can't wait to forget that happened

Rain for My Parade 🌧️🌱🌿🌹🌷🌼

part of my cloud petticoat series~

Ugh, was having a great time mocking my recently imprisoned rival when I noticed the camera positioning makes it so that I appear behind the bars, thus framing me as trapped in a metaphorical prison of the narrative, now my whole day is ruined. Fuck.

I get it, man. The other day, I survived a shootout, only to realize that a stray bullet went through a mirror in such a way as to look from the camera's perspective like I got shot in the head through the mirror, so now I have to acknowledge that something that could be reasonably referred to as "me" really did die that day, and it's just like "jfc, gimme a BREAK"

ugh dont even get me started on how the other day i tried to sit on the throne of my conquered foe and light a cigar to celebrate my victory but the lighter wouldnt work and it had to be lighted by the vizier who used to work for my enemy but that i enlisted to work as a double agent and help me in my coup. that jerk afterwards said with a devilish smile "ill always be at your service my liege" and i just KNOW that he said that exact same thing to the previous ruler. signifying that my victory was phyrric since i am still caught in an endless cycle of violence and betrayal. that really spoiled the whole mood

I just don’t get it. How can our society act so goddamned normal about seahorses. How can anybody so casually accept that that’s a fish???

This is one of nature’s most anatomically perverse of all beasts. A FISH, like a carp or a bass or a beta is a fish, but it bent its body straight up only to bend its head permanently back down. It stretched its skull into a pipe. It tapered its tail like a lizard, specifically like a chameleon. It can also move its eyes independently by the way, you know, like a chameleon. Fun fact, it can change color to express its mood, like you know whatever does that. It doesn’t properly swim anymore. It buzzes its few remaining fins like an insect’s wings to float itself around at a snail’s pace. It lives its whole life clinging to coral branches or seaweed, which means it decided to become a “tree dweller” in an environment where gravity didn’t even matter anyway. The males get pregnant. They make noises at each other by rubbing some of their neck bones together. Every day, EVERY DAY a mated pair does a little dance and a little neck bone song so they remember which two seahorses they were. They’re a beautiful precious obscenity. Nothing so adorable ever made such a strong case against a logical creator.

They have as little skin and meat as they could get away with. Their skeleton is almost all they are.

This thing is one of the most successful hunters on the planet. Because their mouth is fused shut, except for the tip, they can create a powerful suction force in front of that one little opening in order to draw in prey. 

Lions have a 20-30% success rate on their hunts, depending on daytime and if they’re in a group. Great white sharks, anywhere from 40% to 80%, depending on the size and skill of the individual. Dragonflies, which are one of the most successful terrestrial hunters, can hit about 80-85%. Seahorses? 90% success rate, sometimes more. Only a fraction of their prey escapes that powerful vacuum. They’re incredibly precise. 

If you touch them, they feel hard, because of the skeleton underneath their skin. Their tails are being studied to make coiling bridges, because of how strong that interlocked structure is. Different species range in size from over a foot long, to barely an inch. 

Behold: not just a fish, but a wildly successful predator! 

horsey

don’t forget their majestic cousins the sea dragons! these are the leafy and weedy sea dragons

and the newest seahorse family member, discovered in 2015, the ruby sea dragon ❤️

Yeah that’s when someone tried to straighten the seahorse back out and it still didn’t look right. The more they bent and mushed it in their hands to look like a fish again the worse they fucked it up until finally they just left it and walked off and hoped nobody would ask who did this

(I love them so much)

Oh, so it’s actually the ruby sea dragon on a string! Got it.

i doubt that someone hasn’t already brought them up in another reblog but anyways. don’t forget about pipefish! relatives of seahorses which are literally as physically close to a worm on a string as any real animal could get, imo

the humble "like" is oft mocked despite what it does for us. "like, three people" is a vastly different statement from "three people". "and i was like 'what the fuck'" is vastly different from "and i said 'what the fuck'". i love you "like" and anyone who says you make people sound stupid will be killed on sight

Thank u discord

according to wikipedia there are 44-50 countries in europe so i just went with 50. have fun!

tag yourself

Also shout-out to the Swedes for just borrowing the French "adieu" into their vocabulary and just spelling it "adjö"

German has borrowed the italian "Ciau", spelling it "Tschau" and only using it as a goodby instead of also a greeting.

I had completely forgotten about this, this is fantastic.

If you enjoyed "ciao" becoming "tschau", you'll definitely want to hear where "tschüss" (German, also meaning "goodbye") comes from!

