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god they were the most divorced 8 year olds on the planet and gil's only been back with him for like 30 minutes and he's already like this

#girl genius #gilgamesh wulfenbach #tarvek sturmvoraus #gilvek #god tarvek's satisfied little expression in that last panel. gil's wholly unsatisfied one. #they're not fighting tarvek's just killing gil's heart. #anyway. pspspsing the girl genius fandom. #reblog my posts boy; and put them in your girl genius tags so i can archive binge.

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rereading the castle arc and sorry to do this to you phil but like. gil is definitely looking at the same thing tarvek is here, Whatever It Might Be. like that's just something you've drawn.

#girl genius #gilgamesh wulfenbach #tarvek sturmvoraus #agatha heterodyne #gilvek #is agilvek a thing? like obviously it's a thing but is it a tag? #because ot3 is definitely what i'm implying; at all times; but i do admit this is mostly centering gil and tarvek at present. #i do like how agatha looks more blushy in that last panel than she usually does. #like it is nice to think that agatha's completely entrenched in her science and thus oblivious; which is in fact how i read this page #but cheyenne has given us all something to think about; hasn't he?

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Hello, I'm auditioning for El Higgins and I'll be singing School's Out by Alice Cooper.

#el higgins #galadriel higgins #the last graduate #the scholomance #audition songs meme #my wife convinced me to put this in the tags because this poor fandom is starving #but does anyone outside my circle actually remember this meme? unlikely!

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Image ID: a CSI: Miami meme

First panel: [off-panel commenter] "so how's the race for harrow's affections going?" / [Caine] "well, i'd say"

Second panel: [Caine] "ianthe is"

Third panel: [Caine] "coming in third." (Dave Strider sunglasses has been badly superimposed over his second pair of sunglasses)

Fourth panel: An extended, capslocked "yeah" over the cityscape

#the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #ianthe tridentarius #harrowhark nonagesimus

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This is the Cohort, Mr. Bones, bring enough to make rib xylophones. You had your protein in paste before, but you won't eat at all anymore.

This is the Cohort, Mr. Flesh, we like our fats kept nice and fresh. You had a cav to chew on before, but he won't help you out anymore.

Do what the lyctor commands! She's got a temper, and she is God's hands.

This is the Cohort, Ms. Spirit. That rebel planet-go clear it. Ghosts were your calling, but this is war; only genocide calls anymore.

(context)

#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #locked tomb #this is the army mr. jones

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last person to post the chatGPT fic where bebe murders clyde is a rotten egg

#south park #it's free kudos estate.

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thinking about how 3 has projectile guns in its arms which means it has to carry projectiles with it at all times and might have to occasionally reload

#two immediately funny options: a) 3 doing the load motions with its own goddamn arm b) 3's under-rib compartment being absolutely stuffed with round cases and some loose bullets clanging around in the bottom.

grassangel

C) the way turrets in portal don't shoot bullets by using the gunpowder in them, they just sort of fling them out to pack more bullets in and not worry about gas expansion

#murderbot #the murderbot diaries #secunit 3 #three #grassangel

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ART?

I'm here, ART answered. Do you know what you are?

I'm Murderbot 2.0, I said, and then I remembered. Oh, right. This is weird.

Okay but it's weird for ART too, 2.0-you've just called yourself a name ART has never learned-not this book, not in the entirety of Artificial Condition does 1.0 ever tell ART its secret name.

You designating yourself as "Murderbot 2.0" means that for ART, the name "Murderbot" now has to be retroactively applied to 1.0!

ART is having a Bad Day already and has some very crucial irons in the fire to worry about right now, but I like to think that somewhere in its gazillions of processing space part of it is going what the FUCK while Amena distracts 2.0 for a while.

#murderbot #murderbot 2.0 #secunit #the murderbot diaries #network effect

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Age sixteen and Elliot was shocked to see Miriam Price again, as shocked as he’d been last year when Cyril Leigh hadn’t gone. After Elliot’s outburst that they were all being trapped here, she’d led the way back to the human world.

And now here she and Elliot both were, there and back again. Maybe it proved him right.

