Every splinter an image

From there it's not actually difficult to get the other soldiers onboard with covering up the fact that poor Ping took one for the team and got afflicted by the vagina curse, especially since it would have been all of them if they hadn't gotten the warning ahead of time. So they agree to help him cover it up, because obviously the army's not going to understand.

Mulan: Uh, what boobs? Huh? Where did these come from?

Mushu: *facepalms and thinks quickly* (speaks from the shadows) I AM THE SPIRIT OF THE LAKE! BEWARE MY CURSED WATERS FOR THEY WILL TURN MEN INTO WOMEN!

Mulan: Look-

Ling, Yao, and Chien Po: WE CAN EXPLAIN!!

[One convoluted, chaotic explanation later]

Shang: ...is this why you've all been insisting we don't camp anywhere that doesn't have a lake.

Shang: and then none of you actually swim in it.

Shang: and you all keep jumping at shadows.

Shang: wait a second Ping did this happen before or after you became insanely good at fighting?

Shang: did you get better at fighting after you became a woman.

Shang: are women better at fighting than us.

Mulan: ....uh. well. maybe? no one's ever tried to find out.

Yao: [thinking very fast] y'know Captain it's just so hard to find recruits these days.

Chien Po: Real shortage of men.

Ling: Lots of women, though.

Mulan: [catching on] Without marriage prospects.

Shang: You're right, men. The spirits must have done this in order to show us that we should be recruiting women as fighters.

Mushu [from the shadows, seeing an opportunity to do the funniest thing]: EXACTLY, LI SHANG. I HAVE TRANSFORMED PING INTO A WOMAN BECAUSE YOU HAVE TOO LONG OVERLOOKED THE TRUE WAY TO WIN THE WAR.

Mulan [seeing an opportunity to get all the stories straight]: O Great Spirit, is it reversible?

Mushu: WHY WOULD YOU WISH TO REJECT MY GIFT? I HAVE SEEN YOUR HEART, CHILD, AND HAVE ALREADY ALTERED THE MEMORIES OF EVERYONE WHO KNEW YOU BEFORE YOU LEFT FOR THE ARMY. YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THEIR DAUGHTER.

Li Shang: Welp, the spirits have spoken. Ping - wait is your name still Ping if you're a woman now?

Mulan: Uh. Actually, I was thinking of renaming myself. How do you feel about Mulan?

BONUS:

Mulan [climbing out of the eleventh lake the men have arranged for her to swim in]: Yeah no, it didn't work. Still got boobs. [tries to appear dejected].

Chien Po: If it makes you feel better, they're very nice boobs.

"You haven't seen all the art you were meant to see. Maybe it doesn't exist yet. Maybe you have to create it."

-anonymous

I lost a needle I liked in my pincushion so I decided to get a strong magnet and see if I could pull it back out.

I pulled out 68.

I very rarely sew.

AND YET.

"I'm really sorry that lockdown and the ongoing pandemic interrupted pivotal educational and social/emotional development moments for you. You have an uphill battle towards adjusting to a lot of community based efforts because you experienced a mass trauma during an incredibly important time in your life where you should have physically been around your peers learning to engage in shared community. There is no "but" here, I'm genuinely really sorry. Something many of us consider key points in our interpersonal growth as youths was taken from you, not without reason but without care for its impact on you. I hope you know we are eternally allies in our struggles and if that is something you struggle to know I hope you can learn it someday."

