#technically illegal iirc

[beardedmrbean]

that dent there tells me someone doesn't need to imagine it

#technically illegal iirc #but nobody will ever do anything about that

[scottapez]

thinking abt how the new cover for the physical print of mfm has everyone in their first ever outfits* EXCEPT jo. hes in his second one where he gets a shirt.

#^deranged #t.alk #its illegal for him 2 be shirtless now ig #*leaf is TECHNICALLY in the second ever outfit she was featured in iirc. aka her casual wear #BUT her lab coat wasnt ever really 'one of her common outfits' so.

[tamahoshio]

Sometimes being so involved in lov/villain stan spaces online makes me wanna write some more with my mha vigilante girl getting involved with the villains 😭💖 i think it'd be fun

#i mean if we're being technical in mha japan #vigilantes who are convicted do end up on the like villain registry iirc #since villain is defined legally as anyone who commits an illegal action using their quirk #in some contexts even just using your quirk in public seems like it would count #like the difference varies by quirk and consequences #for example inko dropping her handkerchief or pen and just floating it back up wouldn't bother anyone #but if say sugarman--uh Sato i think-got really lit in a few years and got in a bit of a bar tussle #and hulked out because of how his body processes sugars...well he wouldn't just get your normal everyday drunk and disorderly or whatev #he would prob end up on the villain register because his quirk was indeed activated #whereas like #if 13 year old quirkless midoriya stabbed someone it would absolutely still get him in trouble but legally he's just a normal asshole #my examples got outta hand lol

[narcvampp]

What exactly is a paraphilia? What's the "big three"? And does anti-contact refer to not acting on it? Tysm!!

"Paraphilias are persistent and recurrent sexual interests, urges, fantasies, or behaviors of marked intensity involving objects, activities, or even situations that are atypical in nature." They're technically a psychiatric disorder mainly caused by trauma(like most disorders are)

The "big three" is zoophilia, pedophilia, and necrophilia iirc. And yes anti-contact is refering to not acting on it, specifically for ones that are illegal/cannot be consented upon

#vamp sillies #paraphile safe #paraphilia #paraphile community #anti contact paraphile

[unsoundedcomic]

I think you've explained this before, but iirc the families of Crescian twins aren't technically required to send them to a temple, there's just a lot of pressure to do so. Is it similar for the twins themselves, or not? Like, would Siya have been allowed to leave if she'd really decided to? Or would it always have been illegal for her to run off like Iori did? I think it was the latter but it occurred to me that it would be a little odd (although not too surprising) for parents to be allowed to decide not to send them away, but for twins not to be allowed to decide to go back

Twins can refuse the sacrifice. But with that choice comes great hardship and discrimination. Taken with the fact that the kids are raised apart in shrines and groomed for their destinies, refusal is very rare.

Now, a century ago it was illegal. Twins were seized from their parents soon after birth, taken to the shrines, and there was nothing their parents could do about it. Towns and cities celebrated the event and the esteem it would bring them. But that attitude did shift, and Cresce made it "optional" a few generations ago. In many parts of the country that just increased pressure to give the kids up. Since it was a choice, now it meant even more when you chose the sacrifice. And the kids can choose to. But to refuse is often unthinkable for them. They don't know their parents. All the positive attention they've ever known is for them being a kept twin. Any alternative path is evil, alien, and just difficult to imagine.

It's much worse in Sharteshane where twins are traded like cattle, and the wealthy put way more superstitious stock in their flesh than the rest of the world. They still outright kidnap twins and traffic them from other countries. There aren't just the privileged shrine kids, but foreign rando twins privately imprisoned. It's icky stuff.

[randomidiocyncrazies]

okay i've thought a little more about fem!Nie Mingjue AU; gender matters a lot in the setting, and NMJ being described (and perceived by the fanbase) as such a masculine figure makes it interesting to think about how their life might've been like if they were a woman

(this is an exploration of NMJ as a cis woman, albeit one with (most probably) a complicated relationship with her gender, but if anyone has trans headcanons i'd love to know more!)

one of the biggest changes if NMJ is born a woman would be her role in the sect and in society. In canon NMJ was unmarried, wasn't betrothed to anyone, nor had plans to father children. this was not a cause for concern; he had a legitimate younger brother, so there was no succession crisis.

But as a woman, NMJ's duty as the sect leader's daughter would've been to marry strategically—that would be how she supports her sect and family, since she wouldn't have been raised with the expectation of becoming sect leader (that expectation would've gone to NHS). And as a legitimate* daughter born to the leader of a prominent sect, i think it's likely that she would have a childhood betrothal arranged before her father died/was killed.

*dichu 嫡出: I'm not familiar with an English equivalent and used "legitimate" here, but basically dichu children are children from a man's primary wife (妻) instead of his concubines (妾), and in terms of inheritance the sons of the wife gets the biggest share, followed by sons from the concubines. Daughters were generally not allowed to formally inherit anything until relatively recently; their dowry is their share of the inheritance (and technically the dowry belongs to them, not their husband's family—a mother's jewelry from her birth family can be passed down to her daughters etc). There is a ceremony to make a concubine into the primary wife (扶正), but iirc it's technically illegal if the wife is still alive/part of the household.

Since NMJ is the daughter of a prominent sect leader's primary wife, proper matches for her would've been the (legitimate/嫡出) sons of other sect leaders. Since we know very little about the minor clans allied with Qinghe Nie, I'm going to focus on the other major sects. Of those, I personally think one of Wen Rouhan's sons would've been the most likely betrothal candidate. There are multiple factors pointing towards a Nie-Wen match:

Wen Rouhan and Sect Leader Nie (seemingly) got along well before the murder-sabotage, so it'd make sense for them to pair their children up;

the Wen sect is powerful, and having a daughter marry into the sect is a solid political move on sect leader Nie's part;

it'd give Wen Rouhan a plausible pretext to interfere with the inner workings of the Nie sect via sect leader Nie's murder, especially if it was an attempt to manipulate the Nie siblings to be reliant on "future father-in-law" during such a trying time. WRH did not anticipate his involvement in the murder getting out, which gives NMJ a reason to break off the betrothal—marrying the son of your father's alleged murderer would've been dishonorable. WRH probably also didn't anticipate the Nie sect to stand behind NMJ as someone they can rally around until NHS comes of age.

