#it would be less if the scale was bigger but in tiny scale with tiny stitches it takes forever

[dravidious]

Writing as a medium

Cons: Restricted to silent words, never able to truly communicate the beauty of a landscape, the emotion in an expression, the serene sound of a bird's song, the tone of voice with which a line is spoken

Pros:

#original #i've put over 10000 words on my neocities site and yet not even a single megabyte #i could store my life's work on a floppy disk #the only files in my stories folder that are over 50 KB are .odt files which i don't use anymore #my big stories (CH and RTR) would be probably over 100 KB in pure .txt form but that just proves the point because 100 KB is nothing #100 KB is the size of a meme in .jpg #plaintext is so so tiny that even my biggest works are barely a speck #storing every individual letter instead of every individual pixel is so much more space efficient #and between hyper-efficient storage and the use of keyboards the digital era is the best time to be a writer #WAIT ACTUALLY #on my neocities i have a jpg of my paper robot battle game and it's over 100 KB #i made the paper robots in an afternoon and scaled the photo way down specifically to save space and it's still massive #oh wait wtf i just copy+pasted Childish Harmony into a txt and it's bigger than as an odt? #went from 130 KB to 200 #there must be some compression in odt that makes it more efficient for large files #but it's definitely way less efficient for small files because i tested it again with the Retired Villain short and it went from 28 KB to 9 #so good to know! use odt for big stories and txt for small ones #i wonder where the tipping point is? #oh hey i found it immediately lol it's around 15000 words or 70KB

[heartfullofleeches]

You know what i would like to see a goldfish reader cause i mean goldfish can be really tiny and can get fairly big, maybe reader is from a pet store and gets bought for a young rich yandere and gets absolutely pampered and gets huge, clifford the big red dog style

"Sorry, I can't make it this year."

"Mom won't drive me out that far....."

"Maybe next time?"

"Next year."

Next year... Next year.. They'll be forty by the time that rolls around. It's always the same. People stick around for the lavish parties and taste of the high life, but the second they want to downgrade for something small with close friends and family everyone's suddenly too busy to come see them. The presents have always been shit too. Flashy jewelry or clothing from brands they couldn't care less about. Whatever happened to giving kids toy trains and dolls? They're sick of it. Sick of everything. Why can't anything turn out right-

Auryn hurls their phone at the door, anger fleeting as it smashes into a million pieces. Mommy and daddy will just buy them a new one, and while it won't do a scratch they love the idea of burning a hole in their pockets. Wasting all the money they gave them instead of time. The door creaks open once the coast is clear and in peaks a frightened maid. Her eyes fall to her arms, soothing whatever she held with a soft hush. They return to her master, waiting for their answer.

"Come in."

The maid opens the door completely and steps inside. In her hands was a glass bowl. "From your parents."

Auryn drums their leg against the frame of their bed, wondering why their arms were still empty. "Well?"

The maid shoves the bowl into their chest as passive she could, prioritizing the creature within over her annoyance. They look into the glass. Floating at the bottom; staring right back at them, was a little goldfish. Poor thing had been startled awake by the loud thud and trying to squeeze its tail into the castle it had already outgrown. It still couldn't have been any bigger than their hand. Beyond its human features, there was nothing special about it. A fish.

A fucking fish. Out of all the things they could've sent. The maid could sense their rage flaring. "Please give it a chance. Your brother couldn't keep it, and he knew you'd be the next best owner."

Their nails scrap the glass. That only makes it worse. Their family dumping their trash on them was a new low. What were they going to do with this thing? They should put it out of its misery. Abandoned, weak, unable to feign for itself.... just like them.

Auryn looks at the goldfish again. They stick a finger in its tank, swishing it around as the guppy takes interest. It swims up to them and puts its mouth around the digit, nibbling at the skin. They smile a bit, pulling their finger away which in turn causes the fish to dart away. Their brows furrow in worry.

"... I'm..sorry for scaring you. You're just like me aren't you? Alone. Afraid. I'll take care of you. I promise. Why don't we start off by getting you a new tank?"

.

.

.

"Noooooo"

You shake in their arms as the divers attempt to fit their measuring tools around your tail, successfully knocking two of them away and sending the third packing. Auryn strokes your tears into your scaly flesh, fighting a laugh as the hired help resurfaces.

"I don't want to get measured!"

"Shhhh. It's okay. If even one scale is missing off that gorgeous tail I'll cut their oxygen and add a few bricks to their suits."

You still aren't convinced. Auryn melts at the way you curl against their chest. The first time they held you like this you were about the size of a puppy. Now, your tail alone was bigger as their entire torso and your arms were tree trunks compared to theirs. They had done exactly as they said. After you came into their life no one else mattered. They got you a nice large tank to start off with, fed you a healthy diet with plenty of treats since your speak lessons were going so well, and spoke with you for hours. You were already half their size by the end of the year. They used to take you on walks in your little bowl, then they had to buy a wagon to carry you around, and now you lived in a glorified swimming pool no one else had access to besides care beyond their capabilities. Having you turned them into a more compassionate, but closed off person, and got them through the worse in life. They were successful in nearly every endeavor and it was all for you.

Auryn gets close to your ear as their voice rises in pitch. "But if you reaaaally don't want to - I'll have to find some other guppy to give all the brine shrimp I have in the house to."

Your tail cracks against the pool's wall, ripping the water's surface with tidal category waves and pushing the workers back down under. "I'll be good! I will- please!"

"Haha - ok, ok." They give a thumbs up to the divers as they climb in the pool. You work with them this time, channeling your fright as their tools stretch and stick around you into the grip you hold on Auryn's arm - careful not to apply too much. They grit through the pain and as one of the divers comes up again they take the measuring tape still held by the rest and lines it up to your head.

"4 meters!"

Auryn exclaims in glee and grabs you by the cheeks, cooing and kissing your nose as they laugh. "Look at you! A whole nother meter in just one year. Keep this up and we'll have to buy an island."

A servant knocks on the sliding glass door. Auryn excuse themselves with one final kiss to your wet lips as they hop out of your tank. They hand them a phone.

"It's your parents. They are in town with your brother and would like to take you out for your birthday this evening."

Auryn gets real close to the receiver as they speak. "Eat shit and die. Stay the hell away from us."

#yandere oc #yandere imagines #yandere x reader #yandere headcanons #yandere scenarios #yandere x you #yandere #yandere blurb #yandere insert #monster reader #yandere drabble #yandere oneshot #Goldfish reader #goldfish reader

[sindri42]

What is capitalism if private ownership and monopolization are out

This is about the insulin thing, right? Let me walk you through the steps.

The current situation is, there are three big corporations making insulin. They make it for super cheap, like $2 a dose or something including packaging and distribution and all that jazz, but they know that people need this stuff in order to not die, so there's no reason to restrain themselves as far as pricing goes. So they sell the stuff for like $500 a vial, earning a tidy 25,000% profit, because what are customers gonna do, not buy it?

In a capitalist system, this is a huge opportunity for anybody with a few thousand in seed money and a smidge of ambition. The process of making insulin is hardly a secret. I might not have the economy of scale going and I need a big up-front investment for equipment, but even if it costs me five times as much per dose to produce the stuff, that's still less than 2% of the current market price. So I start making and distributing the stuff for $10 a vial, and selling it for $400, and all the customers see that they can get the same product for $100 less so they stop buying from those three big companies and start buying from my startup. Then a month later, somebody else comes along with the same idea but undercuts me, and I lose all my customers to sombody willing to sell the stuff for $350, but that's fine I just change all my labels to sell for $300 and they come rushing back, and I'm still making $290 pure profit on every vial. Fast forward a couple years, and the market price of insulin is like, $12 a vial tops, because if you try to get profit margins any bigger than that you're the most expensive option and nobody buys from you. There was never any altruism involved in that process, no magic, no glorious savior who figured out a way to impose their will upon the world in order to save lives, just ordinary greedy humans fighting each other to make more money for themselves, but the end result is that the people who need this stuff to survive get it for a tiny fraction of what they used to be paying.