At least she looked different. Her hair was a few months longer and she’d replaced her Hermione Granger-ish desperation to please Elliot, her teacher, with a bitter glare. She’d traded the council course’s tunic and books for the warrior training’s leather and straps.

And she had a Star of David at her neck.

it’s ye olde fanfic i’ve been writing for like 3 years now.

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locked tomb au where ortus really was harrow's cavalier and she went full lyctor off him and was left with all the swordfighting powers of: ortus

#the locked tomb #ortus nigenad #harrow the ninth #locked tomb #harrowhark nonagesimus

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committing the sin of meme resurrection

#harrow the ninth #harrow the ninth spoilers #the locked tomb #the locked tomb spoilers #harrowhark nonagesimus

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The first thing they do after leaving Copley’s is get the hell out of dodgy England, with its security checkpoints and CCTV and complete lack of safehouses.

Relatedly, Nile has a new definition of “dodgy.”

The others don’t relax until they’re back in France, where apparently they have their choice of safehouses so long as that choice is “shitty”. Booker’s go bag is short on matches now so they send Nicky into a drugstore for more, since apparently there isn’t any electricity where they’re headed and they’ll need to do things like see and keep Andy from dying of hypothermia during the night.

#TBA: MY DISSERTATION ON NILE AS QUEEN; THANKS

great news, the addition is no longer “to be.” a lighthearted chapter! (comparatively. yikes.)

#nile freeman #the old guard #tog #old guard fanfic #nile freeman week #i was too late for it but i sure was thinking about it then. and really; aren't ALL weeks nile freeman weeks? #anyway. #google docs told me that this was chapter 2222 words long which i couldn't have managed if i'd TRIED.

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White moves first in chess, and black responds.

Character studies of the pieces as a sequel begins.

-Six months later, Booker blurrily returns to the apartment after finally getting thrown out of the bar at, oh, 600. He glances at the fragment of drafting tape he always leaves from jamb to bottom corner of the door. It hangs loose from the frame.

He’s deadened his fine motor control pretty well this morning. Now his poison of choice slips from numb fingers. Cognac and glass go everywhere, and he manages the coordination to kick at the shards before collapsing on the stair to wait for death and capture.

He waits a while.

some pov jumping, and light but never lighthearted dream telepathy

#quynh #booker #the old guard #tog #old guard fanfic #the only way to get past the mortifying ordeal of promoting your work is to be overcome with spite and i just saw a nile as pawn take. #TBA: MY DISSERTATION ON NILE AS QUEEN; THANKS #anyway. you know how sometimes you bring dishonor upon your whole family by writing 1100 words about booker so you have to redeem yourself b #...by writing 1600 words about quynh

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yo! loved your dudley pharmerrick take. you got anything to say about his lackeys, keane and dr. kozak?

Thank you! :)

Honestly Keane is just a glorified goon-we get a bigger role from him but no more character. I appreciate the production team’s dedication to “the villain is just a money hungry rich guy” in making all the disposable goons equally one note, presumably just there for the paycheck.

Dr. Kozak was a bitter disappointment to me in that I wanted her to be interesting and important, and she just wasn’t.

I had dreams of Doc Ock from Spiderverse. Instead I got no follow-up on “what do you see?” “the Nobel prize”, no consequences from “I believe this will change the world” “a fine justification. I’ve heard it so many times before”, no conclusion of any kind of arc re: “you think me unethical?” “I would say immoral.”

She was knocked out by Nile (which was good, proper, right, and righteous) and thus is presumably alive and thus able to show up as a more major character in a sequel. 

Dr. Kozak is the only Merrick-aligned person with any hint of motivation other than money.

...And unless they develop her more, I am just not invested. Give me back those boring caricatures! I don’t mind the bar lying on the ground, I just don’t want to mourn anyone falling short.

#meta kozak #the old guard #diving-llama #there's a lot to be said for fandom's willingness to develop a character more than the canon #and a lot to be said for when fandom bothers to do that work #and how it's almost always for white men #and like! we could bother with dr. kozak! #but god at what cost!? #the mortifying ordeal of investing in a mediocre white woman when doc ock; a truly AWFUL white woman; is RIGHT THERE #i keep saying that there mUST be interesting stuff about her on the cutting room floor. there MUST be a reason for the camera to linger on h #...her reactions; for dudley to draw so much attention to her. i just can't imagine what that is.