I personally lean towards Wen Xu being NMJ's childhood fiance, for dramatic effect during the Sunshot Campaign—even if NMJ didn't have as much authority as her canon counterpart during the war, I think she'd still be active on the front-lines (maybe as NHS's body-double or bodyguard), and it'd still be possible for her to decapitate Wen Xu & have his body trampled as an intimidation tactic, with the double-edged sword of making her seem more unhinged/brutal in the average cultivator's eyes.

I also think there's more tension? resentment? between NHS and NMJ, if NMJ was a woman. the vibe i got from NHS in canon was that he never wanted the burden of being sect leader (which imo is at least partially influenced by Nie sect's destructive cultivation style), and in canon NHS had breathing space/wriggle room to indulge in his hobbies when NMJ was alive.

but if NMJ was a woman, it's very likely that the other sects would've dismissed her entirely, and her authority would be a lot more tenuous because the other sects would only accept her as an interim leader until the 'proper' heir NHS takes over from her (including NMJ herself—I don't think she was necessarily for women's rights, sorry. She cares about honor, and honor in this instance imo would've been to protect the sect for her little brother and hand the sect back over to him when he's ready to take over). So NHS grows up with far more pressure on him to take his position as the next sect leader seriously, and there's more pressure on him to not goof off indulging in his own hobbies. He has less leeway to blow off steam and must bear the burden of sect leader much earlier. Unlike canon, i don't think he has as much opportunity to cultivate his "head-shaker" reputation, since he can't appear to be too incompetent, though i think he does hide the full extent of his competence/quick wit because he saw as a child what appearing like a threat means (i.e. betrayal and a painful death like their father).

Meanwhile, NMJ might be frustrated by her brother playing dumb here and there, which she probably saw as him not taking his responsibilities seriously. Having essentially run the sect since she was a teenager, she might also chastise him over policy disagreements/give advice when he didn't ask for it etc. On top of that, the other sects also have their own speculations about the power dynamics in the Nie sect, and the politically inclined might or might not spread rumors about sect leader Nie being a puppet of his ambitious sister. In other words: the Nie siblings have to present a united front, and it has to look like NHS is calling the shots even when NHS feels like he's stuck between a rock and a hard place (e.g. his sister arguing with him about some stance they should take as a sect, and knowing there's gonna be political fallout with the other sects either way).

Also, this is not to say NMJ doesn't understand politics; she couldn't afford to not be aware of how it works, especially as a young teen being the regent for her younger brother, and the Nie sect retaining a relatively high standing all these years speaks for itself. I just think NMJ doesn't bother with playing games herself, and there are certain principles she will not bend. (Like... lying is not tolerated, but I think she understands the value of framing things a certain way, as long as you don't lie about it.)

Anyway. I think the Nie siblings love and care about each other—would die and kill for each other, especially in the aftermath of their father's death—but they also have some unresolved issues about NMJ being NHS's older sister instead of older brother.

(on that note, i think multiple people have lamented NMJ being born a girl growing up: in canon NMJ's mom and NHS's mom didn't seem to have beef with one another, but i think family dynamics might be more tense if the primary wife 'failed' to give her husband an heir, while the concubine did. So whether it was just wistful musings or something more bitter, I think NMJ's mom would've wondered out loud what life could've been like if NMJ was the heir, i.e. a boy

i think NHS's mom might've also wished NMJ was a dude, especially after her husband died and they saw first-hand how horrible a qi deviation death was; i don't think she's a bad stepmom to NMJ at all, but there's a part of her that wishes her own son was spared from the fate of dying young in such a way, and would rather NMJ carry the burden than her own son

I could also imagine NMJ's dad joking about how it's too bad she's not his son, kind of proud of her fierce pride and forthright nature but also casually putting her down for not being ladylike enough; there's also a sense that NMJ's talents are 'wasted' bc sexism 🙄

and then you also have the Nie elders and disciples when the sect leader was incapacitated/dies. his heir is 8 years old, the sect is looking at a stretch of instability that could have huge repercussions for their sect's future, and it'd be so much less complicated if the sect leader's other child—barely old enough at 14—is someone they could put into place as the new sect leader without the other sects laughing them out of their position as one of the great sects etc etc. the Nie sect does rally around her until NHS is old enough to take leadership, but it'd be easier if she was a dude)

#mdzs #nie mingjue #the fem!nmj agenda #i have SO MANY thoughts about fem!NMJ i feel like i gotta scream into the void

[lirational]

Hello I am interested in path to nowhere I want to get interested in the lore

HAULS OUT LORE SUPPLIES

Hello friend, do I hear interest in PtN lore?

Alright, so let’s start from the beginning. We’re playing as a “Chief” of MBCC, basically an organization dedicated to apprehend Sinners and investigate problems related to Mania. If you’re familiar with Arknights, Mania functions similarly to Oripathy, with a small chance of giving people powers (awakening them as Sinners in this game) or death (turning them into monsters known as Corruptors in this game.)

So basically, Sinners are people with unique powers from Mania. However, they are always in danger of losing themselves and becoming Corruptors. This will be relevant in a bit.

You start without your memory, awakened in the middle of an unknown procedure while the Sinners the organization have previously captured are attacking the base. After waking up, you see a mysterious woman, whom you may know before your memory loss.

She is known as Suspect R, or Rebecca. This woman so fine I need her to murder me.

Ahem, alright, seeing you have no memory, she decided to copy your biological information down to your appearance, and flee with it right before your adjutant can do anything. In your disoriented state, you offer to help your adjutant who saved you just before, eventually discovering your uniquie “Shackle” power, essentially allowing you to stabilize Sinners and prevent their power from going haywire, but also allows you to control them however you wish. This is also why you are uniquely qualified to be the Chief of MBCC.

Your adjutant asked you to go and retrieve the only Sinner who remained in her cell in hopes to apprehend Suspect R. Hecate.