In the system that we're actually using, the three big corporations go to the government with three big suitcases full of cash, and the government passes a law that says anybody who tries to make insulin who isn't one of the three big corporations goes directly to prison forever. All the competition vanishes, and without the risk of somebody selling the same product for less they're able to keep raising the price as much as they want. I mean, if you get up to the point where the majority of your customers literally can't buy it anymore and they die then you have fewer customers, so going up into the millions per vial would be counterproductive, but as long as the majority of people who need insulin can just barely scrape together enough, you maximize your profits. And all it costs is widespread human suffering and a few surprisingly affordable bribes.

And then here's the really funny part: the corporations that benefit most from government interference in the market? They're the ones that fund all the media that convinces kids that the solution to all their problems is to give the government even more control over every aspect of life. They're the ones who pushed the narrative that 'libertarian' is synonymous with 'pedophile'. They're the ones who bury stories about corrupt politicians so you never question how a congressman can have a salary under $200,000 a year, go into the position with a net worth of a million dollars, and come out eight years later as a billionaire. Almost every "anti-capitalist" movement out there, if you follow the chain of evidence back, is funded directly by the corporations it claims to oppose, because shifting the balance of power further away from the individual and more toward the State means more profit for the people who are in a position to manipulate the state.

Now, this isn't to say that a free market is without problems. If there was zero regulation of the production of insulin, then a particularly unethical person could undercut the legitimate sources by making a loose approximation of the product people need for much cheaper by using dangerous or ineffective methods, and then sell it at prices that legitimate manufacturers can't compete with because the purchase price is lower than the manufacturing price. Which means that when you buy insulin, you would need to do your own research into who's got a reputation for quality, and there would be people who straight up die because they decided to go for the $4-6 "insulin" instead of the $12-15 insulin. But I'm pretty sure that would still be better than the only option being $500.

[telleroftime]

I want to hold tiny Bowser in my cupped hands. I want to boop his little snout. I want to give his face a big smooch. I was to scratch his head. I want to tickle him. I want to pet his tail. I want to call him adorable. I want him to learn to be content with someone doting on him.

At least until he finds a way to get the effects of the power up off.

The best thing about this is that Bowser is always the bigger one. Even in his normal form he's huge. He's used to picking people up whenever be pleases, he's used to looking down at everyone talking to him, he's used to being intimidating, he's used to being stronger.

But he can't do those things when he's small. Nope.

Is he scowling? Well that just looks adorable. You thought he's cute when he pouts normally but tiny Bowser with furrowed brows and crossed arms? That's an invitation to squish his cheeks if I've ever seen one.

Is he trying to breathe fire? It's smoke. Just smoke. A little cough of smoke, I refuse to headcanon it any other way. Or no fire at all, because where would be generate it from? He's too small to successfully grow it.

Is is trying to talk in a grumpy tone? Ha, that isn't gonna work. He's squeaking. High pitched Bowser. Better yet, High pitched, trying to be intimidating, tiny Bowser. He'd demand respect, but how can one keep a straight face when he sounds like he inhaled helium.

And just picture trying to take care of him, but less like trying to take care and more like going about your day and just tending to him whenever you get the chance. Imagine setting up a little desk and chair for him. Unless you make a custom one to fit his tiny size, he'd have to sit in those doll furniture toys. I'm pretty sure there's a barbie chair that exists somewhere.

Just - just imagine Bowser having to sit in a pink chair with a pink barbie table on a doll-sized pillow. Imagine if it's his kid's toys. Imagine his kids 'playing' with him. Tiny Bowser dress up? Does he even have the patience? I have no idea but it's the thought that counts.

And an additional though, I do imagine tiny Bowser would be a lot more squishy than his main form, and I can explain this -

Obviously when he's normal sized all his scales are normal sized too. His muscles have a defined mass to them. They're tough. Right. That mass shrinks when he's tiny. Whatever strength those muscles had, whatever resistance to pressure was present, throw that out the window because suddenly everyone else is stronger. So, no matter if he tenses his muscles, it'd be easy to just squish him. So yeah, squishy Bowser.

Oh and yeah, the second he gets back to his normal size he'd do the same thing to you because lets be honest, "two can play this game".

#bowser x reader #bowser headcanons #bowser #toonce responses #redaskeded

[bloobluebloo]

YES LETS TALK ABOUT GANONS SMALL TINY FEET

Totk and botw have small feet as their stylistic choice for pretty much every character.

Starting with link, his legs are not proportional to the length of his torso. But he's a shorty so we forgive him.

Short legs also for rito because birds, for the most part, visually have small legs.

In terms of zora, it's 50/50. Sometimes they look fine, sometimes it's why are your legs so small (Especially if you look at King Dorephan's model).

Tauro, as a human character, also has tiny legs. Because he was supposed to be sidon 2.0 and for that he needed to be buff. Buffness and bigness seems to be the reason behind ridiculous small legs.

Maybe Nintendo was trying to make ganon look big on his own without putting anything next to him for scale. That's what happens sometimes to characters if you just scale them bigger. You can only tell they are supposed to be big when you have them next to something small or of average size.

In a more stylized game like ww totk ganon would look absolutely fine with his tiny petite feet. In stylized character design it's common practice. Make a character top heavy while keeping his legs small and there you have your big and menacing villain. But because botw/totk is leaning a bit more into tp level of stylization it's a bit jarring.

Also doesn't help that in his promo 🚹 I'm-just-standing-there art it's very easy to see that his hand is probably bigger than his whole foot.

So thats my theory. Nintendo has rules for designing big characters. So they couldn't give ganon proportional feet without him looking out of place next to other big characters. Normal feet is the price you pay for being jacked in botw/totk world

Honestly I did notice exactly as you mention, it is just less noticeable when a character is small. For example, even in Wind Waker the characters were all rather stubby but it didn't stick out so much with Link and Tetra, for example. They got away with Ganondorf in a robe so you can't see his stubbiness. AND IT'S THAT RIGHT, GANONDORF'S 🧍‍♂️ POSE MAKES IT SO MUCH MORE EVIDENT. You look at his hand and his foot and go "Yeah, they're about the same size". My wife and his dainty feet~

#ganonthots #thanks for typing this all out really 🥰

[grasshopperdoingdogpaddle]

Hypothetically speaking; if Omi, Kimiko, Raimundo or Clay drank the Lao Mang Lone Soup, what do you think their respective Heylin monster forms would be? What would their evil personalities be like?

Please note though that the personalities we saw when each one of them briefly turned to the dark side hardly count, since, A.) Heylin Raimundo was just Rai going through some emotional problems and looking for both an alternative choice and an outlet to take all of his frustration and anger out on, B.) Omi and Kimiko only turned evil because they both had their respective good sides magically removed by the Ying-Yang World, so, it’s kind of hard to count that as seeing what they would be like if they turned to the dark side, and C.) Clay was merely possessed by an evil entity, meaning that every single bad thing that we saw him do or say was all just Sibini using him for a puppet

I definitely subscribe to gravity-what's theory that "Lao Mang Lone soup transformations work by latching on to a person’s insecurities and current mental state."

Hence, Chase looking very much like a traditional, reptilian dragon/drake that even incorporates some of his spiky hair into its design, because Chase took the time to contemplate it and knew what he was getting into and ultimately decided he wanted this path to make the legendary name for himself that he envisioned, regardless of it costing him everything he believed in and everyone he loved.

And Guan having this harder exterior and a much more haphazard mix of pincers and claws and natural weapons because, when he accepted Hannibal's offer, it was some time after a strain had appeared in his and Chase's relationship with Chase having this unresolved enmity from not getting to drink the soup when he had resolved to abandon everything. So Guan wanted a means to lash out, but also a defensive outer shell to harden his heart.

