#My guy. That’s not a human being. That’s someone who has access to the author’s brain and knows everything the author does just ‘cause.

[anti-dazai-blog]

y'know, it's kinda ridiculous that dazai eventually won without much difficulty. in recent chapters of the manga, we witnessed for the first time that dazai was struggling so hard, which showed him less omnipotent than he was, and more human at the same time. but it turns out that he was making a fool out of fyodor all along!!!! he lost to the power of alliance!!!! ...excuse me? then what was meursault arc all for?

i love bsd, but there are too many things that annoy me, and the flaws of the series are rarely talked about. so im reaaally happy to see you criticizing the series. i love your blog sm, please never stop posting!! 💕

YES EXACTLY!!

Dazai’s omniscience does NOT help humanize him. All that it does is give him more accountability in everything that happens. He doesn’t get the luxury of pleading ignorance because at this point, the story has made that no longer believable. 

No matter what, Dazai knows everything all the time, doesn’t make mistakes in his plans and strategies, and is capable of anything. If this is the case, which I said it was semi-jokingly in the early days of this blog, he really can be held accountable for pretty much anything and everything happening. Which I’d really rather wasn’t the case.

One of the main themes of bsd is humanity. No one’s special or perfect, everyone’s a human being trying their best to get by. The Meursault arc did a pretty decent job of humanizing both Dazai and Fyodor, two characters who were previously shown as (intellectually) flawless, by having them struggle in their battle of wits against each other. Having both of them mess up or miscalculate in some way made them seem like real people and not just two algorithms playing chess. 

Having Dazai reveal in this final episode that he knew everything all along, everything went according to his plan, and there was never any challenge to begin with entirely defeats the purpose of the arc. What are we supposed to take away from this? That Dazai automatically wins any fight because he’s Dazai? That removes all stakes. 

Why continue watching a show if you’ve already been told that one specific character will always win—and not only that, but it won’t even be a struggle for him to get there, because he knows everything about everything all the time. 

I really, really hope that this was an anime-only ending. Asagiri can still fix this. Admittedly, bungo stray dogs has always been character-focused rather than plot-focused, so while I trust Asagiri to handle the characters better than this, I’m not really sure what to expect plot-wise. But I’m gonna hope for the best.

#Anti dazai asks #I like teenage Dazai because he makes mistakes! he messes up! #Dazai didn’t know about arahabaki— Dazai didn’t know that Chuuya would choose not to kill N— Dazai didn’t know how to save Oda #Main manga Dazai knows the entire plot of the next ten arcs before they even begin #My guy. That’s not a human being. That’s someone who has access to the author’s brain and knows everything the author does just ‘cause. #Dazai skipped over breaking the forth wall and jumped straight to the fifth sixth seventh wall #However many walls it takes to enter the author of your story’s brain #Unless it’s revealed that Dazai has the book and learned about timelines or whatever happened in Beast #Idk I’ve never read Beast but if he’s gaining his omniscience now from the book that would at least be an explanation #not a fantastic one in my opinion but better than nothing #Bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #dazai

[xagave]

pleasepleaseplease recommend some danphan fics!!

Sorry these are on ff.net I was into danphan before AO3 was really A Thing. Invisobang also just completed and a whole wack of new fics are also now out for your enjoyment so I suggest taking a look there too Lab Rat - Danny (as Phantom) is captured by his parents and vivisected in the lab. THE MOST iconic dp fic from this era of fandom and also the first dp fic I ever read which single-handedly got me into the fandom. I also recommend anything else by this author[sequel]

Pits - Danny is captured by Walker and thrown into the Pits to fight for his life. HANDS DOWN my all time favorite dp fic. I drew a bunch of fanart for it and never showed the author LMAO [sequel]

In The Way - A twisted tale of a summer spent all alone

Wondering - Danny's been captured and tortured by his parents, but he refuses to say a word until his psychiatrist starts connecting the dots. Can he risk keeping it a secret any longer?

Dreams of Light - A cute box ghost fic with a fun twist at the end

Phantom's Sketchbook - Mr. Lancer finds himself in an unparalleled situation, he has access to something which can give him incredible insight into the personal workings of Amity Park's local ghost teen hero, Danny Phantom

Masks - Lancer has had enough of his most enigmatic, frustrating student Daniel Fenton and forces him to stay in detention with him until Danny tells him The Truth. A story examining Danny's relationship with the human race. Another BIG FAVE of mine [sequel]

Darkness - Part 1 of Illuminations saga. [part 2][part 3][part 4] Maddie and Phantom are trapped in the dark and must work together to avoid dying. I don't remember much about this but I do remember it being super creepy and I bulldozed my way through all 4 parts so it must have been good lol

I'm Still Here - Danny's been locked away in a forgotten thermos, buried in the backyard for 70 years. When he's finally released, happy isn't the word he'd use to describe his new life

Real Life - A very creepy take on ghosts and the events of the show, where they're more inhuman, feral, and scary. I don't remember much about this but it's unfinished

Lopeholt - Valerie must survived the night in the third scariest place on earth. **VERY** creepy, I remember reading this in the dark and it gave me nightmares. Another top fave. I def recommend reading anything else by this author

Running to the Enemy's Arms - Danny runs away and ends up on the doorstep of the person who's dead last on his list of favorite people - Vlad. Danny/Vlad father son relationship. A fun and interesting view of what Danny's life would be like had he been the son Vlad always wanted. Incomplete but also another BIG FAVE of mine. Tolerate the first 1-2 chapters and the rest is golden

Checkmate - Vlad forces Danny to leave everything behind in order to save Jazz's life. But just when the billionaire believes to have won his chess game against his young rival, Danny makes a single unexpected move.

A Secret Uncovered - Danny's transformation is caught on tape and now the whole town knows who he is Photoshop - Dash and Kwan find an old class picture and start having a little too much fun on Photoshop. Will someone's secret be revealed?

Chained - It starts with a fire at the Guys in White headquarters, where a vengeful Valerie stumbles across an imprisoned Danny Phantom. It starts with injustice. But what happens when justice and revenge are confused for one another? Where does a hero end, and a villain begin?

Phantom of Truth - Locked away in a secret government lab with Phantom as her subject, nothing stands between Maddie and the truth… except, perhaps, herself [Sequel]

The Soul Sepulchre - Something foul is stirring in Amity Park and it all starts in the bowels of Amity Park's Museum of Natural History

Moral Code - Moral code says to never kill or capture a specimen that you did not weaken yourself. Maddie finds Danny Phantom wounded late at night after a hard battle. After she helps him, she finds there is more to him than she ever thought possible. Mother/son bonding

Connections - Maddie knows that the Booo-merang has keyed into Danny, for whatever reason, so what's she to think when she sees it collide with Phantom? [Sequel]

Isolated - It's just a wish that's been granted with the wrong twist, but for Danny, it's a nightmare that's become reality. He's stuck as Phantom, his family's hunting him, and everyone who can help him is gone

Little Earthquakes - They say that a man is defined by what he does when he thinks nobody's looking. Does the same hold true for ghosts?

Tortured Truth - Danny's parents discover that the ghost boy is half human. Now that they've captured Danny, will he submit to torture and reveal himself, or is the revelation just the beginning of their problems? [Sequel]

Estrelas - AU. Sam's attention is captured by a lonely ghost haunting her grandmother's attic…and discovering his secrets will take everything she has.

Criteria of Life - Every living thing must follow the Laws of Life; however, Maddie wonders if Phantom can somehow follow these laws as well. The fact that he is a ghost is putting a knick in her plans, but what if Phantom can follow the Laws of Life?

#ask #danny phantom fic recs #i have soooo many danphan fics to rec but alas tumblr character limit #def recommend checking out invisobang though #it was my first year participating and i cant wait to look at everyones stuff when i have the time :0

[komorezuki]

Angelic unacceptable cybersecurity practices: what exactly is fucked in Heaven and what thoughts does this lead to?

After the conversation with @raining-stars-somewhere-else and his post about Saraqael I have pondered a bit and now I want to be "that guy" about heavenly security policy as an IT person and wannabe-cybersecuritist.

Disclaimer 1 - there are no conclusions here. I am trying to compile my observations related to Heavenly data and lay out kinda a tree graph of possible explanations. But I doubt I’ll be able to choose the most possible coherent interpretation.

Disclaimer 2 - english is not my first language so I might make some (many) mistakes.

No onboarding for low ranked angels (not sure it s really a vulnerability)

This fandom (but not me sry) loves naive and curious Muriel, but what I am focused on is why archangels dont give an incompetent low ranked angel some instructions. Actually, main question is why Saraqael didn't entrust the surveillance to other more professional angelic spy.  In terms of common sense,  there is not a single reason why that should be Muriel. But Saraqael’s intention is unclear to us, so I can brainstorm the variety of versions:

They hadn’t considered. Simplest variant, but this decision is seeming  too failed to be a mistake. I really don't believe Saraqael could just overlook this, they seem smart.

An attempt to WARN. A spy who is so easy to get busted is making it clear to husbands that they are being watched. Also note that even Muriel’s heavenly outfit seems to be more fitting for Earth than shining Inspector-Constable’s suit.

