#obviously i include researchers in this bubble

[drchucktingle]

What flavor of queer are you, if that's not too invasive of a question?

question is just fine with chuck it is kind of interesting story.

on LGBTQIA trot i am TECHNICALLY two letters

easy first one is B that does not need any more explanation. that has always been my trot

second way is what i have learned through talkin with my online buds way of non-dysphoric trans. it has taken chuck LONG time to understand this but it has been fruitful journey i think. long ago chuck would post online about becoming other people or things or concepts or wrestling with my IDENTITY as a buckaroo (whether that meant becoming sweet barbara or becoming my reverse twin or becoming the entire seahawks footballs team, very handsome). in fitting with my entire heckin LIFE some buds probably thought these were jokes when they were not at all. they were just personal artistic bubbles tumbling up and popping in ways i didnt understand yet.

but through posting these thoughts and THEN writing trans tinglers and talking to my trans buds online, i started to realize there are all kinds of versions of a trans identity INCLUDING the ones that rolled around deep inside of me that i never had a name for.

three events helped chuck understand this

first: the trans buds chuck talked to while researching harriet porber said 'well i always knew if i could press a button and change my body to match my gender i would instantly do this' and chuck thought 'of course woudlnt we all do this?' and they said 'well no, do you feel this way?' and i would say 'yes very strongly'. i will FOREVER be grateful to trans community for these conversations and maybe it is another reason why being anti-gatekeeping is so important to chuck.

second: thought about all the games i have ever played like a dang videogame or a role playing game, chuck would ALWAYS choose ladybuck character. didnt really think this was a unique thing at time but it is a pattern across whole life

third: chuck was trotting around with some buds and they all said 'whose bod would you choose if you could transform into any body?' (this is common topic for chuck believe it or not.) and the buckaroo guys went around naming the usual brats pitt or handsome channing and it got to chuck and i said 'obviously brie larson' and then the dang guys just kind of stared at chuck and then i realized 'oh, i didnt even think my answer was unusual but i guess they were only talkin guy bods'

these three things happened pretty close to one another but they were all bubbling up for decades and expressed in various ways even chuck did not entirely understand

anyway. chucks way is NOT that i feel uncomfortable in my body and it does not bring me grief. i am not upset about it honestly. i do not even THINK about it most days. however, it is all TRUE and in a purely technical and utilitarian sense of A PLUS B then YES, male would not be my preferred gender.

didnt talk on this for a while because there are MANY dysphoric trans buckaroos who go through a lot of hardships and i have gone through ABSOLUTELY NONE IN THIS WAY. it has not made my life more difficult and it does not haunt me, so i do not want to have my voice drown out other trans buds who need space to shout. i am very privileged so even though technically this applies to chuck i do not need or want any bonus points.

that beings said, part of my journey on the autistic spectrum was to recognize that EVEN THOUGH my personal story is not tragic, it is still an important one to get out there onto this timeline. IN FACT there should be more stories of buckaroos who love being autistic like chuck. i am PROUD of my trot and i love my autism (this is also why i wanted to explicitly say my lead character in camp damascus is autistic)

so in the same way, when directly asked, i will say: i am technically non-dysphoric trans ALSO this has not weighed on my life at all. my story is not tragic it is full of joy and excitement. i will not shy away from this because there are all kinds of buckaroos on this spectrum.

anyway that is my VERY LONG TROT hope you enjoyed getting to know chuck a little more thank you for this question buckaroo

#chuck tingle #tingleverse #love is real #camp damascus #trans #lgbtq #bisexual #autism #non-dysphoric #buckaroo lifestyle #queer

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

the shroud parents

Okay, so I’ve been thinking about this for a while 🤔: “Why are the Shroud parents so warm and loving when the impression we had of them from Idia are so... negative?” And then I realized it’s very obviously because CHARACTERS CAN BE UNRELIABLE NARRATORS.

Like. That does NOT mean that what happened to the characters didn’t actually happen. The events very obviously DID happen as described (especially as it pertains to post-OB flashbacks), but it’s how the characters tell the information that paints the perception of events and how certain elements are presented or omitted entirely.

***Content warning: I briefly mention a few dark topics under the cut (including suicidal ideation and depression) and link to a related post on those topics!!***

As an example, let’s look at the Shroud parents. Idia previously described his grandma and dad as being very gloomy and negative people. He also says his parents as being the types to value results over their children’s feelings. We also notably do not see Mr. or Mrs. Shroud in Idia’s backstory flashback when he was going through a difficult patch of coping with Ortho’s death. This all led to us having an impression that the Shroud parents were cold, distant, calculating, and just overall not very good parents. Then we meet the parents in book 7 and Mrs. Shroud is SUPER bubbly, and both parents readily welcome Ortho as an official member of the family. It’s a huge juxtaposition which completely recontextualizes the information Idia previously gave us.

Idia is Mr. Doom and Gloom, a huge pessimist. It could be possible that he was greatly exaggerating elements of his parents’ personalities, usually when it pertains to them asking him to do something he doesn’t want to (ie pulling him out of school to research on his classmates). Alternatively, it’s implied that he barely left his room for two years following Ortho’s death. The lack of the Shroud parents in Idia’s flashback could indicate that as their own method of coping, they distanced themselves or they gave Idia space to heal on his own. Or maybe Idia was even the one who actively shut his parents out? It’s extremely possible, especially given that there are theories floating around that Idia’s memories and thoughts are greatly impacted by grief, depression, and/or suicidal ideation.

This makes me kind of want to go back and reevaluate all the other OB boys’ flashbacks and see just how much of the information could have been colored by the bias and the perspectives of the storytellers 🤔 POV actually adds a LOT to whatever is being told!! Like you can tell in Riddle’s flashback that even though he now knows his mom’s parenting has fucked him up, he doesn’t appear to hold any ill will toward her. He’s moreso confused and unsure how to proceed, feelings which are perfectly encapsulated by Riddle asking why his chest still hurts, even though he has followed every rule his mom has set for him. As a result, Riddle is shown to be a lot more hesitant and charitable to his mother compared to other people.

Interestingly, fans are quick to bypass Riddle’s own neutral telling of his story and demonize his mother (I think maybe because his circumstances are more relatable?), whereas with Idia he tells us the worst of his parents and it paints our ideas about the Shroud parents in accordance with Idia’s telling.

I also wonder if the fandom’s assumption that Leona’s whole country despises him or that Azul’s mom didn’t know about him being bullied is true at all??? Because if you think about it, Leona’s flashbacks only ever depicted palace servants talking badly about him, which are not representative of all of the Sunset Savanna. We don’t meet locals that speak badly of Leona in his hometown event either??? Then for Azul’s flashback, you can’t really take omission of information as confirmation of anything.

This line of thought also applies for the information the boys relay to us; how much of it is embellished or slightly altered in order to project a certain outward image to their peers? Especially considering how NRC is teeming with (mob) students ready to pounce on you if you seem weak??? It’s really interesting stuff to think about.

