#whats sciences deal?

[send-me-a-kae-via-subspace]

she gunpowder on my tim till i. um. till i blow up the moon in a murderous rage over the death of a dear friend

[carpsoup]

making an astronomy/meteoritics iterator oc when i know fuckall or at least just very basic things about those things was maybe a mistake. Looking up stuff for reference/inspo like haha i like your funny words magic man

[sciencussy]

What do mosquitoes do except exist in a niche that no other creature wants to fill?

[nana-glass-chillhop-radio-hour]

the gossip at the Grace must have been fucking crazyyyyyyyy

[incorrect-half-life-quotes]

"Here at Black Mesa, our staff are the pinnacle of achievement, working tirelessly to keep our facility in tip-top shape. But don't just take my word for it! Let's see what they have to say about that!"

[kvroii]

Poisoner's City, Chapter 14 - Marun is taken to Laboratory 12 to undergo a procedure to relieve him from the effects of a strange spell that's making him act strangely. But that spell was another of Marun's bluffs! Desperate to escape the machine and the consequence of his lie, he attempts to break open the lid before the procedure begins.

(Part of an ongoing project to illustrate each of the main scenes of the Myrios Series!)

[cyclogenesis]

Tried to write some normal porn last night but instead just managed some deeply deranged and lovingly detailed erotic violence. Warning for um Wade getting his heart fucked by Logan's claws. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Fuck it. Wade leans further into it. The gleaming tips of each claw punch through his suit like the fabric’s been waiting to part for them. His own skin, when the adamantium reaches it, is equally acquiescent. 

“There’s something wrong with you,” Logan says, claws sinking into Wade almost impossibly slowly, millimeter by millimeter. Everything usually happens so swiftly with things like this: a blade plunged in deep, a bullet catching on bone before it’s spat back out. This is fucking sensual. Ribs splintering helplessly under the inexorable force, a slow-motion aortic dissection. Silver pressure against his left lung, momentarily tender until it’s sliced into and Wade’s breath catches, trying to inhale around what Logan’s forced inside him. 

“You’re the one claw-fucking my heart, babygirl,” Wade points out. It’s not quite a wheeze. Logan raises an eyebrow, and his claws ease out—still slow, serrating, slick in Wade’s hot blood—

—and then thrust back in, all the way through. 

“Okay,” Wade says. His body’s trying to heal, nerves and muscle knitting back together, weaving around each claw like acceptance. “New kink unlocked, hello.”

“Is there any way to shut that mouth of yours?”

“Nothing that doesn’t confuse the audience and go against the whole point of the character,” Wade admits. 

Logan twists his fist, a sharp and practiced motion like a key snapping open a lock, and Wade’s introduced to the brand new sensation of his heart being shredded like it was dropped in a food processor. He chokes on his own blood and it’s so embarrassing, the hot flood of it down his chin and neck. It makes Logan laugh, if a sound that low and dark could be classified as such, which is at best a maybe. And that sound, in turn, makes Wade’s cock go from persistent half-mast to so hard he thinks he actually feels his blood redirect. So hard it’s created a medical anomaly, and all he had to do is get his vital organs mosaiced by a mutant with an attitude problem. 

[victorluvsalice]

💬I'm curious about the New Severance fic (mainly because I don't think I've heard of that series) and the BITD Smiler BABS fic (Because...self indulgence)

*cracks knuckles* Okay, so, let's take these in order:

The Severance AU: Severance is a show on Apple TV from 2022 (though season 2 is coming out in 2025) about a bunch of workers for the Lumon Corporation who have undergone the titular procedure to "sever" their work and home selves (involves getting a computer chip inserted in your brain). Basically, an employee who gets severed has a home self (Outie) that doesn't remember anything about what they do at work, and a work self (Innie) that doesn't remember anything about their outside home life (like, they know basic stuff, but their personal lives are a complete blank). The Innies are in fact basically trapped on the basement floor they work on because the elevator that you use to access the floor also turns the chips on and off. So from their perspective, they get into the elevator at the end of the day -- and then immediately get out again and go back to work. The show follows the people in the "Macrodata Refinement" department (they sort numbers based on vibes, essentially) and their Innie and Outie selves as the Innies are shook up by new hire Helly R. and her desperate attempts to escape and the appearance of an outside self-help book on the Severed Floor, and the Outies (specifically Mark Scout) start to learn that Lumon is, uh, fucked up. Honestly, given how fucking weird the whole thing sounds (I haven't even gotten into the whole part where Lumon basically operates like a cult, or the Break Room -- which is not the room where you take a break...), I think the series might be your jam -- here's the Wikipedia page should you care to learn more.

