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PLOTTING (es ist ein Experiment)

@cractasticdispatches / cractasticdispatches.tumblr.com

we just...... we're just........ it's a clusterfuck in here okay? also we might be a flying squirrel. or we might not. the world may never know
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The completed Afro Victorian ensemble. More to come.

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dr-ladybird

Ooh FUN!!!!

Hey OP if you’re reading this, I’m curious: is the outfit historically accurate? or more historically inspired?

swish swish

It's made from patterns drafted from extant pieces or photos from fabrics in patterns and colors that would have been available at the time. I used cotton wax print fabrics which have been produced since the 1780s and avoided prints with modern motifs like oscillating fans.

Contrary to popular belief the Victorians were ostentatious af. For example, this is a cycling suit from the 1890s.

So, while I'm not sure someone _did_ use as many different prints in one outfit as I have, they certainly could have and someone likely did.

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(We’re taking a calculus final. The TA is a well-known Lord of the Rings fan, and we’ve had running LotR jokes all semester.)
TA: “Okay, guys, everyone look at me. We’ve been over the rules, but just in case: no notes, pencil your answers in on the scantron sheet, and graphing calculators only – no more ‘can I just used my cell phone’ nonsense.”
Student: “[TA’s name], my calculator batteries just died! What should I do?”
TA: “Here, I’ve got a big box of spares.”
Student: *struggling* “I can’t get this packaging open…”
Student 2: “Here, I’ve got a pocket knife.”
TA: “And I’ve got a pair of scissors if you need them.”
Student 3: *from the back of the room* “OR MY AXE!”
(Everyone starts laughing.)
TA: “The only axes allowed on the exam are in the graph section.”
(Everyone groans.)
TA: “Oh, come on, you’re in a math class. Deal with the math jokes.”
(The professor enters with a stack of exams. With him are two exam proctors.)
Professor: “Tolkien jokes already, [TA’s name]?”
TA: “Hey, I didn’t start it.”
(The professor starts handing stacks of exams to the TA and proctors.)
Professor: “But I’m about to finish it. [TA], take these exams down the left flank. [Proctor 1], follow the desks down the center. [Proctor 2], take your exams right, along the wall.”
(At this point, many of the students have realized where this is going: Theoden’s lines from ‘Return of the King.’)
Professor: “Forth, and fear no problems! Solve! Solve, students of calculus! Points shall be taken, scores shall be splintered! A pencil day! A red-ink day! Until three thirty!”
(The professor pulls out a pencil, holding it out like a sword, and runs down the first row holding it out. Students hold up their pencils, hitting his as he passes.)
Professor: “Solve now! Solve now! Solve to good grades and the class ending! MAAATH!”
Entire Class: “MAAATH!”
Professor: “MAAAAATH!”
Entire Class: “MAAAAAATH!”
Professor: “Forth, exam-takers!”
(The entire class rises to their feet and gives him a standing ovation. A week later, we get an email from the professor.)
Professor: *at the end of the email* “PS: I appreciate all of you who wrote in their evaluations that I was the one professor to rule them all, but the best one yet was the student who called me ‘Mathrandir.’”
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neil-gaiman

did you ever consider becoming a literary writer rather than a fantasy writer? w

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I don’t think I ever wanted to be anything more than a storyteller and a writer. Other people can decide where the books get shelved.

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thenightling

@eurphrasie​  That felt rude.  Since when is fantasy not literature?!

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gholateg

You know, It’s kind of fitting that It was Sir Terry Pratchett himself who answered this question in an interview, just going to paste this up real fast:

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Pratchett: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.

P: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.

O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.

P: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus. Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.

Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.

(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.

Have to say I agree with the man.

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lurlur

It’s the casual death threat for me

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soryualeksi

Rude ass interviewer who also doesn’t know what they’re talking about: “I mean, you’re obviously a clever man, so why bother with this lowly fantasy drivel.”

Sir Terry Pratchett: “I’ll break you in half like a stick.”

