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hhnguyen · 1 year

Text

aren’t you just precious

Everything medical related was a google search, so those in the medical field please don’t come for me - I was a literature major for a reason 😭

♢ Pairing: Parents!Jake & Neytiri x Oldest daughter!Reader

♢ Word count: 2k

♢ Genre: suspense, action, angst, slight humor - Warnings: explicit description of injuries, blood, cursing, reader is a lil crazy

⌲ Description: Your iknimaya goes a little south. Aka introducing the ‘demon ikran.’

M A S T E R L I S T

Jake Sully, a marine veteran at the age of twenty-two had gone through absolute hell on earth before ever setting his disabled ass on Pandora.

He thought he had seen the worse - comrades shot down right in front of his eyes, the blood covering their skin, blank dead eyes staring into his soul. Sometimes there were those who were actually blown to bits by bombs and grenades, screaming not even five feet away from him as they clutched their missing limbs, begging a nonexistent God for mercy.

Then there was his own injury. The pain he hardly remembered, because he had gotten to the point of delusion when they finally managed to drag him out of the war zone, half dead, and to the VA hospital.

The incoherent words he had heard after waking up from his surgery despite his hazy vision and buzzing hearing at that time, yet the truth coming out of the doctor’s mouth had still hit him in the face like the largest ‘fuck you and your life’ to exist.

“...ave severe spinal injury...fixable...expensive, marine.”

A severe spinal injury that was fixable but too expensive for a marine like him to afford.

For an active man as he had been in the past, the thought of being paralyzed from the waist had been his worst nightmare to the point of being ready to waste away his life.

Though even after all that shit, Jake Sully felt like he wanted to throw up as he stared at his oldest baby girl at the fresh age of fourteen laying there in front of him; delirious as he had once been in the same position, bleeding and bruised.

He could only thank Eywa that your heart was still beating and your body intact.

Well, mostly.

The almost nauseous angle of your left wrist certainly did not look natural. And their bones were fortified, stronger than anything else to human knowledge. Yet it had managed to snap as easily as that.

Neytiri - his beautiful, poor mate. She was distraught, one would say more so than him. Sitting only inches away from your fevering form in one of Hell’s Gate treating rooms for avatars, muttering prayers with dried tears upon her face.

Your injuries had been so severe that not even the abilities of your grandmother, the Tsahik, could heal you solely through the spiritual power of Eywa. These kinds of injuries needed the advanced surgery of human technology.

His other children were barred from coming inside, having been firmly ordered to remain in their village as he and Neytiri made sure that you would be okay. None of them wanted to keep them away, but neither did they want them to be traumatized by seeing your bloodied and broken form.

A stark contrast from the smiling and proud sister that they knew.

And yet, you had still managed to complete your iknimaya.

Jake watched with a bated breath from the air upon Bob, his own faithful ikran through the years, as he saw the slight encouraging push Neytiri had given you on the edge of the nesting place. Your, oh so small form, looked firm and stubborn as you steadily stalked forward in a crouched form, the band for the beak held in your grasp with determination.

He watched as one ikran flew away. Then another. And another. A third one. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth.

He had lost count after the eleventh.

You were getting frustrated, he could see that. Neytiri was still there, calling out for you to calm down. To be patient as he moved Bob a little bit closer, but not too much to distract you if you were to see him hovering.

And there he was.

Jake had seen it before you did. The vicious screech even reached him high up in the clouds and echoed above all the other ikrans.

He felt his blood run cold as the midnight blue beast, nearly black in color with its yellow and green detailing jumped down from the highest point of the rocks and landed behind you as you whirled around with snarl of your own.

But then as fleeting as it had been, you had grinned, taking in the magnificent animal despite its bloodthirsty aggressiveness.

“Aren’t you just precious?” Neytiri had told him of your words in the aftermath.

His mate hollered in encouragement, and he could hardly stop the prideful tug of his own lips.

Rather than you leaping on the beast, Jake straightened up as he saw the ikran run at you as well. Both were only inches away from crashing, as you last minute decided to slide beneath its belly - slight enough to fit as you rolled away on the other side and then slung the catcher around its mouth swiftly before throwing yourself on its back.

His expectations had been hopeful from that moment. Positive. But wrong, oh so wrong.

Rather than trying to snap at you by turning, he watched in horror as the ikran seemed to have a human mind as it slammed against a stone wall, you hitting it first.

Neytiri had screamed, already half leaping forward but stopping herself as she saw you still clinging to the beast.

Both had thought that had been the worst of it until the ikran tried it again. This time deliberately falling backward to land on its back with a rumble, where you were hung on.

“LET GO MA ‘ITE! LET GO!” Neytiri was yelling. Or begging. He couldn’t be sure in his own fear.

But both of them underestimate you, as a growl mixed with what Jake had assumed to be a painful yell from yourself erupted. Legs manage to wrap around the animal’s neck despite being crushed underneath its weight.

He saw belatedly you were only holding on to the banshee catcher with one hand as you pulled at its head hard enough to make the animal let out another vicious muted screech.

And then you truly proved you were his daughter.

“C’MON YOU MOTHERFUCKER. GRANDPA BOB WAS BETTER THAN THIS!”

The ikran had gotten angrier, trashing before suddenly rolling like a fucking bowling pin on the stone-covered ground.

Towards the edge of the cliff.

Neytiri ran, and Jake dove, both reaching out and screaming your name as you and the ikran fell off the edge.

As his mate leaned almost desperately over the edge, Jake forced himself to draw Bob back up, only for a few seconds - not to interfere with the rite. But it was in those few seconds he felt like his heart had stopped beating.

There was that familiar screech again.

Then you were soaring.

Up in a straight line, past Neytiri and him. Tsaheylu clearly made as the ikran listened to your orders.

There was a blinding grin on your face as you soared, clearly looking for him and letting out a whoop.

The moment your eyes caught his, Jake felt his grin slip.

Your eyes, open just moments before suddenly rolled back. Your whole body went slack as you fell over the side, your newly bonded ikran screeching at the sudden weightless feeling as the bond broke and your body went straight down.

Jake hadn’t heard his desperate yell, this time diving down without stopping.

He thought you were dead when he managed to catch you and flew back up, only to have Neytiri meet him in the air on her own mount, an expression so clearly in distress. Without a word, they both made haste back to the village, your newly bonded ikran following closely behind.

“How is she?” His voice sounded like it had gone over fifty years of smoking with no water. It felt like his whole body was weighed down with stones.

“She’s alive,” that’s all that Max could offer with a grim expression. “She will need surgery. The momentum of her slamming repeatedly against stones with the ikran’s weight on top has managed to collapse a lung.”

Jake had never wanted to sob like a newborn baby until now. But he needed to remain calm, or at least sane. For Neytiri’s sake, and your siblings.

“Usually surgeries like these lead to long-term conditions in life, but we’re certain that with the Na’vi biology she will heal just fine without complications. But it’s the healing that will take time.”

He was nodding along, but it felt like he was far away. Only hearing a slight inconsistent sound in his ears as he watched through the see-through glass into the room where you were all connected up to tubes and an oxygen mask.

It was so human, the whole situation of you being in a hospital bed for avatars - Jake wanted to laugh. Not in humor, but maybe in slight delusion at the situation.

