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Yes, Crowley's expression here is hilarious and always worth a post in its own right 😊 but I thought I'd share something about what he's doing with his hand for anyone who is unfamiliar with that particular gesture, as it has a name and a purpose that goes along with a few other scenes in the series. It's also a good strategy in real life for anyone experiencing anxiety and might want another tool in their toolbox for it.

TWs: anxiety; trauma; PTSD; brief, indirect mention of SA.

For a lot of people who get something on their hands and are exploring the texture of it, the inclination would be to rub together the thumb and the index finger. Crowley's unique use of his fingers isn't just a sorcery thing, though, as what he is doing in this scene-- touching his thumb to his middle finger-- has a name amongst us humans.

It's called shuni mudra.

If you meditate or practice yoga, you have likely heard of mudras, which are different ways of positioning the hands to use the fingers to create a seal that directs prana-- aka energy flow-- in different ways throughout the body. Shuni mudra is done to generate a sense of calm and patience-- especially patience with the self. It is a hand gesture done as a way to help regulate the heart, circulatory & nervous systems and is most commonly used to counter anxiety. Like with any mudra, you don't have to do it in the midst of a yoga or a meditation session but can make the gesture just whenever you feel the need, as Crowley did in the scene above. If you give it a try, you'll probably find that it is surprisingly relaxing for such a simple gesture.

Crowley's outsized startle response to getting hit with the paint is very funny but it is also pretty typical of someone with PTSD-- especially someone who has it as a result of bodily autonomy violations, as is the case with Crowley. People who have experienced non-consensual loss of control over themselves tend to have a jumpy response to sudden, unexpected stimuli in their environment.

Even though Crowley flailing dramatically is hilarious to watch because he's so over-the-top with it, beneath the humor in the scene is also that being unexpectedly hit with something out of nowhere is a very common thing that can trigger anxiety in people with PTSD. Good Omens is very good at finding some humor in dealing with darkness and a comparable scene in tone to this is Gabriel bouncing off the walls when the angels show up at the bookshop in S2. What is very amusing "books are keen!", fly-chasing zaniness is really, underneath, unconscious anxiety manifesting, as part of Gabriel's mind knows that the angels are a threat to him and is reacting with panic at them in his bookshop safe space.

Ironically, reacting with panic to an angel perceived as a threat being in the bookshop safe space is also Crowley's S2 plot, as if he and Gabriel didn't already have more in common than Crowley is ready to admit...

But, back to the hand gesture thing...

There is evidence that things like shuni mudra are effective simply because they help to create a pause that interrupts anxious and self-critical thoughts, which then allows space for calming the mind and body. Used in the way that Crowley is using it here, it's very similar to the Five Things/5-4-3-2-1 strategy for staving off or stopping an anxiety attack, in that both pull people back into the present moment by creating a sense of concentration on something besides the feeling of panic.

That Crowley does this pretty intuitively in the paintball scene as a response to having something anxiety-inducing happen to him indicates he likely does it pretty frequently. Crowley automatically going to shuni mudra while he takes a breath and figures out what, exactly, has happened, is indicative of someone with an awareness of their anxiety and PTSD and who has and uses strategies to help manage them, which goes along with things we've seen in other scenes as well.

Crowley and Aziraphale are inhaling places and food with a clear devotion to trying to live mindfully. You don't need to have experienced trauma to do that but mindful living is prescriptive for virtually every sort of mental health struggle that exists so Crowley and Aziraphale seeing it as therapeutic, as well as enjoyable, seems likely.

In the bookshop, they have a lotus flower rug. The lotus flower has long been a symbol of trauma recovery. You might have heard of the saying "no mud, no lotus", referring to how beauty and health can be made in the wake of horrible experiences. The lotus flower originates in the mud at the bottom of a body of water and travels through it to bloom above the surface, which is at the root of it being symbolic across different cultures for things like enlightenment, purity, strength, and recovery. Its resilience and ability to literally wade through struggle to come through into the light and bloom makes it a metaphor for getting through different forms of trauma.

That Crowley and Aziraphale have this rug in their World of Carpets that is the bookshop, when combined with these other scenes, show how they're dedicated to working through their stuff together and trying to be the best trauma-informed partners they can to one another.

It's also on the lotus rug that Crowley and Aziraphale put Gabriel to perform the miracle to protect him and, when they do, their magic is done with both of them using another hand gesture-- gyan mudra, the seal of knowledge-- to complete the miracle.

I think if you take all of this together, you could make the case for either or both of Crowley and Aziraphale using yoga and/or meditation to help manage the effects of trauma. For those who think that Crowley has chronic pain, there's also that both of these things have been helpful for managing that in many people, so that might be another reason for Crowley, in particular, to practice them.

The lotus rug in the shop might not just be symbolic but also a meditation/yoga spot. Do we think The Serpent always starts with Snake Pose, just because? 🤭

Longest ongoing fic that I know of currently

Ok, so... help me explain how does an ongoing work surpass the 2 MILLION word count with 129 chapters realeased to date.

Seriously, I haven't read it, my calculations are that this momster of a fic averages at about 16k words PER CHAPTER and, apparently, hasn't gone past episode FOUR of the original canon.

It's about a MILLION and a HALF words longer than the second longest fic (currently) in the fandom

I kow we're pretty unhinged here in the Merlin fandom but this is just insane.

FYI: I tracked the lengthiest fic published to AO3 for comparisson sake, and that one is also ongoing, spanning 7.5 Million words over the course of 1571 chapters to date and it belongs to the Terminator fandom, of all things. Second work on a series (first work is, funnily enough, under 100k).