Because so many of the angriest, most disenfranchised people I see on this website are under 24 and I often try to put younger people's behavior in the context of where they might have been 2020. I've seen the impact on my siblings and their peers+friends first hand, all ages 18-24. We've talked about how its impacted them, the isolation, the attachment to the internet, the anxieties and phobias and fears it developed in them due to the pandemic, the political unrest, and the responses to both that we've seen since. I know they're not the only ones and I know how much being marginalized also influences that impact too.

eyes hit serious diminishing returns wrt resource costs vs vision quality as they get bigger, so the question became: what the FUCK do giant (and colossal) squid need to see so badly that they couldn't see with swordfish-sized eyes that's justifying that massive energy cost? that nothing else in the deep ocean needs to see so fucking badly??

turns out the one strength eyes that big really have over much smaller eyes is: seeing large glowing objects in water deeper than 500 meters from an appreciable distance.

sperm whales are the primary predator of giant squid. sperm whales don't glow. BUT! water that deep is full of bioluminescent creatures-- these creatures light up when bumped into. something a sperm whale's size is continuously bumping into those critters, it's just surrounded by a glowing field all the time when it's swimming at those depths, visible from a distance-- if you have the right eyes-- as a massive glowing shape. so basically the only reason to have eyes the size of soccer balls is if you live in the deep ocean and your life depends on having a heads up when a hungry sperm whale is lurking around

For example, you're using a public bathroom, and there's no toilet paper left for the toilet you're using. If someone was waiting outside and is about to use the toilet / stall you were just using, it's fair to warn them first "hey there's no toilet paper left in that one" so they can use a different toilet if they'd prefer (or maybe grab some paper towel from the sink first if they'd personally rather improvise like that).

Another example of this is in many places it's common for cars to flash their lights at oncoming cars if there's any sort of danger or obstacle in the road ahead, like a flooded road, or an accident, or rubble/debris in the road.

Or say you used to work somewhere, and the work environment was really toxic (verbally abusive boss, co-workers who are bullies, they repeatedly "accidentally" paid you less than they were supposed to even after you called them out on it, etc) and someone you know is going to apply working there or was just offered a job there, it's fair and considerate to warn them about your experiences.

Or maybe you took a class that was way harder than you thought it would be, and had a much higher rate of people who fail or drop the class than you anticipated, it would be fair to warn a friend and/or classmate who says they're going to take that class.

#security androids using their being mosly bulletproof to bravely seek peaceful resolutions 

#engineer droids who refuse to work with faulty tech or supar metals for fear of the vehicle not keeping its humans safe 

The robot is programmed to keep the crew safe. Normally this is patching up leaks in the hull and doing the dangerous job of refueling the reactor, but it was programmed for medical tasks as well. Once you’ve had to resolder a surface mount IC in zero-G, doing surgery is easy mode.

The robot’s been with them long enough, it was never designed to be sentient, but the self-learning systems plus being treated as a member of the crew means it’s getting closer.

But one day all the input stops. It doesn’t know what exactly happened, maybe a freak gamma ray event or some kind of virus the med-filters didn’t detect? But all the crew have stopped moving. It runs through its medical routines, trying the options in the encyclopedia. CPR doesn’t seem to help, asking them loudly to “wake up” does nothing, it even tries building a makeshift defibrillator out of the secondary plasma coupling. Nothing.

It finally comes to the page on Death in the encyclopedia, and reads it, with dawning sadness (or the closest thing a robot that was never programmed for emotions can feel). They won’t move again. They are permanently deactivated. The robot is alone, and it has failed them.

Unless… The robot notices a link at the bottom of the page.

See also:

* Necromancy

It’s eyes glow in the reflected light of a screen as it quickly reads the page. So there’s a chance after all? Cancel sending the mission update, there more important things to do with the deep space radio. Send all information on “necromancy” immediately.

The robot hums to itself as it reprograms the biosynthesizer for Goat, and looks into how it can create candles with the limited materials on hand. The deck 4 cargo bay would be best for making alchemical circles on the floor, but it will need to move the self-sealing stembolts to another location first. Perhaps Mx. Jormand’s quarters? They won’t be using them until this is complete, after all.

Annoyingly long story of a robot summoning a demon to get necromancy powers under the readmore:

Human 1: (points at animal) What’s that?

Human 2: Cow.

Human 1: (points at bug) What’s that?

Human 2: … little cow.

Human 1: But it’s so much smaller. Who would have use for such a small cow?