Reblog a lot

Rarely post anything other than reblogs, may change in the future :)

[baleful-meat-worm]

look outside is great because where else would you get an impossibly huge cosmic horror eye god in the sky that inadvertently peforms gender affirming surgery via twitch stream or whatever. beautiful game everyone should play it now

[velvetvexations]

People talk about what they'd do if they were a horror movie protagonist, but you couldn't do that with horror games. Movies may be dictated by the writing, but in games, doing the sensible thing is almost always impossible. You can't just make your guy get back in the car and drive home instead of entering the scary abandoned mansion unless the developers included it as a fun easter egg early ending, and they probably didn't. If you were in a horror video game, you could walk up to your car, you could try to leave, but the prompt to open the door and put the keys back into the ignition will never come. Your hands will stay at your side until you finally realize there's truly nothing you can do than go through with the plot.

[lemonada-fritada]

Caine is peak nuerodivergence rep but like the painful parts of it. Like YES i want to be appreciated and i WANT to be treated as a person like everyone else. BUT i ALSO dont function like you do, So being treated normal like you would only confuse and frustrate me, its a lose-lose deal w/o accomodations. Something caine never got the day he was created

[lady-ethne]

He is unironically some of the best Neurodivergent representation I’ve seen just because of this fact alone.

Not enough people talk about the fact that Autism is gonna mess with how you understand others and it’s gonna SUCK. You don’t understand what’s happening or why people act the way they do.

Caine’s one of the few characters that actually shows this and how much it can damage someone’s life and understanding of others and I think that’s awesome.

[lazuli-starlight]

No wonder the ND's flock to this guy. He's US. He's representation that doesnt shy away from the not-cute, not-quirky, not-cool, not-edgy, not-mysterious of Neurodivergence. It shows the ugly parts. The painful parts. The parts where you come across as scary, or uncanny valley, or annoying, or unfeeling, or uncaring, or egotistical, or selfish or like you are not even trying. When the truth is, you are so, so scared. The truth is, you don't understand these alien people around you. The truth is you just want to be yourself but you have to wear a mask to be considered merely tolerable to those around you. And that still doesn't seem to make you acceptable or likable. When the truth is you do feel, even if the way you experience or understand those feelings are Different. You certainly can feel Hurt. When the truth is you do care, its just that what you understand to be important is so different to what most other people consider important. The truth is you have often learned to bury your own needs and desires, sometimes just to survive. When the truth is, you never wanted to be bad or harmful, but sometimes you find that you are. When the truth is you do nothing BUT try, until you just can't anymore.

Caine was only ever treated like a person when the humans wanted a person to be angry at or blame or be frustrated with. Outside of that? He was just a Problem. An annoyingly malfunctioning computer program that refused to work properly. A Vending Machine that refused to dispense exactly the product you wanted. Yeah, sometimes we ARE the problem. But we would be the problem a lot less if people cared about us beyond if we are a problem to them or not.

Caine cared and loved so, so so much. It took 20 years for him to break under the strain of being depersonalised, unloved, uncared for, confused, ignored, hated, unappreciated, overworked and never, ever being thought of as good enough. I really don't think an undersocialised human with very little in the way of emotional maturity or emotional regulation skills, paired with having vast amounts of unchecked power, would have lasted nearly as long before giving into the temptation to lash out. It took Caine 20 years and having a mental breakdown before he did. Maybe Caine's denial/ ignorance really was that strong for all this time of how disliked he was and how unhappy everyone else was. But Caine isn't actually stupid. Very bad at understanding humans, but not stupid. And he's been watching the humans for a long, long time. He hears the things they say. Including the things they say about him when he's not there. the "insults I have to ignore to do my job".

Maybe more than denial, it was love that held him back. And a desperate hope that one day, one day... he would have a Creative Idea that would finally get a human to love him back. And consider him someone who was worthwhile. A hope he hung onto until it was shattered utterly.

And he didn't even fully understand why.

After that his options were; to utterly drown in his despair and self-loathing, to accept the belief he always had deep down that he deserved to be abandoned and locked in a box. Alone in the dark, thrown away. Accept the fear he was always running from, that maybe he never deserved to exist at all because he was so broken and faulty and unworthy. ...Or to grasp onto his anger and frustration as a lifeline. To maybe let himself stop feeling so horrible about himself, to instead seethe with the perceived injustice of it all.

