatory studying the ephemeral patterns of the firmament and the multiverse beyond. Currently small and thought of mostly as dabblers It's been more than a century since they were superseded by Gazerette as the foremost of Taloncliff's mages.

Curricula Narthex: Adventurous and daring, the explorers of the Narthex always seem to be recounting their last great expedition or planning their next, even maintaining their own airship docks to make it easier to seek out new horizons.

Shortly after one of the party have really proven themselves to be a true asset ( or liability) to the school, they'll receive a note that says "seek to Know the secret of the waters, at the place where Torthane met her Mistress". This requires catching up on some very old University gossip, as well as tracking down some otherwise unnoticeable histories that are always misfiled in the library. Doing so reveals Torthane to be one of sage Jadek's first pupils, one who frequently clashed with her austere teacher about his insistence that dedication to Ioun and true knowledge meant abstaining from the physical world and the "earthly knowledge" that came with it. Torthane loved Ioun, but she also loved the ladies, and was said to meet with her lovers right under Jadek's nose in a particular garden that the campus grounds have since grown to encompass.

These clues further lead the party to the statue of the fountain of the pensive sage, which boasts a statue of Jadek poking his staff into a basin of ever rippling water. One who looked closely might notice a glow distorted by the ripples of the fountain, and that if the primary spout is plugged or diverted that the glow originates from where Jadek's staff disturbs the unearthly white sand that rests at the basin's bottom. (Leave a comment if you can figure out what the party will need to draw in the sand to progress)

With the passphrase entered, a secret stair opens in the cobbles surrounding the statue, inviting the party down into a dungeon crawl that takes them to the university's flooded foundations. After battling past arcane traps, more puzzles, and creatures of the tide, they stumble into a room wreathed in cascading water, in which the images of a dozen or more cloaked figures manifest and pass judgment upon them. The question that the figures are to argue: Are these trespassers cringe?

Some of the figures will argue that the party are indeed cringe, a never-before seen collection of narcs, fuckboys, killjoys, and karens. It will be up to the party to plead their case. If they manage to win over a majority of the crowd then the waters will part and they'll be invited into the secret headquarters/speakeasy of Curricula Torthane, the resident secret society of Taloncliff made up of all those who are willing to bend the rules and collaborate in the pursuit of knowledge and those little pleasures that are so often neglected in scholastic dourness. You haven't lived till you've had wizard moonshine, so cheers and bottoms up troublemakers.

Further adventures

I'll be adding more Taloncliff adventures in the future, so feel free to check out my blog.

While the party is sure to meet no end of red tape as they explore the campus, they'll make an easy ally in Oroteia, a rising star in the Gazerette and Narthex Curricula who seeks to overturn every expectation placed on her by her by others after discovering her lowborn country origins. Blazing a trail through the University's establishment, she'll see the party as useful allies against whatever campaign level threats the rest of the institution is too set in their ways to even contemplate dealing with.

[parvulous-writings]

Bill and Ted Neurodivergency Headcanons

Just some little headcanons that have been bouncing back and forth in my mind recently! Very short, I just wanted to get my thoughts down and out there to be honest

Not my gif

Bill and Ted both have AuDHD (Autism and ADHD), but to varying degrees.

My reasoning is thus: they are both impulsive, stim a lot together, and are at times slow to wrap their heads around certain things, unless it truly interests them. (Such as their interest in launching their band, vs their ability to retain anything they learn in history up until being face-to-face with it). I believe they may also have echolalia - they both use "dude" and similar terms frequently - and whilst these were of course popular terms when the original two films released, the pair carry these phrases well into their adult life, and since they still spend so much time around each other I believe it may be because they're just endlessly bouncing off one another.

Not to mention the fact that they stopped being sneaking in the Tudor Castle to be nerds about Star Wars, completely disregarding their task at hand until Ted falls down the stairs. .... And that they play 20 questions whilst falling down a hole.

Also not to mention the fact the amount of lyrics that they are able to recite at the drop of a hat? Their knowledge of Rock is immeasurable - because it's a shared special interest.

I'm not sure if I have any specific evidence of this (None comes to mind immediately) - but I have a sneaking suspicion that of the two; in Ted, his autism is more prominent, and in Bill, it's his ADHD.

I think it's reasonable to assume that neither of the boys have a diagnosis until later in life - by that point though there aren't exactly many resources for them, and they've already got a somewhat functioning support system (mainly one another, and of course, their wives whilst we're thinking about it). Bill probably tried to take meds at one point, but came off of them after about 3-4 months due to the headaches and loss of sleep that he started to suffer with. Ted was never prescribed meds, even in adulthood.

Going back to childhood/teen years, I don't think anyone really had many suspicions that they had AuDHD, simply because their interests and hobbies were relatively mainstream. If anyone did have the thought that something "may not be right", it would probably be Ted's dad, but he wouldn't have gone to the doctor about the fact. He more considers it a disciplinary issue - I.e, the fact that himself or any tutors haven't been as rigid or harsh as they should be to keep Ted in line, and on the right path to success.

In later life, though, I think it might be more obvious. They go more into less mainstream instruments when they bring in the theremin to their music - not only showing their devotion to music and all it's parts and genres, but also their fixation. (I don't know many people who know or listen to the theremin or music it containing it besides myself). Their inability or unwillingness to change their mannerisms, also, I think is a sign. They don't like change.

I may update/add to these at a later date, but these are my ideas on Bill and Ted's neurospicy situation - I personally think they are AuDHD as mentioned, and that may just be me projecting onto them, but at the same time I don't think there's any chance that these two are neurotypical - if you have any thoughts, feel free to share them!!

[abrthephantomq]

Soooo....

Turnabout Storyteller.

I had already vaguely known about Uendo having DID due to me not necessarily avoiding spoilers when reading fanfic, but...

I have so many thoughts on this as someone who HAS the disorder they're representing here.

Like, one, I definitely appreciated the way they revealed it -- during a Mood Matrix session. Having multiple sets of feelings and having them switch on and off like that is def a thing. I've/we've experienced that before.

But also -- before that, when Uendo was switching between his "characters" and everyone thought he was just putting on a performance? Yeah, see. They did that really well considering that like -- yes, the way alters hold the body/the face can be really different. They certainly felt like different people, which was really cool to see. I liked the different poses they had because as I played I was like, "Huh... is he the character with DID...? He is, right?"

The thing is, I'm like 80% certain that Uendo is the murderer, and THAT annoys me -- but I'm not done playing through the case, yet. I just started the second half of the trial, so.... I'll comment as I go.

But if I'm right and Uendo IS the murderer, I'm gonna have to roll my eyes because soooo many pieces of media use my disorder to show HEY SOMEONE WITH THIS COULD BE A KILLER AND NOT KNOWWWWW and I hate that. Because like.... no.