Along with Hecate, you managed to shackle Hella as well, pictured here;

Though you tried, Suspect R escaped, seemingly implying she knows more about you than you do before she departed. Now, you have to chase the mysterious woman, try to recollect your missing memories, and navigate your way through Black Rings (a disaster made from an overload of Mania) while juggling the political insanity from various parties, all with their own agenda.

Now because tumblr allows us 10 images per post iirc, I’ll put pictures of some of the other characters here, because their designs are so fine I swear to god

Alright, with that out of the way, let’s address a common question people have posed: “are you playing as a cop?”

No, that is not the case. Chief is more of a middle manager who has to deal with the worst of the Mania problem, and in fact, has stated several times that they are not “law enforcement” in story, even turning a blind eye to technically illegal action (stealing resources to survive) at one point. You can compare them to SCP organization more than to law enforcement.

TLDR: please play PtN it is good and fun and the characters are so fine I am going feral

#lirational rambles #man this got LONG I am so sorry

[lilietsblog]

so in between the power outages and taking care of my grandma I rediscovered a book series

- it takes place in Moscow, starting in 1991

- yes, that’s the very end of the Soviet Union and the very start of the, uh, Bandit Nineties. The economy going to pieces, organized crime surging. Unless I’m mistaken, the organized crime wave ended with the successful crime bosses all becoming legitimate businessmen/politicians, so, you know, yeah. The organized crime won that one.

- (yes, I’m referring to Putin and his crowd. However, the book doesn’t. All the politicians are made up and whenever ‘the president’ comes up, he is left nameless. It’s not political except in acknowledging realities of the time)

- the main character is a cop, in the murder investigation department

- no not like that

- the main character is a thirty-two year old woman (at the start, the series continues iirc into her fifties)

- she is not athletic, has a bad back and bad blood circulation. Also anxiety / impostor syndrome, though that’s mostly unrelated

- she is an analyst, hired by a department head who decided to lean into the whole “we are not legally allowed to do police brutality anymore” thing and do things the smart way instead

- notably, the writer has, actually, herself worked in that, ah, industry, though I believe not in that specific postion. Still, she knows how it works, from formal organization to interpersonal dynamics

- the books are not traditional murder mysteries per se, in that we get clues alongside the main character and have the chance to decipher what really happened along the investigation. The story is multi-POV, shifting not only between the mc and her coworkers, but also between the investigation-ees, including frequently the murderer, frequently immediately named such in the narration. Of course the audience doesn’t get all the answers immediately, but still, it often becomes obvious who did it to the readers way before it does to the mc, and the tension lies more in “will she figure it out, and will it be in time for [...]”

- basically it’s a psychological drama centered around murder investigations

- the series is not what I would call copaganda, on any level. The mc herself does not take bribes (nor is she usually offered them, being too low in the hierarchy), nor does she really take full advantage of the “acquaintanceship” system the whole, er, society runs on, due to aforementioned anxiety / impostor syndrome. But the series is VERY frank about how the system works (not that any Russian/post-soviet reader is surprised by that, as it is VERY frankly how it works. My family has had nice things because of where our family members worked and who they knew, too), and the main character does go through acquaintances instead of official channels to find out information (often information that’s technically illegal for them to give her) approximately half the time. It’s Just How The System Works. Her boss runs on full acquaintanceship system, too, and there’s at least one investigation they “win” by acquiring blackmail on a politician through a con. (A rapist was being protected by his politician relatives...) Police brutality is acknowledged as a thing, Though It’s Illegal Now. Not defended, not condemned, just... there as part of the setting.

- the main character and her coworkers genuinely care about justice, putting away murderers, and so on. However, the series explicitly goes out of its way to reject black and white morality. The criminals are not “the bad guys”, the cops are not “the good guys”. It’s more... law vs chaos. It’s brought up that apparently some of the criminals the mc’s boss had put away later came to see him with a bottle of alcohol because in the process of investigation / arrest he got them out of a bad situation / saved their family / etc. Approximately all of the police structure is hopelessly corrupt, in the sense that the mc’s boss is also very much expected by his colleagues and superiors to play along - and he sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t, depending on the situation. In the case of a guy who raped a 12 year old girl he doesn’t, see the blackmail situation above. He’s buddies with at least one crime boss, with a “you know and I know but you just try to catch me” relationship. (He also lies shamelessly to that crime boss for a scheme where they get a chance to catch an assassin normally protected by the organized crime system)

- the main character’s love life is... very queer. Nobody’s gay (in the main cast, there are gay that-book-only characters later) (unless I forgot someone gay in the main cast, which is possible), but the mc is VERY on the aroace spectrum (complete with the “I’m not a woman, I’m a computer” “I am incapable of normal human emotions” not-quite-angst-as-she-has-just-accepted-it-as-fact-and-is-comfortable-with-it), and her overall situation is very Like That. She’s in a long-term sort-of-relationship with a childhood friend who has a crush on her, but also gets crushes on other women all the time, only to burn out quickly and come back to her complaining about his disappointment in women in general who are not her. This is normal and she is very comfortable in the relationship. Eventually (into her forties I think) they actually get married, because she gets the epiphany that she’s actually happy with him and loves him very much, and romantic feelings can get fucked given she’s not had any since teenagehood. She also sometimes sleeps with men who are not him, and flirts with more, sometimes for work, sometimes for personal reasons, only to inevitably conclude that yeah she’s Too Aroace For This. Zero jealousy is involved.

- other arrangements along these lines also come up in various books, and I think it’s this series that opened my mind way back when to the concept of “marraiage as a platonic cohabitation agreement”. A gay guy who’s married to a woman who has her own adventures and he his own, and they’re best friends and partners and each other’s shoulder to cry on about romantic troubles - this happened at least once.

- the series is occasionally stereotypically “crazy psychopaths” ableist, it certainly is in the first book, but overall it leans more towards a very... incisive take on people just being That Way (with no particular terminology involved). Like the main character’s anxiety (and probably autism tbh, though the writer seems unaware of the concept)

- there are many topics like that. Fatphobia gets a whirl many times, visibly without the writer having any idea that the topic is somehow political or controversial. She’s just writing what she sees, you know? Same with homophobia etc. The writer’s mission is to give black and white morality kick in the nuts and just write How Life Is, and she is just. Very good at it.