We can't let the French keep getting away with this

I mean the french very much aren't getting away with it. Everyone else is taking their language and running off with it cackling with glee. We're all getting away with fucking up french words on purpose

#English loves french so much it steals the same fucking word a few centuries apart so it gets two words that have the same meaning#But different spellings -#Like guarantee/warranty#(aside: There was a w/g shift so you can see if the word showed up with the normans or got nicked later#Which is why for e.g. the english call it wales and the french call it pays de galls)#Catch/chase#Gender/genre

official linguistics post

My latest @guardian books cartoon.

if you give “stupid” characters rural/southern accents i don’t like you and if you give “smart” characters rural/southern accents but it’s a punchline i don’t like you even more

the other day I was out at lunch with some people I don’t know too well & they got talking specifically about West Virginian accents in the context of a movie that takes place there & that the movie opted out of doing accents & one of them laughed and said “I mean, can you imagine if characters sounded like that in serious moments??” I was like yeah I can because everyone where I’m from does sound like that. Y’all are so annoying.

no need for a more specific word because it all falls under classism and/or racism.

west virginia is home to some of the strongest labor & union movements in U.S. history, from miners’ strikes to the 2018 teachers’ strikes (where 20,000 teachers went on strike together with community support).

For the last 100 years it has become very beneficial to those in power for the rest of the country to think of us as very stupid, backward, “inbred,” etc. It’s not an accident. there were real efforts made to create & proliferate the stereotype of the stupid hillbilly.

Likewise it’s not an accident that dialects like AAVE are treated as a joke. Easier to dismiss civil rights leaders if you think what they say is inherently comedic or uneducated.

a lot of people in the tags saying they live in places where they hear people mock accents & dialects a lot & it upsets them. just want to remind you that it’s up to you to challenge that in the moment. when someone makes a shitty joke at the expense of someone else, someone else has to tell them it’s not funny & why. we don’t learn in a vacuum. maybe they’ll listen, maybe they won’t. still gotta try.

at some point you likely had an “ah-ha” moment where you realized an unconscious bias you held needed to be unraveled. likely someone else pointed it out to you, whether that was in a conversation or something you read/watched online.

it’s not enough to learn your own lesson and move on. you have to pass the lesson along.

All of the following is IMO, so YMMV.

"Accent bigotry" - Irish = stupid & possibly a drunk; Northern Irish = bigoted & possibly a terrorist; RP English = educated & probably trustworthy (though also nowadays possibly a villain) - is one of the reasons I'm ... let's call it "ambivalent", about what TVTropes calls "Funetik Aksent".

"Phonetic" misspellings and dropping letters in favour of apostrophes happen at both ends of the literary social scale, but there's seldom any doubt about who's in "Who's Who" and who isn't.

The person who said this:

didn't go to the same school as the person who said this:

Further lot development may and should reveal that neither of those speakers are what they seem - salt-of-the-earth working class or disdainful peer-of-the-realm - but what they SEEM is telegraphed instantly by the way their speech is set in print.

(Sharon McCrumb did this in "Zombies of the Gene Pool" - a big burly man who sounds like a hillbilly villain from "Deliverance" is a linguistics professor born in the region and doing it deliberately to mock the assumptions of the people hearing him.)

Unless there's a good reason for it (for example, a character revealing their true origins by accident or for emphasis) often the only thing writing speech like that does, is to indicate These People Here Speak Properly whereas Theyum Fohx Theah Tawks Funnih.

That comes complete with baggage which the writer either doesn't know about, doesn't care about - or is fully aware of and using deliberately.

*****

Other reasons for ambivalence: a little Funetik Aksent goes a long way; it's often tiresome to read (and to write); most of all, if readers are unaware of some important detail - such as what sounds the weird spelling is meant to imitate - it's pointless.

There's an example of Unaware right in the TVTropes article, which states:

No it doesn't.

For one thing, just looking at them would have shown that speech from Lovecraft stories (here "The Dunwich Horror")...

...is nothing like speech from "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar"...

For another thing - this is much more excusable - that writer clearly didn't know about "The Dagenham Dialogues", a series of British comedy sketches from the 1960s. performed by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

(Not knowing isn't a surprise. Those sketches aren't as famous as they might be because of the infamous BBC policy of wiping / reusing programme tapes to save on costs and storage. "Monty Python's Flying Circus" almost went the same way; a lot of "Doctor Who" and many other popular shows DID.)