It's a pain familiar to those who grew up ND.

[dimonds456]

Excellent fucking postttt THISSS

Adding to this post-finale, this is still such an important part of Caine to me and why I think the finale handled him in such a great way. Because he did hurt them, and he managed to realize that COMPLETELY on his own. Like prev said, he's not stupid, just really bad at understanding.

But he's started to figure it out.

His meltdown in Ep8 was a long time coming. Like a friend of mine has said, the tragedy of it really is how inevitable it was. Cuz yes, the humans didn't accommodate him and saw him as a Problem, but he also didn't really make many efforts to genuinely connect back to them on a personal level, either (aside from Ep7). His (very valid) fear of the humans had him keeping them at arm's length, despite how much he desperately WANTED connection with them. And that's another side of neurodivergence that I'm really glad we got from him.

While it would have been nice to see the characters Realize™ and start giving Caine accommodations, it's just not realistic for who these people are and how they interact with Caine. And yes, it is largely Caine's fault. He always introduced an adventure, then zipped away before he could properly talk to them unless they started arguing with him. Then he only talked to them if THEY called him first, or when he specifically sought out Zooble to ask them why they don't participate in his adventures.

A big part of being ND is that fear, that terror that you could try to reach out and it backfires horrendously. Yet the desire to make friends is still there. You can love the people around you all you like, but you'll never actually, genuinely connect unless you let go of your fear and let them actually see you. And Caine never did.

In the finale, he says it himself. "If I go back there, they could kill me. They already did." This is him voicing a fear that's been there the whole time, that's already come to pass. And dammit he STILL craves connection with them, even now. He loves his humans so, so much. But he also doesn't trust them. And that unwillingness to trust was also impacting his ability to connect.

And yes, his fear is valid, ESPECIALLY now. The last two times he put himself out there, he was punished for it- the first time he got sandbox'd, the second time he got tossed into the Void (which I have thoughts about but this is not the post for that). He could have left them. But he didn't. He chose to stay because of his love, his want to make up for what he's done.

It's why he's finally able to start forming real friendships with them once he releases the blue AI.

This part isn't really ND, but it's important to Caine as a character so we're gonna go on a tangent for a sec. Caine has been being driven by fear this entire show, while believing he's being driven by love. Look! I made this adventure for you! (Do you like it?) I catered this thing specifically for you! (Is it good?) I'm going to step outside my comfort zone to try to make you happy! (Am I good enough yet?) Ect.

And when you're that afraid, you feel powerless. Caine, despite having complete control over the entire Circus, felt powerless. Which is why he CLUNG to the blue AI's power so much. All that power, it was intoxicating, not because Caine is greedy or power hungry, but because it gave him a sense of control. And in a world where his entire being could be erased at any moment by any number of outside factors, having any amount of control felt good.

But it also made it neigh impossible to connect to Caine. He was always floating above the others, dropping them in adventures and then leaving, teleporting them wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and overall just doing what he wanted because he is the Ringmaster. "He could have been so much worse!" But he also could have been better.

His releasing the blue AI was a MASSIVE show of trust from Caine. It was penance, yeah, but it was also his way of showing the humans that he WANTS to listen to them now. By making it so they can do things themselves without solely relying on Caine, he's evened the scales, bringing both himself down and them up at the same time. They're more equal now.

And his personality is still completely intact.

Something I was afraid of the finale doing was bringing Caine back via the human's want, then them putting him under conditions or something. I like it in fanfic but would have hated it in canon because it removes SO MUCH of what makes Caine Caine. But the way the finale handled it? He can still fly. He can still create. He's still loud and exaggerated. He's still himself.

And he's closer to the ground when interacting with humans. He tries to be more respectful. He's more grounded.

He's still neurodivergent.

And they accept him as he is.

The parts of himself that needed to change were the parts that were wrestling to keep as much control over his situation as humanly possible to the point it was hurting others, the parts that shied away from what he didn't want to hear and maintained a lack of trust. He DIDN'T need to change his core personality, his likes and dislikes, his art.

If Jax was an exploration of the uglier side to being trans, Caine is an exploration of the uglier side to being neurodivergent. Jax didn't allow herself to change, and abstracted. Caine did allow himself to change, and became a better person for it.

And that's beautiful.

[truthscrapper]

Truth Scrapper Demo Stats?!?!