So, my thoughts for how each monk's Lao Mang Long dragon form might be:

I love gravity-what's design for dragon Omi, can't improve upon perfection.

Tiny, but with this frill he can flare up to make himself look and feel bigger and scarier. Claws and fangs that are good for sharp, quick attacks. A tale that's not a good weapon but serves for good balance, so he's very agile and fast. Hyperactive and vicious, but still has this surprisingly kitten-like adorableness to him somehow. Confused and angry and tricked and lost but feisty and determined and sharp and wide-eyed and naive, this form definitely captures the moment!

He's scared and confused, and was tricked into it again, but he's always been a fighter, and he's prepared to fight now, too.

Once he acclimates, though, he'll be fueled by loyalty and devotion like he always is, so it's a matter of who he aligns himself with. There's no form of Omi that's ever going to want to go it alone, so he'd inevitably end up under someone he can cling to.

-

For Kimiko, her Heylin side is driven by ambition and passion. It was only half of her, but what we see is still genuine. She made it very clear, she wants the world, nothing more and nothing less.

Her dragon form would be the only one that incorporates her element into it, visually, and the only one that would have fur instead of scales. She'd look a lot like a Hisuian Typhlosion.

Hypnotically pretty in a dragon sorta way. Sleek, shiny, fireproof fur, beautiful eyes, fluffy ears and tail, graceful but powerful movements. A collar of ghostly flames that wisp and flare in a bright magenta red color. The ever-burning flames would be more of a Heylin magic thing and less of a true-burning fire by default, but they'll still burn whoever she wants them to burn. Kimiko's always been a little scared of getting too close to others and letting any shortcomings show, so the natural way to keep other's at whatever distance she wants or to draw them in with something eye-catching would suit her.

She can emit fire or smoke with a practiced ease, and its powers can be just as mystical and disorienting as they can be destructive.

She's still clever but temperamental, and is the dragon that'd be most focused on long-term goals, since her motivations are the most goal-oriented.

-

For Clay, he's a big guy that often tries to make himself seem smaller, take up less space.

We've never seen what it would take to drive him to the Heylin side, but we still have a lot of his hang-ups and motivations that we can draw from.

His dragon form would have the thickest skin, maybe even a hard outer shell of some sort he can retreat into. All defense. And his would have a "chameleon-like" (but more cuttlefish-like in the mechanics) ability to camouflage itself to any environment, even changing his texture and patterns to blend in. I don't have an exact visual analogue for this one, but if I had to pick, maybe something like the Mystery Shell Dragon from YuGiOh?

Clay would make some place his own, cultivate it, and be highly territorial over it. He'd have little interest in dominating the world, he just wants some corner of it that is his and his alone, like how he focused on building a new home in the alternate universe rather than actively fighting. But like Chase and Guan, he'd definitely gather up an army of people-turned-animals of some sort.

-

For Raimundo, he made the decision to betray his allies fueled by spite. He was fully of sound mind and didn't really have to be prodded or magically altered. Raimundo ultimately wanted the other monks taken down a peg. He was angry and frustrated, and he wanted to hurt them and make them feel as bad or worse than he did. That was more of a motivation for him than the riches.

Though the riches he sold out for were still some factor, so it'd be interesting if gold were incorporated into his dragon form somehow.

Aside from that, I think his form would be a bit like Guan's in that it would have a lot of natural weapons incorporated into it and boast a design most suited for offense, but far less shielded. An amalgamation of vulnerable sinew and sharp edges. He'd have a stinger on his tail, tusks and horns on his head, pincers on his hands, spikes along his body, rows of shark teeth, maybe even something projectile-like incorporated into his anatomy. The soup would draw out a form built for destruction and pain in accordance with his motivations for turning.

Again, I lack a perfect analogue here, but it'd be something to the vibe of Devidramon from Digimon.

#xiaolin showdown #chase young #master monk guan #omi #kimiko tohomiko #clay bailey #raimundo pedrosa

[awakenthemusic]

Trick or Treat

Jack had insisted on dressing ‘like his dads’ for Halloween. He wore a pair of jeans and a buttoned-up flannel that matched the one Dean wore with a solid blue tie and a smaller version of Cas’ trench coat over top of the whole thing. Sam had had a bit of a bitch fit that the only things Jack wore that represented him were a pair of moose slippers and a cheap Party City wig, but screw him; if he wanted to be a bigger part of the costume he should have been the one scouring the internet for a child’s size trench coat and matching flannels. Besides, it’s not like he was the one out here freezing his nuts off taking the kid door to door.

Tags: Short fic, ~1,100 words, Tooth-rotting Fluff, Child!Jack

For Suptober 2023 Day 31 - Trick or Treat

Under the cut or on Ao3

ETA: This is best read as a sequel to Pumpkin Patch, my fill for Day 2.

“Hold up, kiddo.” Dean snagged Jack as the kid zoomed circles around Dean, apparently still too excited to walk. He fiddled with one of Jack’s wings, which had started to droop, adjusting the brace he’d jury-rigged to support all three pairs of them. He fixed the collar of Jack’s tiny trench coat with a fond pat, then let him rush off again.

Jack had insisted on dressing ‘like his dads’ for Halloween. He wore a pair of jeans and a buttoned-up flannel that matched the one Dean wore, with a solid blue tie and a smaller version of Cas’ trench coat over top of it. Sam had had a bit of a bitch fit that the only things Jack wore that represented him were a pair of moose slippers and a cheap Party City wig, but screw him; if he wanted to be a bigger part of the costume he should have been the one scouring the internet for a child’s size trench coat and matching flannels. Besides, it’s not like he was the one out here freezing his nuts off taking the kid door to door.

The costume would have been weird enough, but Jack had also insisted on no less than three sets of feathered wings with paper ‘eyes’ that he’d colored the correct shade of blue himself, the closest they could come to representing Cas’ actual wings. He was also carrying two (hidden) plastic weapons that looked like eerily-accurate scale replicas of the demon knife and Cas’ angel blade, even though they’d started life as a couple of pirate-costume daggers.

Jack zoomed up to the next house and bounced excitedly on the top step, waiting for Dean to catch up and ring the doorbell.

Dean chuckled and took the steps two at a time.

“Trick or treat!” Jack yelled with enthusiasm as the door swung open.

The woman who answered the door dressed as a stereotypical witch, green skin and all, looked vaguely familiar. “Hi Jack, don’t you look... handsome,” She said with barely a pause as she held out a bowl of candy.

The voice was finally enough to place her and Dean shuffled awkwardly. What were the odds that Lydia lived on this random residential street that Dean had picked for candy-gathering purposes?

“What are you dressed as?” She asked, her tone surprisingly non-judgmental.

“I’m dressed like my dads!” Jack proclaimed, spinning around to make sure Lydia got the full effect. He pointed out each item he was wearing (minus the plastic weapons; thankfully they’d convinced Jack that not telling the whole truth was different than lying) telling Lydia which pieces represented which person. “And the coat and wings are for my Dad,” He finished proudly.

Dean caught Lydia’s confused look and shrugged. “I call him angel” He said, then gave Lydia his best ‘kids, what are ya gonna do?’ grin, which he’d had a chance to perfect over the half hour or so they’d been out here already.

“Oh,” Lydia said, playing along. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of angels with six wings before.”

“I’m dressed as a seraph,” Jack informed her solemnly.

“I see,” Lydia replied, just as solemnly as she squatted down to look Jack in the eye. “Seraphs have six wings, huh?”

