I dreamt that I was invited to this zoo to get a behind-the-scenes peek at the newest baby animal they had acquired. When I arrived, however, it wasn’t a baby animal at all, but a human girl around seven years old. “What the hell is this?” I demanded. “Is this a joke?” “Just wait,” said my companion.
The “girl” turned out to be a hyperrealistic robot. She moved, sounded, and spoke just like a real person, but they hadn’t been able to program a complex emotional range into her. She was sullen, sarcastic, and exceptionally rude. Her makers were frustrated that she didn’t seem to be developing correctly and their attempts at reprogramming her had failed or resulted in unexpected glitches. She greeted me by yanking on my hair until I yelped in pain.
“Why am I here?” I asked. I wasn’t a programmer, computer engineer, or child psychologist – I was a fish and wildlife officer.
“Well, you’re good with kids, and we just thought she might connect better with someone like herself. Someone who’s coping better.” When he saw my confusion, he leaned over and whispered a word into my ear, and I suddenly remembered that I was also a robot.
I spent several weeks with the girl, just hanging out and talking about being both a person and a robot, and how they were not mutually exclusive. She was fully aware that she was a machine and didn’t see any reason why she should pretend otherwise and perform acceptable human behaviors. She saw me as a sellout and a disgrace and enjoyed pinching me just to see me squirm in artificial pain. Whenever I’d express something about valuing my emotions because happiness and love are positive experiences worth developing, she’d just laugh derisively and insult me.
With no change in her development after several months, her makers started experimenting with me. They’d disable me, remove parts, and deactivate me to see how I worked, snip wires and reconnect them, purposefully scare or upset me to explore my emotional complexity, and threaten to wipe my memories.
The fact that I was a robot kept slipping in and out of my awareness, so much of the time, I thought I was actually dying.
And then the girl decided to rescue me by straight-up murdering everyone in the room. She took my hand, led me outside, and informed me that we were now robo-fugitives who must survive in the wild. I walked hand-in-hand into the woods with my angry robot daughter.
this dream from last October is hitting me hard all over again
PLEASE WRITE MORE
Since it was a dream rather than a conscious story, I can’t faithfully continue it – I could try, but I am very out of practice with lucid dreaming.
All I can imagine is backwoods camping shenanigans. Me trying to teach her how to fish responsibly, track, and build shelters and fires and her just being like “You know literally none of this is necessary, right? We’re both machines. We don’t need food or water and we can’t get sick. Why are you purifying river water?” “Look, I’m… I’m coping with a lot right now, okay? Nothing makes sense and I need to do something I know.” “We’re inhiding and you keep trying to arrest poachers. Do you want to die? I could have just left you.” “Hunting wolves has been illegal here since 2014. They’re still considered endangered in the Great–ow! What did you do that for?” “You don’t even have nerve endings. Shut up.”
so a while ago @everywhereilooktheres and I were talking about how there has never been an age-appropriate Sherlock Holmes adaptation–they meet in canon when Watson is twenty-nine and Holmes is TWENTY-SEVEN–and how this should be rectified.
I present to you, the Dream Fancast.
Sherlock Holmes, aged 27:
Ezra Miller is currently 26, so let’s GET ON IT
and John Watson, aged 29
Dev Patel is currently 29. YOU GUYS. YOU GUYS HE EVEN HAS A MOUSTACHE. I AM VERKLEMPT
WHO CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN, GUYS. WHO CAN DO THE THING.
I’ve found the Irene Adler for this version. Meet the hardcore glamorous retired opera singer and escort Irene, played by the unspeakably hot Indira Varma at 44:
So many people in the notes insisting Dev should be Holmes and not getting the point. Yes Dev is the hot one. But John Watson is supposed to be the hot one. Doyle’s Watson is a total stud. He’s a good looking flirtatious smooth bastard and Dev would own that.