An attempt to threat the same way.

A setup for Michael and Uriel, it might be a part of some undercover games and a power struggle.

Michael & Uriel gave this task to Muriel along the way. Because ineffable husbands aren’t the only ones who don’t like to strain.

They never changed passwords

“you'd have to be a throne or a dominion or above”

Okay that seems to be redundant. Demon’s invasion is not the regular occurrence. Apparently heavenly passwords represent some sort of a cast of the celestial soul and angels can just touch a folder. And there are no new angels in the office BUT.

What about personnel reshuffles that happened canonically?

Example 1. After Crowley had made some troubles Azi has been demoted from Cherub to Principality. It means that he could have had access to confidential folders earlier and he might still have it as a principality.

Example 2. Maybe, Gabriel with erased memory would have it too, but if we assume that new memory = new identity, then it is a controversial issue. Anyway, this password policy is totally fucked up.

Another explanation is based on on the second assumption that angels receive their passwords externally. What if Crowley wasn't a Throne or a Dominion or above? WHAT IF HE HAS STOLEN ACCESS.

Always asking damn fool questions, isn’t he? Fell for this? One of the most popular hacking attack vectors is social engineering. It implies that you are using psychological manipulations to get access to secure data.  It is not so hard for humans to steal password this way. And it would be so easy for one creative angel who is brilliantly sweet-talking and successfully prying all necessary information. Yeah he literally fell for questions. This angel (or demon) also might hack other angelic devices like Michael’s smartphone or Saraqael’s memory manager as well. He has room to move around.

Strangers allowed

Small appetizer: a critical issue of angelic nature - they are worse at detecting  demonic presence (Gabriel didn’t recognize Beelzebub) than demons and they are too naive (not all of them, okay).

So. Any object with confidential info requires a pass-entry system. But here we have a case of someone (worse than that, a demon) whose presence at office was not sanctioned by the system. I guess a low-ranking angel doesn’t have authority to do that. Anyway no one can reveal his disguise by default. As we have seen in s1ep6 a demon can even take a certain angel’s appearance. Who said that other demons cannot do the same?

And now we are going to to discuss a fucking disaster

Possible imposter

A demon can enter the Heaven accompanied by an angel (Eric in s1, Crowley).

A demon has the ability to disguise as an angel and may not be revealed (example: Crowley as Azi).

And there’s one angel in Heaven who miracles like demons do (by waving hand upwards).

I mean, what if there is more than one grapevine. And here I also have a variety of versions for “demon Saraqael” theory:

Sara has fallen with other demons and they are still pretending. Unlikely scenario bc i don’t believe that they had not been revealed in the last 6 millenia.

Demonic spy. This version explains  why they sent Muriel (look at setup version 4 about Muriel). An unknown demon disguised by Saraqael is sabotaging angelic investigation. What has happened with true Sara?

Other variant - demonic spy, but Michael (a grapevine) is in the loop.

A voluntary body swap. We still don’t know Saraqael’s ineffable game. 

Wait, what? An ineffable game? They are Almighty?

Anyway, that’s all for today. I don’t know which of all this versions is better (you are dark horse, Saraqael), but we all like to be be fussy about details like gestures, so maybe someone has better ideas about demonic invasion in Heaven.

#good omens 2 #good omens #good omens meta #goodomens #good omens theories #good omens heaven #saraqael #go2 #go2 meta #crowley #good omens demons #demon!saraqael

[venerawrites]

Hi! I loved your Gaara, Itachi and Kakashi ideal partner could you please add Kisame and Sasori? My sis fell head over heels with them

author's note: I am not gonna lie, these two were quite challenging, but in the end I really enjoyed writing this! I hope you enjoy and thank you so much for requesting! <3

➤ Kisame

Occupation - I am not really sure it counts as an "occupation", but the only realistic partner for him would be another rogue ninja part of Akatsuki. I imagine he needs to know them for quite a while before he even look at them in a romantic light.

Looks - Kisame would not fall for a normal looking human, there has to be either something animal-like about their features or just something extra ordinary about their appearance. I also think he would really like his partner to be quite tall, since he is a big guy and he doesn't really like the idea of having to bend his whole body just to kiss his lover. Since he likes fighting and battles a lot, I see him with someone quite muscular and fit, who is not afraid to show off their battle scars (which Kisame absolutely loves!).

Personality - I don't think Kisame is picky about a personality, as long as they share his most important value: LOYALTY. I think he would get along the best with a warrior type of person, who loves battling just as much as him, but who also has a softer side, which they only show to him once they both take care of their wounds. I imagine Kisame being the type of man to give himself fully to their partner, so he expect the same for them - once they promise their body and soul to him, there is no going back. Outside the battlefield, I imagine them as someone confident, maybe even a bit arrogant and cocky. They would enjoy their fearsome reputation and would always stand on business.

➤ Sasori

Occupation - I totally imagine Sasori with some sort of engineer/inventor, who likes to build everything from toy trinkets to actual weapon. While they may not be rogue ninja themselves, they will be involved in some sort of illegal trade with Akatsuki.

Looks - in order to get his attention in the first place, his ideal partner has to really stand out from the general public. I imagine him being intrigued by someone who has more unconventional looks - bright colourful hair, maximalist fashion style and a lot of accessories. They probably carry different instruments hidden in their jewellery, such as their rings or bracelets, so they are easily accessible to them at any time.

Personality - I believe he would only show interest if he believes the person is truly unique, so his ideal partner would probably be just as eccentric as their looks. I imagine him with someone who is a total opposite of him, yet with whom they share a lot of common interests - someone who loves to create and share his view of art, but at the same time is unpredictable and manages to bring a dose of excitement into his life and make him feel alive (even just for a bit). A relationship with Sasori would always be toxic, so I kind of think his partner has to be a bit on the mad side, just so they can handle him. As someone who creates and build, they would also need to be able to think outside the box and not be afraid to challenge him.

cc artwork: Aleksandr Pronin

#kisame hoshigaki #kisame x reader #sasori #sasori x reader #akatsuki #akatsuki headcanons #akatsuki x reader #naruto imagines #naruto headcanons

[bondsmagii]

Man if we are talking about bad takes I have one for you: this whole eat the rich movement

And you know why? People can't discern who the rich are!! Like they are coming after doctors and lawyers and artists, people who made their money working, instead of focusing in the people who made their money by exploiting people like businessmen which is the whole point and my god people are goddamn stupid like the whole point of eating the rich was to go against exploitation "boss makes a dollar I make a dime" and like thats 99% of rich people yet Tumblr users see a doctor with a vacation house and lose it completely like my dude having money is not the problem, the problem is when people have money because they took it from you!! Anyways the whole thing has become such a joke and if I see one more person talking about celebrities when they say eat the rich imma legit lose it because taylor swift might be rich but she's rich bc you bought her stuff my guy not because she made you work and took about all of your profit

So yeah a lot of bad takes on this site that come from good places but have zero critical thinking behind it

people not being able to identify the Actual Rich terrifies me. like, they do realise that they're reinventing the concept of kulaks, right?

to an extent, I can get the idea of people being pissed off at very rich doctors in countries like America, where the healthcare system is there for profit. that's exploitative and fucked up, and while I understand that not all doctors are in it for the money, granted some of them are and they are using an exploitative system to get it -- but the real issue there is the healthcare system, rather than individual doctors. (in the UK, the idea of a rich healthcare professional is actually laughable, unless they're a private practise, which isn't as loaded here as you choose to go private and pay money; if you don't, you still have access to healthcare.)

as for everything else, especially when it comes to the arts... shit, man. it worries me, how so many people on this website will wax poetic about how art is worth so much, and artists are angels, etc, but boy howdy they sure don't want to pay artists. people are out there thinking the price of a book is exploitative because it prices out poorer people, without considering the fact that the whole £8.99 doesn't go to the author's pocket -- it pays the author, and everyone who marketed the book, and who edited it, and who did the art for the cover, and who bound the book, and who organised its distribution, etc. it's the same with singers, or movie stars, as well as fundamentally forgetting the fact that you consensually part with your money in order to have something you enjoy. it's not the same as having your wages literally stolen from you by a billionaire.

generally speaking, these people make their money because they're good at something. enough people think that Taylor Swift is good that they've bought her songs and made her rich. enough people like Stephen King's books that they've bought them and made him rich. movie stars are rich because they make good movies and people want to see them. they work. and none of these jobs are easy! they're hard fucking work, and a lot of people are involved in the finished product and they all need to be paid. super-rich billionaires and multi-millionaires, who hoard wealth and underpay employees and cut corners, are usually only talented at making money, and this is because they're despicable human beings. they also have more wealth than they could ever use even in a dozen lifetimes, and they remove it completely from the economy, and they use its influence to seek power and undercut laws and generally make the world a worse place, and they're in a whole different league. the kind of wealth we're seeing right now is supervillain levels of rich.

when there's issues like that, I really don't give a shit if someone who did 12 years of college and residency and who's worked 12 hour days minimum for 25 years has a vacation house. we'll discuss the ethics of multiple houses in a housing crisis when we've dealt with the bigger problems, like the multi-billionaire born to a blood emerald empire hoarding insane amounts of cash and contributing precisely nothing to society, for example. a large chunk of society's problems could be solved or at least on their way to being improved if we didn't have hoarding billionaires and starvation wages.