Jack nodded, then corrected, “Seraphim have three pairs of wings covered in eyes.” He glanced over his shoulder with all the scathing disdain of an art critic and said, “It really doesn’t look anything like this, but we were forced to work in only three dimensions…”

Dean stiffened, ready to distract Lydia and move the conversation away from its current course, but she rolled with the weird turn with admirable calm. “That would limit your abilities to represent metaphysical forms, wouldn’t it?”

Jack beamed at her, eagerly telling her all about the problems he’d had getting the eyes just the right shade of blue without the presence of grace, and trying to find glue that would stick to the fake feathers, talking so fast Dean was barely able to keep up and he’d been there for all of it.

At least his motor mouth meant that all the weirdness was flying right over Lydia’s head. Just as Dean was about to have pity on her and try to nudge Jack to head to the next house, he heard the welcome sound of Baby pulling up behind them.

“Dad!” Jack shouted and shot off Lydia’s front porch like he was strapped to a rocket, arriving at the car just in time to open the driver’s door for Cas as Cas stared at him with a confused grin, their matching trench coats just as cute as Dean had thought they would be.

Dean turned back to thank Lydia, unable to wipe the sappy grin from his face. “Uh, thanks for that. You’re the first one who’s asked him questions like that, most of the parents just shove the candy at him and bolt.”

Lydia smiled. “No need to thank me, he’s a great kid. Any time you want to bring him with you to the bakery, he’s more than welcome…” She glanced over Dean’s shoulder with a wistful look. “I used to be a teacher, loved working with the kids, but…” She shook herself. “Well, baking pies pays the bills a lot better anyway, especially since you moved into town.” She held the candy dish out to Dean with a teasing smile.

“Oh, no, that’s okay, I don’t need…”

“Go on,” She said. “Jack forgot to take some. Why don’t you grab one for both of your angels?”

Despite how long he and Cas had been together, he still had to fight down a blush as he faked a pout. “What? None for your best customer?”

Lydia laughed and shoved the bowl at him again. “Oh, go ahead, you charmer.”

Dean took the offered candy and turned away with a little wave, grinning as he loped down the steps, heading over to Cas as Jack swooped up and down the sidewalk.

“Sorry I’m late, things took longer than expected.” Cas called, careful to obscure the fact that he’d been helping Sam and Eileen on a hunt.

Dean frowned in concern but, before he could even ask, Cas reassured, “Everyone’s fine, it was just more complicated than we thought.”

Cas folded Dean into the warmest hug ever, and Dean wasn’t sure if it was because they hadn’t seen each other in several days or because the weather had just gotten that cold.

Dean shivered a bit and Cas made a little noise before leaning back into the car and pulling out a thermos full of hot cocoa.

The tiny plastic mug transferred all the heat directly to Dean’s hands, biting at his frozen fingers and making him hiss, but the cocoa slid down his throat, warming him from the inside out.

“Marry me,” Dean groaned in appreciation for the warmth.

Cas smiled, one of his happiest, gummiest grins, as he brought his hand up to cradle Dean’s face, his ring a spot of cold on Dean’s cheek. He pulled Dean in for a kiss as he whispered, “Too late, I already did.”

#suptober23 #destiel #fanfic #fanfiction #spn #supernatural #myfics

[archetypal-archivist]

The Math of Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds is a lovely game that takes place in a scaled down solar system complete with tiny planets, tiny day-night cycles, and travel time that is blisteringly fast for ships held together with duct tape. But as any Outer Wilds fanfic writer knows, this scaling down leaves time and distance... wonky.

So I decided to actually run the numbers of how Hearthian distance and time compares to ours. Fair warning, I am not a mathematician, but I'll be explaining my logic and calculations as I go so folks can double check my work. I also apologize deeply to anyone who reads this and then needs to stare at a wall for an hour or two to process just how fucked up Hearthian everything is compared to human measurements; I highly recommend never, ever using these numbers in your writing unless you want to cry.

Let's dive in!

First order of business was calculating from a constant to get a conversion of Hearthian kilometers to human kilometers. I wanted to use the speed of sound from the supernova but sound doesn't travel in space in real life, unlike in game, so I had to use something else. I settled on the general speed a supernova ejects matter at: between 15,000 and 40,000 kilometers per second. I took the lowest value, 15,000, to be as nice to the Hearthian distance system as possible.

The Hearthian star supernova travels at a speed of about 0.812 kilometers a second (I sat my ship on the white hole station about 23 Hearthian km from the sun to watch and my stopwatch recorded it to take 28.32 seconds for me to die). Taking this value, I can then set up a ratio of Hearthian kilometers to Human kilometers: 23 H km to 424,800 hu km, totaling to 18,469.57 human kilometers for 1 Hearthian one. That means, for example, when Giant's Deep is roughly 16.5 Hearthian kilometers from Timber Hearth at the start of the loop, the human distance would be 304,747.905 human kilometers.

So now that we have a good conversion to work off of, let's take a closer look at Timber Hearth, the home planet of Gabbro, Chert, and the rest of the Ventures crew.

By shooting my scout on top of the Zero-G cave such that it's level with "sea level" on the planet then heading down the elevator into the center of the planet, I was able to tell that the distance between the planet's surface and the central point of the planet is to be about 256 Hearthian meters, or about 4,728.21 kilometers in human units. This means that in diameter, Timber Hearth is 9,456.42 human kilometers wide. For reference, Earth is about 12,742 human kilometers wide. This puts Timber Hearth as being just slightly smaller than Earth but bigger than Mars.

Let's go further. The circumference of a circle is calculated with 2*pi*the radius. The radius of Timber Hearth is 4,728.21 kilometers, putting the planet at a circumference of 29,693.16 kilometers. To get from North pole to South pole, a Hearthian would need to walk over 14,000 kilometers, to get from the village to Young Bark crater, about 7,400 human kilometers.

For curiosity's sake, I walked that distance with my little Hearthian traveler and it took me 2 minutes and 30 seconds roughly to walk from North to South pole, including time to navigate around geysers and get up and down the crater walls. I also sat there with my stopwatch and found the Hearthian day-night cycle to take about 8 minutes to go from dawn to dawn. One, this means that in Hearthian time, the loop spans a little less than 3 days, and two, the Hearthian day-night cycle in no way matches distances.

By the Hearthian day-night cycle, I could set off from one pole at dawn, travel over 14,000 kilometers by Earth units, and arrive at the other pole by dusk. That... is implausible. At best.

On Earth, a marathon is 42.195 kilometers and on average, it takes a person 4 hours and 30 minutes to complete it. Expanding on this number, assuming no time is taken for sleep, it would take about 352 hours, or two weeks, to walk from one pole to the other. To get from Timber Hearth to either pole, a week and a few days-worth of sleep of Earth time. These numbers do actually sound plausible. I would 100% believe it would take a month or two to circumnavigate Timber Hearth.

Something else to consider is that Nomai technology is truly incredible, as is the material Timber Hearth is made of. The deepest mine on Earth is roughly 4 kilometers deep, the deepest on Timber Hearth is a whopping 4,728.21 kilometers deep, right down to the center of the planet! This means that the structural integrity of Timber Hearth stone is insane as it's able to hold the shape of the tunnels for thousands of years, beneath the much of the weight of the planet above, without collapsing. No wonder the Nomai used Hearthian rock for the Ash Twin project! And how incredible their technology must be if they were able to mine it en masse, too.

Makes one wonder about the power of those Hearthian mining machines like the one to be fixed in the Zero-G cave, huh? Perhaps it's not such a stretch after all that Slate started making rockets if that's the kind of machinery they were working with beforehand. And the speed those rockets must be able to obtain is just as crazy!

One thing this revelation about distances does is tell us that the protagonist probably spent a lot less time walking across the surface of various planets during the loop than the average player does. Their ship was almost certainly the primary means of travel for our Hearthian and walking was reserved for checking out points of interest that were scouted from space. Beyond this, those gravity tunnels on Brittle Hollow? Those must have been blisteringly fast in order to get across the planet so quickly, no wonder it's so easy to pancake yourself with them.