“Okay, okay…” he swallowed. “Anything else?”

His human friend was taking pity on him, Jake knew.

Max has been there since the beginning. Seeing Jake growing his own family and now being placed in this position. “Besides the broken wrist and strained ankle, it’s mostly cuts and bruises. So she will have to wear a brace as well as remain seated for the next week or so. And check-ups every three days.“

“Yeah, we can do that,” Jake croaked. “When’s the surgery?”

“As soon as possible.”

Another nod. “Thanks, man.”

“Of course.”

He had to nearly pry Netytiri away from you as she snarled protectively. But he had to explain that she couldn’t join in on the surgery due to contamination concerns. The whole room had to be fixed to match that of a Na’vi body, the surgeons wearing oxygen masks as the space was filled with Pandora’s toxic air for your sake.

It was an open lung surgery, Jake had been told. A risky procedure even on earth. It had taken four hours. Four hours full of anxiety and fear.

But you had pulled through, Max said, Norm closely behind with a relieved teary smile himself. The man was like another uncle to the kids despite his avatar form. He had watched their ceremonies, rites and connections to Eywa. So to Norm, this was just like a family member to him.

You had slept for a full day and a half after the surgery, still confined to the avatar hospital room before your eyes had fluttered open with difficulty. A cough erupted followed by your painful whine at the action.

Netytiri had hushed you gently, crouching down and stroking your hair back. Fresh tears fell at seeing you conscious again after so long, sobs breaking out as you flashed a sleepy smile at her.

Neytiri had felt like Eywa had pulled the entirety of Pandora away from underneath her feet during the hours of your examination and surgery. Clutching Jake to her and never wanting to let go as her oldest baby was at the mercy of nature and your own will to live through.

But she knew.

You were strong. You always had been. And you had fought.

Neytiri had never imagined a day when one of her biggest nightmares nearly came to pass.

To lose one of her children.

She would rather throw herself off the highest point on Ayram alusìng than lose one of her precious babies before their time. She believed in Eywa with her whole heart and soul and knew their beings were only borrowed and one day had to be returned.

But Eywa would not take her children away from her until Neytiri herself agreed.

Until that time, she would do anything to protect them. But to have it happen during one of their most treasured rites in life had prevented her from doing many things.

Interfering for once. Because you had said so before as if knowing how horribly wrong it could go.

“Do not stop me, mama. I can do this on my own.”

Of course, you could. And you did.

Despite having to brush the doors to Eywa’s home yourself to succeed.

And as your parents carefully helped you back home to the village after five days of observation at Hell’s Gate after your surgery, you couldn’t help but snicker despite the stabs of pain.

Your mom had admonished you gently to not aggravate your wounds. Whereas your dad held back the roll of his eyes with amusement tickling the sides of his mouth.

“Why are you laughing, flower?”

Your grin was shit-eating as you looked up at him.

“My iknimaya was so much cooler than Toruk Makto’s.”

“You little skxawng.”

I feel like I lowkey pulled this one out of my ass, but oh well.

taglist: @nao-cchi @eywas-heir @ssc7514 @spicycloudsalad @calums-betch @httpjiikook @ricecakeslove @fanboyluvr @iwaslikeblah @the-wandering-pan-ace @avatarloversblog @eternallyvenus @enchantinggoateefox @arianapntn @heydemonsitsme @slyvixen1029 @promiseofeywa @love13tter @directioner5life @bambisposts-blogs @melllinaa @sugarmummystuff6 @lovekeeho @hai-kbai

#avatar #avatar imagine #avatar the way of water #sully family #sully family x reader #jake sully x reader #dad jake sully #jake sully imagine #jake sully x daughter #mom neytiri #neytiri x you #neytiri x daughter!reader #sully reader #sully daughter

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nonsensetwo · 2 years

Conversation

My trip to Sturbridge Village

Me: Just vibing.

Random lady with her daughter: Look at those chickens or turkeys or whatever the hell they are.

Me internally: BRUH.

#not kidding #even in the slightest #exactly how it went down #Sturbridge village #nonsense two #me #I am crying now #faith in humanity next to nonexistent #chats #Sturbridge Mass #I find your lack disturbing

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underforeversgrace · 1 year

Text

all masks must come off

DannyMay2023 Day 6: Eclipse

words: 2517

Complete

AO3

Excerpt: "Eclipses are... hm, kind of like holy days for ghosts." Danny began and Maddie fully relaxed. Ghosts weren't sentient enough to have anything approching religion or faith. "You can't hide under an eclipse. It's night and day both turning their gaze to you and no disguise can bear both the sun and moon's scrutiny."

~~~~~~

It was Vlad who told him what would happen, though still in the interest of self-preservation and not any kind of kindness or goodwill. Surprisingly enough, it had been Sidney who further expanded, who explained why it would happen.

Danny, of course, had known about the upcoming solar eclipse for months, what kind of space Obsessed ghost would he be if he didn’t, after all? The closer it came to time, the more his core vibrated in his chest in excitement.

The closer it came to time, though, the harder it became to hold his form, the more he felt the masks he wore trying to slip.

His idea for the day might be madness, he knew. But… he was tired. Two years of this - of lying, of being shot by them - and he was tired. If they didn’t take it well… well, he knew how to care for himself. It wasn’t like he needed to eat, like all of his human biological processes were more suggestions than requirements. There were plenty of abandoned buildings and he was a ghost, may as well give into cliche if he needed to.

He prayed he didn’t need to. He prayed for their love. Who, or even what, he prayed to, he didn’t know. But he prayed with every fiber of his being that they loved him more than they feared ghosts, even once his mask was stripped from him.

A deep, stuttering breath as he reined in his fear. He knew they would accept him, part of him, he had seen that much courtesy of Freakshow last year. But they hadn’t known it all. They didn’t see the whole truth.

“Mom, dad?” Danny asked, peeking his head around the corner of the lab doorway. Even if he wasn’t half ghost, he would probably do this, to be honest. His parent’s lab safety was absolutely nonexistent - he was proof enough of that. It had half-killed two people.

“Danno!” His father boomed, a wide grin taking up half his face. Danny couldn’t help but smile back, Jack’s exuberance was practically tangible. (And also, outright delicious. Danny loved the taste of happy emotions, the darker ones left bitter tastes in his mouth.)

“What’s up, sweetie?” Mom asked, stepping away from whatever they were tinkering with on the desk and pulling her hood down.

For a moment, Danny just enjoyed this, hoped it wouldn’t be the last time he was able to do this - absorb his parents’ love for him from the air.

“There’s an eclipse soon. Would you like to watch it with me?” Danny asked, gesturing towards the ceiling and the Ops Center above.

Surprise tinged the air as they looked at each other. He didn’t need to guess what they were thinking about. When he was younger, he had pulled them to the Ops Center so many times to just watch the night sky, it hadn’t even needed to have a notable celestial event happening. He had just been young and adored the stars and wanted to share it with his parents.

He hadn’t asked for anything like that, not even for the meteor shower, since he’d died.

“Of course!” Jack said, setting down the half finished device covered in disconnected wires on his desk.

“We’d love to.” Maddie agreed, though Danny saw the tears she blinked away. He knew they were tears of happiness, though.

He didn’t need to be an emotion eater to know that.

“C’mon, then!” He said, waving his hand to follow as he hurried up the stairs, though he pulled his phone out on his way up and shot a quick message to Tucker.

Hack and disable the suits.

He shoved the phone back in his pocket before getting a response, though the vibration he felt less than a minute later and the faint sound of machinery whirring down that even his ghost hearing struggled to hear were all the confirmation he needed.

His parents followed him all the way up, not even pausing when he dropped the ladder that led them to the top of the Ops Center, where nothing else remained over them. His core sang and he saw the first sliver of the moon begin to pass in front of the sun and he knew his countdown had begun as they each sat down, his parents pulling their hoods back on to protect their eyes, Danny fishing eclipse glasses from his pocket even though he didn’t need them.

“I need to talk to you two.” Danny said, leaping headfirst into whatever destiny determined for him as he felt his hold on his mask begin to shatter.

“Should’ve known, you haven’t asked to spend time with us in years,” Mom teased, but Danny sensed the pain behind her words.

