traversing the multiverse against my will

Jay Maniac // any pronouns // 24

[thejaymaniac]

Heyya, I'm Jay!

here you may encounter insightful commentary, stupid bullshit, and specific complaints about the following topics:

writing (especially fantasy; especially urban fantasy)

worldbuilding

politics/activism/history

magic

being from the san francisco bay area

religions

being queer

information and misinformation

the metanarrative implications

media literacy

the surreal experience of being an english and history teacher for queer neurodivergent high schoolers in the United States of America

unreality

I had a moderately successful youtube channel that I still tell myself I'll revive one day. I was good at art for half an hour once in like 2021. Sometimes I voice act! I have an average amount of irrational biases and a less than average amount of gall bladders; I contain multitudes.

original posts or posts that I've added sufficiently to will be tagged #maniacal rambling; original posts that don't deserve that distinction will be tagged #maniacal shitpost. Posts about being a teacher will be under #teachercore. I also tag unreality posts and nsft posts when I remember to

I love making friends and chatting w/ people so feel free to message or send me asks!

If you're still reading here is a picture of my car, The Scallawagon. It's older than I am and my most identifiable object

[supreme-leader-stoat]

I have a very rough idea in my head that I don't think I can clearly articulate beyond "And that concludes tonight's reports on German air forc—WHAT'S THIS? IT'S KING ARTHUR WITH A STEEL CHAIR"

[the-writers-wrench]

IDK what this is about, but I want to know more.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

This isn't exactly the same idea but it could be but there is more rattling around in here so:

The Blitz here manages to qualify as Britain's Darkest Hour, thus triggering the return of Arthur from the Realm Avalon.

He does not speak a lick of modern English. He speaks an unholy mishmash of Brittonic and Late Classical Latin.

(Honestly I can see the latter becoming a plot point if they manage to get their hands on a Roman Catholic priest to act as a translator. It wouldn't be a perfect arrangement, but probably better than anything else.)

Truthfully he probably gets mistaken for a madman.

Somehow manages to steal a Spitfire out from under the RAF's nose, proceeds to use it to bring down like half an enemy squadron on his own, then lands in a field in the middle of nowhere.

Police and RAF converge on his location on account of the whole "stealing a plane" thing. They eventually overwhelm him with sheer numbers, but he manages to knock out an impressive number of them in the process. I mean, come on. It's Arthur.

[leseigneurdufeu]

"a catholic priest" i mean yeah sure why not but JRRTOLKIEN himself was alive and a teacher at the time so go big or go home.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

You know what sure why not let's just make literal real-life JRRT himself a character in this Arthurian return story, he deserves it.

[chainsawsdreamer]

@seajr DUDE

[thejaymaniac]

Suicide jokes are not funny but every time my boss gives me contradictory or incomplete instructions I do mentally say 'So am I just supposed to kill myself?' and someday I'm going to raise my hand and ask it in a meeting

[estro-boi]

we gotta get back to torrent distribution, i just watched someone eat eight grand in bandwidth charges because they ran a direct-download piracy site with local file hosting through cloudflare. torrents were invented literally for this exact reason

[estro-boi]

torrents work like this

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

please learn to torrent

[macleod]

How to Use Torrents (with Pictures) - wikiHow

An expert guide to get started using torrentsTorrents are one of the most popular forms of file sharing on the internet, accounting for over

always use qbittorrent, do not use bittorrent or utorrent.

[the-punforgiven]

I'm just saying, if you're going to worldbuild magic being a "raw, primal force, akin to and interweaving with nature itself" you gotta explain to me why animals don't use it

[the-punforgiven]

I know the normal answer is "they just aren't smart enough for it" but idk I've seen enough media where a character uses a spell in a moment of brain-off panic ilI feel like animals could probably stumble into a spell or two like, accidentally

[the-punforgiven]

Also how funny would it be to see a completely normal regular bear cast magic missile outta nowhere

[the-punforgiven]

Also there is no way ravens wouldn't figure out spells, tbh

They're smart fuckin birds, I believe in them

Either through observing or just figuring shit out ravens could 100% learn how to cast spells I'm sure of it

[the-punforgiven]

Dogs can also cast Magic Missile but every time they do the projectile is shaped like a bone or a stick and they chase after it

[rathayibacter]

group of wizards who ask this in-universe, and after extensive study learn to their surprise that animals are casting spells all the time, just that their magic is so fundamental as to be unrecognizable to humans. turns out the only reason acorns grow on trees is because squirrels keep wishing for them.

