You Can't Hide Lukie Pookie In The Tags, It Needs To Be There For Everyone To See, Just Like This Masterpiece!!!

Totally responsible consumption of tea

HELL YEAH

Hadestown Au anyone?

I didn't know this fic existed, but I've just read it and it's the best thing that ever happened to me 😂😂😂😂

You guys remember « The Legend of Liob », right?

Eepy

If there’s any argument for Tech dying or needing to be dead that I’m tired of—and I’m tired of all of them—it’s the idea that he must have died because he fell a long way. (Obligatory disclaimer that I’m still arguing that Tech is alive and was never actually killed off in the first place, and that that wasn’t dropped but just hasn’t played out yet before moving on):

Now, if Star Wars were a documentary? Sure. I’d buy it to some degree. I’d think that whoever was responsible for the documentary was remiss in not sending out a search party, since real life people have survived falls from upwards of 30,000 feet before, but on balance I’d think that he was likely, though not certainly, dead.

But Star Wars isn’t a documentary. It’s fiction, and genre fiction at that—a caricature of reality which abides by its own internal rules, shifting from story to story, and where both injury and likelihood of death alike are determined by narrative need rather than real world fatality. Short falls kill main characters in fiction all the time. Not always, there’s a degree of plot armor in many cases, but when they do, we see (or “see,” if it’s a written work) the immediate result. Perhaps not as graphically as it would appear in real life, perhaps with some artistic license and discretion depending on who’s watching, but we see it all the same.

Long falls, however, almost never kill any named characters in genre fiction. Not unless we immediately see the body afterwards. Even George Lucas—who, bless his heart, has some good ideas and some understanding of storytelling but has never thought a single implication all the way through and isn’t actually a very good writer—knew that. That’s why he cut Maul in half before throwing him into a pit. And that still wasn’t enough to keep him dead when Lucas changed his mind a decade or so later.

The utility of a long fall where you cut away before impact is that anything can happen in the gap the audience doesn’t get to see. In fact, the higher the fall, the more time the character falling has to do something about it. And what could they do? Well, the story of the bad batch, if we start from where it began in season seven of TCW, actually presents us with a number of different options for a character who found themselves in that position, including:

1. Use their collection of animal calls to summon some giant flying reptiles and ride them to safety (On the Wings of Keeradaks, Tech’s idea)

2. Just use the force to jump to safety and hope someone lies about them falling to their deaths dying (Aftermath, Caleb, can we talk about how “Where’s X?” and “X didn’t make it,” combo happens in exactly two places in the script for the whole show and one is Hunter lying to Cross about Caleb and the other is Hunter talking to Omega about Tech?)

3. Fall a long way in something that’s going to roll around and take most of the impact for them (Reunion, Tech’s idea again)

4. Just don’t die. Or I guess hit a bunch of things on the way down and hope their special armor protects them (War Mantle, Hunter, who doesn’t even break a rib, listen it would actually be flat out stupid for Tech to die in a fall in a situation that’s directly parallel (the terrain, Omega screaming at everyone to go back) to the one we watched Hunter walk away from. We watched it happen once; why should we believe it this time? The only difference is that we didn’t follow Tech all the way down.)

5. Hope the box they’re falling in has emergency thrusters to slow them down (Spoils of War, Omega’s idea, Tech was impressed and I’m sure remembers it, I mean seriously are we actually thinking Tarkin’s secret gondola doesn’t have some kind of safety back up in case it malfunctions with him inside? *Maybe* it doesn’t, but it very well might.)

6. Hope there’s water at the bottom after they fall through the mists (The Crossing, Omega and Tech. Funny how at least some of these involve Tech. Funny how there’s mists like in Plan 99.)

7. Have someone catch them on the way down before they hit the ground, which may be lava (Hunter catching Omega, Retrieval. You can almost count Phee catching Hunter and Hunter catching Phee in Entombed, I just don’t because they don’t fall first)

8. Grab onto something on the way down into the void (CX-2, Extraction)

9. Fall into water again (Also CX-2, Extraction)

This isn’t about actual survivability, by the way. The characters involved in most of these would have likely died if it happened in the real world, especially the ones with a water landing, but Star Wars doesn’t care about that. It will blow people up and light them on fire and decide they’re fine. Physical reality and how any of these would actually go (badly, they would go badly) is irrelevant.

The point here is about establishing audience expectations. We’ve got a situation in which a character whose body neither we nor his family ever see supposedly dying via a method the story itself—not even the conventional rules of the genre, the specific story being told—sets up as survivable. Never mind that “no body, no death” is a genre convention, never mind that “Faster” goes out of its way to set up that Tech works in milliseconds and that if anyone can find a way out of it, he can.

People watching are handed a set of survived long falls which set up the expectation that this fall could have been survivable, too, even if they’re not picking up on it. It’s just enough for people to go, hmmm, that’s weird, and not fully accept it. Which makes it more likely for people to accept that he survived instead if he should come back.

tl;dr: This is the implausible survival franchise. It’s a feature, not a bug, and any arguments about gravity or what would kill someone for real don’t matter.

looks like i have the gift of prophecy because....

AO3 got fucking scraped again for gen AI purposes!

AO3 got scraped for gen AI purposes again, a ton of works were included.

There's been DMCA requests and it looks like some/most? of it has been taken down, thankfully. Still. I highly highly recommend that everyone lock all their works to the archive right now. I can't force you to, but I strongly suggest that you do. Don't let them scrape your work in the future. It sucks losing guest interaction but. Would you rather feed the AI slop?

For people who guest comment: Make an AO3 account! You have to wait a bit for an invite but it's worth it i promise!!