#anon #asks

[quaranmine]

Book Reviews with Quara

Since I keep talking about audiobooks, now I want to do a sort of mini book review of the books I've read since starting to "seriously" pick up reading again last year. Also I just like typing about things. I'm skipping Fire Season by Philip Connors and Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams because I've spoken about them already. Keep in mind I am not super-super critical of reading material; generally if I enjoyed it I'm giving 5 stars. If I disliked it though I get a lot more critical because then I want to start analyzing what didn't work for me. Now go forth and learn about what my reading taste is when I'm not reading/writing angsty mcyt fanfic!

Books I loved, aka 5 stars:

Cold Storage by David Koepp

This was the first book I checked out from Libby and it was a banger. I am still trying to replicate that high tbh. When I gave my mom access to my library card in Libby (her rural library has nothing and my city library has everything) I made her check it out too. The narration on the audiobook is fantastic. My mom raved about the narration and basically says she doesn't want to check anything out that wasn't as good--regularly her reviews to me are "good narrator, not as good as that Cold Storage book" lmao. You may know David Koepp as the guy who wrote the Jurassic Park screenplay. This is his first novel.

It's about a mutated fungus that is a sci-fi version of the very real Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which is more commonly known as the zombie-ant fungus. In this book, a version of Cordyceps can infect all lifeforms, including humans, and has been locked away deep in a former US military vault that has since been sold and converted into an underground storage facility. The plot follows two unlikely protags who work in the storage facility, as well as the two retired military people who are the only ones to have seen the fungi in action, as they try to prevent it from being released into the world. It's funny, horrifying, and gory.

They are making a movie of this book. The release date is tentatively 2024, but I worry about it because I have heard so little news on it. They did do filming though. I have high hopes because they cast Joe Keery as a main character, which I think is perfect casting for the guy in question. I have low hopes because they cast Liam Neeson, a white man, as a character who was originally Hispanic and (as I just noticed while writing this) changed the character's name to be more white. Ugh. Who is Robert Quinn and what did you do with Roberto Diaz???????

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

What if you got kidnapped and woke up in a parallel world where everybody knew who you were, but they think you're someone else? What if you're just a quantum physics professor, but this other version of you is a successful theoretical researcher? What if your wife never married you in this universe, and your son was never born? How do you get back home? This book is constantly pulling out interesting new questions, twists, and places to explore. Also I liked that while it does feature romance pretty prominently, it's about a guy who just really loves his wife of 15 years and wants to see her again. I just like it when men love their wives.

Also, a fair amount of Goodreads reviews poke fun at this author for having way too much fun hitting the enter key on his keyboard, but since I listened to the audiobook I never had to deal with any annoying formatting choices lol

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

I feel like we all know about this one already, tbh. If you don't, heavy tw for child abuse and eating disorders. Tread carefully. It's worth it though if you are confident you won't get triggered. If you haven't read it I recommend the audiobook specifically because Jennette narrates it herself and that gives the book so much extra. It was a 6 hour audiobook and I was gripped by it all day.

Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

BACKWARDS TIMELOOP BABEYY!!! This one was great. It's about a Mom who witnesses her teenage son kill a man. Every day she wakes up in the past again until she can solve why this happened, the mystery leading up to it that entangles her family, and try to prevent it. First she ways up the day before, then two days, then three, then a two weeks, then a few months, then a few years--until her son hasn't even been born yet. I enjoyed it. Also a plus for British accent narrator (can you tell I'm American....)

A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong

This one was fun. I checked it out because it was longish and I had to drive like 8 hrs roundtrip for a work trip, so I listened to this the entire way. It's about a (Canadian) woman named Mallory who was a police detective in the modern day, who gets attacked while out for a jog in Edinburgh, Scotland. The attacker strangles her and she goes unconscious. When she wakes up, however, she finds herself in someone else's body--in the Victorian era. She's now a 19 year old housemaid, and has to adapt as quickly as possible to avoid suspicion. She quickly finds out that she works for a man named Dr. Duncan Gray, who is a medical examiner. And there's a person who's been murdered in a very similar way to how Mallory herself was attacked. And she's quickly finding out that the person who's body she's in was not well-liked.

My favorite part about this one is the emphasis it has on early forensics in Victorian Scotland. Dr. Gray is a fantastic character and it is so interesting to see him doing his lil cutting-edge forensics research (which Mallory, being educated in modern times, wants desperately to help him with.) Also the narrator, while being Canadian, does Scottish accents for all the Scottish characters. I'm not the best person to ask as someone who isn't Scottish but I thought the accents sounded pretty good lol

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

My mom recommended this one to me. It's also a lot of fun. The title is, mostly, accurate. Ernest Cunningham (protag) is a writer, who mostly creates how-to books for mystery novelists he sells on Amazon. No, he doesn't write mysteries, he just writes the how-to books. But he's very well-versed in the "rules" of how to write a classic mystery! He promises that, as the narrator of this story, he will always be an entirely reliable narrator. The book itself is obviously fiction but within the narrative of the book, it is being told like a nonfiction account of something that the main character is writing down. This book is sort of a bottle mystery--strange murders while everyone is snowed in at a ski resort during a family reunion, anyone? The main character is funny and breaks the fourth wall often. I am convinced that there is a separate audiobook specific version since the narration within the book references it being an audiobook. The main character will be like "so, you probably realize this isn't the real killer, since we still have 4 hours of the book left to listen to" lol. I almost want to check out a print copy of this to see if the text is different.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

First one on the list that I didn't listen to as an audiobook. Honestly, I probably read this book in 4 hours flat. Three of those hours just dead-focused while on a plane (with the book's hold expiring as soon as I landed and took my phone off airplane mode.)

I don't really know how to explain this one. I don't think I understood what it was about until I actually got like 4 chapters in and then I couldn't stop. It's just off-the wall ridiculous. There are talking cats. There are dolphins that want to unionize. There is a volcano lair. There are explosions and assasination attempts. There is a reasonably bleakly accurate capitalist picture of what "villainy" means in our world. There is a poor main character in over his head as he learns he's inherited all this from an uncle he never saw. This book is like...satire comedy. Comedy and outlandish but you're also depressed about billionaires a little while reading it.

Books I thought were Okay (3-4 stars but actually I gave both these 4 stars I think)

The Poisoner's Ring by Kelley Armstrong

The second book to the book I mentioned above. Honestly, I remember very well what the first book was about (i typed the summary by memory) but I have trouble remembering specifics about this one. It's a bit too long as well, at 14 hours. I don't have anything bad to say about it, I just didn't enjoy it quite as much as the first one.

But honestly I do remember it was still a good time. I just really like Dr Gray as a character and the setting, early forensic science focus, etc. These books are also setting up to be an EXTREME slow burn romance between Gray and Mallory, which I don't mind. (Literally by book 2 the most we have is that she thinks he's attractive, so at this rate it will take us 3 more books to get anywhere lol.) I will be checking out the 3rd book when it is released this spring.

Someone Else's Shoes by Jojo Moines

Also a book that suffered from being too long. It's a 12 hour audiobook but I think that it could have been 8 or 9 hours and gotten the same point across. My mom recommended this to me. It's narrated by Daisy Ridley, who does a good job. I enjoyed it, but I also started to feel like I really wanted it to be done?

Also unsure how to describe this one. Slightly-contrived-but-cute plot about how a bag switch up in a gym connects two women's stories. One is a, frankly quite annoying, American woman who married rich but has now been completely cut off from her money (and even passport) by her ex-husband who's cheating on her with a younger woman. One is a British woman with low self-esteem and a bad job who is struggling to keep her family afloat while her husband suffers from severe depression. I think my favorite was a side character named Jasmine who brought light to every scene imo.

Books I disliked (2 stars but after writing this review I almost want to make it 1 star)

Aurora by David Koepp

David I really believed in you after Cold Storage. But imo, this book isn't it. It throws away every interesting part of its apocalypse-level plot to focus on the characters. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love a good character-focused plot, except I never connected with anyone in the book. I just kind of didn't enjoy any of them. This is a story that is supposed to be about a solar flare taking out all electricity and communications for most of the world. And it only covers like a few days after the disaster AND THEN TIME SKIPS LIKE 8 MONTHS UNTIL EVERYTHING IS HAPPILY SOLVED NEIGHBORHOOD UTOPIA STYLE. I'm sorry????? Assuming I can believe that this little suburban Illinois cul-de-sac has managed to set up subsistence farming in a few months and is living perfectly happily, why would you....not show me how that happened.....

Also the "everything fits together" character moment at the end felt unearned. I was like yeah, okay, I guess this slots together. But the author didn't earn that moment for me. Instead of connecting with the characters and the plot and getting invested I felt like I was just being....told that everything worked out?? Or told that this was an important moment instead of actually Feeling the moment? It's hard to explain but I was like ok great thanks let's all go home now.

Sigh. I just can't get over the whole "throwing away the most interesting part of your setting" part. Again. Why would you spend a significant time setting up the science and how much of a disaster the solar flare is and then not show any of the characters figuring out how to survive it long-term....?

