Rogue SecUnit that gets HelpMe.file but instead of discovering regular media it discovers Social Media. Much like Murderbot it decides to just keep quietly doing its job but instead of watching tens of thousands of hours of pirated TV and movies it's tens of thousands of hours of doomscrolling, shitposting, and watching absolute brainrot content. When not pretending to do its job it communicates almost entirely in memes and spams gifs and reaction images at people.
Children near a magical wood catching bugs and their family are like. Please do not catch pixies and small fae and bring them into our home. They are sentient and they are intelligent
And the kids are like "but they get into our bug traps" and "we didn't catch him he followed us home"
And their parents are like. Please i do not believe that 6 fucking pixies smuggled themselves into our garage on the underside of your bicycle saddle and then set up shop in the old dolls house. These are living beings they're not toys it's not kind to treat them like this
And the kids are like we are NOT treating them like anything you said we're not allowed to trap them and they always get into our traps so we always run away when they see us and then they follow us and get inside our backpacks and stuff
And the parents are like
Stop lying!!!
And then they set up wildlife cams and not only can pixies apparently do all of that and are very desperate to hang out with these human kids (who have fun life-sized toys and are covered in wonderful things like glitter and are a free source of fresh bugs and pop tart crumbs)
But they can also like. Fully just pick locks and shit.
Setting up little cameras and having to come to terms with the fact that not only are these small fae initiating every interaction with the kids but have also taken their cat's side in the war against pigeons and keep riding it into battle
The fae quickly realise the camera is a camera, and just as quickly invent silent movies
Each intertitle card has been crafted from words cut out of other writing, so a piece of paper looking like a ransom demand states "BuT Hoo wil SAVE the Dams3l?" is pulled away to reveal a doll tied to train tracks
is this a safe space to bring up how hilarious it would be if murderbot was amena's sexual awakening and it's the absolutely worst sexual awakening anyone could ever have bc you know you're dead on arrival there will be NO reciprocation. ever
>amena calmly and affectionately fluffing up its hair to make it feel better after the whole redacted thing ahaha 💁🏿♀️
>amena returning to her cabin and screaming into a pillow 🤬
bonus:
>perihelion wondering idly what fresh hell adolescents have come up with this time when it hears the muffled screams but after checking her vital signs to confirm she's not dying, goes back to poking murderbot
You have a superpower that keeps you safe: whenever you are in danger, time freezes.
You could be asleep, or in the middle of a conversation, or watching a movie. Time would stop and give you a chance to leave the area, and as soon as you were out of danger, time would immediately start up again
You walk in front of a bus and time stops until you exit its path. Someone tries to mug you, but suddenly you're gone; down the street and around the corner, so even when he turns around he can't see you, and therefore can't come after you.
One day you're watching tv at home and everything freezes. You look around, but you're alone. You get up and walk out of your apartment - the unnatural quiet, and the immobile dust motes suspended in the shaft of light from the window at the end of the hall tells you the danger still has not passed. You leave the building and the city is motionless. You walk down the street, then you go a few blocks, and before you know it you've traversed several neighborhoods, but nothing changes
After what feels like hours of walking, time still hasn't resumed, which means the danger still hasn't passed
After a very long time (you'd say multiple hours, but you can't estimate it well. There's nothing to estimate it by.) walking in random directions, it finally clicks. This isn't something that happened to you, it was going to destroy the whole city at least. You can't check your phone for news, because that requires a current to be transmitting information, so that's not an option. But you can open doors. And bars in the area are sure to have a tv. If any news about this came before time stopped, the screen is likely to still be stuck on that transmission. You know it's a low chance, but you have nothing else to try.
You go through ten bars before you give up.
Your second, desperate attempt is the news studio. If any information was about to be broadcast, you would fing it there. It takes a while to walk there by foot, but you can't take a car, since combustion is sure as hell not going to work when time doesn't. But after walking for a while you come across a bike. That only requires your movement to work, so you "liberate" it from it's frozen rider, after which you manage to get there before getting bored to death.
After trying the necessary doors and not finding a key, you break in through a window. You get lost a few times, not that it matters much, before you find something. They printed out the text, thank god, so no need for a working computer. You read. And then you lean on the wall for support. And slowly sink to the ground.
