#we were not organized

[alphacrone]

love seeing high school kids organize real protests for actual world issues bc when i was in high school the only time my peers and i managed to actually pull a protest together was when we organized a sit-in to protest the new rule that we weren’t allowed to sit in the hallways during lunch

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[doctorsiren]

I’ve been thinking about Miles as Serizawa quite a bit 😁

[arachnerd-8-legs]

really disappointing that bunjywunjy had to be pestered twice just to quietly remove their reblog after using their huge platform to encourage garbage like raving about the lesbian estonian soviet flag and how 'new pride flag just dropped' so people could go 'ooh pretty' about a flag that was forced onto us by ppl who wanted our culture gone and oppressed us for about a century in total if not more.

to say nothing or not show anything of the truth about that flag and quietly remove the reblog felt more like it was done out of obligation (and you didn't agree) rather than care for the subject matter that is still a fresh wound in our country's memory. it's only been 33 years since it ended.

I'd rather you make the mistake about something you didn't know (eastern european history is easy for westeners to overlook, because we're not a big country like them, we're not england or france or spain or germany) and admit/apologize for said mistake or even just outright state that you don't actually care rather than say nothing and quietly remove something so that people would stop talking about it

[weevmo]

@kmodoposts and I are up to our Melodious Nonsense again!! Here's the 'Title Card' for our next video: - Fionna and Cake styled -

Just like the WH video we were thinking of opening some parts up for other artists - if there's any interest!

[blackyote]

"Forget Me Not"

Lawlu Band AU / Explicit / 12k words

👒🐯 read here on ao3 🎵🎸

Thank you SO MUCH to the incredibly talented @sen-ya for the cover art!!! ...and everything else they drew 😭

[clonerightsagenda]

Had a dream that I got hired to deal with a haunting and I was like you know my blog is a bit right, I don't actually believe in ghosts unfortunately, but it turns out the place was actually haunted and the ghost was pretty pissed off at me for sticking my nose into it. So I went ok, they hired me for *my* skillset, so I started looking shit up and eventually found one oldish book on local urban legends speculating that the ghost was a woman who lived on the property when it used to be a low income lodging house who lost a baby and buried it in the yard, so I dug around and found the remains, which were in an area that the place I was hired by (I think it was a branch of NARA? which is weird, why would they need to hire an outside researcher) was planning to build a new addition on. So by the end of the dream I was going 'yeah ok I have two proposals, one you put these remains in a silver box, rebury it, keep on with your construction, and hope that'll do it, OR you add a covered walkway to your building plans, connect the old building to the new building, and have a nice little courtyard area with a plaque where we rebury the remains, maybe that would make her happy' except I was hired to do research at a history and records institution so I couldn't just write that report based on Vibes, so the rest of the dream was consumed with me trying to figure out which local newspapers would help me confirm the ID and make my case better than one speculative sentence in a trashy book. So yeah. Dreamed I was a ghostbuster but the real core of the dream was the challenges of public history when working with regular people who don't make the historical record very often. Wish you well, dead lady. I was really trying to get you that courtyard.

[halorvic]

The danger is clear and present: COVID isn’t merely a respiratory illness; it’s a multi-dimensional threat impacting brain function, attacking almost all of the body’s organs, producing elevated risks of all kinds, and weakening our ability to fight off other diseases. Reinfections are thought to produce cumulative risks, and Long COVID is on the rise. Unfortunately, Long COVID is now being considered a long-term chronic illness — something many people will never fully recover from. Dr. Phillip Alvelda, a former program manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office that pioneered the synthetic biology industry and the development of mRNA vaccine technology, is the founder of Medio Labs, a COVID diagnostic testing company. He has stepped forward as a strong critic of government COVID management, accusing health agencies of inadequacy and even deception. Alvelda is pushing for accountability and immediate action to tackle Long COVID and fend off future pandemics with stronger public health strategies. Contrary to public belief, he warns, COVID is not like the flu. New variants evolve much faster, making annual shots inadequate. He believes that if things continue as they are, with new COVID variants emerging and reinfections happening rapidly, the majority of Americans may eventually grapple with some form of Long COVID. Let’s repeat that: At the current rate of infection, most Americans may get Long COVID.

[...]