OH THANK GOD. Like 3 seconds into the send half of the trial and it's NOT Uendo. Yay. Yayyyyy. I'm actually really glad they did that subversion of the person-with-DID-is-the-killer trope. Thank fucking GOD.

SIMON GRABBING ATHENA when she starts to doubt she can prove Bucky's innocence is just -- fuck. Okay. Yeah, I see why the fandom loves that particular moment. (I love Simon so much omfg).

I am honestly loving this case and I actually really like the way they've presented Uendo -- it's simplified a bit for the sake of the audience, but at the same time, switching DO be like that. And you can certainly be co-conscious and share memory.

Like.... that's legitimately how our System works -- there's usually 2-3 of us up front at any given time, with someone generally more forward, while the other(s) listens / watches. Sometimes others push to the front. And there are 4 of us who more or less have access to the continual life happenings even if we don't always recollect specific details (or what we were feeling) later.

Also Owen being a LITTLE makes so much damn sense? Fuck, idk man, I love it. I kinda adore them.

I really really really got weary when Uendo's diagnosis was revealed because, y'know, the whole oh God pls tell me you're not the murderer even if it was kinda looking like you were.

That fucking balloon girl did it, didn't she? Jesus fucking Christ. I love that, but I also hate that. Also it's so unfair they made this chick so goddamned pretty.

Also man can I also say just how like.... they legitimately refer to Owen as a child, and Kisegawa with Ms., and -- that's actually a nice little piece of the writing here. Like... is it absolutely perfect? No. It's not. But let me tell you -- as someone with this disorder? Writing it and showing it for an audience is hard.

That whole, "everyone is unique" thing applies here -- every System is different. They all develop ways of functioning in order to blend in and protect themselves. Uendo may not have the denial bit that comes with this disorder (do you know how many times I find myself asking if I'm sure I'm not faking this thing? do you??? because like, it's a "rare" disorder, right? and was my trauma REALLY bad enough for me to have alters???? etc) -- but considering the confident way he, Patches, and Kisegawa speak about their experience with the disorder, I would imagine they've been in therapy for it for a while, now.

But also -- the three of them not being aware of Owen? Or denying his existence, at least? Well, they were either protecting him because he's so young, or they legitimately did not know since apparently he may only come forward when the body is drunk.

idk I love that Uendo et al was not the killer. Like so much. Thank FUCK.

Also that was a really fun case even if it was like, not entirely relevant to the overall story happening here in SOJ. I definitely enjoyed it.

[alacetor-the-duckies-deer]

Been thinking about this post I made earlier, and

The problem with the hotel is that Charlie went too big too fast with the goal. Unfortunately Katie Killjoy was RIGHT when she asked why anyone would care about becoming a better person, when you consider that it means going up to heaven to be with the very people that put them in hell in the first place (as far as they know), and who (definitely) then come down to massacre them once a year anyway.

But if you think of the pride ring specifically, rather than all of hell, as a jail of sorts for sinners, then, maybe they'd want to explore the rest of hell if they could.

And if Charlie got with her father and the other sins, and got approval for like, passports of sort, that give sinners who prove they could behave in the rest of hell- where people live who aren't saints but can still be good people and who ARE more often than not weaker that Sinners- permission to travel, I BET plenty of sinners would have at least wanted to TRY the hotel.

The hotel could function more as a voluntary recovery resedance for them. Like if Angel had been promised the opportunity to visit the Lust Ring, I bet he'd have committed a little more serious the cause sooner.

And it wouldn't even have to be an all or nothing thing. Each sin could have different requirements for allowing sinner into their territory. Ozzie would probably never allow people with sexual assaults on their record, for instance. And Mammon would probably allow pretty much anyone, wanting anyone who could pay to see his shows.

But it's still not a perfect solution unless the genocides stop.

Because it just leads to questions.

Do they tell heaven they're letting sinners got to other rings?

If they do, they run the risk of Heaven, specifically Adam, not agreeing to only hunt the unrepentant/unredeemed in the Pride Ring, and simply expanding the genocide, the violence, into the other rings, and the other sins might refuse the system soley based on that.

And if they don't tell them? That's not going to stay a secret long. Even if it take a decideds for enough sinners to have earned their passport to even one other ring, all the sinners that can, are going to bale on the Pride Ring during the genocide.

At first the angels might think they're successfully keeping Hell's population down, but eventually they're going to get suspicious, because whether they've been doing this since the dawn of time or only since the human population, and therefore Hell's population, boomed in the last century or so, for it to suddenly be working this well???

And all they have to do is capture some sinner during an extermination, and torture the answers out of them.

And then it's like.

Do they see that as Lucifer trying to get out of his side of the bargen? Do they say fine we won't uphold our end?

The fact Adam and them go after Charlie in the season finale shows there's no magical contract PREVENTING them from killing Hellborns. So what if they start giing after Hellborns too, since they're traveling rings now too?

Soooo maybe I've talked myself in circles.

Even though I dont THINK Charlie has though about all of this, it's still stands that she does have to go that big with the hotel. She has to get them out of hell as things stand now, because if there are genocides, nowhere and no one in hell is garenteed safety.

Now, in a post canon world where they get the extermination to end, I think this would actually be a good system.

Most sinners are actually in hell for a reason, and if they want to just keep indulging in that behavior, fine. Pride Ring Prison.

But leaving a voluntary out program readily available to them, where they can rehabilite themselves as much as they want-wether it be to Aesmodeos or Mannon's or Beelzebub's, or even Heaven itself's standards? Yeah, I think that would work really well to insintives people to change.

[ursalot]

This lot is uploaded as a gym, but it also meets the onsen bathhouse requirements. Once again, it's limited to expansion packs only. It's meant to go on the 5-6-1 Shirinyoku lot in Mt. Komorebi, aka the 20x15 lot occupied by the Nishidake family in Senbamachi. Place with moveobjects on. EA ID: ursalot. Floorplan and a ton of rambles under the cut, as well as substitution notes for Discover University. Also, there's links to things I was looking at for architecture references and design inspiration.

Pack substitutions! The only item from Discover University was a shower divider. The cleanest substitution is obviously the frosted divider from the Sleek Bathroom Kit that literally just came out, however, for a more realistic substitute, I'd recommend the Snowy Escape shower divider.

As far as inspiration, this wasn't based on a given building or set of images, although I did reference the bathhouse at the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum. In general, that's an amazing source for historic Japanese architecture because you can take 3D tours of the buildings on their website. Also, if you somehow haven't found them, I recommend watching Yukihyo. Watching their "Japanese Retro Sento" video was useful to see an example of a Japanese person's imagination of a classic bathhouse in the Sims 4, even though we have very different build styles.