An atomic bomb. That's what's happening. That's what would've killed you. What would've killed everyone. You stare at the ceiling. Then you stare at the floor. You stare, for a long time. An unmeasurably slow moment. There is no way to stop this. Your best hope is to take your bike and drive until it won't hurt you. You check the paper to see how far to go. It's doable, everything is when your body can't get tired.
But..
You look at the news reporters around you, their frozen faces of fear, as they rushed through the preparations, to at least warn the people of what's coming. You see it in their faces. They knew they would die for this broadcast. And they were still late.
You can't leave them here.
The info on the paper is essential. You can guess at what distance your powers would proclaim you safe. It saved you from many things which would not have necessarily killed you before, so if you merely dragged people to the point where they would get hurt but wouldn't be likely to die... You could do it. It's doable. It must be done.
You start with the tv studio. At first you're uncoordinated, but after the first few you start a system, sweeping the building from one side to the other, from top to bottom. By the time you're done with the first building, you're sure it would have taken you at least three days, had the planet been turning.
You could've spent a century here, doing this. Your body can't get tired, you don't need to eat, or sleep, or to breathe, as all physiological needs are magically suspended. No time passes, no energy is spent, and yet you move. After a few houses, you draw out the safety line with chalk to keep track of it. You read a book, sometimes, just so you don't go crazy. It's not like you don't have the time for it. One by one the houses get emptied. One after another the streets are deserted. Block after block turn lifeless. City districts, moment ter eternal moment, slowly, torturously slowly, become ghost towns.
And then, after metaphorical, uncountable centuries of work, you are done. You took count, every house and every street adding up to a number somewhere around the official citizen count. There's piles of paper filled with the calculations. You still probably didn't get everyone. But you got a lot. You gave them a chance. You breathe a sigh of relief. You sit down, finish your book and take your bag.
And then you cross the line running.
The sound of the air moving around you reaches your ears for the first time in forever. With it, the sound of many, many confused people.
And as the sound of an explosion reaches you, with merely a gust of wind and slight warmth to tell you what has finally come to pass... You laugh.
So what I think is that there's this default belief in patriarchy that men are superior to women and therefore the "masculine" sphere is superior to the "feminine" sphere. And so, as feminists have fought to expand the number of allowable female activities, men (on the aggregate over generations) have retreated from those activities because they're now seen as "feminine", and so partaking in them is incommensurate with their belief in their own superiority. And, unfortunately, as this has progressed, this has resulted in a lot of men sectioning themselves off from, frankly, everything that actually makes being alive worthwhile. It's a misery spiral, and the only way out is to abandon male supremacy.
#men gave up deep friendships and reading and poetry and colourful fashion#all things that used to be considered manly in the 19th century#they're currently giving up on studying law and medecine#it's so stupid and sad
(I mean, the colourful fashion was more of an eighteenth century thing, but yeah)
#more women in higher education meaning fewer men is incredibly depressing to me. funny in a sad way#what happens when women will finally get into trades? will they just stop working
do you ever find something that is so funny and you want to share it with everyone but it also requires 18 layers of context spanning things like. 90s anime. aviation history. europop. canada. in order to even remotely understand why it is so funny
in the late 90s there was an anime called initial d which was all about street racing and drifting. naturally every single drift was played for great drama and excitement.
in 1999, an italian named giancarlo pasquini released a europop song under the alias dave rogers called Deja Vu. this song was picked up as the theme song for the above anime. it in turn became a meme, a shorthand for drifting and Cool Moves as a concept.
in 1983, air canada flight 143, a full sized 767, ran out of fuel halfway to edmonton, alberta. this is not something you want to have happen to a huge airplane. the flight chose to try and make an emergency landing at a nearby decomissioned airforce base (as they were falling fast and could not make it to a proper airport), where they ran into a second problem: they were falling out of the sky at 500 feet per mile, but reached gimli (the base in question) while still too high to safely land. normally a plane would just do a big loop-de-loop to lose altitude, but they had maybe three minutes of airtime left before they hit the ground: not enough time to make any kind of circle. the pilot, therefore, decided to execute a side slip to lose speed and altitude. this is Not a move you want to do with a massive 767, because airplanes are not built for that and if you screw it up that plane is hitting the ground at a high speed at a weird angle and breaking into a million pieces. nevertheless, the captain tried it... and succeeded. the plane landed perfectly, and there were no major injuries! (a couple of people did get minor injuries when evacuating the plane after.) he did it so well, in fact, that the plane was refueled, flown out of gimli a couple days later, and continued to fly for another 20 years with the nickname "Gimli Glider."