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

This book has such a high rating. It's very popular right now. It took me like 12 weeks of waiting for my hold to come up, and that's with the library having 7 copies.

It is, supposedly, about a smart octopus named Marcellus who helps an elderly lady solve the mystery of her son's disappearance at sea when he was a teenager.

In practice, it is about one minute at a time of Marcellus (the best part of the book) and extended sections of characters that I don't care about at all. I assume all the pieces of the story were supposed to come together later, but I was just highly bored. I was so bored that I DNF'd at 25% when my hold was up. I do not care enough to wait weeks to check it out again. Based on the one star reviews I read, the characters I didn't like did not develop into better people later and remained similarly annoying. Now, I don't need characters to be good people of course. But I do expect to be interested in them. I still don't know how the son's disappearance factors in because I felt like I heard barely anything about the supposed main character woman.

I feel vindicated because my coworker also checked out the book and told me a few weeks ago that she was at 50% and there still wasn't anything happening in the plot. I will ask her tomorrow if she finished it or not and if it ever got better.

Write an entire book for Marcellus the octopus and I'll check it out...

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn

This book had so much potential. It's about a group of four women who were formerly assasins but are now retiring at 60. To celebrate retirement, they go on a cruise and then realize that they're the new targets for assasination, presumably because they know too much about the organization that used to employ them.

In execution....very meh. I actually had a Libby glitch on this one, where I think I missed about 1.5 hrs of narration total because the book skipped twice. I have no concept of which parts I missed. What I do know is that, the book was already so cobbled together before the first skip that I didn't realize I had missed anything until the end. Like sure, parts didn't make sense, but I was ready to accept that it was just Like That since the rest of the book was like that. After reading a bunch of reviews of this book I am convinced that there is NO way that all of its flaws can be explained by me missing a small part. After all, I did listen to 8.5 hours of it still.

The characters never felt their age to me. I felt like they either acted like they were 80 or 90, or like they were 20. It just seemed odd to me. The characters also felt very 2D, like the author wrote down three traits per person and called it good. There's a younger woman who appears to know the main character and conveniently helps the group, but I literally never figured out where their relationship originated or how they knew each other. Maybe I missed that too. By the end of the book I still didn't know who anyone was and couldn't remember which person was the main character. The plot jumped around to new locations constantly and often with little transition--this happened even on the parts where I definitely didn't get a skipping glitch. The main villain was a guy I literally had barely heard anything of til that point, although perhaps he came up in the 1.5 hrs I missed. They described the same painting in excruciating detail THREE separate times. It was...too feminist? Feminist in a contrived way where I have to be reminded every 5 minutes the characters are women? Like, I know, I am reading a story about women. Please don't mention it several times a chapter. There are ethical and moral considerations about their profession and chosen organization that never really get given the weight required. There was a love interest for the main character that I hadn't heard of once until he was introduced like an hour from the end--maybe I missed more about him in the parts I skipped? Unknown.

ANNND THAT'S ALL FOLKS!!!

#quara talks books #my current book is mr penumbra's 24 hr bookstore by robin sloan and i'm not getting promising vibes from it 30% in #i'm gonna try to finish it but....the mc kind of annoys me #but i could live with that! #what i can't live with is the author's incessant need to talk about google constantly. there's a character who works for google. #does the author have a thing for google....?? why do they wanna **** google's ***** in this random presumably unaffiliated book???? #also more product placement vibes like macbooks and kindles coming up a lot #like dude. please. stop. you promised me mysterious bookstore not megacorp tech worship #also the tech talk hasn't aged super well in this book imo #a bit amusing to read about people being very wowed by someone attending a party 'virtually' via webcam #in the post pandemic work from home era of zoom meeetings and teams meetings etc #also getting manic pixie dreamgirl vibes from main love interest #ANYWAY. stay tuned to see if I have to put this book in the middle or bottom tier (it's already missed its chance at 5 stars)

[deathbyautopilot]

Social Connections, Severed Wires - The Rise of Short-Form Intimacy

Written by Sophia 🌀

In a Logic Mag interview with Digital Media lecturer Ysabel Gerrard, the state of the internet is summed up by vague mental health rhetoric; It is both harmful – increasing feelings of insecurity, depression, and loneliness – and potentially lifesaving, fostering tight-knit communities especially for queer, mentally ill, or otherwise socially ostracized groups.

Of course, with the function of each social media platform evolving quicker than content moderation or sociological studies can begin to address, it's a Sisyphean task to try to find a single answer to the question “What is the internet doing to young people?”. As Gerrard said, it's hard to draw any generalized conclusion about the internet's effects because it is so highly contextual. But I want to take a more critical perspective on these online communities for their feigning of intimacy and love for the sake of self-gratification.

Art by Holly Warburton

When I reminisce about 2014 Tumblr, I first think about how it normalized queerness for so many young people, helping to form lifelong friendships and communities that made middle school a little less miserable. It introduced me to feminist theory, artistic expression, and new perspectives that I never would have experienced in my class of eight people. But it was also an era of wallowing in your own misery and #Depression-posting that predates the adult content ban. Ironically enough, in my trip through the relics of this site, I had to scroll past no less than three graphic images of self-harm just to find a post as iconic as this one:

When scholars like Gerrard speak on the double-edged sword of these online communities from a perspective of content moderation or outside observation, I feel that they miss out on just how low the lows were, and still are, for those participating in these spaces.

Mental illness is competitive. When someone spends their offline life craving recognition or love from their peers, authority figures, and family, in their yearning, they spiral. The internet is an accessible echo chamber of validation under the guise of community support. These online spaces are committed to suffering because it’s so often the only clear way that you connect with each other.

This is why I can't fully sympathize with the perspective that these spaces are positive support systems. I can't in good faith even reference the #Pro Ana tag here as a prime example for just how harmful they are. These are not spaces of love and healing - it's the result of placing something as intimately human as our isolation and loneliness into the hands of something so cold, lifeless, and inhuman. 

"Our hearts connect with lots of folks in a lifetime but most of us will go to our graves with no experience of true love.” - bell hooks

These issues only seem worse when I turn to contemporary TikTok, a platform where each person’s feed is fully customized, making it even harder to understand its effects on our well-being. Whenever I open the app, it’s a complete toss-up between artists sharing their work, Family Guy clips, and what Haley Nahman coined in a Substack essay as “Short-Form Intimacy” - paralleling the worst of Tumblr.

“TikTok satisfies our desire to experience the world in its full spectrum, but only superficially. ‘It's not going to stay with you,’ said [Sociologist Alison Hearn, Media Studies professor at Western University] ‘It's not a real solution to the problem of social connection.’”

Edit by kamrynmarie._ on TikTok

Maybe it’s a short-form personal anecdote, or maybe it’s a young girl crying because she can’t bear the weight of it all anymore. I see so many people desperately turning to the illusion of a community that has never, and likely never will, hold you in their arms and tell you that you are loved. People who won’t sit on your bed with you and talk late into the night about your fears, your ambitions, your love, and your pain. Instead, they will leave a comment of sympathy, maybe go so far as to tap the quick-follow button to be a bit closer to this person, but ultimately the majority of users will just go right back to their escapist scroll through their neverending For You page.

It's a concerning trend, but I'm more concerned for the person behind the screen, who sat in their misery for so long that they could only prop up their phone, hit record, and hope that somebody will hear them.

In times like these, when love and intimacy come into question, I turn to bell hooks, a radical black feminist whose seminal work All About Love: New Visions responds to lovelessness in contemporary society. She believed that true love and intimacy are incompatible with consumerism since material desires are so much easier to satisfy than the void that loneliness leaves us with.

TikTok promotes an individualist, consumerist culture as it stands post-pandemic, where alienation has us all realize that the dopamine hit from each scroll is a far easier fix than emotional fulfillment.

“But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” - bell hooks

In a social landscape that ostracizes young people further and further, pushing them into the online sphere if they want to foster meaningful relationships, it is no wonder that these platforms have become emotional graveyards. Tumblr nostalgia is in full swing and the imminent loss of Twitter feels like such a devastating loss to so many different communities. I just hope that TikTok goes next. Hell, I’d stoop as low as Facebook if it meant I could love online like I did when I was 12.

#death by autopilot #bell hooks #all about love

[will-o-the-witch]

Hey idk if this is too late to the party but as far as the godkin/child of X-deity thing goes I tend to be wary of ppl who specifically use what I can "small caps voice" (after the way Death from the Discworld books speaks) whether or not they are actually using small caps typeface. Small caps voice usually involves some of the things that other ppl have described in previous asks

Asserting undo authority over others by using their name or epithets or background to put pressure on others

Pushing and ignoring boundaries around saying someone has exclusive access to knowledge abt a God or Gods that others are not privy to

Pushing and ignoring boundaries around giving divination or prophetic advise on behalf of said God or Gods

Generally sounding like a 4kids anime dub version of that diety and using a lot of unasked for pet names and using the words human mortal or child in a way that is patronizing

Small caps voice can come from ppl who are kin, systems, channelers, God spouses, and children of deities and it good to know how to spot it bc when it's not an instance of genuine ignorance or social faux pas it's usually to sell you something and you should be wary.