The Merlin fic has about 13x the hits. Another interesting statistic

I would love to see your Thoughts on the Hugolian Internal Magic System sometime:D It's something I like talking about but def. some Deep Nerding that is not an overcommon discussion!

Ah!! Thank you!! I’ve been wanting to talk about this!

But also, it’s so Big? So instead of overwhelming myself trying to cover it coherently, I’m going to get the ball rolling by scattering undeveloped ideas everywhere.

To start, my feeling is that the brick operates on something that isn’t real-world logic but a coherent system of magic logic, heavily symbolic, and with power over the events in the story. It’s not fantasy-world magic--it’s closer to magical realism, though it never quite reaches what I’d consider that.

There are a lot of magical elements in the brick. Some I want to acknowledge but have little to say about:

The animal thing. The dog-man versus lion-man, mice and cats and all that. The visual use of it in Arai’s manga was how the penny first dropped for me about the brick having magic. Many other people have more coherent thoughts about this than I do.

The fatefulness of spiders and the doom that hangs over anything connected to the numbers four or eight.

Enjolras and Grantaire in OFPD as the apotheosis of the ideal and the grotesque uniting in the sublime--I’ve read meta from you and others about this! It’s fascinating, and I feel like I only half understand it! I have nothing to add to it but it’s wonderful.

A whole lot of characters symbolize different things, and the way that functions has a magic logic to it, and Oh God This Topic Is So Big, I Can’t.

Related to the symbolism, there’s the, um--economy of casting? There’s a coherent logic behind a lot of the coincidences: If someone goes for a police officer, they’re probably going to find one--where brick logic differs from real world logic is, that policeman will always be Javert. All the misfortunes of poor and friendless young women befall Fantine. All people at the cusp between abject poverty and marginal respectability live in the Gorbeau house. I’m not sure I’d quite call this magic, but it’s related.

The place where I first really noticed the magic system myself was with the four-and-a-half characters who have power of will over when they die.

The first is the Conventionist, G——, and it’s with him we get a description of the trait I’m talking about:

Though so near to his end, he preserved all the gestures of health. In his clear glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of his shoulders, there was something calculated to disconcert death. Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back, and thought that he had mistaken the door. G—— seemed to be dying because he willed it so.

This isn’t a magic that can be used for arbitrary purposes--you can’t game the system with will-powered immortality. I think it’s more that the characters who have this are so in tune with the magic they become immune to petty injury until they reach the moment of their death--which will be an appropriately symbolic one.

The second of the four is the Bishop, though his death is a little different: instead of culminating in a moment of transcendent will, he’s granted Hugo’s ideal of the perfect death. (Now--I have Massive issues with what Hugo thinks the perfect death is. Spoilers: you’re blind, and beloved woman is taking care of you. It’s gross, sexist, ableist bullshit with wild disregard for boundaries, and Hugo is being The Worst. But anyway.)

In the text it’s the ideal death, and Myriel is granted it. This feels to me like not an exception to the system but its culmination--the other four are granted sublime and transcendent suffering, and Myriel was granted something past that: transcendence without the suffering.

Following the Bishop and the Conventionist are their direct successors, slightly more tarnished, but only slightly: Jean Valjean and Enjolras.

Like the Conventionist, neither can be killed until they choose to die. Until that time, bullets don’t touch them. Both deaths are sublime and transcendent, but Enjolras seems to come closer to perfection--there’s something strangely self-defeating in Valjean that doesn’t exist for the other three. Nevertheless, both of them clearly have near-superhuman power of will over their deaths.

Discussions of what Enjolras would have done if he’d survived after condemning himself for Le Cabuc feel slightly misaimed to me because of this--my feeling is that once he condemned himself, there was no other ending. He belonged to the magic, and he had willed it so--he Knew.

(And... okay, side note, I personally am writing an AU where he lived. But I had to fracture some of the magic system to do it. It felt right to me that in a story about Combeferre the magic would be fractured--I don’t know, I feel like that’s a thing.)

Aside from those four, many characters have different magic at different times.  Eponine gains a preternatural ability to get things done, Gavroche is made of magic and Paris, there’s a lot of magic in Cosette, and so on. The Amis are also magic, and a few of  them seem remarkably able to perceive it--Combeferre understood Valjean at a glance and described Fantine exactly. (Side note: my  favorite headcanon about Combeferre is that he has a nearly unparalleled  ability to perceive the magic system but is too at odds with himself to use it.)

But I feel like there’s a character with a half-realized version of the transcendent will like the other four above, and it’s Javert.

There’s something really interesting going on with Javert and magic.

Like Valjean and Enjolras, he’s immune to bullets, (”You’ll misfire”/The pistol misfired.) And Valjean almost gave to Javert the transformation Myriel had granted him, but something went wrong. Instead of becoming the fifth of these supernormal characters, Javert reaches half a revelation and backs away. He wills his own death, but prosaically and with despair, in a bastardized version of what the others achieve.

I can’t prove this, but I put real significance in that moment when Javert’s tied-up body makes a cross with Mabeuf’s body laid out, and instead of bearing his suffering he asks Enjolras to re-tie him lying down. Javert does a LOT of things wrong morally, but magically and symbolically that might be where he got off the path of the Absolute. (Does it matter symbolically that there end up being four of them (a fateful number) rather than five? Does the feeling of transcendence in Enjolras’s death and incompleteness in Valjean’s have anything to do with the fact that Enjolras convinced Grantaire, but Valjean did not convince Javert? ...I’m not convinced of any of that, but it occurs to me.)

--

And the barricade.

The barricade is made of magic and fate and the Absolute. It magically draws everyone to it and intensifies the magic potential in anyone near it. Enjolras and Jean Valjean become godlike, and everyone else becomes more transcendent as they get nearer.