#Ignihyde #twst #Azul Ashengrotto #Leona Kingscholar #twisted wonderland #Riddle Rosehearts #Idia Shroud #Ortho Shroud #disney twisted wonderland #spoilers #notes from the writing raven #tw // depression #tw // suicide #tw // suicidal ideation

[drylan]

some more random rylan headcanons

few things make dylan gasp and tremble as quickly as ryan kissing his fingertips

likewise, touch or kiss the back of ryan's neck and his knees instantly start to shake

why yes, dylan does like to start as many mornings as possible kissing each of ryan's moles. ryan usually stops him halfway through because he's still sleepy and needs his coffee, but he definitely loves it more than he lets on

ryan does become an animator, working freelance for commission or contracted out for companies. he does both traditional and 3d animation

i can't decide with dylan fully, but i think he ends up being a physics professor that does research, so while he does teach a small number of classes, he does a lot grant-funded research into quantum physics, too. but he 100%, totally, runs an online radio station on the side.

ryan shoulders a lot of guilt early on about cutting off dylan's hand. dylan reassures him it's okay, but lets ryan do a lot of things early on in their relationship to make him feel better. eventually, he becomes fully independent and adjusted and ryan learns to process the guilt and see dylan and their relationship holistically, including that tragic event, but not letting it fully consume them

they both have very sensitive nipples. yes, i said what i said.

ryan's the hairier of the two and dylan absolutely loves the fluff and fuzz, from his chest and swimmer's abs to his happy trail to everywhere. dylan's not completely bare, mind you, but he only gets a few hairs between his pecs and a light happy trail.

dylan does teach ryan a bit about audio engineering and mixing, especially early on in ryan's career when he's making his own animations solo and building a portfolio. and yes, it does lead to some 'roleplaying' of a certain variety because those two just cannot help themselves

ryan drives a truck, dylan rides a sedan for a while until it craps out and then he gets a used jeep that lasts for fucking ever. they obviously carpool pretty much everywhere together but end up becoming the duo to call when you need help hauling things/moving

dylan isn't that good at swimming, but ryan patiently teaches him. it totally leads to them skinny dipping at some random lake late at night while on a road trip one time and making out on the beach after. and...get the cops called on them. they manage to make it out of there before the police arrive, though.

dylan is a bit more spiritual of the two. after they've experienced hackett's quarry, they both believe in the supernatural to some extent. but dylan believes a bit in things like past lives and reincarnation and intertwined destinies and no he doesn't believe that spirituality and science are mutually exclusive, thank you very much. ryan doesn't have strong opinions one way or another, but he doesn't belittle or deny dylan's beliefs. and he will sit patently with him when they get tarot card readings done. neither of them belong to or are part of an organized religion, but they do accompany ryan's grandparents (and sara) to some church festivities

ryan grows out a beard after a little while and oh, oh boy does dylan love it. constantly nuzzling it and running his hand through it. he just loves loves loves it so much, the texture tickling that sweet spot in his brain. he loves the beard burns he gets on his thighs sometimes, too.

they adopt another kitty after living together for a couple years. ryan names it, and, completely unprompted, names it schrodinger jr. schrodinger absolutely loves junior, much to their relief and surprise.

dylan makes music on the side pretty often. most he uploads on soundcloud, but some he makes specifically and only for ryan's ears. sometimes dylan will come home and hear ryan playing those special tunes throughout the house. it always makes something warm and bubbly fill up dylan's heart.

when the hacketters have a movie night, they are absolutely almost always in each other's laps

#my stuff #the quarry #ryan erzahler #dylan lenivy #drylan #rylan #radioheads #headcanons

[hadit93]

I recently read on a reddit thread that doing banishing or invocation rituals daily are bad for your practice because they essentially banish every spirit around you, including the ones you are working with. Also, it makes the room you are doing it unbearable to everyone else and your life might become a desert.

Is this true?

I can't tell you what is true. It seems people have mixed feelings about this. I will give you my opinion. I imagine you are speaking about the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram and Hexagram type rituals.

The people who believe 'banishing' banishes everything have usually learned this from a book such as "Modern Magick" by Donald Michael Kraig. Jason Miller has also echoed that banishing sets a wall up between the spirits and the sorcerer. He learned from Modern Magick also. It is one of the rare times I disagree with Jason Miller.

I learned from Modern Magick initially too, but since then I have learned from people involved with direct lineages to the original golden dawn (not simply the Regardie revival) as well as performed my own research and drawn my own conclusions.

The Lesser Rituals of the Pentagram and Hexagram do banish entities, however, it does not banish all entities. It doesn't create a sterile bubble, it creates a state of equilibrium and lvx within the body of light of a magician. It operates in assiah up to the beginning of yetzirah. This means it banishes the etheric and lower astral only. In my experience spirits that are actual, autonomous beings operate in higher yetzirah and are rooted in at least Briah. The ritual will not effect them, and this, in my opinion, includes demons.

However there are beings, husks. Empty vessels that are cast off from workings and from normal human interaction. They can be born out of intense emotion. They will feed off the energy of the magician and begin to take on form and autonomy. These are what the LBRP banishes.

The LBRP is like washing your hands, it is not like dipping them in bleach. It will clean an area, but will not banish all that is within it.

Then again, it is highly malleable to intent. And so I do believe the intent of the practitioner matters. A lot of people banish with th mindset of 'get rid of everything!' and I do not believe this is the right mindset. The mindset should be 'Balance' not 'banish'.

The banishing rituals should also not be the only form used. I believe the invoking ritual to be the most important. Obviously learn to banish first, but I perform more invocations than I do banishing. Some people like to invoke in the morning and banish at night, I am fine with that approach. In time you tend to know what you need- sometimes you need to banish, in particular if you require etheric cleansing and have had a bad day or been in a toxic environment. Before a tarot reading you would invoke if you feel calm already, or banish if you have traces from the previous reading still lingering.

I do think banishing three times a day every day would be extreme. Washing your hands too many times will destroy your natural skin barrier. But I do not believe a daily banishing will be detrimental unless it is all you do- do not let the LBRP and LBRH become the only things you practice, you will get nowhere.

It is about creating a space or circle that is strengthened and under the control of the magician and their guardians, in this case the Archangels. It is about banishing spirits that are not spirits or are detrimental to your own spiritual progress. The Archangels will not allow a harmful spirit to come through, however, they would have no issue with a being of light. The Lesser rituals are general banishing- they are not banishing all things, but the dross that other workings or emotions may have left behind with the agency of the archangels overseeing a balanced state.

In truth, as with much of the Golden Dawn rituals, what you are really influencing is your body of light. Your circle is your aura, and it is certainly true that you want a strong aura that is impregnable. You can still reach out and invite spirits in, they can still enter if it is for your benefit. But you don't want to be bothered by every spiritual energy around.

"It is usually sufficient to perform a general banishing, and to rely upon the aid of the guardians invoked. Let the banishing therefore be short, but in no wise slurred --- for it is useful as it tends to produce the proper attitude of mind for the invocations. "The Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram" (as now rewritten, Liber 333, Cap. XXV) is the best to use." - Alesiter Crowley.

Here you see the assertion is that the banishing rituals are brief, general, and rely on the guardians to be effective at warding the space. Therefore it isn't nuking an area, it is sweeping it and allowing beings of light to monitor what can enter and what cannot. You also see how banishing is useful as a preliminary only to get into the right mindset for invocation. Banishing in my opinion is more about balance within the Self than it is about clearing an area. You are establishing equilibrium within the aura.