We are someone with a no small caps house rule and generally just do not want to be in a position of power generally so we take great pains to make others aware, especially as far as system stuff goes, we run on "just some guy" mode and ppl outside oursystem are welcome to treat fronters like friends with weird jobs. And nothing more. Everyone needs to take a break sometimes and being multitudinous has its perks.

If you know someone in your life who has a habit of using small caps voice maybe gently inquire abt why. My hunch is that a lot of ppl feel disempowered and helpless and want very desperately to be heard understood and be taken seriously so they look to figures of authority to help legitimize them and divinity is a very accessible and flexible and multifaceted mask to wear. Your friend might just need to be heard on their own terms and needs help feeling understood in a world that tries so so hard to devalue us.

(Idk if you remember but this is @redjaspersfalls main bc I'm perpetually stuck on mobile. Sorry if there's typos )

Hi pal!

And YESS this! I've never heard it called "Small Caps Voice" but i like it and thank you for putting a word to it. So many people don't realize how easily it can be a manipulation tactic.

Some people probably definitely do it to serve their own ego/insecurities, but I think it can still do emotional damage to whoever is receiving it. Even if you know someone is higher status than you in a situation (more experience, team leader, etc.) they should still never speak to you in this manner. One of those "We can possibly see why they do it, but a person isn't obligated to put up with it" things in my mind.

All that said, if someone is going beyond talking down to you and is trying to assert undue authority over you/put themselves in between you and your spiritual practice, RUNNN 👟

[foraging-beast]

everything i hated about the reanimator novelization 💚

(bear in mind i’m fully aware all of this is dumb nitpicking EL OH EL)

the reagent being YELLOW instead of GREEN?? coming in hot with just an absolutely stupid change to the canon

dan being weirdly out of character? he feels borderline creepy at times? maybe this is just me, but he gives me “high school jock who will definitely bully you if his friends are around” vibes a lot more than the “lovable himbo good ol’ boy” vibes i get from the movie.

hill getting more backstory or just any more screentime whatsoever. he doesn’t NEED to be sympathetic he’s a horrible human being

they COULD’VE used the hill screentime to instead spend time strengthening dan and herbert’s partnership. spending more time on dan and herbert experimenting could’ve really strengthened one of the weakest parts of the movie. and they felt CLOSER in the movie which had way LESS time to delve into their relationship 

herbert also being weirdly out of character, but also i kind of liked it because he was more emotional and, being a queerdo, i’m a sucker for angst. maybe it made him more realistic as a 24 year old? the author gets a pass here, just once.

not using the deleted scenes. surely the author had access to them? even if not, he still could’ve brought up hill’s powers of hypnosis before he just suddenly hypnotizes herbert. it gives a much better explanation for why the dean so suddenly gets irrationally angry at dan for even suggesting that herbert had re-animated rufus.

the author just kept repeating the dean is an idiot who only wants to make his school prestigious like way too many times

using “cain” and “west” instead of their actual names in the narration. it makes it feel like the reader isn’t familiar with the characters? (this is definitely the most nitpicky of my nitpicks)

the occasional weirdly religious dialogue? this book feels like it was obviously written by a christian. to a christian i don’t think this book would seem religious but i picked up on it and was subsequently made uncomfortable and annoyed by it. herbert west is clearly canonically an atheist or agnostic like. i don’t know what to tell you, christian man. a guy who wants to conquer death and has a god complex that big is not gonna go to church on sundays.

the explicit stating of dan and herbert not being gay. it’s like ok we get it. this book was written by a straight man who wants to make macho man gets all the women straight guy porn. this wasn’t necessary.

the ENTIRE herbert’s-work-being-stolen-scene HE FUCKED IT UP SO BAD

HERBERT FUCKING ACTUALLY DYING WHEN IT WAS LEFT IMPLIED BUT AMBIGUOUS IN THE MOVIE

one thing i DID really like, though, was the exploration of herbert and gruber’s relationship at the beginning. it was sweet. i also liked herbert’s absolute disgust at the police officer’s prejudice against dan when dan had to lie and say he might have AIDS. finally! someone actually reacting in character!

also, all this being said, the novelization isn’t actually that bad lmao

coming back to edit this after fully finishing the book, the novel is so much worse than the movie and while you can read it, if you’re as easily annoyed as i am, you will hate it too

#reanimator #RA #danbert

[irregularbillcipher]

copying the response to a comment i just replied to on my fic because i figured some people might be interested in the actual penny dreadfuls gus' stories are based on

[ID:

A comment by Monarch_of_Nerds on Chapter 15 on Configuration, They have a Flowey the Flower icon and writes:

"OH MY GOD THE STORY ABOUT THE MURDERS-

TELL ME MORE~"

There is a response from PhilipJFright, the author. They have an icon of the Axolotl and Bill Cipher. Thier response reads:

Well, the story wasn't based on any actual historical murders, like the baby farmer was, but was loosely based on a very real Victorian Penny Dreadful, the Diary of a Madman, by Guy de Maupassant. The story is similar in a few ways-- namely being about a judge who becomes obsessed with the idea of committing a murder and the idea that it's human nature to kill. Eventually that judge kills a pet bird, then a small child, and then a fisherman. The bird is not enough, and the bird's owner, one of his servants, is distraught but assumes it flew away. The child is killed in a way that sheds no blood, and his parents come to the judge weeping, not suspecting him but hoping for justice, but an unknown "tramp" is assumed to have done it. Because there was no literal bloodshed, the judge is unsatisfied and kills a fisherman, in a way that produces bloodshed, and the man's nephew is blamed. The judge gets to condemn the nephew to death for the crime he himself committed, sees him guillotined, and then decides his urge to spill blood has been satisfied. The story basically ends with "And doctors think there are probably a lot of people like him in the world, hidden in plain sight! Isn't that scary?" The similarities are probably pretty obvious-- after a dignified funeral for a respected judge, someone finds his diary and discovers that he was obsessed with the idea of killing, the idea of "human nature," and had even committed some horrible crimes himself, and then gotten a chance to execute someone for the crime he himself committed. Main differences are: Gus' personal involvement in the story, as the narrator for the funeral and ending lines never identifies himself. The format. 90% of this very short story-- just two pages front and back-- is comprised entirely of diary entries, while Gus' story is in third person. Wahlwort's wife is aware of his crimes and desperate to let other people know about them, since she doesn't have the societal power to go against her Polygonal husband. Wahlwort slaughters far more people, and his access to these people aren't coincidental. He is deliberately killing the lower class prisoners-- Isosceles, Irregulars, Lines, the very occasional Equilateral, and the also lower class guards. There is obviously class at play in the original short story; the judge kills the pet of a servant, a random homeless person is assumed to have killed the child, and while the fisherman had enough money for the accused nephew to be his heir, he does not have the social standing of the judge, but it's not as huge of a theme. I really wanted to play around with the class aspect though, so Wahlwort is deliberately using his status as a Polygon with law connections to access these victims, and is choosing people he knows won't be missed by the "important" people in society. There's a reason, after all, that all of Wahlwort's awful judge friends act like he's doing them a favor, and joke about taking the murderer out for drinks. There's a reason nobody /really/ cares to investigate these killings, despite their brutality. The judge's deranged ideas about the "nature" of beings to kill is expanded on and given more detail than in the original, because all the fear mongering about Lines, Irregulars and Triangles so easily lend to that awful thinking. There's a reason Wahlwort' first violent acts are, instead, to agitate crowds with a blade and blame the more acute people around him. While it ends similarly, with the judge finally getting to kill someone in a courtroom for the murders /he/ committed, I added the extra angle of an Isosceles desperately trying to make it known that the Polygon in front of him was the violent one and nobody listening, because again, it just felt more in-tune with Flatland's awful society. The idea that Gus struggled to publish this story because of the influence of the Wahlwort family was, again, my own invention. I liked the idea of showing that even this well-meaning Polygon was struggling to reveal the crimes of a well-known, high-up Polygon family. Again, felt thematically relevant.

Anyway the original is a very short read, but I thought it would be fun to base it off a real Dreadful of the era and put a Flatland spin on it!"

END ID]

#sorry i'm still getting used to descriptions #i heard it was better to put them here than as alt text?

[firelordgrantham]

Hot take: Supernatural is cultural appropriation from jewish and christian theology, and a harmful one as it does it wrong.

LOTR is cultural appropriation from scandinavic and germanic mythology. Also, Wagner in his operas took pagan myths when he was not pagan so even if he made them accessible and popular, he is a fascist.

Star Wars appropriates chinese and japanese elements. Let's not even talk about a:tla.

Harry Potter features a boy as the mc, but the author is a girl, so that's inherently sexist, mysoginistic and disrespectful for all the women who fought to be able to write and to have female characters.

the fact black is darker than white is also racist because, reasons.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron talks about natives but there were white and other ethnicities involved in the making of the movie. Thus, it's not enough. There should have been only natives doing it (even though the movie features also white people).

Got enough? Do we even hear ourselves anymore? We can't talk or write about something we are not ourselves, white can't retweet a black lives matter tweet because it would be a political trick to have us think a white guy can empathize with a black man, and so on and so on.