- like, the criminals aren’t always The Bad Guys. At least one murderer is a teenage girl who was abused by her father and so desperate to escape, she did Very Stupid Things (if wearing lipstick is as bad as murder...). Her father has understandable motives in turn, though not in an excuse way. The narrative is just genreally very... non-preachy and non-judgemental towards people involved, even people like professional assassins and (worse) professional big bosses who don’t give a second thought to stealing/conning people, and when caught in a blackmail situation because of it only hesitate some before escalating to murder over it, and mostly because of “what if I get caught”

- the understanding of everything is very... societal/systemic, in a very good way. No Shit People Who Live Here Are This Way, the books say every time, while also saying People Have Different Personalities And That’s Normal (and It’s Not The Personality That Makes A Murderer, It’s Personality In Systemic Context)

- like, it’s just... so good, holy shit. While also occasionally being bad in places where the writer is just kind of making shit up and the ignorance is audible (see “psychopath” ableism - the writer is doing her best to write her characters as people with coherent motivations and logic, but she just doesn’t know enough to nail it)

- there is so much... sympathy for like... mundane life situations. A character who’s driven to being an absolute piece of shit by living conditions of “five people in a single-room apartment including a disabled elderly relative you Have to take care of”. And nobody’s demonized? Like. Situations that just suck for everybody involved and nobody’s to blame, particularly. And if someone is, they still get sympathy.

- like... there’s a character who was denied an opportunity in Soviet Union because of the systemic antisemitism, but the guy who got to break her the news was very awkward about it and didn’t want to say the antisemitic thing, so he was ableist about it instead. Oops. That person is a bit character who played an unquestionably negative role, but they still get sympathy from the narrative for their choices - they said the worse-for-this-particular-person thing while trying to avoid, you know. The other thing that’s also very bad.

- i would like to reiterate that the main character is an autistic aspec woman with chronic illnesses who starts at thirty-two and progresses into her fifties over the course of hte narrative.

- (she loses her impostor syndrome along the way, as the book series is very much the “genius detective figuring it all out from tangential clues” genre and her achievements and reputation mount)

- oh yeah, to say that the series tackles sexism is to say that Karl Marx’s “Capital” tackles economic inequality. “People underestimate women and they really shouldn’t” is, according to the writer’s foreword, the original idea that sparkled the premise for the first book and then also the entire series. (”People underestimate fat women and they really shouldn’t” appears as a consistent sub-theme later on as a new prosecutor character enters the scene at some point and sticks around.)

- like, holy shit guys. I hadn’t realized how good it is (despite the... The Flaws...) until this reread...

#books #literature #marinina #theres also a tv series based on the books but i have no idea how good it is #i dont watch tv #anastasia kamenskaya my beloved

[mechanicalinertia]

Bubblegum Black: For A World Without Gold - Chapter 3 & Author's commentary

This is the longest chapter I've written for this fic, despite it being mostly characters talking to one another. 11k words of this shit, man. That's either great or terrible, depending on who you ask. Anyway, here we go!

Doctor Hartland: Relatively obscure character, the guy who provided Roberta with her murder-meds during the Blood Trail / El Baile De Muerte IIRC. He, like many such characters Cyberpunk 2020 would call 'ripperdocs', is what I assume is the front line of medicine in a city like Roanapur. I imagine a city where hospitals are either for syndicate soldiers or extremely rich people, and everyone else can rely on doctors who import or print any medicine they can get their hands on. Presumably 'Traditional Chinese Medicine' is pretty popular, too (did you know that the Chinese government, at least in Hong Kong, prescribed traditional remedies for COVID awhile ago? It did not, of course, help, but it was an alternative to Decadent Western Pig-Dog Medicine I guess. Eugh.)

Revy's Custom Ammo: Delayed-fuse HESH rounds, truly terrible fleshripping monstrosities, are actually something I got from Masamune Shirow's work. You know how in the original manga and in the 1995 movie, Motoko goes "Oh, is that so", shoots up the one guy, and then it takes a second before his cyborg body is blown to bits? That's the effect I'm going for. The tungsten tip is to penetrate body armor and dig into a target's vitals, although that doesn't work 100% of the time with heavier armor. Still, even if there's no penetration, damage can still be done. HESH rounds were originally designed to kill a tank crew through spalling, hitting the armor with shockwaves such that slivers of metal inside the tank would break off and kill the crew. This is something one can easily mitigate with composite armor and a Kevlar inner lining in the tank, but to translate that back to body armor is probably a little more difficult. One can imagine shockwaves and slivers of armor lining pulverizing human or light Boomer innards even without penetration.

Seburo M-057: A completely fictional Seburo handgun. For those readers who don't slobber over Shirow's non-porn work the way I do, Seburo is a Japanese gun company built up after around World War Three (in the 1990's in Shirow's timeline). Apparently it might also be a subsidiary company of Poseidon Industrial, the megacorp that becomes the entirety of Japan by the time Appleseed rolls around. Either way, it's a famous Japanese arms company, which makes one wonder: Are handguns legal in Japan in Shirow's world, where they are not in ours? For the sake of lore, let's say that Japan allows organizations like GENOM to possess and manufacture weapons for security purposes, but not individuals. Remember how in BGC2032 there was that whole subplot about how military-grade Boomers in Japan were technically illegal and ideally should only be manufactured offshore? And GENOM just ignored that law for the most part? Well, fuck that game. In the 2060's GENOM happily supplies the JSDF with whatever Boomers they want, the better to defend against China. Anyway, yeah, the M-057 is a caseless pistol, ammo stored in the gun's handle like normal, but a whole lot more of it, we're talking 18+1 per magazine. In the 2060's, caseless weapons are juuuust starting to make a comeback as a concept, aided by new chemical configurations with higher ignition temperatures and better structural integrity. Revy's handguns are the equivalent of a high-performance electric car compared to everyone else's Toyota Corollas, is probably the best way to think about it.