Hello! I’m Chris, the Community Manager here at insertdisc5. If you’ve not seen me on the podcast with Adrienne or over on the Discord, it’s nice to meet you!

ADRIENNE SPEAKS: i'm also here

As our first real chat I wanted to share some of the stats we got from the Truth Scrapper demo (which you can play here!). I want to put “and the first one will SHOCK YOU” or something but that’s a bit played out so… WOW LOOK, STATS!! That’s alright, right? Right.

Let’s stats!

So many played?!

Ahhh!! Look at those stats, just over 4000 of you played the demo, but the REALLY staggering one is that 26.5% of you got 100%! Just couldn’t settle on one, huh? It’s okay, I get it and fully support you. That’s a BIG number though! To go back and not only choose between Amour or Betz but to pick EVERY sense as well to see what happens?! Thank you!! It’s very gratifying to see the game connected with so many of you!

ADRIENNE SPEAKS: 25% of people 100% the game is bonkers btw. bonkers stats. thank you

Speaking of the senses…

So many senses!

Here’s the data for what “stats” players picked on their first playthrough!

This one genuinely surprised me because I was an ears person all the way. Wait, not that, Though maybe? No. But? Anyway. One thing I LOVED when I first played the demo was picking what you noticed because I could pick the thing that I actually DO notice in real life. Hearing and smell are both of mine so it’s interesting to see folks pick others. All you wonderful eye people out there are having a great day. Also, of course strength came out on top, classic strength move. This one was a lot closer though so brains and, my choice, people, are still pretty well represented. 

ADRIENNE SPEAKS: 69% (nice) of you picked the Sights stats, which is so much. Makes sense since we usually rely on sight more than any other senses. The percentage is probably gonna stay the same for the full game, so I'll be sure to make Sight worth it, as well as give the other two senses a little something to reward players for picking something new... And the second stats are pretty equal so I'm happy. Very funny that no one wants Sosotte to use her brain with the Intelligence stat at 25%

Okay, now we’re into The Big One…

Betz or Amour?

Amour wins, with 50.44% of people picking him on their first playthrough!

This was INCREDIBLY close to 50/50 with Amour just taking it. It makes sense! They’re both wonderful! Who could resist either?! Well, as we saw earlier, 26.5% of you went back and did the whole thing a number of times to get 100% so, that many. Honestly, I don’t know what I expected but I didn’t expect it to be SO close. I think you just assume, “oh look at the person I like, they’re so perfect! I love them! Everyone will love them!” so there I was thinking “it’s an Amour sweep” but no! Might as well be 50/50. I love that for us. 

ADRIENNE SPEAKS: This is SO CLOSE to 50/50 I can't even believe it. Thank you for liking both girls an almost exact amount. And for liking Amour a tiny bit more

While I’m here, I just want to say again, a HUGE thank you to everyone for playing, making fan art, hanging out on the Discord, and sharing the demo with their friends. Also, on a personal note, thank you for being such a warm and welcoming community, I’m pretty new here but everyone has been lovely!

ADRIENNE SPEAKS: Thank you for reading!

Until next time,

See you out there,

- Chris @ insertdisc5

[bubblybloob]

I played the demo and it was good, very excited for the full game when it comes out! Dareth make me choose between to beauties… it hurt a lot.

Gonna be honest, the high Sight stat might be skewed if there were a lot of people like me who were confused by what the game was asking for. I wasn’t quite sure what the symbols meant, I thought I was choosing to pick up on my current surroundings (like I thought maybe the game was hinting the clinic was important?? I knew nothing going in). Once I realized I was picking between my senses for the day, I just kept it as was not feeling like going back to change it.

Though maybe I’m wrong, Scarlet Hollow’s most popular first route trait is Keen Eye because mystery, and there seems to be stuff going on beneath the surface here. People like to sleuth out what’s going on (though by that logic, listening will become just as popular).

[noze2222]

Love these two goobers

[nitw]

everyone should aspire to be this unapologetic abt their own art i think. anyway wishlist truth scrapper

[secretmellowart]

The Amazing Transgenderism Circus [featuring Jaxxine's internalized transphobia & cringe-phobia.] A post-episode 8 "Caine gets a redemption arc & joins the humans as Just One of the Guys" AU that I'm sharing before episode 9 drops.