Another thing it tells us is that all those stories where Gabbro or any other Hearthian makes a day trip to the quantum grove is unlikely to have actually occurred that way, as it would take a lot longer to travel Timber Hearth. The same goes for Tektite and their trip to Youngbark crater- which poses a problem.

The game itself explicitly states that Tektite only took a little while to get from the Hearthian village to go see the disturbance in the crater, an amount of time implied to be less than a few days even. This runs contrary to what is actually possible for a Hearthian to do on foot... Unless Gossan has a ship of their own and uses it to ferry passengers around Timber Hearth. Or Tektite used a tunnel under the planet's crust to shorted the amount of time it takes. Or they're just cool like that, haha.

The main takeaway from all of this is that Outer Wilds is a game about exploration and wonder and as such, trying to make everything make sense is a wonderful way to make your brain start glitching. Numbers are just a tool for a writer or artist to use as a suggestion, not a hard and fast rule, so have fun with it and don't get bogged down in the details!

Unless you're like me and your idea of fun is overanalyzing media at 4 am. Don't be like me.

(Help.)

#outer wilds #math #my writing #science is cool #gaming

[whiskeyswifty]

What’s your favorite thing about folklore?

oh my god what a question. I'm just gonna riff off the dome here because if i try to go at this in any kind of organized way, i'll write a deranged thesis paper. (this is about the album proper, sorry to the lakes. too bad she never released it and we'll never know what it sounded like)

Gut reaction to this question is just how complete it is. It's an idea and concept, a writing prompt if you will, compiled neatly and cohesively in a way that's the perfect digestible length for it's form (music/an album) and also all killer, no filler. All the vignettes are not a "story" (save for the love triangle which i largely ignore because it's shoehorned) but come off like an anthology; that is to say that they're a series of emotional vignettes across a range of life experiences, but explored through the motifs and styles of one writer. I cannot jump around with folklore, i must press play on the 1, which has never happened before with a taylor album. It has no skips, every single one flowing smoothly but efficiently with the ebb and flow pacing of a babbling brook. (i do skip mad woman occasionally cuz its not what i wanna hear at the moment or epiphany cuz it's too heavy and too soon to go back to that mental place, but they're both excellent and fit perfectly within the album when i'm casually listening)

The sound is also just so perfectly aligned with my tastes. I contain multitudes, but unfortunately one of those is being a sad indie white girl lol. I love soft rubber bridge guitars, and whining violins and piano and minimal but expertly layered textures. atmospheric ones that carry the mood and the fill the space like fog but let you feel close to the artist, as i've said once before, as if she were sitting next to you and talking directly to you. There's a lushness to live instruments played softly and as pieces of a whole, and it makes any additions from a moog softened and supplementary. It just, for me anyway, really helps to hear the tactile nature of the instruments and mistakes and the breaths and the pedals on the piano and all the rest. it's the perfect mix of what i love musically from that genre, akin to Sujfan or Lucy/Phoebe or imogen heap or the xx or lana at times. even as way back and like dashboard, which shows my age a bit. you know the vibes. And i love how jack leaned into his more orchestral side, which he doesn't often do with taylor, still to this day. august in particular is just outstanding and he's great at stuff like that and i wish they would do more like that together!

I think its the PERFECT use of her voice. it's not blasphemous to say of all her artistic talents, she does not have a voice that can stack up against her peers vocally. But, as i've also said a million times before so sorry to bring it up again, she has a very emotive voice when it comes to the tiniest and most nuanced of emotions. maybe because she's less focused on vocal runs or hitting notes, but this album has her voice really shine. it's textured and rough and soft and smooth at the same time, fully bringing you whatever raw emotion is on the page. its the voice of a scribbled journal entry if that makes sense, off the cuff, unpracticed (even though i'm sure it is), and so intimate. you can hear her smile and hear when her throat is thick, it's just a showcase of her voice like nothing else. the pared down sound really lets all those tiny moments rise to the surface.

visually, i mean what can i say. her second best album cover ever. Fully removing herself from the center of it, diminishing herself with the trees for scale. Trees that have existed before her and will outlive her, as if to say this, the act of making art and ultimately the art itself, is so much bigger than me. my life and my problems. but everything is bigger than me, and it's important to not lose sight of that. which, if you were an adult at that time, particularly of a similar age to her at least, you commiserate with that sentiment. the black and white isn't actually black, but more of a warm gray, which i also love. i also know it was mainly out of necessity, but embracing how dressed down and simple her styling was. wrinkled dresses and limp, unruly hair. really suited the look of someone who's going to spin you a tale. NO TEXT TOO LIKE YEAHHHHHHHH god it's perfect and so well designed.

rapid fire now, lets see. i love that peace was done in one take, and you can tell, in a good way! and it's her HEARTBEAT???? i'm a sucker for that, no matter how played out that trick is, and imo it's justified because they disguise it with a dissonant tone of sorts. i love the PERFECT knee jerk answer opening of "i'm doing good" and then proceeding to delve into some of her darkest emotions she'd explored thus far (and in some ways since). i love that illicit affairs is missing it's final chorus, a song that is structurally unfinished and just peters out, the way doomed affairs always do. the way she never mentions the location or even the event, but the soundscape and the lyrics of my tears ricochet paint a perfectly clear church and funeral in your mind!! i love the word ricochet and i love how easy it is to spew it with vitriol. as corny as it is in the context of the rest of this more subtle album lyrically, i love the swiftian turn in the bridge of tlgad like.... damnit it's always so delicious. that harmonica in betty is just like a glass of sweet tea on a muggy summer night, it's SO bright and fun and puts a smile on my face every time!

But all that to say I think my favorite thing is seven. seven is a perfect song. her best song. the best version of a taylor swift song. a song so emotionally poignant and transcendent it wins over, however begrudgingly, even the biggest haters of her and indie music as it pokes at that one spot that will always be soft, and it's blank space's spiritual successor and therefore foil in that way. incredible feat to use the motif of your childhood self and not come off trite, like most other attempts by other artists can be. the most opaque she's ever been lyrically, which is a huge risk to take. small in scale but massive in it's implications and intentions. a song where the meaning and gravity exist in your reaction to it and not the song itself. perfect art. an opus of a song on an opus of an album.

#it's after midnight so my brain is turning into a pumpkin so sorry if this got mushy and nonsensical but #don't ask me about folklore and expect brevity #it's just EXCEPTIONAL #my silly little essays

[donniesexceptionalmind]

Laniakea - The Supercluster of Galaxies🌌

Or: the infodump I'm writing to prevent myself from feeling upset.

Earth is part of our solar system, that is part of our home galaxy called Miky Way, which is part of a 'local group' of galaxies, which itself is part of a bigger group of galaxies called the Virgo cluster.

But the Virgo cluster itself is just one of a large number of galaxy clusters, themselves collections of hundreds to thousands of large galaxies which have been mapped out in the nearby Universe: the Virgo cluster, with the Centaurus cluster, the Great Attractor, the Norma Cluster & many others!

Together, they make up a much larger structure & if you sum up every galaxy in it, it is fully anticipated that the total number should exceed 100,000.

This is the collection of matter that is called beautifully after the hawaiian word which means 'immense heaven'

✨️Laniakea✨️

But let's start with the beginning, shan't we?

The Big Bang happened roughly 13.8 billion years ago & in the early stage of all that matter, antimatter, radiation, fields, etcetera, there wasn't a uniform sea of these energetic quanta.

Instead, there were tiny imperfections ⁠- at about the 0.003% level, which is VERY VERY SMALL- on all scales, where some regions had slightly more or slightly less matter-and-energy than average.