what is a side-slip, you ask?
it's drifting.
the guy goddamn drifted his 767.
in 2008, the tv show Mayday: Air Disaster featured the gimli glider with full reenactments as an episode on season five of their show.
and so, in conclusion, the thing i have been giggling to myself about all weekend:
when i was a kid my parents bought me an inflatable doll of the Scream by Edvard Munch (??) that was significantly taller than i was at the time and i used to slow-dance with it and pretend it was my boyfriend. It had its hands attached to its head obviously so it felt like he was always a bit horrified to be forced to dance with me
How much discourse do you think there is in the kpop demon hunters universe over Huntrix's breakup? I assume half the fans are analyzing every second of footage from the last three years looking for signs of tension and arguing about the whose fault it was and half the fans are posting that it's actually kind of fucked up to ruin the Idol Awards with a fake onstage breakup just to build up to dropping a new song, even if it is kind of a banger
@sagewiththyme You know that's a fascinating point because I figure the two options are a) no one really remembers what happened at the end because of magic bullshit or b) they play it off as a really elaborate but fully planned performance.
And the second one - can you fucking imagine.
Imagine one of the most popular bands in the world have this ongoing lore bit that they're actually demon hunters and they're always referencing it in their songs. And then one day a new boy band pops up and gets wildly popular with an over-the-top-cutesy hit. They're so soft and sweet and respectful. They're called Saja (Lion) Boys and they're all like "join the pride!" How cute!
And then they announce a new concert and you get there and it's fucking this. They're all dressed as demons/grim reapers. Surprise, "Saja" meant Jeoseung Saja all along! They're singing about how they're here for your soul and they relish in your pain, just a stunning 180 from their previous personas.
And then while you're trying to process the emotional whiplash the fucking demon hunter band bursts in and beats the shit out of them with the most insane pyrotechnic show you've ever seen in your life. They "kill" the boy band demons and then you never see them again. The whole band was a fucking psyop for Huntrix to play up the "demon hunters" bit.
I would never recover. The cheesiest fantasy power metal band has NOTHING on that level of commitment. I'd be stanning Huntrix for the rest of my life.
[ID: A comment by @sagewiththyme that says, "Didn’t they also say that the Saja boys were fighting onstage and that’s why they swapped time slots with the girls? Double breakup and makeup type thing". End ID]
"Yeah, the Saja Boys were a fake band. We paid them to steal the limelight for a little bit while Rumi's voice was out of commission. We thought it would be a cool setup for a triumphant return, you know? The cute little Lion Boys end up being secret demons trying to steal your souls, and Huntrix steps in and slays them in a triumphant return? ...Yeah. We planned it all, the songs, the heel-turn, the special effects, the whole shebang.
Except, uhhhh. We didn't expect them to get so popular so fast? They For Sure weren't supposed to make it to the final round of the Idol Awards. Like, for Legal Reasons. We were almost visibly panicking on stage when they announced that! I mean, do you know how it would look once it eventually came out that Saja Boys were working for us? "Oh, you planted a fake band so you could win the competition!" No joke. I mean, that is a pret-ty clear conflict of interest there. You know?
The Idol Awards are all about the fan's choices, and we just accidentally rigged the game.
The Saja Boys had to win the Idol Awards, now, but there was no chance. They only had two songs, Soda Pop and Your Idol. We couldn't have them push up the debut--I mean, we thought about it, Your Idol's a banger song and it totally would've given us a run for our money--but we'd have to follow it up with This Is What It Sounds Like, first off, and second, 'killing' the Saja Boys onstage would be like. The Media equivalent of announcing we won, like the Fans didn't have a choice in the matter. At the Idol Awards? Ha. Yeah. That's a no-go.
