#kinglazrus

[albinotopaz]

Your prison ghost AU gives me life

Clear!

[half-deadmagicperson]

So what does it mean to be a potato clan member?

Hi Laz!

So basically, a couple years back there was a bit with the Danny Fenton rp blog involving potatoes. I got roped into it, and eventually a club/clan dedicated to potatoes was formed.

To be a member one must simply like potatoes 🥔

[fridurwrites]

Which of the fandoms that you have fics or wips for has been your favourite to write for and why?

This feels a bit funny when I only have two fandoms I've written for and one crossover in WIP, hah.

The answer's Outer Wilds. I love you, DP community, but Outer Wilds and its community mean so much to me in so many ways. I'll always be grateful that the game exists, and that it brought together so many wonderful people that I am lucky enough to consider extremely talented friends. The game and its fandom got me into writing again when I didn't think I ever would enjoy it properly anymore, and that kind of influence simply can't be overstated.

Writing Old Feathers and Learning to Catch helped me in some of my darkest mental spaces, and I'll probably never stop loving Sanidine and Olivine (yes, I do intend to finish them both still). Whether it's confronting existential dread, challenging questions of identity, or just putting cute nonbinary aliens in a position to share a marshmallow, I love it all.

It also, at the moment, has the dubious distinction of being the only fandom I've gone far enough to write public NSFW for. Whether or not that counts for much is a matter of perspective, I suppose.

[bibliophilea]

So how does the imaginary number work? You said that i^2=-1, but how do we get i in the first place?

Oh ye! So, you know how when you take any real number, and you square it, even if the real number was negative, you wind up with a nonnegative number? Like, if I want to square two (2^2), I get 2*2, which is 4. If I want to square negative two ((-2)^2), I get (-2)*(-2), which is again 4, because the negatives cancel each other out.

I can do this with any number! 0^2 is 0*0 is 0 (nonnegative). (-1)^2 is (-1)*(-1) is 1 (positive, and therefore nonnegative). pi^2 is just pi^2, because pi is transcendental (a special form of irrational that I could go on about, but that takes a bit of a tangent - but basically, it means that if I plug pi into any polynomial with rational coefficients, then there's no way to get 0).

So, we have a well-defined function that can take any real number, and map it to another real number: f(x) = x^2. That's squaring!

Now, what if we wanted to do the reverse?

Well, we have a function for that, too! The square root function: f(x) = sqrt(x).

This takes in a number x, and it outputs the "primary square root" of x. When x is a nonnegative real number, it outputs the nonnegative real number y such that y^2 = x. So, we have sqrt(0) = 0, because 0*0 = 0. We have sqrt(4) = 2, because 2*2 = 4.

We have sqrt(2) as its own irrational number (somewhere close to 1.41...), with sqrt(2) defined as the nonnegative number x such that x^2 = 2. Similarly, sqrt(5) is the nonnegative number x such that x^2 = 5.

This doesn't address what happens when we want to do sqrt(x) where x is negative. What if I want to do sqrt(-4)? In other words, how do I find an x such that x^2 = -4?

x can't be -2, because, as we said earlier, (-2)*(-2) = +4, not -4.

That's where the idea for i comes in! i is defined as the primary square root of -1: that is, i is defined such that i^2 = -1.

When we first encounter i in classes that talk about imaginary numbers, we normally see this written as i = sqrt(-1). But that leads to the question: which root are we picking? sqrt(-1)^2 = -1, but also, (-sqrt(-1))^2 = -1.

As it turns out, if we base our number system on -i rather than on i, we get basically the same number system. So, rather than force a choice for i, which could be sqrt(-1) or could equivalently be -sqrt(-1), we define i such that i^2 = -1.

This lets us play with imaginary numbers! sqrt(-4) is now 2i. sqrt(-pi) is now i*sqrt(pi).

We can even take the square root of imaginary numbers! That's just asking the question, what is x such that x^2 = i, for example?

As it turns out, we need a number with both a real part and an imaginary part to answer that question: in other words, we need a complex number! A number a + bi, where a and b are real numbers!

