#america arcadia

[heck-star]

Been having a grand old time on the American Arcadia whiteboard, got me thinking about @octopus-in-disguise AA Spirited Away AU again. I’ve been wanting to do a design for angela (specifically her dragon form) for a while now and this felt like a good opportunity!

Apologies for the shit quality of some of these, I have a bad habit of drawing really big and that often doesn’t translate to the best screenshots 😭😭

[packet-of-staples]

I'm going to preemptively say any Art of Trevor and Angela I do is strictly platonic. They are besties.

[sillydesktop]

Play American Arcadia.

[southernsadie]

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“You sound high, but thanks for the morning grope!”

[faux-ee]

being into stavrovensky is weird bcs one second I'm sitting here going omfg over this queer-coded dark academia anti-everything twink who would destroy himself and the world and more a thousand times over for his sun who is his better half but also really is just super depressed and the worst and most beautiful guy on earth and eternally bored but he laughs when Pyotr /flies into the room with impulsive curiosity/ literally just emotionally impaired walking personality disorders torturing and being silly with each other and the next i have fifty two tabs and twelve books open trying to crack the underlying philosophical political religious aesthetic layers of this crazy ass yaoi and i just

[brechtian]

Arcadia isn’t my favorite play in the sense that there are other plays I LOVE that I do think are better but it is also kind of my favorite play in that idk it feels like Mine & it is also one of the few plays that was not just a piece of art I loved but a full hyperfixation that resulted in me making it my laptop background & rereading/rewatching it multiple times & listening to the Spotify playlist I made for it constantly for like two months straight SO. if you ever ask I’ll say my favorite play is indecent or appropriate but in my heart of hearts if we use favorite to mean thing that makes one’s brain tick in a way that isn’t entirely logical I think. Maybe Arcadia might actually be my favorite play yeah

[oldshowbiz]

1964.

Right-wing extremists versus Librarians. 

[l1zzygr4ntforever]

fingertips in the shape of a gun, raise it up to your heart, pow, done

♡°♡°♡°♡°♡°♡°♡°♡°♡°♡°♡

[heck-star]

American Arcadia - Swap!AU || Part 2

Alright it’s time for some villains!! Oh boy these two gave me a lot of trouble design wise. I liked Markus’ design in concept, but idk how I feel about its execution. Also he doesn’t look anything like Markus but ah well. Vivian was easy, it’s literally just her in Markus’ uniform. I didn’t change it all that much bc it’s a costume, and in this AU Emily was cast to play basically the same role as Markus. Anyway it’s been really interesting to see all ur predictions on who I was going to swap next! (Shoutout to that one guy who got it right) I felt like these two were a good match, considering they are the primary antagonists and get to interact with both Angela and Trevor.

[bluheaven-adw-gone]

If you want the physical books, there are a ton on ebay for cheap, but this is good too

Ever wanted to read the Trollhunters books but you can't even buy them because they've apparently been taken off the market and practically from existence? Spent weeks searching for online versions before eventually giving up?

Well don't click this link!

It has all of the trollhunters side adventure books as well as the two comics in easily accessible pdf form, so we wouldn't want that to spread! Definitely do not share with your friends!

These books have a lot of really interesting characters that don't appear in the series, and we absolutely don't want more people to know about them! A single person in the whole entire fandom making occasional fanart of them is enough!

[ozma914]

Writing Is Getting Spooky Again, In All the Noble Counties

 I feel a little guilty for not posting about this since June, but it's now official: I have a contract to produce, for The History Press, a book titled something like Haunted Noble County. Probably with an "Indiana" added because, it turns out, there are more Noble Counties.

(I'm looking at you, Ohio and Oklahoma. I mean, did you have both a Governor Noble and a Congressman Noble? That's right--busted.)

My original title was Noble Dead Rise: Haunted Hoosiers Horrified! But the publisher talked me out of it, by saying no. The History Press is part of Arcadia Publishing, and you might remember I already wrote a book with them:

Also Indiana! Don't let Ohio steal this from me.

Anyway, the original balloon I floated was in this blog:

Immediately after posting that, I vanished. Like a ghost.

Actually, we had the summer of hell, which says a lot considering I usually love summer. I don't want to belabor it, because I don't know what belabor means, but it's been an overall horrible year for a lot of people. It derailed both me and Emily, who's an indispensable part of these projects due to my general incompetence. But in a few weeks her job will revert to weekends only and I'll be taking a little time off, so we're about ready to get rolling.

My acquisitions editor even said I could add a little humor to the book, something he may come to regret.

I do humor! I also drink tea.