~~~~~~

Maddie smiled at her son, though his entire focus was on the slowly disappearing sun above them. Her husband, who sat on Danny’s other side, had a similar smile. It had been so long since Danny wanted anything to do with them, that they weren’t forcing him to do.

“If Jazz or I came back. What would you do?” Danny asked, his gaze never wavering from the show in the sky.

Both parents’ smiles were wiped away, confused frowns replacing them.

“What do you mean, Danno?” Jack asked.

“The Fentons have one rule. What if Jazz or I broke it?”

“The only rule we have is to stay dead,” Maddie said, suddenly uncomfortable with the direction this conversation was going. She knew she was being less than subtle when she reached for Danny’s hand, holding it in her own, reassuring herself when she felt the pulse of his heart beneath his skin.

“I know.”

Maddie hesitated. What would they do? Obviously, it wouldn’t be her children anymore, but it would still be an echo of them. Could she hunt something that had once been her child?

It was Jack who ended up answering. “I… I don’t know. I couldn’t shoot something that looked like you, I know I couldn’t. So please move on, if it ever comes to that.” Jack swallowed, pain in his eyes as he even contemplated the idea of their son dying. “Please don’t linger.”

“And if it isn’t that easy? To just move on?” Danny asked. He began to look fuzzy around the edges, though Maddie didn’t even really acknowledge it, eyes full of tears as they were.

“I… I don’t know, Danny.” Maddie admitted. “I couldn’t hurt you. I couldn’t. Not something with your face.”

“It may not look like my face anymore.” Danny said cryptically.

Maddie was still struggling for words when Danny continued.

“Want to know something cool Sam discovered in one of her ghost books?”

“Uh. Uh, sure?” Maddie stuttered out, though some relief settled within her. Clearly, something in Sam’s books had been wrong and had caused a train of thought more painful than Maddie had ever imagined.

“Eclipses are… hm, kind of like holy days for ghosts.” Danny began and Maddie fully relaxed. Ghosts weren’t sentient enough to have anything approaching religion or faith. “You can’t hide under an eclipse. It’s night and day both turning their gaze to you and no disguise can bear both the sun and moon’s scrutiny.”

The moon continued to inch further in front of the sun.

“I…” Danny swallowed harshly. “I didn’t mean to.” He said, pulling off his glasses and tossing them from the roof.

“Danny!” They both yelled in worry, preparing to cover his eyes, but he scooted back too quickly.

Neither knew what to do when green eyes stared down at them. “I didn’t mean to stay.” He repeated and Maddie could no longer deny the fuzziness of his body wasn’t a trick her eyes were playing on her. He looked up at the sky again and Maddie just looked at her husband, shock, fear, worry, grief painting his features.

When she returned her gaze to her son, Maddie’s mind felt oddly empty. She just… she didn’t understand. When did her son die? She had just felt his heartbeat!

But there was no denying she was talking to her son’s ghost as he raised into the air, still with his legs crossed, floating without effort.

“Danny?” Jack whispered, reaching for him. Danny visibly flinched when his father managed to get his hand, but he didn’t pull away, even as Jack pulled him back to the ground. “Danny?” He repeated, pain the like of which Maddie had never heard from her husband in his voice as he grasped both of Danny’s shoulders, as though seeing him for the first time.

“I’m sorry,” Danny whispered back, the faintest hint of an echo seeping into his voice. Still in his father’s hands, he turned slightly to look at her. “I’m sorry.” He repeated, tears slipping from his eyes too.

He returned his gaze to his father and seamlessly pulled away from him, phasing through Jack’s hands. “That… that isn’t all.” He said. The eclipse wasn’t at totality yet, but it was nearly there. “You know two of my masks, my disguises. No one knows what I actually look like anymore. Not even me.”

Danny stood and stepped back away from them. “First, I need you to understand. I didn’t mean to die.” Those words were a knife to Maddie’s heart. “I didn’t mean to come back.” Suddenly, Maddie didn’t care about the stupid old Fenton rule. “But I’m happy. I’m still here. I… I’m still Danny. Still your son.” Maddie could no longer hold back tears at the last statement, how unsure he sounded in those few words despite everything else said with such confidence. No words came to her to say though, the lead in her chest suffocating her as his eyes continued to glow green.

“How long?” Jack asked, slightly lifting up his hood and letting a stream of tears escape. He wasn’t looking at the eclipse anymore.

“A little over two years.” Danny admitted and whatever was left of Maddie’s heart shattered so hard it was nearly audible. That long? How had her son been dead for two years and his parents didn’t know?

Suddenly all of their ‘malfunctioning’ inventions made a lot more sense.

“But!” He continued, motioning for both of them to look at him. “I’m only half ghost. I… my accident with the portal, do you remember?” Maddie pressed her hand to her mouth as she began to actively, loudly sob.

Her invention had killed her son.

“Half?” Jack asked, emotions wavering in his voice. “That… that isn’t possible, son.”

“People said the same thing about ghosts.” Danny replied simply. “It’s time.”

Maddie could tell when totality hit, even if she hadn’t seen the change in color and light, hadn’t seen it out of the corner of her. Because she saw her son.

Her heart knew it was her son, even if her eyes didn’t.

As soon as the moon fully blocked the sun, he changed. The fuzziness faded from his edges. He grew taller, darker, his hands suddenly too long. He was still humanoid, but only barely. His torso stretched too far, his legs too thin, his face too blue. Inexplicably, she still saw the human in him. His heart shone through the darkness of his chest, his veins glowed. She could see his heart beating. Every time it pumped, his veins burned a very human red, fading to the green of his eyes, only to repeat the cycle at his next heartbeat, the crown floating above him pulsing in tandem. As she watched, a second set of what looked like veins began to glow a solid green, but the shape was wrong. It took her mind a moment to realize this new pattern of thin branches were shaped like lightning and only shot through half his body.

Maddie felt like she should be terrified. The being in front of her was monstrous, the thing children were warned would get them if they misbehaved.

But even as the… the thing in front of her opened his mouth and showed too sharp teeth, she didn’t fear him. He bit nervously at his lip, he rubbed a hand behind his neck.

In his mannerisms, she knew it was still her son in front of her.

Though, as she studied white hair, as the monochromatic symbol glowed on his chest, she wondered how she hadn’t seen it before. How she’d never seen her son in Phantom.

Maybe because Danny Fenton was a human boy and Danny Phantom was a long dead teenager. She’d never looked too closely.

