Call that a System of Equations

[Icon Description: A drawing of me drawn from the shoulders up. End I.D.][Banner Description: The words "Calculator Menace" with spider webs behind it. /B.D.] Calculator. 20. He/They/Xe. I have ADHD and my current hyperfixation is The Magnus Archives.

[calculatormenace]

17 September 2025 Intro Post

Hello! We've had this blog for probably around 6 years now and we haven't made an introduction post, so I'm changing that.

We are the Calculator System! We collectively go by the names Calculator, Calc, and Jon. Our collective pronouns are he/they and we are collectively transmasculine, genderqueer, and abrosexual. We are physically 20 years old, American, Latino, and white. We are very open about having ADHD, ASD, BPD, NPD, and OSDD. You can refer to us in the singular or in the plural, we really don't care all that much. We are a full time college student working on getting our Bachelor's Degree in Applied Mathematics!

Our art blog is @calculator-menace-art .

We have no DNI, but we block very freely and encourage others to block freely. Our system mates tend to have differing stances on most topics and are often very opinionated, but most takes you'll see on here are usually what our system generally supports unless stated otherwise.

Our art as of recently as centered a lot on The Magnus Archives, and while we probably have other interests, that is what our life primarily revolves around.

This carrd about us as an About Me section, some art we never posted, links to other social media we have, and our commission information.

We also have a Patreon that we try to update regularly. There are currently four tiers. While we don't keep to a perfect schedule, the goal posting schedule typically is:

Tuesday - Exclusive art for Patrons in the $2 tier and above.

Wednesday - A look at a work-in-progress or unfinished piece for Patrons in the $2 tier and above.

Thursday - NSFW art for Patrons in the $5 tier and above.

Friday - Early access to art that will be posted to social media the following Monday.

Only those that are physically 18 years old and older are allowed to become Patrons.

We also have PayPal, CashApp, and Ko-Fi if you want to help us out a bit without becoming a Patron.

Our tags: #carefully calculated content - Our original art. #cal rambles - Text posts and reblogs where we talk. #cal answers - Responding to asks. #other people's masterpieces - Art by other people.

Welcome to the new folks! For those who have been following us for a while, thank you for sticking around!

[themostat]

A gerry from the vault

[phleb0tomist]

he would not fucking say that, but with disability.. he would not fucking be able bodied. sick n tired of characters walking away from multiple life changing injuries without a scratch. let’s get some natural consequences in here.

give that knife/sword fight survivor nerve damage. give the character who was shot in the gut a stoma. give that fire survivor lung damage and an oxygen cannula. give that leg injury survivor a cane. give that starvation survivor gastroparesis. give that spinal injury survivor a manual chair or powerchair.

while we’re at it, give your characters congenital disabilities too, just because. give them intellectual and development disabilities. give them acquired and postviral illnesses. dare to make somebody bedbound. for me.

[questionable-method]

no but im so tired of how self-deprecation is always more accepted than self-advocacy. if i say i can't drive because im autistic i get questioned on how exactly that works and given a million suggestions on how to do it anyway and i look like im trying to be special so it's easier to just say im a loser. yeah i don't drive because im kind of a loser lmao. oh well. and people say lmao back and we move on. at worst they say "oh im sure you'll figure it out haha." but no interrogation!! being a loser is more respectable than being disabled. being a loser is something that doesn't make other people feel uncomfortable about their own biases. so no, no im not disabled. i don't struggle to keep friends and do the laundry and make quick trivial decisions and clean my room and brush my teeth because im autistic. it's because im a loser. it's my fault. it is what it is. at least im funny now. do you think im funny? please think im funny

[transfaguette]

I'm telling you you guys have to stop buying into the propaganda about disability fakers. EVEN if fakers exist to the extent that it is a massive problem, disabled people still should be given proper support. If governments and other organizations fail to deliver that it does not matter what their excuse is; they have still failed disabled people and that is unacceptable. If their solution to so-called fakers is one that harms disabled people then they have not actually solved anything, but it sure as hell is a convenient scapegoat.