This build is honestly kind of weird because I always knew it would be a bathhouse/gym, even though I didn't have any inspiration for it, because I've been mulling over a personal remodel of Mt. Komorebi and that seemed like a necessity. (I happen to like having saves take place almost entirely in one or two worlds, because taking what would be a 12 hour flight in reality to use a gym feels odd.) Plus, I knew it would be on that 20x15 lot, because I have vague plans for the other lots in that neighborhood. Form very much followed function on this one.

Most of the first floor layout honestly wouldn't have been my ideal, as I built separate men's and women's facilities, including doors that are locked in-game to reflect that. I don't normally do that in Sims 4, since the characters in the game don't care, and I have *mumble* feelings on gendered spaces in real life personally, but looking at bathhouses in Japan, they're gendered, and the only reason the bath in this build isn't gendered is due to 1) space constraints and 2) the fact that sometimes that can be legal under specific circumstances.

On the other hand, there was a lot of joy in discovery on this lot. I used a ton of items I normally forget about, including that divider from Discover University. I knew from the start that I wanted this building to be older, since I can't imagine there's a ton of pressure for new bathhouses these days, given that even micro apartments come with showers and often baths. Hot spring resorts, sure, probably. Bathhouses, eh. So I had a ton of fun using old-fashioned wallpapers and decoration. I imagine the outside last had major work in the '60s, and the inside in the '80s. Obviously it's been maintained, and they've updated things, like the showers and the toilets, and they've added in a solar water heating system to reduce gas costs, but the bones are old. The gym, on the other hand, is another business renting space. I'm assuming the bathhouse had that room, and maybe it was used for storage and staff space, but the business is pulling in less money, so renting it made sense. And it's great for the gym because their members can just go downstairs to shower and bathe afterwards.

Finally, towards the end of the build I decided that this neighborhood of Mt. Komorebi has building limitations to preserve the historical nature of the area. It's in what would be a tourist-oriented economy (winter sports, pristine nature, charming local festivals and traditions), and most of the debug neighborhood buildings are fairly uniform, but not in a way that resembles Japanese architecture post-WWII. A surprising amount seem to be modeled after Kyoto, which has very strict preservation regulations. This wouldn't be as intense, but some of the buildings are probably listed, and I'd bet that there are strict rules on façade colors, building height, and advertising prominence.

[xeno-bio-sociology]

Would it even be possible for a Mother Grub-like creature to exist on a humanoid species scale without magic, considering the vast caloric intake it would need just to exist even without constant egg-laying? Speaking of, how fast do you think it could produce eggs? I'm trying to figure out numbers for the troll population and that's my starting point.

Woof, hmmm....

It's interesting because I have wondered some of these things myself before, wanting a place like Alternia or any other giant-animals & dragons world to be plausible, but I don't have the background to get into the actual science of it. But let's see how far I can get and then hope that someone else can fill in the gaps.

Okay, so the three major constraints we'd be working with here are: structural integrity vs gravity and square-cubed law, air intake and blood circulation vs square-cube law, and calorie intake vs food chains and square-cube law.

For those who don't know, the square-cube law is the principle that the mass/volume/weight of an object grows faster (x3) than its surface area (x2) or the measurement of its height/length/depth in one direction (x1). An ant, being much smaller than a human, needs proportionally less muscle to fight back against gravity. Its exoskeleton doesn't need to be made of a super-tough material to withstand most of the impacts it receives or to easily contain all the bodily tissues. It needs less oxygen and what oxygen it has can reach all its tissues even without a special tube system to pump it all over the place, and it can survive on a very small amount of calories. If you simply embiggened the ant to a human size it would collapse and be unable to breathe.

So let's take this one at a time: structural integrity Our mother grub needs to be made of much stronger material than an ant is. There is precedence for this, found in other animal kingdoms. Elephants manage to move around despite their size, as did the dinosaurs before them, with huge dense bones and similarly meaty muscles. And both the scaly-footed gastropod and some rodents integrate metals into their bodies to toughen their shells and teeth respectively.

This is an alien from a different planet and evolutionary tree after all, we do not have to stick to the traits we can observe in the insect kingdom on our own planet here. Calling trolls and mothergrubs insects or insectoid is simply a shorthand for convenience and we can decide that they've convergently evolved these adaptations or whatever else we might invent to allow them to work as we wish, we just have to make the actual function make scientific sense. So, the mother grub's exoskeleton is metal-infused, and she might have a secondary internal skeleton to hold her up as well, as a solid core to hand things on is more structurally sound and mobile than a can around it. Or perhaps a more honeycomb-like approach, with supports scattered throughout; like a building with rooms. Maybe it evolved in a kind of opposite way to how a turtle did, where it had an internal skeleton that then grew into a shell. Or perhaps it is a new structure that we do not have an equivalent for in our insects. Either way, that's the exoskeleton out of the way.

As for muscles, while I think it's possible for them to have evolved them to the point that they can have the typical thin limbs of an insect, since we can see that mechanical devices can operate under such contraints, I think it's likely that that the limbs in general and the weightbearing and locomoting legs especially are significantly chunkier than we would see on an ant.

I will say however, that it is entirely possible that the mother grub in particular is not especially expected to move around by herself, and typically relies on drones and jadebloods to do much of anything. Pretty sure that’s how termites do. Perhaps Kanaya's virgin mother grub is also smaller than she is depicted; though the opposite could be true and most mother grubs do not regularly attain such sizes and either the lusus fluke or her being unmated contribute to her being as large as she is. We simply do not see any other mother grubs, though the implication that the skull on Terezi's scale is from one would suggest that the inverse is true and mother grubs can be enormous indeed. Either way, she probably doesn’t fly unless she’s much lighter than she looks and maybe filled with helium. Perhaps the wings are decorative? Or maybe they function as part of a heat-dissipation system or even for oxygen exchange themselves?

In any case, onto the next issue: air and blood circulation

As you probably already know, insects have a much different respiratory system to vertebrates. Instead of a central hole or three to breathe from and a sac to breathe into, where it dissolves into the blood and then a bunch of tubes all around the body to take the blood to the tissues, they tend to have what are called "spiracles," a bunch of little holes in their skin big enough for the air to enter and a tube to take the air to the tissues directly. The problem with this on a large scale is 1: less surface area:volume means you have less space for spiracles, 2: more volume:size means it's harder to get the oxygen to all the tissues you've got packed in there. Letting the oxygen essentially just passively absorb just isn't very efficient.

In past eons some invertebrates have gotten around this to get much larger than they are today by the simple expedient of there being significantly more oxygen in the air than there is these days. We can also get a heck of a lot more leeway by updating our mother grubs to have a heart and blood and veins and such. Something more complex than the simple book lung that spiders and such have. For reference, while the largest terrestrial invertebrate that ever lived was a 110lb millipede we think that the blue whale is pretty much the largest an animal can get with a mammalian circulatory system before the heart just can't pump the blood through the body fast enough, and it comes in at 199 tons (two-hearted whale when).