In each one of these regions, a great cosmic race ensued. The race was between two competing phenomena:

The EXPANSION, which works to drive all the matter & energy apart

The GRAVITATION, which works to pull all forms of energy together & causes massive material to clump & cluster together

With both normal matter & dark matter populating our Universe - but not in sufficient quantities to cause the entire Universe to recollapse (IMPERFECTIONS saved us!) ⁠- the first star formations happened & then star clusters, with the first ones appearing less than 200 million years after the Big Bang.

Over the next few hundred million years, structure began to appear on even larger larger scales, with the first galaxies forming, star clusters merging together, & even galaxies growing to attract matter from the lower-density regions nearby.

As time went on & on, galaxies gravitated together to form the Universe’s first galaxy clusters. With up to thousands of Milky Way-sized galaxies in them, massive mergers form giant elliptical behemoths at the cores of these clusters!

On even larger spatial scales & even longer timescales, the cosmic web began to take shape, with filaments of dark matter tracing out a series of interconnecting lines.

Dark matter drives the gravitational growth of the Universe, while normal matter interacts through forces other than gravity as well, leading to the formation of gas clumps, new stars & even new galaxies on long enough timescales.

Meanwhile, the space between the filaments, the so-called underdense regions of the Universe, give up their matter to the surrounding structures, becoming great cosmic voids.

Galaxies dot these filaments & fall into the larger cosmic structures where multiple filaments intersect.

On long enough timescales, the most spectacular nexuses of matter even began attracting one another, causing galaxy groups & clusters to begin forming even larger structures:

💫Galactic Superclusters💫

For me, it's a beautiful & a very comforting idea that represents structures on scales larger than a visual inspection would reveal.

But there’s a problem with Laniakea in particular & with superclusters in general: these are not real, bound structures, but only apparent structures that are currently in the process of dissolving away entirely.

There isn't just this "race" between an initial expansion & the counteracting gravitational force caused by matter & radiation.

In addition, there’s also a positive form of energy: dark energy. It causes the recession of distant galaxies to speed up as time goes on & gets more relevant the bigger the scale gets from which you look at it.

If there were no dark energy, Laniakea would most certainly be real.

Over time, its galaxies and clusters would all mutually mutually attract, leading to an enormous grouping of 100,000+ galaxies!

Unfortunately, dark energy became the dominant factor in our Universe’s evolution approximately 6 billion years ago & the various components of the Laniakea supercluster are already accelerating away from one another.

Billions of years from now, Laniakea will be torn apart by the Universe’s expansion, forever adrift as lonesome islands in the great cosmic ocean.

A bit sad, huh?

Thanks for reading, have an... air hug? Or a cookie. Let's stay with the cookie. 🍪

Please have this WONDERFUL visual of Laniakea:

Found on Pinterest.

If you really read all that - Wow. I wouldn't have thought that.

You have my honest appreciation.

💜✨️💜

#donatello infodumps #donnies special interests #donnies exceptional mind #turtle net #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt #rottmnt donnie #rottmnt autistic donnie #rise autistic donnie #autistic donatello #special interest #space #space infodump #space is awesome #laniakea #superclusters #galaxies #astrophysics is the best #astrophysics #space facts #infodump #infodumping #rottmnt donatello

[thrashkink-coven]

Last night I had a dream about Lord Lucifer. I was sitting beside him in his realm, which to me looks like a thorny, flowery field of rose bushes and laurel. I sat beside him as he poured us both some coffee and lost ourselves looking up into the stars.

Looking up into the massive expanse of night, I altogether became aware of how magnificently gargantuan space is, how every glowing spec is not only an alien planet or massive burning star but also galaxies and nebulae so many times larger than earth that we would not even occupy a pixel in the grand scale of the image. As I continued to look up I almost became sickened by it, nauseated by the mere scale of it. How the painting in the sky seemed to go on forever and ever, so incredibly massive that my own two eyes could not capture the entire image in my sight. Every time I looked another direction I became aware of how much more space there was, how little of it we have even considered. How of the roughly 10,000 stars visible to the naked eye, only a few hundred have been given proper names in the history of astronomy. And if every one of those stars looks down on us silently, are they as oblivious to us as we are of our blood cells and atoms? They are as many times bigger than I as I am to a spec of bacteria, even more so, a proton, a quark. In the scale of all of these things, what am I? How do I fit in the middle? What is the intelligence of humanity that allows us to understand how little we understand?

Then I looked back at Lucifer, in his radiant beauty and brilliance, and understood that he too is gargantuan. Though Venus is slightly smaller than Earth, she is still roughly 7521 miles across. She stands 178.34 million km away from us, it takes light around 4 minutes to reach Earth (depending). Then I thought about Jupiter, the Sun, the siblings of the sun, the siblings of our galaxy,

to them, even Lord Lucifer is small. In fact, I’ve no idea how small he really is. How tiny, and yet how massive. Our human minds just don’t do well imagining such scales. All understanding of size is lost here.

…and I again began to feel almost disgustingly small. Minuscule. Nothing. Hardly even nothing.

And yet…

Here we are, sitting beside each-other, taking to each other, sharing coffee and company. Seemingly, against all odds. In this universe so incomprehensibly massive that even light itself cannot overcome it, we still see light. We look up at the stars with such admiration that we wrote them poems and sang them songs, we wrote them love letters and told them our deepest secrets on lonely nights- and they witnessed every year, every atrocity and delight, every tear and sorrow, every smile and laugh. We are minuscule, less than tiny, less than lesser, and yet, we still pray and they still respond.

How wonderful is it then, that these giants still hear us, that they have kept us well on this vulnerable naked planet for all these centuries? How, in their massive gravities, they have protected us from objects and radiation that would destroy us in an instant.

They hear us and listen, perhaps for the exact same reason why we pray to them.

Perhaps we are Gods in high and low places conversing with each other to understand ourselves.

How am I so lucky to be born into such a volatile and monstrous cosmic thing, and still be cherished and cradled in my Mother Earth’s chest? How, in a universe so chaotic, do I know the tenderness of a God’s love?

I don’t know, but I’m pleased. This is a good place, a very very good place, more than I even understand.

Thank you Lucifer, and thank you to all those who surround him as well. Thank you for listening and thank you for existing.

#magick #witchcraft #occultism #witch community #demonology #pagan #paganism #witch aesthetic #witchblr #grimoire #thoughts #devotee #deity work #deity worship #luciferian #theistic luciferianism #lucifer #venus #daily devotion #divination #paganblr #pagan witch

[stranger-rants]

Thinking about Jötunn Billy thanks to @thediktatortot.

Billy formed by the sea and washed up ashore as a baby. He’s a tiny, helpless little thing when his adoptive mother finds him. Unable to have children of her own, she prayed for a child to be delivered to her. She visited the shore every day. The nine daughters of Ægir and Rán heard her prayers, forming the baby out of clay and seaweed and salt, molding him in their waves until he is perfect, beautiful, hair golden and eyes marine. When she brought the baby back home, her husband Neil was ‘delighted’… but unbeknownst to her, he was the reason she could not carry children. He had been given a prophesy that his first born son would end his life, so he had a witch curse his wife never to bear children.

Neil tried every which way to get rid of the baby, but Billy survived every trial. First, he tried to return Billy to the sea but he was spat back out. When he was a little bit older, Neil tried to throw him down a waterfall. Billy was carried by fish back to their home. This continued throughout his life, but he grew bigger and stronger and more and more powerful with every hurdle he overcame but Neil grew more reckless and desperate too. Billy’s mother had fallen ill - or rather she had been poisoned by Neil. Neil advised him that the only way to cure her was to acquire a scale from the back of the legendary sea serpent Jörmungandr. Billy would do anything for his mother, and so he accepted the challenge… on the condition that Neil help steer the boat.