It also CANNOT be overstated that many people with legitimate needs are and will continue to be labeled as fakers, a sentence which is hurtful at best and deadly at worst.

[ihasasecondpolitics]

I would rather a thousand fakers get rewarded than a single person in need get overlooked.

[stuckinapril]

I think part of getting better is complete ego death. Like you’re not above setting a timer for 5 minutes and focusing on a task. You’re not above doing a very simple 3 minute workout to start. You’re not above reading for 10 minutes a day when you first get out of your reading slump, even if you used to read for hours. You’re not above starting slow and then building up to where you want to be/where you once were. What you are above is total inertia. Doing something really is better than doing nothing. Radically accept where you are, radically accept your limits, and go from there. Don’t let your ego get in the way.

[sleepy-tucker]

TMA Chibiverse 12 - Gerry

To everyone’s surprise…. Guess who won the poll…

ITS MY SILLY GUY I love Gerry soooooo much he’s definitely the character I’ve drawn the most and had the most developed design for ! Everyone always forgets his burn scars 🥺 anyways I couldn’t help myself with the will wood reference I am only a man

[fuckrsystemcringe]

Worst part of being a system is going crazy about The Character™️ while their sitting right next to you. sir can you leave I’m having a moment

[certified-silly-system]

They call it fronting because it’s like being on the frontlines of a war

[dusknoodle]

MY MOBIAN MY SONIC OC MY GOAT DR SLUMBER YAYYYYY

Pondering practicing this art style to do commissions with— I think it'd be neat =]

(maybe I will also make him blink?)

[miscellaneous-snark]

I am a fully diagnosed DID system - I used to be anti-endo until a number of months ago when I had a startling realisation that made me reconsider everything:

Restricting the definition of who a label/concept can be applied to falls under the same philosophy that the systems that oppress the disabled fall under.

That is to say - restricting access so that imagined invaders and "appropriators" won't get in.

The endo "invaders" are not oppressors in any fashion. Hating them because our oppressors "won't take us seriously because of them" is joining the war on the side of the oppressors. It's only fighting ableism until the oppressors call out a target that's easy enough to punch down on.

We, as a community, can be better, more compassionate than that. Is this truly what being "radical" is? Stop punching down. For your own sake, too. Is this really the "good fight" you want to win? To remove all the "weirdos who don't belong?"

To my friends who still feel hurt, I understand. But the people you are fighting do not want to hurt you. They just want to understand their own individual human experience. If they are angry at us, they are not in the wrong. You know that rage, too, at being told that what you are is not real, or is impossible to take seriously.

You have been taught to value an idea of a "real" experience based in science. But that science is so limited. The DSM-5 is not a bible, it is written with the intent of treating us, making us more palatable, "worth our place in society". It is not something we should be thumping to ward off "impure" things. We do not need purity. We do not need sanctity. We need safety and community, so we need to build it.

If we view endos, willos, or any type of system as a pest, we will choke ourselves with pesticide to eradicate them. This is not kindness. This is not acceptance. It is cruelty.

Do not give in to the desire to punch down. It will kill you.

[azuremist]

Nowadays writers loooove killing off traumatized characters who have been through hell and back. They especially love having suicidal characters succeed in killing themself in the last act, but it’s framed positively as a “sacrifice for the greater good”. It’s their favorite thing!

Surely this does not reflect any larger cultural views about mentally ill and suicidal people at large. It will also not be damaging to the psyche of the ill people who saw themselves in these characters whatsoever btw

[alphacrone]

“you should be at the club” i should be by the sea. i should be in the mountains. i should be awestruck and rendered speechless by the majesty of the natural world. if you even care

[boccher]

the central conceit of white boy "comedy rap" genres is that they're too racist to recognise that most classic rap is already pretty humorous in many ways, on account of wordplay being fundamental to the form,

[boccher]

and also steeped in pop culture from the very beginning, like the rap scene was already making music about comics and anime and video games you don't need to segregate a new genre for that

[avatarofthearchives]

Do you have any advice for writing dialogue for the TMA characters? I need help.