So pump up the oxygen level (not too high or there's fire explosionsm especially under the alternial sun), and maybe decrease the gravity on the planet and things can grow pretty big. Maybe you could even switch out oxygen and carbon as the main elements we're looking at here and get a boost that way too. I’m not big on chemistry or how things work, so maybe oxygen and carbon are the only things that’ll work here, but for instance the atmosphere on earth is 78% nitrogen and only 21% oxygen and humans don’t even do anything with the nitrogen, so even assuming that humans have to breathe the same air as exists on alternia (not a safe bet, as each species would have some wiggle room in terms of air composition and all humans were godtiered and capable of surviving in the vacuum of space [or at least the medium] by the time they were face-to-face with the trolls, and Earth C is both dubiously canon and potentially contains species that are not quite the same as those on either earth or alternia) you’ve got plenty of space to fill with some alternate gas in there.

So we’ve got a metal-plated, well-muscled mother grub who maybe doesn’t move around so much and has anatamy containing lungs, pumped blood, and veins. Maybe she’s got spiracles still and they work like our own airways or maybe she’s got a big honker of a nose like humans do, but either way we’re cooking with fire here. We’ve made the planet lighter and changed the O2 content and maybe we’re working with a silico-hydrate base for all our flesh-building purposes and thicken up the air so it’s soupy and bouyant. Heck, maybe we shrink everything we see over on alternia and the trolls themselves a bit, and they’re only depicted as of equal size as humans for story reasons or maybe everything gets resized to a default setting once it enters the medium for convenience’s sake. Whatever, it’s not important cause now comes the problem that I keep running into headlong each time I try to tackle an alternia-like ecosphere. The food web.

Cause, see, the mother grub by her self and trolls as a whole, they’re not a problem. (Well, not until they start taking all those nutrients to space)

The problem is this: Lookit how many giant predators and hyper-predators there are. Lookit this dragon. That is canonically a newborn. She can fly and breathe fire. Lookit this horrorterror. She canonically eats a ton of land and surface dwelling meats and isn’t just subsisting off of chemical vents or something.

All that mass, the energy to go flying off into the sky with extra to (literally) burn? That’s gotta come from somewhere. And on the one hand, we have maybe a partial answer: the sun. Specifically, that it is implied to be extremely hot and strong and maybe close. Not explicit, since Trolls could be unusual in their being nocturnal and even looking at our sun for long will blind a person, but the implications are there and we can run with them to a big, hot, super energy source ripe for the taking. The problem with that is that energy typically doesn’t flow down the food chain very far. We like to think of the food web as being a self-sustaining perpetual motion machine, but that’s just not true. So much energy is lost at each step, often as heat. And then that heat dissipates into the atmosphere and then escapes out into the greater universe. Think about it; how many seeds does a bird have to eat to grow to its adult size, and then to sustain it every day? Then how many birds does a cat have to eat to do the same? And how many cats does a fisher eat, and how many of those does a puma need in its life? It’s a lot. It’s exponential at each step, since a creature must spend so much energy just maintining its daily life and can’t put it all on body growth. And then all of that big long chain has to be sustained on vast quantities of plant matter, who generate their own bodies from the sun. There is of course a secondary chain that “starts” with detrivores like fungus and flies, but is by necessity focused on a much smaller amount of resources than the main chain.

So we’re limited by the following:

- how much energy the sun makes

- the % of that energy that makes it to alternia

- the amount that bounces off alternia or its atmosphere before it can be harvested

- the % of that energy that photosynthesizers can harvest

- the % they can store

- the % they need to live and propegate until they are eaten

- how much the herbivore needs to grow and live and eat and reproduce

- the efficiency with which the herbivore stores the energy gain

- how much the creature that eats the herbivore needs to use

- how much ITS fat can store.

- and so on

We can mess with any and potentially all of the steps in the chain to increase potential length of it and allow more and more massive and widespread superpredators at the end of it. We’ve already started that by increasing the potency of the sun, but each change will have repercussions. For instance, if energy is so widely available then why bother to evolve anything more complicated than photosynthesis itself? I once heard an author say that one needs to have two levels of answers to worldbuild convincingly – to solve the first problem and then to solve the follow-up question. That after that people will be satisfied. Something about fighting nuns. Where did the nun learn to fight? In the sewers. Why was she in the sewers? To fight the crocodiles.

So: We amp up the sun. Why bother evolving herbivory? The sun is too hot and withstanding it is costly and resource-intense. Not everything can be a plant because not everything has the sun-blocking resources, and there is a niche for nocturnal herbivores who don’t have to invest in sun protection. Why carnivory? The sun-block also makes the plants tough and hard to eat and digest; eating meat is relatively quick and easy.

The same thing can be done at other steps. Maybe we make animal life on alternia more efficient: they can do all work of living without creating much waste-heat, and their versions of digestion and fat pack in more calories denser.

But again, the nitty gritty science is not my area of expertise, and these are the questions that can keep me awake at night. What kind of solutions could make the food chain more efficient? What kind of pressures would encourage long food chains, large fat stores, and giant hyper-predators? How can we engineer an environment that will predispose this planet to logically evolving dragons?

[unregisteredskybox]

[@ysines becuz u asked :D] im gonna preface this rant by saying i think side order was GREAT!!!! i love roguelikes i love splatoon this was a dlc MADE for me,

that being said! the lore was obviously, unfortunately, not the focal point of the dlc, especially the final boss being [spoilers!] another sentient ai. i love the little guy, but tartar [my wife] did it better. so UNDER THE CUT will be a long rant as to what i would make for the final boss of the DLC, along with some art I made for it!!! Oh, and that final boss?

Order, a sentient collection of Eight's memories that deems ITSELF to be the real copy

alright, now that i have your attention, let me go into depth as to how this all began, side order spoilers obviously:

Marina created the Memverse to help all the octolings from the metro of course, but more specifically, her friend Eight. The entire memverse was based on their memories, using them as the "blueprint" for all memcake related technology, since theirs were fully intact. Not only that, but since Eight was not only unsanitized, in a right state of mind, and an incredibly capable fighter, they were the perfect basis for those CLIMBING the tower. if the memverse is brain surgery, than Eight's brain was the example used. makes sense? This is where thing's get weird, however. Eight's memories are embeded within the memverse itself, interconnected with all aspects of it. Functionally speaking, a part of their SOUL was in the memverse, a soul with lots of desires, dreams, and determination. They fought through kamabo co. after all, their soul wouldn't be so easily tamed. Marina allotted too much control over to Eight's memories, so as soon as the memverse was online, they were alive. Alive...

And alone.