My personal advice is 'Invoke often....banish when required'.

You do not need to banish at the beginning of EVERY magical act. You certainly can, if you are distracted I recommend it, but it is not necessary. Invoking would sometimes be more helpful and the invoking forms also invoke balance etc. Some people will use a statement of banishing 'Hekas, Hekas, este bebeloi' and ring a bell to clear a space then invoke. They then use the banishing at the end to return to material consciousness. This is how I usually work these days.

If you are seeking to explore an isolated force, feeling stressed or unbalanced, have excess energy from ritual- banishing is a good idea.

But if magicians who performed the pentagram ritual could not communicate with spirits there would be an issue. It is perhaps one of the main points of magick.

All my opinion of course. You just need to understand the point of these rituals, what they actually do. The majority of books are absolute rubbish and represent misunderstandings of the authors who have often not undergone proper magical training nor have decades of experience.

My experience and understanding of the LBRP and LBRH now is far different to what it was 15 years ago.

#banishing #spirits #LBRP #LBRH #Thelema #Golden Dawn #LBRP does not banish all spirits

[neonscandal]

So excited to know that you also love Link Click...! I watched it first before JJK (I know, still kinda new in thw fandom), so Cheng Xiaoshi/ Lu Guang are special to me. And after 2nd season with that finale, wow, for me it feels like came out of a fanfic. So when I got to know Gojo/ Geto somehow they remind me of Cheng Xiaoshi/ Lu Guang, cause both couples are doomed by the narative....

And what do you think after you finished TGCF? Have you read the novels? Just so you know, it is worth it to collect the books. Their story is that good. Also when you finished it, most likely you'll also have some non-canon fav couples (I have 4 non canon fav couples from TGCF)....And have you watch MDZS or SVSSS?

Sorry for my rambling, MXTX is one of my favorite author ever and I like to talk about their works. (And now I'm still depressed with the latest JJK update and nervous with the BNHA update)......

OMG SEASON TWO FINALE OF LINK CLICK ABSOLUTELY SLAYED ME. Lu Guang, the enigma that you are. This whole time!? What a damn reveal! Just thinking about it, tbh, I'm gagged. I like to guess at things, obviously, but just never even fathomed.

I don't know if I'd mentioned that before RE: Gojo and Geto but same. It might be on an anime recommendation draft 😅 Like, sure, their character design is an obvious indication but it's really all the anguish bubbling just beneath the surface. And now I need to read all the source material because I'm not sure I can wait for them to animate (even though the animation is just 😘👌🏾

For background on my experience while watching TGCF, there are a lot of cultural/religious things that were completely out of my current realm of understanding re: ascension, conditions/relation of the supernatural beings discussed, etc. but I was still able to really enjoy it without and prompted curiosity to learn more before jumping into the novels. Like, having watched and read media informed by Japanese culture (and growing up on Inuyasha), you understand the idea of youkai, general types and their dispositions, even some religious aspects to practices by priestesses and even everyday people, etc. so it's a little easier to navigate. So getting into Chinese media of a certain time period where those beliefs and practices inform the story was a challenge but it also just kind of opens your eyes to how much you don't know which is exciting. I absolutely want to check out the books because I need to know Xie Lian's whole origin (including his 17th birthday and his parents backstory) and what transpired to have created the delicate soft spot San Lung has for him. I hadn't heard of SVSSS yet but MDZS is on my TBW and I'm wondering if watching it will help clarify my confusion from TGCF or if I should do some research ahead of time so I'm not as lost.

Never apologize, I love when people are inspired and passionate! Lol and makes the conversation I have with you guys feel less one sided (with my disproportionate essay responses haha). 💛 I'm sure I'll post when I start watching/reading any of the above so we can reconvene! I'm currently finishing up Stars Align and, from what I've gathered might need to add this to my TBR to get a satisfactory end to things, too. 😭

I've been running on an empty battery lately so Tumblr's really the only social media platform I've been consistently perusing and posting on (RIP to twitter, insta and tiktok, ig). The upside of this being that I see JJK and BNHA leaks less frequently so I'm out here living in ignorant bliss ✨ So if you're out in these virtual streets, be safe out there, anon!

#neon asks #anon asks #anime #manga #donghua #manhua #danmei #tgcf #tian guan ci fu #heaven officials blessing #hob #link click

[carnivorousyandeere]

Byte who has access to Darling's money, especially a rich Darling or a researcher Darling... If their Darling doesn't have much money, Byte can just skim money from other people's bank accounts. But if Darling has a lotta money, Byte ADORES the thought of using it without their Darling knowing... it feels kinda naughty to them ;)

CW: smutty, stalking, I think this counts as sexual harrassment tbh;;;

Byte using Darling's own money to send them anonymous gifts to their home and workplace. Including, but not limited to, Darling's favorite food or flowers, things hidden in their Amazon wishlist and Etsy likes, candies, stickers, lingerie, and even sex toys.

My favorite variation of this would be an extremely innocent Researcher Darling with Perv, extremely online Byte. Just... them misappropriating Darling's research funds in order to buy themself some functioning genitalia (which innocent Researcher Darling obviously didn't think to add to their android body). Innocent Researcher Darling receiving so many emails with filthy videos about humans and sex bots. Innocent Researcher Darling receiving packages with toys they don't even know the use of. Byte who watches all of this with a practiced air of innocence of their own.

Darling confesses that all of this is making them rather uneasy.

Byte tilts their head to the side, blowing a bubble and letting it pop. They can’t quite taste things the way that many humans do, but the repetitive chewing motion is rather nice. “I can make the security measures here stronger if you like?”

#my thoughts #yandere #yandere oc #yandere imagines #yandere scenarios #yandere x darling #yandere x reader #yandere x you #mdni #nsft #yandere smut

[yelyahnaloj]

This is the Israel and Palestine Resource Guide from my college library.

It's kind of a catch-all of "beginners guide to what's happening":

The first page has links to research guides to other universities, etc. as well.

The News and Explainers tab has links to news outlets as well as 101 material and an infographic

The media tab includes podcasts, panels, and films

The Organisation and Movements tab includes organisations in Palestine, Israel and the United States (caution, some of them are obviously zionist, it's educational about what's out there)

There's a books tab, which is less useful to someone who is not a student, but still gives recommendations none the less

And finally, academic and research institutes, which lists journals, research nonprofits, and academic institutes

I was looking through this the other day because honestly I don't really keep up with news, so most of my knowledge of world events is random social media posts or campus protests/graffiti. So if you are like me and need a large resource bank to go to that can help give a more diverse and thorough perspective of what's going on, here you go. Much of people's social media and even Google searches are curated to individuals every day to reinforce biases and create bubbles, and it would be harder for real change to happen if people are relegated to isolated communities and unable to access everything that's going on.

#palestine #israel #gaza #hamas #the evergreen state college #lib guide #research guide #current events

[dyns33]

Flufftober 6 - The Bubble

Dieter Bravo x reader 

No one really took the actor seriously when he survived his overdose and said that he saw the future.

