N is for nerds. It's the 90s, we're in!

buzwuzz, they/them, born in 1990. Mostly here on tumblr to kill time and reblog stuff. I have this same username on Dreamwidth, Pillowfort, and AO3, and it's also a Protonmail email address. I don't tend to follow people, because I'm easily overwhelmed and I don't use my dash that way. My time zone is GMT+2 (in the winter). Header art by me.

[trekinist]

> The Stalker says he can take me to the Zone

> I ask if the Zone is creepy or wet

> He doesn't understand

> I light a cigarette and make my speech about what constitutes something being creepy or wet

> He does not laugh and says "The Zone demands respect"

> it's creepy AND wet

[fial-inka]

cicada radio

ko-fi | instagram | bluesky

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

feels like a real step back that with all the sexual freedom available to us we moved to Hookup Culture instead of Having Sex With Friends Culture

[ellieisnotjelly]

Kiss the homies. Hold the homies. Make love to the homies. Then play smash.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

*nods sagely* smash bros and then Smash Bros

[victusinveritas]

Meet Pando, not a forest but a single tree. Every trunk of the Quaking Aspen is genetically identical & connected by a single 80,000 year old root system, making it one of the largest and oldest living entities on Earth!

[foone]

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk through the body of a God?

[carmelia-rose]

@derinthescarletpescatarian

[makesomenoise]

🌈

[goth-queen]

[status-quo-hater]

I think one of the funniest abortion stances I've heard was from my parents neighbor. He's a like, hard-core libertarian viking larper guy who is very tall and very fat and very bald.

He believes a fetus is human with a soul, but also its "basically attacking the woman's body" so if she wants to get rid of it, that's "basically self-defense". He compared it to shooting a home invader. So he supports abortion not as healthcare, but as killing a baby in self-defense

[status-quo-hater]

Y'know I'm so glad someone reminded me of this. Because this was also discussed.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

He brought up people consensually hurting each other, didn't go for one of the obvious answers like boxing or body mods or something, no he went STRAIGHT TO BDSM and he DIDN'T EVEN REMEMBER THE ACRONYM

[the-big-mood]

This woman's dragon puppet

[gokucat]

feeding her stuffie must live on....

[vacuously-true]

Happy birthday to all queer people on this, the first day of pride month

[nattousan]

this feels like making one of those posts people get sent death threat anons about but...

do you think the Despicable Me minions are people?

Me and my friend are in two camps. She thinks they are not, simply because they are not human. Her requirement to be a person is simply to be a human. ME on the otherhand, i extend my definition of personhood to any sapient non-human who can communicate on par with a human. Humans are people by default, but i think a 40 foot flesh creature with teeth for skin would also be a person if they gave me their name and told me they were DTF.

Thats why i would not consider a dog a person, because while they yes are very intelligent and have an internal state and way of communicating with us, they are not able to do so on the same level, whereas a minion would be, despite not speaking the same language.

This all was brought on btw bc of an argument with her fiancee about putting minions in the people section of his Tomodachi Life Island

[gallusrostromegalus]

Oh my definition is even broader than that: An Orca Whale is a person, but one that needs additional civil protections because of its inability to communicate with the kind of nuance necessary to function in modern human society.

And by the same logic, the Minions have the same right to inhabit the "people" section of Tomatachi Life as any other fictional character, "human" or otherwise.

(more under the cut)

---

One thing to consider here is how we're using the word "person". I'm using it to describe an individual organism with enough intelligence to possess a sense of self, communicate with others of its kind or even other species, and engage in social practices like teaching skills to a younger generation or making art. You're using it to describe an organism that could perform all the necessary tasks to be a citizen of modern society, and neither of us are wrong, at least colloquially. Someone who is better at linguistics than me can come in here with the specific technical language surrounding sapience and personhood.

The reason I cut my definition so broadly is that like you, I agree that all humans are people by default, but there are many humans who have even greater communication barriers with humanity at large than the minions do. For instance:

-People with cognitive and physical disabilities that greatly impair communication

- Children, who will be able to participate soon but not right now

- People who are so socially isolated they can't function outside of their very narrow social circle (so they need some help adapting to society at large)

- People that don't have any problems communicating, but whom some assholes will argue are not people for the sake of maintaining the social status quo (we're all familiar with the -isms here)

These are also all people who are THE MOST VULNERABLE in society and I try to center my personal policies on "what could we be doing that would be good/safe/just/helpful for EVERYONE?"

By putting the "oh for sure a person" line out at "Orca" (and being willing to entertain arguments that extend that line even further) I'm keeping my mind open about how radically different a person could be from me and still be a person, and thinking about what can be done to ensure justice for this person. That's more self-maintainence than anything else, but you see where I'm coming from.

