#Maybe IM the onion….

[skhardwarevers1]

I need people to know that every day I talk to my irls about the Onion because they’re the only ones that I can tell without it messing up my story

[wisted-twonderland]

aware

[maximotts]

girlies is it toxic of me to side eye people who think Wanda’s dead bc of the trailer-

[gaytobymeres]

Benoit Blanc's similarities to other fictional detectives

Specifically Holmes, Poirot and Columbo because I'm most familiar with them and saw many of their characteristics in Blanc.

Impeccable clothes - Poirot

Cigar - Columbo

Post-case slump - Holmes

Eccentric - Holmes, Poirot, Columbo

Detection as a means of helping people, not just for the sake of solving crimes - Holmes (and Poirot and Columbo to a slightly lesser extent)

Fun name – Holmes, Columbo, Poirot

Referred to by surname (almost) all of the time, even by close friends/partners – Columbo, Holmes, Poirot

Kindness to and deep respect for vulnerable women – Holmes, Columbo, Poirot

Said to be the best detective in the world – Holmes, Poirot

Fun American accent – Columbo

Hates rich people who abuse their financial influence – Holmes, Columbo, Poirot

Polite – Columbo (of course Holmes and Poirot can also be very polite but I don't feel like it's a defining characteristic for them the way it is for Columbo)

Rude to mean rich people in a way that is so polite the horrible rich people don’t realise they’re being made fun of/talked to rudely – Holmes, Poirot

Politeness and diplomacy that is often pushed too far and they explode into explicit anger – Holmes, Columbo, Poirot

Drama in resolution – all three to varying degrees, but especially Poirot

Understated and affable – Columbo

Involved in self-contained stories – Columbo, Poirot, Holmes (though a couple of Holmes stories do link closely to previous stories)

Uses the word 'afoot' – Holmes

Gay – Holmes, Poirot (I'll let you decide if this applies to Columbo)

[gghero]

Glass Onion spoilers !

I want to believe that the Brand sisters' first names are not incidental. I also believe that while one is played relatively straight, the other is presented as a subversion of the myth.

Not unlike her mythological counterpart, Cassandra outsmarted a god and was cursed with the gift of prophecy in return. Her warnings in the face of tragedy would be ignored. She would be ridiculed, spat on and belittled for daring to go against the grain. For being a disruptor, a real disruptor.

Helen, on the other hand, plays the role of her mythological counterpart in a less straight forward way, though I still think makes sense. Accounts of Helen's attitude during the war of Troy vary but one thing is consistent—she is at most a passive actor in the war that is waged in her name. Glass Onion tells a story where Helen does fill that role, to an extent—she is the interloper and the princess who got wrapped in a huge mess against her will. But she is also the wooden horse. a woman who no longer causes the destruction of the entire city through inaction and passivity, no longer merely existing, but doing.

In this story, Helen gets to burn Troy down herself.

[homestuckreplay]

Ditch The Clowns, Get The Crown

(page 627-636)

9/11/2009 Wheel Spin: Sburb Lore Verdict: YES! YES! YES!!!!

9/13/2009 Wheel Spin: being silly :3c Verdict: The Prankster’s Hammer Emerges :3c

John was pretty smart about how he got all those new cards into his sylladex. And now that he has twelve cards, does he even need a ‘detect collisions’? I’m sure he’ll be absolutely fine and there will be absolutely no throwing things off a cliff from here on out. Right????

Two huge things happen in these pages: we get a peek into Harry Anderson: Wise Guy by Mike Caveney, and John creates the pogo hammer, unlocking uncountable new possibilities with alchemy. They’re both super important, but my Wise Guy analysis will be a separate post because I found some weird and cool trivia, so here I’m just discussing the alchemy.

Alchemy is, historically, right at the intersection of science and magic. In that way it’s very cool that John has his breakthrough while reading about magic tricks, considering that up til now the process of punching cards has focused on the mathematics and data storage of it all. Stage magic, however, doesn’t create ‘real’ effects, only its impact on people is real. Alchemy seems entirely real – there’s no trickery, and John sure is holding that hammer. Taking the unreal (video games, the effects of manipulating the mouse and keyboard) and making them real continues to be Sburb’s whole deal, and right now I think Skaia’s power can be best phrased as ‘turning stories into reality’ – encompassing both meanings of creation/creativity at once.

