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I guess I live in Gravity Falls now, judging by the multiple Billford AUs I started lol they are:
non euclidean geometry au - Karaoke night resulted in Pyramid Steve!
I Could Really Use A Sunny Day series - on AO3 - Typical Handyman Bill AU setting… except this triangle is blind and still pretty angry (scared) about it.
party billiam au - Time travel to before the Betrayal to fix everything- except it's FORD who went back to seduce Bill away from evil! It worked. They have been happily married since the 80s. Bill is now a party planner/demolition expert (lots of job crossover). Ford is a children's author (submitted his journal to the wrong publishers). Mystery Shack still run by Stan (they made up way earlier in the timeline). Oh, and Bill is aging.
henchminiacs au - hey you know those super cute aus where the Stan twins and baby Bill are friends? yeah it's just one of those, but I added Bill's pals. Kid gangs forever!
biclops bill - just Bill's fleshsona. He insists its not a humansona- he's a rare two-eyed cyclops, a biclops. It just happens to be mostly identical to a human
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It may just be me, but I think Iroh's lore drop that he invented how to redirect lightning when he "studied waterbenders" is astonishingly neglected... The conflict and motivation for Katara's arc in Book One are driven by the lack of teachers who can pass on waterbending, as the Fire Nation systematically attacked the Southern Water Tribe, imprisoned waterbenders, and deprived the culture of the embodied knowledge and practitioners needed to keep waterbending alive. Hama gives us a brutal testimony of how the Fire Nation treated waterbenders. So, while Katara is severed from waterbenders and their knowledge, Iroh, the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, somehow has access to waterbenders to extract the knowledge and insight from studying them to develop one of the most sophisticated firebending techniques in canon.
When he lectures Zuko on the elements and speaks of the waterbenders he "studied," he does so primarily to teach his nephew what they gain from appropriating knowledge of peoples that his family has been oppressing and annihilating for several generations. In other words, Iroh approached waterbenders and their knowledge as a resource for him to advance firebending. It's wild that ATLA (including when Zuko instructs Aang who cheerfully points out how this technique reminds him of waterbending) frames this piece of Iroh lore as a reason to admire him, because the moment you ask, "Okay, and how did he study waterbenders when his country has been actively at war with them and hunting the waterbenders of the South down for a whole generation...?"
Canon doesn't care (and I deem it very likely that the writers didn't think about the implications), but I do. Since I'm currently rewriting Hama's story anyway, I'll take this piece of Iroh lore as a prompt to overhaul the worldbuilding more extensively: Iroh is not uniquely enlightened for studying waterbenders, but for the raids on the Southern Water Tribe and the systematic abduction of the waterbenders aimed at studying them. That was the strategic objective of the relentless raids over years.
As far as we know, the four nations "lived in harmony" before the Fire Nation declared war. The army may genuinely not know at first how to engage waterbenders systematically in an environment that gives them a significant strategic advantage against the navy, because waterbenders can mobilize the ocean. They don't fight with ammunition; they fight with the battlefield against the Fire Nation's ammunition. That's terrifying.
Instead of sending a fleet, the initial raids and abductions aim to learn how to wage war against waterbenders who are surrounded by water, ice, and snow at any given moment. Fire is quite vulnerable to water, after all, because water extinguishes fire.
So, the Fire Nation collects data from every raid, documents and analyzes exploitable weaknesses, and tests different strategies and timing to tailor warfare and training in iterations accordingly. The abducted waterbenders become vital because they are turned into living training material for the soldiers. In the version canon gives us through Hama's testimony, waterbenders are held in cages and kept from bending under all circumstances. The question is why? Why go to such lengths? The construction, maintenance, and staffing of these prisons (which apparently hold the entire waterbender population of the South Pole) must be expensive. The Fire Nation isn't shy about eliminating an entire nation in one campaign, as they demonstrated with the Air Nomads. So, why keep waterbenders alive?