I swear I can hear the first sparks of the magic of the barricade forming in Grantaire’s dialogue in the Corinth. He’s in the middle of a misogynistic and racist harangue and then he bursts out with:

“And it appears that they are going to fight, all these idiots, to get their  heads broken, to massacre one another, in midsummer, in the month of  June, when they might go off with some creature under their arm, to scent in the fields the huge cup of tea of the new mown hay!”

(Wilbour. Hapgood massacres this line.)

...then he goes back to rambling, until he wanders into an entirely perceptive (if wryly mocking) description of Marius’s love for Cosette and his own for Enjolras: “They must make a queer pair of lovers. I know just what it is like. Ecstasies in which they forget to kiss. Pure on earth, but joined in heaven. They are souls possessed of senses. They lie among the stars.”

Which, for once, is exactly correct.

And I think these sparks happen because the barricade is beginning, and the barricade is magic, and it’s what finally pulls from Grantaire what he was capable of.

There is SO MUCH MORE I’m sure, but this post is becoming novel-length, so I’ll stop for now. Anyone who wants, please argue or expand!

dog breeds that cannot give birth naturally should simply not be bred

There's so much going on at the end of the anniversary dinner.

There's Cytherea saying the dinner was "useful" and affectionately referring to the Fourth as "the children", when it of course transpires that the dinner was useful for identifying who to murder first, and when she will hunt and torment those children just weeks later.

Then, as the Fourth's whispered conversation about biceps grows in volume, this happens:

Their hisses carried. Abigail, who was standing nearby deep in conversation with one of the Second, reached out a hand to touch Isaac lightly on the shoulder in reproof. She did not even turn around or break off talking. The Fourth adept winced: his cavalier had a hard, resentful, told-off expression on her face.

The Fourth seem particularly upset by Abigail's silent warning. And with good reason. Isaac is the Baron of the Fourth. We know from the Cohort Intelligence Files that his father's title was held in stewardship. We also know that Abigail managed to get them rejected from the Cohort on age grounds, despite the fact that when they applied they were several years older than Judith was when she joined up. Which raises a interesting question: what is the Houses' definition of legal majority and does it differ by House? Did their rejection on age grounds perhaps have something to do with their education on the Fifth? Would they have been eligible on the Fourth, but were still considered children and in education on the Fifth? Regardless, at 13 Isaac is holding the title of Baron and Jeannemary is his cavalier primary. They are there formally as House scions in contention for Lyctorhood. They are, we have to assume, at this point in some legal way adults as far as the society of the Nine Houses is concerned. And there is Abigail - Abigail Pent, Lady of the Fifth, the House at that moment apparently actively annexing the Fourth - treating them as if they are still children and under her authority in public. Of course they're upset.

This isn't to say that it wasn't an otherwise prosaic family interaction and that they don't have a loving and very familial relationship with the Fifth - we see them bobbing around after Magnus and in and out of the kitchen before the dinner, happily acting like the Fifth's children. But the casualness with which Abigail shushes Isaac is inescapably, for all of them, also political.

And Cytherea immediately picks up on this. It's what seems to provoke her moment of candid reflection on House politics to Gideon:

Dulcinea murmured, “Oh, Gideon the Ninth, the Houses are arranged so badly … full of suspicion after a whole myriad of peaceable years. What do they compete for? The Emperor’s favour? What does that look like? What can they want?

Cytherea perceives this interaction as political. As evidence that she's right - that the whole system is broken. She sees competition in Abigail's parental gesture, and suspicion in the frustration of teenagers who want to be grown ups. And she kills them all.

And there's two rather awful thoughts that follow from this.

The first is the extent to which Jod's shitty system poisons things. Abigail Pent, who just wants to nerd out about ghosts but is very good at whatever job she sets herself to, has a marriage with a man that she loves as an equal...and over whom she holds life and death authority three times over, as his feudal lord, as his boss, and as his necromancer. He dies because he is her cavalier, even though it's suggested that his cavaliership was in part Abigail's gesture against having to participate in the whole system in the first place and evidence of her plans to escape it. And despite the fact that they clearly loved the Fourth as their own, every gesture of that love was also inescapably part of a political manoeuvre set in motion by previous leaders of the Fifth to draw the Fourth further under their control. And with Isaac still, at least on paper, holding authority in his own right, prosaic parts of that relationship suddenly become matters of state and not the teenage drive for independence. And Cytherea looks at this and, for all her hatred of Jod, is unable to see him as the poison at the root of it.

Worse, we don't know what happened next. We know eventually the Fifth went to the Facility, but what did the Fourth do? Did they make up, and say their fond goodnights? Or is part of the Fourth's hysterical grief as they try to summon the Fifth's ghosts at the crime scene because they slunk off after this, and it was the last time they ever saw them alive?

this is the most indecisive ive ever been so im gonna make y’all deal with this too

- also if you can choose reblog which the pink you like more and your zodiac sign

Metamorphosis

we have found the evidence! This is a Dravidian language. Tamil, I’m pretty sure, though if someone can correct me (if wrong!) that would be highly appreciated.

We must note that this is a bilingual newspaper though- Hindi or Marathi or Nepali on the right, I can’t read it. I can just read English, Bengali, Odia and Arabic (though I’m bad at it and not close to fluent yet 😢)

Another clue would be that their names are “western”. The only Indians with “English” names that I know are Christians (and then, usually from Tamil Nadu or Kerala), or north easterners. Though clearly they are NOT from the NE region.

