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@spaceless-void

Charlie/Venn | Aries | 24 socializing is not a skill i have. banner: commissioned from @foxyjoy-art https://ko-fi.com/thevoid09

I’m sorry Orpheus i was too harsh on you…

i was in the physics lab today and we were working with lasers, so the Lab Freaks (legal name) were being very careful to stress that we Do Not Turn Around or Look Behind Us because we’ll get extremely blinded by the power of high strength lasers

and i’m not gonna lie it was actually extremely hard to resist turning around. i misjudged orpheus it turns out this isnt extremely easy actually

okay i’ll be honest i 100% looked back at the lasers. actually multiple separate lasers multiple different times. they were pretty

and i didnt get blinded. so clearly lab safety isnt real and you should always risk it cus taking risks is awesome #gambling

but uh. my ass is NOT making it out of the underworld 🔥🔥🔥

I can’t speak for other social media webbed sites but I really enjoy how tumblr seems to just completely spin a wheel on whatever media is hot right now. Like yeah sometimes it’s a new show that’s big and actively coming out but also sometimes there will be a solid month where half my dash is Columbo memes. Defy authority. Get really into an book from the 1800s. Watch shows that haven’t aired in 40 years. Celebrate the anniversary of the Boston Molasses Flood. Become unmarketable

oh shit i almost missed it!

Luo Binghe: I will protect you, Shizun!

Shen Qingqiu, lounging in a chair eating grapes: Good luck, Binghe. I believe in you!

~~~

Lan Wangji: I will protect you, Wei Ying

Wei Wuxian: Lan Zhan knows better than to not expect me to stand by his side

~~~

Hua Cheng: I will protect-

Xie Lian, who has already defeated all the enemies: Sorry, San Lang, what were you saying?

Hua Cheng: Gege has protected me ☺️☺️☺️

Bonus:

Mobei-Jun: You will protect me

Shang Qinghua: THAT IS A TERRIBLE IDEA!

Mobei-Jun: If you don't I will die

Shang Qinghua: WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!

Mobei-Jun: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“Home is where the trees look normal” is the sweetest, saddest, most nostalgic truth I’ve ever heard.

Intellectually I realize our forests can look intensely haunted, but to me: home! friend-shaped! the blessèd conifers!

More evergreen tree friends in Portland:

The Columbia River Gorge:

Chuckanut Drive near Bellingham:

Vancouver!!!!

lbh clamoring to get out of the defendant's seat rn

part 1 [bc tumblr doesn't allow more than 1 video per post T-T]

sometimes you just want to look at the qing dynasty jadeite cabbage again

here she is!

[ID: a sculpture of a chinese cabbage carved from a piece of two-tone white-and-green jadeite, resting on an intricate wooden stand /end ID]

This is actually such a crucial part of healing from neglect and abuse and I have to add to this.

Because indeed, people who like you will not roll their eyes and sigh at the idea of accommodating your needs, they will value your voice and be upset with you about injustice done to you, not at you for "being difficult". They will be happy when you find a way to live a better life, and help you to get there. If you are struggling, someone who loves you wants to see you smile, not tell you to smile because "you have it so good".

Istg, if I ever get rabies because some dumb ass antivaxxer refused to vaccinate their dog, I’ll probably be doing the rest of my blogging from prison because I promise you, Imma curbstomp the shit out of the owner

Fun fact: if your dog is unvaccinated and bites someone, in most states it's not only perfectly legal but SUGGESTED COURSE OF ACTION for animal control to seize your dog, euthanize it, and cut its head off for rabies testing. This process costs 300-500 USD and is the responsibility of the owner to pay.

This happened to someone on tumblr, and happens with regularity at my job, so it is not a far-flung worst case scenario.

Rabies shots cost 20 USD at your local pet store or farm supply and if your dog bites someone while vaccinated, all you have to do is quarantine for 10 days.

Once again:

Rabies is one of the most lethal diseases in the world

If you get bitten by a rabid dog - or even slobbered on by a rabid dog and happen to have an open wound - and don't get medical treatment until you develop symptoms; congratulations! You're dead.

Vaccinate your fucking pets

I also suggest vaccination

Stuck on the idea of vampires as a kind of reverse fae, or like someone's twisted, perverse attempt at moulding humans into fae.

They're repelled by liminal spaces.

A vampire could never enter fairyland, not just because they'd never be welcomed, but because most of the usual entry-ways are naturally barred to them.

They can't cross running water. They can't be seen in mirrors. They will wait forever at a crossroads, unable to pick a direction to go in. They can't even step over a thresh-hold unless there is absolutely no ambiguity about whether they are welcome inside.

They crave human blood, iron and salt, but are repelled by herbs and plants. They are supernaturally prevented from harming you unless the rules of hospitality have been invoked.

A fairy may replace your newborn child with something unnatural and ever-hungry. A vampire will do the same, but with your grandmother's corpse.

The fae are typically associated, even in stories where they're the bad guys, with flourishing and purity. Vampires, even in stories where they're the good guys, are typically associated with decay and corruption.

The fae turn ancient human burial mounds into fancy halls for their courts. Vampires take ancient human castles and let them grow mildewed and cobwebbed, exchanging the beds for coffins, turning them into burial places.

Fae don't tend to live among humans, but can generally pass for them with relative ease if they so choose. Vampires nearly always live among humans, but tend to find not revealing themselves a huge struggle.

I can't think of many stories I've read where fae and vampires even exist in the same universe, let alone ones where they actively interact. I feel like their enmity is almost more inevitable than that between vampires and werewolves, however.

The rivalry between vampires and werewolves is, essentially, the rivalry between two apex predator species who share a territory. (Even in stories where the werewolves aren't actually hunting humans.)