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Merrick’s actual plan: A rebuttal.

God. Okay. Fine.

I've been so reluctant to make this post because I absolutely hate to waste a single moment on Dudley Pharmerrick. But I’m getting tired of the ‘they’re trying to make super soldiers’ take I’ve been seeing around more and more. So this is my attempt to stop that from becoming uncontested Fanon.

Because Andy's healing abilities are not what he's interested in.

I’ve said it before, that he’s an absolutely uninteresting villain. He’s one-note, he’s static. He tells us, and also a crowd of medical industry investors, what he wants right off the bat: It’s money. He just wants money. “Investment drives my enthusiasm” is such an excellent line, they’re really shouting from the rooftops “this guy is a rich douchebag and that’s all you need to know about him.”

And like, yeah, sure, it’s not only money. He’s very into himself: His company’s named after himself, presumably so he can do that Avengers 2012  "he wants a monument built to the skies with his name plastered on it” thing. He boasts about being the youngest ceo in pharma in what sounds like the tail end of a tantrum over not making a 30 under 30 list, he dresses to fit in among the upper echelon of the Silicon Valley. He has that line about ‘what my products can do.’ (Yeah because you definitely had literally anything to do with the science side of things). He wants to be King Lear, except he forgets that it’s a tragedy, and Lear inevitably dies.

But he doesn’t have Lear’s fatal flaw. Like, yes he’s arrogant, but that’s not what kills him. What kills him is greed.

And like! I know! I absolutely know that isn’t interesting. It’s just basic plot comprehension: Copley says he probably can get Dudley one of the immortals with whom to do whatever poking and prodding for samples he likes, and Dudley rejects it.

Right there, in the limo, he seals his fate. The gang had literally just finished a year apart on hiatus, and Andy was quitting again. With Booker to assure them (via his Incomparable Tech Genius, which is actually just his Lying) that the video hadn’t spread any further, they would’ve thought they’d stopped up the leak with Copley’s death and gone their separate ways again. Booker could’ve been strapped to a table for months with no one the wiser

Instead, Dudley demands "all." Later he explains that if they’re walking around, his competitors can get those same samples, make those same leaps, ending his dominion over the whole market.

And that's the key, I think. He desperately wants this monopoly, to be the only one able to offer this product and the only one able to reap the profits.

He says his cancer drug, put on the market last quarter, has already saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Yeah, right. Cancers are too different from each other for him to have gotten a broad hitting drug that is lifesaving, and when you start breaking them down by type there just aren’t enough cases to save that many people in 3-6 months. Like I realize that none of this is particularly feasible biotechnobabble, but still.

Made him hundreds of thousands of “quid” though? I absolutely believe it. I'd be surprised it isn't millions, but I will bow to the expertise of the person who made that one post about ‘you paid for testing on over .25 million ACTUAL MICE? you paid for ALL THAT? you didn’t use EMBRYOS or something you got them to full mouse stage!?’ to accept that maybe they had to make up for that expenditure first.

So with this as evidence, we can go with the assumption the movie is pushing: That this dude cares about the financial bottom line, not hyping himself up on the amount of good that he’s doing for people.

And let’s focus on how he talks about Andy.

Dudley, at the start of the scene where the private force acquires Andy and Booker, is above it all. He’s got what he wants, which means there’s no reason to think about it. He’s literally standing over Copley and Andy on the floor, over Booker being forced to crouch by his captors.

It’s not until Booker tells him that Andy’s not immortal anymore, that it’s gone, that Dudley gets interested. He wants a closer look, he gets down on her level. He starts thinking, asking questions: “Now, how old are you?” “Between Sudan and now, something’s changed. Find out what.”

Copley tells him that the testing might kill her now and not only does he say “we don’t stop,” but he also tells his pet doctor “keep her alive at all costs.”

All costs, from a man obsessed with money. All costs, from a man who doesn’t take risks without investment first.

