death tw

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

comparativelysuperlative:

Ever since reading Jingo, I’ve been wondering what happened in the other leg of the trousers of Time.

All we really know is that the Klatchians attack Ankh-Morpork, take the city, and a bunch of people die.

Carrot dies. Littlebottom dies. Reg Shoe dies…more, or again, or something. Dorfl and Detritus both die, within minutes of each other, which makes me really curious about what kind of firepower the other guys had. Vimes dies. 

Vetinari presumably gets killed or captured, which means captured, which means he’s fine. And pity the poor invaders who have to occupy a city that contains Sybil Ramkin. I can never keep track of what order the books happen in, but if Moist was in the city when the army was arriving he proceeded to manage not to be. The wizards will notice that the city fell when they miss the next daily delivery of a week’s worth of food.

The thing is, though, this isn’t all that destabilizing. I mean, mass death, bad, but the city has a procedure for this. When the bodies have been carted away and buried or tossed in the Ankh to make it that much cleaner, the first Morporkian voice you hear belongs to the most Morporkian person there is.

“Meat pies! Sausage inna bun! Hot dogs! Onna stick!”

Because when the invaders are battering down the walls, you open the doors and sell them things and before you know it they’re as Morporkian as you are. There’s most of a national anthem about it. Ankh-Morpork the province of Klatch is going to be worse than before. Most of the Watch and a lot of bystanders are dead, and Vetinari can’t keep the Guilds handled until he gets back in power. But it’s still Ankh-Morpork. And even with half our favorite characters gone, well, the Turtle moves.

Can’t think of any, but I’m sure it’s out there somewhere. Anyone else know?

Tags:

#Discworld #reply via reblog #story ideas I will never write

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

doctorwho:

Series 4 – Silence in the Library

Really? Really?

I’m not going to blame this Doctor for the travesty that was “The Bells of St. John” because it hasn’t happened to him yet, but this is after “Rise of the Cybermen”/“The Age of Steel”, which is basically composed entirely of pro-death propaganda.

If he really thinks it’s better to live in a machine than to die, what about Sally Phelan? He killed her because he couldn’t bear the thought of living in a robot body, without ever asking her what she thought. In that moment, among others, he accepted that everybody dies. Worse than accepted, he hastened her death, and arranged the other Cybermen’s mind-restorations to occur in a manner maximally likely to cause them to die from the shock. Heaven forbid that any of them even try to cope with what had been done to them. Heaven forbid that any of them even begin to accept that they don’t have to die.

Evil is sticking people into robot bodies without permission. Arrogance is thinking that if they had asked, nobody would have said “yes”.

(And frankly, I think a lot of the over-the-top evil* of Cybus was to tar the bits of good ideas buried in there by association, but that’s a more Doylistic concern than what I was going for above.)

*You’re going to mind-control people into not fighting back when you force surgery on them, but you’re not going to mind-control them into not feeling the pain of the surgery, nor are you going to anaesthetise them the mundane way?

Tags:

#Doctor Who #transhumanism #rants #this is a written form of the yelling-at-the-screen I did when Mom’s New Who rewatch reached the Cybermen

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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thessalies:

so much fiction about the angst of immortality and just fuck that i want to live forever i want to build a house on mars and have sex in space and watch first contact on the news and i want to see how much better we can get as a species and i want to learn how to play every instrument and speak every language and i want to learn how hardcore cosplayers make those impressive sets of armor and i want to watch all the tv that will ever be made and i want to learn every weird science fact and i want to get married 50 times and i want to survive into an age where science will finally figure out how to fix my sensory issues and cure all mental illness and even if eventually all the suns die and i’m left immortally alone in a dark cold void for all eternity that would be fine i would just write fanfic in my head i could keep myself amused, it would be worth it

mostly though i want to know what happens

 

thessalies:

incidentally, none of this would be impeded by vampirism, so, stop whining lestat

 

slashmarks:

I was always so frustrated as a kid by how vampires in fiction never did anything cool with immortality and I kind of made up a whole fiction world based around them actually doing shit

 

cyborgbutterflies:

If I could, I would definitely become a vampire and start (consensually) spreading vampirism to others.