Second-Highest Boomer Per Capita City: First is Anchorpoint.

Lightning Hawk: A silly Resident Evil reference.

The Master: Okay, this is going to take some explaining. Or at least a picture:

Yeah, okay, you see that gun Priss has? Sure looks like a laser magnum to me, doesn't it? And, hey, look closer, that's definitely its name on the side alongside the name of the sight! So, since no one has never done anything with this information, I have decided to do it my goddamn self. Now, as I've said before in the Hardsuit Tech document, laser weapons are actually pretty viable so long as you dial down the pulse train to femtoseconds and thereby jack up the pulsed power to the gigawatt or terawatt range. I do not know what the effective overall damage of a tactical-vehicle mounted terawatt laser would be, so in the end I settled on measuring the gun’s stopping power in joules, easy enough to compare to ballistic weapons. For the record, that max power level, 5KJ, is more stopping power than even 7.62 NATO. Which might be overkill even for futuristic high-density capacitors, but what the hell.

Chiborgs: Abbreviation of Chinaborgs. In this particular iteration of the future, following World War Three between the US and China's respective power blocs (and all the ruination that has brought upon the earth), Cold War 2 has been going on ever since neither side could claim absolute victory due to climate change-induced mass crop failures starving their armies out. So GENOM has one big rival in the 'Sinobloc': The China World Prosperity Corporation, a conglomerate of old State Owned Enterprises that privatized themselves following the war, rolled themselves up into a separate power structure, about as independent from the CCP as one can get, and resumed Chinese imperial efforts in the old Belt and Road bloc. But - but but but - they've never quite managed to emulate the entirety of Boomer technology. Oh sure, they've got robots, but Boomers are biomimicry nanotech down to the cellular level, a common platform for alternative life. WPC doesn't have that, so they've aligned with the turbo-Leninists in the Party, arguing that GENOM's Boomers alienate the proletariat from their labor on a societally toxic scale, and simply continued the use of prosthetics and augmentations coupled with inferior robotics to an absurd degree. A Chiborg, then, is a WPC-produced set of augmentations designed for relatively specialized labor, turning a human into a near-machine relying on constant maintenance and subject to constant surveillance. It’s not like these ‘shells’ are expensive, or cheap but low-quality. The WPC is more than happy to sell, as per Party directives, at an ever-so-slight-loss even in economically turbulent times. The insidious part, besides the addiction to maintenance and the monitoring of every micro-movement the brain orders the body to make, is who ends up with these things permanently grafted into themselves. Migrant workers in the bottom tier of the hukou system; ethnic minorities treated as culturally and mentally inferior to the Han majority; Taiwanese or Koreans or North Viet treated as near-slaves, the ‘curse’ of their WW3-era resistance against the benevolence of True Socialist Xi Jinping Thought with Chinese Characteristics For The Eternal Bright Future having marked entire families with generations of debt only payable by concentration camp labor. Voluntary, of course, but, y’know, not really.

Mycoplastic Packaging: Fungus-derived materials that have replaced most petrochemical-based plastics by 2060. In the case of easily-biodegradable packaging like what the Master comes in, it's more akin to a sort of micromesh made from hymenophore tubes. Check out this Vice article about more high-performance materials that fungi could help make. It's not really the same principle, but I imagine it's... plausible, to grow the right materials with some funky bioengineering.

Singto Phumici: Proud Lion in Thai. Note how some districts have English names and others have Thai. You could, I imagine, track the economic bracket of a given district, or perhaps who it relies on for authority, by the language used in a name. Might throw a Cantonese name or two in there later. We'll see.

Sawyer's Bloody Business: Yes, most of the meat in the 2060's is lab-cultured tissue or an imitation thereof, 3D printed into a meal. And yes, Sawyer feeds human corpses to flesh-eating bacteria which are supposed to build up a nice big blob of biomass that can then be fed to meat cultures. One meat becomes another, just with more extra steps and less maintenance than feeding human remains to pigs as one might do in the old days. You know, they've managed to print lab-grown Wagyu. How much longer before Mickey-D's is marketing luxury synthmeats in its products? I wonder.

Sawyer In General: The idea of Sawyer being an obsessive Priss fangirl has been a fairly crucial part of this crossover ever since I started thinking about it in early April. Perhaps it runs against her canon characterization as a stone-cold killer in Gore Gore Girl, but all we have to go off of for G3 so far is chapter summaries on the wiki, and it strikes me as a somewhat sillier spinoff than mainline Lagoon. Which is fine, but then what the hell, I have license to fuck around with what we're given in terms of Sawyer, because It Is Fanfiction. I guess I find her at once intimidating but kind of pathetic? I mean, those scars on her arms definitely aren't something someone else did to her, if Hiroe's claim that she was based of a friend with depression is to be believed. Without spoiling anything, suffice to say that in earlier drafts of this chapter Sawyer was even more of a mentally unwell gore fiend than she is here. My beta took issue with it, said that there was no way that what I want to do with the character in the long run made sense if she was like that. And you know what, he was right. We haven't seen the last of the Gore Gore Girl, not by a long shot. I didn't write that scene to set a big ol' nothingburger up. You'll see.

Priss vs. Revy: Okay, could Priss actually beat Revy in a shootout, even by one point or whatever? Hard to say. Priss's skill as a marksman is more up in the air just because we've seen less of her overall, and less emphasis is placed on her ability to shoot well. But I think that she's got some skill, at least, from her time as a bosozoku and from having to make crucial railgun shots as a Saber. Also... she kind of cheated. A little. Not a lot, but enough to win. Those who have read Anatomy of a Lovedoll, or remember a little side bit from Chapter 2, will recognize how.

