Not An Overripe Green

and then you can still have a child with your genes, too

also if everyone's doing IVF, then depending on how much gametes degrade when frozen versus when in the body, it might make sense to store samples and sterilize everyone, although that introduces some nasty failure modes

it would reduce the birth rate of uncredited babies and thus lower credit prices, though

but also i don't think that people who are willing to make major personal sacrifices based on abstract moral reasoning without much external encouragement should selectively be sterilized, that seems dumb

it’s fucking disgusting, nobody wants to see that??????? can’t wait until everywhere is clean. when i’m old maybe there won’t be any re//d/s or re//dfuc/ke///rs left :) the fact that they’re still out there unpunished makes my skin crawl

it is so annoying to be browsing a kink tag and Suddenly, Red Fetishists

like, yes, i know you can use filters but it's a pain to keep everything all configured all the time (especially in spring when you want More Novel Fic Now) and sometimes people don't tag things well and autofiltration doesn't catch it

like ... i get that people have weird fetishes, but the sheer prevalence of redfuckery in tags which are not! actually! about! reds! is just stunning

Since I changed my URL I have gotten 14 asks about what the heck “darha” is (and one from someone whose translator didn’t successfully separate out “infinite” and politely informed me that I misspelled “cantaloupe salad”, and one from someone who thinks I’m a kindred spirit in shipping Darhoki/Hahgae, which, no, gross.)

Darha is an old proto-Oahkar, I think technically Agraes, word; it’d translate in an Agraese (?) text as “capital” (as in social capital or political capital, not financial capital, they’re using a different metaphor, the tentative etymology is from “weight”).  It’s related to Oahkar words for “reputation”, “clout”, and “fame”, although all of those sound pretty different unless you go through a few steps to see the resemblance.

As used in modern Oahkar, mostly by blues in Oahk and Calado and people who hover close to blues but apparently also in the Oahkar/Calador movie industry, who knew, “darha” is kind of… “the thing you want”.  Not “children” - children is too low-granularity.  Obviously the reason darha is valuable is mostly about converting it into permissions, but this is like saying that money is valuable because Tapai people can convert it into credits.  This is technically true, it drives a lot of credit-country citizen earning and saving behavior, and it would be an astoundingly reductive gloss on the value of money.

You do trivial favors for blues who will never give you personally a permission to acquire darha.  You chase promotions over raises and raises over time off to acquire darha.  You juggle fourteen conflicting loyalties in secret until one looks like it’ll pan out sooner than later because darha doesn’t always mathematically add up, but it’s like trying to roll a twelve and adding more dice.  And your other thirteen loyalties might turn on you insofar as they can when you slip out from under them - because you can get darha by making it less likely your supporters will find it worth it to disappear on you - but they might not - because you can get darha by leaving bridges unburned, so if a shiny opportunity doesn’t wind up working your erstwhile supporters come slinking back.  Having permissions to hand out can get you darha, but it will get you more darha if you spend it carefully.

Darha can in the hands of a skilled person be exchanged with money, time, services, and privileges for yourself and for others in both directions with astonishing fluidity.  Darha flat-out evaporates if you don’t know what you’re doing and don’t have any passive sources to fall back on (family connections, sometimes foreign political power) - if you don’t know what you’re doing, your time comes to be seen as worth less than nothing, your money seems like it can be taken from you with no commensurate exchange of darha, your services no longer appear valuable, and you’d diminish the prestige of a privilege by trying to exercise it.  A skilled person can seem to generate it out of nothing, although of course it’s always coming from somewhere and in the end it’s backed by permissions and there are only so many.

Darha is immune to math.  Darha is like trying to knit smoke and count love and juggle promises.  You can’t think about children while you’re working, not at high levels of courting darha; you’ll be distracted from getting it and spending it and trading it and braiding it into existence from tips and smiles and plots.

but i don’t understand how this could possibly be a positive thing

is this truly what we want to encourage everyone to optimize for?

competing for babies is basically always 0-sum but at least wealth isn't, whereas this looks like a painful all-encompassing game generating little-to-no value, and why would you want to select so much for the best players of that?

i love the way the tattered clouds blow wind across the sky/summer goes, and leaves me with a tear in my eye

i’m taking out my winter clothes, and my garden knows what is wrong/the petals of my favorite rose, and shadows dark and long

though every year, it’s very clear: i should be carrying on/but i can be found in the garden, singing this song, until the last rose of summer is gone

i mean you'd have to be both be really thoughtless and be really resilient in spring or something i guess

"do you ever think about X" there's over a thousand days in a year and you're awake for over 10 hours a day and thinking about something takes less than a minute, how could you not

new ask meme: send me a belief of mine and I’ll tell you what evidence i’d need to change the belief

ok to reblog even if you aren’t green

Thought I’d post another link, now that it’s finished.

Or That Which Calls Our Hearts

Chapters: 5/5 Fandoms: RPF, Programmers Rating: Explicit, Y/Y, Y/Y/G Warnings: period-appropriate opinions on intercaste relationships, landlord-coersion, unhealthy work ethic, empty springs, major character illness, strong language Relationships: Tatha Kampori/Soma Asem, Tatha Kampori/Soma Asem/Original Green Character Characters: Tatha Kampori, Soma Asem, Shiam Hiteina, Original Green Character Additional Tags: slow burn, Ving out, festival of the bells, springfriends-to-lovers-to-friends, chance meetings, implied time travel, in which Shiam is the worst in historically accurate ways, I did an inordinate amount of research into what teas were popular in northwestern Tapa back then and y’all had better appreciate it, character-focused, ambiguous ending Status: Complete, Stand alone

Anonymous said to chartreuse-yellow:

coloursofthenight :/

person seems kind of questionable, handles tumblr somewhat poorly, is not definitively abusive but is definitely doing some sketchy stuff