And I mean. Soda Pop is catchy but not that catchy guys, c'mon. We were totally gonna cream them with Golden.
So we were all scrambling. Rumi and Mira and I were trying to write and choreograph a brand new song, Takedown, something good but not Good Enough To Win, to maybe prolong the Rivalry, you know? To make our comeback all the more sweet. But it was all such short notice, and the song wasn't working, and Huntrix never gives a shoddy performance, on principle. We couldn't do it. But it was looking like the only way we were gonna legitimately lose was if something... happened during the competition.
And then it becomes even more complicated once it’s been awhile, and it becomes clear that no one’s heard anything from any of the “real” boys since the awards.
Like, obviously the Saja Boys weren’t a “real” band, so it makes sense they’re not coming out with new music, and since they’re “dead”, of course all their official band accounts have gone quiet, but like… someone would have had to be portraying the band members, right? Even if you wave that off as them being some of the same actors who portray the “demons” at their concerts, someone would definitely have to be lending their voices for the songs. Who were they? They couldn’t have been well-established in the industry, otherwise they’d have been recognized too quickly and the ruse would have been up, and something like this would have been a huge break for new performers.
So why’d they just disappear?
Where are the actors?
I’d imagine this would never gain too much traction within the fandom, but it still lingers long after the dust has settled and the scandal clears up. Go deep enough into the comments on any HUNTR/X-related posts, and you’ll find someone commenting #WhereAreTheBoys.
......suddenly struck by the idea for a piece of worldbuilding of "fae don't like iron bc it is the most stable element*"
*as in elements higher you can extract energy via fission and lower you can extract energy via fusion but iron itself there is no excess binding energy to extract at all
Even in a post-capitalist, post-consumerist world, you still need to produce goods, as a result of this, you need factories because it is more effective to have a few people making a lot of clothes in a factory than every woman being forced to sit down and spin wool all day.
please understand that the problems with capitalism are exploitation of human labor without fair wage, and the disproportionate profit-earning of a tiny minority of Owners who do not contribute labor in meaningful ways.
time-saving processes and devices and factory assembly (both automated and by hand) are not inherently capitalism or bad. they are the means by which humans meet their own needs for shelter, clothing, food, and other work tasks and still have time/energy for social activity and art and leisure beyond pure survival.
we do not want to go back to entirely analog, by-hand, subsistence living. we do not. people who romanticize that have never lived it, and it reads like marie antoinette cosplaying as a peasant. that romantic fantasy of hand-making and hand-farming EVERYTHING is a false picture born from a place of privilege.
if we dismantle capitalism, if we tear it down and start over in some social system that doesn't prioritize profit and inedible wealth, we will still need mass-produced clothing (even things meant to be altered!). we will still need canning factories and tractors with engines, we will still need mass-printed books and science labs and the factories that produce glass and plastic containers. we will need group work where one's skilled labor is exchanged for the products of other skilled labor.
could we survive without those? yes. we have before. but in many ways, it would only be survival. in society, humans have always moved toward ways to share and distribute tasks and the larger a population is the more people it needs in centralized locations doing A Thing together.
if we work to dismantle capitalism and it means we all have to do our laundry by hand because nobody is making washing machines and the people who could make washing machines can't do that because nobody is tooling the parts for washing machines, then we fucked up and i'm going to be mad. all of those steps represent jobs done most efficiently on a mass scale in a factory setting, so we don't all have to do our laundry by hand. that efficiency isn't a profit issue-- it's timesaving to free us up to acquire food and spend time with friends and make things for fun. we just have to pay someone a living wage for a reasonable number of working hours for the task of making rubber gasket seals for a washer.
what we need are proportionate wage and sustainable schedules that make humans in the system the actual beneficiaries of their work, instead of being consumable cogs for someone else's wealth accumulation. the reward is the problem, not the function itself.
80s misogyny saved the Star Wars galaxy because Darth Vader wasted all his time and effort trying to convince his starry-eyed gayboy empath son to become an evil space fascist when if anyone had any point asked his daughter “hey do you ever just want to KILL these people” she would’ve been shooing lightning out of her hands to prove a point in like 10 minutes