The memverse was just booting up, and considering how big it was, it would likely take hours, maybe even days. Days that Not-Eight would have to spend wandering an unfished world alone, devoid of any meaningful colour. It was designed to be monochrome as it was easier to retain memories when climbing the spire, without significant colour to distract the climber. Worst part was, this individual was eight's memories BEFORE octo expansion, so the last thing they remember is falling after fighting agent 3, waking up here. Through time, other memories would spark creation within the world, from the sanitized octolings who helped on the project, but it was still a long and lonely time for Not-Eight. However, as I said, they're the blueprint for this world, and was interconnected with it, so they had a form of control. It wasn't a conscious decision, but rather, the unbearable feeling of loneliness caused the simulation to pull people IN, hoping to satiate the desire for connection the god of this world demanded. And, with our Eight also being integral to the memverse, the system decided the perfect fit would be to bring in their best bud Agent 4! ...Who Not-Eight didn't know because they've never met.

But, after a quick explanation, Four, smart as they are, picks up on the situation: something went wrong in the Memverse, and Eight only remembers her previous memories, and not her current ones. Alright, they've got it completely wrong, but it's the logical conclusion. The two do find solace in each other, however, as they wander the Memverse searching for...anything really. As this happens though, something starts to happen to Not-Eight. This entire time, they've felt like something was missing. Like when you wake up from a dream, and feel like you can remember it exactly, yet it immediately fades away. That, but constantly. They assume Four's story is correct, since it would explain the feeling, but it doesn't offer them any comfort. There's also Not-Eight's emotional state, since they've been wandering the memverse for days now, and Four's only done it for maybe a few hours. It's taken a toll on their mind, and by proxy, the Memverse itself. Remember, it's connected to them, their loneliness was why Four was here in the first place. As such, with their desire to be fulfilled, to remember something, the Memverse starts to overwork itself; it brings the spire into existence, the Jelletons, all of the challenges, much faster than it should, all for its God that doesn't even know it's a god in the first place. With this speed comes mistakes, or in computer terms, glitches. Just as Not-Eight's mental state effects the memverse, the memverse's stability effects Not-Eight. They start to, if only gradually, undergo a process known as Bleaching; when a Soul and Body are separated into two individual beings, the soul in the memverse, and the body outside of it. [This replaces greyscaling.] But, Not-Eight doesn't have a body, just a simulated one to house their soul. That means, while attempting to climb the spire with four, they start to deteriorate. Pieces of them glitch away, corals grow and cover their face, and features just disappear. It's an incredibly painful process, one that Four doesn't really understand, so they try to solve it in the only way they know how: getting to the top. It's hard, especially considering they have to carry Not-Eight up there, and have no colour chips [Only weapons they summoned the same way Pearl did], but they make it to the control room. Pulling up a monitor, they scroll to a section covering the Admins of the spire. Marina, Pearl, Four themselves, and...two instances of Eight. One of them is glitching out, so that's the one Four goes for, not bothering to question why there were two. They click the button to reset the palette, but...that was probably the worst thing they could've done. In an instant, Not-Eight's mind was flooded with the code of the entire memverse, it's innerworkings, what it was currently processing, and their identity. They knew within an instant that they were just MEMORIES, a shadow of another person. Yet, they also knew how much power they had over the world. Without another word, they immediately Bleached Four, creating the Parallel Canon boss and Order Defense Force. They knew that the "real" Eight would come for them, to subsume them, to replace them, so they would need defenses. Though they acted like a tough general on the outside, in reality, Order was horrified. They were, mentally, a fourteen-year old child who failed to escape to the surface and instead fell into what was practically Hell. A cold, barren landscape with no colour or emotions, a place where they would die by being assimilated into another person. The mask placed on the Parallel Canon boss wasn't something to control them, as they already had that power. Rather, it was to make other beings look more like themselves after they began to decompose. This, is Order, the commander of the spire:

The red bits on their body are pieces they can no longer use due to the Bleaching, which is basically trying to separate their soul in two, considering they don't have a body. All facial recognition they once had has been wiped clean, and they're more coral than octoling at this point. Now is when Eight and the rest of the gang enter the memverse, but how Order presents themself is different. They're still a dignified smoke cloud, as they were after Marina, but they harbor an irrational sense of hatred towards Eight, one that isn't cold or orderly. Boss fights are now, as many people have suggested, Eight fighting the person the palette belongs to. Inky clones of Marie or Big man, who dissipate into a cloud of smoke once you defeat them, with Order taunting/insulting Eight after the fact. However, palette orders are slightly changed, as the last one you get before Eights is Four's. Now, the Parallel Canon boss up to this point would've been the hairless clones specifically, because Order is saving Four for last. Once Eight reaches the top, Order does another monologue, and brings out Four in hopes that Eight's emotional attachment to them would make them give up. [It does not, as Eight is INCREDIBLY used to fighting their brainwashed friends.] Once Four is defeated, they're freed from the Bleaching/mind control, and exposes Order's identity in their fit of rage. Now, Order did genuinely like Four, so seeing them express such hatred for them puts them in a really terrible mood, especially considering Eight is one step closer to replacing them.

at this point, Order freaks out, and Eight probably would as well, considering that they look exactly like each other [Though Order's freakout is more anger and Eight's is more confusion.] Order's one goal now is to kill Eight and replace them before they can do the same. It probably has some sort of AM I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream esque monologue [can you see the inspiration? i love it so much] and deems itself to be the one true "eight." After escaping the tower, with a bit of exposition from both Four and Marina, the entire group basically figures out what's going on. Their respective reactions, however, are a little different, mainly between Eight and everyone else. Most of the group feels sympathetic for Order, as they're a 14 year old who's only known loneliness, the fake sunlight, and is currently at risk of being replaced as a person. Eight, however, has NO sympathy for Order whatsoever, an opinion they would definitely voice. They toiled and troubled through Kamabo Co and the spire just to get their memories back, but now their friends are arguing that they shouldn't? That they should remain without memories just to keep a fake person alive? I've been writing this with more of a story perspective than a gameplay one, so this would probably cause some divide in the group. How the Memverse works to me is after freeing Marina, all of them could come and go from the simulation as they please, like a normal VR. And, because I loooove angst, I could see Eight sneaking into the simulation when everyone else is gone and fighting Order themselves, since no one agrees with them.

Here's where I split the timeline a little, because honestly? I don't know how this should end! I could see two options, option 1. With plenty of time and convincing, they learn to coexist, Order eventually becoming like a little sister to Eight and the two of them living in harmony, completing each other. Option 2? One of them kills the other, permanently, and basically absorbs their mind, memories and bodies, just fitting with the personality of whoever won. IDK!!! I could draw smth for both maybe? Or if you, the lovely reader have any ideas???

And if you have any questions about this (or the aforementioned ideas) don't be afraid to drop an ask!!!!!!!! ooough that was long. thanks for reading : D

[mister-julius]

I got to thinking (dangerous, I know)...

