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strictly platonic tentacle

@caladblog / caladblog.tumblr.com

morgan / 29 / they. an aggressively multifandom sideblog. CURRENT MOOD: still on my mass effect bullshit

sometimes you read something so good that you just have to sit and stare into space for a few hours so your brain can fully process it

Irem is that good.

honestly all of Evolution has been amazing, especially the last few chapters. it might even be my favorite Fallen London storyline ever-- i was deeply satisfied by the conclusion of Ambition: Nemesis, but i also had a couple years between when i reached the pause and when they started the conclusions, so it’s hard to judge it as a whole.

but irem, all by itself... god damn. god DAMN it is so well-written and perfectly crafted and if you haven’t gotten there yet i implore you to go in spoiler-free and with the knowledge that it’s gonna take a lot of time to explore in full. let it unfold.

(there’s so much more i want to say here but i’d contradict my own spoiler-free policy lol)

so i’ll just say that: when i reached the end that was right for me after two days, it was beautiful and narratively satisfying and i was also struck with this incredible feeling of i want to go home. so i sailed my lil character back to london, and all was well.

Looks like fanfiction.net is gone. Probably should have backed up the fic I had there. Woops. Too late now.

Okay, this is very weird. The green leafy thing is what I’m seeing but apparently there are multiple people who can still access the site? I’m very confused right now.

I did not have access to fanfiction.net on my phone. Did have access to m.fanfiction.net. On my desktop PC, I’ve got access to both. Might be some sort of technical issue but if you have fic up there that you haven’t crossposted or saved, now is a good time to do it!

It’s somewhat difficult to download fics off fanfiction.net or even to copy-paste, so here is a link to a web-based downloader that will download fics from ff.net to your format of choice - it automatically downloads as an epub, but you can also get downloads for mobi, pdf, or zipped html. this side is also compatible with a number of other text-based fanfiction sites. this is what i’m using to archive my earliest fanfictions - 2002 and 2003! 

tragically and unexpectedly, the wacom tablet i bought secondhand in 2011 died today. shocking! unforeseeable! etc

so i'm wondering if anybody has any recommendations on a new tablet. drawing is strictly a rare hobby for me, so i'm looking for something fairly low-priced and small. any products / brands / features i should look for / avoid? all advice is appreciated!

Quick PSA, if you get one of those "Work scanned, AI use detected" comments on AO3, just mark them as spam.

Some moron apparently built a bot to annoy or prank hundreds of authors.

There is no scanning process, your work doesn't actually resemble AI writing, it's all bullshit. Mark the comment as spam (on AO3, not the email notification you got about the comment!) and don't let it get to you.

The spam comments have evolved.

They are now also linking to a site they claim is able to scan works and tell you whether they were AI written or not, and that you should do that before reading a fic.

It should go without saying that you should not, under no circumstances, visit a site advertised in a spam comment.

In this case, I'd say there's even a chance that the "scanning" site is actually used to scrape fics and use them for future AI writing. What it definitely doesn't do is tell you whether something was AI written or not. That's a bullshit claim.

Don't use that site. Don't believe these spam comments, whether you get them on your own works or see them on someone else's.

It's all bullshit.

Scarlet Hollow ~~BEACH EPISODE~~

If you like this picture of all the Scarlet Hollow characters taking a break and having some fun in the sun, we’re doing a surprise crowdfund for a poster starting RIGHT now, and the first 100 backers get a free sticker sheet!!

We’re already over a quarter of the way to the funding goal, so I guess people really like this! I’m so glad!! It’s fun drawing everybody having a nice time and getting to be (mostly) normal.

i really love horror stories about exploring the mysteriously abandoned hulk of a once-luxurious ship where the horror is capitalism (and also monsters) and the main character is a woman who survives to the end and has to figure out how to reconcile the existence of the supernatural with her understanding of the world and there’s some crew-as-family stuff going on too (which only makes it worse when they start dying)

which i know sounds extremely specific but i can think of three examples off the top of my head, pls suggest more if you’ve got ‘em

re: that poem

i put some serious thought into it before answering the poll and here’s the thing

if i walked through hell to reach the person i love most

and was promised her if i just walked it again

and i got to the surface and she wasn’t there

i would fucking go back.

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do u think omegaverse acknowledges covid-19 and the generation of people who permanently lost their sense of smell like how are they all scenting each other now is the omegaverse economy in shambles

actually pheromone sensing works differently from normal olfaction, since humans in our world don’t have a functioning vomeronasal organ (VNO), we don’t have any data on how covid-19 would affect a functioning VNO in omegaverse AUs

Actually there is evidence that covid probably would affect the VNO and it stands to reason would accordingly impair its function. Briefly:

  • SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid, can only infect cells expressing a certain protein called ACE2
  • ACE2 is expressed widely in nasal cavity epithelial cells but not in olfactory sensory neurons. 
  • Seo et al. (2021) studied potential nasal targets for SARS-CoV-2 using golden hamsters as a model organism (commonly used as a proxy for humans in virology studies)
  • They found ACE2 expression in the main olfactory bulb epithelium (MOE, your “normal” nose organ) as well as the vomeronasal organ (VNO)
  • Several cell types in the VNO were able to be infected and they also found significant inflammatory activity (macrophage activation, apoptotic cells, etc) 
  • The specifics of how covid actually causes dysosmia are not known for sure but epithelial damage by local inflammatory immune responses likely plays a role, especially because sensory neurons themselves are not affected (Bilinska, & Butowt, 2020). Therefore I would suggest a potential similar effect of VNO dysfunction as we see in the main olfactory bulb
  • From Seo et al.: “Considering the function of the VNO, infection and subsequent pathologic changes may affect the behavior of Syrian hamsters”
  • If it stands to reason that omegaverse individuals have functioning VNOs similar to members of the animal kingdom, then it is more than reasonable to conclude that covid may cause them to lose not only their main olfactory function, but also their VNO function as well
  •  References: (1) (2)

In conclusion the omegaverse economy IS in shambles.

OP this is very well-written but im still hung up on how you came onstage dressed as a clown only to tear off the costume and reveal yourself as a biologist