Hubris getting the better of him, of course Neil agreed. He could easily stab and kill Billy, throwing him overboard miles away from the shore. His mother didn’t really need the serpent’s scale. It was a mild poison. She would heal in time. Billy and Neil set out on their journey. Billy spoke to the waves, the fish, and the rain, asking where he could find the serpent. Figuring they were far enough out at sea, Neil brought his knife out from under his cloak while Billy’s back was turned. He had been looking at someone or something in the water. Talking to it, when he saw Neil’s reflection on the surface of the water - the knife raised above him. Neil looked down in horror at giant pale eyes and silvery scales. Sensing the danger Billy was in, Jörmungandr lifted himself out of the water and swallowed Neil whole.

Billy was merely asking the serpent for a loose scale when Neil came up behind him. It turns out the prophesy was much less, your firstborn will kill you and more your pursuit to kill your firstborn will kill you.

The end.

#jötunn billy #billy hargrove #text post #norse mythology au #i guess ???

[silverskye13]

Silver I know next to nothing about the alien franchise and movie, I am giving you full permission to use this ask as an opportunity to spread propaganda to get me (and anyone else) to finally watch it

So it's, so like, the thing is, right. I'm not a movie tech kinda person [though it is technically impressive, the funny little tricks they did, like not having the budget for a Big Space Ship Derelict so they are a scaled down model that the director's kids in space suits walked up to so it would look bigger, and it was shown to the audience on a shitty CCTV because they didn't do a big matte painting of the set they filmed the tiny one, projected it onto a wall, and then filmed that.] So my rant isn't going to be about how technologically cool the movie was for 1979 on a less than optimal budget. But what I do like, what I excel at, is breaking down themes and tropes. And my god. My god. Just. Ugh. [Flails my arms.]

So a basic rundown for the movie, spoilers ahead, and my analysis of how fucking cool it is:

Basic gist of the movie: The crew of the commercial mining vessel Nostromo are awoken halfway through their trip back to earth by a mysterious signal, calling for help on a far away planet. Upon going down to investigate, one of their crew members is attacked by a strange alien parasite which attaches to his face. This kicks off a tale of increasing horror as the new alien kills off the crew one by one, culminating in Ripley [the main character] blowing up the ship and fleeing in an escape pod, not sure if she'll ever be picked up in the vastness of space -- with the ships cat, who miraculously also survives. [We all know Jonesy is the real main character 💜.] Along the way a plot by the Weyland-Utani corporation is revealed, one of the crew is discovered to be an android, and there is a lot of alien screeching.

Now! The themes that I go absolutely feral over can commence.

The horror of the movie, the reason why the alien is scary, and lethal to humans specifically, is it is a creature built for efficient survival, and this is a trait that Ash, the ship's science officer [and resident hiding android] highly praises in the critter. He describes it as beautiful, elegant, pure in its efficiency. The perfect organism. Efficient.

Humans, by comparison, aren't efficient. We are social. And efficiency preys on social needs. For example:

The xenomorph eggs can survive for ages [in the derelict they're found on, the dead alien who drove the ship is described as fossilized. These eggs have been here for thousands of years. But they activate immediately when a curious human pokes around them. It isn't a fast process. Kane is poking around for a few minutes, looking at the movements of the creatures in their eggs, making observations. Curious. Curiosity is an inefficient trait -- he would have survived if he had climbed out of the hole the eggs were in and left, or even waited for the rest of his team to enact quarantine and investigation procedures.

Speaking of quarantine! When Dallas and Lambert bring Kane, newly infected by an alien parasite, back to the ship, Ripley locks them in the airlock. There are quarantine procedures. We can't risk the whole crew. But they are scared for Kane's safety. He might die without help. They break quarantine. If they hadn't broken quarantine, the baby alien would've been born in the airlock, where it would get spaced the moment it was born.

When the face hugger parasite dies and Kane seems to return to normal, what they should have done to attempt to reinstate quarantine was put him in hyper sleep. His body would have been frozen in a stasis which might have frozen the parasite or, if it hadn't, would have left the new baby alien trapped in a stasis pod. But Kane, haggard and scared from his ordeal, asks can we please have one more meal together before I go to sleep? And that one meal is long enough for the new xenomorph to be born, and release terror on the ship.

There is more. Parker would have lived if he hadn't gone to find the cat by himself, leaving the safety of his group. Dallas would have lived if he let Ripley go through the vents, but he was the captain and he didn't want to risk someone else's life so he went instead. Brett would have lived if he'd left Lambert behind when she was being attacked, or if he'd hit the xenomorph with the flamethrower instead of insisting Lambert get out of the way first. And Lambert would have lived if she'd run instead of being paralyzed in fear by the creature killing her friends. And the xenomorph? Wasn't even eating it's kills. No gore. Little blood. It was killing them because it knew they would kill it, and it was neutralizing threats. Efficient.

The xenomorph is very clearly engineered for survival, and it's survival depends on killing the inefficient organisms around it. Even it's acid blood is described as a survival mechanism, not an offensive mechanism.

Okay Skye, we hear you talking about how scary the critter is because it's not a social creature. That's an interesting observation, but it's still just a monster story, right?

Well, let me tell you an alternative story. Just a little to the left of the original, but one I would argue is still very very canon.

You are an android built by Weyland-Utani, a company which is jealously hunting alien tech to use for its many space programs. You are placed on the Nostromo because there is a known anomaly in the area, and they want to find it. Your job is to get a specimen back to the company, all other protocols expended.

You are programmed to be efficient, so you get to work.

You wake the crew when you find the signal. You give them only the information they need to investigate: it is a signal that repeats every 12 seconds. You let them make the conclusion it is an SOS. Humans are social creatures. They want to help other social creatures in need. There is some arguing about whether they should go, but in the end an extra push from you sends them. Ripley, one of the more efficient members of the crew, keeps asking you why you haven't decoded the message.

"Mother [the super computer running the ship] is still working on it." This is true. She has only translated part of the signal. By the time Ripley realizes it's a warning, the crew is already on the way to the derelict. You tell her if she walks out there, they will have already figured out if it's a warning or not by the time she makes it to them. She agrees.

When they return with a specimen, Ripley [efficient, following protocol] doesn't want to let them on. But Ripley doesn't know you're an android, so when you break quarantine, and you tell her you just wanted Kane to be safe, she begrudgingly believes you.

When the alien is loose, it is easy for you to keep them from killing it. Humans are social, inefficient creatures, and you feel no empathy for their deaths. You do pity them though. Between you and the alien, their chances of survival are slim.

If only they were more efficient.

The horror in Alien is not the xenomorph. The horror in Alien is when anything, primal creatures, androids, a particularly greedy corporation, preys on human social needs in order to get what it wants. There is significance in that Ripley, despite everything, chose to save the cat. She needed companionship. All humans do. She needed to save that cat. A cat that was cantankerous and mean, and hissed whenever it was held, was better than the cold efficiency of empty space.

Any system that prioritizes absolute efficiency will be inhospitable to human life.

#spazzcat barks #alien 1979 #xenomorph #i could go on actually #the entire second movie Aliens is about a colony falling prey #about families torn apart #about a little girl who survived because she was quiet and saved by her brother #about how a thousand times they should have left that child behind to save themselves but they didnt #and how an android not powered by the company helps them survive #i just..... the movies are about corporate greed #wait it was about the dangers of capitalism all along? always has been

[penname-artist]

So I know that "avian" universes have been created by a few Planes folk, or at least just by buddies @c-119 and @ask-dusty-boy (that I'm aware of currently) but I'm quietly toying with a similar idea of my own, just on the...Opposite side of the scale?

By which I mean, goddamn tiny bird people.

So this is where I wanna dump all of that plated spaghetti of unsorted ideas. I have lost my writing muses so pardon the mess.

I know for normal-sized people to have bird wings, generally the rule of thumb is that you make them bigger, and their wings much bigger, to reach accuracies and such for how they'd get into the air. And also power. Big powerful bird person cool.