And once we have complex numbers, we essentially have everything we need to build functions made out of polynomials and roots, without having to restrict the input and output!

So! TLDR: the idea of i comes from the fact that we can't take the square root of a negative number and come out with a real number. So, we need i to be one of the solutions to the equation x^2 = -1. Rather than write "i = sqrt(-1)" (no good, forces us to choose between sqrt(-1) and -sqrt(-1), why are we pitting our children against each other, -sqrt(-1) deserves to shine), we write "i^2 = -1" (good, does not force us to choose between these siblings, we love our children equally and we show it by not forcing sqrt(-1) into the spotlight and -sqrt(-1) into the shadows, they can share i).

And once we have i^2 = -1, that opens up a whole world of complex numbers and playing with functions in this world!

[ghosttrolls]

Who is the ultimate character ever to you? Just the character who is the most. Who you can't stop thinking about. Who changed your brain chemistry

I know this is gonna be really cliche, coming from a DP blog runner... but Danny Fenton really did something to me. back in middle school i struggled with getting in trouble a lot, not infrequently for things i didn't do, both at school and at home. I guess i have a "troublemaker" vibe or something even though i literally never broke any rule on purpose in my childhood... maybe nervous energy just makes you look guilty. regardless it was so hard for me to have anything to myself. i was made to share a lot of things and even when i had my own room my dad would barge into my room without knocking to accuse me of some kind of transgression (like not rinsing out a milk glass - when i didn't drink milk, that kind of stuff that you shouldn't get yelled at for) even when i was just sitting quietly, or even at times SLEEPING - all this is to say, the double life that Danny was leading felt, at the time, so exhilarating. Being able to keep secrets felt like such a luxury to me, and i wanted to be him soooo bad. i know everyone says that aljsdhjh but yeah. exploring the nuance and realities of balancing two lives like that had such a draw to me back then, and at the core of everything, it's still the roots of why i enjoy it now. danny phantom tickled a very specific itch that i ended up going searching for in other media, other shows, in books, and more. Trollhunters was one of those. i took the first chance i could to move out of my parent's house, and i need that comfort a lot less now, so i've gotten way more casual about all that... but i still like it. still good.

[ravenatural-art]

Hey are you inside my head because you just posted two great fanarts for two mangas I have been thinking about a lot recently. I think this is the sign it's time to reread Karneval and Pandora Hearts

LMAO WAIT I WAS ACTUALLY JUST ABOUT TO MESSAGE YOU THIS MEME IN RESPONSE TO YOUR TAGS DUSJSJAKZLA

Okay but honestly I am shaking ur hand 🤝🤝🤝 bc I never actually finished Karneval ( I was up caught up on it for a while, but then fell out of keeping up to date ) and have been meaning to do so, and Pandora Hearts. augh. Ough. ofuhfjs I did finish that one and it emotionally wrecked me soooooo much, and I wanna experience that again ( the panel I think of constantly is one of Oz in the final arc that is just sooooo beautifully heartbreaking—putting it under the read more since. End of the manga spoilers ^^ )

mayhaps. This is also a sign for me. To draw more fanart of my beloved series of years past… :3

[halfabouros]

Would you rather be able to run non-stop without getting tired, but there is always a rock in your shoe when you do. OR you always arrive somewhere exactly when you need to, but you have to stay 30 minutes longer

Always arrive wherever exactly when I need to. I don't mind staying 30 minutes longer and I can probably just start to schedule that in too. Like a 7-4 being a 7-4:30 or whatever. Some places I go I basically have to do that anyways, and being on time is nice.

Listen, I've HAD to run with a rock in my shoe before and it sucked so bad and cut my foot up a lot. I don't even want to imagine how bad my feet would be if I could run non-stop without being tired. Because my ass WOULD be hauling!

[bixxelated]

What are your top three critter activities?

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oh man what a difficult question to answer! there are so many good critter activites that are excellent but i'd have to say my top three are

scurrying up some trees and making ambiguously horrifying noises/voices to scare unsuspecting passerby down below

finding the most isolated point in the house so i can chew through the walls and improve the architecture

liberating everyone's left shoe so i can add it to my lovely collection