I'll get back in touch with the people who've already contacted me, and of course I'd love to hear from anyone who has a ghost/spirit/haunted/weird story or place about Noble County (Indiana!) Photos, too, would be appreciated, especially historical ones. I've also cleaned up our good camera and we're going to be going around the county (Indiana!) to get pictures of everything from haunts and historic sites to cemeteries and--well, an actual picture of a ghost would be cool.

If you have a suggestion, make sure it's not in Ohio or Oklahoma. I like to travel, but come on.

Sometimes it's all about the lighting, am I right? The courthouse in Ohio is boring!

As I said earlier, in general I like to communicate through e-mail or various internet messages, only because I spend most days asleep and lots of nights awake. Just the same: phone, in person, ecto-plasmic telepathy, whatever--we want to hear stories. In the list of links at the bottom of this blog are several sites I can be contacted through. I do NOT want to hear the TV say "They're heeeeerrrrreeeee ...." so stay out of the satellite feeds.

Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

Remember, if you don't support writers they attract more and more social media sites, and are soon so busy checking them they don't have time to write. Not that it would happen to me. Nope.

[archivist-dragonfly]

Book 245

Theatres of Oakland (Images of America)

Jack Tillmany and Jennifer Dowling

Arcadia Publishing 2006

The Images of America series from Arcadia specializes in local history of neighborhoods, towns, and cities across the country. I only have one of them, and this is it. Truthfully, I don’t really like them. They can be terribly edited (I see at least one error on the back cover of this book) and overall feel rushed. I keep this one mostly because it has some great photos of my favorite movie theater, The Grand Lake.

[blueinkjpeg]

“Where am I?”

“Oh, uh, this is Arcadia Bay, Oregon.” Rachel supplied. At her blank stare, she added; “America. The United States. Planet Earth—“

“I know where Oregon is.”

“Just checking.”

A dead girl and a time traveler walk into a cafe…

[bestiarium]

The Crawfordsville Monster [modern cryptid; urban legend]

As far as modern urban legends go, most sightings of cryptids and creatures tend to fall into one of several recognizable categories: a lake monster, a flying saucer, an ape-like creature, etc. But every once in a while you have something weirder or unique:

On April 5, 1891, a supposed monster was sighted in the skies above Crawfordsville, Indiana, in the USA. A local pastor, Reverend G. Switzer, left his house to get some water from the well in his backyard when he supposedly experienced a strange feeling somewhere between dread and awe. Uncertain what caused this feeling, he looked up to see a large serpent-like being flying through the sky. The snake moved quickly even though there was no wind that night, and seemed like it was about to land, only to change its mind and take off again.

The paster and his wife were not the only witnesses, for that same day the apparition was seen by two workers about to haul ice on their wagon. They were so frightened of the creature that they took shelter until it was out of sight.

The size of the creature varies between stories, putting it somewhere between 16 and 20 feet (5 à 6 meters). It did not have wings – although other accounts added several fins or fin-like structures – but was able to fly by means of writhing movements, not unlike those of a real snake. The monster was white and had no head, or at least no clearly visible head, but it did have a large, brightly burning eye. Despite the lack of a visible head or mouth, the monster emitted a wheezing noise.

The Crawfordsville Daily Journal named the creature ‘the Midnight Wraith’ but today it is more commonly referred to as 'the Crawfordsville Monster'.

When researching this sighting, I came across some very weird UFO theories. While they tend to strain credibility, I admit that it’s fun to theorize about, in a fantasy worldbuilding kind of way. For example, the last source I listed here mentions a theory about atmospheric creatures that live in the clouds of our planet and stay afloat because of their extremely low-density bodies. The Crawfordsville monster, supposedly, could be such a creature.

Several explanations have been put forth. Some claimed it was a spirit. Professor Robert Burton assumed that the witnesses might simply have been under influence of alcohol or drugs. A later sighting in the same location put forth a simpler, albeit anticlimactic, explanation: two men followed the flying ‘monster’ around until it came close enough for them to identify it as a giant flock of killdeer birds: local birds with a distinct white belly. There were several hundred of them in the flock, and the birds’ erratic flight pattern might have been caused by their confusion from the electric lights, and the many moving ‘fins’ of the monster would have been the wings of the different birds. Perhaps exhaustion in the early hour, combined with the dark night sky, caused the ice haulers and the pastor to mistake the flock for a monster.

Sources: Clark, J., 2005, Unnatural Phenomena: A Guide to the Bizarre Wonders of North America, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 408 pp., 160 pp., p. 87-88. Zach, K. B., 2003, Crawfordsville, Athens of Indiana, Arcadia Publishing, p. 140-141. Hunt, C. M., 2023, Ghosts & Legends of Crawfordsville, Indiana. Haunted America, Arcadia Publishing, 160 pp., p. 12-18.