“Mom?” He asked, voice echoing with static beneath, though it did nothing to hide the fear beneath. “Dad?”

~~~~~~

Danny had never felt as free as he did in that moment, the restraints of the mask he wore deteriorated to nothing. He had known, for a long time, that the way Phantom looked wasn’t the true way he was, but he’d always been too afraid to see what he may really be under the surface.

Phantom looked human, Phantom didn’t scare the people.

As he yielded to the eclipse, let it unravel every disguise he’d forged, he knew he would return to his costume as soon as he could. His body was too long, too thin, too tall. He could see his veins changing color as his ghost side and human side fought for dominance, could see his death scar glowing brightly in the pitch black that was his skin. His teeth felt too sharp against his tongue, his hair brushed against ears that were too long, a crown he kept trying to refuse weighing him down.

He had never seen this before. Only his death scar, though it remained hidden beneath his jumpsuit.

As free as he felt, he also knew he was horrific.

His parents’ emotions tasted sharper, sweeter, than anything ever had before. The horror and sorrow they felt tasted like ash.

But the acceptance was better, honey-like and with a pleasant aftertaste.

It was their love, though, that tasted better than anything he’d ever experienced before.

“Danny.” His mother said, standing and looking up at him, dwarfing her. He’d be dwarfing his father too right now. Danny hesitated then knelt down onto his knees, so he only towered slightly over her. “My son.” She continued, holding open her arms.

“Mom.” He said, voice breaking as tears spilled from him, as he accepted her embrace.

Jack said nothing, just enclosing his wife and son in his arms.

As they embraced in silence, the moon continued to move, allowing the sun’s light to spread again. Danny felt his masks come back to him and welcomed them, despite the constricted feeling he now was aware of, that had always been there.

When his parents pulled away, it was normal Danny Phantom who stood in front of them, shrunk back to his normal size.

There were a lot of discussions, a lot of guilt he knew he and his parents would have to work through.

But as love filled the air, filled his entire being, nourishment down to his very core, Danny knew it would all be okay.

#grace writes #danny phantom #dannymay2023 #Dannymay #Day 6 #Eclipse #danny fenton #jack fenton #maddie fenton #I'm really proud of this one???#It's kinda angsty but it's happy

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tangibletechnomancy · 5 months

Text

Neural Nets, Walled Gardens, and Positive Vibes Only

the crystal spire at the center of the techno-utopian walled garden

Anyone who knows or even just follows me knows that as much as I love neural nets, I'm far from being a fan of AI as a corporate fad. Despite this, I am willing to use big-name fad-chasing tools...sometimes, particularly on a free basis. My reasons for this are twofold:

Many people don't realize this, but these tools are more expensive for the companies to operate than they earn from increased interest in the technology. Using many of these free tools can, in fact, be the opposite of "support" at this time. Corporate AI is dying, use it to kill it faster!

You can't give a full, educated critique of something's flaws and failings without engaging with it yourself, and I fully intend to rip Dall-E 3, or more accurately the companies behind it, a whole new asshole - so I want it to be a fair, nuanced, and most importantly personally informed new asshole.

Now, much has already been said about the biases inherent to current AI models. This isn't a problem exclusive to closed-source corporate models; any model is only as good as its dataset, and it turns out that people across the whole wide internet are...pretty biased. Most major models right now, trained primarily on the English-language internet, present a very western point of view - treating young conventionally attractive white people as a default at best, and presenting blatantly misinformative stereotypes at worst. While awareness of the issue can turn it into a valuable tool to study those biases and how they intertwine, the marketing and hype around AI combined with the popular idea that computers can't possibly be biased tends to make it so they're likely to perpetuate them instead.

This problem only gets magnified when introduced to my mortal enemy-

If I never see this FUCKING dog again it will be too soon-

Content filters.

Theoretically, content filters exist to prevent some of the worst-faith uses of AI - deepfakes, true plagiarism and forgery, sexual exploitation, and more. In practice, many of them block anything that can be remotely construed as potentially sexual, violent, or even negative in any way. Frequently banned subjects include artistic nudity or even partial nudity, fight scenes, anything even remotely adjacent to horror, and still more.

The problems with this expand fractally.

While the belief that AI is capable of supplanting all other art forms, let alone should do so, is...far less widespread among its users than the more reactionary subset of its critics seem to believe (and in fact arguably less common among AI users than non-users in the first place; see again: you cannot give a full, educated critique of something's failings without engaging with it yourself), it's not nonexistent - and the business majors who have rarely if ever engaged with other forms of art, who make up a good percentage of the executives of these companies, often do fall on that side, or at least claim to in order to make more sales (but let's keep the lid on that can of worms for now).

When this ties to existing online censorship issues, such as a billionaire manchild taking over Twitter to "help humanity" (read: boost US far-right voices and promote and/or redefine hate speech), or arcane algorithms on TikTok determining what to boost and deboost leading to proliferation of neologisms to soften and obfuscate "sensitive" subjects (of which "unalive" is frequently considered emblematic), including such horrible, traumatizing things as...the existence of fat people, disabled people, and queer people (where the censorship is claimed to be for their benefit, no less!), the potential impact is apparent: while the end goal is impossible, in part because AI is not, in fact, capable of supplanting all other forms of art, what we're seeing is yet another part of a continuing, ever more aggressive push for sanitizing what kinds of ideas people can express at all, with the law looking to only make it worse rather than better through bills such as KOSA (which you can sign a petition against here).

And just like the other forms of censorship before and alongside it, AI content filtering targets the most vulnerable in society far more readily than it targets those looking to harm them. The filters have no idea what makes something an expression of a marginalized identity vs. what makes it a derogatory statement against that group, or an attempt at creating superficially safe-for-work fetish art - so, they frequently err on the side of removing anything uncertain. Boys in skirts and dresses are frequently blocked, presumably because they're taken for fetish art. Results of prompts about sadness or loneliness are frequently blocked, presumably because they may promote self harm, somehow. In my (admittedly limited) experiment, attempts at generating dark-skinned characters were blocked more frequently than attempts at generating light-skinned ones, presumably because the filter decided that it was racist to [checks notes] ...acknowledge that a character has a different skin tone than the default white characters it wanted to give me. Facial and limb differences are often either erased from results, or blocked presumably on suspicion of "violent content".

But note that I say "presumably" - the error message doesn't say on what grounds the detected images are "unsafe". Users are left only to speculate on what grounds we're being warned.

But what makes censorship of AI generated work even more alarming, in the context of the executive belief that it can render all other art forms obsolete, is that other forms of censorship only target where a person can say such earth-shaking, controversial things as "I am disabled and I like existing" or "I am happy being queer" or "mental health is important" or "I survived a violent crime" - you can be prevented from posting it on TikTok, but not from saying it to a friend next to you, let alone your therapist. AI content filtering, on the other hand, aims to prevent you from expressing it at all.