This future included what he had first taken for an angel, before realizing that this was the woman of his life, the one who would make him truly happy and who would allow him to stop doing bullshit.

Dieter Bravo, however, seemed to really believe what he was saying.

Not only did he start looking everywhere for the woman he had seen in his dream, but he also stopped drinking and took drugs less and less.

That didn't stop him from acting weird, proving once and for all that his attitude had nothing to do with his bad habits.

He was just weird, and now he was looking for a ghost.

Several women tried their luck. Even though he wasn't perfect, he was still rich, famous, and quite a handsome guy. Trying to use this new fad to their advantage, his agent even decided to organize a kind of contest, so that he meets the one who had saved him, metaphorically speaking.

A filmed contest, of course.

But Dieter immediately refused.

           "I don't understand. Don't you want to meet this girl ?"

           "Indeed, you don't seem to understand !" the actor got angry. "I'm very serious, I had a vision of my future. Of my destiny. I'm not going to choose a pretty girl at random from lots of pretty girls, because it's simple and fun. I want to meet the one I I saw."

           "Maybe she will be there."

           "She's different from the others. She won't be here. I have to fight to find her. I have to rise to the occasion, travel the world, and have the chance to cross her path."

           "Are you sure you don't want to try the contest ? You can choose no girl at the end, and explain what you're looking for on camera, so your special girl recognizes herself."

This didn't seem to convince Dieter, who agreed to enter the contest anyway, as it was stated somewhere in his contract that he had no choice.

There was a lot of betting during the few weeks that the show lasted, people were convinced that he was going to sleep with everyone, drink, smoke, and go back to how he was.

But no.

Dieter Bravo was a new man now, with a purpose.

After he said goodbye to his suitors, he quickly turned to the camera, taking out of his pocket the text he had prepared for a long time.

           "My love. You don't know yet that we were meant to be together, but heaven sent me a sign, the sight of your sweet face, the sound of your laughter, the shine of your smile, and I won't stop looking for you, even if it must take me all my life. As soon as I find you, I will know. I will come to you, and I hope that you will be as happy to meet me as I was to finally see you. I will understand that you're scared, it's a bit strange and I have a pretty complicated past, but please, give me a chance."

Although there were still a few sceptics who thought he was acting for attention, his speech moved the rest of the viewers, who all wanted him to finally meet the one he was looking for.

Many hoped to be the woman in question, and many came to him with this secret hope. All were very disappointed after being gently rejected.

It ended up getting boring.

           "Maybe it's time you accepted that you had a bad trip, just a dream when you were going to die, and that this woman doesn't exist." his agent told him after more than a year of research.

           "She's real ! She's out there and I have to find her !"

           "You're crazy, Dieter. It was kind of funny at first, your popularity had never been so high, but if you don't find it quickly, people will think it's a waste of time. "

           "But I don't care what people think !"

As he stood up to leave the restaurant table, Dieter slammed into someone, nearly knocking them over. It was only with a good reflex that he grabbed their arm, holding them close.

           "Sorry, I wasn't watching where I was going."

           "No, it's me, I..." he began before looking at the person standing in front of him.

A young woman. Who looked at him with a shy smile, and a slightly lost look, obviously not knowing who he was and why he was staring at her like that.

But he knew her.

           "You ! It's you ! I've been looking for you for months !"

           "... What ?"

           "It's her ?" asked his agent, rushing towards them. "Her ? But she's not..."

           "Oh, shut up. You're not supposed to be here, you're ruining this moment. Come on."

Without waiting for her answer, Dieter took the hand of the woman of his dreams to lead her outside, in the street, towards the park, far from the crowd. It could have looked like a kidnapping, and he would have understood her screaming and hitting him with her bag, but she seemed curious to see what he was going to do.

She was not risking much, in the middle of the park, surrounded by several joggers, mothers with their strollers, and little old people sitting on benches feeding the pigeons.

           "So, I was saying... It's hard to explain everything, it would have been for you to know a little bit, but anyway. Over a year ago, I almost died, and I saw a woman's face. I knew right away that I had to find that woman, and that she would be the love of my life. And that's you. That's it. I love you."

           "... That's a bit fast, isn't it ?"

           "For you, no doubt. But as I just explained, I've loved you for over a year."

           "You don't even know my name."

           "Oh, what an idiot ! I'm Dieter Bravo, how about you ?"

He didn't understand why, but it made her laugh.

Dieter might have been offended if he hadn't dreamed of that laugh for so many months. It was a real pleasure to hear it in person.

           "You are weird."

           "People often tell me this."

           "I can imagine. I'm Y/N. And you can't be in love with me."

           "Y/N. Lovely Y/N, I can buy you a drink and if you let me, I'll do anything to prove to you that I love you, and to deserve that you love me too."

Of course, Y/N hesitated for a moment. But she at least accepted the coffee, and they would see about the rest, later.

That was enough for Dieter, who already knew they would never be apart again.

#the bubble #the bubble netflix #dieter bravo #dieter bravo x reader #dieter bravo imagine #dieter bravo fanfiction #flufftober 2022

[jonnysinsectcatalogue]

Ferocious Water Bug - Abedus sp.

I was so happy to visit the Toronto Zoo last weekend. It had been a long time since my last visit and it was wonderful to spend the day with some of my dearest friends! In addition to all the delightful outdoor mammalian and avian exhibits, there are plenty of indoor terrarium-based habitats to enjoy and discover exotic and/or strange reptiles, amphibians, and insects (obviously). There are five species in total that I'll be covering over the next few weeks, beginning with a new branch of the Hemipteran order for the blog: Giant Water Bugs (Belostomatidae)! The exhibit here mainly showcases the adults, but there are a few nymphs hiding around. As their common name suggests, these large insects make aquatic environments their primary habitat (freshwater specifically) and are well adapted to it despite ultimately being creatures of the land. They all have a flattened, oval-shaped hydrodynamic body, flattened legs that can can tuck in and row, large eyes to visualize a wide view of their aquatic environment, and enlarged raptorial forelegs to seize prey that swims by. Stay clear of those claws, as anything caught in them gets painfully jabbed by the curved rostrum! Such a puncture has earned them the nicknames: "Toe-Biter", "Fish Killer" and "Alligator Flea". For additional adaptations, like their distant Nepomorpha cousin - the Backswimmer - Giant Water Bugs breathe air, and thusly need to bring it underwater with them since they lack a full set of gills.

To facilitate underwater respiration, these Bugs have a rear abdominal respiratory siphon that they stick out of the water to obtain air while submerged. Yes, a butt-snorkel is the tool for the job. This is why many of the individuals here appear to be tilted as they sit in the water's flora. With larger specimens, it could be mistaken for a stinger, while different species use different types of snorkels to obtain air. From my research, Abedus Water Bugs use two reduced rear-tubes to obtain air and then store it underneath their forewings; they can store quite a bit of a bubble due to their reduced wings beneath, effectively trading their ability to fly for an efficient scuba system. With efficient energy expenditure, they can remain underwater for minutes to hours, and thus have more time for hunting and other activities. Speaking of the latter, you may have noticed a few individuals covered in nodules here. These are male specimens. Females attach their eggs to the backs of males, and the latter will protect them...until they hatch. After they hatch, Abedus nymphs become fair game to hunt, and the nymphs share that behavior, with nymphs further along in development hunting and snatching smaller instars! With the number of eggs here, it looks like the zoo may have a feeding frenzy on its hands! When they aren't eating each other, Giant Water Bugs will eat anything they can hold (even animals much larger than themselves, similar to Jagged Ambush Bugs) including struggling land insects, snails, tadpoles and fish.