Above are the totems for the hammer and pogo ride individually (p.618 – see bottom right of picture) and for the pogo hammer (p.632). They do all look similar, with a thicker part at the top and another thick section jutting out in the lower half. It’s not identical – the pogo hammer has some crisper edges compared to the smooth curves of the pogo ride – but the pogo hammer totem looks more similar to the pogo alone than to the hammer alone. This suggests that – from an alchemy mechanics perspective - the pogo is the base item, and the hammer is the combinatory or modifying item. It further suggests the idea of a ‘hammer pogo,’ which I imagine as a giant, rideable hammerhead mounted on a spring instead of a handle, one that John could ride to victory just like on p.496, but where his steed itself can bash the imps and John only has to worry about guiding it around. This might be slightly less dangerous than using the pogo itself, as he’d at least be able to hold on, and it would deal more damage. It could be created by punching the hole patterns for both items into a single card, creating more holes instead of less.

The pogo hammer is significantly more expensive than the pogo ride and hammer as individual items. The pogo ride alone costs 5 grist and 1 shale, the hammer alone costs 2 grist, and the pogo hammer is all the way up at 10 grist and 16 shale – the most expensive item we’ve seen so far. The rocket pack with its multiple insertions was technically a more complex item, but was cheaper on grist, maybe because it’s absolutely useless. It makes sense that the grist cost wouldn’t just refer to the components, but to how useful the output will be in the game, so that players can’t get access to gamebreakingly powerful items too early on. I would guess that the rocket pack on its own would be more expensive than the merged item, possibly requiring a grist type that John and Rose don’t have yet.

John is truly acting on whims here. Not long ago he was furious about the imps using his pogo ride, swearing that no-one but him risks injury on the pogo ride (p.476) – but now he barely notices an imp bouncing on the balcony, getting the new one all messy with oil too. He’s got something new to feel overly passionate about, and it is HIS FIRST CUSTOM WEAPON. And not a moment too soon, given that the giant imp has presumably climbed up into John’s yard by now. Lots of combat-based games make it necessary to either upgrade your weapon with additional damage and special moves, or obtain new and more powerful weapons, in order to fight tougher enemies. Players are often able to choose what properties they’d like to imbue their weapons with, or will collect multiple and decide which one to use. In this case, John’s chosen the Bounce property, which allows for the weapon’s attack to ‘jump’ to a second target on a successful hit, stacking an unlimited number of times so long as the attacks continue to land. The imp on p.636 looks understandably scared about this.

The alchemiter, we’ve seen, can be used by either Rose, John, or the imps – I assume they’re the ones who made a whole bunch of regular hammers. John should definitely take the pogo hammer totem and stash it away somewhere, both so that he’s the only one who can use the upgraded weapon, and so that the imps don’t waste all his hard earned grist making a hundred pogo hammers. The imps are mischievous creatures due to the harlequin prototyping, but I’d actually guess this tendency is programmed into the base NPC, pre-prototyping. As well as directly attacking the players, enemies trying to deplete grist resources so that players can’t progress further in the game fits with Sburb’s punishing learning curve, and gives players another task to balance – protecting their carved totems and their alchemiter.

The cosmetic upgrade to the weapon is important too. Instead of a plain, uncolored hammer, the pogo hammer has a green rubber grip and a miniature green Slimer on top of the head, perfectly matching the one on John’s shirt. I know that I will choose a weapon that looks sick as hell over one that does a little more damage but has a boring design, because you gotta have an aesthetic when playing a video game and you gotta stick to it even more strictly than you stick to a mechanical build. John’s whole aesthetic being based around green slime (and perhaps magic, thinking back to his CLEVER DISGUISE) means this weapon is for him and him alone, and with that in mind, it’s poetic that he made it all by himself.

John is really, really excited about his creation, as he should be. He DID ‘make something totally sweet’ as he says to Rose, and I’m really happy to see him proud of himself for this. Rose is really good at this game, and it can be hard to play games with a friend who is a lot better than you, so it feels really good as a reader and a big John fan to see him get this moment of success.