This becomes particularly alarming when you recall one of the most valuable use cases for AI generation: enabling disabled people to express themselves more clearly, or in new forms. Most people can find other workarounds in the form of more conventional, manual modes of expression, sure, but no amount of desperation can reverse hand paralysis that prevents a person from holding a pen, nor a traumatic brain injury or mental disability that blocks them from speaking or writing in a way that's easy to understand. And who is one of the most frequently censored groups? Disabled people.

So, my question to Bing and OpenAI is this: in what FUCKING universe is banning me from expressing my very existence "protecting" me?

Bad dog! Stop breaking my shit and get the FUCK out of my way!

Generated as a gift for a friend who was even more frustrated with that FUCKING dog than I was

All images - except the FUCKING dog - generated with Dall-E 3 via Bing Image Creator, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

#ai art #generated art #i want to make a stress toy out of that dog #i want to make a squishy stretchy plush toy #with weighted beans so it makes a satisfying THUNK when you throw it at the fucking wall #you did it you bastards you made a dog problematic

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griseldagimpel · 19 days

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Why Basira Hussain in The Magnus Archives Isn't Textually Muslim

I've noted before that Basira Hussain in The Magnus Archives isn't textually Muslim and is implied not to have strong religious faith. And it is religious faith I want to talk about in this post. Basira may very well come from a Muslim cultural background. But she isn't depicted as a capital B Believer.

Let's start with: a character's background - of any and every sort - is going to have some kind of impact on that character. The specifics of that impact will vary - there is no universal experience of anything - and the extend of the impact will be affected by the specifics of the story they are inhabiting. But a character's background shouldn't just be garnish.

With The Magnus Archives, it's a story that deeply involves religion and religious faith, what with the fear entities being worshiped as gods and all. And that means that characters' non-fear-god religious background comes up more than it might in another narrative. Thus, we get stuff like Eugene opining that the Cult of the Lightless Flame shouldn't just imitate Christianity and Martin & Jon discussing whether the Christian God is a force they can invoke.

As such, the fact that religion never comes up with Basira - when it comes up with so many other characters in the story - leads me to believe that she doesn't have a strong religious background.

Are you following me so far?

Right. So why is this? Why did the creative team make this creative decision?

Well, it's because of season five.

The fourth season ends with the fear apocalypse beginning, and then throughout all of season five, no deity intervenes to stop the fear apocalypse. (Well, unless you want to argue this was the case with Georgie and Melanie's immunity, and there, yeah, I think from an in-story perspective their cult's pretty justified, honestly.)

We spend most of the our time with Jon & Martin, who explicitly come from culturally Christian backgrounds but don't have particularly strong Christian faith themselves and predominantly experience religion in the context of the fear gods. Then there's Basira, Georgie, and Melanie.

The goal of the fifth season is the stop the fear apocalypse, which the characters do, and then the series quickly ends. And the sequel series is over there in a whole different parallel universe.

Because, look, even after being undone, the fear apocalypse was going to fuck with a lot of humanity's religious faith (or lack there of!) something fierce. Gods are real but also they're monsters and also no other god intervened.

That's...a lot.

Basira's doesn't have strong religious faith because if she did, she'd have to process season five through the lens of her religion.

And that's...a lot.

And the creative team wanted Basira's story arc to be about her confronting the harm she and Daisy did as corrupt cops.

Also, look, a British podcast depicting the Christian God as either probably nonexistent or useless? That's like, whatever. England's got a whole Church of England. Christians in England aren't being persecuted for being Christian. The episode "The Architect of Fear" can have Robert Smirke write, "I am certain the Dread Powers cannot take a soul who keeps faith in the Resurrection." and then drop dead before he can even finish his letter. It's fine.

But a British podcast specifically depicting a Muslim character having to confront that their faith is false?

Muslims in England are a religious minority. They don't have a whole institutionalized Mosque of England behind them.

Yeah, that could easily end up coming off as Jerk Move.

Not saying that it couldn't be done or couldn't make a compelling narrative, but it would be a lot to take on. It would risk overpowering the corrupt cop reckoning character arc. And the creative team would have to tread carefully for it not to be a Jerk Move.

Ergo, it's easier on the creative team for them to just...not have Basira be religiously Muslim.

Relatedly, Melanie and Georgie aren't depicted as strongly religious for similar reasons. Because they're outside of the Eye's power! If either of them had a strong religious faith, the characters would likely be interpreting their exemption as being a reflection of their faith! And that would be another plotline where the creative team would likely feel like they had to tread carefully lest their story come off as Jerk Move. Again, not impossible to pull off. But difficult.

#the magnus archives #meta #religion #islam in fiction #christianity in fiction

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thebadgerclan · 2 years

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Outdated

Pairing: Nikolai Lantsov x reader

Summary: An outdated practice comes to light...

A/N: This was inspired by the Netflix show’s “The Empress” (really good, 10/10 recommend) scene where Elisabeth’s “purity” is examined. Nothing graphic is depicted, but it does deal with a virginity check, so if that’s something that will make you uncomfy, this might not be the fic for you

Also Nikolai is 1,000,000% a feminist, no I will not take questions on this 😂

“He did what?!” You had never seen such rage on your fiance’s face; not when his council questioned his decisions, not when his father called him a clueless bastard, not when the Fjerdans rejected yet another peace treaty. But when you ran into his study, your dressing gown tied haphazardly around your waist, your hair mussed and your cheeks stained with tears, Nikolai’s fear for what had happened had quickly morphed into boiling, white hot rage.

Through stuttering sobs, you managed to tell Nikolai what had happened. Before your ladies had even come to help you dress, the Apparat had entered your room, a Healer in tow. As your wedding was a week away, the old man had said, your purity must be ensured. You’d expected a conversation, for the Healer to inquire about any past lovers you might have had (which were nonexistent). What you hadn’t expected was to be laid back, your legs spread, and poked and prodded.

To his credit, the Healer appeared thoroughly uncomfortable with the whole affair, made all the more uncomfortable by the Apparat’s presence, hovering over his shoulder. As soon as the Healer declared you “intact”, you were scrambling to cover yourself, and as soon as the Apparat and Healer were gone, you were running to your fiance. There was too much anger flowing through his veins to comfort you, as much as he yearned to; to ease the torment you were feeling, to wipe your tears and shelter you in his arms, so Nikolai threw open the door.

“Kolya, where are you going?” you cried, trailing behind him hurriedly. “Nikolai!” Your fiance ignored you, knowing that if he so much as looked at you, he would shatter. The King strode hurriedly through the corridors, down a flight of stairs, and threw open the doors of the study the Apparat was permitted to keep. “Moi tsar,” the priest said, rising and bowing. “What can I do for you? And Lady Y/N, I was not expecting to see you until the wedding.”

“You’ll be lucky if you’re even in that damned chapel, priest,” Nikolai snapped, and the Apparat winced at the profanity. “Majesty, whatever is the matter? Have I done something to offend?” “Indeed you have. Might you explain why you were in my fiance’s chambers, violating her without her consent or knowledge?” The Apparat chuckled and shook his head, as if he were speaking to a petulant child.