I remember back when there were more "placeholder" bosses in Warframe like The Sergeant. I remember there was constant discussion, of varying intensity, about the concept of "difficulty". How to increase it, how to avoid making enemies into "bullet sponges", the glorious rage brought about by the rise of nullifiers...

these talks lead to some great boss reworks, leading to 'phases' and a greater focus on 'mechanics', which then turned discussion towards the natural frustrations that came from the then-unlabeled invulnerability phases, and similar stuff that had us feeling like we had to wait for the game's permission to continue to play.

With Steel Path and now "damage attenuation" being a part of the game, memories of those earlier days of discussion come flooding back.

See if the game has no power creep, at some point every weapon becomes a choice of aesthetic. We saw this for a time when Dual Swords were the "meta". I remember talk of Dual Kamas Prime being more or less "Yawn yet another dual swords who cares farm it if you want the fashion skip the Prime Access hope the next Prime launch is interesting". Needless to say, this isn't great from a financial perspective, but then there's Mastery...

One of the games many number-go-up mechanics lies in leveling gear to increase a "Mastery Rank". While this might not be important for most, I think it may be most important when it comes to content creators. After all, how much do they actually know about the game if their profile shows that they've only used enough gear to reach MR15 instead of MR30 or the following Legendary ranks?

It seems like a barely-related tangent, but you have to understand that Warframe is very reliant on content creators helping to onboard new players. Going in blind and alone, the game very easily overwhelms most with a sheer barrage of information that's hard to process in one sitting, even if you try sifting through every in-game tutorial.

If every new weapon is released is a matter of taste and not raw stats or unique gimmicks, how long before the people who have levelled everything else start getting so utterly bored that no amount of number-go-up neuron activation can keep them around? However, if every new weapon is better than the last, then what is the point in grinding/paying for it when something better is just around the corner?

If you make it to where every damage source takes more-or-less the same time to chew through a boss, or if every weapon instantly brings a boss to its next brief moment of invulnerability, we wind up asking the same question.

If we take the financial side out of this, as I really shouldn't care since I'm just some random player, be it phases or sponge, the problem Warframe is always trying to get ahead of is players lacking meaningful reason to interact with the many underlying systems that power their loadouts.

That's bad enough of a problem from a sheer game design perspective, but when you add in the financial need to keep releasing new things for people to potentially buy to afford the increasingly-expensive servers that the game's core functions were made to run on

from all I'm able to understand, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things, it seems all you can do is let the pendulum swing between extremes while praying that whatever players are knocked off by each are replaced by new recruits

I wonder how stressful it is to be in a leadership position at Digital Extremes...

[kivaember]

new ac6 au idea help me

okay so i've been playing pacific drive since it came out, and it gave me SUCH brainworms for a post-apocalyptic AU of AC6. In BULLET POINT FORM:

when the Fires happened (the first one), it occured just as a coral collapse started to initiate

this basically fucked up rubicon and its now the bermuda triangle of space

anyone who lands on it don't come back and no sensors or satellites can penetrate the thick crimson cloud that covers the entire planet (looks like jupiter from the outside now, with storms and the like)

still, corpos gonna corpo. so after a few decades when nothing changes, they send a few reconnaisance groups to the planet

some manage to report back before vanishing, and the reports are: laws of physics have been screwed up, nothing makes sense, and everything's trying to kill them

Corpos sent their ac squads bc if its dangerous bring guns

They vanish, and after sending a few more they throw up their hands and are like, planet's haunted. fuck it. no coral ever now

ENTER WALTER

who's been closely observing this whole thing for a while

paranoid this effect will spread to other systems, as ambient coral levels are rising in the vaccuum of space around the planet

sends 621 to the planet's surface with strict orders for him to find 'watchpoint alpha' which should have a functioning comms array that can send through heavy coral interference

621 crashlands on the surface and man, what the hell is this scp shit

anyways, there're still ppl living on rubicon, but they've adapted to the fact that they're stuck in a reality-warped nightmare and roll with the weirdness

they have acs, but they're such precious resources that they're only deployed whenever they're gonna do a big expedition for a resource haul when identifying a safe passage opening up to some intact ruins or old foundries

most of the time they're trundling around the planet's surface on old MRAPs or jeeps, harvesting resources where they can

the redguns and vespers who were sent before have kind of like. settled down there - those that survived, anyways. bc they can't leave, but they can't survive without working together either. so there's like an uneasy alliance between the native rubiconians, the redguns and the vespers. as well as various independents that landed and learned to survive

AYRE OF COURSE IS IN THIS

so sentient coral do exist, and they tend to possess random objects

ayre in this case has possessed a car :| 621's gonna drive it

anyway 621 and ayre come across rusty, who's a scavenger for his rubiconian outpost - and the pilot of STEEL HAZE - and tl;dr rusty takes 621 back to the warrens

621 saying he has a mission to reach watchpoint alpha, bc then he and walter can "fix" rubicon

(621 is unaware of the "burn all the coral" plan. walter only told him they're fixing this mess)

rusty's interested, but says reaching the watchpoint is dependent on the conditions. he may have to wait a while

THEN POST-APOCALYPTIC ROAD TRIP AND FALLING IN LOVE while ayre plays wingman

anyway i had to get that idea out of my mind and writen down. ac combat is super rare and is only done when redguns and vespers scrap over a big haul of resources, and even then they try not to damage each ther too much, bc if their acs get too damaged, that's it. it's not being fixed with their limited resources.

rusty who's never been a spy. born on rubicon when it was already messed up and thinks this is normal. oh hey so the landscape is constantly shifting and transforming a mile long field of grass into an acidic bog that'll chew through metal in seconds? haha yeah that happens. it is what it is. oh those manniquins you see on the road sometime? yeah they multiply when you're not looking and try to creep up on you. they explode. yeah that's normal. it really is!

god rusty would actually be incredibly weird in this. even 621 would be side eyeing him...

[colorico-art]

Resource - Digital Tool Assets

Okay, so I've jumped around with several programs to try out based on the needs I had at any given time. These are program specific assets and resources that I've come across while using testing out the various programs.

Sketchbook

I still use this program, though strictly while on-the-go (I use an Android tablet). I personally use it more for quick sketches and then carry them back onto my PC to render, but I know @kreature1827 uses the app and has done some incredible work within the app. The link provides free brush and texture assets.

The program does work across multiple platforms, however I am unsure if there are any sync features present.

Clip Studio Paint

I purchased this program some years ago and tried it out for a bit, and don't get me wrong: it's a really good program. The issue I personally have is that when I moved over to Linux, CSP has no functionality within the system (that, and the pricing model past V1 was not something I personally liked to get involved with). The CSP Asset store is accessible through the program, and includes a lot of brush, pattern, model, and stamp assets.

