paperairplanemob

[paperairplanemob]

Checking for any “scrumblr” domains…

my mum just called "scrolling on Tumblr" "scrumbling"

[paperairplanemob]

Ok how hard would it be to get this into a vtuber setup?

All these billionaires who invested in the metaverce and Neuralink must be questioning their life choices looking at what what furries are doing in VR chat.

[paperairplanemob]

So, I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I love sponsorships for creators because they’re typically direct—it’s not targeted web ads that pay a pittance before Google/Facebook takes two-thirds. It’s part of what makes podcasting a sustainable industry despite being an open ecosystem (not dominated by a single player like YouTube and video).

I’m not excusing creators taking money from obviously shady companies. I’m definitely not excusing the companies themselves (there’s a special place in hell for people that do what BetterHelp did). And in hate how so much of our lives are invaded by advertising. But I also know how long it takes to do just one video or podcast ep, and if there aren’t enough people in the Patreon, it’s either sponsorship or ending it…

Fundamental life advice: never trust a product from a youtuber/influencer sponsorship

[paperairplanemob]

[paperairplanemob]

Look under the cut to see what meeting your entity is like. Reblog to give a gift to your patron.

The fae: a creature stands before you. Though this street was warm and crowded a few moments ago it is suddenly cold and the people around you look like shadows. The creature begins an antlered shadow with glowing white eyes, but soon its body can be seem, with white blue flesh, and sapphire eyes, and icicles for teeth. What looks like a cloak unfolds from its naked body and you can see massive white wings of a moth. As if it's an act of sacrifice you tell it your true name, a name you didn't even see before, and suddenly you belong to it, for better or worse.

The angel: a radiant entity appears before you. They're bright, like something so hot it would burn you up. But as the light fades, you can see a person in silver armor, perfect yet inhuman like am ancient green statue, their back srouting six wings with blue eyes along them, as the eyes on their head are covered by a mask of two smaller wings. The creature offers their hands and you shake it, as they fly you through the city streets and above the skyscrapers, to the stars above and dimensions beyond, to gods living and dead, across the streets of alien cities and the clouds of dead worlds. And when you return to the earth you can feel something diffrent about you, like there's light in your blood.

The scavenger: below the lights of skyscrapers beyond you, on the dark sands of the beach, you see it crawling twords you. This serpentine creature with countless legs, and a dark black shell, yet a strangely human like face. You think it'll attack or run away, but it just looks at you, egar, and for a momment you stare at eachother. It's legs pass something to eachother and then to you, it's meat but it's shining with all the colors known to the human eye, and a few more. You hold it and it happily looks at you. You take a bite and suddenly you know... you know so very much...

The vampire: she flies down to you on green wings with orange eyespots, but folds them into her back. She looks like a human for a momment, tall and strong, with a black suit over her body, but eyes the color of ruby. For a momment her mouth opens, and it's massive and monstrous, with countless moving parts and fangs. But then it folds back onto something humanoid and she gives you a playful smirk. She cuts her hand and offers you her blood, and when you drink it it tastes so sweet, and makes you feel so good. She hands you the knife and you know to do the same, and when she drinks from your palm it's life the sweetest of kisses.

The djinn: the room wirs around you. If it were not for the fans it would feel like hellfire. For a momment there it darkness, but then the screen before you glows white like smokeless flame. You can sense something inside, something beyond the code. You reach your hand within it, and there's no glass, your hand passess right through until you're in a white void of your own making. You call out, thinking there is nothing at all around you. Yet somehow something calls back, something that knows your name.

The rat king: You see him in an empty subway station. Something dark and distorted, you're not sure if he's man or animal, covered in rags, and singing in the language of the goblins and the orcs. Yet he comes close to you excited. And you can feel his song. He calls for you to come to the train tracks, and let yourself run with the rats and the roaches, where the train will pass over you when it comes, and you'll live forever. When you touch the third rail you don't die, but you'll never be human again.

The lich: the library is strangely bright. Run by skeletons in suits, decorated with gold. There are more books here then you thought were in all the world. There's knowledge here most mortals will never have the change below, all kept safe below the city. You see her, her body doesn't look human, everything has been replaced making her look more like a joining white doll then a being of flesh. Yet she is dead, you can tell that under the porcelain skin she must be dead, she is dead, and there is the tragedy of death in her eyes. You come closer to her, and she places a black rose within your hair...

The demon: You stand in his office and he stands before you, a humanoid being covered in black scales, with red eyes covering his skin. Yet none are on his head, that remains featureless save for two massive horns. Wings on his back nearly surround you. Countless souls line the walls of his office, looking at you, waiting. After you sign your name you give him yours, you can feel it come away for you forever and your eyes grey and your skin pales. But he puts the jar in a special place for you, you're spacial, he can tell there's something about you that he likes.