Fyi, I'm not from America or anywhere in the english speaking world, but in my country, a great author loved by everybody wrote a historical novel. The theme was slavery, among other things, and the heroine (or one of the main characters because there's more than one lead) was a black girl from Africa. BUT the author is male, and white. SO, because it's very rationnal to think like that, many associations against racism, against slavery, against human trafficking and what not attacked him in justice (he won since the novel was accurate and not defending slavery at all) and asked for their followers to boycott the book. Also, it was supposed to get forbidden from buying it directly in library (fyi in my country the only book censured that way was mein kampf) but it won a prize and the ban was abandonned.

So, make up your mind:

Do white / male people have to use their ''white'' / ''male'' privilege to show diversity, attract attention on minorities, make the causes advance, or do they have to shut up because they are vile and it's cultural appropriation?

Do we have to show cultural representation (an indian guy, a muslim woman, a black girl, etc.) under the punition of being ''vanilla author'' or do we have to keep to what we are ourselves under the punition of cultural appropriation?

I get that there is harmful cliches and badly done representation.

But you can't say to someone on monday they are homophobic because they don't have a gay character, then on tuesday tell them they are homophobic because this character has such or such default that is a cliché for gay characters, then on wednesday complain that it's not shown enough that the character is gay, on thursday come knocking back because he doesn't have a personnality besides being gay, and on friday lament because the representation of gay characters is not diverse enough!

#lotr #harry potter #wagner #supernatural #spn #star wars #cultural appropriation #spirit stallion of the cimarron #representation #vanilla #slavery #censure #homophobic

[princesscolumbia]

Code of Ethics - A Troubleverse Story

So remember that post a few days ago where I wrote about how panicked I was over whether my current WIP would be liked by the original author of the setting/universe it's in? Well, I've posted it over on Scribblehub. If you haven't read anything in Troubleverse, first off you must or we can't be friends, but if you haven't you're in for a TREAT! Go do that and then follow-up with Code of Ethics!

Synopsis:

Dylan is the American Republic's best cyber-agent with a 'kill' count that exceeds the next top 4 agent's count combined. When the world woke up in the aftermath of the Rogue A.I. scare in U.N. City, America formed a task force to defend her people from the A.I. that were trying to wipe out humanity. The challenge was, the U.N. had walled off America after World War 3, so the only nation openly fighting against the threat of the machines was hemmed in and limited. The agency has gotten their hands on a "VR Pod" and selected Dylan as their first operative to penetrate the online spaces that the Republic has been denied access to so far. A new VRMMO game has come out, "Galaxies Unlimited: Master and Commander," that's being billed as the first true collaboration between a team of human developers and A.I. Scuttlebutt in the intelligence community says that this new 'game' is actually a front for an organized effort to hide and traffic rogue A.I. In order to best infiltrate the game, Dylan's support staff of analysts dig into the published info about the rogues and determine that the A.I. seem to gravitate to the 'queer' humans outside the wall (there are NO queers inside the wall, the church made sure of that), and since Dylan gets the screaming willies even imagining trying to pretend attraction to another guy, he opts to go incognito as a woman.

Dylan, now Diane, takes command of her station in the game and must navigate a universe filled with humans playing as aliens, uncomfortably lifelike A.I., and the disturbing awareness that she should be feeling more conflicted about being a woman than she is.

A story set in the 'Trouble with Horns'/'Witch of Chains'/'Lieforged Gale'/'Digital Galaxies' universe that asks the question, "What about the bad guys?"

Preview below the cut:

It had begun with some unusual readings on a variety of analyst’s stations. Indications of checksum bits trickling in from some unidentified server on the FTLN through one of the Republic’s black-site nodes. As no logs were showing any significant transmission of data to justify the backflow of confirmation bits, this was at first dismissed as an error. It kept happening, though; days would go by and suddenly a surge of checksum bits through a FTLN node.

Some brainstorming occurred, complete with late nights with all hands on deck and plenty of whiteboards and pizzas ordered in, when some geek on the I.T. team asked the seemingly innocuous question, “Who’s been monitoring for possible transmission of A.I. leaving the network?”

The notion had been scoffed at. America didn’t use the same kind of computers that the rest of the world did, after all. While the U.N. and their member states had moved to crystal storage, America had refined the solid state drives into three dimensional storage. The processors used by American computers were copper-wafer RISC chipsets with SCAD data processing arrays, where the rest of the world was using QISC processors with a bucky-tube fiber bus. Even the operating systems were, by necessity, different. The A.I. that worked on the computers outside the wall simply couldn’t run on American computers and so, ipso facto, there would be no A.I. on American computers to leave the network.

But then someone pointed out that there was a significant black market for “jailbroken” devices from outside the wall, including (if you could afford it), the new VR pods that were practically replacing desktop and laptop computers outside of America. As more of these devices were proliferating (however illegal it was to own them) across the country, the software on American computers needed to be modified all the way down to the BIOS layer to work with them. The logical next step would be for the A.I., which were designed from the start to be as infinitely adaptable as humans could make them, would rewrite themselves to work on American computers.

The scramble to create, install, configure, and calibrate the software and devices necessary to detect American rogue A.I. would have been the stuff of an action movie if they weren’t all so terrified by the notion that it might already be too late.

And sure enough, almost as soon as the first of the devices monitoring for rogue A.I. traffic attempting to leave America’s servers went live, a kill switch had been used to try and shut off a rogue A.I.

Rogue A.I. were spawning inside of America’s network.

The challenge, of course, was the A.I. were, well, intelligent. It was in the name, after all. They figured out what the agency was doing and learned to spoof the exfiltration signs. So the agency started tracking for signs of rogue A.I. active within the network nodes leading to the FTLN nodes. So the A.I. learned to build encrypted tunnels. So the agency started doing ‘flat level’ monitoring, looking through the network for signs of unusual spikes of CPU, GPU, or NPU activity and identifying A.I. based on activity signatures. So the A.I. learned to mask their presence.

The next stage of the cat and mouse game between the agency and the A.I. was an accident. One of the analysts had kids, and one of those kids had a VR headset. Unlike the pods from outside the wall, the headsets didn’t hijack the nervous system entirely. They used a combination surface-contact neural sensors for regular input and regular video signals and cleverly engineered audio signals for output to trigger synesthesia-like effects in the user. The eyes saw and the ears heard, but the nose was tricked into ‘smelling’ something that wasn’t there, the tastebuds were fooled into sensing flavors that didn’t exist, and the senses of touch, pain, hot, and cold were simulated in such a way that most people would never guess they were in VR if they hadn’t strapped a headset on.

The analyst in question was one of the good parents Dylan rather wished he’d had growing up, the kind that took an active interest in their child’s activities. When the analyst heard their kid talking about a new friend they’d made online, the analyst hopped into VR with the kid to meet the friend. There were enough oddities in the ‘friend’s’ behavior that made the analyst worry, and when he checked his home network, he discovered a rogue A.I. had taken residence in his router.

The analyst’s desks all had VR headsets on them the next day.

Jokes about “gaming on the job” quickly fell silent as agents logged into VR games, VR malls, VR workspaces, VR social spaces…anything with VR in the title, and discovered more and more A.I. that were hiding in plain sight. America didn’t have a rogue A.I. problem, it had a rogue A.I. infestation.

Analysts’ workstations got upgrades overnight. Anything that allowed them to deep dive into VR for extended periods, navigate the VR spaces the A.I. were hiding in, and ‘tag’ them, either with tracking software or using admin codes to shut down the power to their server.

In quiet moments, in the stillness of break rooms or the white noise of a bar over drinks, sometimes the not-quite-agents-but-no-longer-analysts would comment that the rogue A.I. were almost human-like in their ability to learn how to hide.

Nobody wanted to think too hard about that.

Soon, the ‘analysts’ were strapped into VR for deep dives that would last their entire work shift and beyond. They were pulling 12 and 16 hour days, getting escalated clearance levels to get into VR spaces that even the Joint Chiefs weren’t permitted and developing tools in-software to help them do their job more effectively.

Field agents were brought in to replace a couple of the analysts at first, but they simply…washed out. They couldn’t handle the time in VR and they couldn’t bag-and-tag the rogue A.I. like they could human targets IRL, so simply failed to match the standards of even the worst performing of the then-analysts. So the agency shifted focus; they had the field agents re-train the analysts in field-ops that the now cyber-agents would adapt to the virtual world. The new agents would get a crew of analysts to support them to help them track down the A.I.

Dylan hadn’t started out as an exceptional agent. He wasn’t even that great an analyst. He hadn’t necessarily joined the agency to be the best of the best, but he didn’t like underperforming. His one and only real distinction was that he was able to handle non-VR cyber spaces when other agents became so panicked that they had to emergency log-out before they had a complete psychotic break. He wasn’t unique in this, there were probably a dozen cyber-agents that could do it as well, but it did mean the agency was willing to give him leeway when he fell down on the job.