For my Hama AU, I decided to integrate the prison into the compounds of military academies. Hama and her comrades are held under conditions that prevent all waterbending, but the guards regularly transfer them in rotation to a training arena, where they have to waterbend to survive fighting soldiers in training.
In the Boiling Rock episode, we see that the Fire Nation controls firebending prisoners by literally cooling them down, strongly indicating that lower temperatures weaken firebenders. I think it's reasonable that this cooling technique is quite old because before the war, the only benders the Fire Nation would've needed to imprison were firebenders. The training arenas are equipped with the same mechanisms that allow instructors to adjust the temperature: at first, the temperatures are comfortable, even favorable for the firebenders, so they can focus on studying how waterbenders fight. The better the firebenders get, the more the instructors lower the temperatures to push their bodies to generate heat and mobilize energy under conditions that weaken them while strengthening their opponents, simulating combat conditions at the South Pole. The Fire Nation forces the abducted waterbenders to teach its soldiers how to fight them better. Analysts observe and record the sessions in detail to catalog waterbending forms, adjust training doctrines for the drills, update manuals, and design firebending techniques specifically to counter commonly observed waterbending forms, test those inventions in subsequent combat simulation sessions, and refine them through iterations. The arenas are a training ground and a highly methodical firebending military laboratory.
At first, the purpose of the abducted waterbenders from the South is limited to optimizing warfare against the Water Tribes. However, after a few years, the instructors notice that waterbenders make firebenders better firebenders. They are invaluable assets.
As Iroh explains, water is the element of change. Even after years, the analysts notice that these waterbender subjects never seem to run out of new ideas. Their capacity to improvise is genuinely admired among officers and relentlessly exploited: since the waterbenders keep adapting, they, too, can keep innovating. Their primary interests shift from optimizing waterbending specifically to advancing military firebending in general, as the war increasingly produces its own branch of firebending.
To train as many soldiers as fast and as efficiently as possible, masters started to radically standardize and simplify forms. The pro was reduced training time and higher accessibility; art and style were sacrificed in favor of aggression and speed. The con was far less flexibility and a narrower range of attacks; the more automated the muscle memory, the lower the responsiveness and capacity to improvise, because highly standardized training focused on repeating sequences rather than learning to combine isolated forms and figures.
Fighting waterbenders mitigates these downsides, and continuing to study their adaptations keeps firebending adaptive and flexible, which makes it harder for earthbenders to fight the Fire Nation soldiers because the repertoire keeps growing and becoming unpredictable.
As a young Crown Prince, Iroh studies waterbenders in the arenas and in direct combat under controlled conditions, a significant part of his training as a soldier and officer. He perfects his lightning technique in simulation battles with them. He learns to redirect lightning by observing how waterbenders defend themselves against his attacks. Iroh eventually masters a version of lightning redirection that doesn't involve waterbending by appropriating the original defenses his "test subjects" develop to survive him.
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every day i get a little madder about the ‘dream job’ narrative… all i want is to have a job that benefits society somewhat, doesn’t abuse me, and lets me live a happy life outside of my job lol. jobs should not be (and arguably can’t be) cosmic destinies and identities
Ford calling himself a recovering cipherholic is wild on so many levels, but it also provides a very interesting metaphorical context for the determination he carries in the main canon to defeat Bill, to not let him in, to never believe even a small piece of his lies. To never give a single solitary inch.
It's not because the love is gone. It's that Ford knows that even a little inch being allowed through the door could have him falling off that wagon.
Allowing himself to feel one shred of affection, of the all consuming devotion that still dwells inside him, would be akin to a recovering alcoholic allowing themselves just one drink. Dangerous, and something that has the potential to undo the entire process of recovery.