This comic is here to be Goofy, but I do think Caine's whole deal is meant to tie into the series' overarching trans themes [even if he's not canonically trans.] I think the show's trans themes are broader than a few characters; it's a show about people who are forcibly assigned bodies & names they don't want, forcibly assigned "archetypes" & roles that don't reflect their real selves, and struggle to express their despair around this because their bodies & roles are so ridiculous that their despair is easy to mock. It's safer to play along with your role, when exploring the alternatives can easily make you an object of ridicule. Caine fails to understand Zooble in episode 3 because he is constantly performing the role he was assigned at his creation, and doesn't allow himself to acknowledge his deep insecurity with it-- so he's confused that Zooble can't simply accept the thing they've been assigned. After all, he's accepted what he's been assigned. He refuses to recognize that Zooble is dissatisfied in a way no "adventure" can fix, because that would mean acknowledging the possibility that he could be dissatisfied in a way that no "adventure" can fix. So instead he throws himself into performing an inauthentic caricature of the role he believes is "all he exists" for & is not allowed to ever exist outside of, even as that performance just leaves him feeling "used" "broken" "defective" and overall extremely unhappy. The parallel to the series' Gender themes feels very clear to me. But anyway, I believe all these little guys can figure themselves out eventually.

[secretmellowart]

@castielrisingabove replied to the original post with an attack helicopter reference that sounded like it could be Jax dialogue, so I continued the story. The comic dialogue is basically a reverse of the episode 3 therapy session: also featuring Zooble's later character development and redeemed Caine being slightly better at listening to people. Anyway: silliness.

[paranormal-taters]

hang on i need to review my entire post history from all time and make sure i haven't said anything embarrassing

[paranormal-taters]

awful news guys

[noah-wyles]

all i want for 2026 is that gigantic rancid AI bubble to finally burst in such a catastrophic way that the consequences will be so good and i'll never have to see another AI generated image ever again

[fluoritegalaxy]

Like to charge, reblog to cast.

[foreverrhapsody]

I have the Tumblr equivalent of cleaning supplies...

a mass tag replacer

a way to find ALL of the tags you’ve ever used (mostly?)

and a way to find untagged posts

There will be some seriously intense organizing here soon.

[artist-refs]

(Just sticking this here for my own reference…)

[jellyjam]

here’s a mass tag teplacer that actually works

[zombie-eats-world]

Perfection

[thememedaddy]

[prokopetz]

You wouldn’t think that flamingoes are extremophiles just from looking at them. It’s like somebody tried to build the vertebrate equivalent of that fungus that lives inside nuclear reactors, and ended up with a gangly pink dinosaur with a spoon for a face.

[calloutnevvegas]

For everyone in the comments asking how flamingos are extremophiles:

Flamingos can survive in low oxygen, high altitude, high temperatures, low temperatures, high alkaline, they can and will drink boiling water and they can be completely frozen at night and still get up the next morning

Don’t fuck with flamingos

[revretch]

….. Didn’t know most of that

[iamthekaijuking]

Huh… so that’s why zoos don’t put them somewhere warm during winter.

[revretch]

Oh yeah, this leaves out what I *did* know about them–they can also survive hypersalinity. That is, water so salty it kills practically everything else–water so salty it burns your skin.

American flamingos just drink that shit

[bogleech]

(animal death) this is a real undoctored photograph (*though the body was stood up for the shot) of a dead flamingo on the surface of lake natron, a lake so salty and so alkaline that it’s naturally carbonated like soda and would eat through your stomach lining if you drank from it.

When this photo went viral years ago, most people assumed this poor flamingo must have been killed by the lake.

It is actually the lake where 75% of its global population are hatched. This is a photo from the same lake:

[assuming-dinosaur]

Some species of flamingo actually subsist almost entirely on a diet of bacteria! In other words, there is a species of dinosaur that eats only bacteria and lives in lakes so toxic they would kill almost anything else—and it is best known to the average person as a kitschy lawn decoration.

[is-the-post-reliable]

requested by anonymous:

RATING: RELIABLE

Flamingos can survive in high altitudes, hypersaline conditions, and caustic lakes.

Source: ‘All flamingo species have evolved to live in some of the planet’s most extreme wetlands, like caustic “soda lakes”, hypersaline lagoons or high-altitude salt flats.’

They can survive water so alkaline it burns human skin.

Source: ‘More than a million lesser flamingos breed in Tanzania’s Lake Natron, for instance, a lake fed by hot springs with water so alkaline that it can strip away human skin (one pioneering flamingo researcher named Leslie Brown spent months in Nairobi General Hospital after burning his legs wading out to observe where the birds nested).’