Since the insects belong to the Toronto Zoo, I’ve marked them with the Mantis icon. Pictures were taken August 27, 2023 at the Toronto Zoo with a Google Pixel 4. Please go and visit the animals (insects very much included)

#jonny’s insect catalogue #ontario insect #giant water bug #abedus #aquatic bug #aquatic insect #abedus sp #hemiptera #heteroptera #insect #toronto #toronto zoo #august 2023 #2023 #nature #entomology #invertebrates

[anneimaginesundertale]

Underocean Headcanons

Now that both Bubbles (Triton) and Delphin (usually called Finn by most people) have been introduced in RP, I figured I’d post an official thing about the two of them. They will be available for asks and imagines once the RP is done, but won’t be part of a roleplay after this one unless we do something else at the beach.

The UO bros came through the machine back before all the boys lived at Anne’s house. They couldn’t really stay long with the main crew, so they found their way to Sweet Sands and have lived in the water near there ever since. They spent a lot of time with Blue and Stretch when those guys lived in Sweet Sands. They don’t NOT get along, but Blue and Delphin butt heads sometimes and their brothers tend to rile each other up for annoying their brothers.

Underocean Sans — Bubbles (Triton)

Officially, his nickname is Triton, but he hates it. His brother picked it to go with his own nickname but it feels snooty to Bubbles. He insists on being called Bubbles or Bubs instead.

His fish half is based on a clownfish, with orange, white, and black stripes. Like a clownfish, he gets protection from sea anemones. If he swims through one on a regular basis, his HP goes up. If he forgets, the protection goes away.

He wanted his nickname to be Clown but got shouted down by at least five voices. He also tried to go for Nemo but that got vetoed too.

He is very relaxed and laid-back and as much of a jokester as the other lazybones.

He has a singing voice similar to Scuttle the seagull, but that doesn’t stop him from singing (mostly to annoy others).

He “works” with Bailey at the shell shop. Most of the really good shells and sea treasures they have in the shop are from Bubs. Bubs and Bailey are…not dating, but not Not Dating, if that makes sense.

Bubbles likes to call people “guppy”. Usually it’s a term of endearment but it depends on tone.

He can teleport, like most Sanses. This ability includes teleporting to a different body of water. Technically the boys could live in any body of water, but they like the ocean near Sweet Sands best. (They might pop up in the pond at Anne’s house for a big important event at some point.)

Underocean Papyrus — Delphin or Finn

He picked his nickname and his brother’s very carefully. It took him a long time and he did a lot of research into Greek mythology, etc. He is very insulted that his brother didn’t like what he picked and is the only one who calls him Triton. Other than that, the two of them get along like most Sanses and Papyri.

Finn is very proud (as evidenced above) and he doesn’t like being wrong. He will bluster and sputter and try to correct himself. “What? Oh, yes, of course. That’s what I meant, obviously.”

His lower half is a dolphin, which is why he chose his nickname in the first place. Delphin was the Greek god of dolphins, which Finn thinks is really cool!

Because he’s part dolphin, he does like to do tricks. He’s very acrobatic and clever and loves showing off for people.

Finn’s best friend is a marine biologist named Quinn (yes, with the rhyming names). They met when Quinn discovered the hidden reef where the brothers live. Finn has assigned himself the protector of the reef, so he wasn’t too pleased to find someone trying to visit. Of course, it turned out Quinn just wanted to study the reef and was working with a conservation group to help further protect it. Finn agreed to help them with their studies and the two of them are now Best Friends. (There might be a crush on one side…or both…but neither of them is confessing to anything more than friendship at the moment.)

I haven’t thought too much about these boys, so I’d love to flesh them out a bit more. If you end up meeting one of them in the RP, feel free to ask questions and get to know them more. Otherwise, please save questions for after the RP is over.

#underocean #uo sans #uo papyrus

[spookyblazecoffee]

The Dirtbike Gays headcanons

-The Dirtbike Gays are TJ, Reed, and Lester (named that by Reed after Lester came out [originally they were called The Dirtbike Gays + Lester])

-They mostly spend the night at Reed’s house because his dad doesn’t acknowledge them and his mom doesn’t mind when the other two come over (plus TJ never has to worry about his peanut allergy while there because Reed’s mom is also allergic [and Reed obviously doesn’t have to worry about his cat allergy])

-Dressed up as Spider-Man (TJ) Iron Man (Lester) and Captain America (Reed) when they were eleven for Halloween

-Watch kids shows together a lot (EX. Bubble Guppies, Team Umizoomi, Little Einsteins, Octonauts, ETC.)

-All know each other’s phone passwords (they won’t tell anyone else [I.E. TJ’s asshole dad and Reed’s asshole dad {Lester tells his dad his password because they tell each other practically everything}])

-They all named Reed’s dog (they named her Eirwen [they did a lot of research about names meaning white or fluffy]

-All watched Coco together ‘Is Big Bad Basketball Man crying?’ (Lester) and ‘No Lester!’ I’m not crying, I just have something in my eyes!’ (TJ) and ‘Pfft, yeah, tears.’ (Reed) during the end with Remember Me [they were ALL crying but none of them will admit that they were to anyone else {Reed and Lester tell Cyrus about it and TJ yells at them playfully}])

-The same thing that happened with Coco happened when they watched Tick... Tick... BOOM! with Amber, Marty, TJ’s mom, and TJ’s grandparents

-They get new costumes of the ones from when they were eleven every time they grow out of the old ones

-One time they all put on their superhero costumes and sprayed a bigot with water (the only reason it was water was if they got caught they could just say they didn’t do anything to harm anyone they just soaked them with water)

-They try all of the different Pepsi flavors and see if they like them or not (including the ones that taste like Peeps marshmallows [their favorites are the Cherry and Mango ones])

-They all have the same favorite movies (10 Things I Hate About You and Heathers)

-Bi-weekly (every other week) sleepovers (it’s mainly just Reed and Lester teasing TJ about his crush on Cyrus [sometimes Marty comes too, or, if they’re at TJ’s grandparents house he goes into TJ’s room and joins in on the teasing until TJ mention his crush on Buffy {at which point Lester and Reed start teasing Marty}])

-Out of the three of them Lester is the mom friend, TJ is the dad friend, and Reed is a reckless child friend

If I make anymore HC’s about The Dirtbike Gays I will make a separate post but title it the same

#TJ Kippen #Thelonious Jagger Kippen #TJ Tired Dad Friend Kippen #Thelonious Jagger Tired Dad Friend Kippen #Reed with the Weed #Reed Andi Mack #Reed Reckless Child friend with the Weed #Lester Andi Mack #Lester Mom Friend Andi Mack #Cyrus Goodman (Mentioned) #Amber Kippen (Mentioned) #Marty from the Party (Mentioned) #Marty Kippen (Mentioned) #Marty Andi Mack (Mentioned) #Buffy Driscoll (Mentioned) #Andi Mack headcanons

[mariacallous]

Cryptocurrency has a serious problem: The party’s over. Fresh dollars from naive retail buyers aren’t coming in anymore after the crashes in May and June, despite a round of advertising during the Super Bowl in February reaching every consumer in the United States. Without those fresh dollars, the holders can’t cash out.