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octopuscato

@vaysh11​ <3

this should be written somewhere in eighty-foot-tall letters of fire, or possibly in very tiny letters on a business-card-sized bit of paper one can hand to someone when they ask that question. Here’s your bit of paper, go away.

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srsfunny

Masha The Hero

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asryakino

They forgot the part where the ambulance actually stopped to let the cat in

oh good I was worried

What a good cat. What a kind cat. How can anyone not love cats they are so good and loving.

they also forgot the part where they only found the baby because masha was screaming her head off bc she knew this baby was in danger. she went around outside the alley the next morning and yelled at passerby until she got one to follow her to the baby. she kept him warm all night and then made sure someone found him. she was adopted after this bc she was a stray and is in a loving home and is a hero

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pon-raul

Hero cat

Thank you, Masha, you’re such a good girl.

See.

Kittens can’t regulate their own body temperature. That’s why they pile up.

Cats see us as colony members.

Masha saw a kitten that was on its own, no mommy, no other kittens to cuddle with. She instinctively knew that was a cold kitten. She knew that a kitten alone on a cold night was very likely to die. Because a kitten would have died too.

So, all she was doing was what any good colony member does - protecting the abandoned kitten. Then when the abandoned kitten’s mommy didn’t come back, she called the rest of the colony for help.

People have this bizarre idea that housecats don’t have a social sense. They do, and it saved this kid’s life. And possibly Masha’s too, as life on the streets is dangerous for a kitty.

We say “good dog” all the time, but Masha was being a very, very good cat…not just by human moral standards but by feline ones.

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cricketcat9

Rebloging again because who can resist Masha the Hero cat 😻😻😻

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mizgnomer

Making It Weirder - David Tennant at C2E2 discussing Good Omens

I think Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett… they have a very unique writing voice.  I think that’s why they’re so beloved and that’s why they have such huge fan bases.  I think if anyone else had tried to adapt Good Omens for the screen they would have made it normal.  They’d have sort of knocked off the bananas edges.  It would just have made sense to make it more linear and to reduce the number of characters and to take some of the weirder stuff out, because it’s hard to film. And Neil being Neil just went, “No we’re doing all of that, exactly as it is, and do you know what?  We’re going to make it weirder”   
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dduane

:)

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neil-gaiman

Well, yes.

Then again, writing Good Omens Season 2, we had to seriously look at what we were doing, given the constraints of making television, and what an international audience can accept, and the need not to be too weird, and then…. make it even weirder.

Good on you @neil-gaiman. A hearty dose of benign weirdness is exactly what the world needs right now!

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yekkes

It’s my opinion that like if a white supremacist/Nazi is going to be reformed. They need to do so willingly. The only times I’ve heard of successful rehabilitation of fascists is when they made the conscious decision to no longer be one anymore and seek atonement. People who try to like hug and change fascists that don’t want to change are fucking morons

Correct. I was crypto-facist for a few years, and the people trying to hug me didnt change me because at that point I wouldnt have listened. It was only when I started to see the movement for what it was that I was finally able to listen.

I’m not derailing your addition but I’m horrified you’re only 18. When did you become a fasc?

Yeah trust me it *is* horrifying. I’m ashamed of who I was and I think my only atonement is to talk about how damn easy it is to become one when you’re young.

This is gonna be a long post.

For a little bit of background, I am a mixed race person, half brown and half white. I was raised in a Muslim family and am still closeted around them.

I started to have issues with Islam at around 12 or so, when I first started to get the idea that I might be gay. Now I never would have admitted that was my reason. If you had asked me I probably would have said “logic” or something. Because of that I went hard into atheism and atheist circles.

Now people hate to admit this but ex-Muslim spaces are predominantly right wing. Ex-Muslims often see the left as “too tolerant” towards a religion that hurt them. This was the only community I had though, and I read through everything. I was 13.

