[text] @dr; OS v.3 [open]

[donttalktome]

Well, congratulations on managing to destroy the notion that I had seen all the idiocy this place had to offer.
Leave it to you all to find some way to sink to new lows. Literally.
I do hope you plan on not getting yourselves killed, because we may well have just lost our only way to add to the population.
Honestly, the whole thing makes me almost want to withdraw what I'm about to offer, but here I am anyway.
You can save your thanks for later.

A while ago, it came to my attention that not everyone here is used to dealing with a sunless environment.
In fact, it seems that a grand majority of you are terrestrial.
You don't know the protocols for a 24 hour cycle without daylight, and eventually that's going to have, let's say, a negative impact on your mental health.
Without your naturally-evolved signals for sleeping and waking, your circadian rhythm will become an absolute disaster.
Without UV light, your brain will not produce as much serotonin as it should.
You'll be exhausted, depressed, and withdrawn, and you'll start to suffer cognitive issues.
Memory loss, lack of coordination and concentration, etc.
In the worst of cases, you may suffer a psychotic break, which is something none of us, myself especially, want to deal with.

These are not mere hypotheticals.
Excusing what amounts to maybe a few months, I lived my entire life without a sun.
In that time I met a substantial amount of people who hadn't grown up that way, but for some reason or another chose to venture out into the void.
Many of them adapted, eventually.
The rest, to put it lightly, lost it.
Mostly that just entailed their being reduced to useless lumps, but sometimes things got a bit more exciting, and that's something I'd like to avoid.

Luckily for everyone, there's a fairly easy solution.
In addition to exercise and eating more fish and eggs, you need to regulate your sleep/wake cycle.
To assist in that, I have the gift of a simple application.
It operates as both an alarm and a stop watch.
Which may seem incredibly banal, but I assure you it'll come in handy.
Whatever makes the most sense for whatever species you are, make a schedule and keep to it.
That whole essay above wasn't just written to glorify a timer, it was written to tell you why you need one.

As an aside, this little update allows you to convert hand-written characters into text, and it also includes an application exclusively for multiple-image sharing.
The latter of which I'm sure you'll all decide is far more important, but don't forget to use the goddamn alarm.

[The aforementioned apps are attached to the post, though not separately; downloading one downloads them all. The first is, as described, a fairly simple alarm clock/timer/stop watch, and the second allows users to share multiple images at a time in a collection, like an album. The images can be captioned individually (or collectively) by the sender. And finally, the tablets now offer the option to write with your finger instead of tapping letters on a keyboard. The scribbles will be translated into text, so hopefully you have good handwriting!]

Oh, and the next person who tries to hack into my tablet is getting a very unfortunate name change on the network.

Comments

@riku; text

[equinoctials]

Thanks, doc.

[donttalktome]

And why do I get the impression that this was meant to be dripping with sarcasm?

[equinoctials]

[ Hey hey so about that lived experience being actively consumed by darkness? Might be contributing to the bitter tone. ]

Someone already beat you to this by a month or two.
But I guess you don't need to read the log books, since you know so much more than the rest of us.

[donttalktome]

Of course I don't read your log books.
You do know that a digital network is a far more efficient way to share data, don't you?
In any case, if someone's already made these things, they sure did a poor job of spreading them around.

[equinoctials]

[ They did their best. Riku knows they did. They went a step further to make that message for the newcomers, too, and referenced a digital copy of the latest content of those books.

He-

He can't expect Will to have bothered to review it. It wasn't his job, his responsibility, or even his problem.

Riku's taking this personally not for any good reason. It's because he's tired, he's wrung out by months in the dark when he's lived most of his life in the sunshine of Destiny Islands, because the ceaseless dark stirs memories in him of a literally darker time. None of that is Will's problem.

So that's what he writes: ]

Course. Thanks.
I'll think of something.

[donttalktome]

No, no.
We're not ending it on that note.

[He's just... decided this. Sorry Riku.]

What were you actually talking about?
Did someone just bring up the effects of polar night, or is someone actually making apps?

[equinoctials]

[ Riku almost doesn't answer. Except... Will helped them. Not just with the tablets, either.

It's the constant dark. The exhaustion, the stress, the complicated grief. It's the fact that Riku had to open up about some things he'd rather keep buried in the past and how it places him too close to all of it. So he doesn't trust that initial spike of frustrated exasperation, the question: why did I bother? because he knows that mentality belongs to the Darkness. ]

Like I said, thanks, these apps will come in handy.
sorry somebody broke into your tablet.

[donttalktome]

No need for an apology, it wasn't serious, just annoying.
But whatever you're very obviously not saying, you can drop it in my inbox if you ever feel the need.

[evulsed]

You're just going to let him talk to you like that? You have no back bone at all.

[moderatelymaladjusted]

Ever heard the phrase "if you can't say something nice, then shut the fuck up"? That's you right now.

[evulsed]

What's this?

Are you upset someone else knows something you don't?

[moderatelymaladjusted]

God, you're a dick. At least I know how not to be a fucking asshole.

[evulsed]

Fall in line, Quentin. It's what everyone else is doing. And you want to be normal like everyone else, don't you?

[moderatelymaladjusted]

I've never been one to walk the path. Wrong fucking assumption, jackass. You're dead. We're all dead, acting like a decent person doesn't cost you anything, so why are you being an asshole about this.

[evulsed]

Me?

I'm not the one telling everyone their efforts to spread information are useless.

[ Not right now, at least. ]

Unless you think Riku deserves it?

I don't blame you. Giving up like that, he looks pretty pathetic.

voice; @riku

[equinoctials]

That's enough. Both of you.

voice;

[evulsed]

[ u can't tell me what to do ]

Not going to answer my question?

voice;

[equinoctials]

There's nothing gained from picking a pointless fight.

voice;

[evulsed]

Tsk. And after you spent all that time trying to warn them, too.

This place is making you a pushover. You can't do anything without him around.

voice;

[equinoctials]

[ Vanitas is only bringing him up because he knows it'll get under his skin, Riku reminds himself. ]

Come on, Vanitas. Is that the best you can do?

[ It's uncomfortable enough to have shown his hand a little more than he should have, but to have Vanitas reiterate the source of that information stings. ]

That information is for us, not him. You know that. Why would Will care about the log books? What's the use convincing him otherwise?

voice;

[evulsed]

What, he's not one of us?

voice;

[equinoctials]

I wouldn't say he's on the same level. Or wants to be. Isn't it enough that he helps?

voice;

[evulsed]

Oh no?

You think he's better than you? He's sure acting like it.

voice;

[equinoctials]

I think he has a different experience. That doesn't make it any better or worse.

Just different. Like ours is different.

voice; ;)

[evulsed]

I guess if you want to trust a guy that only shows up when it suits him without checking on what you're doing that makes sense.

If you want him to be your leader.