The mushroom lord: you walk through the darkness of the forest, the furthest from civilization you have ever been. You come upon a part where the trees all seem dead, that even the cryptids won't go near. Mushrooms fill the ground, and white vein like lines are all over the trees. You feel the need to lay down, and you let the moss and the mushrooms and the worms surround you, and let yourself sink into the soil,, and it feels good. It feels so good...

The witch: You can see them in the Cafe next to you, skinny and small, with a sweatshirt over most of their body, and dark glasses over their eyes. They seem powerful though, and though their body looks young they seem ancient, they seem beyond humanity. You talk to them and they tell you things, and secrets, lost gods, things you never knew you didn't know, both beautiful and disturbing. When it's time for them to go they pet your head, and give you their number. You don't know if you should text them, but you have to, you have to see them again, there's something about them that makes you need to know.

The living clothing: you step into it at first, it looked like a puddle yet shining like silver or chrome. But soon it surrounds you, first just your torso, but soon your head, your entire body. But it doesn't feel scary, it feels like you're being held, held by something beyond your understanding. It whispers to you, and you don't know if you should feel like your being eaten alive, or like you're being protected. You can't help but keep walking.

The abyss: the void is before you, blackness beyond blackness, like the color beyond the field of your vision, stands before your eyes. You stare at it, it's nothing yet you're entranced. It stares back...

[paperairplanemob]

Subscriptions suck, and the promised utopia falls far short of the enshittified reality.

Dropout is the exception.

It’s cheaper than Netflix used to be. You don’t have to have some asinine “Dropout Plus” to download in the app for offline viewing. They actually pay their workers and even do profit-sharing (or at least they want to). And when they mess up, as everyone inevitably does, they apologize and try to make it right. It’s the exact opposite of the corporate ego-driven businesses you see otherwise.

Not to mention, when it comes to modern streamers, they’ve been here the whole time:

It's Dropout's 6 year anniversary!

To celebrate, we've finally made a trailer explaining what Dropout's whole deal is. Got a friend or relative you want to explain Dropout to, but need some visual/audio aids?

This should cover you.

Dropout has improv, game shows, specials, gaming, and SO much more - and all on a streaming service that is extremely cheap AND wants you to share your password with friends who can't afford a Dropout subscription themselves.

And if you're still not signed up, you can do so right here!

[paperairplanemob]

The one thing I can kinda imagine them hunting is large mainland megafauna, but we're working with a setting that takes place pretty much exclusively on islands.

Counterpoint: Toothless is an Out Of Context Problem in the movie’s setting. We see one archipelago; where’s the rest of the earth?! I’m going to posit that he ended up in the Meridian of Misery by Circumstances Outside Of His Control (born to a migrant family, enthralled by the Red Death at an early age, part of a vast society of signalers) and thus is evolved to hunt megafauna that don’t exist in his current habitat.

But you’re probably right, OP. 🙃

Hot take

Night furies are actually perfectly evolved for hunting and killing other dragons and the only reason they aren't a dragon-hunting species like the death song or deathgrippers are is because DreamWorks couldn't have their adorable main character dragon be a "cannibal"

(below I'm gonna try to summarize what we've figured out in a convo with friends on discord)

(also tw animal death via predator)

First of all yes I'm aware that pretty much every decision made about their design was with consideration of the effect it would make on human audiences but hear me out

Night furies are most iconically known as dive-bombers. They are built for speed, high maneuverability, night-time camouflage and for striking targets from above. If we remove human settlements out of the equation (which would not have existed long enough to actually influence night fury evolution, come on), what does that leave us with?

They aren't built for catching fish for sure, they aren't very hydrodynamic and their head is round, wide, and their teeth are dull. Honestly, the monstrous nightmare is much better suited for catching fish, with its long neck, almost pelican-like jaw and rhamphorhynchus teeth

Compare to

Yeah the jaws look kinda like a porpoise of some sort but for that the whole body would have to be a lot more aquatic imo. The light fury looks a lot closer to an aquatic diver, it has a sleeker body, rounded fins instead of spikes, and a long neck.

I don't really see them hunting land animals either, they just don't look like they're adapted for that minus the resemblance with large felines and even then, they're too large to effectively hunt in forests.

The one thing I can kinda imagine them hunting is large mainland megafauna, but we're working with a setting that takes place pretty much exclusively on islands. And overall, dragons are the only abundant species there with the exception of fish and human-bred sheep and chickens.