What's actually being parodied are the "Dialogues" characters "Pete and Dud", playing two acolytes of Cthulhu. They're described thus:

Rather, or indeed very, like this.

The Defence rests, m'Lud.

These acolytes discuss H.P. Lovecraft's style and vocabulary (overblown and eccentric), the location of sunken R'lyeh (just off the end of the pier, but handy for the shops), Great Cthulhu who lies dreaming (though temporarily deceased), and so on and so forth.

It's an excellent simulation of Pete and Dud and yet, apart from a couple of dropped-letter apostrophes, der's nun uv d'yoojul kunstruksh'n trikz. Instead it's done by matching the repetition, pace and rhythm of the originals.

*****

Incidentally, "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar", the titular beer of the story, is itself a parody of Theakston's Old Peculier, a not half bad dark ale.

Note the difference in spelling: "PeculiAR" means strange or odd, "PeculiER" means a kind of Christian ecclesiastical court, so that's another beery association with a temporarily deceased god. Accidental, coincidental or deliberate?

Knowing @neil-gaiman, my money's on deliberate. :->

*****

Here he is, reading "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar": Part One, Part Two, Part Three.

And here are a couple of bits of "Dagenham Dialogues": One and Two.

I was really enjoying Peter's analysis and then suddenly I was reading about my story. He's spot on, on every point.

Also: Why would anyone in "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" be speaking in a New England accent, good or bad, when the story's set in regular old Old England? In a Lovecraftian town, perhaps, but not a New England one.

My latest cartoon for New Scientist.

There should be a fanfic writing game called the showrunners challenge where someone writes a story and partway through someone else can play things like "actor leaves after 4000 more words" or "topic now too politically sensitive due to unforeseen world events" or "lost rights to that reference"

I need this to be a real game right the hell now

I do not have the energy do do a full layout right now b/c it is kickstarter season and I am under water, but here's a prototype that can be solo-played (you can also have a friend just pick from the lists if you want that pvp feeling.)

Showrunner's Challenge By Runawaymarbles (also sorta by sprintingowl)

Begin writing a fanfic. It is a feature length television program being watched every week by thousands. There is no plan. The industry is in shambles. The writer's room is barely hanging on.

At the end of each chapter, roll a d12.

1 Everything at once. Roll twice, use both. If you get this again, keep rolling. Your only way out is to stop getting 1s. 2 Product placement! The next chapter must center (and subtly promote the features of) a product belonging to the most recent brand you've seen. 3 Fan favorite. Your most recently mentioned character (or named object) is now beloved by the audience. You must give it a bigger part in the story, a special destiny, or an important new romance or friendship. If you get this twice for the same character or object, the adoration cools and you must go back to treating the character or object normally. 4 Executive meddling. You must change to a different genre. You cannot go back to a genre until you have changed genres three times since then. 5 Audiences are craving more coziness. The next chapter must be completely low stakes and set you at ease. 6 Audiences are craving more suspense. The next chapter must take place entirely in a single location, ideally just a single room, and build tension with every exchange of dialog. 7 Audiences are craving more action. The next chapter needs to involve at least one extended fight scene, and the weapons must be the last three objects mentioned. 8 Audiences are craving more romance. The next chapter needs to involve a deep, sappy confession of either love or admiration between two characters that have not previously been romantically involved. 9 Go to the most recent line in your fic that references a brand. Due to ongoing legal action, that brand cannot be mentioned again, but you score 1 audience point every time you allude to it in a way that paints it in a negative light. 10 The two most recently mentioned characters' actors have, IRL, gone through a VERY messy divorce or friend breakup. You cannot put them in the same scene, but they must both remain relevant parts of the show. If you get this with the same two characters again, they reconcile. 11 The most recent negative event (stabbing, poisoning, banishment to jupiter) is now the center of a very real IRL news story. You must immediately pivot away from all plotlines involving it and, if possible, also find away to apologize for even thinking to include it without breaking character. 12 The most recently mentioned character's actor has decided to leave the show. You must write them out in the next chapter. If you are brave, also roll a d12. 1--6, they were well loved and their sendoff must be as flowery as possible. 7--12, they were despised by the cast and crew. Mulch them.

You win if you can complete the fic in a state of relative coherency.

Alternate Game Mode: TV Digest Version

Don't write full chapters, just summaries of what happens in each chapter.

Alternate Game Mode: Realism Edition

Start your fanfic with your own telling of the first episode of an existing show, then proceed from there.