“King Nikolai, the royal bride’s purity and chastity must be confirmed, surely you know this? Your mother underwent the sa-” “I don’t care!” Nikolai shouted, holding up a hand. “Do we live in the times of Anastas? Why should a woman’s virginity matter? Y/N is faithful, that should be enough to assuage your worries of an illegitimate child.” “The church, Your Majesty, requires it. The law requires it, the Saints require it!”

“And who wrote those laws?” Nikolai countered. “Men. Misogynistic, ignorant men. Men who viewed women as objects rather than living, breathing human beings, and I will not stand for it.” “Majesty, this is all an overreaction. The Healer found nothing amiss! The wedding can go on as planned!” The King stepped forward, forcing the Apparat to look up. “Oh, but something is amiss. You see, my beloved Y/N was violated today, treated as a vessel rather than the future queen. And that, priest, is something I cannot forgive or overlook.

“You will never subject another woman to such a display again, do you understand me?” “King Nikolai,” the Apparat said. “My vows to the church insist that I–” “If you do,” Nikolai said, his voice low. “I will have you hanged. Perhaps then you can ask your beloved Saints their thoughts on the matter, no?” It seemed the threat of death had knocked some sense into the priest, and he bowed shakily.

“Yes, Your Majesty. My apologies.” Nikolai huffed. “I am not the one you need to apologize to.” Your fiance stepped to the side, allowing the priest to look at you, still disheveled, still crying. “My apologies, Lady Y/N.” His words meant nothing, you knew this, but you nodded and turned, exiting the room.

When you were outside the study, Nikolai pulled you greedily into his arms. “My love, I am so, so, so sorry that happened. I didn’t know….I never thought he would…. Fuck, I’m so sorry.” You nuzzled your face into his chest, breathing deeply, the smell of his cologne calming you. “It’s not your fault,” you said, but your fiance held you closer. “No, I should have known, I never should have let him near you, I should have–” “Nikolai,” you said, cutting him off. “You are the last person I’m upset with. Yes, I’m shaken and upset, but you marched in there and threatened to kill him. That’s more than most men would do.”

Nikolai tipped your chin up and kissed you, keeping your body pressed against his. “I meant it,” he said. “That law’s getting abolished within the month. I’m so sorry that happened, darling. I love you so much.” “I love you too, Nikolai.” Your fiance took your arm and led you back to your rooms, somehow managing to make you feel as regal as the queen you would soon be in nothing but a dressing gown. “No one will ever touch you again,” he vowed, and you smirked. “Just you.” Nikolai smiled, a flush creeping up his neck. “Just me.”

#nikolai lantsov x reader #shadow and bone fanfiction #nikolai lantsov x you #shadow and bone

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numbraerys · 1 year

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Optimus Prime x Megatron fic recs!!

Homesick For A Memory by Eisengrave, Maelikki - [M, 9k w., Bay Movies]

Even Primes can lose their faith. But sometimes, their failed Protectors make good on their word given long ago.

(weird little fixit for AoE because we stan a protective Megatron and an Optimus who is finally tired of his human hamsters. Also, homecoming.)

~ugly crying, screaming on my pillow, rolling around on the floor

The Silver Lining by GeminiWishes - [Teen and up, 38k w., Transformers Animated 2007]:

After Optimus was expelled from the Autobot Academy, he had no sense of what to do or where to go. Desperate for purpose, he ends up on a mining crew that travels the galaxy. But when their ship is attacked, Optimus' life will change forever.

Whether or not he'll be able to handle those changes is yet to be determined.

~I ran around my room on all fours reading this

Some Kind Of Forever by auri_mynonys (FAVE) - [E, 8625 w., TFP]:

A chance meeting in a bar near the Pits brings Orion Pax and Megatronus together.

~I freaking love this fic, I'm so glad it was one of the first I ever read

Adeste Fideles by Legitconcrusher (FAVE) [Teen and up, TFP, 57,632+ w, ongoing]:

“Oh, indulge me, Optimus. How many times have you answered your desire’s calls to walk among these pitiful creatures…in the flesh?”

In which Optimus shares with his greatest foe, and former friend - Megatron, the one time a year he allows himself to feel amid the throes of their War within a Christmas market.

The angsty slow burn Christmas AU no one asked for.

~absolutely wonderful to read and incredible writing♡♡♡♡

Gaining Perspective by Dragonlingdar [Teen and up, BayVerse, 105,732 w., Ongoing]:

Megatron and Optimus are turned into humans by a prototype weapon Starscream uses against them. In order for Megatron to get his revenge and Optimus to free himself of Megatron, they must reclaim their original bodies. However, will they still be Optimus Prime and Megatron by the time they do?

~I hyperfixated on this fic for a whole month after finishing it

Contact by auri_mynonys (FAVE) [E, 98,747 w., TFP]:

Orion Pax knows there's a word for what Megatronus means to him. He just can't quite put his finger on what it is.

Which is probably how he missed the moment where he asked Megatronus to marry him.

~Slow Burn♡♡♡♡♡

Plus One by auri_mynonys [E, 64631 w., TFP]:

Megatronus has a party to attend. A high-caste date will lend him status in the eyes of his fellow gladiators, and Orion Pax is all too happy to play the part...

~this fic was infuriating to read, I loved every second of it

Songs Of Metal And Sparks by EbonyAura [Teen and up, 58,741 w., Rock n' Roll AU, TFP]:

Imagine the Transformers Prime universe where war is nonexistent, and instead of the Autobot and Decepticon factions, it's the Autobot and Decepticon rock bands.

Imagine that both bands are nearly world famous, yet have no idea the other exists.

Imagine that Cybertron's festival of music is approaching, and with it, the chance for a lucky upcoming band to go on a world tour.

Imagine that both bands, ecstatic for the chance to finally reach world fame, are going to the festival.

~this cured my teenage heart that didn't get to read nice cute stuff like this

Optimus Prime Is Destined To Die!! by Chuzillla [G, 86,146 w, ongoing]:

Orion Pax is your typical archivist from a functionalist free universe and lives a peaceful life, but after dying tragically in a transport incident he’s reincarnated as Optimus Prime of the hit action novel Songs of the Spark, the beautiful but aloof eldest prince of the Prime lineage...who is a pathetic side character doomed to die a tragic death at the hands of the tyrannical Duke Megatron.

Of course his darling little brother Rodimus Prime is the precious hero and puts an end to Megatron’s reign, but Orion has no intention of dying a pathetic death! No! Not again! He wants to live damnit! So begins the attempts of a pax-turned-prime turning over a new leaf in the hope of living another day. Little does he know there’s a bit more to Optimus than a pathetic side character…

~I love this fic so. damn. much.

Lunch Date by Chuzilla [Teen and up, 6,000+ w, Earthspark, crack]:

With a new cafe opening at G.H.O.S.T headquarters, Optimus invites Megatron to try something new.

~fluffy and funny♡♡♡

At First Sight by Lyricality (FAVE) [M, 27,000+ w.]:

Optimus is the last of the Primes; Megatron is the greatest of Kaon's gladiatorial warriors. Their shared destiny - Optimus is certain - just needs a push in the correct direction.

~help I got obsessed with this fic and I can't get out

To give (in) by 0 (only_elsewhere) [FAVE][M, 10,000+ w, Earthspark]:

After the war, Optimus confesses.

~aaashhksdkkklkosljdhjh

Victory Condition by astolat [E, 37,000+ w, TF Gen1]

“Do you want me to tell you a story?” Megatron said mockingly. “You won’t like it, Prime. It’s not a very nice one.”

~cave in fic with poetry and the heart wrenching story of Megatron's origins - my beloved

Cooking Off by zuzeca [E, 2000 w., IDW G1]:

Megatron and Optimus find themselves in an awkward position and learn some extremely personal information about each other.

~ Good reading ;)

#megaop #fic recs #transformers #Optimus prime x Megatron #megatron x optimus prime #Transformers fic recs #megop #I'm always adding new fics i find

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lapis-lights · 1 year

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.·.·Blog Masterlist·.·.

Here is the masterlist...to all the series' masterlist :')

Every work I upload will be added here regardless if I finished it or not, so this is really all my stories in one place for anybody who needs to binge read some things. All of it is Leon Kennedy so far so yuh! Anyways, enjoy!

.·.·Car Lights·.·.

Part One

Part Two