Ford doesn't trust himself not to go back to being Bill Cipher's devoted little priest who sold his soul for nothing but his muse's affection, if he lets himself feel anything towards Bill but hate and a desire to stop him. Yes he is stubborn but (at least in his own mind) he has to be. Because even after everything, he still can't help wanting to love and worship Bill Cipher.
Whatttt is with the tendency of Tumblr users to seek absolution from every single person who offhandedly posts about disagreeing with something they do
I say this not unkindly, but firmly: to function as a member of a social species, you have to get comfortable with the idea that not everyone will like you
call me terminally academia-brained but i do think a lot of the fun of character analysis is figuring out how to build a compelling argument for a particular reading using lines of evidence from canon as well as meta/intertextual support
and you could say that what i’m saying here is basically “a lot of the fun of doing character analysis is doing character analysis” but let’s be real a lot of fandom character analysis is pretty heavily vibes-based. and i think that’s where i really chafe up against the traditional thought-terminating fandom attitude of like, everyone’s opinions hold equal weight and any interrogation of that is inherently hostile. because i think it’s fascinating to dig into where others are coming from in terms of their views on characters or dynamics or whatever, especially when they differ significantly from more commonly expressed views, and part of that digging is asking people okay what parts of canon are you drawing from to support your opinion? what parts of canon are you disregarding or downplaying? how does this argument hold up in the light of how race, gender, class, ability, etc. operate both in the piece’s in-fiction and real world contexts?
the thing about being bullied for being weird as a kid is that even if you've always embraced being weird your brain is still always looking for the line where it's too much. you can be as proudly and intentionally weird as you want and you can love being weird but your mind is still convinced there's a point where you get too weird and people start treating you like a weird looking bug again. also it feels like you reach that point 500 times a day even if everyone you've spoken to today found you pleasant and likable and even if you're completely alone in your house with nobody looking at you at all.
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Replacing physical buttons and controls with touchscreens also means removing accessibility features. Physical buttons can be textured or have Braille and can be located by touch and don't need to be pressed with a bare finger. Touchscreens usually require precise taps and hand-eye coordination for the same task.
Many point-of-sale machines now are essentially just a smartphone with a card reader attached and the interface. The control layout can change at a moment's notice and there are no physical boundaries between buttons. With a keypad-style machine, the buttons are always in the same place and can be located by touch, especially since the middle button has a raised ridge on it.
Buttons can also be located by touch without activating them, which enables a "locate then press" style of interaction which is not possible on touchscreens, where even light touches will register as presses and the buttons must be located visually rather than by touch.
When elevator or door controls are replaced by touch screens, will existing accessibility features be preserved, or will some people no longer be able to use those controls?
Who is allowed to control the physical world, and who is making that decision?
It’s so funny how like. Spock is queer bc of the subtext, the Otherness inextricable from his character, meanwhile William Shatner was handed the straightest man of all time on paper and fumbled the bag bc he couldn’t stop giving Leonard Nimoy fuck-me eyes and now he lives in a bi Kirk hell of his own devising, forever enduring the conshatquences of his shactions
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I respect the fuck out of this. The whole site is trying its hardest to go against every selling point the dog robots have as its selling points.
The dog robots are supposed to be autonomous, threehalves is explicitly only for being piloted by a human. The giant horns make it difficult for this machine to enter through doorways, and that is the point. Coupled with the built-in weak points, it is very easy to disable this thing, so it can't be used by the police or the military effectively.
OP alluded to how unsettling the machine looks, and I believe that it was a concious decision; the robot dogs have garnered sympathy due to their apperance, which makes it easier for the police to morally justify their use. This thing? You're not gonna get many people to sympathise with it. The only people who would are monster and-or robot fuckers, and I believe these circles generally understand that a machine cannot be trusted (though of course many would willingly approach it for pervert reasons (positive) knowing full well it's a bad idea).
Your Antisemitism Is Probably From Medieval Christianity
A huge amount of modern antisemitism did not appear out of nowhere. Many of the ideas people repeat today, even in "secular" or atheist spaces, are just recycled versions of medieval Christian anti-Jewish beliefs.