Later, when the worldshattering news that there is a new immortal on the stage breaks, the seventh one in all of human history as far as we know, we get absolutely nothing from him. Nothing about “we have to capture her too!” Nothing about the scientific discoveries to be made with a brand new immortal to compare to the older ones.

No, he’s focused entirely on Andy. “You selfish, little bitch,” he says in a low voice, gun pointed right at her which makes clear that it’s not Nile he’s addressing here. And then he raises his voice for “I will kill her!” which means he’s addressing anyone other than Andy: He sees Nile, but he doesn’t know who else might be around. And then he’s back to Andy.

“All the lives you could save,” he tells her, when she literally can’t. There is nothing he can get from her now that will help him. The immortality is gone. There is nothing that separates her from him anymore. Nile is the one he should be saying that too, Nile the one he should be trying to convince.

But Andy is the one he thinks is “priceless.” Andy, who is merely mortal.

What is Dudley after here?

Monopoly.

Vertical, this time, and over absolutely everyone.

He wants to be producing immortality and its end. He wants to be the disease and its treatment.

It’s the metaphorical apex, the logical end result for Big Pharma conceptually: He wants to get every single person in the world literally paying him to stay alive.

Because if they don’t, he can dole out their deaths whenever he so chooses.

And in my opinion, that’s so much worse than super soldiers.

#the old guard #steven merrick #tog #tog meta #is that a tag people are actually looking at? who knows. whatever. #that's the post; now i'm gonna babble in the tags. #like as far as i have seen the evidence for 'merrick's trying to make super soldiers' is...'the usmc has merrick products in its med tent. #biotech; troops; CLEARLY IT'S SUPER SOLDIERS.' #bah humbug to that; personally. #the us military is very strict about its contracts; about who's allowed to use its technology. #if they went down the super soldier route; merrick would have to tie itself to ONE nation's government; ONE nation's military. #they're a private company! they don't want that! by selling MEDICAL tech instead they aren't bound that way. their customer base expands. #with immortality and also its antidote; they can make the entire world their cash cow. #dudley's gonna go for that every single time. #the other thing is. copley gets booker on board saying 'if they can figure out what causes immortality; maybe they can figure out how to cu #...cure it!' #he hasn't talked to DUDLEY about it. NOTHING OF THE SORT is on his radar until he sees andy. i doubt copley's even told him about lykon. be #...because 'ending immortality' is not actually one of copley's goals. he's using booker here; bless his oblivious heart. #anyway. love that dudley would rather kill andy than let any of his competitors get her; even if they get the other immortals. #hate that i have spent any time whatsoever thinking about dudley pharmerrick.

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an adansey text collage.

(source)

thank you for your time.

#call down the hawk #the raven cycle #adansey #adam parrish #richard gansey

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Tag yourself: Which Entity kills you?

Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way: doesn't get the deal with "sleep hygiene experts" and their "insistence that you turn off your lights and electronics and do nothing but sleep in your bed"

Apocalypse Now: owns a metal straw

Monsterfuckers: "actually, the women doing the plant based scrounging were the main source of food for early humans"

I Do Not See It I Am Not Looking: reads multiple sources for news to reduce bias

Bees?: thinks the whole world would be better with all the mosquitos gone

Mr. Lonely: is the person all those Italian mayors are yelling at

Soylent Green: keeps thinking about going vegetarian but isn't actually going to do it

Spider Solitaire: was personally called out by the 'how many of my children have you put outside to freeze and die' line

Sweet Death Won't Text Me Back: actually had that teenaged invincible-never-gonna-die phase every child development book goes on about

Mr. Rogers, in his bloodstained sweater: complains about their headache but won't take painkillers for it

Hozier: isn't autistic but still loves weighted blankets

Albert Camus: independently came up with "we're all one HUMAN race" and was really disappointed to see it trashed on the internet years later

Edward Scissorhands: wants to be a Helen but is really a Michael

Which one vapes?: you frequently update your mommy blog

NO EDGE: flat earther

#tma #the magnus archives #magnus archives #in order that's the: dark; extinction; hunt; eye; corruption; lonely; flesh; web; end; slaughter; buried; stranger; spiral; desolation; vas