#this is a rambly mess but whatever

[anonymous-dentist]

The frog is staring at him again.

Quackity ignores it and pretends that he isn't being watched. Gods, that's the worst thing about living in Karmaland: he's always being watched. At least before he had the privilege of being allowed some semblance of privacy.

Before...

Before is a complicated thing, so he usually just doesn't think about it. It's hard not to, though, especially now as he wraps leather around the handle of his ax in a familiar way. Once upon a time, someone showed him how to do it this way, someone Quackity can't quite picture through the fog in the back of his mind. This way, he had said, Quackity's hands wouldn't get rubbed too raw by the rough wood. The leather would provide a grip.

A fucking grip, Quackity thinks. He wrinkles his nose annoyedly. Yeah, who here needs a fucking grip? Not him. He's having a perfectly rational reaction to election fraud and betrayal. It's something he thinks that he knows a lot about. Fraud. Betrayal. Cheating. Betrayal. Friendship. Betrayal.

It takes a real asshole to treat a friend like this. What kind of friend goes from saying that he just wants Quackity to be happy to treating him like a kid and ripping away the one thing he wanted in this world just to, what, protect him? Protect him from assholes trying to take advantage of him? What a joke.

The frog is staring. Quackity doesn't know how it got down here, but it's down here. There's an imposter little brother somewhere upstairs playing Call of Duty and cheering loudly every time he murders someone.

Quackity glances at the frog. "The fuck do you want?"

The frog blinks at him one eye at a time. It says nothing in response, but it looks like it's judging him. It probably is. Fucker.

Quackity rubs the top of its head, anyway. A thumb gently strokes a line between its buggy little eyes, and the frog devolves into little froggy purring, and Quackity wants to cry. But he won't. Not now, anyway. He can fake cry like a champ, but actual tears always dry up when he's got company.

This won't be Quackity's first revolution, he thinks. Maybe. The memories are blurry, but he's pretty sure that he's done this before. Somebody died. Someone important. Quackity killed them. He'll kill Luzu, too.

That's the one thing that Quackity knows best, after all. Not politics, not ducks, not music, and definitely not friendships, apparently.

No, Quackity knows one thing best of all: loss. It's all he's experienced on this server between the betrayals and carnivals and births and... everything.

(Rubius in his dress briefly crosses Quackity's mind, Sapo Peta helping him get justice, all the election rigging in his favor...)

Loss. Two universes in a row.

Well, Quackity muses as he raises his ax and inspects it in the light. Third time will be the charm, right?

[mblue-art]

BAD SANSUARY // [14] tears for owl-bones's event !

"...Killer, it just looks like I have running mascara."

"it's such a look though."

messy kisses and post-nuzzles

[kaleidoscopiccc]

never ask a man his salary

a woman her age

a teenage girl why she has personal beef with a fictional fortune telling machine

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

Hiii everyone, say, how do your Hawkes go go about sharing their estate? If they do it at all? Is everyone free to come and go or are they more private? Or do they only invite their LI to stay? I'm curious!! :)

[verdantglow]

SmallEtho headcanon time let’s go.

When they are cuddling, Joel usually ends up tucked against Etho’s chest, with Etho’s chin on his head. It’s really mostly a matter of Etho being a tall gangly thing needing lots of space & Joel being, uh, more compact. But sometimes Joel decides this needs to be switched up. Of course, he doesn’t tell Etho that. He just sorta wriggles out of Etho’s grasp, scooches up the bed & pulls Etho into his chest.

Now, don’t get it wrong, Etho has no problem with this; it’s actually really endearing & he enjoys being held like that. However. It’s way way way more fun to annoy Joel. So he will escape Joel’s arms, scoot even higher up on the bed, & tug Joel back under his chin, saying nothing.

Naturally, Joel is annoyed & repeats the position change.

So Etho does it again.

& they sorta wind up spending the better part of half an hour just. Silently fighting over who gets to hold the other. Eventually they run out of bed & Joel’s neck is at a weird angle against the headboard & Etho will rotate them to face the other way & it just… continues, neither of them willing to stop or verbally acknowledge that this is happening.

Joel does this out of his stubborn need to assert his dominance (read: he just wants to hold Etho why the actual fuck can’t he just have this???). Etho just likes watching Joel get progressively more annoyed & listening to his little huffy noises of exasperation.

Eventually, they grow tired of the whole thing & they will relent. (Insert optional make outs here.)

In the end, Joel is happy to get to hold Etho in peace & Etho is delighted to be held, safe & secure, listening to his soulmate’s heart (even if it mean his feet are hanging well off the end of the bed).

[onii-onahole]

Not being conventionally attractive can suck my dick.

