I Should Probably Post This Here:

I should probably post this here:

The Life Alignment Chart

What is "alive" to you? What counts as alive?

Going top to bottom, then left to right, we have:

A PERSON: everyone generally agrees that people are alive. This category is for all animals, plants, all the easy stuff.

CORAL: is a creature as simple as coral alive? It's in the kingdom of life, but it's really at the edge of what we consider "sentient". It doesn't think, it acts on instructions ingrained into its DNA, but that's basically what people do too but just more complicated.

VIRUSES: a virus is still made of biological material, but it's not DNA-based like everything else is. It's basically a snippet of code. It can't reproduce itself, it needs to highjack other cells to do so.

Moving on to the second column, we now have creatures no longer made from biotic material.

ANDROID: if we build a machine which is sufficiently advanced such that it can simulate the intelligence of a brain, and put it into a human-mimicking robot body, would it be alive? Unless you look under the hood you couldn't tell it wasn't another human. The only thing separating it from humanity is the fact it's made from metal.

SELF-REPLICATING DRONE ARMY: if someone built an army of drones which is capable of mining, refining, and machining new drones to add to the army, would it be alive? As a collective? Assume that it can respond to stimulus, like building kill-bots to fight enemies and improving on the design of its drones if it finds the right materials.

FIRE: people often describe fire like it's alive. It can grow, die, eat, breathe, starve, suffocate, and spawn new fires. If a virus can be alive, why not fire?

Finally, the last column, beings which exist only in the minds of people and have no physical form

GOD: Assuming the Christian God exists, would he be considered alive? He can certainly think complex thoughts, and since he's omnipotent he could self-replicate if he wanted to. The only caveat is I'm not sure he has any physical form. This category also includes voices in people's heads and imaginary friends, who are able to live and think autonomously by essentially sharing the brain of the person they live in.

A NATION: a nation can be thought of as an animal, with all its citizens as its cells. It can think, eat, produce products, get sick, and make new nations (if parts of it split away like mitosis). This category includes all groups of people which operate as collectives.

A STORY: a story is like a parasite living in the minds of the people who know the story. It spreads by being told. It can mutate to adapt to its environment. It can die if people forget about it. This category includes all art.

Once I forgot what a coupling was and Googled "female to female nipples" at work

my dad knows what yuri is because at a museum he used to work at he was trying to organize some event about Yuri Gagarin and im still not over the mental image of my 50 year old father sitting down at his computer at work and googling "yuri images" fully expecting to see black and white photos of the russian cosmonaut and just seeing anime girls kissing instead

Doodle from class today

Hard agree. All the honor and advancement is fluff. No darkeyes has actually held shards for centuries. Even if by some miracle one managed to get them, it would not he tolerated that their first action is to challenge a lighteyed shardbearer with an excellent reputation by calling them an evil lying coward. That kind of thing needs to be shut down immediately, and so it is. The only acceptable attitude for a darkeyed shardbearer to have is "I love the system and my ability to advance through it. Darkeyes who haven't made it as far as me aren't trying hard enough. I will use my newfound privilege to uphold the values of the society that allowed me such fortune"

The most infamous line in The Words of Radiance

"And for my boon" This line manages to take Kaladin from the great high of seeing Adolin saved from certain death to the tremendous low of seeing prison because of the betrayal of the lighteyes. I have a serious problem with this scene as I feel it breaks the world building of the series. Kaladin is dismissed and punished for being an uppity dark-eyes, for challenging Ameran's honor and station without having an appropriate social ranking to do so. Kaladin is treated as foolish and is released under the idea he was caught up in the moment and not acting rationally.

The reason I take issue with this resolution is that in Alethi culture Kaladin is right. A lot of time in The Way of Kings is spent impressing upon the readers the deep cultural idea that society is social advancement is possible. And that the ultimate act of social advancement is to best a shardwielder in combat and claim it for yourself. That combined with the fact that Adolin's duel was explicitly playing for keeps means that Kaladin is a lighteyes of the 4th dahn in Alethi society when he says "and for my boon". He is not disparaging Ameran as a peasant but as someone one rank below him and very much still high class.

This interpretation of Alethi culture is likely to be unpopular with lighteyes as it is a threat to the status quo and their social status. The important ramifications being the disillusionment of the darkeyes that make up the Alethi armies. There should be riots in the war camps because the lighteyes by arresting kaladin they destroyed one of the lies that allow soliders to continue dying so their brightlord can get rich on gemhearts. This belief is shown to be at least fairly common among soliders in Sadeas's army via Gaz and the deserters that became Shallan's honor guard.

A bitter failure of ballistic science that we have yet to build the vampire canon

Why do vampires even need to drink blood? Is it the nutritional value or is it some kind of magic life force? If someone had orange juice running through their veins instead would it work the same?

despite the christianity ingrained in the modern western vampire narrative there is no vampire canon

colored sketch of angua from discworld,,, i love werewolves so much theyre awesome AWOOOOOOO

go girl,,,