---

I think your concept of "a person is someone who could participate in civil society" is a very good one too, and goes hand in hand with mine, because it raises the questions of "Is it really feasible for this person to participate in civil society? If not, what can we do to include them? And if meaningfully including them is not possible at this time (Orcas) how do we do right by them?"

I think that in the future, it's entirely possible that advances in physical and social technology will enable us to communicate effectively with Orcas, and that the Orcas of today and the future are more than intelligent enough to understand the concepts of Encroachment, Liability and Lawyers, and will sue the shit out of everyone for what we've done to the oceans.

Personally, I'm looking forward to that day.

Since we don't have that technology yet, but can recognize Orcas as people, it's on us to sue the shit out of data centers and the state of Washington (among others) on their behalf and put the money towards giving them the chance to reach that future.

---

Referring to small text on the original post though: are Minions "people" in the sense that they can and should be included in the "people" section of someone's Tomadachi life game?

Admittedly, I am more familiar with whale biology than the Tomadachi and Minions franchises, but from what snippets I recall: in-universe, Minions meet both my standard of basic sentience AND yours of being able to participate in civil society and thus putting them in the "people" section of Miitopia would be appropriate.

However, in our universe, Minions are entirely fictional, so they're philosophical constructs and not alive, so they're not people at all.

...but everyone in Tomadachi life is fictional, so the Minions are as much people as any other character and thus the Minions have the same rights as "people" and to participate in Tomadachi Life Island as "human" characters do.

[unidentifiedspoon]

my turn at this one. ART is the feed? no. ART is the frame

[2colde]

i hear there are several types of ways to feel

[insomniac-arrest]

the road OUT of hell is also paved with good intentions. That’s just kind of the main road we’ve got

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

People think hell can afford TWO roads? In this economy? You're taking the Good Intentions Highway both directions, mate.

[goldfish-inhaler]

Dru takes doll hunting very seriously and extremely literally.

[floralgreenery-deactivated20260]

okay this is gonna be a bit gross but WAIT okay if vampires don’t need to go to the bathroom technically. what happens to actual food they eat. like spike and his blooming onion. how does he digest/metabolize it. what happens. also does he just absorb his alcohol like he would blood or. what’s the science

[rahirah]

OK, so this comes up every couple of years, and there's a big argument between the people who like the idea of vampires not having any icky bodily functions, and the people who are like "BUT HOW DOES IT WORK?"

For the record, my headcanon:

Vampires have blood in their veins. It doesn't circulate per se, but it does move around via the demonic essence that animates them. This allows vampires to get erections, prevents them from constantly having giant post-mortem lividity bruises, and explains why Spike was able to knock Dru out by pressing her neck. He wasn't cutting off her air, he was cutting off the magical blood flow to her brain.

When a vampire drinks blood (or other fluids, they are canonically affected by caffeine in coffee, and alcohol makes them drunk) it is digested/absorbed by their stomachs. This digestive process must have a mystical as well as a physical aspect. Blood does not contain enough calories by volume to sustain something as large as a human, so the energy vampires derive from it cannot be purely physical. (Vampire bats, small as they are, have to pee constantly to shove enough blood through their systems to keep them alive. Obviously we don't want that for Spike and Angel.)

Vampires can eat human food. However, they derive no sustenance from it. Vampires have a diminished (but not nonexistent) sense of taste compared to humans, and, like many predators, do not taste sugar well. When vampires eat human food, they prefer things that are highly textured, and fatty/salty/spicy. Because of vampires' lower body temperatures, foods like chocolate which release their taste best at higher temperatures are less attractive to vampires. A vampire who wanted to eat chocolate would find hot cocoa more palatable than a candy bar, which literally wouldn't melt in its mouth.

Because vampire digestion is at least partly a physical process (canon support: Spike's stomach rumbles when he's hungry) the waste products thereof must be passed and disposed of in the usual manner. However, a vampire who subsists solely on blood will produce far less waste (and none of it solid) than a vampire who indulges in burritos or blooming onions. (Canon support: Angelus taunts Spike while Spike is in the wheelchair saying that Dru has to feed and change him like a baby. There would be no point in mentioning changing unless there were, er, something to change.)

While we're at it, vampires can breathe in the sense that they can inhale and exhale -- they must do so in order to talk, smoke, or track scents. The oxygen just doesn't provide them energy. Angel just didn't know how to do CPR.

[floralgreenery-deactivated20260]

thank you for this breakdown i really love how much thought you put into this!!!!! i would have to agree w you. however if i accept all these things then it makes it a smidgen more concerning that spike may not have running water in da crypt. ew

yes im one of those people that need a logical explanation for how things work HAHA even though i heavily indulge in magic/fantasy based media… everyone has their crosses to bear

[rahirah]

Hey, we all saw Spike using power tools in Harsh Light of Day. I'm fully confident that he can rig a sewer line if he needs one!

[spacerockband]

spike the houseguest