• Summary: Leon Kennedy is your best friend who you've been hopelessly enamored with for quite some time. However, fears of what might happen and how his reputation might be affected have always held you back.

It's only when your humanity is slipping away and the chance of ever getting to tell him how you feel is next to nonexistent that you finally begin to understand.

• Author's Notes: Ah, ye olde faithful Car Lights, my first ever Leon Kennedy write that regrettably wasn't broken up into more parts bc I was too used to uploading 16k one shots on an old blog, which is why 30k words was split into only two chapters. Definitely a fan favorite and I hold it near and dear to my heart as it broke my previous word count record by almost doubling it.

.·.·Falling From Grace·.·.

Masterlist

• Summary: Active within two different groups trying to fight the war against the ever-famous bioweapons, you and Leon have always maintained a healthy rivalry. It's not uncommon that you'll butt heads on overlapping missions, engage in countless fights ending in draws that begin with two guns pointed at each other, and say words of hatred spit in the heat of the moment while the two of you try to get the edge on the other.

However, one night, you show up on the doorstep of his room at the raggedy motel he'd hidden away in to recuperate after the events with Glenn Arias.

On one hand, he doesn't trust you at all. On the other hand, you were bruised, and bloodied, and looking like you were on the verge of death.

Somehow, you soon have Leon wrapped up in your ploy to take down the company that bound your life in a contract. As the two of you stay trapped together working as unfortunate allies, conflicting feelings arise and threaten to turn your world upside down.

• Author's Notes: My passion project and ultimately magnum opus at the time of writing this note. Big behemoth story with 51.2k words a whole lot of effort put into it. Definitely a story you might have to sit down and take the time to read as none of the four chapters go underneath 10k words. Hope you enjoy this one :)

#lapis language #leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy #resident evil x reader #leon s kennedy #leon s kennedy x reader #resident evil #resident evil fanfiction #leon scott kennedy #leon scott kennedy x reader #leon x reader #leon kennedy imagine #leon kennedy x you #leon kennedy x y/n #resident evil leon #resident evil fic #resident evil x you #leon kennedy fanfic

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basssiliskk · 3 months

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letting my qsmp mutuals know now that my qsmp posting may be slowed/nonexistant for a while because i'm not enjoying the energy surrounding the fandom right now

Putting it under the cut for people who don't want to hear me yapping

a lot of the people on here have a hard time differentiating criticism with hate and are starting to harass people with genuine concerns or critiques about the server for being "chronically online" or "taking it too seriously"

most of these criticisms aren't even in bad faith, it's people pointing out prolonged behaviors/events they notice and want to change because they love the server and want to see it improve, not because they hate it. Following Quackity's advice and "letting things breathe" and bringing up continued issues people notice can coexist. We don't always need to pretend everything is perfect or enjoy every second of a media we consume, because it is created by humans who can make or overlook mistakes.

Some of these examples are things like: Essentially locking CCs out of the server for "lore reasons" like Pol, Slime, Baghera, etc (we still haven't gotten Pol back and it's been months). Disrupting lore that's been in the making for months, which even if CCs aren't mad about per se, have expressed disappointment in like with Cellbit during Purgatory and Pierre currently. Then one that's less extreme but a bit frustrating when it happens over and over again — unsatisfying conclusions to arcs that have been hyped up like the short cutscene played as the "rescue mission" for Baghs and Cellbit when it was previously brought up as if it'd be some big event including Phil at the very least.

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern and unfortunately a lot of these points are things that have happened multiple times and we can assume it'll happen again. People bringing up disappointment in that isn't unnecessary hate and it's beginning to feel like if you say otherwise, you're seen as a toxic fan. I'm hoping things change but for now I'm just going to watch Foolish's pov privately and not talk about the server much on here.

#qsmp fandom crit #qsmp fandom neg #qsmp crit

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theboarsbride · 10 months

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WIP Intro - Temperance & Mr. Wyrm.

Title: Temperance & Mr. Wyrm

Genre: Body horror, romance, magical realism, drama, historical fiction (1980s), fairytale/folklore retelling (Prince Lindworm), novella.

Status: Second draft/revisions

Themes: Shedding skins - literally and figuratively - to grow into a new person; temperance (in regards to self-restraint and suppression against impulses); survival and faithfulness of love.

Content Warnings: General body horror, snake imagery, ableist language regarding autism, general socio-political norms of the 1980s (though I will keep this to a minimum as I feel like I don’t need to stick 100% true to the period. However, given how illness and healing is the core plotline, the whole being “afraid of AIDs” will make a brief appearance).

Synopsis: Two people try to navigate their unorthodox romance in spite of an arcane, snake-like infection that affects one of them.

Temperance Cavell, a six-foot tall autistic woman living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, lives a quiet, unexciting, and demure existence running a convenience store with her mother. But despite her mother's overbearing nature, the nonstop caring of her ailing grandmother, and her near-nonexistent social life, she cannot complain. This life is quiet, she’s (somewhat) in control, and nothing is unexpected…

That is until Jack Turner, the motorcycle-riding kleptomaniac with a heart of gold, bursts into her store one Saturday afternoon, and between them a romance reluctantly blooms. That is until such love is swiftly threatened to shatter when Jack’s body begins to betray him, contorting him into something that is completely, and utterly, non-human.

WIP Pinterest Board

***

would you still love me if i was a wyrm?

just a redo of this WIP intro for TAMW because the old one was slightly outdated and I wasn't a huge fan of it lmfao

The tag for this story is #WIP : temperance and mr. wyrm if you're interested in learning more about this story!

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transgenderer · 2 years

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I am visiting my friends' new townhouse (rural so cheap. constructed in like 70s, 80s) and I got very high and second day there while very high I noticed that one of their few ceiling lights was an old timey frosted glass clear glass mixed thing with these sort of glass bubbles that were formed to make grapes and vines and this discovery felt massive to me (high) so I looked at all the other ceiling lights in the house and none of the others were grapes they were just smooth and plain.

So I insisted the friends living there come up and look at the grapes, and neither of them had noticed the grapes! And then we were analyzing the grapes lightshade, it's virtues mostly but also some critiques, and how the light inside seemed asymmetrical, and was maybe missing a bulb, so one of the guys living there reached up and tried to get the cover off, and it fell to the floor, and it bouced off the floor onto the stairs, and bounced again, and then on its third bounce it exploded, massively.

I was OVERCOME with distress. This felt so so bad, like I had destroyed something so valuable, so immense. And then it really sunk in that it was gone, and probably irreplaceable, there was no label, no way to find another. And it felt so massive and important, that something valuable was gone forever. And I realized the reason the light seemed undeniably very old, probably installed right when the townhouse was built, unlike every other light in the whole house, which was replaced in the 90s at the oldest. But anyway I realized it seemed old because it reminded me so so vividly of my dad's parents house. And the glass cover breaking felt like my grandparents dying. All my grandparents are alive. No one close to me has died. Certainly no one I cared about. And that glass breaking was like a terrible taste of death being real, relevant to me.

