Subpoena the Teenage Witch
(Salem, 1692)
@gardenofphantoms / gardenofphantoms.tumblr.com
Subpoena the Teenage Witch
(Salem, 1692)
its really telling where you learned about lapis lazuli. put yours in the tags
Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?
Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.
Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.
Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?
Long collection of resources under the cut.
ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose
Another one that I just found recently is this, which is a whole collection of blogs, organized by topic!
Look guys the real internet IS STILL THERE I'm going to cry
i can tell i’m sleep deprived bc i just made myself cry about tutankhamun and i have, like, negative interest in the kid
have now made the rest of the discord cry about this little boy who had multi-coloured ducks sewn onto a tunic that he loved so much he wore it to a Very Important Event because he was EIGHT and have you SEEN my DUCKS
sorry no i’m not done i’m gonna make you all cry some more i’m bringing you down with me
there was once a little boy.
he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.
somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.
the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?
he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.
as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.
he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.
and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.
there was once a little boy.
yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real
but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.
tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child
his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.
but he had brightly coloured little ducks on his favourite shirt, and he kept it.
and he did not just keep the duckie shirt either
tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.
and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.
but he was a little boy who thought ducks were just the best
WITH PLEASURE
(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)
King Tut was treated horrible as well because his father, Akhenaten, had been the Pharaoh to try and completely change the religious and cultural structure of Egypt which had been stagnating for a few hundred years. He moved the Capital away from Thebes, he rewrote the Egyptian religion under a singular god named Aten, which took a LOT of political power away from the religious priests. His wife was Nefertiti. Tutankhamun had a different name when he was born, Amenhotep.
We don’t know for sure how Akhenaten died, whether it was poor health or assassination, but Nefertiti died very soon after and disappears from all records. Tutankhamun is renamed with a more traditional name.
All of Akhenaten’s statues, temples, and murals are attempted to be destroyed as much as possible. The religion of Aten is scrubbed as much as possible. Power is wrestled back into the hands of the old priests where it used to be before Akhenaten tried to implement changes. Everyone tries to make things back the way they were before so they can once more control Egypt the way they used to. SO that they can have back that power.
8 year old Tutankhamun is made Pharaoh.
Oh my fucking G-d @somecunttookmyurl I have reblogged this post like 5 times before I knew it was you. XD
i gained 400 followers in a day from the triple shot kill of this, the “remember me i love you” poem, and wee bessie
Oh that’s fair, I have definitely had that shit happen
This was my art school’s water fountain. Drink from them wolf tiddies
Assignment misunderstood. I have now built a city.
Give it a day
Alvin and the chipMONKs
Hi! Do you have any posts about asexuality and or aromanticism and queerplatonic relationships?
Thanks for running this blog!
Yes! We love asexual, and aromantic history here!
I don’t think we’re rick rolling each other enough anymore. 1. it CANNOT die out 2. this under saturated market is perfect for unsuspecting victims who’ve been lulled into a false sense of security. be the person you hate. bring back the dastardly link
someone actually studied the falling Rick Roll rate for their Ph.D dissertation recently and published the paper
Beatrice/Benedick + Text Posts (Part 1/?)
text post meme wei wuxian edition
tbh this is one of my fav things i've ever made. and its on t-shirts
One of the best things that ever happened to me was during my trip to Venice 5 years ago. I had bought an all-inclusive ticket for all museums and exhibitions in the Piazza, and I was going through an exhibition of statuettes when I entered the next wing with paintings. The styles seemed somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t work out what was happening. Thankfully this incredible lady working at the exhibition saw that I was a bit confused and approached me to ask if I knew what this exhibition was. I said no, just that it had seemed interesting.
She explained that the reason why I might be confused is that I had entered the exhibition of Wolfgang Beltracchi from the end rather than the beginning. She then took me to the start and started explaining about him and his history. He has art forgeries in every style from medieval paintings to modern art and his forgery is not copying existing paintings but creating “lost paintings” that the artist might have painted or talked about painting but never did. He perfectly matched the artist style, composition, ideas, colours and medium. His materials were historically accurate and experts couldn’t determine that they were fakes.
And his wife Helene Beltracchi was incredible. She helped “backdate” paintings and provide evidence of their age. One of the things that stuck with me the most is this black and white photo, created with an old-time camera and medium and the photo itself was aged so carbon-dating couldn’t discover that it was a modern photo. It was of Helene, with her features slightly altered, dressed in an old-time, era appropriate dress with the painting in the background. can you imagine the level of dedication and the immense attention to detail required to so convincingly fake a photo to provide a reliable history of this painting existing for centuries? She helped him create fake history for a lot of his paintings.