For artists specifically: I recommend that you look into Glaze and/or Nightshade. There's also these disruption filters, it's not clear how well these actually work, but you're welcome to try them. Glaze is supposed to work best, though.

It looks like you can see the status of the datasets here

And how to submit DMCA or copyright violation

I'll say it again: FUCK AI THAT STEALS PEOPLE'S ART AND WRITING!!!!

Read this!!!!! It's important!!!

Actually yk what, let's make sure more ppl can understand the information:

Traducción al español del texto escrito por @the-final-sif :

Este es un claro ejemplo de por qué hay que tener cuidado ante casos de desinformación/ falta de información.

Tomate un tiempo para pensar y preguntarte, un proyecto como este requiere un montón de tiempo, dinero y recursos, ¿por qué los científicos le dedicarían ese tiempo a algo que puede hacer un árbol?

La respuesta es no lo harían. Eso significa que hay que investigar más a fondo la noticia.

El proyecto se llama LIQUID 3 (líquido tres), y no está diseñado para ciudades con espacios abiertos grandes, sino para ciudades como Belgrade en Serbia. Estás ciudades están densamente pobladas y altamente contaminadas, hasta el punto que la misma contaminación ahoga los árboles ya presentes y dificulta la creación de espacios verdes nuevos.

Liquid 3 esa respuesta de científicos de doctorado a este problema. El tanque de microalgas está diseñado para lugares en los que:

No existe el lugar para plantar árboles o

No hay tiempo para plantar y esperar que los árboles crezcan

El tanque es extremadamente eficiente cuando se toma en consideración el espacio que utiliza con la cantidad de CO2 (dióxido de carbono) que transforma en oxígeno. El tanque funciona durante el invierno. Y, lo más importante,se puede instalar rápidamente en lugares que necesitan un alivio de la polución del aire AHORA, no en 10 años cuando los árboles terminen de crecer. Los niños ahogándose en la polución no pueden esperar a que los árboles crezcan, necesitan una solución ya, y Liquid 3 la provee. Dependiendo la especie de microalgas que se usen, una gran cantidad ha demostrado ser capaz de extraer metales pesados del aire, una de las cosas con la que los árboles se ahogan.

Además, los tanques no son solo tanques. Tienen paneles solares encima, y proveen luz y zonas para cargar el celular, y funcionan como bancos públicos. Los diseñadores quieren promover los espacios verdes cuando existe el lugar, pero a falta de tiempo y lugar, Liquid 3 funciona como sustituto. Siendo realista, esto NO reemplaza los árboles. Reemplaza los bancos viejos y aburridos de metal con bancos nuevos más lindos que también purifican el aire (y que tienen algo calefacción durante el invierno).

No solo eso, sino que las microalgas que crecen allí son nativas de Serbia y tiene un montón de grandes usos y beneficios. Funcionan muy bien como fertilizante, compost, como tratamiento de agua residual, como un biocombustible más limpio, e incluso ayudan a crear nuevos tanques para purificar más el aire. Solo requiere una división de algas una vez al mes, y las algas producidas ahí pueden ser transportadas a dónde sea que se las necesite. Esto las hace una solución efectiva para áreas que no pueden sostener instalaciones complejas.

Así que si, hay muchos lugares que necesitan uno de estos. Mucha gente que en estos momentos respira aire de mala calidad preferiría que se reemplacen los bancos aburridos con bancos de alga divertidos y que encima limpian el aire y que pueden ser usados para ayudar a crear + sostener futuros espacios verdes en la ciudad. No sé ustedes, pero preferiría eso antes que bancos de metal cualquier día. Ponganlos en todas las paradas de bus y estaría encantads.

(trate de escribirlo en el español más neutro que pude)

I love how sometimes Tumblr says oh you like this? How about I show you this masterpiece you missed?

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH I love this so much

... so apparently it was Plan 99's anniversary 🥳

the 212th have a meme that's just an image of Commander Cody's neutral resting face with the captain "The Commander Is Not Amused"

Cody eventually finds out about it, and is Not Amused

specifically, he takes issue with the holo still of him they used

naturally, he has multiple better options on hand to offer as alternatives

Yes to everything.

Also, even tho Crosshair and Echo weren't there, they weren't dead, they were just gone, in another place.

The rest of the batch weren't mourning, at least not in the 'they're never coming back way' sense (bc they were mourning, as in he's taking another path and he isn't with us rn)

Tech had a great capacity of adaptability, he said it himself, and he was used to putting aside his feelings and making the changes that were necessary and gave them the better odds of survival (hence plan 99). You compared him with an engine, and I agree. He was the engine, he hacked into things and made plans and quick calculations, knew the best strategies to optimize the team, and was usually the one who got the information- and he was the medic in the team.

So after plan 99, not only did they lack his abilities to solve the problems they encountered, which was exactly what they needed, they also could not deal with the pain of truly losing a brother for the first time- suddenly death wasn't inevitable, it was a very real thing (I do believe (read as I'm in denial) he survived and became CX-2). They were mourning a brother that they would never see again.

They went back to Cid's for AZI bc they didn't have a medic and Omega needed one which turned out to be a bad decision, but one they made while heartbroken, so without Tech there they didn't stop to think, couldn't stop to think if there wasn't another place to go (or to get AZI and get out of there immediately)

They didn't even have the time to properly mourn him, bc Cid betrayed them and suddenly they lost more of their family. They were desperate and heartbroken and everything had gone wrong.

(I also want to say we were robbed of seeing Crosshair react to Tech's death, we know he knows but we never saw how he reacted when they told him)

remember in S2 when Tech said "This squad existed before Echo was a part of it, and it will exist after."

and then in S3 Crosshair said "Clone Force 99 died with Tech. We're not that squad anymore."

i just think about this a lot.