The game started changing when someone in I.T. came up with a script that would force admin access to any processing thread, allowing the agents to effectively stun-lock the A.I. It never lasted long, but it gave the agency a new way to catch and eliminate the A.I.; an agent in VR would use the script (a clever UI designer made it look like a hand tazer) on an A.I. and “call” back to their analyst team, who would then use the ‘locked’ thread to identify the A.I.’s presence on the system and force-kill it.

Soon, however, the A.I. were figuring out how to reduce the stun-lock lag to the point they were able to unlock and flee before the kill order could be done by the team outside of VR, so a new tool was created to issue the kill command directly in VR, this time designed to look like a hypospray from the old television show Star Trek. It wasn’t fully effective, if the A.I. was advanced enough to have multiple threads across several processors then you could only disable the single thread, but it was enough of a next step to give Dylan an idea.

Read the rest at Scribblehub

#transgender #fiction writing #fiction #trans author #queer author #lgbtqia+ #lgbtq+ #lgbt #lgbtq #trans #trans woman

[leam1983]

The Fourth Wheel

I haven't spoken much about the fourth member of our polycule. That's because he's of the sort of, well, presences that's easy to forget in life accounts. I'm of course speaking of Romeo, the twelve year-old Chocolate Standard Poodle.

Romeo's like all dogs in that he's nonjudgemental. He was best pals with Walt within forty-five minutes of meeting him, he loved Sarah to bits at the first sign of free ear scritches, and I'll be heartbroken the moment I realize he can't follow us to the new flat. Romeo is bound to keep trying to enter our apartment, being as blind as a bat, and won't realize we're gone until it's too late. Considering, we've been putting in as much time with the fuzzball as we can.

It used to be that Romeo was head-over-heels for my father. After a few walks, he starting asking that Walt take him out for walkies, which felt a bit like a betrayal for my father - if a fairly amusing one, at least. Romeo's at the age where stopping to smell the flowers (and the fire hydrants, and sidewalks, and dead leaves and other dog poops) is typically more his speed. Despite that, Walt's find in Romeo the perfect excuse for brisker, more constitution-enhancing walks than I can offer, and my parents are far from minding that the pooch gets run ragged once a week, in the middle of a string of breezier strolls. It affords them an afternoon's worth of a contentedly snoozing overgrown puppy and dials his anxiety levels way down.

Being a stubborn old coot even from puppyhood, Romeo never did pick up a wide selection of tricks, but he figured how giving us his paw could be used as a marker of insistence. A tap is a polite request, a double tap is a renewal and the claws getting involved means he wants something now. Past that, he steps away, uses sound to locate us in space, angles himself in front of us, and sits down in obvious disapproval. This is the last stage before the Perfunctory Bark of Authority, which happens only once and more or less is Dog-speak for "Hey, humans! I'm over here and I have needs to communicate!"

These needs all seem severe to him, but they typically actually vary in severity from basic boredom to Having Heard an Ambulance Siren that's a Little too Loud for a Little Too Long. Food and water are never asked for, as he knows both are always plentiful. He self-regulates his kibble intake, crosses back to the folks' apartment to drink from his bowl when he's thirsty or occasionally cadges a few slurps from a temporarily-repurposed kitchen bowl. He has access to Walt's old, repurposed comforter in a corner of the big guy's office and pops in to check on us every so often during the day, when he isn't locked inside. His blindness leaves him anxious if we're not close by, so he's developed a clear aversion to going past our shared porch if nobody has him on a lead. To enter our unit during the colder months and before closing time around 9 PM, he simply sits down in front of our door and issues a single and fairly polite bark.

For the most part, Romeo's a nap companion for Walt when I'm not around, a TV-browsing buddy, and someone who tends to want to join us for our pre- and post-friskiness parts of our weekend dogpile sessions. He's numbed up Walt's legs more times than I can count and has spent the last three years more than happy lying down with his goddamn anus a few inches away from my face. On somewhat frequent occasions, what gets me out of my state of sheer meditative bliss tends to smell like Eau de Rotten Egg...

I'm mostly writing this down as a sort of mental prepping excercise. The fuzzball is a senior citizen, some stairwells around town are difficult for him to handle, and the metal stairwell to our little back yard is starting to seem a little dicey for him.

We've all reached a consensus across both units: if he ever can't reach a spot that allows him to relieve himself, that means his quality of life will have reached a net zero.

At that point, euthanasia would be the kindest option on the table.

Twelve years old. For a Standard Poodle, this is a good run. Romeo hasn't reached that level of disability yet - but we're paying attention. On the flipside, it makes us appreciate every moment spent with him. Statistically, that's two, maybe three more years. Some Standard Poodles very rarely make it to fifteen years old, but that's truly exceptional.

Walt's asked me how I took to that, a few weeks back. I remember smiling. Romeo's my second dog, my first one taught me how heart-wrenching saying goodbye to someone so devoted, so innocent, can truly be. You come home and there's about a dozen markers of their presence left - now-deserted food and water bowls, toys that won't be played with ever again...

But that's okay. Romeo was in it for the long haul, and his idea of it seems to be nearing its end. The first one was agonizing, the second one's going to hurt just a little bit less.

What's interesting about owning pets is that it brings out a spiritual side out of nearly everyone. You can bill yourself as more of an Atheist than Dawkins himself, for all I know, and you'll still grow misty-eyed at the thought of the Rainbow Bridge story, or the idea of a dog park that never closes - a place where those little lives that touched you so briefly are cared for, and perhaps waiting for your return.

It's a strange dichotomy to have to deal with, honestly. I can buy the thought of most of my relatives turning into worm food at the end of the day, but my dog? That sets a sort of theoretical snowball of conflicting emotions into place, where I start re-assessing my afterlife-related hopes, however guilty they might be, for Walt, Sarah, Mom, Dad, my aunt and the three or four uncles I was close to...

"No Gods, but a liminal plane of Guaranteed Rest" probably is an adequate label for how I'd like to situate myself, once brain death settles in - at least in these moments. As I wouldn't be fully human if I wasn't contradictory and also had zero issues imagining myself fully and completely being annihilated upon death, when pet and family-related feelings don't hijack the synapses.

It's one of the myriad things where, at the end of the day, the wisest answer is probably something to the tune of "I'll figure it out when I get to it - or I won't. Makes no difference either way."

#thoughts #life post #animals #pets #afterlife #atheism #conflicting ideologies #learning to live while being okay with not knowing

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Limiting Names

Imagine you wrote a manga and you named it My Life in Elf Village and then four or five chapters in you realized you wanted it to be a far-spanning travel adventure like "One Piece in Forests" was its elevator pitch.

This is the trouble afflicting Lone Spellcaster on Webtoon. They established almost immediately that he wasn't the only spellcaster in general. And then another five or six chapters in they realized having him be a solo act reduced stakes -

Much like Marvel's "end of the world" scenarios, the audience can't really make themselves believe the author's going to kill off their own main character 7+ chapters in, any more than they can believe the planet will explode in Eternals when there's a new Spider-Man movie coming out later the same year. They can't even have their hero get knocked out, just because if he's fully solo there's nobody to carry him out of combat. So when he's alone the stakes are incredibly low from a narrative perspective because there are a bunch of ways they can't even start to go wrong.

- and also just wasn't as interesting from a writing perspective, because without people actually teaming up with the hero the entire background cast gets flattened into one job: the Greek Chorus, all singing about how magnificent Protag-kun is and how nobody has ever done such things before.

It is interesting to me that I don't find Lone Spellcaster's grading system as annoying as Questism's. The reason is that where Questism was explicitly treating those grades as a measure of power - similar to being able to see a boss' hp bar - Lone Spellcaster had them as signs of rank, and indicators that you'd completed certain tasks. This made it more believable to me that someone could be far more powerful than their grade would indicate, either because of tactical factors ("He's only a level 2 rogue!" "Sure. A level 2 rogue. With a gun.") or just because they haven't bothered to do the mission to raise their grade. Depending on the game, sometimes you want to actively keep scumming in the low ranks for longer access to the easy content.

There is a bit of worldbuilding confusion where people were talking about not being able to comprehend this guy's power at all, even when they hadn't heard of him, but for progression purposes and expanding-the-cast purposes the writer has now determined that high-rank characters are similar in combat ability to our hero. Which means all the people who were shocked his feats were being performed by an F-rank are fine, but the ones who were like, "No human has such power!" are somehow unaware of the most powerful - AND THEREFORE MOST FAMOUS - members of their own guild structure. Whoops.

Overall this falls in the same category as the boilerplate Harem Isekai. It's not awful but the story's a little trashy and there's a lot of information given to the reader via videogame announcement boxes and status windows, which is like an extra layer beyond Telling Instead Of Showing.

#webtoon #lone spellcaster #review

[nobalg]

RACE OF THOUGHTS WITH REALITY

Common sense is something we develop, after experiencing different situations. Below are some words, jargons, situations which confused me when I came to the IT world for the first time. They may obviously confuse a newcomer, or may not. But the real problem occurred to me when I already had some meaning assigned to them. Its very difficult to shake of your beliefs, just like people and religion. However some made me laugh, some challenged my psyche, like may be it was better that if they would have been named otherwise. But this may be only my own personal point of view.

I am not going to clarify what the words actually meant in reality, I am just sharing what I felt about them, when I heard them for the first time.