ANYWAY -- I haven't actually SEEN the TV series, but I DID recently read "Welcome to the Panopticon," a BTTF/Severance fusion fic by @penny-anna that covers most of the relevant worldbuilding for the TV show while putting BTTF characters into their own version of the mess. I found the fic fascinating and inspiring, especially with all the Innie/Outie stuff, and my brain immediately decided two things:

One, I would love to do a Valicer AU with this fucked-up premise

Two, this kind of corporate malfeasance feels VERY Aperture Science.

Cue the mental creation of a currently-unnamed AU where Victor, Alice, and Smiler are severed workers working for the Macrodata Refinement department of Aperture Science! Victor's there because he was severely depressed after the death of his fiancee Victoria and their mutual friend Emily during a robbery and his parents talked him into it; Alice is there because she murdered Dr. Bumby, got caught (though she did at least expose him in the process), and was pushed into the program as a "rehabilitation effort" to make her a "productive citizen;" and Smiler -- well, Smiler was simply forced to have the procedure by their asshole father Dr. Kelman, who wanted them to do it as a PR move and to try and force them to bend to HIS wishes about their life. The idea would follow mainly the Innie versions of everyone as Smiler joins the team and makes it their job to try and keep them all from going insane down in that basement, with the trio gradually falling in love as they get to know each other (well, as much as they can when they're all amnesiac on the floor) and having adventures dealing with their weird-ass circumstances, their personality core supervisor Wheatley, and their unsevered boss Miss Glados (aka Caroline, one of the big movers and shakers of Aperture) --

And THEN managing to escape because of an incident involving the Overtime Contingency (which allows the Innies to wake up outside of the Severed Floor if the bosses really need them to for some reason), which allows them to wreck a party their Outies were attending with the real facts about Innie life -- and then the Outies get to see the Severed Floor, go "holy shit this is fucked up" and manage to escape when Chell shows up to cause chaos in the name of rescuing her old friend Wheatley... I mean, there's a LOT more detail in my head about what happens in this Hypothetical Fic Eating My Brain, but I want to actually get to the OTHER half of your question, so let's call it there for now. XD

BITD Smiler in BABS Verse: Okay, you've probably guessed that this relates back to when I asked you about VITD Smiler ending up in the "Beneath A Broken Sky" world and what you thought might happen with them and the cast. This version is a little different, as it involves a Smiler from a Blades In The Dark world that doesn't actually have a Victor or Alice in it, because I wanted to see how they'd react to the Victor and Alice who got sucked in without having any of their own. I haven't got like a FULL idea of how it would go yet, but I do have a few key items in place:

-->Smiler would end up in the BABS verse because, in this version of Duskwall, the moon is slowly but surely beginning to fall on the Shattered Isles and will eventually destroy everything, and Mar-Mal is trying to find a way to save their Advocates -- I'm thinking they manipulate a Special Tree to shoot Smiler to the BABS verse to "scout it out," so to speak

-->I picture the "local" Victor and Alice wanting to support their fellow dimensional refugee and checking in on them as they're getting settled -- and being perhaps a little concerned by how almost unnaturally cheerful Smiler is

-->I think it would be funny for Daniel to want to cast that spell that provides all the modern contemporary knowledge on Smiler, only for Victor and Alice to leap in and be like "don't, do you not remember all the vomiting when you did that to us" -- only for Mar-Mal, using their limited influence in the new universe through their connection to Smiler, to find the spell, go "oh, that looks useful," and cast it on Smiler anyway XD (though I'm picturing them managing to spare Smiler the vomiting -- not the fainting though, they still go down for the count)

-->I really have to wonder how Gef would react to Smiler -- I imagine it would be quite the thing XD