Ms. Apu and Sally’s family are Tamil confirmed?!!?? Or maybe she’s a Malayali who knows Tamil? 🤯

Hey sorry in advance if it has been asked before but why do show cats have these funny names? Is there a show cat naming law, why havent i seen a cat named mr poop fartington yet

Show cat names have to be entirely unique so breeders have to get creative, usually they want to represent themselves within the name (I don’t think this is a requirement, though? Just standard practice?) which helps a little bit, so you can have Manxzana’s Kiwi and Tailless Beau-T’s Kiwi for example.

Sometimes you’ll have a cat with two cattery names because they’ll be produced by one then sold to another or they’ll be born to a queen of one cattery and the stud will have belonged to another, etc. So in this case you might have Tailless Beau-T’s Kiwi of Manxzana for example.

I don’t know the exact details on the restrictions surrounding registered name requirements beside having to be unique, it does seem to be fairly lenient in subject matter. There’s a champion Persian named Cocaine Cake, I can’t remember out of what cattery though.

There’s presumably a character limit, you probably wouldn’t get away with naming your cat the entire bee movie script for example…

Since the post about differences in translation in regards to Kaito and Kokichi's relationship was unfortunately deleted, I've taken it upon myself to make my own for posterity's sake.

NISA: Geez… you're such a naive dude.

OG: 。。。ったく、テメーはピユアなやろうだな。/ …Geez, you're such a pure guy.

A pretty well-known change that makes Kaito sound more insulting then he does in the original. Kokichi's response was also altered not only in the text, but in the voice acting; in Japanese, he sounds uncharacteristically emotionless, rather than annoyed like in the dub.

NISA: Well, we come from different backgrounds. So for now, let's agree to disagree. No one's ever called me naive before. And from Kaito? Seriously?

OG: まあ、百田ちゃんとオレの話が合わないのわ最初あきらめているけど。。。 / Well, I'd already given up on seeing eye to eye with Momota-chan since the beginning… ピュアなんて言われてのわ初めてだよ。オレみたいに嘘つきがさ。/ But that's the first time someone's called a liar like me pure.

Kaito goes from telling Maki to let Kokichi go or he'll die, to telling Maki to let Kokichi go so she won't get executed:

NISA: Maki Roll, cut it out! You'll get killed if you don't!

OG: ハルマキ、もうやめろ！それ以上やったらマジで死ぬぞ！/ Harumaki, stop already! Any more than that and he'll seriously die!

Kaito's response to Maki saying he shouldn't have cooperated with Kokichi is translated to sound like he was pestered into it. In the original, it sounds like he's seriously reflecting on Kokichi's state of mind throughout the game.

NISA: It was kinda hard to ignore such an annoying guy. Geez… I wonder how far ahead he planned this evil scheme of his.

OG: 。。。あいつわそんあ易しいヤツじゃねーよ。/ …He wasn't that simple. まったく。。。どこからどこまでが計算だったんだろうな。あいつの悪巧みわよ。/ Man… I wonder how much of it he'd planned out. For that cunning scheme of his.

And of course, Kaito's final words on Kokichi were made to sound a lot harsher.

NISA: He was a lying sack of shit.

OG: 。。。あいつは筋金入りの嘘つきだったぜ。/ …He was a liar to the core.

I’ve been brainrotting an AU? Theory? Headcanon? Idea? Whatever it is, I made doodles and have explanations

The basic idea is what if Tecchou fought in the Great War when he was much younger, because of his skills and/or Ability?

We know they aren’t against using kids (see Yosano), so that wouldn’t be out of the question, but this also goes off the idea that he’s somewhere in his mid to late twenties, and has been training with a sword for most of his life (both pretty plausible, but this is just a random idea). It doesn’t explain why he would continue fighting. Maybe he found purpose in it or something?? Idk, everything on him is speculative, currently (as of chapter 99)

No idea what to call this since we have no backstory on Tecchou at all right now, but I have a habit of hurting him so it’s not surprising, really.

This may also work with Teruko, too. It might be where she met Fukuchi or something (adding this last minute, and it’s plausible since Fukuchi fought in that war, too)

The entirety of the war just interests me, I hope we learn more about it, if there is more to learn

hello tgcf fandom. let’s talk about yin yu and hua cheng’s relationship for a minute .

yin yu as a banished god, being picked up by the last believer of another banished god. yin yu spending years and years serving hua cheng and witnessing the art he creates and the worship he bestows and the love he carries. yin yu being one of the few people who knows the full truth of xie lian’s fall from grace, because he’s proven himself trustworthy. yin yu learning this and learning what’s been done to hua cheng and how deeply he still loves xie lian, and maybe for the first time in his life being able to look at himself as something good.

not necessarily because hua cheng wants him in any way, but because if xie lian is still deserving of love (and of course he is, yin yu would never argue otherwise) and if their stories are so similar… well, let’s be honest, that’s what it would take for yin yu to feel capable of being a person again. i think he looks at hua cheng’s unending devotion and hears about wu ming and he sees quan yizhen. who was willing to die if yin yu asked it of him, in much the same way.

i don’t know how to end this, i just think the parallels there are neat :)

approaches to style: the 4 types of writing styles, and examples of authors in each category.

from Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer — which i recommend! it’s one of the best books about speculative/genre writing i’ve ever read.

your turn to die characters ranked by how painful their death was (and why)

okay. crazy title, i KNOW. but this was actually so interesting to talk and think about. at least for me.

spoilers ahead, and trigger warning, because most of these deaths are already gruesome and only made gruesome-er by me talking about them in detail.

everything is under the cut, because this post is LONG, i'm warning you now.

some backstory: i have a special interest in anatomy and physiology, and i've always thought about how the different deaths in your turn to die worked. my wonderful friend @lovivelle and i talked about this topic extensively last night and they made this tier list with me! so, here's the ranking and explanations!

this ranking ONLY covers HUMAN deaths, because dolls/dummies do not feel pain.