[applestruda]

Ok so honestly I just wanna say that the sexyman polls have been so fun,,

Like its gotten me to do fanart and such for people other than scar + boatem, and overall i find it very motivating to just draw a whole bunch

And I love all the dramatic moments, that at least I personally have had, all in the name just messing around

like idk, I'm just happy to be here ig, I never expected to get so invested

[arklay]

RESIDENT EVIL → THE WESKER FAMILY

To the public, little is known of the families behind some of the world’s most renowned bioterrorists, but the question remains: did they play a role in causing their children to walk down the path that they did? Or are these individuals simply ambitious criminals with delusions of grandeur?

For Diana Wesker (née Afanasyeva), her introduction into the bioweapons black market trade was upon discovering her employers were using her research into limb regeneration with salamanders to further their experiments in creating enhanced soldiers, instead of developing human therapies with which she was recruited for. Although the prospect of using biological weapons in the military did not appeal to her, the concept remained fascinating for her own selfish endeavours. Born on the 27th of October, 1963 in Sydney, Australia to Russian immigrant parents, Diana had harsh expectations placed upon her at a young age, ones that no matter how hard she tried she could never live up to. Her mother, Tatyana, was an unfeeling woman, absent for long stretches of time with little regard to how it affected her daughters, much more concerned with her craft as an accomplished opera singer. Viktor was no better. A strict man whose role as father and ballet master blurred, he pushed his girls to one day follow in his footsteps. Whilst Sofia enjoyed ballet, and went on to become a professional ballet dancer, Diana’s heart was set on going into the field of biology. She wished to make a name for herself, separate from her family – to which she succeeded.

Diana was married to former U.S. Marine, Dave Monroe, for only a year until he was declared dead in 1992 after succumbing to injuries sustained in a horrific car accident. Foul play was ruled out while Diana played the role of the grief-stricken widow, but in reality, she had snapped after years of mistreatment at her husband’s hands, and opted for something she could pass off as an accident to be free of him. For years she believed he was dead – and he was, legally – but that proved to not be the case when he found his way back into her life again in 1999. Unbeknownst to her, she had been lied to by the police and coroner, who were paid off by her employers when they took Dave’s body for themselves and used him as one of their first test subjects in developing supersoldiers. Before he could ever hurt her again, Diana’s second husband, Albert Wesker, tracked the man down, captured him and tortured him, before allowing Diana to get her violent and bloody revenge.

The origins of Albert Wesker’s involvement in bioterrorism, alongside his twin sister, Alex, are much different than that of Diana’s. The two hail from London, Canada, but unfortunately, they hold no memories of their lives there, nor what happened to their biological parents when they were eight years old. Agents of Oswell E. Spencer, an aristocratic billionaire and eugenicist, took the twins from their home and executed their parents as per Spencer’s orders. Albert and Alex were then placed in a home funded by the Spencer Foundation where they were given new names and a privileged upbringing. They had access to the best education possible, free to pursue whichever field they decided, but it was by no accident they both went into virology and bioengineering; at home, their adoptive parents – agents whom they believed to be their real parents – instilled them with the beliefs of Oswell E. Spencer, harbouring disdain for war and pestilence, and believing humans to be an evolutionary dead-end in need of a rebirth. They were only two of the hundreds of children “adopted” as part of what is known as Project W, a plan intended to develop an advanced race of human beings. The most promising candidates were headhunted by Umbrella Pharmaceuticals, the twins amongst them, where they went on to create bioweapons for the company founded by none other than the man who had handpicked them for his plan. The final stage of this was to infect the thirteen Spencer saw fit, however, only two survived; Albert received the intended effects, now possessing superhuman abilities, however, Alex was only offered more time to live due to her terminal degenerative illness.

In the summer of 1995, Diana was working undercover within Umbrella to gather development data on their projects for her company. Here, she had a chance encounter with Albert, an intelligence officer at the time, which permanently altered the course of her life. The two were never seen far from one another’s side, marrying in 1998, and they went on to become notorious in the bioweapons industry. The development of the Uroboros virus was where things took a turn for the worst. Although Diana’s infection was successful and she bore abilities that rivalled her husband’s, the plan itself did not succeed as they had hoped, and almost cost Albert his life at the hands of his former subordinates.

Now, they work within the shadows, with Diana declared missing and Albert believed to be dead. Their legacy, however, lives on with the mark they left on the world. As visionaries in their field, they influenced bioterror attacks carried out by countless individuals and organisations. In turn, they also inspired others to fight against such atrocities. One such person happens to be Albert’s son from a former relationship, Jake Müller, whose existence he was unaware of.