LP: A recent JAMA study found that US adults with Long COVID are more prone to depression and anxiety – and they’re struggling to afford treatment. Given the virus’s impact on the brain, I guess the link to mental health issues isn’t surprising. PA: There are all kinds of weird things going on that could be related to COVID’s cognitive effects. I’ll give you an example. We’ve noticed since the start of the pandemic that accidents are increasing. A report published by TRIP, a transportation research nonprofit, found that traffic fatalities in California increased by 22% from 2019 to 2022. They also found the likelihood of being killed in a traffic crash increased by 28% over that period. Other data, like studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, came to similar conclusions, reporting that traffic fatalities hit a 16-year high across the country in 2021. The TRIP report also looked at traffic fatalities on a national level and found that traffic fatalities increased by 19%. LP: What role might COVID play? PA: Research points to the various ways COVID attacks the brain. Some people who have been infected have suffered motor control damage, and that could be a factor in car crashes. News is beginning to emerge about other ways COVID impacts driving. For example, in Ireland, a driver’s COVID-related brain fog was linked to a crash that killed an elderly couple. Damage from COVID could be affecting people who are flying our planes, too. We’ve had pilots that had to quit because they couldn’t control the airplanes anymore. We know that medical events among U.S. military pilots were shown to have risen over 1,700% from 2019 to 2022, which the Pentagon attributes to the virus.

[...]

LP: You’ve criticized the track record of the CDC and the WHO – particularly their stubborn denial that COVID is airborne. PA: They knew the dangers of airborne transmission but refused to admit it for too long. They were warned repeatedly by scientists who studied aerosols. They instituted protections for themselves and for their kids against airborne transmission, but they didn’t tell the rest of us to do that.

[...]

LP: How would you grade Biden on how he’s handled the pandemic? PA: I’d give him an F. In some ways, he fails worse than Trump because more people have actually died from COVID on his watch than on Trump’s, though blame has to be shared with Republican governors and legislators who picked ideological fights opposing things like responsible masking, testing, vaccination, and ventilation improvements for partisan reasons. Biden’s administration has continued to promote the false idea that the vaccine is all that is needed, perpetuating the notion that the pandemic is over and you don’t need to do anything about it. Biden stopped the funding for surveillance and he stopped the funding for renewing vaccine advancement research. Trump allowed 400,000 people to die unnecessarily. The Biden administration policies have allowed more than 800,000 to 900,000 and counting.

[...]

LP: The situation with bird flu is certainly getting more concerning with the CDC confirming that a third person in the U.S. has tested positive after being exposed to infected cows. PA: Unfortunately, we’re repeating many of the same mistakes because we now know that the bird flu has made the jump to several species. The most important one now, of course, is the dairy cows. The dairy farmers have been refusing to let the government come in and inspect and test the cows. A team from Ohio State tested milk from a supermarket and found that 50% of the milk they tested was positive for bird flu viral particles.

[...]

PA: There’s a serious risk now in allowing the virus to freely evolve within the cow population. Each cow acts as a breeding ground for countless genetic mutations, potentially leading to strains capable of jumping to other species. If any of those countless genetic experiments within each cow prove successful in developing a strain transmissible to humans, we could face another pandemic – only this one could have a 58% death rate. Did you see the movie “Contagion?” It was remarkably accurate in its apocalyptic nature. And that virus only had a 20% death rate. If the bird flu makes the jump to human-to-human transition with even half of its current lethality, that would be disastrous.

[dragonpropaganda]

you should talk about your thoughts on rw fanon (looking with huge eyes)

Oh god, there's a lot of major misconceptions have concreted into fanon, mostly around ancient society and ascension.

First things first! Ascension is not death! They are entirely separate things treated entirely separately by the text of the game. I can see where the interpretation is coming from, but it doesn't really align with how the text treats either subject. Five Pebbles may want to remove the self destruction taboo, but from his reaction to the rot it's clear that he doesn't want to die. Conflation of ascension and death only comes up as an offhand possibility that pebbs makes on iterator 4chan, when he's going into the possibilities of scenarios that even the other sliverists are doubtful of! (let me make clear that I am not a sliverist by any means)

Ascension is more of talked about as a form of transcendence, yeah? A Bell, Eighteen Amber Beads talks about their sitution as being "To have grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void…", not as them seeking an end to life.

The beta dialogue goes into more detail, mentioning the "infinities of time and space" and the "boundless fractal planes of spirit and reality...", though this dialogue was cut and it's hard to tell how much it reflects the concept as in the released game.

As for the cultural misconceptions... there's A Lot to talk about, but the first that comes to mind is the common conflation of the five natural urges and the christian concept of sin.

It is true that the negation of urges is mentioned by moon as an alternative method of ascension, but much of what we know about the culture of the people who the fandom calls the ancients (which makes discussion of the depths a mess but that's something for another post entirely) points towards the urges not being seen as shameful.

Even the first urge does not seem to be particularly scorned! Being a warrior is presented as a cause for bragging in the Shaded Citadel pearl, being comparable with being an artist and a fashion legend. The second urge, also does not seem to be suppressed. Multiple sources attribute some level of honour to parenthood! The aforementioned pearl also mentions Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel as being a "Mother, Father and Spouse" without any hint of shamefulness. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections expresses pride about having progeny, mentioning it alongside their owned land and esteem among their peers.