-->I imagine that Victor has some nasty nightmares after his experience with The Bleeding Eye (like, there's no actual contact by the creature again, Daniel's made sure of that, but Victor keeps having bad dreams about the "room" and the Thing in it -- can you blame him?), and Smiler eventually offers to help with their hypnosis skills -- Alice is immediately like "I want to observe to make sure this is on the up-and-up" and Smiler's like "Sure!" Cue Smiler helping Victor out, Alice being like "...wtf I didn't know that could be used for good," and the three getting closer as a result, with of course eventual romance

-->I want Smiler to go to OmegaMart, see the employees, and want to cheer them up -- mostly I want them to offer one a hug and the employee to be like ??? Smiler wants to improve happiness in this place damn it

-->Potential endgame is them finding a way to get Smiler back to their world, with Victor and Alice tagging along for a visit...only to discover the whole "moon falling on the world" thing and realize that Mar-Mal's plan is actually to evacuate the Advocates (and whoever else wants to come with) to the BABS world before everything, you know, gets smashed. Cue panicked race to get people through whatever gateway they got open before the end

Basically, it's just me going "I want that version of Smiler to cause Even More Shenanigans in that world" right now. XD

[fitzrove]

[shaking and biting] but what does it MEAN. what does it SAY what is the THEME

[emotionally-charged-arson]

Character Spotlight: The Chemist (Ayreon's The Source)

Ask and ye shall receive.

In the grand scheme of countless intertwining Ayreon headcanons infesting my brain, I like to have a nice, compact theme to refer back to for each album. Arjen is borderline intentional about not putting themes in his work, but they creep in anyway and you can dig them up and work off of them with a little elbow grease.

For me, The Source is about loss of purpose, which is sort of an overarching theme of the Forever saga anyway, but it shows up on a more intimate level in this album. Especially when you pull traits for characters out of thin air when you're 14 and eventually find a red thread through the lot of them you didn't actually plan for.

I did a really general overview of most of my versions of the Source cast and their whole deal while they're on Alpha. Just a whole mess of science, religion and state all crammed into one, eventually leading to the 'Frame taking over. In some way or another, these people all know each other and support a cause of some sort. When they're forced to leave their home planet, they have to grapple with the fact that their lives there were altogether pointless and figure out how to embrace the sense of rebirth that's a part of the Forever package.

Almost all of their arcs follow the same overall timeline: they had some *thing* they had worked towards for the better part of their lives, it's all ripped away in an instant with Alpha's destruction, and during their time on Starblade, they work their way back up to a new sense of collective self-worth.

There are, however, a few notable outliers. The Captain, The Chemist and TH-1 still have that theme thing going for them at the end, but how they get there is a little different.

So. Chemist. Like I said, pretty much everyone in the cast has an idea of who everyone else is. Not this guy.

Thomas Giles Rogers is an organic chemist with zero personal affiliation with any other character pre-album story. He graduated from the same enormous central university most of them did, but had no interest in tying his research, much less his entire career, to the fate of the planet itself. Not that he was ever offered or cares about politics at all, but still.

His motivations lie on more personal grounds. Giles is prone to stress, nervous breakdowns in academic settings, all that fun stuff. He always has been. His doctoral dissertation and the ten years of his career following it were dedicated to the synthesization of safe alternatives to sensory deprivation drugs. Either supplemental to the process or replacing it entirely. His "big" project for most of that time was an injection meant to temporarily alter the human respiratory system, allowing someone to breathe underwater for therapeutic processes.

The endeavor was a total failure, for all the resources put into it. Giles is forced to abandon the project after years of constantly being denied grants to pursue its production. People not prioritizing what he wants to use it for, his ineffective presentation, him refusing to let people hire him for research to weaponize it, whatever. All that work was for nothing and it takes genuine a toll on him.

It's really just a career slump, but his self-worth is so firmly attached to his perceived academic success that he can't cope. Four years before TDTTWBD, he drops all his research, picks up some entry-level lab tech job and just goes through the motions. No grandiose motivation to save the world like the rest of these yahoos, just surviving.