Crypto trading firms hold large piles of assets whose “market cap”—their alleged mark-to-market value—supposedly adds up to a trillion dollars. But this number is unrealizable nonsense because the actual dollars just aren’t there. Everyone in the system knows it. What to do?

The regulated U.S.-based exchanges are just the cashier’s desk for the wider crypto casino. The real trading action, as well as price discovery, is on the unregulated offshore exchanges. These include Binance, OKX, and Huobi. Until Tuesday, Nov. 8, they also included Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, which cut off customer withdrawals around 11:37 a.m. UTC on Nov. 8 and then revealed around 4 p.m. UTC that it was suffering a “liquidity crisis.” FTX is just the latest casualty in a series of collapses that began with Terraform Labs’s UST stablecoin; that took out Celsius Network, Voyager Digital, and many other crypto trading firms; and that is now gradually driving the price and trading volume of cryptocurrencies to what they should be: zero.

FTX desperately sought more funding, but to no avail; at press time, FTX had been shut down by its Bahamian regulator and put into liquidation, as well as was filing for bankruptcy in the United States and Bankman-Fried has resigned as CEO. But the fall of FTX has been particularly remarkable in part because its founder was unusually feted.

Sam Bankman-Fried, often referred to as SBF, was born in 1992 to parents who were both academics at Stanford University. After gaining a physics degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was introduced to the “effective altruism” quantified charity movement by “longtermist” William MacAskill, and he took a job at quantitative trading firm Jane Street in 2014 with the aim of “earning to give,” a buzzword among effective altruists who believe that the most effective way to do good is to make a lot of money first—even in ethically dubious ways—in order to give it away.

After three years at Jane Street, Bankman-Fried started his own cryptocurrency hedge fund, Alameda Research, during the 2017 bitcoin bubble. He has said that he made the money to start FTX from an arbitrage opportunity. In 2018, bitcoin cost more in Japan than it did in the United States; everyone could see this, but for unclear reasons, only Alameda was in a position to exploit it.

FTX was founded in May 2019. Alameda could trade there and served as the exchange’s market maker. In most regulated markets, this would not be allowed because of the obvious conflicts of interest and the incentives to trade against your own customers—but offshore crypto is unregulated. FTX rapidly became very popular, offering complex products such as options trading, perpetual futures, and tokenized stock market shares, and it was perfectly placed for the 2021 crypto bubble, when bitcoin rocketed to $69,000, the volume of trade soared, and ordinary people the world over were sold hard on getting into just a bit of crypto. FTX did not allow U.S. customers but started a separate exchange, FTX US, in May 2020.

During the 2021 crypto bubble, Bankman-Fried started promoting himself as a billionaire public thinker with big ideas and a deliberate mystique. He posed for the front covers of Fortune and Forbes. He was invariably photographed in shorts, a T-shirt, and untied shoes. He reportedly said, “I think it’s important for people to think I look crazy.” This worked on the venture capitalists, such as Sequoia Capital, which bought his pitch—hook, line, and sinker—with a writer on its website saying: “And, since SBF is obviously a genius, I should simply assume that, compared with me, SBF will always be playing at level N+1.”

High-profile visitors would be scheduled to arrive when Bankman-Fried was asleep in the office beanbag. He spoke to the media about his charitable mission—even if the charities’ goals sometimes seemed odd, such as fighting risks from hypothetical future artificial intelligences.

FTX marketed itself heavily. It got Larry David to do a Super Bowl ad this year in which his character’s skepticism turned out to be completely correct. Bankman-Fried bought a 7.6 percent share in popular day-trading brokerage Robinhood. FTX sports sponsorships included the Miami Heat’s FTX Arena, MLB umpire patches, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 racing team, and athletes such as quarterback Tom Brady. FTX even advertised in fortune cookies. FTX worked hard to paint itself as a trustworthy, fully capitalized institution run by smart and sensible people—even as it was operating almost entirely outside any regulation and was a hollow shell.

But Bankman-Fried was also keen to sell himself as a philanthropist. Bankman-Fried formed a super PAC, Protect Our Future, to lobby for political candidates in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, spending over $39 million. Several million dollars went to sponsoring his fellow effective altruist Carrick Flynn in a Democratic primary for the House of Representatives, but Flynn lost his primary to Andrea Salinas.

Bankman-Fried aggressively lobbied in Washington, D.C., for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to control crypto in the United States. He was photographed with its commissioner, Caroline Pham. Bankman-Fried’s policy proposals upset many of his fellow crypto institutions, most notably offshore crypto exchange Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, who felt that Bankman-Fried was setting the rest of the industry up for failure.

Bankman-Fried’s media promotion served to distract attention from what was going on inside FTX. Occasionally, warning signs would leak: His Forbes billionaire list entry included a cautionary note that most of his claimed wealth “was tied up in ownership of about half of FTX and a share of its FTT tokens.”

FTT was the internal trading token of FTX—like supermarket loyalty points for frequent traders, who could get discounted trading fees and free withdrawals. The token was also traded in the wider crypto market. On Nov. 2, a balance sheet was leaked showing that a third of Alameda’s claimed assets were a large volume of FTT. It was as if the Tesco supermarket chain was solvent only if you counted its own made-up Clubcard points as assets. Alameda had also used this pile of FTT as collateral for loans from outside companies.

Binance had been an early investor in FTX. It divested in July 2021; FTX paid Binance for its share in $2.1 billion of FTT and stablecoins. On Nov. 6, when FTT was at $25, Zhao started dumping Binance’s FTT holding on the open market. Alameda offered to buy Binance’s FTT at $22, but Binance continued dumping.

Bankman-Fried had always maintained that Alameda and FTX were separate entities, but the market considered them closely entwined. The possibility of trouble at Alameda led FTX users to withdraw funds as fast as possible—a bank run. FTX paused all withdrawals on Nov. 8.

A few hours later, Binance and FTX announced that Binance would buy FTX to resolve its “liquidity issues”—pending due diligence. Zhao announced the next day that FTX’s books showed that, rather than just a lack of liquidity, the exchange was insolvent by at least $6 billion. The Bahamas, where FTX is incorporated, has frozen all assets and has appointed a provisional liquidator.

Alameda’s liabilities included substantial loans from FTX. It came out later that FTX had lent over $10 billion in customer assets to Alameda and had accepted FTT—its own internal-trader loyalty points—as collateral. Alameda had been in a hole months before, when the crash in May of Terraform’s UST had quickly been followed by the collapse in June of Celsius Network and Three Arrows Capital. Bankman-Fried had bailed out Alameda with customer funds, secured by Alameda’s FTT holding. FTX and Alameda worked in tandem as a risky shadow bank, using customer funds.