 

theunitofcaring:

cyborgbutterflies you have read Luminosity and Radiance, right? Because everyone should but especially anyone interested in a book in which Bella Swan decides it’s a moral obligation to overthrow the Volturi so she can vampirize anyone who is interested, and then does it.

 

brin-bellway:

#I’ve read Luminosity#it was very well-written and engaging#and I found it very refreshing to see a narrative that viewed immortality as a valid goal#after growing up on Harry Potter’s bullshit#(they *tell* you all this crap about how ‘death is just the next step’ and Flamel still chose to die)#(and yet they *show* you that Flamel chose to die after over *six hundred years*)#(given the opportunity to set his own lifespan he made it several times longer than what he would have had otherwise)#(but I don’t get the impression we were supposed to read between those lines)#(the lines we’re *supposed* to read between are more the timelines of Voldemort’s life)#(he died his final death less than halfway through the life expectancy of a wizard)#(chasing immortality made him die *sooner*)

 

comparativelysuperlative:

Even worse than that, though. Flamel’s age at the time of the first book,a few years older than the historical Flamel would have been in 1991 so it isn’t coincidence, was six hundred sixty-five. The guy who comes closest to immortality gets handed a number just shy of a certain other well-known number. Almost as if the author wants to tell us something. Depending on how much time is enough to set his affairs in order, she might be being even less subtle about the moral status of immortality.

Tags:

#… #…oh dear #Harry Potter #oh look an update #I just got a pop-up notification that justice-turtle reblogged the previous version from me #sorry about the cross-posting JT

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

theunitofcaring:

cyborgbutterflies:

slashmarks:

thessalies:

thessalies:

so much fiction about the angst of immortality and just fuck that i want to live forever i want to build a house on mars and have sex in space and watch first contact on the news and i want to see how much better we can get as a species and i want to learn how to play every instrument and speak every language and i want to learn how hardcore cosplayers make those impressive sets of armor and i want to watch all the tv that will ever be made and i want to learn every weird science fact and i want to get married 50 times and i want to survive into an age where science will finally figure out how to fix my sensory issues and cure all mental illness and even if eventually all the suns die and i’m left immortally alone in a dark cold void for all eternity that would be fine i would just write fanfic in my head i could keep myself amused, it would be worth it

mostly though i want to know what happens

incidentally, none of this would be impeded by vampirism, so, stop whining lestat

I was always so frustrated as a kid by how vampires in fiction never did anything cool with immortality and I kind of made up a whole fiction world based around them actually doing shit

If I could, I would definitely become a vampire and start (consensually) spreading vampirism to others.

cyborgbutterflies you have read Luminosity and Radiance, right? Because everyone should but especially anyone interested in a book in which Bella Swan decides it’s a moral obligation to overthrow the Volturi so she can vampirize anyone who is interested, and then does it.

Tags:

#transhumanism #vampires #recs #I’ve read Luminosity #it was very well-written and engaging #and I found it very refreshing to see a narrative that viewed immortality as a valid goal #after growing up on Harry Potter’s bullshit #(they *tell* you all this crap about how ‘death is just the next step’ and Flamel still chose to die) #(and yet they *show* you that Flamel chose to die after over *six hundred years*) #(given the opportunity to set his own lifespan he made it several times longer than what he would have had otherwise) #(but I don’t get the impression we were supposed to read between those lines) #(the lines we’re *supposed* to read between are more the timelines of Voldemort’s life) #(he died his final death less than halfway through the life expectancy of a wizard) #(chasing immortality made him die *sooner*) #anyway enough ranting #I need to finish Radiance someday #death tw

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Please signal boost this for anyone that owns a dog, works with dogs or knows someone with a dog, this is SO IMPORTANT.