Health Status

The year was 2014, and I joined a company after my college. The manager there was having a team meeting of which I was a part of. I was new and always eager to leave a mark on the org and team, just like some kid who want to outshine the other kids of his class.

In between the meeting the manager gave a statement.

"Why the health status of this agent is so irregular, client is upset about the downtime."

Just this and My brain, has different labelling for this and interpreted this as,

"May be these guys have deployed their personal staff(real human beings-agents) on client locations, who may have been suffering from some bad health and are unable to show up to work. Man, these agents must have been hired for field jobs and thier life seems to be tough."

JavaScript's callback - Unpredictable

The year was 2017-2018, I was having my new interaction with JavaScript, There was a Junior developer with whom I used to work; however he was having more JavaScript experience than me at that point in time.

One day we were writing some code. The code was working sometimes, and sometimes it was not. Actually there was a callback which was relying on some global variables inside its body. Because the other functions were changing the global variables as well, So we were receiving different outputs.

The manager(who had java experience) came and asked the other developer,

"What's taking so long to finish this functionality?" and the developer replied:

"The code is jumping here and there, there must be some problem with the JavaScript"

At that moment, I became afraid as I am just like other humans who are afraid of uncertainty , but I am more afraid of code that cannot be interpreted or can be made sense of.

However, later 'Promises' came into my life after a month and they made me believe that JS world was not actually that bad, and they made me realise that my actual fear was 'Unawareness of basic concepts in JS'

Null values after two hours

This goes back to 2015-2016 again may be. One of the service deployed on dev environment was getting stuck, for at least two hours, then waking up and giving Null Pointers in logs

My team lead(13-14 years experienced) asked us the reason. We told the above scenario and started diagnosing.

The manager came and asked the team lead about the ETA.

He told, "Sir, due to two hours of program being stuck, variables are getting emptied or nulled by something, we are looking into it."

I am not sure whether the manager bought this or not, but it remained a matter of laugh among friends for so many years.

Security

I always understood that securing the application is stopping some hacker to get access to your systems, or identifying some attack on your applications and then recover from the damage etc.

But I realized after going through some spring applications and tutorials, the for a developer it may or may not be same what I used to think.

It was more about Authentication/Authorization/Roles etc.

Hackers were never in the picture(at least while development).

It was really about the Authentication of the user and providing access to the user of the data which he is Authorized for.

It was never like stopping someone working on CMD with green text and typing some commands with pace of light and bringing the whole system down.

It was something else.

UI Development - Pixel By Pixel

For most of the time,(even though I was aware of android at the start of my career ). I always was afraid of Frontend development.

I was unaware of the tools, languages of the UI world.

I used to think, that these screens and the interactions are being written from scratch. May be each pixel is being deigned by some UI developer like a bee creates her home and honey.

Backend Development, everything is Either 'If' or 'else'

Well some developers (old me may be), still believe this. BE is nothing but the ladder of if and else.

Atleast I have heard this from seniors when they assigned tasks to us for a customer change request.

"Oh Man, this is going to be easy, you just have to do this, if this happens otherwise do that, just a game of one or two hours(with unit testing)".

Resource

Use of words like resource for living human beings and then words like allocation surprised me the most. May be only me, but I think human life deserves utmost respect and at least the word 'resource' should not be used to represent an employee.

[kisilinramblings]

You know, when Ladybug was giving Miraculous temporarily to people, no one made comments such as “She should consult Chat Noir beforehand”. Though we did got “Chat Noir should be giving Miraculous to people too!” while in canon, what CN did mind was to be left completely in the dark about what was going on, not the fact he couldn’t partake in the decisions nor the selection of potential candidates. Because the powers and the people LB selects are part of LB’s plan to defeat the Akumatized villains. 

But when Ladybug decides to give the Fox Miraculous permanently to Alya so she can be Marinette’s backup ressource, there are people upset she didn’t meet with Chat Noir and discuss about that decision with him? 

Like what changed?

I do agree we are heading toward an episode similar to Syren if Ladybug still keeps Chat Noir too much in the dark again that makes him feel useless or question his presence in the team. But that people get mad on Chat Noir stead for not being “consulted” on a decision that has always been up to LB? Especially that she is now the official Guardian and Chat Noir respects and follows her lead and convulated plans? 

Even when, during Miraculer, when CN saw that Chloé was still lighting her Bee Signal and realized that LB didn’t yet take the time to tell Chloé the truth, Chat Noir just reminder LB to go talk to Chloé instead of offering to go in LB’s place. Why? Because it is LB’s role.

Even when, during Furious Fu, Chat Noir tells Ladybug he will accept to give back his Miraculous if only Ladybug decided so because she is the only Guardian in his eyes? Because he trusts her?

I mean, Chat Noir isn’t oblivious either. He notices things too. He has his own point of view and LB usually listens to him. And Chat is usually open to express himself unless he has been hurt. That’s when he shuts down. But otherwise? He supports LB however he can contribute. 

All that to say that at the end of Optigami, when CN asked LB how she knew there was a sentimonster hidden inside the Miraculous, LB answered him:

“Thanks to my Lucky Charm, Kitty. It always shows me the right way, but this time, I was shortly led astray”.

And you see his reaction. 

He gets serious. He doesn’t say anything yet, but mentally seems to take notes.

That day, Chat Noir wasn’t able to be much by her side or so he thinks, but that doesn’t mean he cannot be the support LB needs. If Chat Noir sees Ladybug be led astray again during one of their missions, Chat Noir will remind her and raise a flag. 

Because he has the knowledge and power to do so. He has the objectivity precisely because he isn’t personally involved. Because he knows they need a focused Ladybug to succeed. Whereas all the temporary Holders are “sidekicks” who follow LB’s lead and authority. Including Alya. Heck she has tried to take some initiative and regretted it because it almost lead the Bad Guys to know Ladybug’s secret identity. So chances are very high Rena will just stick to LB’s plans because she doesn’t want to put her best friend in danger again. Whereas Chat Noir is more at ease to propose things and work with and around LB’s plan so she can succeed.

Anyway, even if Chat Noir knew about the whole Ladybug and Rena Rouge ordeal at this point, even if Ladybug did ask him what he thinks about it, I wonder if really Chat Noir’s opinion would have mattered in the balance. I assume it would have ended like how LB didn’t understood what her Lucky Charm was trying to warn her about until the very last minute. 

It was fitting Ladybug was fused into Lady Bee for this episode. Because the Bee Miraculous is used by someone who can defy authority. And that was what Lady Bee was doing. Defying the omniscient guidance of her Lucky Charm. It is only when Ladybug was back as herself that she questions why her Lucky Charm didn’t have any use to defeat the supervillain this time around. 

Anyway, is Marinette making the wrong decision by permanently giving Alya the Fox Miraculous? I think Trixx did point out the issue.

“See? I am right, even if I am not”.

Marinette knows who to trust, however like any human, her biases, her emotions and traumas can cloud her decisions. We want to believe every character and person will react logically to a situation they are personally living. Spoilers alert, unless they are a machine or from a race that has no emotion, they won’t. And Marinette is mentally recovering from a severe breakdown. And who ended up being her life raft during that difficult period? Alya. 

Marinette does have a point. She needs someone who can be her backup when she is unable to transform. She cannot always count on the Kwamis since their respective power comes with a chaotic aftermath. She can be in a position where she thinks it isn’t safe to transform. 

She has Chat Noir who can stall the villain and buy time but it is only if he manages to be there on time too. And after witnessing the Chat Blanc timeline, Ladybug is avoiding as much as she can to trigger it back. Adrien discovering her secret identity was one piece, but there was another piece concerning Chat Noir and her and that is was she is afraid of and that concerned their secret identity that was later found out and used by Hawk Moth to akumatize Chat Noir.

And then, there is Alya to whom Marinette revealed herself when she was at her lowest and who have been nothing but helpful ever since. Alya is now so much involved with Marinette either as a superhero or a civilian. And Marinette relies on Alya. And now, it looks Marinette is starting to depend on her maybe too much that it will affect Alya in a way she is unprepared for. I’ll keep an eye on Alya’s relationship with Nino. It sure did shake her to find out she had been fooled by SM and that she didn’t realized the being in front of her wasn’t the real Nino. 

Alya is a good and trustworthy ally. She does learn from her mistake and works to do better, but I agree Marinette didn’t seem to have made the most enlightened decision there and Chat Noir’s opinion would probably have changed nothing. 

By wanting to be relieved and have someone to back her up, I think Marinette is not clearly seeing the burden she is imposing on Alya. 

Btw, I am personally presuming that even if Alya could transform at any given opportunity now, it doesn’t mean Rena Rouge will be present all the time on the team during patrols or Akuma attacks. Rena Rouge would still be on-call when the power or Illusion is needed. Like how she had access to the Miracle Box, but still waited for Marinette’s instructions. 

Still, i wonder how much time it will take for Chat Noir to point out LB is maybe relying too much on Rena Rouge and putting her in danger more than necessary.

#miraculous ladybug #ml season 4 #ml s4 spoilers #ml spoilers #optigami #ml s4ep13 #marinette dupain-cheng #adrien agreste #alya césaire