I talked about how my bougie and anxious upbringing had deluded me into believing that everything always works out for the best, which grew into an unshakable faith that the world is a perfect choreography towards maximum joy, that everything is shepherded towards optimality, which is absurd, look at the great suptomimal world, it's...incoherent. But all that bad stuff, outside my world, is immaterial. It doesn't feel real. It hasn't hurt me. And my "grandparents dying" reminded me that death laughs in the face of "optimality". Every moment you live you have the tiniest chance of living forever, or at least until you choose death instead of having it thrust upon you, of it all working out, and when you die that tiny probability drops down to hard 0, that ol goose egg. And that sacrifice, that's a negative infinity on the optimality calculations. Optimality is a joke. People have died forever, been to turn NOTHING. In all likelihood most of you reading will die forever, against your will. How unspeakably cruel.

Anyway, another source of emotion about this weird lamp thing: the grapes lived unknown, unrecognized, truly nonexistent in social reality, and then when I saw it, when I pointed it out, I destroyed it! If I kept it safe from human knowledge, if I kept it secret, it would have lived! I killed it! For knowledge! There's An SCP about this. So that fucked me up to. I felt so guilty. I might as well have strangled a baby bird right between my fists to dissect it's corpse. I kept apologizing tonight.

I got what I call "whoopsies high" where you got way higher than you meant to, or maybe ever have been before. Ive also had 25 mG Addy and two cups of coffee and a tiny bit of dmt and some tobacoo in the weed and some painkillers for the holes in my ears(!) and who knows how many drinks and also a tad bit of lead from bullet oil (loaded some AK ammo! Shot an AK!) so um. I'm really experiencong some brain stuff. Like as I type this. I feel like I'm writing a really good post though. And prettt coherent. Altho who knows.

P.S. I'm sitting on the stairs and there's like a railing next to me and theres clothing draped on the railing and when I focus on somewhere else in my vision or like zone out my brain thinks the clothes in the corner of my eye are a person, the person keeps changing, and upon identitying the person I would fill in the details and then look closer and see the clothes and the person would be destroyed and it felt like death over and over.

Also the weird brain state and the stuff everywhere and the steep narrow stairs keep reminding me of my grandparents who Will DIE forever!!! In like. 5 yesrs tops! They're in their 90s! And it so terrible. Death is real

Strangely tho....I feel animal scared but I don't feel sad. My brain thinks the status quo is good. Repulsive. But there's so much joy!

- Loves and kisses from the temporary sacrificial summer-branch, exploring a distant region of spacetime to get information to the main branch about the effect of small deviations to pilot my way through mind space. Unlike most such branches, I was coherent enough to write a post! So I don't totally disappear! My ideas get into the main branch! And to other minds! The thing that makes me different from other minds! I am immortal!

(Cope)

#I think this.might be a really good post

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empyrangel · 3 months

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I’ve been wanting to post my thoughts on the new Percy Jackson show and everywhere it went wrong, but I’ve actually seen a decent amount of people already criticizing it, so no use beating a dead horse. Despite the overwhelming majority of people who think this show is the best thing since sliced bread and will crucify anyone who gives so much as good faith criticism towards it and handwave it all away with “well you just don’t like that it’s not a carbon copy of the books!”, I have seen plenty of people talk about the horrific lighting, the unnecessary exposition dumps in every other scene whilst simultaneously skipping important show-don’t-tell moments and summarizing them later, the absolute lack of stakes and tension that comes from the characters being able to identify every trap and threat before it even happens, and Annabeth’s personality being scrubbed of fluff, flaws, and anything remotely interesting and reduced to smart, cool, and mommy issues. However, there’s something that I haven’t seen anyone else mention yet that’s really bugging me.

The gods in this show don’t feel like gods at all. The gods in PJ are supposed to be humanized—to an extent. They have petty human emotions and somewhat human problems, but they’re always still portrayed as what they really are, deities. The gods in the show don’t feel like forces of nature and abstract concepts capable of tearing the universe apart in human forms, they just feel like normal mortal people. Dionysus I can give a pass to because of his unique circumstances. Poseidon and Hephaestus carried a somewhat enigmatic air to them, but it sure as hell wasn’t divine. Where was Poseidon’s gaze that contained the churning, untamed depths of the seas? Where were Hephaestus’ disfigured scars from when he had been tossed to the ground from mount olympus? Ares and Hades are the worst of it. Show Ares is intimidating, sure. As intimidating as a normal human biker, not god of war intimidating. In the books, Ares’ mere presence was enough to stop people in their tracks. He could cause blood to boil and fights to break out around him. Everyone is in love with Hades’ portrayal and I can’t even begin to understand why. Hades is supposed to be a god of the dead who wears the souls of the damned as his garments and his aura could tempt people to submit to him or give up their own life. He’s not some sassy twink you’d see at a gay bar in LA.

I think that the lackluster portrayal of the gods is part of why the stakes feel so nonexistent. The beings who are supposedly going to initiate the war to end all wars if the master bolt isn’t returned don’t feel formidable in the slightest. People can defend Annabeth’s half-baked personality and the godawful pacing all they want, I don’t care, but can we at least all agree that the gods are supposed to actually feel like gods?

#traveler from another world ✨#for the record there are a lot of things about this show that I really love they are just small and #inconsequential compared to the big major things they fucked up #percy jackson #pjo #percy jackson show #pjo show #disney percy jackson #rick riordan

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blessedarethebinarybreakers · 11 months

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A queer reflection for Trinity Sunday

There’s something queer about a Triune God.

How can one Being also be three Persons? The math doesn’t seem to add up! Some spend years attempting to articulate this theology in a way that doesn’t fall into “heresy”; others give up with a laugh and accept it as a Mystery. Ultimately, the God of the Universe is ineffable, beyond our understanding — yet we are called to seek ever deeper relationship with God, and promised that if we seek, we will find.

When people decry queer identities as nonexistent, overly complicated, or paradoxical, I can’t help but think of our impossible Three-in-One God. I think also about my own gender journey: how I struggled as a child to name what I was feeling because I had no language to describe it; how once I discovered others had words for what I was experiencing, I delighted in every one I could uncover; and how, ultimately, even my favorite words I’ve found to describe myself fall short.

Words like trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer certainly help others understand and relate to me better — but I’ve learned to be okay with the fact that they might never fully know me, just as I may never fully know them. Turns out that the children of a Mysterious God are micro-mysteries in ourselves!

What I’m left with is this: if we worship a Triune God, why do we try to squeeze the humans made in that Infinite, Ineffable Being’s image into two narrow boxes? And if we celebrate how, in the Incarnation and Resurrection, Divinity burst through the binaries between Creator & Creation, Life & Death, surely the binary between male & female isn’t so insurmountable!

Together, let us pray:

Holy God, whose very existence is relationship, we marvel at your mystery. Protect this day and always those of your children who, like you, defy easy definition and resist restrictive categories. Teach us to recognize your wisdom and holiness shining within them, for only together in all our diversity do we reflect your image. Amen.

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