The other thing that people hate to admit is that, especially when you’re young, being mixed race is so damn hard. If I acted “too white”, following my mother’s German/Austrian traditions, I was accused of hiding my true nature. But if I acted “too brown” I was just another camel jockey. So I hid my “Indian” customs from others and tried passing as white. Especially online.

So I’m not saying this is all youtube’s fault or anything. I was raised to believe that the brown half of my family was lesser and stupid. And with my hatred of Islam, I believed it doubly.

Then came Anita Sarkeesian. I was watching pewdiepie and from there my recommendations were all set. If I’m remembering the pipeline it was pewdiepie - Philip Defranco - Chris Ray Gun (sp?) - Thunderfoot - Sargon - etc. But I was pretty much acquainted with all of the right wing youtube of the day.

Funnily enough, I found her through Thunderfoot. That got me into antifeminism, and more specifically, GamerGate.

I was primarily on the subreddits KIA (Kotaku In Action) and TIA (Tumblr In Action). Both made fun of the SJWs. I kid you not, I would gleefully wait for “Sanity Sunday”, where the people would talk about how feminism is disgusting, cultural appropriation is fake, the wage gap isnt real, etc. I would scroll through this tag for hours.

I got most of my youtube recommendations from those subreddits. This led me from GamerGate to more fascist lines of thinking, such as watching videos about why BLM is a terrorist organization, why all muslims were evil rapists, and why I was fundamentally right to reject my Indian heritage and follow my “correct” heritage.

From here I delved into “race realism”, and I believed it all. I had to. This was the only community I had felt safe in. One of the fash guys even offered to shack me up at his house if my parents kicked me out for being atheist. I was 15.

To say that again, I was 15 and believed that white was right, blue lives matter, “we wuz kangs”, etc. I never would have called myself a fascist or a Nazi. How could I? I used my brown skin as a token, so that people could point to me and say: “See, we aren’t misogynistic and racist! We have this brown girl right here.” But I believed in all the things the Nazis did. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t. I will never pretend I didn’t.

But then something happened. I admitted to myself, and to a few others, that I was gay. And suddenly, the homophobia that I had molded myself in, it didn’t fit right. I happened to, by accident, click on the reddit thread of GamerGhazi, the opposition to GamerGate. And after a long bout of introspection I found out that they were accepting of gay people, that the things I had been experiencing were common, that maybe, just maybe, we didn’t need a white ethnostate.

I don’t want to be dramatic but that accidental click saved my life.

From there it was a road of recovery. I deleted all my old accounts, made new ones, and started to read leftist theory. I found better friends, cut out old people. So now, just about two years later, I’m healing.

I think that’s everything. I probably got some times and dates wrong because I’ve been trying to move on from it. But if you need more info or anything like that, please let me know.

Reblogging for anyone who’s struggling with being an ex-fascist. Feel free to message me as well, I know how scary it can be.

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robogal328

Reblogging because, if this shows up often enough, maybe it will be someone else’s accidental click

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How many people can say they have played rugby with a Beluga whale? 🐳 🏉

I’m putting this back on my radar. I want this life

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kinka-juice

I believe this is Hvaldimir, who, get this, is believed to be a defected Russian spy. Literally.

He showed up in Norway in April 2019 wearing a camera harness labeled “equipment of St. Petersburg”, has tried pulling ropes on boats, is obviously very familiar with people and prefers to hang with people. While we know Russia has marine mammal government programs (the US does too, but it’s bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions), the extent of their programs is not declassified like the US Navy’s are.

He likes to play fetch and be scratched around the blowhole.

He has taken a diver’s knife out of the scabbard, played with underwater drones, stolen a go pro from a kayaker, and other mischief. Notably, it has been said by the Murmansk Marine Biology Institute, who may have been who trained Hvaldimir, that seals are better equipped to be polar military animals, as they have high professionalism that belugas lack.

Anyhow, enjoy Hvaldimir (the name combines the Norwegian word for whale, Hval, with Vladimir, as in Putin), the defected Russian spy whale.

seals are better equipped to be polar military animals, as they have high professionalism that belugas lack.
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