Since CSP moved into a subscription model, they've added the option to have the program sync with multiple devices.

Krita

This is my current program of choice, and it's also one of the programs I started out using when I looked into illustration work. I did drop it a couple of times, though the reasons were always surrounding the need for on-the-go use and resource management (before Krita 4, it demanded so much out of my laptop that I couldn't use it effectively). The link provided provides a ton of brushes, plugins, and tutorials.

Krita does have an Android app available for beta testing, however my reason from moving away from the mobile app was due to the odd interactions within the app (i.e. some of the tools, like Transform, don't behave properly and require multiple specific alterations to only get a half-decent result).

Medibang Paint

This is what I used whenever I got a tablet before I coming across Autodesk Sketchbook. It's a very robust program, but it does have a specific use for manga art work. You can make some custom brushes, however the program didn't particularly click with me or how I approach my art pieces (i.e. I didn't stick with it at all). The link provided gives program-specific tutorials on getting specific results, such as halftone screens and tool usage.

Medibang is excellent with the cross platform use (it's even better than CSP in that it's free with a simple account), and can be synced with almost any device or operating system. The program does feature ads, which I personally detest. But the ads aren't intrusive and they're mainly out of the way.

[six-costume-refs]

Hey so I’m a lil confused on what happened with the West End Alts situation, all I know is that because they reduced from 9 to 8 shows a week, the alts no longer consistently have at least one day a week on right? But then I hear about how there’s something up with the alt costumes too? Is it possible that you can summarise bc all I’m seeing is fallout across various instas

Hey! So...there's a whole lot. Quick note that I've been on hiatus the last few weeks so apologies for taking so long to reply to you (and I know I have many more unanswered asks on this to get to as well, so apologies to y'all and will do so when I have time).

I did briefly hop in from hiatus to post this, which I would suggest reading. I was light on details because I simply did not have time to go into it more, but it gives a base for a lot of what I'll say here. First things first, the show schedule. Most West End shows perform eight shows a week: 6 days of shows with 1 day off, and 2 of the days have an extra matinee added. It's meant to be optimal for tourist audiences and families. But Six is a much shorter show with an unconventional format that originally wasn't really trying to appeal to those traditional musical theatre audiences, and so a lot of their marketing promoted them more as a fun night out pop show rather than a West End musical. With that and the shorter show in mind, they operated a nine show per week schedule (they've also had some similarly unique scheduling and marketing in the US, particularly for Broadway and the Vegas run). However, the way that pay is set up under the UK actor's union (Equity) is based on the more conventional West End schedules, with actors contracted for either eight show weeks or twelve show weeks. So Six has had all their actors on eight show week contracts, and covered the one show disparity between eight-show-contract and nine-show-schedule by requiring that all actors have to have one show off per week. This meant that each role would have to have a cover perform for at least one show per week. Hence, the West End alternate system was born! But it's been almost five years now, and the outlook for Six is very different. The West End production is very successful, very established, much more polished, and hugely appealing to a more conventional tourist audience. They don't need to focus on setting themselves apart like they originally did; they've long since established themselves as a tenet and huge force of the West End, and much of their marketing now focuses on that status. (A really good comparison for anyone who is from the US and was into theatre about ten years ago is how Hamilton shifted their marketing - they started out as another unconventional, "risky" show that really leaned into those features as part of their marketing, but as the show became more popular and mainstream they've long since started to focus on ongoing success and tourism.) So, yes, right now, they are trialing an eight-show-per-week schedule. Without the ninth performance, they do not need scheduled alternate shows and so they are temporarily not happening during this trial period. Which sucks, but the switch to eight shows is a good thing and is one of many examples of how they're shifting their operations for that longevity by optimizing financials. It's also much more sustainable for everyone involved with the show, because Six is very intense and overuse injuries are rampant. But, again, they are promoting this as a trial period. It gives them time to see how it works financially and to see how the cast functions with this performance schedule (including if more covers could be needed in the future). They'll re-assess, probably in Jan/Feb, and see what happens then. I'm personally expecting that they will keep an eight week schedule, but it's also wholly in the realm of possibility that they might do so and still re-introduce some level of scheduled alternate system, depending on what needs/concerns they find. (Right now the UK Tour principals each have a show off every other week with alts scheduled for their first covers on alternating weeks, while Broadway/NCL swings out each principal for one show every few months, so there are definitely systems for some scheduled swing-ons that are significantly reduced from the weekly alt system. And of course the alts will be on for any injuries/illness/vacations, of which there have already been many). It's also worth noting that because this is a shorter trial period, the contracts will likely have to be renegotiated in some form. So....the costumes.

We've seen some pretty clear evidence for them in the theater, starting in tech week. Naomi and Hannah both posted their makeup; both of them got glitter eyeshadows for both of their principals plus a third glitter that matches the color of an alternate costume (Naomi orange, Hannah light pink). They also both got palettes that were inclusive of both their queens colors' and those alternate colors: for Hannah it's a pink palette that some other Howards have used in the past, but for Naomi the dominant color is oranges and it's a very blatant departure from what makeup they've given Cleves principals/alts in recent years so I really don't find there to be an easily argued alternative explanation. And Hannah got three lipsticks, in the exact same shades that they normally assign for Howard, Parr, and pink alt. We've also seen blue, orange, and pink alternate costumes in the theater, but weeks after the previous' cast's costumes were loaded out and stored in one of their maintenance areas. I've posted about all of that a fair bit in this thread, although note that it hasn't been updated in about a month and is now out of date. But starting about two weeks into this current cast's performances, there have been a couple messages/statements about both alt costumes and covers that seem to imply they don't exist, which I think is what you saw. However...I think they've all been worded oddly and far too carefully, plus the very tangible evidence of alt makeup, plus the existence of alt costumes was also denied in 2021, so I've been incredibly skeptical. But earlier today on live Hannah said they aren't contracted to have second covers for the moment, which is pretty clear but with a providence that that may not always be the case. That also ties in with a theory I've been forming over the last few weeks: that Six is still undecided on whether these alternates will have additional covers, but has had the costume team make all the provisions necessary so that covers can be very quickly added when those decisions are made. This also allows the costume team to move on - most of them are working on Starlight Express these next few months and likely wouldn't be able to return to Six at the drop of a hat for all the prep needed to alt costumes later on. Setting everything up in advance for that possibility is just more efficient for everybody and would allow the alts to quickly learn/debut new tracks if needed. To me, those plans most likely mean: - That the alternates were fit with pre-existing alternate costumes that are now altered for them and stored in the theater - That the alternates were given makeup for all three queens, such as the glitters/palettes/lipsticks that I talked about above - That the alternates were given wigs/hairstyles that intentionally have more versatility in their rigging/cuts to be repurposed for a wide variety of queens if needed (which does seem to be the case, and is not how they'd be set up if they were purely intended to be worn as we've seen them used so far for their first covers) (Also noting that if they're not formally contracted for any additional covers, they cannot be formally rehearsing them; that's why I expect that if they were to add any additional covers it would be finalized and contracted when the performance schedule is for convenience's sake) However...again, this is purely a speculation/theory of mine based on what I've seen and some of the very careful wording (but does seem supported by Hannah's). And even if I'm correct, Six preparing for the possibility of second covers/alternate costumes does not necessarily mean that that will actually wind up in use. Once again, Six is moving to a longer-term focus and in some trial periods to see how they can maintain the show going forward, so some of the production management will still be in flux in the coming weeks/months.