quick glossary: exsanguination: death caused by bleeding out hemorrhaging: bleeding necrosis: cell/tissue death hypoxia: inadequate oxygen supply hypovolemic: loss of fluid in the body, often referring to blood or water shock: life-threatening condition where the body does not have enough blood circulating through it crush syndrome: medical condition where skeletal muscle is crushed for a prolonged time, resulting in shock and organ failure hematemesis: vomiting up blood hemoptysis: coughing up blood TBI: traumatic brain injury immolation: death by burning; being burned alive

the tier list:

OUCH!! (most painful):

nao: nao's death involves her ribcage being crushed. i put her at number one for what i hope are obvious reasons. for starters, her death is drawn-out, making the pain last even longer. while her ribcage is being crushed, any internal organs are being crushed as well. her bones are probably splintering and breaking off and piercing her insides and organs. overall... just horrible pain. official cause of death: internal hemorrhaging and irreparable damage to organs.

kurumada: kurumada's death involved being crushed (between two walls), which is similar to nao's. i would put their pain levels as being equal to each other, but kurumada's has the potential to have been less painful than nao's, because we don't know how quickly the walls crushed his body. if they were moving slowly, the pain would've been drawn-out and agonizing, and in that case, i would make the argument that his death was more painful than nao's. but if it was very quick, he would've just felt blinding pain in his entire body for a few seconds before it would end. we do have to keep in mind that kurumada is clearly quite muscular however, which probably provided some resistance against the walls, but only served to draw out his pain even further. official cause of death: muscle necrosis, internal hemorrhaging, and irreparable damage to internal organs due to crush syndrome.

either way, both definitely experienced, in my opinion, the most painful deaths in the game.

YOWZA! (very painful):

mishima: mishima's death results from his collar slowly heating up and burning his neck until his head disconnects from it. i don't even have the words to describe how painful this would be. the fact that the collar heats up slowly and it is drawn out only makes it worse. if you've ever burned yourself before anywhere on your body, you know how painful it is. imagine that pain centralized around your neck. mishima might have the fortune of his nerves being burned off after a certain amount of time, which would mean he wouldn't feel anything (think third-degree burns burning through to muscle, tissue, and nerve endings). but at that point, because the burning is around his neck and your neck contains- A) your spine/spinal cord and B) your trachea, which allows you to breathe- anyway and burning it in half would definitely kill you, he may be dead before he even has time to not feel any pain. either way, this shit would hurt so bad. official cause of death: cerebral hypoxia due to decapitation.

hinako: hinako technically has two deaths, but we ranked her based off of her being drilled. a lot of questions actually arose when my friend and i were talking about the drill deaths, because we don't know the speed at which the drills move. i mean, whether they're moving quickly or slowly, it would still obviously hurt- but the faster the drill, the quicker the death, which would make it less painful. being drilled would be unbearably painful for the sole fact that she might be alive for a lot of the drilling until it reaches any vital organs. no matter what, it'd be very painful. official cause of death: hard to say for certain, but would most likely be from exsanguination... y'know, from her body being split in half by a giant drill.

kugie (kanna's sister): my friend and i were FLOORED when we looked into kugie's death. in the game, i don't think we get a canonical answer specifically as to how she dies, but in the manga, we do. kugie and kanna have the same first trial as joe and sara, but they don't succeed. in it, kugie's bed literally snaps and essentially folds her in half. in the image from the manga, we can see blood flying out from the bed (implying it happened very quickly, because if it were slow, the blood would instead drip and flow), and kugie's hand sticking out between the two slabs of the bed. i think this death is the most painful out of the entire "YOWZA!" category because kugie was probably alive and in immense pain for at least a few seconds or even minutes after the bed snapped. if i had to speculate official cause(s) of death:

i would guess her lumbar vertebrae (basically the bottom discs of the spine) and spinal cord snapped, cutting off sensation and sending her into shock.

if she was folded in half, her legs would have quickly shot up, meaning her torso was likely unnaturally slammed into by both them and the bed, and sustained massive trauma. this would cause internal hemorrhaging and damage to her organs.

the blood spurting out of the bed was likely from her head. i'm a teenage girl, likely the same height or around the same height as kugie, and when i bend in half, my face is level with my knees. knowing this, her knees probably slammed into her face and broke her skull, causing a TBI.

the combination of all of that would have first caused terrible pain for, like i said, at least a few seconds or minutes- we don't see how extensive the damage really was, so i can't say for certain... but yeah.

aughhh (painful):

joe: joe's death is really interesting to think about, because upon first glance, you might think it's one of the most painful- but there are a few things i considered with him. his death is a result of wrigglers draining the blood out of his body. because we don't know how large the wrigglers are, i can't say how painful it would be when they enter his body- but i'd have to guess they're on the smaller side, like little tubes, because if they were big, they would have difficulty sucking out his blood due to how small blood vessels are. it would hurt horribly to have the wrigglers enter his body and drain the blood. we don't know if they moved around through his blood vessels- if they did, that would definitely exacerbate the pain- or if it was more just like getting blood drawn. but what i considered with him, the thing that makes his death less painful than the others, is the fact that he would probably pass out long before he's even fully dead. the amount of blood he's losing at such a rapid pace would first make him dizzy and disoriented before he just... passes out. his entire body would start shutting down very quickly and he wouldn't even be awake for it. his body would give up on transporting blood to the extremities and non-vital organs and shift only to transporting what little blood it can to keep vital organs running. when that blood runs out, the heart will stop being able to pump enough blood throughout the body and to the brain, and joe would actually be dead. so... yeah. official cause of death: hypovolemic shock resulting in organ failure.