Bothering the beast

Y'all think the fantasy high universe has fantasy tumblr lol

(inspired by @orions-garden who had this idea first !)

🐀 stealthcheck reblogged steelwindstrike

⚡ steelwindstrike Follow

you guys remember that trend from last spring where everyone was posting these random videos and pictures of and saying there was a tabaxi woman in there LMAO What the fuck was that 😂 it was like a worse version of The Gown thing from years ago

⚡ steelwindstrike

#LMAOOOO I FORGOT ABOUT THAT #wasnt that a marketing scheme for that one teen band #im pretty sure it was

LMAO WAS IT? i wouldnt be surprised LOL

🐴 princessthehorse Follow

THERE WAS LITERALLY A TABAXI IN ALL OF THOSE VIDEOS. THEY WERE LIKE REALLY SCARY VIDEOS. WHAT WAS EVERYONE ON ABOUT. WHAT FERNS WERE Y'ALL FUCKING ON

🔮 conjurdivination Follow

OP, I understand your confusion but that was very much a real event! Turns out that tabaxi was the Shadow Cat, the familiar of the Nightmare King who was actually an ancient goddess of Sylvaire who was transubstantiated into a disease. She could only be seen by people who had her disease, which was transmitted through various bodily fluids. The Court of Stars has also been putting out statements lately saying that they and other members of the Fallinel government worked with the Shadow Cat, but had nothing to do with her plot of trying to bring back the Nightmare King, since she apparently worked with them as well.

⚡ steelwindstrike

⚡ steelwindstrike

Was it still those fucking kids who did all that though

🐀 stealthcheck

it was those fucking kids

73,127 notes

🦇 nightmarekwing reblogged powerofsol

🦇 nightmarekwing

was just waiting for a meeting with my banker and i watch two teenagers show up and one puts a gun to his head and the other grabs his balls. I'm so done with adventurers bro, how the fuck do people allow this shit

🦇 nightmarekwing

One of the teenagers is the archdevil of the bottomless pit. i swear to god i'm gonna die and even Hell is gonna be a piece of shit because of adventurers

☀️ powerofsol Follow

Did you not do anything to try and help your banker?????

🦇 nightmarekwing

no why would i help a banker

11,928 notes

🧚‍♀️ tiredaasimar

I have insider information on the Central Solesian Area Polycule

5,872 notes

🔍 detectiveagent5353 reblogged alwayshappyhour

❤️ 123fantasydestiel Follow

I cannot BELIEVE that there are FELLOW STUDENTS here at Aguefort who are SERIOUSLY considering voting for Kristen Applebees for class president. Are you out of your mind? Kipperlilly Copperkettle is actually trying to campaign to make the school better for all of us when we've all seen firsthand how messed up everything is. She's actually trying to make it fair for us students, and what does Kristen want to do? Nothing! She has literally ZERO campaign promises that mean ANYTHING for the school and the only things she talks about are steelworkers of all things and a thing NOBODY knows. NOBODY KNOWS WHAT FETTY WAP IS! I looked it up and looked through every book in the library! THOSE WORDS HAVE NEVER BEEN SAID BEFORE! NEVER!

All I'm saying is if this school starts to go downhill because you all thought it was funnier to vote for the cleric who killed her god TWICE than the regular student who's ACTUALLY trying to make the school better, you all better realize that it's your fault.

🌃 alwayshappyhour

sounds like someone's salty they can't do a shrimp jump

🔍 detectiveagent5353

256.927.723.142

1,283 notes

🐗 recklessattakk

my hungry ass could never be a cleric

3,992 notes

boggyandmoggy reblogged thistleficer

🐦 infernobirds Follow

reblog to cast healing word on the person you rbed this from

23,828 notes

burntownsgetvans reblogged falloutboimaniac

🐉 burntownsgetvans

does anyone know what's going on with fig and the cig figs? i've been waiting for their new album for a while but their social media account has been radio silent, like fig and gorgug are still posting on their personal accounts but nothing about the band :(. they said a new album would be coming out soon last april, i'm just kind of sad and confused i guess

🌹falloutboimaniac Follow

that's really rough man yeah. i don't know what's going on with them either, but i hope they'll end up releasing something soon for you. but if you wanna listen to something that's like fig and the cig figs, maybe you'd like my clerical gnomance? they've been a total breakout hit all over the radio where i'm from lately and they are sooo good lol

🐉 burntownsgetvans

well, okay, i'll give it a shot i guess, thanks for the recommendation :)