For me, creating my own little side-dish sandbox of "human Planes characters but with bird wings so I can play birds too because fuck you still you one human person from an unspecified number of years ago who wouldn't let me play with them" means going the other way. Making them TEENY. fairy sized. Dollhouse scaled. Itty-bitty please do not step on them little bird babies.

This might also be so I can save a bunch of DIY dollhouse items to my Pinterest and melt over them with an excuse that I'm "conducting research" for such a world.

Anyways.

Somewhere I already said and or drew or did something where I was like "Blade. Hummingbird boy. Nuff said." But like LEGIT, I bring this up again. He would have a hummingbirds wings and have similar qualities. Probably would struggle with discerning reflective surfaces in bright sunlight so he's probably hit his head more than once on stuff.

Baby go boom, pass out on ground for while til someone hands him an appy juice (natural sugar is very helpful for replenishing an exhausted hummingbird's energy)

Dusty is probably one of those small wild birds you hear in the morning. Maybe like a robin or something. Loud in the morning, chirpy, big on vocalization and tree branch hopping

...Nick's probably a chickadee. The colors tho. The little round ass fucking body, that thing is so B O R B. He is small round borb. A mess of feathers.

I also won't take literal fairies off the table here because that would be an interesting combination. Or butterflies! Or moths! Or literally any other type of small creature capable of flight. And the likes, for the non-fliers as well

*cough* spider Maru *cough*

Fuck now I want to ironically make Cabbie into some kind of tiny bat thing

The SJ can be his bugs- I mean um beetle styled people

GUYS, NOBODY SLEEP ON KEEPING TINY BIRD PEOPLE IN A DOLLHOUSE AT HOME THO.

I imagine there's a terrible pet industry for them if that's the case, but my point still stands that if you take good care of them you should get to have them around as trusty companions! Maybe less like a pet hamster and more like a befriended hive of bees

They have predators. Likely just any animal that would eat what they would be animal-wise. But like not each other. That'd be weird. Also if that was the case Cabbie would be down like, five Smokejumpers. So no it's just the big pred animals going after them not them after themselves

Cats are NOTORIOUS for getting to them. I fully believe Rip would have set one on Dusty in their final race, on purpose.

They probably aren't like, just woodland fairy like creatures anymore, like the stories would have you believe. I think they'd all be integrated somewhat with the modern world and have a lot of evolution themselves, so they basically have scaled down versions of everything normal humans have, even down to styled choices of clothing...well, minus the added wings

They probably don't lay eggs

They do molt though when stressed

I have to imagine there's SOME sort of process to the insect ones on shedding skins?? That's kinda gross but like? It's nature??

*cough* spider Maru *cough*

Catching them is probably illegal, especially inhumanely (ie in ways that injure or risk injury to them, like using bug nets, zappers, etc) and accidental capture (like from mouse traps let's say) may be fineable

(okay but someone stuck on a sticky mouse trap is kind of funny to me. They have such an angry grin and the occasional 'flflflflfl!' of wings)

That's it that's my post byeee

#disney planes #disneyplanes #planes fire and rescue #disney planes 2 #blade ranger #dusty crophopper #cabbie #windlifter #nick lopez

[glazenewt]

Did you know that before I got sucked into punch needle, I used to actually do embroidery!? I got interested in embroidery mostly before and during covid times, I loved it but didn't love how long it would take me, how much my hands would sweat, and would get easily frustrated...

I seem to be much more interested in doing punch needle because its done on a bigger scale. It's easier on my clammy hands and finger tips, takes less patience, and you get to essentially make tiny rugs? Cool as fuck dude.

Will I ever return to small scale embroidery again? Maybe- I dont know. I know I have an unfinished project sitting in my embroidery bag that I need to actually finish... I hate leaving things unfinished. So maybe one day i'll finish that, but who knows? Maybe i'll make some pieces to sell one day hmmmm...

#pokemon #punch needle #pokemon fanart #chansey #chansey doughnut #chansey donut #mr donut #embroidery #needle point #craft #dragon fly #art #fiber art #textile art

[fyrefrostanimus]

Hey look, Fyre's revisiting one of her older AUs that's been mentioned on her blog before!

Jokes aside, I'm pretty sure the only person who read that post is connectionterminated13, so maybe it's better to just put the whole context here.

Remember FuhNaff's Midnight Motorist theory that got run hard into the ground by Sire Squawks proving it could just never be canon? The theory (if you don't know) is that Evan Afton, as the Crying Child, got lured out by Funtime Freddy disguised as Fredbear with illusion disks and got killed. Then William recreated him as a robot, but he remembered how he died, hence his fear of Fredbear despite being okay around his plushies. Then he dies again in the Bite of '83 without having a new robot body made again after.

Yeah I made an AU with that theory as the base. I would have posted this tomorrow for the free space day if I hadn't realized that it does fit at least the trapped prompt, and to some degree trust.

It's pretty much the theory as-is, with the AU timeline diverging as Evan realizes that this isn't Fredbear after the illusion disks are turned off. And this pink-and-while bear with a Bonnie hand puppet has malicious intent. He tried to run away, but Funtime Freddy pulls the classic move of throwing BonBon at him, killing Evan on impact (unlike the Bite, this was a blow to the neck). He goes on to possess BonBon which is like a nightmare for him.

Evan's trapped in a tiny body that makes him feel cramped (for reference, minus Cassidy also being in the same body, possessing Fredbear was like a cozy pillow since it's soft on the outside and bigger than him). And trapped with the bear who killed him. And on top of that, trapped in an underground facility with no natural light and no escape except when let out. The only reason Funtime Freddy was able to get out on that one night was because he manipulated the electricity to make his way out through the elevator (don't question it, I thought of this on the spot to make it make a bit more sense). Evan doesn't want to trust this murderous ursine robot, but he doesn't have much of a choice since Funtime Freddy is his main source of protection and movement. Which is complicated by the bear being the one to act out the most, meaning that they both get shocked if one of them does something wrong. He doesn't want to tell his reluctantly-chosen ally that he's actually the kid he killed that one time he got out, but what if that got him abandoned? What if he was forced out to be alone, barely able to move or defend himself?

Timeline mostly continues as canon up until Michael ends up scooped. Evan eventually works up the courage to leave, definitely egged on by the fact he's hitchhiking inside what he assumes (like Elizabeth does) is his father's corpse and ditches early while inside the house. Being smaller and made up of less wires made it a lot easier for him to detangle himself from the rest of Ennard and just wait out the rest of that time under the couch. Eventually Mike regains control of his body, finds the tiny wire blob under his couch, and freaks out thinking it wants back inside him (he does not want back inside the corpse). Evan's rather friendly since Mike isn't trying to hurt him and eventually the reveal of what actually happened to Evan when he went missing shortly before his birthday happens (don't ask how I have not planned that out).

Evan ends up alone again after Pizzeria Sim since Michael didn't know he was going to burn in there. He would have brought his little wire blob of a brother if he knew on the off chance it would bring him peace, but he didn't. Not sure what happens past that point.

ONCE AGAIN my posting is delayed. I was gonna post it and then my family went to eat out so yeah.

Height chart (idk I just like making these)

A little doodle of the Evan-possessed BonBon knowing what's coming when Funtime Freddy says that specific line

Wire blob Evan being held by Michael for a bit more scale. He loves being held gently like hamburger

And finally, ghost sketch! I had an older sketch to reference but with not as much detail

Aside form what's shown here, I settled on the difference between ghosts who possess animatronics on their own with no assistance (like Charlie, Elizabeth, and at least my version of Cassidy) and those who don't with them being able to interact with the physical world a bit more. So yes, when Evan falls over because his legs collapsed from under him, he can knock things over.

@and-stir-the-stars

#crying child weekend bash #fnaf #five nights at freddy's #fyrefrosts fnaf au hell #evan afton