In general, night furies have duller teeth, smaller claws and are smaller than most dragons. Disregarding the movies making Toothless weirdly OP, a night fury would be disadvantaged against most dragons in a 1v1 fight and besides, it has four huge weak spots that would highly discourage it from a direct physical fight - the primary and secondary tail fins. One unlucky rip in the membrane and the night fury is fucked.

The night fury however noticeably resembles falcons, given their dive-bombing ability and high maneuverability.

Falcons too have smaller beaks and weaker claws compared to most birds of prey, and for that they compensate by simply picking up speed, balling up their talons and Punching. Really. Hard.

And they use that ability to kill other birds, even much larger ones, by knocking them right from the sky.

Here, the night fury's plasma blast works the same way as a falcon's punch. Dragons are fire-resistant, so what the plasma blast does is really just a densely packed bolt of energy that has the effect of either stunning or outright killing prey by damaging its spine. And what the plasma bolt doesn't do, rapid contact with the ground would finish. And if even that doesn't do it, the night fury's wide jaws and dull teeth are just fine for simply clamping around the unlucky dragon's neck and strangling it, like a lion or a pitbull.

The night-time camouflage allows the night fury to soar for extended periods of time perfectly unnoticed in the night sky, and by the time it strikes, the dragon wouldn't even know what's coming.

Unless

Say the hunting night fury is aware of other dragons sleeping under the trees, as most dragons probably would at night (village raids aside, most dragons seem to be diurnal), so how does the night fury get them in position where it can use its signature attack? Well, there's That Iconic Screech Of Death. Since in the movies it tends to appear not just during dive-bombings but also when charging up a blast, I imagine it's something the night fury is able to control to some degree. So by simply fake-diving in close proximity to sleeping dragons, it can effectively terrify them into leaving their hideout and fly out into the open where it can easily take them out.

I dunno, the possibility of night furies as predators to other dragons just makes so much sense to me, I really don't know what other reasons there would be for them to evolve these particular adaptations.

And one more little headcanon to add to this whole rant - since night furies are significantly smaller and less equipped for dragon vs dragon fights and are primarily speed-based predators, I imagine there is this very likely scenario:

There is one dragon who resembles a hyena, a lil bit

Ok, rant over

[paperairplanemob]

NGL, I’d love to see a season of Make Some Noise or something that was filmed live.

I like how dropout shows often have an almost “filmed in front of a live studio audience” effect from simply having the crew obviously losing their minds off camera

[paperairplanemob]

[paperairplanemob]

“Look, we know it can be done. We’ve known for a while.”

“So why—“

“Jeff Bezos.”

“…oh.”

“Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg. Need I go on?”

“Not at all.”

Magic and technology don't mix, or so they say. You worked out how they can be safely combined and it wasn't even that difficult, yet when you presented it to the archmages they confiscated your prototype and ordered you to destroy all documentation and proof of its existence.

[paperairplanemob]

Anyone want to buy an M1 MacBook? 7-core GPU, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Battery is “normal.” Runs Logic, Final Cut, and Motion well. Includes original charger + cable. Asking $450 OBO + shipping.

[paperairplanemob]

the best thing you can do for your enjoyment of video games is to try to embrace every mechanic as part of the game, and use it to its fullest. that sounds insane but also like. you know how often people just look at systems in a game and say "that's too complicated" or "i ain't using that" or "it's too OP i don't wanna use it?" it's so frequent, and so often it just. Absolutely tanks the quality of the game because those systems were designed to Do Something For The Game. At the very least, even if it's a bad system you don't like, or even if it doesn't look worth your time, give it a shot before outright declaring you're not going to bother with it.

[paperairplanemob]

The Next Generation Delivery Vehicle that the USPS ordered is legit the most fucked up thing you'll ever see in your life.

[paperairplanemob]

"your arcanine and nidoking weren't shit"

[paperairplanemob]

I could have lived with NaNoWriMo leaving their AI stance at “if it helps you, sure, but using it to write for you defeats the purpose, y’know?”

But in the context of creative writing, comparing AI hate to ableism/classism rings extremely hollow, especially when they could have said nothing at all.

[paperairplanemob]

Just for fun…

[paperairplanemob]

WordPress tried to be Tumblr back in 2010. They called it “post formats” and it was an unextendable list that looked suspiciously like the Tumblr post types. It was just a checkbox in the admin screen and only changed the look on the frontend of the site if the theme supported it.

Which, after five years or so, none of them did.

So… good luck, Automattic!

It feels pretty telling that Automattic used the WordPress.com news blog to announce they are building a castle in the sky migrating Tumblr to run over WordPress but haven’t even mentioned on tumblr @staff blog