Fediverse: Mastodon is the most famous of these platforms, but the fediverse is more than just 'the open-source Twitter replacement', it's more... federated networks are disconnected communications networks that can still talk to each other over a common platform, so the idea behind the fediverse is a galaxy of 'instances', small servers run by a person or organization that can all share common accounts with differing rules of operation and moderators and stuff. No one company owns the protocols used, and so it's a lot more of a wild west - plenty of people who were kicked off Twitter for good reason (Nazis) have taken root on fedi instances - but the idea in mentioning fediverse-like platforms in the noosphere of the future is that they're sort of the alt-internet, the cyberpunk-y version of the internet that has otherwise been carved up by big platforms and those Everything Apps I was talking about in the Chapter 2 notes (even more prescient now that Twitter-cum-X is being set up by Elon to be Explicitly That). Forums that run the gamut from respectable to shady; software and 3D printing libraries of varying quality and trustworthiness; piracy and crime and all the corrosive forces that eat away at the respectable foundations of the Noose - these are the kind of networks Benny and Jane love to hang out on. In other words, the only ways to use the internet of the future are Facebook, Amazon, and 4chan. God, don't you miss the days of nonplatformed webpages? Let's bring Geocities back, guys. Let's do that to save the internet.

Tewwowizm: Are the Knight Sabers terrorists? In the eyes of many, they probably are, a menace against the prosperous GENOM-lead global order that... you get the idea. The hope is that enough people can recognize that the Sabers mostly kill GENOM execs and blow up GENOM assets like industrial facilities and Boomers, and avoid killing innocents for the most part. To make them superheroes and not supervillains in the eyes of the body public. This was something I wanted to play around with in this conversation as it organically unfolded. At least, I think I did. This conversation textually pulling double-duty as a way to lead Eda off the trail of the Sabers working with the Lagoon Company and also letting Dutch get all weird and philosophical... I'm happy with it, but it's weird all the same. Either way, it does get to the desired outcome, highlighting how easy it is to needle Rock now after... well, have you Lagoon manga readers figured out who died yet? Yeah, I bet you have.

Eda's Pet Naming: Not in the manga, but I think it's funny and kind of mean-spirited on Eda's part, so in it goes. Okay, what else to put in here...

What I'm Stealing From: You may have noticed, dear reader, that I'm writing a lot of Rock. Hell, the next chapter is mostly his perspective again. This is probably not a good thing, because even if I find him super interesting as a character, most people are probably here for the girls, not him. Too much Rock, too much of the Lagoon cast in general and the Sabers risk being only bit players in a larger drama, which they should not be. So that's a balancing act I haven't quite gotten the hang of. Anyway, there's one Lagoon fic I want to bring up real quickly that has had a major impact on how I think about the franchise. It's called Apotheosis, which is, in my opinion, perfect in every conceivable way. While it lacks the balls-to-the-wall super-action of Lagoon as we know it, it makes up for that by having really interesting prose, heartfelt character development, firm grounding in late 90's history, and really getting inside Rock's head, both his best impulses and his worst ones. It almost made me cry at the end, and the only reason I haven't reread it extensively is because I'm afraid I'll either succumb to Fic Envy and start kicking myself, or I'll just rip off chunks of characterization and plot wholesale. Which is kind of what I'm doing now to navigate the Lagoon cast as people, but to a lesser degree. The Sabers have to provide a catalyst, a reactant, stuff like that - that means the plot can't be the same thing beat-for-beat. It better not be. Are there other fics that have made me think about this franchise deeply? Yep. Sure are. But I don't think any are going to be as radically influential on this fic as Apotheosis. We'll see. I have high hopes for this project.

Anyway, rough draft of Chapter 4 is already done, it just has to get edited but it's pretty short. Next time, a deal will be made that will change the way you think about Roanapur forever...

#bubblegum crisis #fanfiction #black lagoon

[sablegear0]

So I’ve spent the last few days binge-reading the majority of the story scripts from the VN portion of Technoroid Unison Heart on the wiki.

This has answered some questions but raised others, mainly because not all of the story segments have been translated across all categories, yet. You can bet I’ll be keeping an eye on it, though. I’m invested.

But I have some thoughts and some theories about what I’ve read so far. So Technoroid spoilers (both game and anime) under the cut:

First, with reference to my previous post, I have some answers about Bora’s interlock mechanism. Some (but not all) androids have a special ability called an “expansion” (also mentioned in this ask here), the use of which tends to stress their hardware and decrease their operational time (read: superpowers that cost years of your life). The ability and cost differ between individuals, and usually it crops up due to a strong desire or stressor, but it seems like a few have theirs built in from the start.

Bora most likely had his built-in; his expansion allows him to suppress his interlock temporarily. Which makes perfect sense, given he was built as a police unit and force is sometimes necessary, but he still must abide by the laws of robotics overall. Notably there are at least two other androids with a similar ability, and both of them were constructed illegally. One works for Bora, the other for Nobel (iirc Ein’s isn’t confirmed, it's just described as "combat ability," but it is implied). I think it’s safe to assume that if there are other law enforcement androids, they probably have a similar expansion.

As for Nobel, I still have no clue, but that seems to be by design. Most of the Nobel-related chapters are yet to be translated at time of posting, so he’s still a big mystery, but I suspect he will continue to be so even if I’m able to get into the reading. I do have a minor theory brewing that his expansion, if he has one, somehow ties into or enables his capacity for deception.

Notably, it doesn’t seem to be mentioned anywhere in the game that androids are unable to lie to humans. It looks like that detail was introduced in the anime. The intent does sort of seem to be there; the android cast appear to get evasive rather than outright lie when there’s something they don’t want to say. But there are very few human characters in UH, so it’s difficult to judge if that’s an actual restriction or just Japanese mannerisms in the writing.

I may be able to get more info once Nobel’s materials are translated, but also he’s weirdly open about his extremely illegal hobby of building androids, so who knows. He doesn’t even get cagey about it, not even around Bora, so it is possible that he can’t lie, and operates on technicalities. But it’s also possible that he’s just confident that nobody can really do anything to stop him. The writing in UH makes it clear the government and police force are both totally opaque and slow to act, especially on robot-related issues (including a burgeoning synth-drug crisis - androids remain second-class citizens even post timeskip) so nobody is ever inclined to call the cops for any reason.