shin: shin dies from being stabbed. there are a few questions regarding exactly where he was stabbed, but i assume he was stabbed somewhere in the torso because he has blood coming out of his mouth. if you don't know:

blood coming out of the mouth can be a result of haematemesis (vomiting up blood), which is where blood wells up in the stomach/digestive tract due to trauma in that area

it can also be a result of haemoptosis (coughing up blood), which results from being stabbed in the lungs/trachea due to trauma in that area

my guess is he was stabbed in the stomach, because if he were stabbed in the lungs, he'd be coughing and frothing at the mouth struggling to breathe. if i'm remembering correctly, he's also shown to be clutching his abdomen after turning on the joe AI, so... my money is definitely in the stomach.

which, you guessed it, would hurt. a lot. and there's no workaround. he's strong enough to drag himself to the rubble room and turn on an AI before dying. he would've been in blinding pain that entire time before dying.

official cause of death: exsanguination.

reko: reko technically has three canonical deaths, which made her hard to rank. i'll cover them all.

strangulation (hanging by collar): being hung is painful, but i think people underestimate how terrifying it is too. reko would have been terrified and in immense pain for a few minutes before dying. everything in her neck would be getting crushed and pressed on by the collar thanks to gravity. overall... awful death. official cause of death: cerebral hypoxia due to strangulation.

stabbed: same as what i said for shin. terrible pain for however long until she ultimately bleeds out. official cause of death: exsanguination.

fake-reko falling headfirst onto a spike: this one's... interesting! mainly because i think she would actually just be dead instantly. if the spike pierces her brain, she won't even really have time to process "ow!" before just. being dead. official cause of death: severe TBI resulting in death.

owie (painful, but not as painful as others):

q-taro: q-taro is stabbed in the back by mai and slowly bleeds to death over the course of the chapter. the reason i put him so low is because he would definitely be in some pain, but i don't think mai stabbed him very well (no offense girl). he's able to walk around, talk, and do stuff with the others after being stabbed, at least for a little while. it's difficult for me to pinpoint what exactly killed him because of this. i'd imagine his body began repairing the stab wound in his back, but ultimately, blood loss and the disruption to everything surrounding his spine (because mai stabs him in the back) is probably what killed him. depending on how deep mai's knife was, the blade may have even pierced or grazed internal organs such as q-taro's heart or a lung. his body probably put most of its focus on keeping his internal organs running whilst simultaneously trying to repair them, which tired him out over the course of the chapter, before it ultimately couldn't keep up with the amount of blood being lost. a hasty bandaging job using an office first-aid kit is not ideal for stab wounds.

*edit: this person corrected me regarding q-taro's death! i still think the severity of his injury could have killed him before the coffin cremation system actually killed him, plus the information is interesting, so i'm keeping it. but technically, being burned alive is actually what killed him. ouch.

official cause of death: exsanguination OR immolation.

kai: kai's death is kind of up in the air in terms of the specifics, but we know he kills himself during the first main game by cutting his arms. in order for this to kill him, and for him to have bled out as fast as he did, he likely cut his axillary and/or brachial artery. your brachial artery runs down the front of your bicep and is an extension of your axillary artery, which is in your upper arm/armpit. if kai cut deeply into both his brachial arteries, and/or his axillary arteries, he would bleed to death very quickly. it would be really painful, but i think adrenaline and the probability he'd pass out immediately would certainly be on his side here, making it at least a little less painful. either way, he dies quite fast, so. official cause of death: exsanguination.

uncertain (i'm not sure!):

this category is for the characters who have one or more variables that make it difficult or impossible to determine how painful their death was.

kanna: first of all, the way kanna dies is impossible in real life. lets just get that out of the way. you cannot have flowers sprout out of your body. that immediately makes it impossible to tell how painful it would be for her.

if i were to suspend my disbelief for this, however, here's what i have to say about it:

safalin says kanna is numb during her death, which would instantly give her a pain rating of zero. kanna is screaming during her death, but given what safalin says, that doesn't necessarily prove she's in pain. she could just be screaming out of fear.

if she weren't numb, yeah, she would be in a lot of pain. flowers and vines growing out of your body, poking out of your skin, running through your insides- that would hurt insanely bad.

but the fact that:

this death isn't possible in real life

kanna is presumably numb during her death

we don't specifically know how the seeds are working/moving inside her body

kind of made it impossible to rank her.

if i had to guess a cause of death, i'd guess severe disruption by the vines to her internal organs and processes is what ultimately killed her.

hayasaka: hayasaka's head is presumably cut off by a swinging axe. there are two reasons we put him in 'uncertain'; we don't know how sharp the blade of the axe is, and we don't know the velocity it's swinging at.

if the blade is swinging slowly and is very dull, it would take a few swings to fully cut off hayasaka's head, which would make it incredibly painful.

but if the blade is swinging very quickly and is super sharp, his death would be instantaneous, making it essentially painless.

so it's difficult to say, but either way:

official cause of death: decapitation.

ranmaru: ranmaru's death is in 'uncertain' because we

don't know exactly how that happened to his stomach

hear him talk about how he's numb to it

don't know how long he's been sitting there

i imagine he was in some pain and just putting up a front, but we just don't know for sure. and like i just said, we don't know what specifically killed him or how. we just see a wound in his stomach.

probable cause of death: exsanguination/hemorrhaging.

anzu: anzu's was between 'uncertain' and 'so quick.' we see spikes piercing her body, but the angle makes it difficult to tell exactly where they pierce, or how sharp they are, etc. if the spikes didn't hit her face/brain, she probably felt intense pain for some time from the neck-down before rapidly bleeding to death. if the spikes got her head, she'd die instantly. so.

probable cause of death: exsanguination? TBI? damage to internal organs/processes?