But anyhow. Russell does his thing, the 'Frame takes over, and one way or another everyone except Giles is crowded in Nils' basement accepting their fate and hopelessly looking for livable planets with no power or digital resources.

Gross oversimplification of Chronicle I, by the way. Russell drags a broken android into the place, Floor shoots Simone's ear off, etc.

The only remotely plausible option is Y, pretty grim given that the surface is uninhabitable and colonization could only occur if everyone somehow grew gills. As Hansi laments when a switch goes off in his brain and he remembers some science expo he went to a few years back, where some guy was presenting prototypes for...pretty much exactly that.

By pure coincidence, Giles is one of Simone's clients, signed onto her private practice she started after quitting her job as the previous president's counselor. She knows where he lives and works, and she and Tommy manage to track him down amidst the literal apocalypse outside (on account of Tommy having no scientific background and pretty much no other use to the group than scavenging for essentials on the surface in this part. Bonus points that he knows how to use a gun and supposedly doesn't care about his own death).

Giles, like a lot of people has basically been hunkered down in his apartment since the 'Frame took power (about three weeks) and is all paranoid and starving when they find him but they find him, take him back and convince him to pick his work back up all the same.

So he's part of the group now, and alternative to everyone else on Starblade who has no point to their lives now, Giles has FAR too much of a point. Using years old notes and limited resources, he has to create the greatest scientific advancement in the history of mankind in the maybe....six months that people onboard are able to live outside of suspended animation. The total extinction of the human race to follow if he fails.

This...does not mix well with

1. his whole self-induced, major-accomplishment based pressure thing since it's a wildly amplified version of it

2. The fact that he killed a woman during Run! Apocalypse! Run! (defending another character but still) and his control to give life and take it away over so many people, existing and prospective, constantly rotating in his brain

3. The more upbeat, hopeful characters unwittingly holding their expectations for their brave new world over him and what Liquid Eternity needs to be to satisfy them

4. Pretty much everyone else involved in the political side of things deliberately ceased contact with friends or family outside the party's inner circle, to prevent distractions or the possibility of blackmail, while they were still on Alpha. That devaluing of personal relationships is what they're conditioned to and this is more the focal point of Tommy, Floor and Tobias' sort of...joint character development situation, but it has an effect on Giles. This much more openly sensitive, emotional guy is surrounded by these jaded assholes who have no sense of the pressure he's feeling in more ways than one. This effect also applies to James (Historian) in a way, and the two actually kind of have a rapport going about it at the end of Chronicle II (syncing up with their little Condemned To Live duet), but the only person who seems to fully get what's happening to Giles is Simone, someone who deliberately separated herself from said jaded political asshole clique and who has prior knowledge of his experiences on account of literally being his therapist.

All in all just. Not having a good time, insisting that he has to do this alone and eventually external assistance from one or more characters being the only thing that solves it.

The other part of this compact theme thing is that our purpose, our humanity, is defined by our relationships and reliance on other people. We need something to strive for in order to feel like a person, and ultimately that 'something' comes down to either the preservation of the self, the other, or of the collective.

Once you resolve that, there is one other thing that defines the human experience and that is death.

Death and a point, a person, to avoid it in the name of. And Liquid Eternity took both of those things away. From there arises stagnation and a lack of purpose with no means of escape, the hallmark of the Forever Race.

-

-

-

(gosh, I wonder if that ties into members of the party forcing away loved ones in the name of their progress even though it was pointless in the end. Or TH-1's self-preservation being their downfall after all the talk of cooperation and acceptance of emotional openness. Who's to say.)

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[aliveaudiencegang]

alex rider au where instead of attempting to kill him at the end of point blanc, julius shows up at alex’s house like, you’re technically the only family i have left so…

[nachosncheezies]

Something that I have observed, in life and in fandom spaces, is that vast cultural and linguistic differences are often unknown, and this has become especially apparent as social usage of the internet has grown worldwide. It's no one's fault. Nobody is "less than" or unintelligent or whatever else for not recognizing it. It's simply something that you can't really know, I think, without being directly exposed to it either by education or personal experience.