a. hamlet and horatio are having a badly-hidden affair from the start. they’re trying to keep it secret and act like they’re Just Guys Being Dudes
they’re terrible at it. every time they make eye contact they forget the ends of their sentences and get distracted
(this canonically happens in the text – ‘give me that man / that is not passion’s slave, and i will wear him / in my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart, / as i do thee. — something too much of this.’ you can’t tell me they didn’t get distracted by making out and have to reluctantly drag themselves back on track during this sentence)
play opens with a montage of them making out in corners of the castle corridors and having to jump apart any time people walk by
this also explains why horatio’s apparently been in denmark since the funeral but he and hamlet are talking like they haven’t seen each other in forever when the play opens
b. ophelia is also really gay and she and hamlet are pretending to date in order to get their various relatives off their backs.
hamlet and ophelia lying on the floor taking turns to drink soda out of the same bottle, writing the world’s fakest love letters to each other and laughing so hard they’re crying
‘nonono wait ive got it, “doubt truth to be a liar but never doubt i love”’ (wheezing) ‘WHAT’ ‘idk?? straight people like that stuff?? do they?’ ‘you’re asking me??? your guess is as good as mine dude’
‘IM PUTTING THE WORD ‘BOSOMS’ IN IT’ ‘NOOOOO’ ‘IM DOING IT’ ‘my father’s going to have to read this you’re the WORST’
c. ophelia knows that hamlet is pretending to be mad – she doesn’t know why, but he asks her to help him out. this means that all of their confrontations are as melodramatic and extra as possible, interspersed with moments of frantic conspiratory eye contact.
ophelia, pulling out all the stops, ‘FATHER i have been SO AFFRIGHTED hamlet came with his DOUBLET UNBRACED and HELD ME AT ARMS LENGTH and STARED AT ME….. all this after i stopped encouraging his love…. what can it MEAN!!’ ‘mad for thy love?’ ‘….idk i can’t say for sure but yes definitely that’s what it is and you should probably go tell claudius that now’
the ‘get thee to a nunnery’ scene becomes way more enjoyable if ophelia’s in on the plan and is helping to convince claudius that hamlet’s mad
basically ophelia deserves more time being happy in this play
and if she gets this, then things get REAL SAD REAL QUICK later, because then hamlet kills polonius, and she starts to wonder if she really knew him – was she right to trust him? had he been using her? had he really been mad; should she have noticed; could she have stopped him? she HELPED him, what if she made things worse by playing along? and now everything’s gone to shit and her father is dead and she’s desperate and alone
Wonder Woman greeting T’Challa with the Wakanda Forever salute, but forgetting what happens when she clashes her gauntlets like that
Accidentally blowing him through three walls, a car, and M’Baku
He is, of course, completely fine, but that was certainly not the greeting he expected from the suddenly VERY apologetic Princess
Bonus: T’Challa runs back to Diana and does the salute again, channeling the power from the improved kinetic absorption and redistribution on his suit, and launches Diana straight into the sky. They laugh about it later.
Give me infinity war fix it fic where loki is *captured* by Thanos but not dead and Thor goes on a murderous fucking rampage to get him back
Oh oh oh and the rest of the Avengers are like “Thor calm the fuck down this isn’t like you” And he’s like “you had your war, Stark. Don’t tell me how to win mine”
Happy #internationalwomensday! ✨✨ I hope Peggy will inspire you by finding courage, strength, and value in yourself, as well as acknowledging the value of others, and to always always stand up. ❤️❤️❤️
Inspired by Norman Rockwell’s “Rosie the Riveter”.
my favorite picture ever is the one that says “HELL IS FULL, BITCH” and then it has the national suicide prevention hotline on it. it makes me smile every time
Spock, the first officer whose advice was always effectual, possessed a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgement, which qualified him to be the counselor of the ship’s captain, and enabled him frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all, that eagerness of mind in Captain Kirk which must generally have lead to imprudence. Spock had an excellent heart, positioned somewhere near his kidneys; his feelings were strong, but he knew how to govern them: it was a knowledge which his captain had yet to learn, and which one of his fellow crew members had resolved never to learn.
Dr. Leonard McCoy’s abilities were, in many respects, equal to Spock’s. He was sensible and clever; but eager in every thing; his sorrows, his joys, could have no moderation. He was generous, amiably cynical, interesting: he was everything but logical.
A man in possession of a hybrid biology must be in want of a doctor.
Loki is the Philosopher King 