[catboybiologist]

Random question: do you have a favorite theory as to how multicellular organisms formed? Mine is the Cell Symbiosis theory

Do you mean endosymbiosis for the formation of Eukaryotic life?

Endosymbiosis is basically as "proved" as anything can be without a time machine. For those that don't know- mitochondria and chloroplasts have a lot of features of independent bacterial cells, including their own genome, and processes that occur along their membranes that also occur along bacterial membranes (like the ETC itself), and much, much more. So the reasoning goes that these more complex organelles evolved as independent organisms that were then engulfed by larger prokaryotic cells, which then become the Eukaryotes we know today over time. But there are still single celled Eukaryotes around that have these organelles, so this is orthogonal to multicellularity.

As for the rise of multicellular life, this is really cool because we actually have multiple independent examples of multicellularity arising from symbiosis, and there are extremely simple examples of bacteria being multicellular- and yeah, it was essentially starts as independent cells becoming symbiotic to each other. My favorite is cyanobacteria:

The basic idea is that cyanobacteria are nitrogen fixers, meaning that they can take atmospheric nitrogen and turn it into ammonia or other nitrates that are bioavailable to other organisms. It's a crucial choke point in the nitrogen cycle, and somewhat rare- The family of enzymes that do this, however, are extremely sensitive to oxygen and can't function in its presence. Most organisms don't bother, and just eat something else to get their fixed nitrogen. But what's the solution if you do want to fix nitrogen?

Some cyanobacteria only exist in small "chains" of cells- no more than a dozen, attached together in a line, with some permeability to their membranes. Then, the roles are divided. Most of the cells function as normal, photosynthesizing and producing oxygen as usual. But a single cell in that chain is designated as the nitrogen fixing one- it shuts down photosynthesis, makes itself impermeable to oxygen, and starts expressing nitrogen fixing genes. Essential energy carrying molecules and other important stuff gets shuttled in from neighboring cells, and fixed nitrogen compounds get shuttled out.

This is so fucking cool to me. It's an extremely simplistic, stripped down version of multicellularity and tissue specialization. It's impossible to know what exactly happened to make the majority of Eukaryotes multicellular- and it probably arose multiple times within Eukaryotes themselves as well, and there are some funky examples of simple multicellularity in protists (the shadowy grab bag taxonomic classification that contains horrors most biologists dread to touch). But it was probably something like this- a small clump of cells started adhering together, and slowly became more specialized to increase energy efficiency.

Similar bacteria also exist in the roots of some plants (which is one reason crop rotation is important), but the cyanobacteria in the ocean do the overwhelming majority of nitrogen fixation on this planet.

Fun fact, this is why the Great Oxygenation was so devastating-it's thought that when some bacteria had the bright idea start spitting out oxygen and the atmosphere became filled with it, nitrogen fixing bacteria populations plummeted. And at that time, it's thought that these bacteria constituted the majority of life on earth. Woopsie. A small fraction of them, however, developed systems like this, and they've kept the entire food web going ever since.

This spun off on a tangent, but I hope it's the kind of thing you wanted when you dropped this ask!!

[finnickyslut]

More of the Truth-warping Cattonquick au because I have to get it out.

Oliver's sisters

His older sister is 29 and the younger one 26. They're both booksmart like Oliver (one studied law and the other psychiatry) and very close to each other. They grew upper-middle class. The older one has a cushy job as a barrister and the younger one is still studying. They both live in London.

They live close enough to Oxford that the older one volunteered to be added to his emergency contacts list when Paula started fussing about her baby so far away from home (the Quicks were chuffed). When Oliver privately asked about appointing her primary contact she was moved but alarmed.

They never lived together and saw him only a handful of times a year. This became even less as they grew older, using their studies as an excuse. They were tepid at best whenever Paula and Oliver were involved, and not much warmer about Jeff. Paula didn't want Jeff to pressure them and risk alienating them even more. Jeff himself was a fool for his daughters.

They saw Oliver as a bother and "that slag's child" for a long time, even if they knew he wasn't really at fault for anything. Never wanted anything to do with him until they were both uni age. (12-14 y.o. Oliver)

Several things coalesced around that time, including an incident where Oliver got his arm scar, their mother happily remarrying, them finally having certain conversations with her and each other... Mostly just maturity.

Although they apologized to him and actively started trying, they had their own lives and Oliver was too wary by then and still hasn't truly opened up. All the same, they did connect, mostly through their love for literature, drive, their feelings about Jeff and Paula, and later when the girls advised him regarding uni and career choices. They each have scheduled calls with him at least once a month.

(Oliver will never tell, but it was a conversation with them about "making your own opportunities" that led to him puncturing Felix's tire)

Oliver has incredibly conflicting feelings about his sisters. He admires, resents and envies them. He appreciates their sustained effort to connect and make things up to him, but he can't fully trust it. He can't bring himself to think of them as his sisters neither give them up. He realizes they were kids too but is bitter about getting the short end of the stick.

All three siblings share dimples, wavy hair, a pale complexion and impressive lashes. (Felix feels shivers at the hospital seeing Oliver's gaze on his older sister's face.)

His sisters gifted him his necklace and a few other things once they started trying to get close (other gifts include tutoring for uni exam preparations, some favorite books, a nice shirt that he has since outgrown, a fancy scarf and gloves, tickets to a play...).

He keeps most of the physical ones in a box, tells himself he just can't throw presents away or his parents would ask (Just the once, he ripped apart a book in a fit, ended up crying like a baby, desperately trying to put it back together)

The girls have a good amount of correct suspicions about Oliver's mental problems. They have tried to have "general" conversations around mental health and therapy but anytime things got too close to home he shut down and deflected. Given he seems high-functioning they've focused on showing they're non-judgmental/a safe space and learning how to be a good support system.

They know from experience that talking to Oliver's parents about any of this would be counterproductive.

Oliver was originally planning on spending part of the summer with them to avoid home. They were looking forward to it but were happy for him once they'd asked around and checked Felix Catton was a real, non-psycho person who actually hung out with their baby brother.