After some peer review, an esteemed friend has told me to add a section on purposed organisms as well! This is not so much my area, so I might be a bit off on some things.

As moon says, the majority of purposed organisms were tubes in boxes, and that the primal fauna of the world are almost entirely extinct. A lot of the fandom seems to ignore the first part, and i can't say I blame them, but the evolution of the creatures is so much weirder than people think.

Concept art for the creatures has this interesting quality to it, where the organic parts of the creatures have an almost... melty quality to them.

In the concept art, the flesh appears as if it's almost defying the machinery to form an animal shape. It's as if it's conquering its own artificiality the way the foliage grows over the (stone, brick and concrete, not mostly metal as some think!) ruins.

Of course, it's hard to really tell how much of this reflects the finalised concept, most of the integration is much smoother in the game, in line with a seamless kind of biomechanical design. There was always an intention of biomechanical strangeness, as shown in this screenshot of the devlog before the term "slugcat" even existed!

That said, the melty nature of the concept art shows a level of wild change inherent the biomechanical nature of the creatures, as if they truly are the result of these "tubes in boxes" almost revolting against their own boxes.

and considering centipedes... some tubes may not have had boxes in the first place!

[transformativeworks]

The results of our 16th Anniversary Survey!

Over 75,000 people told us where they spend their fannish time and the tally is in....

Y'all are Here.

You can see the rest of the metrics at the OTW blog - there is a downloadable version of the report if you are interested!

~ Mod Remi

[lunarin64art]

That feeling when he can't stand to see you that way, no matter what you do, no matter what you say😩😭💔

[gammija]

i know Gertrude and Gerry have done the 'kindly granny and her grandson' routine in tma before, so there is reason to not take them at face value here. but honestly, I don't think they're going to come back into play in tmagp a lot;

for the simple reason that we've already had Gerry and Gertrude act as the cool monster hunter duo. Casting them in that role again, instead of letting us meet some entirely new characters who are fucked up in different ways, honestly just sounds a bit boring imo

[fbfh]

Imagine topping Leo in a chair?

LITERALLY love you for this. riding Leo in a chair is in like your top 5 favorite ways to ride Leo. your faces are so close together and he can feel every intimate rockwing bouncing squeeze of your tight juicy little hole gripping his throbbing cock like a vise. his eyes are so wide and his grip on your soft hips is nearly enough to leave pretty little fingertip bruises polkadotting your thighs (which he's obsessed with) and your hips (which he's also obsessed with) and your ass (are you sensing a pattern here????) and god everything you do drives him crazy but CHRIST the way you hold his face so sweetly in your pretty hands, so innocent and tender while simultaneously milking his cock for all he's got. and he'll give it to you. Leo will let you ride him in that chair that he can't look at after that without going half mast. he'll let you ride him until he's shooting blanks, until both of your cum drips on the floor, mixing in messy creamy beautiful puddles. Leo will throw his head back in pleasure, panting, chest heaving and giving you the best view of his perfect neck that's just begging to be covered in hickeys and bites. Leo will let you ride him in a chair until he passes out. can't walk. pounding down gatorade and liquid iv to try and rehydrate. and he'll thank you for it.

[soath]

It is genuinely not surprising that Ashton has such a strong The Gods Are Going To Kill Us take on the situation, given what they specifically have seen and what they have to relate to. They're about two weeks out from 1.) getting done violence onto them by an angel and then 2.) being told they have a bit of a dead thing that the gods tried to kill inside them. Then they go and put a lot of effort into getting that dead scrap to wake up (with disastrous consequences illustrating how incredibly volatile its power is). Then they have their only religious friend blow up in front of them. Then they watch a movie trilogy where the only non-god main character is another earth genasi broken-walking-timebomb whose main purpose on the mission is to explode when the gods need him to. They don't see the Lawbearer weep for her son, they only see the Emissary, a child, crying because he's afraid to die. Then they go to Vasselheim, the city of the gods, and see the corpse of a Titan, the dead thing the gods killed, yanked out of the earth and puppeted by one wannabe god and now desecrated in death by the overconfident followers of all the others. They're making something beautiful out of it, they're living on it, and normally he'd be in favor of that but they don't even know its name. They're building new temples on the corpse of the old world, hollowing it out and starting fresh, and Ashton is a part of that old world. They cannot stop being connected to a power the gods seem to, at best, be willing to weaponize. That would make anyone paranoid; given their background it's impressive that he's not more combative, tbh.

[grahamcarmen]

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep - A Fragmentary Passage - Depths of Darkness