[earl-grey-crow]

it’s me, hi, I’m the white witch, it’s me

[topazpearl]

[art-of-mathematics]

The task I wanted to do:

- task 1: Visualize the fourth dedekind number

What I needed to do in order to do task 1:

- task 1.1: Draw a hypercube and

- task 1.2: then give each of the 16 vertices a name - which is the 16 different "cells" (I dunno which word to use, sorry) of a venn diagram with 4 overlapping sets plus a circle around that 4-venn diagram.

- - -- ---

//additional info: For the 3rd dedekind number visualization I already posted I needed to use 20 cubes. Each of the 8 vertices of a cube was related to 3 sets - A, B and C - and the intersections of these sets. (AB, AC, BC, ABC)

You remember this post:

... and these details:

...and now back to the 4th dedekind number, which follows the same principle, - but in 4 dimensions.

- So we need a hypercube - and a 4th set/letter:

Now we have 4 letters - alias 4 sets

- and 11 combinations of these sets:

AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD, (6)

ABC, ABD, ACD, BCD, (4)

ABCD (1)

=> 11 different intersections + 4 "pure" sets. (sorry for ignorant wording)

So, we have 15 of these now. What is with the 16th (as the hypercube has 16 vertices)? Yeah, that one is the circle you imagine around the 4-set venn diagram.

- - -- ---

This is a 4-set venn diagramm btw:

--- -- - -

So, back to me attempting to do the 4th dedekind-number visualization:

So I started to draw that venn diagram using ellipses, but I slightly altered it, because I wanted to use my isometric grid paper. (The angles of my drawing are different than in the picture depicted above.)

I started to draw the 4 ellipses, and I somehow started to see two intertwined/interlocked tubes due to the additional helplines I used for drawing.

Then I started to use my thicker black pen to make this effect of these two interlocked tubes more visible:

Now I plan to write the sets/letters at the backside of that piece of paper - in mirrored, so I can hold this piece of paper (with the tube drawing in front) against the light - and see the letters of the set names shining through.

i might also add some details to the tubes.

[daddy-long-legssss]

The Story Behind The Song: Arctic Monkeys’ early ambitions on ‘A Certain Romance’

Lucy Harbron – Far Out Magazine | January 17, 2024

It was 2006. Mortgages were crashing, and businesses were going bust. Tony Blair was on his last legs in office as the longest-serving prime minister since Margaret Thatcher, and the hangover of ‘Cool Brittania’ was beginning to set in with an unexpected ferocity. Things were bleak when a young Alex Turner sang, “There ain’t no romance around there” through the public’s speakers. Arctic Monkeys were about to write themselves into musical history as the voice of a new generation.

The final song on their debut album, there has always been something special about ‘A Certain Romance’. In 2022, after the release of their seventh album, The Car, Turner seemed to find himself reflecting back on that 2006 track. To the musician, that early cut holds a clue to everything that was to come as he said the piece “showed that we did actually have these ambitions beyond what we once thought we were capable of”.

Coming in at over the five-minute mark, ‘A Certain Romance’ almost feels like the Arctic Monkeys’ version of a rock opera, summarising all the themes, feelings and energy that came before it on their seminal album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. It has the cheekiness of ‘Fake Tales Of San Francisco’ and the catchy instrumentals of hits like ‘Dancing Shoes’ or ‘I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor’. Utilising the northern charm of ‘Mardy Bum’, it stands as a final, neatly summarising point on the social commentary found in their early tracks like ‘From The Ritz To The Rubble’ or ‘Riot Van’. Really, it could be argued that ‘A Certain Romance’ is the ultimate example of Arctic Monkeys’ original sound, perfectly encapsulating all the things that made the world listen up and pay attention.

It’s like they seemed to know that, too, always allowing the song a special place. In fact, it was really the band’s opening remark. Years before the offer of a debut album came around, the group were a well-oiled machine with their own local hits. They had the northern live music scene in their hands as their homemade demo CD was passed around like everyone’s worst-kept secret. Beneath the Boardwalk features eight out of the 13 songs that would be on Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, albeit in a slightly different, lower-quality version. But the opening number, ‘A Certain Romance’, sounds just the same.

It’s all there, from the rolling opening drums to that final guitar solo. Recorded and produced in a rented studio at only age 17, the existence of ‘A Certain Romance’, one of the band’s most explorative and energetic numbers, in this form this early in their career feels like a diamond sitting in a mine. It proves that they were always onto something special.

They never needed any help. In fact, their producer, Jim Abbiss, noted that they even seemed nervous about the help. “I think they were probably a bit weary, like ‘who’s this guy? And is he gonna make our sound this or that.’”