[thatquietkid108]

When a species becomes extinct humans have to figure out what kind of magic they were doing to keep the ecosystem from becoming out of balance

[pukicho]

Still rocking an NFT icon in this day and age is like seeing a confederate flag on the back of someone’s truck. You lost 100 years ago, fucker, it’s over.

[ink-and-errors]

The best thing about flash fiction is the high experimentation ideas with almost comically low stakes. I mean, sure, I can write the idea of prank calling wizards as a book but a book takes weeks/months/years with guaranteed self doubt, burnout, sleepless nights, an ungodly amount of energy drinks and/or coffee cups, and a weekly subscription of imposter's syndrome. But for flash fiction, even if the idea doesn't work out, I'd just wasted like 10-30 minutes and 200 words. Boom.

[thejaymaniac]

Dang, can't believe fujoshi get their own god

good for them

[artbyblastweave]

Fun thing about Mannequin is that of course, objectively, to the extent you can objectively categorize anything, he's a supervillain. He's a bad guy in a superhero novel. He fights guys in tights. He's on his second code name. But that's not really a lock that you'd pick that up if you just saw a piece of fanart of him in passing, is it? Dude could be a slasher (I mean he is, but he could only be a slasher, defined by the absence of the last-second arrival of a guy in tights.) Dude could be an enemy from a soulslike. Could be a fan-favorite NPC from a high-concept actual-play podcast, playing Nobilis or something. Could be the latest Lethal Company enemy, could be an SCP, could be a college sophomore's vent art about feeling commodified under late stage capitalism, could just be a mannequin. Faceless plastic doll guy is a versatile aesthetic

[thejaymaniac]

[scorchroots]

I've never loved anyone as much as I love Ursula Le Guin

[minecraft]

[canoncanidae]

[stjohnstarling]

People on the internet love to criticize work posted by Some Guy with zero institutional power like it's made by Disney Studios, and talk about Disney movies like they're made by their personal friend Amy, who is just trying her best,

[orteil42]

i'm very happy with cookie clicker's success of course but it's difficult to tell if it was a freak fluke or if there was some sort of unsuspected secret sauce at play. could i do it again. modesty aside somewhere in my hundreds of design docs for other game ideas there could be the game industry equivalent of a nuclear bomb. i must tread lightly

[orteil42]

[lazy as shit, doesn't make anything] i.m saving the world

[bethfuller]

ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖✶ ✦ delete world? ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖✶ ✦

˚　　　　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　　 . ✦　　　 　˚　　　　 . ★⋆. 　

[nereb-and-dungalef]

@thejaymaniac

[stackslip]

we're moving to an internet where children would be banned from reaching out for help and friendship online but abusive parents can post their children's every second online to humiliate and expose them for money with no pushback

[thejaymaniac]

You've heard of fuck marry kill but have you heard of Fuck, Marry, Kill, Fight, Become, Adopt, Elect?

It's great for when you have more than 3 options! specifically when you have 7 options.

[thejaymaniac]

And if you're thinking 'when am I going to be picking between 7 options that's way too many??' well then let me introduce you to:

The 7 deadly sins

The 7 colors of the rainbow (if you're Christian)

The 7 traditional planets

The 7 notes in a major or minor scale

The 7 days of the week

The 7 wonders of the world (several versions)

The 7 main chakras

The 6 real continents and 1 fake one

The 7 kinds of birds

And for any weirdos who only play this game with people I'll throw in one for you guys too.

7 members of the Justice League (either original members or animated series members)

Put any more you can think of in the tags