[sentientstump]

i got silly, here's Somsnosa's greatest song about domiciles

[floorpancakes]

[ghoul-haunted]

i will now play ac odyssey and we'll see what happens in the recesses of my mind

[bmpmp3]

yesterday in vocal synth news

[aggressionbread]

I'm still thinking about this fucked up BBQ Chicken bacon pizza we got from Papa John's like two years ago. So egregious I've held a grudge against Papa John ever since.

So first, there's so much fucking barbecue sauce on the thing that in some places, its completely drowning out all the other flavors. You can see it pooling out from underneath the cheese in some areas. By the end i had resorted to lifting up the cheese layer and scraping off the excess sauce, but it was still too much.

Which brings us to the second point, the elephant on the pizza. I do not think this is standard for Papa John's. I have never seen them do this before, nor since (since i've never been back) but i would like to direct your attention to the big spiral of bbq sauce on top. Was there not enough sauce for you already??? Did you need to add more sauce?

[groundrootvegetable]

guys you must be honest with me because liars go to oblivion (mara told me so): is eso actually fun do yall have a grand time there because i’ve tried so many times to pick it up and it just never works out for me

[grubloved]

ive got an early shift in the morning god hoping im done with being in pain by then but its for an event we arent actually opening for service so it should be chill and then when i get home i will get to see my beloved and make some fucking bagels hallelujah

[milkweedman]

Whittled a spindle from a birch stick I found at a park earlier. First time getting to work with birch--it's really nice although I think this piece was a little old and had dried slightly too much for whittling, as it chipped a lot. But it spins in the palm well and I'm pretty happy with how it looks. Obviously the spalting is really nice although largely that's not something I have a hand in, other than trying to preserve it rather than cut it away. Every random stick I pick up to whittle has its own thing going on that I have to figure out how to work with if I can to make into a spindle. This one was hard, that's why I'm happy with it even though it's quite a strange and crooked spindle.

The reason I'm holding it in these angles is because it can't rest at these angles, it would roll or fall. This is often the case with my spindles because they are whittled, not lathed. Lathed spindles are uniform on all sides, whereas whittled spindles can be totally different shapes from each angle. So, the cross section of this one is an oval instead of a circle. It also twists at the midsection. I'm fairly certain I got the tip and point aligned, which is what's absolutely key. It will never spin balanced if they aren't aligned, the rest of it is of varying importance as far as I can tell xD. I've been spinning a little on it--it only tolerates very fine yarn (not something I have noticed with my other spindles) but spins incredibly fast and isn't particularly wobbly. I'll try to remember to update whether it becomes unstable with a significant cop on it--if so, that would make this more of a decorative piece. That's okay though, random sticks are free and I enjoy whittling, so occasionally making a spindle that I think is beautiful but not very functional isn't a problem.

The holes in it are from fire ants. Or at least, fire ants were living in them. I'm glad I didn't leave this in the car very long, they don't seem to have started leaving the stick before I disturbed them with my knife and then started knocking them out. I feel kind of bad for relocating them like that. I usually knock stuff out before I leave with it, I guess these ones were very deep, or I forgot.

Anyway, I hardly ever name my spindles but this one is the Crooked Steeple of The Fire Ants

Steeple for short.

Here is what it looked like initially, and much earlier in the day:

[trentcrimminallybeautiful]

it really is the hope that kills you huh 😭

[bluehairedboyfriend]

I haven't seen it mentioned and I don't know if I'm just making it up but, I feel like it's funny that Birdie is wearing designer clothes but they're damaged/old

For example, at the pool she's wearing Louboutins, famous for their red sole, but, when she places her feet on Benoit you can see that they're worn (the sole is used up/scratched) and the rainbow dress, is probably designer but, on the left there is a rip that has been sewn up. If you consider the design of the dress, meant for flow (cut in round) it shouldn't have a gash there (especially with the fabric/print)

Basically, Birdie used to be rich/glamorous/wear designer but, now, she can't afford it so her designer pieces are damaged/repaired/ripped