The vampires hate the werewolves because the werewolves interfere with their access to prey. The werewolves hate the vampires either because they consider themselves aligned with humans (the prey species), or because they are also predators and the vampires are competing with them.

By comparison, I think there's some story potential in the fae finding something genuinely creepy and uncanny valley about vampires.

They're immortal, like them, but also dead. They can be beautiful, like them, but that beauty is something they actively require humans to sustain. They like to inhabit beautiful and ancient ex-human dwellings, like them, but they actively work to make those places dark, damp and empty.

Fairies who are unflappable in the face of all sorts of Otherworldly monsters, can look an eldritch horror in the eye(s) without blinking, and have never been phased yet by any human, but will recoil from even the weakest vampire.

Vampires who hate fairies just as much, but in a more envious way. The way that the creature for whom immortality is a curse is bound to hate the creatures for whom immortality is an eternity of sunlight and laughter.

Maybe their touches burn each other. Maybe vampires can't stand physical contact with anything so alive and vital. Maybe immortal fairies become ill from too much exposure to the undead.

Maybe they fight over the human population when their territories overlap. The fairy need for servants and people to make deals with, competing with the vampire need for thralls and blood to drink.

Just… fairies and vampires. We need more stories about them interacting.

The only other fae/vamp crossover I know of, and like the exact same vein, but with more enemies to lovers

I like to imagine Shen Qingqiu needs glasses but doesn't know that he does

This is just. How the world looks. Everyone sees blobs until they get close.

It's a wonder his caligraphy is legable much less flawlees.

So imagine one day Mu Qingfang notices "hm.. Now that I think about it, Shen-shixiong squints a lot..." So he goes over to Shen Qingqiu and asks "Shen-shixiong, might this one borrow your eyes for a moment?"

Queue Shen Qingqiu having an impromptue eye exam much to his chargin. And Mu Qingfang looks at the results like HOOO BOY WE HAVE TO EXPIDITE THESE GLASSES SHIXIONG HOW DO YOU FUNCTION!? Meanwhile outside he's like "Shen-Shixiong this Shidi has already commissioned for a set of glasses to fit your needs. You will need to wear them from now on, and this shidi must insist on it as a healer."

The glasses arrive and Shen Qingqiu begrudgingly puts them on and promptly spends the rest of the day wandering his own peak getting lost in the beauty of it. He's never seen things so clearly before, it's nearly overstimulaitng. Paintings take on new light, he can recognize people from afar, he feels some peristant ache behind his eyes fade.

Then he gets to a peak lord meeting. He wears the glasses. He starts to turn heads because something about him in glasses is attractive. He, on the other hand, is having a small panic because wait what why are they all so pretty he can see all of them at once not just blurry pieces this may be too much for him.

The idea of “but everyone knows that” needs to stop.

I saw a post about someone chiding Millennials for not knowing about JKRowlings transphobia, and asking how it is at all possible that people can exist in the world and the internet and, you know, not know.

Which I mean, I get. It is so present in so many of my online spaces that it seems astounding that someone could simply be ignorant! It feels impossible!

But let me tell you a story:

I went on a girls trip with a bunch of friends. All of us are rather incredibly liberal and all of us are incredibly online.

One girl would not stop talking about Harry Potter.

At one point, another girl asked her why she was ok with supporting it, and she had no real clue that JK Rowling was at all transphobic. She had heard that she likes to support Lesbian causes and thought “oh ok cool!” And that was it. She was AGOG with the news and rather horrified.

I must once again emphasize that she was an incredibly online person. She’s a foodie and a restaurant blogger.

Later in the trip we were picking restaurants and I suggested one I found on Google, and she gasped at me. Actually gasped, asking how I could ever be okay picking that one.

The shock must’ve been on my face, because she then told me all of the shitty things that restaurateur does. He abuses staff. Underpays them. Fires them on a whim. Is known for being one of the worst people to his employees in the entire restaurant business on this coast.

And she was so shocked I had never heard of this. Because in her mind, I was just as online as her. And in her online world, EVERYONE knew about this guy.

So I think the moral of this story is: always approach the other person with some empathy. Even online people, even people you think MUST know about how bad people are, may not have heard. It may truly be just them being on a different sphere of the internet than you.

So be gentle, be kind when letting people know they might not have heard about the cancellation of XYZ person. Don’t assume that everyone knows all the same info as you.

By all means, let them know so they can make informed decisions, but being kind will go a lot further than attacking them for some info they might not know yet.

is it a hot take to say that i think you need to understand why something is bad, not just that it simply is?

this is a part of the problem

you need to be able to explain why you shouldnt use ai rather than “oh well its obviously bad and you shouldnt use it or else youre a bad person” because that isn’t logic. “ai generates child porn based off of real children and whether or not it does is entirely up to how it is built and if pedophiles are able to find ways around those safeguards, because ai cannot in itself discern right from wrong” is a genuine criticism. “amazon tried to build a data center the size of tuson outside of tuson just to power their ai that would’ve increased the inability to stay alive outside in parts of arizona” is a genuine criticism. even “using generative ai teaches you not to learn how to do things yourself even when they’re difficult, devaluing necessary skills out of practice” is a genuine criticism when you look at the amount of people who think they are able of doing a difficult major when they couldnt write their own papers in high school.

but “ai is just bad because it’s bad” will convince no one and is a morally lazy position to take. about anything!

you need to know why reading someone’s diary is wrong if you want to learn about privacy and respect. you need to know why child sexual assault is wrong if you want to be able to help children form healthy age appropriate relationships. you need to know why capitalism is bad if you want to replace it with something else. you need actual concrete ideas and ideologies rather than “you should agree with me because i have the right vibe”

at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you

at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.

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