A trick that works really well for me, is I try to imagine whatever sentence I wrote being said in the voice of the character I'm writing for.

Like if I write this for Martin: "Huh? Oh yes! I'm fine. I mean, I never want to eat any sort of canned food again, but I'll be alright. Thanks for....asking."

My goal is to hear Martin's voice actor in my head, and if I can't, or it sounds really off, I try again until I can hear and it sounds correct enough.

You could also go on Github and try to study the characters speech patterns. That does help a lot but I DO forget the speech patterns when I'm not looking at them. Jon tends to speak more fancy than he has to, and his sentences often have filler words like "Absolutely not!" instead of just saying "No." Jon also speaks in questions a lot when speaking to other people. Martin pauses a lot. He's the king of "...." Also tends to use filler words like "Oh. Uh. Huh. Um."

Sasha tends to be blunt but a bit playful in how she delivers that bluntness. Tim speaks in jokes, sarcasm, or extreme bluntness. Basira tends to speak in a way that seems vaguely passive aggressive, even when she's not being that. Daisy tends to talk in shorter, blunter sentences. This probably doesn't actually help you, but I think of Georgie of having the most normal speech patterns out of the cast. Melanie tends to speech in a forceful way, when she says something she means it. Gerard tends to have a very casual speech pattern, that's contrasted by sarcasm and metaphors.

I hope that helps some!

[animentality]

[mikkeneko]

#my family does this thing#when we've majorly unfucked a room or done chore that we were putting off#or whatever. Any sort of household Improvement.#'Come brag on me.'#I means come look I cleaned/rearranged/did dishes/put away the laundry#and the scripted response is 'oh nice it looks SO much better in here now'#like my mom did this when we were kids.#'girls comr brag on the garage I finally organized it so I can get my car in there'#and we go and 'ooh' and 'aah' and tell her how nice it looked and how she did a good job#and we could have her 'come brag on' us for like doing the dishes or cleaning our rooms#I do it to my wife now too#it's a dialogue that means#'I did a chore and it feels like an Accomplishment even if it objectively wasn't a big thing. Please acknowledge this.'#and#'Wow you sure did do a thing. It has improved our material circumstance even if only in a small way. Thank you for doing it.'#like yeah scrubbing the pans is my Job and it's a Little Task but sometimes it feels like a Big Task#and it's nice to have an Accepted Script where I can just demand 'I have functioned as an independent adult praise me with great praise' - by @thepioden

[medusadyke]

academic dishonesty is not something you can spin as moral lol i do not want to share a career field let alone a social sphere with a bunch of chatgpt using ass bitches

[medusadyke]

"you're just scared your diploma is going to devalue" i'm afraid you dumb bitches are going to become my colleagues and drag social services to hell

[hylianengineer]

I'm afraid they'll become scientists and data that lives depend on will turn out to be wrong - and people will die.

I'm afraid they'll become engineers and sign off on bridge designs that collapse - and people will die.

I'm afraid they'll become medical professionals who don't know what they're doing - and people will die.

The assumption that academic dishonesty is okay is rooted in the idea that what you're learning to do doesn't matter.

[constance-mcentee-deactivated20]

"The assumption that academic dishonesty is okay is rooted in the idea that what you're learning to do doesn't matter."

[earlgreytea68]

also I just want to say, like, learning isn't just important if you have a career where people are obviously dependent on you. Learning is just important.

This is the most terrifying thing to me, that somehow we have reached the point where people are literally arguing that there is no "value" in learning how to think. Learning has value. The mere act of learning and teaching your brain how to do the hard thing that learning is has value. Period. Full stop. Do it.