🐉 burntownsgetvans

@fallouboimaniac Listen up chucklefuck go FUCK yourself. I'm so fucking TIRED of people like you who are always trying to replace the cig figs and discredit their success and for WHAT reason? I'm so done, I'm so fucking done, I don't wanna FUCKING HEAR IT AND YOU'VE PISSED ME THE FUCK OFF. WHY CAN'T YOU JUST MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS AND LISTEN TO YOUR OWN SHITTY MUSIC? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? WHY CAN'T YOU JUST FUCKING Ddid anyone see that red thing just now

823 notes

🌸 greatgnomishbaker

she kalvaxus on my emperor until i red waste

2,801 notes

lycanstropy reblogged 123fantasydestiel

🧑 123fantasydestiel Follow

Getting really annoyed by all the posts going around joking about Kalvaxus and the Nightmare King. Both of them were EXTREMELY serious and REAL entities that caused SO much destruction in the very real world, and unless you were harmed by them you should NOT be joking about them like that, that is SO gross. My great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great cousin four times removed was KILLED by Kalvaxus and it is so shitty to have to open the dashboard every day to see posts like this.

🕷️ minceraftshreeper Follow

sure but kalvaxus has literally been dead for like 2 years or something 😭. like the fact that those kids killed kalvaxus very much did make national and probably international news did you somehow miss that. and the guy was a total clown be fr it'd be crazy not to joke about him

🧑 123fantasydestiel

Did you not read my entire post? I don't care if you think Kalvaxus was a "clown" or not or that he's already dead, HE KILLED THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE!!!!! You cannot be making posts JOKING About him like that!!!!!!!!!!

🐈 lycanstropy

I went on a field trip to Hell in my warlock class the other day and a bunch of pirates turned Kalvaxus into a ship and tattooed his ass

9,378 notes

🦆 rayofdownwiththesickness

I fucking hate public school dude a plane almost crashed into my house at midnight and turns out it's because of a fucking club at the school and then i GO to school and i can barely even get into my bard class because everyone's lining up around that fucking pirate's kid and the principal is a fucking kid because this school is such a wreck. And can anyone please tell me why the same kid is now in every single club i am also in???? every time i make eye contact with him in one of my clubs he runs away. didn't he and the pirate kid and their party kill like 6 staff members?????????? AND WHY IS THERE A COP IN THE HALLWAYS??????????????????????

54 notes

🦆 rayofdownwiththesickness reblogged rayofdownwiththesickness

🕷️ minceraftshreeper Follow

Imagine complaining about students killing people when you literally go to an adventuring school 😂

🦆 rayofdownwiththesickness

i'd rather you say it to my face than vague me on the dashboard you know

🦆 rayofdownwiththesickness

I have been hexblade cursed

774 notes

👨‍💻 12345fantasydestiel

Has Aguefort collectively forgotten about the fact that a giant spider appeared on campus a few months ago and started terrorizing people? I'm starting to understand why so many people think so negatively of Aguefort now. I was literally there and watched it happen and then no one seemed to bring it up ever again. No teachers decided to address it or anything. We're lucky it didn't kill anyone, and, actually, now I'm remembering, wasn't Kristen Applebees there? I swear to Galicaea she was there. Is that why nothing came of it, cause her party has like 4 parents on the school staff? This place is a joke.

11 notes

infaetheable reblogged alwayshappyhour

🌃 alwayshappyhour

she nightmare on my king until i cassandra

1,287 notes

infaetheable reblogged alwayshappyhour

🌃 alwayshappyhour

she nightmare on my king until i cassandra

1,287 notes

infaetheable reblogged alwayshappyhour

🌃 alwayshappyhour

she nightmare on my king until i cassandra

1,287 notes

infaetheable reblogged alwayshappyhour

🌃 alwayshappyhour

she nightmare on my king until i cassandra

1,287 notes

Please understand that I missed the bottom of this post on my dash and scrolled past like 4 more posts trying to figure out how they were Fantasy High related

If I ask nicely will people reblog this and tell me what their most common breakfast is? Not your favorite necessarily, just what you have for breakfast most frequently? 🙏🏽

me as a child: this "$4.99" sales stuff is idiotic, anyone can instantly round this up to $5 in their mind, no one is falling for this

me as an adult: oh wow only $4 (with some additional numbers behind it), that's great because if it was a single dollar more that would have been the last straw for me in my miserable life

I don't know that I've ever seen someone make the Aardman Grimace in real life.

Truly a masterclass in harrowingly strained enthusiasm!