Everyone Deserves A Someone To Help Them Through The Dark

Worm is one of the few pieces of media to properly show why its a terrible idea to talk to cops, and how it will only incriminate you further. It also shows one of the best alternatives which is to fill their lungs with spiders until they die.

@basket-of-radiants

So, it seems like the fandom consensus on Pale is that you shouldn't bother reading it, because it is "too long". I'm going to push back against this. Yes, it is "too long". Yes it does loose focus near the end, and become a bit thematically muddled. Yes, it has it's share of Wildbow's patented Boring Action Schlock, particularly near the end (but not any more, proportionally, than Worm or Pact or any of the other ones that the fandom has decided are the "good" ones). But it is still 100% worth reading. The highs are just that high.

she's had a long day

I NEED TO KNOW WHICH ONE OF YOU FUCKERS TALKED TO THE PRESS

the Guardian

They wanted to save us from a dark AI future. Then six people were killed

How a group of Silicon Valley math prodigies, AI researchers and internet burnouts descended into an alleged violent cult

I like the idea of putting my blorbos on the Infinity Train. Force them to go through a harrowing experience specially fashioned to make them work through their issues (and leave them with a new set of issues afterwards)

So here's Bonesaw! She needs to stop thinking of other human beings and little more than art supplies. And being stuck on the Train for an indeterminate length of time will forcibly separate her from Jack, so she can begin to build an identity of her own for the first time in her life.

Guys I’m thinking about Kaleshwi again…..

MANIFEST

MANIFEST

Don’t worry about your relationship woes all you lonely Windrunners! Remember, first base is killing them!

the more that i think about it, the more i feel like the undersiders are a really good litmus test for ability to understand/be sympathetic towards neurodivergency w/o reacting w/ hatred when it’s unpalatable. like, yes. they do in fact do a lot of violent and terrible things. but they’re from “trauma viscerally literalized as superpowers which are taken to extreme usages to better represent how devastating and emotionally total being traumatized feels” the book–it makes sense that every character is messy, it makes sense that every character does and thinks shit that extremely fucking sucks. trauma extremely fucking sucks! bitch literally tearing a man’s arm off because she’s been taught her entire life that people will always mock and hurt her for who she is and has learned to use aggression as pre-emptive defense feels significantly more relatable to what i was like when i was an autistic teenager than any quirky-funny representation of autism out there, and she’s not even explicitly autistic. 

like, yeah, taylor has a paranoid and irrational worldview. lisa is hypervigilant and secretive and manipulative. brian can barely function & still refuses to be vulnerable. aisha acts out and it being for attention doesn’t make the behavior any less grating. rachel is aggressive and stubborn and violent. alec doesn’t understand ethical or social boundaries. those are all things i’ve seen people complaining about, saying they hated those characters for it, saying that it was fucking irritating to read about. which is like…Yeah, That’s How Traumatized Teenagers Act! 

taylor had any ability to be “rational” about social interactions eroded from the years of irrational cruelty she faced. lisa micromanages her loved ones’ wellbeing because the last time she didn’t, her brother died. brian genuinely doesn’t know how to function at all if he’s not trying to be strong because it’s the only coping mechanism he’s been taught. aisha, chronically abused and neglected, is trying to assert autonomy & gain attention in the only way she knows how. rachel has learned that the only way she’ll be afforded any respect is if she takes it by force. alec says & does wildly inappropriate things because 13 years of grooming taught him it was normal. 

& yeah, all of those things suck to deal with, but that is in fact because trauma sucks to deal with. litmus test for ability to realize that and be reasonably generous about the fact instead of shitting on the involved teenagers for having a hard time being perfect people after experiencing things built to make them feel less than human.