#Fun House Mirror

[tumbleofdorks]

[browsethestacks]

Remember When.. Mirrors Were Fun?

[thedaveandkimmershow]

We snapped one of our first selfies back when we were dating. A long, long time ago. We met, though, years before that moment. Maybe by even more than a decade.

To hear my mom tell it, Kimmer had her eye on me way way back in Sunday school. I think, though, that's just my mom retconning what's otherwise two high energy kids existing in proximity who naturally recognize members of their own ADHD tribe.

Now, neither of us went on to formal diagnoses but my boy scout troop leader did tell my mom I was "hyper".

She was not amused.

And there's no question I drove various grade school teachers to distraction with my behavior. Absolutely. My first grade, fifth grade, and sixth grade teachers especially, I won't lie.

I can't tell you what Kimmer's experience was, but I'm sure she wouldn't be surprised that she was characterized as high energy in polite company. By today's standards, she seemed an extrovert. She was definitely inquisitive, adventurous, confident, funny. She was quick. Pretty much all the kinds of things you have to be in order to keep getting into trouble at school.

So we were birds of a feather. And we did run in overlapping circles growing up in church.

My enduring memories of Kimmer are two-fold. First, a mental still photograph of her in my mind. It's a moment just outside the doors to the chapel at First United Methodist Church, the building with the dome next to the Columbia Tower on fifth between Marion and Columbia. I was with whoever I was with walking to the chapel for kids church when we turned the corner and there she was in front of the doors. My memory didn't capture why she was there, who she was waiting for. It just captured the image. She's wearing a white dress with faded pink crosshatches. She's smiling. Not at us... she's just smiling. 

The second memory's a later one, closer to high school, I think. It's more of a video memory with motion and sound. We're both at some youth event on the other side of Aurora Avenue from the Woodland Park Zoo. We're playing touch football and, at some point during the game she rips my shirt pocket off my, you know, shirt.

So that happened.

Followed by accusations, protestations, deflections and so on.

Of course.

There are other memories we share growing up. But in general I think that's just what they are: shared memories. Not necessarily ones focused on each other (unless my mom was right about Kimmer from the very beginning, of course 😉). Otherwise, we share memories of youth group, of dances, of overnight conferences (lots of stories from the one in particular), as well as the boys and girls choirs we were in plus that dance group I think she was in. 

All 'n all...

Just a coupla high energy kids growing up in proximity like particles in a particle accelerator speeding in opposite directions along the same circular path.

Or something.

Anyway...

We snapped maybe our first selfie the old fashioned way in a fun house mirror when we were dating.

It was a long, long time ago...

But we've known each other much longer ago than that.

☺️❤️❤️❤️

[spock-pewds-louise]

Fucking sobbing

[soupdwelling]

very normal & trustworthy looking man

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Fritzi Ritz (June01st1936)

Bigger And Better

Art by Ernie Bushmiller

[inkblotdemon]

quick q is it normal to see ur conscience wearing little lab coats and bickering with each other asking for a friend

[crapload-of-crafts]

‘Watcher World’ Poster (Version 3)

[royalarmyofoz]

AGATHA ALL ALONG 1.05

[momo-t-daye]

Part One

Co-(god)parenting a teenager with your (maybe?) ex can be quite the adventure

(O.W.L.s might be easier if you'd had the examiners as tutors since you were old enough to talk, Sirius)

So, for the mirror pattern, I'd been goofing around with attempting marbling with India ink and water, I made an awful mess but I had fun and the swirly pattern looks interesting

[slumbering-shadows]

One of the funniest things about the whole show is how House thinks he's the one In Charge of their relationship but literally episode one starts with Wilson saying "my cousin is sick please help 🥺" and House immediately drops all of the nothing he was doing to help. And then it turns out Wilson was just fucking lying about it lmao male wife manipulate mansplain or whatever I love this show

[wackulart]

more pinterest poses bc theyre quick and im gay

[agayhomestuck]

Lil hal stans (or just fans) please enlighten me on what you see in him

[thatleolion]

Self.

[neathyingenue]

First batch of mini OC portraits are here--3 down, 3 to go! I did these in gouache on tinted paper (though josie's glasses are colored pencil haha)

From left to right:

The Marked Examinant August Shaw belongs to @zeebreezin

The Laconic Captain Samuel Weatherbee belongs to @house-of-mirrors

The Percipient Scientist Josephine Ashwood belongs to @thedeafprophet

I adore each of your blorbos, thank you for letting me at 'em!

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)