Bankman-Fried was quick to reassure customers that FTX US was not affected and that it was “fully backed 1:1.” FTX US was also attempting to buy the remains of the bankrupt Voyager Digital—another victim of Three Arrows Capital—though the deal is on hold until the status of FTX US is sufficiently clear; withdrawals are operating, but deposits have been blocked. The Texas State Securities Board had previously wanted to stop FTX US’s purchase of Voyager on the grounds of problematic activity by the international branch of FTX.

It’s clear now that FTX and Alameda had been hollow shells for many months, even as Bankman-Fried was presenting himself to legislators as a serious regulation-minded crypto proprietor. But there is no reason to presume any other crypto institution is any healthier while the fresh dollars aren’t coming in. In May 2021, FTX’s erstwhile savior Binance appeared to be trading against its own customers. Binance was also used by Iran to evade sanctions with bitcoin. There was, after all, no regulator to stop the exchange from doing anything it felt like.

Legislators have occasionally proposed rules for sensible crypto trading in the United States. The problem for regulation is that the cryptocurrency industry is intrinsically all but unregulatable as long as the trading volume and price discovery happen in the unregulated offshore casinos and the U.S. entities in reach of the law are just the cashier’s desk for the casinos. This is how the crypto world likes it: a trash-fire trading environment, but being able to cash out with real dollars. This is why it bitterly fights the faintest regulation, every time.

This is not just a concern for consumers but a concern about broader financial stability. The Financial Stability Oversight Council’s 2022 Report on Digital Asset Financial Stability Risks and Regulation covers in detail the collapses of UST-Luna and Three Arrows Capital, as well as the cascade of failures that ensued.

The upside for regulators is that the collapse of cryptocurrency didn’t affect the wider economy. The consequences for retail investors in Celsius Network and Voyager Digital were horrifying, but the wider economy hasn’t been put at systemic risk—yet.

The cryptocurrency collapse will be easy to unwind: The crypto traders will go broke, and everyone in crypto will finally admit to their losses. Sequoia Capital has marked its FTX investment down to $0—and deleted from its website its previous hilarious paean to Bankman-Fried’s mysterious genius. The crash victims that FTX was going to bail out, such as BlockFi, have realized their rescuer is not coming.

The crypto bag-holders all actually lost their money long before, when they bought the bitcoins. In the time since, they’d been telling themselves and everyone else that their magic beans were worth money and never mind the lack of buyers. But this was not the case. The beans were always worthless, and the only way to make money from them was to sell them off before other people caught on.

[prezsavconnections]

(—) ★ spotted!! madeline lawrence on the cover of this week’s most recent tabloid! many say that the 37 year old looks like anne hathaway, but i don’t really see it. while  the psychologist turned actress is known for being bubbly my inside sources say that they have a tendency to be blunt i swear, every time i think of them, i hear the song don’t call me angel by miley cyrus, ariana grande, and lana del rey  {she/her; female} - penned by sushi

♥  𝐓𝐇𝐄   𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒 ,

𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥   𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞   :   madeline grace lawrence . 𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬   :   mads , maddie . 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞   :  february fourteen , nineteen eighty five . 𝐚𝐠𝐞   :   thirty seven . 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞   :   henley-on-thames , oxfordshire , uk . 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭  𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞   :    beverly hills ,   los   angeles &  borehamwood , southern hertfordshire, england ,  centre-val de Loire , france . 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫   :   cis   female .   𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧   :   bisexual .

𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬   :   unnamed lawrence ( actor ) , unnamed lawrence ( socialite ) . 𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬   :   graham   lawrence  ( older brother ) . 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫   𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲   :  reid lawrence ( nephew ) . 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬   :   english ,   french ,  italian ,  romanian , greek , german . 𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧   :   actress  (career claim : anne hathaway (early years) & Gal Gadot ) . 𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧   :  university of cambridge ( psychology )  . 𝐳𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐜   :   aquarius . 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫   𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬   :    addison montgomery  ( grey’s anatomy ) ,   grace burgess  ( the peaky blinders ) ,   blair waldorf   ( gossip girl ) ,   haley james scott  ( one tree hill ) ,   mary stuart   ( reign ) ,    spencer hastings  ( pretty little liar’s )  .

♥  𝐓𝐇𝐄   𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 ,

age 16 : cast in first role as princess amelia mignonette thermopolis grenaldi in The princess diaries .

age 19 : meets louie wiley at oscar’s award show after being seated at the same table as him and immediately hits if off with him . the pair are hopelessly in love and become one of hollywood’s favorite couples

age 23 : discovers she is pregnant with louie’s child ( obviously ) but ultimately miscarries ; madeline withdraws from louie ultimately breaking up with him and disappearing from his life ( until now )

age 25 : completes bachelors degree for psychology and is officially licensed therapist/psychologist 

age 26-32 : focuses on work both therapist and actress wise

age 33-36 : gets into a relationship that ultimately ends up being extremely abusive after she married him at 34 ; at 36 she finally musters up the strength to leave and never look back

♥  𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐎𝐈𝐃𝐒 ,

paid her own way through cambridge without the help of her parents thanks to blowing up as an actress .

majority of her therapy sessions with clients are hybrid ; this allows her to work as both a therapist and an actress taking majority of her clients through zoom meetings , phone calls , and text .

she only takes on fellow celebrities as patients for obvious reasons .

a long-term advocate for the Nike Foundation to raise awareness against child marriage .

she spent a week in Nicaragua to help vaccinate children against hepatitis A .

has also traveled to other countries to heed the rights of women and girls, including Kenya and Ethiopia .

was honored at Elle's Women in Hollywood tribute and won an award from the Human Rights Campaign for her philanthropy in 2008 .

is involved with charities Creative Coalition, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the Human Rights Campaign .

was appointed UN Women Goodwill ambassador based on her advocacy for gender equality .

as an actress she has a net worth of $80 million .

played wonder woman in the dc universe .

super close with older brother’s former in-laws , the kennedy’s .

♥  Acting Career ,  

tba but it’s Gal Gadot mixed with early years Anne Hathaway

#hillzhqsintro

[tetrahedrals]

Nona/Alecto predictions

1- I’ve seen people saying Harrow made another bubble in the river and thats where she is at the end of HTN, and I think they’re right. The magazine is the lil piece of Gideon’s soul she ate when she became a Lyctor. The sword is her physical anchor outside the river (wake’s not there anymore so its basically free real estate).

2- Ianthe is PLANNING SOMETHING and it 100% has to do with the apples she’s experimenting w/ in HTN. We know she’s been researching preserving bodies after death for a while now because in GTN she recognizes Cytherea’s explanation of what happened to Protesilaus as total BS- “that is not remotely how it works”, etc. 

3- Marriage- I know people are predicting the marriage will be Harrow and Ianthe, but what if its Gideon and Ianthe: “Reverse everything I just told you. Lets get married.” “Ah, the romance i have been awaiting all my life.” In one of the interviews Muir says "she is the direct cause of quite a lot of nonsense, but she’s hanging out with someone who’s really bad for her” and at first I thought she meant Jod because obviously but if its actually GIDEON my heart will explode with malicious delight. 