"Jews kill children" / "Jews thirst for blood" / "Israelis harvest organs."
This is the modern descendant of the blood libel, the medieval Christian accusation that Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes, especially around Passover. Modern versions include imagery of Jews or Israelis drinking blood, killing children for pleasure, or harvesting organs.
USHMM: Blood Libel
"Jews think they are superior because they are the ‘chosen people.’"
This distorts the Jewish concept of chosenness, which traditionally concerns covenant, obligation, and responsibility, not racial or moral superiority. Christian anti-Jewish polemics historically portrayed Jews as arrogant or spiritually obstinate for maintaining their covenant and rejecting Christianity. The modern "Jewish supremacy" version grows out of that older framework.
My Jewish Learning: Chosen People
USHMM: Antisemitism
"The Jews killed Jesus."
This is the classic deicide charge. For centuries, Jews were collectively blamed for the crucifixion of Jesus, even though he was executed by Roman authorities. This accusation helped justify persecution throughout Christian Europe.
USHMM: Antisemitism
"Jews are greedy / Jews love money / Jews control finance."
Medieval Christian restrictions excluded Jews from many professions while pushing some into moneylending and commerce. Jews were then demonized for participating in the very economic roles they had been restricted to. This is the ancestor of modern "Jewish bankers," "Rothschild control," and "Jews run Wall Street" conspiracies.
USHMM: Antisemitism in the Early Modern Era
"Jews secretly control governments, media, banks, or the world."
Medieval Christian societies frequently portrayed Jews as an alien and conspiratorial group acting against Christian society. Later secular conspiracy theories kept the same structure while replacing religious language with political language.
USHMM: Antisemitism
"Jews are disloyal to the countries they live in."
Jews were historically treated as permanent outsiders in Christian Europe. This evolved into the modern dual loyalty trope: the belief that Jews are secretly more loyal to other Jews, Israel, or a supposed global Jewish agenda than to their own countries.
ADL: Online Antisemitism Report Card
"Jews spread disease, poison people, or contaminate society."
During the Black Death, Jews were accused of poisoning wells and deliberately causing disease. Modern conspiracy theories about Jews spreading pandemics, controlling pharmaceutical companies, or deliberately corrupting society use the same basic structure.
USHMM: Blood Libel
"Jews harm or corrupt children."
This overlaps heavily with blood libel. Medieval Jews were accused of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering Christian children. Modern claims that Jews deliberately corrupt, mutilate, sexualize, or indoctrinate children recycle that same imagery.
ADL: Antisemitism and Conspiratorial Beliefs
"Jews are demonic, satanic, or uniquely evil."
Medieval Christian art and literature often directly associated Jews with the devil. Modern descriptions of Jews or "Zionists" as inherently monstrous, demonic, or metaphysically evil descend from this tradition even when the speaker is secular.
USHMM: Antisemitism
"Jews deserve exile because they rejected God."
A longstanding Christian theological idea held that Jewish exile was divine punishment for rejecting Christianity. This contributed to the belief that Jews were supposed to remain stateless and subordinate. Modern hostility to the idea of Jewish return or Jewish self-determination can sometimes reproduce this older supersessionist structure.
USHMM: Antisemitism From the Early Church to 1400
"Jews fabricate persecution for sympathy, money, or power."
Modern claims that Jews invent antisemitism, exaggerate persecution, fabricated the Holocaust, or use accusations of antisemitism solely for political advantage build on older stereotypes portraying Jews as inherently dishonest and manipulative.
USHMM: Antisemitism
The point: a society can become less religious without automatically shedding the prejudices that were created inside a religious culture. Many modern antisemitic claims are secularized versions of much older Christian accusations against Jews.
Being atheist does not make someone immune to repeating Christian antisemitism. Sometimes the theology disappears, but the trope survives.
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