(image source 1: Mart, T.S. & Cabre, M., 2021, A Guide To Sky Monsters : Thunderbirds, The Jersey Devil, Mothman, and Other Flying Cryptids, Indiana University Press, 174 pp.) (image source: Enshohma on Deviantart)

[aaronwaltke]

For those wondering, Netflix is far and away the best home for Star Trek: Prodigy.

Netflix has the largest market share, about 4 times as large as some others. It also has a global reach that can bring in new audiences.

Historically, Star Trek has done extraordinarily well on Netflix — in fact, outside of America, it remains the home of Star Trek in many territories.

Netflix has a great track record for YA action adventure animated shows — arguably more than any other streamer. Just look at the longevity and success of shows like Dragon Prince (7 seasons), Tales of Arcadia (7 seasons and a movie), or the Renaissance for Avatar the Last Airbender which has led to the creation of Avatar Studios.

Their current focus is animated content with a built-in audience produced by partner studios. That’s us. Netflix has licensed our show with the option for more — just like any other show.

So go fast. Spread the word to watch the series as soon as it drops on Netflix. Let’s see what’s out there.

[fatehbaz]

They’ve built a “Great Wheel” on the Seattle waterfront [...].

The small timber village became a military outpost in the Puget Sound War [...], [and] soon evolved into a trade gateway, with timber tailings and other industrial trash from Henry Yesler’s mill used to fill in the marshlands [...], atop which migrant laborers raised tents and shanties [...] now working to feed raw materials into the furnaces of the Second Industrial Revolution burning in the East. [...] The first nationwide strike ripped across the country’s railways in 1877, but in Seattle the unrest took on a grim character, as thousands of unemployed white workers rioted against their Chinese counterparts [...]. Meanwhile, [...] local elites rebuilt [...] downtown [...] from scratch, hosting the tallest building on the West Coast alongside other new constructs [fueled] with money gleaned from the supply chains linking eastern capital to Alaskan gold. [...] Today the city - again rebuilt [...] - is seen as one of the primary beneficiaries of the “Fifth” Industrial Revolution in information technology, outshone only by California’s Silicon Valley. [...] The digital was increasingly thought of as somehow "immaterial," sustained by intellectual labor more than physical toil [...].

Silicon Valley myths of [...] "immaterial" labor disguise a more gruesome dynamic in which growing segments of the global labor force are being deprived even of the basic brutality of the wage, instead forced out into growing rings of slums, prisons, and global wastelands. [...]

---

Perched alongside a downtown business corridor [...], Seattle's Great Wheel seems to peer out over [...] [the] prophesied “cooperative commons,” an infotech metropolis abutting the beauty of an evergreen arcadia. But travel below Seattle’s cluster of infotech industries and the image appears much the same as that of a hundred years prior - a trade gateway, squeezing value from supply chains by selling transport and logistical support. The southern stretch of the metropolis bears little resemblance to the revitalized urban core of the city proper. Instead of the “cognitive labor” of Microsoft, it is defined instead by the cold calculation of companies like UPS, founded in Seattle when the city was one link in a colonial supply chain built first for timber, then Alaskan gold, then World War. [...]

In south Seattle, this logistics empire takes the form of faceless warehouses, food processing facilities, container trucks, rail yards, and industrial parks concentrated between two seaports, an international airport, three major interstates, and railroads traveling in all directions. Meanwhile, the poor have been priced out of the old inner city, moving southward [...]. [T]hey can be found staffing the airport and the rail yards, hauling cargo in and out of two the major seaports, loading boxes in warehouses [...]. And, beyond them, the shadow stretches out to Washington’s rural hinterlands where migrant laborers staff a new boom in agriculture and raw materials [...] - and further still into America’s long-depressed interior, where the Great Wheel meets its opposite: Memphis, the FedEx logistics city, watched over by a great black pyramid [the infamous Bass Pro Shop pyramid]. [...]

Every Seattle is capable of creating an eco-friendly, “cooperative commonwealth” tended by apps and algorithms only insofar as there is a Memphis that can provide human workers to sort the packages, a Shanghai to build the containers that carry them, and a Shenzhen to solder together the circuits of the machines that govern it all.

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All text above by: Phil A. Neel. "The Great Wheel". Brooklyn Rail. April 2015. Published online at: brooklynrail.org/2015/04/field-notes/the-great-wheel. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Presented here for commentary, teaching, personal use, criticism purposes.]