I’ll never forget that exhibition. There were so many paintings, all of them in the styles of different artists, most of them verified by experts as genuine until his mistake with the white paint which prompted a much, much deeper examination by experts. I think the lady mentioned that they could still not forensically confirm that some paintings were fakes, but it’s been a while, I might be misremembering. I was just struck with awe at the sheer knowledge they must have of multitude of painters, not just their styles, but their lives and the way their minds worked. He painted scenes “they might have painted” and when you look at them, you could definitely see it. It hits especially hard when you have more than passing familiarity with the artist, their lives and struggles, their choices of mediums and themes. You can look at this painting and think, this is definitely created by []. It makes so much sense, it has that distinct flair and works incredibly well as a parallel to [], their earlier painting. It was indescribable. Can you imagine the skill required to back that knowledge up? To be able to perfectly mimic the styles of so many artists and be able to so accurately forge paints, brushes and canvas that experts verified them as genuine?
And he had his own original paintings as well. One of them struck a chord with me especially. It was a painting of storage rooms, storing thousands and thousands of paintings that the public doesn’t know of, because they’re the unpopular paintings, the paintings that never get exhibited, the forgotten paintings. I thought it was very poignant.
I love these people. They really did do it because they loved art, they loved playing around with art forensics, and they just had a blast. Seeing his gallery brought be such incredible joy and so many interesting things to think about. 10/10, would definitely recommend
Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.
Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.
He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.
Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.
But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.
Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.
Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.
So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?
Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.
Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.
Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.
Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.
Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.
Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.
But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?
Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.
Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.
So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.
Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.
At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.
The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.
Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.
All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.
Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.
But by GOD is he trying.
I was wholly unprepared for the experience of watching the untamed in 2023. I’ve seen the gifs! I’ve read some character analysis! I vaguely knew the plot but I did not expect a.) the show to be a lot more tragic and nuanced and funny than what I thought possible and I cannot stress this enough b.) for Wen Ning to also be there on that damn boat
Also, I made something…
Figured that since Ozai looked so young in his portrait, that must mean it was made shortly after his coronation, or thereabouts, so applying that logic here, ZuZu stills looks young and handsome. The dragons, I know, that event was meant to be kept secret, but counter argument, this painting doesn’t necessarily say, “Hey, Dragons are still alive—here’s a map!” It’s just a bit of artsy-fartsy majestic embellishment. Also, I feel like Zuko might want to rebrand the Fire Nation, just a little, you know, after the 100 year war. So instead of just pure fire iconography, he brings things back to their roots, aka, the dragon. More dragon iconography!!! In this portrait, Zuko isn’t the one firebending, it’s the dragons, the first Firebenders. And in the meantime, he’s holding out a White Lotus. Now, I tried to use my Google Fu to find out if there was ever any symbol in Japan or Korea or China that meant “peace,” but my search results came up empty, so I figured that perhaps the lotus could become their version of, say, the olive branch. A discreet and tasteful way to include such a major part of the final battle while having a double meaning. Also, take note of the fact that he’s holding it with BOTH hands. In Japan, when one offers a gift, you always do so with both hands. And while I know it may look a little strange, Zuko towering over his friends—bro—this was always going to be Zuko’s Firelord portrait. He was always going to be the main focus. He just wanted to also include his friends and commemorate the day the war finally ended/his coronation. Anyway, that’s all for now… hope that wasn’t too much… and if anyone has any ideas for how to make it even better, pls let me know.
[ID: Full body portrait of Fire Lord Zuko in the style of the Fire Nation royal portraits. Zuko is holding a white lotus in both hands. Two dragons, one blue and one red, tendril their tails around him and breathe fire above each of his shoulders. In the foreground are 5 small figures of Katara, Sokka, Aang, Suki, and Toph, each holding white lotuses of their own, as well as the icons of Water, Air, Fire, and Earth.]
In Chinese, the word "lotus" 荷 is a homophone with "harmony" 和. Both are pronounced hé.
The same character for lotus 荷 but pronounced with a down tone hè also means both the noun form for "burden" or "responsibility," as well as the verb "to carry a heavy responsibility." Very fitting for a Fire Lord shouldering the duty of restoring harmony.
Symbolically, lotuses typically represent resilience. Lotuses have roots in murky water but grow into something beautiful. There's actually an idiom about lotuses used to describe moral integrity: 出淤泥而不染 chū yú ní ér bù rǎn “to emerge from the mud untainted."
The perfect flower for Zuko.
Another thing I forgot to mention!
荷 hé "lotus" is also a homophone with 合 hé "together." The lotus also symbolizes a future of working together with other nations rather than conquering them.
A quintuple meaning! Chinese is such a delightful language.
So this started as a bonus sketch inspired by this post for a simpler drawing I did (I’ll give that one it’s own post) but then I was finishing the line art and I realised there was no way this wasn’t gonna become a full finished piece haha