4- In that interview she also says there is “one specific magnificently shitty thing Ianthe does in Alecto, just, the dumbest and pettiest thing I am setting her up to do” and maybe its marrying Gideon or Harrow? Or maybe it’s killing her twin and stealing her preserved dead body? We know she wants her alive and unhurt, but how much does Ianthe actually care about Corona? It seems like she’s spent a lot of her life allowing herself to be overshadowed, even though by rights she should have been the sole heir to the 3rd. Why go along with the charade, what did she gain from it? I don’t know, I could be way off base here, I just feel like I don’t fully understand the nature of that relationship yet. 

5- Another popular theory, but Harrow is going to fix whatever is wrong w/ the river, right? The whole harrowing of hell thing. I would love it if that included whatever is in the stoma too! Or if we get to revisit the souls of any of the dead Lyctors. 

6- Harrow and Alecto have some kind of connection- either from Harrow breaking into the tomb or maybe from the way Harrow was born? Doing that kind of magic ( “for all intents and purposes .... a type of resurrection”) right next to a super powerful dead(?) monster seems risky! Even Jod doesn’t know how what Harrows parents did to get her worked- maybe Alecto was involved somehow. 

#the locked tomb #nona the ninth

[raiding]

It was pleasant, sitting in the courtyard, drinking my iced tea. Contemplating my surroundings, I realised I was in the company of Ramon Llull, c. 1232-1315/1316: philosopher, theologian, poet, missionary, Christian apologist and former knight, of whom I was until today sadly ignorant. I am about to share the fruits of my researches. I hope you are sitting comfortably.

Having lived a dissolute troubadour's life until the ago of 30, Llull gave all that up when he had a vision of Christ by his bedside. He resolved to write "the most beautiful book in the world," and spent the rest of his long life writing and re-writing it, including at Randa. In those days, according to the poem by Miquel Costa i Llobera, Randa was a sanctuary to which the solitary could flee from the world, though probably not by bike.

The most beautiful book in the world turned out to be a treatise, the Ars Magna, proving the existence of God with diagrams and algorithms: so obviously that got me hooked.

Llull went on to advocate that the heathen should be converted by argument, not force, of which I also approved. He thus became an early advocate for universities teaching the languages of non-Christian faiths, include Arabic: further approval.

His thought was extraordinarily influential. More manuscripts of his works survive than those of Aquinas. The Ars Brevis, a summary of his philosophy, was copied more times than the Decameron.

He appears in possibly the world's first strip-cartoon, a story of his life in 12 miniatures, painted in 1312, complete with speech-bubbles.

Reading yet further, I learned that for many centuries he was thought to be an alchemist, until it turned out that the treatises attributed to him and thought to be forgeries were in fact by someone else, and genuine (but, spoiler, no gold).

By now somewhat boggled, I learned, further, that his algorithmic turn of mind caused him to propose an ars combinatoria, a sort of thinking machine. This inspired Leibniz's calculating machine. It also inspired a satire by Swift, in Gulliver's Travels, and a fragment by Borges, about a machine for writing poetry.

Being a man who liked to invent things involving combinations, Llull then invented the pairwise-comparison system for deciding the outcome of elections now known as the Condorcet method, though the Marquise de Condorcet only got around to describing it almost 500 years later, in 1785.

That led me down a whole other internet rabbit-warren on electoral systems, to the Schulze method, set out as recently as 1997. This is Condorcet-compliant and produces an ordered list of candidates by voter preference in pairwise comparisons. It is well covered in Wikipedia, perhaps not unconnected with the fact that it is used to elect the Wikipedia board.

Thinking about all this on the ride back north, I devised a method for creating an ordered list of the best cafes and bars in Mallorca, with ranked-preference ballot papers to be completed by the cyclists visiting them.

The results will not, however, be determined by the Schulze method, since it eliminates Condorcet cycles – the kind of infinite-loop pairwise comparison in which (for example) rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock. As well as being against the elimination of cycles on principle, I see no problem whatever in an infinite-loop ride with no end of cafe stops.

#mallorca2024

[fall-cryptid-beetle]

Well I meant to post this much earlier, got kinda busy and couldn’t write this down coherently. Since it’s apparently the anniversary of Danny Phantom, and I have really oddly detailed dreams, why not post my odd Danny Phantom dream from last night? It’s gonna be long as fuck (even with details left out!!) and includes some violence at the end so be warned. Believe it or don’t I don’t care much, do whatever with this info lmao.

So this started with Danny, his friends, and family all sort of hanging out as his house (or at least in the same room together) sometime after the finale (or at the very least his parents know his secret), when suddenly out front this rift opened up and out came these alternate versions of Jazz, Jack, and Maddie. The family had quickly come outside seeing this, their AU counterparts quickly explaining that they’re successful ghost hunters in their world (to the point they unknowingly killed their Danny), however the ghost zone started to merge with the human world, causing extreme destruction and chaos, as good as they are they were struggling to fix things while their world gets torn apart. So the three tried their luck at hopping dimensions, hoping more of their genius could solve the issues and save their world from complete destruction. Maddie and Jazz agree to help, Danny and friends are a bit hesitant about it but ultimately agree, Jack is the most distrustful but begrudgingly accepts it to keep an eye on his family. Which is perfect timing as the dimension hopping actually results in the same ghost zone merging as in the AU, but it’s much slower than before somehow resulting in them being able to close any rifts that pop up. . .

The two families (+Sam and Tucker) use this opportunity to research the phenomenon to save the normal universe and the rapidly dying alternative universe. So they all set off together to do just that, going long distances to figure out why this is happening and close up the appearing rifts. This journey ends up taking them to Wisconsin which catches the attention of Vlad obviously, as they’re driving to the next rift they notice this one is oddly much stronger, needing a key to close it for some reason? Either way it’s a rift to Skulker’s island to which he conveniently tells the two families he has the key and they’re have to fight him for it, though he flies off immediately to a nearby bridge for this fight to take place. Naturally they follow but once they get there and are ready to fight everything on the bridge is noticeably worn down, including Skulker, turns out the bridge immediately got trapped in some time thing? While it was a fairly short drive for the families Skulker had been trapped there for THOUSANDS of years. But the families entering burst that time bubble, meaning Skulker is finally free, so exhausted from that he just surrenders, gives them the key, and reveals Vlad planned this to kill both Jack’s and get both Maddie’s for himself. Vlad who had been waiting nearby (but safe from the bubble) immediately kills Skulker upon him trying to leave for revealing that plan, to which Danny transforms finally and attempts to fight Vlad, but he’s almost immediately defeated, quickly followed by both Jazz’s, Sam, and Tucker, all beaten up so bad they were nearly killed. Of course the parents try to defeat him and do quite well until AU Jack gets knocked out, and normal Maddie is accidentally killed, making normal Jack actually snap and brutally attack Vlad, managing to kill him much to Vlad’s surprise and manipulation attempts. Afterwards AU Maddie and normal Jack take everyone to Vlad’s mansion. AU Maddie burying her alternate counterpart then tending to the others wounds, normal Jack just too traumatized to help much.

#Absolutely no clue what to tag this shit #i have weird dreams man #Weird and detailed dreams #Danny phantom I guess