I've been lucky to have been something of a nomad, but that comes with its challenges which go way beyond the practical or homesickness. I can say that even within the English language there are VAST regional and cultural differences in modes of expression. Interestingly, the folks I've known who MOST seem to recognize it are linguists and especially professional translators - professions where a recognition of the importance of localized metaphor, unspoken nuance, idiomatic expressions, etc, are absolutely KEY to success. But I digress.

Based on my own experience, I believe that internationally common tongues sometimes fail us to a degree because of this. In some places, culture is more "individualized" - a sort of "what can I do" which often includes a sort of "me against the world" outlook. (I do not mean selfishness. Not at all. I mean it's a starting point, not a goal.) Presenting one's thoughts can best be accomplished by conveying strong, even absolute conviction in one's position, which - "me against the world" - can lead to generalized and sometimes forceful statements. At home, that would be a starting point for discussion and debate, and would be returned in kind. In other places, discussion takes more of an "improv comedy" style, wherein "yes, and..." is the mode of debate. In still others, the places and types of silence can convey just as much about someone's position and can be just as persuasive as words themselves. Sarcasm is especially regionalized, and conveyed differently from place to place. Body language is universally important in adding nuance or clarification to any statement in any place. Put these sorts of things in a blender, and you can easily find misunderstandings where some come off aggressive or as "talking down" to others, others unusually meek, still others appearing to agree when actually, they are not agreeing at all, etc.

I have also observed that in real life situations, differences in regional accents afford a certain amount of grace toward these differences, even when we're not actively conscious of any of the above. (This, I can say with absolute certainty, because I have also lived in a few places long enough to have taken on a floating accent, and when I'm visiting any of these places for more than a day or so, that grace if I stumble back into other modes of expression disappears with whichever accent I got off the plane with 😂)

Unfortunately, online, we don't have this constant audible reminder that a person is something of an "other" coming from some other place where modes of communication may be different. Even people who deal with language as their professional bread and butter can easily forget in online spaces. We tend to hear whatever we read in our local accent, and things such as metaphor and sarcasm may be misconstrued, "individualized conviction" modes may come across as shocking and rude, or the many and varied uses of silence may go completely unnoticed, etc.

Anyway. If you have read this whole novella, thank you. 💕 I have debated posting something like this for a looong time, because I wonder sometimes if conflict I see within fandoms (and educational groups, and professional groups, and and and) might arise, fundamentally, from these sorts of misunderstandings. I do not intend it as a callout to any person or group of people. Perhaps, hopefully, simply food for thought.

[eiramuses]

CW: Kind of disturbing (at least to me)

Have you ever had a dream where you can't open your eyes?

No matter how hard you try, they're just too heavy to open.

Or maybe you can open them just a smidge, just a squint, having to hold them open with your hands.

Or maybe you can only open one eye for a few seconds at a time, getting tiny glimpses of things being wrong.

Have you ever had a dream where you can't move?

Maybe you're lying in bed, thinking about getting up and walking out, but your limbs aren't cooperating.

Maybe you think you've gotten up but you open your eyes and find out you haven't moved an inch.

Maybe you want to talk but your mouth won't open, only making hushed whispers.

Have you ever had a dream where you hear something but see nothing?

Maybe you heard a hiss, like one of your cats, from behind you but nothing is there when you check.

Maybe you heard a door slam across the house, despite nobody being in.

Maybe you heard your mother's voice, even though you know full well she's at work.

All three just happened to me.

I have no idea what even happened. I was just trying to sleep, ended up having some combination of these examples happen, woke up and went back to sleep only for it to happen again.

Im not going back to sleep but maybe tumblr can explain what my experience was?

[merge-conflict]

there is very obviously a horror element to johnny having to live in valentine's body after she's gone, but also the thought of him making changes slowly over time to make himself comfortable fills me with a sense of peace that I find hard to explain

[cypric-rat-hyperfixation]

As my following grows and as I meet more and more people who have rats, had rats, know someone who has/had rats, and love rats...

increasingly I wonder if/when a day will come... a day that I'll express rat enjoyment to someone and they'll enthusiastically ask me if I've heard of This Funnie Little Rodent Blog they like, figuring I may already know it or will enjoy it if not...

and it's.. my blog... and then I have to come out as popular Rat Tumblr blogger that they follow and now know IRL.......