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

bpdramsaybolton:

edgebug:

we-have-all-got-battle-scars:

A lot of dog owners give their dogs peanut butter. It’s great as a treat given in small quantities and most dogs love the stuff. But PLEASE check the ingredients before giving it to your dog. There is a sweetener called XYLITOL, often found in chewing gum, dental hygiene products and it can also be purchased as a sweetener itself, and now they’ve started putting it in some peanut butters. It is EXTREMELY TOXIC to dogs and can be potentially fatal if not dealt with immediately when ingested by a dog. Check the ingredients, if XYLITOL is mentioned then PLEASE DO NOT FEED IT TO YOUR DOG! If you suspect your dog has ingested XYLITOL, which can often happen through dogs finding chewing gum in bags (they like the smell of mint), or if they do happen to have peanut butter containing it, call your vet straight away. I’m a dog trainer, I see lots of goods, but I also see the bads, and the last thing I want to see is dogs coming to harm because people are unaware of this so please if there’s one thing you do then reblog this or at least tell people about it. Thank you so much!

http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/xylitol.asp

THIS IS 100% LEGIT. Xylitol can cause a HUGE surge of insulin in dogs and in higher doses is toxic to their livers. Three grams of xylitol can kill a 65lb dog.

quarkity

Tags:

#death tw #dog #the more you know #we gave our dog an empty peanut butter jar to lick the remnants out of yesterday #luckily Wegmans regular peanut butter doesn’t have xylitol #(no we don’t have Wegmans in Canada) #(Wegmans peanut butter is cheaper and tastier than No Name so we buy a bunch whenever we go to America)

Schrodinger’s Kid?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

deelaundry:

My younger kid:  “I don’t want to die.  I want to live forever.”

My older kid:  “It’s not that everybody dies, it’s just that everybody so far has died.”

Roughly (very roughly) 107 billion people have ever lived. Given a living population of 7 billion, this means it’s much too soon to use that saying that “life is a condition with a 100% mortality rate”. Empirically, life is a condition with a ~93% mortality rate.

Seven percent of all the people who have ever lived, it’s not too late to save.

Tags:

#death tw #transhumanism #if I ever decide to make a specific anti-deathism tag it will be ‘seven percent of all the people who have ever lived can still be saved’

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

comparativelysuperlative:

michaelblume:

Alicorn: Did you know that if you laid all the arteries and all the veins in your body end to end you’d *die*?

Me: Did you know that if you weighed all the kidneys of all the people in San Jose you’d get arrested?

Alicorn: Did you know that if you married someone from the state of Ohio you’d be a bigamist?

Me: Did you know that if you laid all the voles in Kentucky end to end, they’d wander off long before you were finished?

Do you have ANY IDEA how many utils you two just created?

#The San Jose one is false #due to lack of people to do the arresting #and your own Untimely Demise if you’re not doing it remotely

Tags:

#overly literal interpretations

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

nuclearspaceheater:

tharook:

northcentralpositronics:

tattoo artist who can encode magic into tattoos but doesn’t want people to know she can so she just puts low-level luck spells on her clients’ bodies without telling them

jeweller who makes body jewellery and pendants which have amulet properties and draw love and luck and happiness to their wearers without them realising it

piercing artist who keeps the remnants from her piercings and puts them all in little jars in the back of her shop to work sympathetic luck spells on all her clients

and then all three of them slowly realise what the others are doing and end up in a poly relationship living in a little shop in the shitty end of town, which gets curiously less shitty the longer they stay, and people think it’s just the development of the area but the three artists know

and they’re never rich and they’re never famous but they’re always happy because they have everything they need

they have the shop and they have their customers and they have each other

and when their customers are happy and content, they pack up and move on, all together now, to find another space with skin to be coloured and jewellery to be made and magic to be done.

this is beautiful

DETROIT – The three body modification artists were arrested today on charges of voluntary manslaughter after a past client suffered a fatal stroke, allegedly due to thaumo-alchemical interactions between her prescribed potions and a luck charm that had been placed on one of her tattoos without her knowledge.

…

“Some potions and drugs are known to react with common charms, which is why it is absolutely essential that your doctor and pharmacist have a complete and accurate list of your active enchantments,” says pharmacist Patricia Patil. “Putting an enchantment of any kind, no matter how minor, on someone without their knowledge or permission is playing Russian Roulette with someone else’s life.”

…

The victim, Carmen Jackson, was 36 at the time of her death and is survived by a husband and 4 children.

Tags:

#death tw #yes this #I did not think this *exact* thing #but I did wonder why we were assumed to sympathise with people tricking others into taking spells

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