ranger: according to ranger's wiki, his human form was stabbed by an assassin. not nearly enough information to rank him with certainty.

cause of death: stabbed?

so quick (too fast to be painful):

both mai and alice's deaths were so fast, they fell into this category.

mai: mai shoots herself in the head. her death would have been immediate and painless since she shot herself in the brain.

official cause of death: fatal TBI.

alice: alice's abdomen explodes. if that happens, you're probably going to feel a very brief flash of pain before immediately dying, because the damage would be so extensive (shrapnel exploded his stomach, but there was undoubtedly collateral damage to his heart, lungs, and other organs around there). he would have been in shock if he did somehow manage to survive for a few more seconds. pain would be minimal or nonexistent in my opinion due to the sheer severity of the injury. and in terms of him being hung in chapter 3, it's the same as reko.

official cause of death: shock resulting from traumatic abdominal injury.

thats it!

if you for god knows what reason read all this, thank you! i'm honestly only posting it kind of for myself and my friend to look back on if i ever want to think about it again, but maybe someone will find it interesting.

questions, comments, concerns (of which i'm sure there are many)- i'm an open book. i'm not a professional by any means, but i am insane. bye!

They can share the night

Just a small town boy livin’ in a lonely world

Just a city boy born and raised in South... Bangkok?

A discussion about socioeconomic status

This discourse comes up often in regard to intersectionality in the queer community. When it comes to queer experiences, race obviously is a factor but so is wealth. People with higher socioeconomic status have more freedom, in a sense, to go against societal pressure aka be gay. If people have enough money, they don’t have to worry about job discrimination due to biases (based on being gay). If they have enough money, being given a fine for a “lewd act” or protesting is insignificant to them compared to someone not as well off which could be the difference between starving and being homeless due to the amount of the fine. Everyone can be discriminated against regardless of finances, but social standing and money allow certain ease in navigating the repercussions of such acts.  

Class & Power

Ayan has been to three schools. Regardless if due to his own choice or not, this clearly displays he has options if one doesn’t work out.  

Akk does not appear to have this same grace. Teacher Chadok implies several times that if Akk can’t get control of the situation, he will have no options for schooling.

Although there is some personal desire behind Akk volunteering to help Ayan in judo class, his statement rings true – If Ayan doesn’t do well, the whole class will suffer, something which Ayan doesn’t even think about, but is at the forefront of Akk’s thoughts. 

Ayan also has difficulty with the class because it requires following certain rules, like not touching your opponent's face and Ayan clearly doesn't have to follow the rules.

We see this play out with the class discussion as well. While Ayan argues with Teacher Waree which results in everyone having an additional assignment, Akk tries to deflate the situation so nobody suffers.

They had a discussion in the first episode about who exactly complacency helps, but we keep seeing Ayan’s actions being selfishly motivated.

Ayan has no friends and even his interactions with the protestors come across as helping him further his own agenda. While Ayan has the freedom to only think about himself, Akk doesn’t.

These implications highlight why Ayan is more prone to rebel while Akk is obedient. Akk needs this school, while Ayan can find another. Akk's life and future are tied to the school, while Ayan's future can be whatever his money can afford him. Akk must watch out for everyone while Ayan only has to watch out for himself.

Connections

This dynamic is also at play with Teacher Sani. Her backstory hasn’t been revealed, but she seems to NEED this job.

If you want to work here for long, don’t get involved with anything that isn’t your business.

Teacher Waree is wearing satin with pearls ($$$) unlike Teacher Sani who is wearing a cotton suit with a discrete necklace. Sani doesn’t come from money; therefore, she must abide by the rules or lose her job and livelihood.

Wealth & Power

Ayan has a car and his own apartment, while Akk has to get a ride from Kan and although he might live in his own space (Kan and Wat are always in it in their pajamas, so this is not clear), it is only a room and not a full apartment.

Although his intentions don’t seem overtly devious, Ayan drives Akk to his place and suggests Akk spend the night because, in a way, it’ll make Akk stuck. If Akk didn’t have a pre-determined escape plan via Kan, Akk could have been stuck at Ayan’s if Ayan decided he didn’t want to take Akk home. He can strip off his clothes in his own house, and Akk has to witness it. Akk can't leave. This isn’t an intentional display of power, but it still is a display of power. 

Even though Akk has the power of authority offered to him by his position as Prefect President, Ayan has a superior power – the power of resistance. Once again, what are rules to someone who doesn’t need to abide by them? As Frank Ocean sang in the excellent 2011 song “No Church in the Wild,” “What’s a king to a god? What’s a god to a non-believer?” Ayan’s position in life allows him real power by simply making everything he deems as a hindrance insignificant. He can be openly himself (gay or not) because he can resist consequences. Akk can't. Ayan can escape to his apartment off campus. Akk can't.

Ayan is here to solve a mystery that took someone from his life, but this directly conflicts with Akk’s LIFE, as a whole, not just a portion of it.

Ayan wants the school to burn, but he’s going to realize that means Akk will go up in flames too.

What are you doing to me?

Someone on Reddit asked about a name like "Star Eater" in Valyrian for a dragon and I wanted to share my response here, as well.

*****

If you want my 2¢ on this, names like Star Eater, Moon Racer, Sun Chaser, etc. are good examples of Common Tongue dragon names, but not good examples of Valyrian dragon names. In the Common Tongue (a.k.a. English) it's easy to put together compounds and come up with names. This is much, much less likely to happen in Valyrian. You can do it, but, frankly, it sounds clunky and awkward.