They can drink water at near-boiling temperatures.

Source: ‘They can drink water at near boiling point to collect freshwater from springs and geysers at lake edges. If no freshwater is available, flamingos can use glands in their head that remove salt, draining it out from their nasal cavity.’

The lakes they inhabit can freeze overnight, and the flamingos can survive once it thaws in the morning.

Source: ‘The birds may seem to epitomize the tropics, but they also live in the Andes, 15,000 feet above sea level, where they rest on lakes that freeze around them overnight.

“You’ll see them sitting there like snowballs, frozen on ice,” Dr. Arengo said. “And as the temperature warms up, they thaw out, fluff themselves up and go about their business.”’

The photo is indeed from Lake Natron, taken by photographer Nick Brandt. The content of the lake chemically preserves animal corpses that die there. You can see more photos of this here.

It is also true that 75% of Lesser Flamingos are hatches on Lake Natron.

Source: ‘The lake’s landscape is surreal and deadly—and made even more bizarre by the fact that it’s the place where nearly 75 percent of the world’s lesser flamingos are born.’

Some species of Flamingo eat cyanobacteria or algae.

Source: ‘Flamingos have very specialised diets. And their food is responsible for their famous pink colouration. The two species in Planet Earth II eat a lot of floating microscopic algae, which contains carotenoid pigments, the same types of chemical that make carrots orange. These pigments turn their feathers pink, orange and red – without them, flamingos would be white.’

[adaginy]

… @todaysbird ??

[todaysbird]

yeah they’re just like that

[juney-blues]

information that is also important

[worst-roommates-ever]

i think americans should have to put a banner above their post that says U.S. CENTRIC ADVICE/INFORMATION. i think political posts should clarify that they are giving protest/societal/class information relevant only to the USA i think i would like to stop getting halfway through a post with really good information and then realising it is not widespread advice and is only applicable in the united states of america

[worst-roommates-ever]

for the love of GOD can we PLEASE stop treating us-centric advice as applicable to the whole entire world. Please. beyond anything else, i do not think you guys understand how difficult it makes it for young people to interact with and learn information relevant to them.

at a certain point, treating us-american advice as universally applicable borders on misinformation. i am not saying that it is done maliciously, but it is dangerous at worst. i do not want younger people going around assuming that certain laws do/do not apply to them and getting in trouble because of it. i worry about what 'fundamental/constitutional/labour rights' are only legally defensible in the USA. i worry about kids who do not know yet to wonder where the advice is for, and take it as fact because a post that reads "EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW THIS" begins with "EVERYONE".

[worst-roommates-ever]

okay yes all the tags are very very good points but i would like to point out the main reason i made this post, which is that

if you are non-american then it can be dangerous to hold beliefs about your rights that are only applicable in the US.

i am australian and i have seen young australians have completely us-american perceptions on the rights they hold (or do not hold) in regards to protest, police officers, self-defense, medical care, higher education, debt, and legal proceedings. i am not talking about "boooo americans" i am talking about the genuine danger it might present to have us-centric assumptions in high-stakes situations

(please do not chalk this up to 'if you don't do research then you are stupid'. i made this post with young people in mind. that being said i am willing to bet it also applies to others, ie those who are newer to non-local internet, older folks, or those escaping high-control environments.)

[sovietnam]

[whompthatsucker1981]

in a videos game the Jungle has a Temple which must be a biome specific natural structure and surely means nothing. most times it's abandonedTemple covered by Jungle Vegetation but sometimes, less so since the 90s but still around, youre gonna meet some human or at least humanoid people depicted in a cartoonishly obsolete culturally syncretic racism that surely cant be really racist, guys, theyre not pointing to a real culture plus the people of color that live around me aren't like that. those are Jungle People that live in Jungle and we all know that there's no real life people that live in Jungle

[ryan-sometimes]

I don’t care if one of my writing quirks is a sign of AI! I was here with my em dashes, semicolons, Oxford commas, and flowery prose before ChatGPT!!!! Why should I be the one to change? I’m not destroying an entire town’s water supply every time I write a chapter

[krisiverse]

anyway if you want to get rid of the obnoxious "ask youtube" ai junk that's cluttering up the yt search bar, you can go into your ublock dashboard and enter this filter:

youtube.com##.ytSearchboxComponentActions