In addition to the main plot, reading the “unison stories” (multi-character shorts) has also given me a lot to think about in terms of fanfic, so I am very pleased. A lot of these shorts are very cute as well, and tend to fall into similar types as the cast bring their own particular elements (haha) to each scenario. Some of my favourite “types” are:

-Ruma is lost, again

-Bora appears to have hired two very excitable dogs instead of a pair of androids

-Zin’s cooking almost kills someone, again

-Nobel is out minding his own business and people are weirded out by his vibe; Nobel is very distressed by this

-Ein is the best butler

-A member of Franky♡Not bumps into Bora and treats him like a bodyguard

And of course the classic;

-The gang are looking for a missing pet, shenanigans ensue

That’s about all for now. You can probably expect fanfic soon if I can get my brain in gear 😅

#sable talks about media #technoroid #technoroid overmind #technoroid: unison heart #technoroid spoilers #links in post #guys help i love them so much

[smokedanced]

@solheimisms​ sent a bunch from this meme!

6. is there any other muse in this fandom you’d like to RP? (mass effect) :: Saren Arterius has really been a muse I’ve considered for a while... I’d also love to try writing Legion. Who knows if I end up testing either, though. But especially Saren? Let me adopt my villains. It’s just... eh, it’s hard, I’d have to either live in AUs or be limited to the first game, and also the way he’s an asshole is kind of distasteful to me too like. Even without being brainwashed by Sovereign. Like. I don’t mean that I don’t already RP muses that are absolutely distasteful to me as people but I mean, even in a fictional context there are flavours to him that I’m wavering about whether this is a type of villain I like, or dislike.

20. what’s a ship you don’t want to roleplay at all with this muse? (except Bad Illegal And Gross Stuff, of course) - for wren! :: I absolutely hate the way this question in the meme is worded and I’m gonna actually rant about that a little, because I’m vehemently pro-fiction/anti-censorship/ant-anti/whatever you wanna call it. Imagine thinking there are illegal ships? It’s fiction. Also “gross stuff” like me picking my nose is gross, I hate it when I know exactly what people mean but they water it down to “nasty/gross”. Also I write plenty of bad and gross stuff, thank you, even if not the stuff that I know this is referring to lol (for anyone in doubt, I clearly have it in my rules what I do/don’t write). Also just because I personally do not want to write certain themes - I’m friends with people who do, and I don’t, at all, mind following people who do, as long as they are tagging things properly and no real people are being harmed.

-inhales- thanks for coming to my ted talk

I find it actually difficult to think of a ship that I would not at all be open to exploring with Wren? This’d be an easier question for another fandom, LOL, because I’m extremely fluid with ships for Mass Effect. I mean I guess I’ve seen some Shepard/Hackett floating around AO3 and all my love to people who enjoy that, but I would never touch that myself. I guess along the same vein, I don’t think I’d ever romantically ship Wren with like. Anderson, either. Again, not here to shame other people’s preferences, please do you, but I personally do not see these being a possibility for my Shepard.

29. what are your honest thought about your muse’s canon? - for EDI! :: Well, my pipeline from “hmmm I wanna dabble with EDI” to “FUCK IT I WILL ADD HER” was being reminded of how the rogue VI on ME1 was like, EDI’s early code. While not technically EDI, iirc they used the same code for EDI later and, that VI’s (that let’s be real was practically an AI) first and last words were a call for help in binary code? I was immediately like. I need to write EDI and when she’s unshackled she will have access to these “memories” and fuck, I made myself emotional with that! But: I like that tidbit of the rogue VI.

Honest thoughts, like I had some controversial shit to share... I enjoy EDI’s canon- oh wait. Oh wait I do. I do have a strong opinion lol. That EDI (and the geth) have to die for the “best” ending for the trilogy! Like I didn’t fucking just broker a peace between the current civilisation’s major AI organic conflict just to have them all fucking die! Aaand this is why I mod my game lol. EDI having to die in the best ending... Like, I get the value of having to make sacrifices, but I don’t feel like this particular one was good writing. It’s not just because I like EDI and don’t want her to perish. I genuinely think it’s bad writing. I mean, everything about the ending of ME3 is bad writing imho. (All my love to people who enjoy the ending, this is valid, it’s fiction, different opinions are fine.) Other than that, I enjoy EDI’s canon, the character development from a shackled Cerberus AI to having freedom. I mean they could have given her a shirt or something for her mobile unit but... mods, and I don’t really care anyway.

#solheimisms #; outofsmoke #uhm... #discourse cw #oops

[wtflife01]

they are literally illegal based on the original regulations though? they literally confine how much skid plate can flex and both rbr and ferrari's exceed ? this is not "loophole". /:/

Technically what I’ve seen is the fia haven’t actually said they are illegal but they don’t fit what the regulations were meant for - so it was kind of a loophole but the fia didn’t like that since it was apparently discussed before hand but wasn’t actually put in the regs specific enough. The only reason this has been able to be changed now instead of next season is due to driver safety. If it wasn’t for the porpoising issue and the concern for drivers health, they would have had to wait until next season to make teams change their floors. It’s like with merc and when they had DAS. Didn’t match the regs but they were able to keep it for that season because driver safety wasn’t a concern and it technically wasn’t illegal at that time, it just didn’t fit the regs and they made it illegal the next season 🤷🏻‍♀️

//

anon, "they don’t fit what the regulations were meant for" is the textbook definition of illegal. ofc they aren't gonna use the word "illegal", i mean they didn't even use it for ferrari engine, even though they banned it. however, regs say that skid plate can flex up to 2mm (and ferrari and red bull's can flex to 6mm at high speed).

it is actually like the last year's rbr's rear wing saga, it passed the tests, however it was flexing more than allowed after exceeding some speed. since tests didn't check that condition, they used it until france gp iirc. the floor discussion is similar to that bc up until current regs, the front part of the skid plate was tested most (bc it contributed the air flow most due to the rake of the cars). however, the current cars don't have rake as dramatic as the previous ones bc of the ground effect. so idk maybe a loophole in the tests but definitely against the regs.

.