To give you a real world example of this, here are some Song of Ice and Fire names translated into Spanish:

Storm's End: Bastion de Tormentas

King's Landing: Desembarco del Rey

Rattleshirt: Casaca de Matraca

The translators are trying their best, but these translations simply do not (a) convey the sense you get from the English, or (b) come off as natural-sounding Spanish names. This is exactly what you get when you translate things like "Moondancer" or "Dark Sister" into Valyrian.

A more natural way to create a Valyrian name that sounds Valyrian is to start with your target word and embellish it. If you start with qēlos you might get Qēlazmia or Qēlalbrion, both of which might be kind of clunkily translated into English as "Great Star". In truth, there's no way to capture the sense of it with a single word in English because our morphology works differently. You'd have a better shot in Spanish (maybe Estrellona).

If you wanted to translate "Star Eater" literally, it'd be something like Qēlosipradaros. It is quite literally "star-eater", but it doesn't look like a Valyrian name. Think about all the Valyrian names you see in the book—for dragons and people: Daenerys, Aegon, Viserys, Meraxes, Aemon, Aenys, Rhaegar, Jaehaerys, Helaena, Rhaenyra, Daemon… They don't look that big. They don't look like compounds. They can essentially be broken down into three parts: (1) the main semantic content piece, (2) the augment (optional), and (3) the ending. Daemon, for example, looks about as basic as a Valyrian name gets. You have part (1) daem and part (3) -on. We see the ending -on a lot, so we know it's an ending, as opposed to -mon, for example. Daeneryslooks a little bigger, so you have part (1) daen, part (2) -er, and part (3) -ys. That is as big and complex as a Valyrian name gets.

If you look at the list of known dragons, the only time you see the English-y names for dragons are afterAegon's Conquest. And this makes sense. Once they're living in Westeros, the Targaryens start adopting Westerosi customs more and more: their language, their religion, their day-to-day practices... The younger Targaryens are essentially Common speakers that Valyrian as a heritage language. It makes sense that they'd name their dragons in the Common Tongue. There are a still a few Valyrian names mixed in, but that's also to be expected, depending on whether they want to honor their family's heritage or do something new that speaks to them.

In short, it doesn't make sense to render the Common Tongue names in Valyrian as they were never Valyrian to begin with. I'd say if you like the meaning "Stareater", do it in English. If you want a Valyrian name, build it up in a Valyrian way.

And now, for a Water Rating Special Feature:

The Lost Sea, Tennessee

About 20,000 years ago, a giant Pleistocene jaguar ventured into a small opening in the mountain foothills, but soon found that this cave was far bigger than it bargained for. It lost its way in the dark, winding passageways, wandering for several days before eventually falling to its death in a narrow crevice, leaving behind its bones and perfectly preserved paw prints for us to find thousands of years later.

This was the first, but not the only, record of those who ventured into Craighead Caverns. Pottery, weapons and jewelry from the Cherokee people have been found in rooms up to a mile from the entrance, dating back at least a thousand years. Later, the caverns were used as a refrigerator for storing food in the summer, as a mine, a mushroom farm, and even as a dance hall. All throughout its history, there were legends of a great underground lake somewhere inside the vast caves, but no one knew where.

This changed in 1905, when a 13-year old boy was exploring the cave. Three hundred feet below the surface, he crawled through a narrow tunnel, and found himself standing in an enormous, half-submerged chasm. It was so large, in fact, that his light illuminated nothing but water. He began to throw balls of mud in an attempt to find the walls of the cavern, but he only heard splashing in response.

We now know that this lake is about four and a half acres, making it the largest underground lake in North America and the second largest in the world. But that’s only on the surface.

Diving explorations have revealed that this lake is seemingly bottomless. Beneath the ethereal water lies a series of caverns so deep that no end has been found. Divers have mapped about 1,500 feet in depth in just one of the main passageways. One diver, descending into a previously unknown chamber with a sonar device, hugged the wall and took readings all around him. There was nothing but more water in every direction.

At present, there are no further plans to continue exploration, due to the hazardous conditions in the depths of the sea. It seems, then, that the true scope of this lake may forever remain a mystery. Perhaps it is best that we leave alone this strange, bottomless abyss far beneath the ancient Appalachian mountains, to remain as dark and unknown as it was when that jaguar took its first ill-fated steps inside.

These snowflake were caught on January 1st 2015 in Idaho, 8 miles west of Shoshone Falls. They are set between onyx and precision quartz lenses. The setting is all sterling silver. Snowflake Grade: 3mm A A Snowflake Cabochons - 10mm Onyx backs, 10mm precision cut quartz crystals Setting - Sterling Silver, with shepherd hook style ear posts. A Close Look At What Happens During Preservation A snowflake is collected either as it falls, or shortly thereafter. The snowflake and the preserving medium are cooled significantly below the freezing point of water to prevent melting during curing. The preserving medium is applied to the snowflake and permanently cured between two pieces of glass before being raised above melting temperature. At this point, the ice which formed the snowflake melts, but the now cured preserving medium retains the snow crystal form. The preserving medium does not allow liquid water to pass, but does allow water vapor to pass. Over time, the water naturally evaporates and dissipates through the preserving medium. After several weeks, only water vapor fills the preserved snowflake.

Found this thread on Twitter about Kalim (and a bit of Jamil) and i think it explains his character sooooo well

THEORY: what if the king is also a creature or being from another world? If the feeling celaena is getting from him is the same as the one that the portals summoned by cain give her,,, then he too must be magic related.

Maybe he got rid of all magic to be the only one to Weald it. But it doesn’t make sense when it comes to the wyrdmarks and gates. Why keep the knowledge of those around? Whatever the case, this is a half baked theroy anyway. Tis just smthn that crossed my mind.

(Just started chapter 44, the king is back from the trip he was on and he crossed paths with celaena and chaol.)