They didn’t want anything to change too much, as the group already had the songs figured out. Turner certainly did, as the track’s meandering narrative about hometown lads, fights, and local boredom is already there. Talking on a podcast, original member Andy Nicholson revealed the story behind the song. “We had a practice room with a pool table in, and we had a party in there, and we invited another band who were friends of ours, and we all had some drinks,” he said. “Then something happened, someone throws a pool cue, someone throws a pool ball, and everyone ends up fighting,” he added, explaining the lyrics, “there’s boys in bands / And kids who like to scrap with pool cues in their hands.”

But the magic of Arctic Monkeys lies in their nuance. What begins as a snooty analysis of his local landscape is a genuinely affectionate take. “Well, over there, there’s friends of mine / What can I say? I’ve known ’em for a long long time / And, yeah, they might overstep the line / But you just cannot get angry in the same way,” Turner sings, looking around at his bandmates and lifelong friends. ‘A Certain Romance’ is not only a time capsule for the group’s beginnings but is an ode to all the people who were there with them. It’s an ode to the hometown that made them and all its various characters.

But as the last guitar solo roars to life, there is an unspoken statement that they’re going to be bigger than what they came from. “I remember when we were recording ‘A Certain Romance’ and having a conversation with the producer about the final guitar solo,” Turner told NME, recalling the moment these songs were reworked for their debut. But they wouldn’t let anyone mess with ‘A Certain Romance’, knowing exactly what they were doing and trying to say with that one. In the 2003 demo version, all the feeling is already there, and Turner wouldn’t risk it.

“There’s something that happens at the end of that track where we break some rules in a single moment,” he continued. What happens at the end of the piece feels even more special, considering how the album was recorded. “These are the songs we wanna do, and I think this is the order we wanna do them in,” Alex Turner told their producer, recounting the conversation in 2007 to RadioX, “And he goes, ‘alright, we’ll try to record them in that order as well.’” As the final song, that last guitar solo is the last thing recorded for the album, standing as a cathartic outlet and a chance for the band to prove themselves.

“We focused on the [emotional] effect of the instrumentals over the words,” Turner reflected on the track, concluding, “and I feel like we’ve been trying to do that again and again since then.”

+

[crystalleoi]

i wasn't planning on posting this but i got carried away with coloring and stuff so...hi :)

[notpercieved]

Why are people SURPRISED that Alhaitham is nice???

He IS nice, yes hes cold but not intentionally, thats just how he is but he doesnt mean it in a terrible way

He doesnt flaunt any form of superiority over someone since he even says that he personally doesnt value himself more than others, rather hes stating facts that comes o f f as being cocky when hes just saying what IS correct, hes blunt till the point where people often consider it as rude and arrogant but he sees it as something that is normal because thats literally how he is

Yes, being blunt isnt always a good thing and people should know when to say the truth, not lie but postpone it, but theres also a consideration that not everyone is able to always know social cues and multiple (including myself) struggle to pick them up often, and of course it comes with consequences just like how Alhaitham is heavily disliked by some of the professors or even other students for his "unacceptable" attitude

His entire SQ is also about how he doesnt care how others perceive him but puts his foot down when it endangers others even when he doesnt even know who they are and all he wants is just a simple life

Hes not mean nor a terrible person, hes actually a nice person

Just because someone DOESN'T fall into the *common* character type of being a happy go lucky, always cheerful and smiling person doesnt automatically make them mean

[wutheringmights]

So rereading the earliest chapters of CTB made me remember one of the key character traits of Mask: that he’s actually a teenage boy in a child’s body. Or that he’s just mentally older than he looks physically, smth like that, I haven’t played Majora’s Mask or Ocarina of Time yet.

I don’t remember if u’ve already discussed this before, but what is the child’s mental vs physical age? I just thought it would be ironic and extremely tragic if it turns out the “child” is somehow older than the engineer, especially considering that protecting his innocence was Spirits’ main motivation to continue suffering past!Link’s abuse. But maybe Mask is only a little bit mentally older than his body would have u believe, and time is wobbly in his head and he’s definitely not as intellectually mature as Spirits or past!Link?

Mask is "mentally" 13 years old, but he's very immature for his age.

Going through everything he did at such a young age, especially when his adventures demanded that he be older than he was, was very damaging for him. His emotional regulation is behind most 13 year olds. His interpersonal relationships are all out of whack because he hasn't been in a safe enough space to actually grow up. Instead, he's stuck in a weird state where he tries to reclaim his childhood by acting younger than he is or strive for maturity by trying to mimic the behaviors of the adults around him.

That's what Mask meant when he said that if there's a young and old version of him, he's a third unrelated guy. He's stuck in his development. He doesn't know how to catch up on the growing up he never got to do, so he tries to run further back into his youth.