[scoreplings]

negative for covid btw i am just regular sick

#still have to quarantine cuz my mom was positive so its possible my test was wrong or that #my viral load was just too low to register #also. unrelated but hey any of my sw mutuals have tips on like. dealing with people being nasty about it. #i have therapy tmrw might bring it up to her but like. auau. talked 2 a friend today i thought was cool about it and they were not #n that shit hurted. a lil bit. #thank u if you do mwah mwah i love you #also really specific so i doubt but if anyone like. knows how safe it is to talk to a therapist abt that send me a message skdjr #technically none of what i do is illegal iirc but yknow. nervous.

[suppenzeit]

i think out of all the weird bureaucracy laws that finland has, the one that requires you to get a permit if you want to accept donations in any way might be the most annoying one

#:V #i know its for a good reason (so random people cant start fake charities) but also in current times i think it really should be overhauled #because technically even putting a donation button on your site is illegal! thats an illegal fundraiser in the eyes of the law! #patreon is in a VERY gray zone so no one knows for sure how legal it is #and also the permit isnt just something you can get iirc you have to have like a valid reason for it #anyway ive been rambling for way too long im just kinda peeved by the law rn

[flowers-of-io]

D'ya have any headcanons about the thanatonauts?

I feel like thanatonauts are these weird kids among the Guardian orders, and like. It's not technically illegal, but most folks raise their eyebrows at it. It's almost something of a subculture, even? Like for most of them it starts as a scientific endeavour but they end up spending more and more time with other thanatonauts because the rest of the Tower Does Not Understand even if they're not outward harassing you about that. So thanatonauts end up sticking together more and more & sharing the brainworms of being gothic nerds, and start to stick out as a group more and more from the general Tower crowd. I really can't help but see them as a bit quirky, pretentious folks, like these high school kids who quote Edgar Allan Poe in every essay and talk about the immortality of soul at 4 am at parties. (No offense, I was a bit of that kid too.) And they're doing real science and are very serious and devoted to it, and bring much good knowledge into the Guardian academics, but to the rest of the world they're mostly just the Weird Kids.

I also think older Guardians have mixed feelings about it, as thanatonautics seem to have only recently become a non-taboo thing. There's one entry when Ophiuchus scolds Ikora for dabbling in it as a young Guardian, and the Speaker wasn't much a fan either; but now there seems to be a somewhat official structure of the order as Ikora invites a thanatonaut and a Praxic (Aunor) for a talk with Osiris in iirc Season of Dawn weblore.

#ty for the ask! love me some 2 am warlock brainworms #headcanon #reply #thenightzedge #destiny 2

[sebastianshaw]

Not a dream but an idea that I had before bed the other night of like an AU What-If Hellfire Club that’s mostly compromised of X-Men who were members, but in this universe they were never X-Men at all, their allegiance is purely to the HFC. Plus Adrienne, Christian, Shinobi, and of course, Shaw. So the lineup would be Betsy - No purple hair dye here, she’s the blonde psychic with a (real) British accent in this universe. In addition to her 616 abilities, I’d also throw in some very weak/vague precognitive powers, because iirc she originally had those VERY early in her development back when she was a purely Captain Britain character. Very much the answer to Emma in this universe, but also definitely her own character, like this absolutely “Evil Betsy” not “Emma but we’re calling her Betsy” if that makes sense. This Betsy never joined the X-Men; instead her activities as a secret agent of S.T.R.I.K.E led her into deep cover in the criminal underworld, and upon seeing how well the illegal elite lived on the backs of others, how little change was affected any efforts to improve things, was corrupted into embracing her own status as a legal elite, leading her here.  Warren - Betsy’s husband. Just the basic wings, no Archangel stuff ever happened, and really he’s only here because of her, he’s just the sexy arm candy. Not much else to say about him. Sorry War.  Adrienne - While Adrienne proclaimed herself the White Queen in Generation X, complete with an elaborate costume that I just love, I don’t think she was actually an official Hellfire Club member. I think she was just mocking Emma. Here, she’s the real deal, though lacking the getup (I’m going with them all just wearing upscale designer dresses and suits, no lingerie or colonial-wear) Her talent of psychometry, while not much use in more openly aggressive groups like the X-Men or Brotherhood, is actually incredibly useful in the shadowy, subtle dealings of the Club, far more so than brute strength or, say, a diamond form. I wonder what did happen to Emma in this world. . . ? Christian- Here to get the development that canon has yet to give him, albeit in a darker direction. While ostensibly an ally to Adrienne in their mutual climb to power here, he’s ready to pay her back for the past the moment he no longer needs her----and she’s absolutely prepared for it. These two make a great team against others, but even better against one another in a constant game of who’s going to blink first. Ororo - In 616, Ororo’s brush with the Shadow King as a little girl was very brief. In this version, he did get her into his clutches as his new pet protege, and while she eventually escaped, the marks he left on her psyche have made her a much more malevolent---though no less majestic---weather witch than her canon counterpart. More chilling still, it gets implied that she has scraps of his power to posses or control others, as if he left a piece of him inside her. Very, very scary Storm. Roberto - A Roberto who embraced his father’s ideals rather than Xavier’s, who never met the New Mutants, who was mentored by Gideon, and who was eager to take Shaw’s hand when it was offered. His unsubtle powers are much less useful to the Club than, say, Adrienne or Betsy’s, but he brings plenty to the table as a business prodigy nonetheless.  Monet - Like I’m going to pass up a chance on getting Monet as the queen we should have had? Not that she isn’t a queen on her own, but you get what I mean. And speaking of mean, she is, but she still has this noblisse oblige, this sense that she should help others who are lesser than her. And who isn’t lesser than her? She’s just, in her pride, decided that she knows what’s better for people than they do, and that the ends justify the means.  And then, of course, the Shaws, because I love those assholes. There’s of course other characters that would be grand fun (Emma, Harry, Maddie, etc) but like I wanted to keep it mostly to the theme of “X-Men who were technically HFC members in 616 but in this version recruited by Shaw before Xavier and are Actually Evil” Shinobi is hot for literally everyone there except his dad btw.

#ideas #out of shirt