#but the site is fucking dead

[ariadne-mouse]

For the serious version of this poll, go here.

[snepfeathers]

pros of being mostly immune to online impulse purchases: I can save my money and use it on more necessary things, like rent and groceries

cons of being mostly immune to online impulse purchases: I don't get to have The Thing

[fritzmonorail]

[thattimdrakeguy]

anything i see anything new on dc's bat-family it makes me wanna scream "WHAT THE FUCK'S THE MATTER WITH YA" and go after them yelling "FUCK OFF"

(not that bad actually. i'm pretty chill inside most of the time. i'm not what i used to be. a lot of it is performative, but a luke warm attitude towards something you have to say doesn't invoke passion, or anythign exciting that'd make anyone want to read it. not that many do anyways)

so many years of this and none of them get better. it's like it's trying to be pathetic

all those years of things you can research to be sure you get it right, and you fuckers couldn't be arsed to get your ass in gear and make sure all these fans that left have something to go back to?

now this dc server discord. my gosh, i don't think we're seeing the blue skies again. they're catering to a small pond of people, a wee group consisting of those that read panels, and pal around with fan fics and mash-ups that they created and pondered

not the stuff that had plenty of real people going out to the shops and ordering comics, that made them have a love and respect for the medium to the point they were fine calling themselves a fan back when it wasn't right in a cool kind of way in the eyes of many

now they're comics, it's not that serious. whoc ares that much in the end

and i guess i'll never seem like i'm not overreacting a touch

but comics used to tell stories that attached themselves to people's hearts and made them be seen and held, like finally i got something that i respond to

now it's who can rip off the fandom the best, and it's so easy to get content of the same marginal quality on AO3, and fan comics that don't need to blessing of bastard DC Comics

it's sensational the passion people can have despite that, whether or not it's for me. but all those hundreds of thousands of people missing a piece of their prior enjoyment because the 5 stan opinions repeated at nauseum is all anyone important at the writers station (not a real thing, i just mean writers) at the company is making them thing "ah yes, we're doing all right by them"

no you didn't, fucker, you scared the rest away with all the nonsense

now if you want more money you gotta try to earn them back

they think it's hopeless and practically pointless because comics are a dying medium, but they don't have to be. i'm sure it'll never to go back to what it once was, but you can still at least try to have a legacy as a writer that means something to people

when we used to have guys back in the day that could go and fuck around writing stories about peter parker's love life that didn't have much action that you would think the typical reader would desire, that could still effect someone in a way that had them stop and think about themselves, because a fraction of wisdom was hidden in it

now you get characters botched, bastardized, and secretly killed and replaced by those with the same names, and they can't even muster the sense to care. because someone laughed at a character being drawn at the wrong height, or another had a good reaction from people that didn't know the character as they thought they were writing their big magnum opus blockbuster for them

and i don't expect perfection, or the good old days to be possible to back to because they're the old days for a reason

but theirs's still the possibility and ability to go back and figure out the lost art of product control, and ravenous quality that can seep into people's spirits and give them a passion to constantly go back to issue after issue, giving your damn funky company a proper profit that means anything

no there they go ripping off little jimmy on twitter, stan account number 55, who's repeating what their pal jessica said on tumblr about bat-family member that got designated trope number 782 on the list, and that got the writer believing they did a job well done

you can do more

they're all just people, and i admire the fact they got to where they are. bless them for all the accomplishments they have. i can't take that way from them. but i'm also just a person who has what he has to say, and i think there's more to these writers then even they give themselves credit for

whining when people rightfully criticize your poor characterization and (even that's rare given the standards of today's comic fandom population) because it's your interpretation, when that's not how interpretation works

my man the money, and legacy you could create for yourself by doing the job, and research, and making something that actually comes across as a product worth buying could make you name live on for years after your death

comics aren't a large, marginally important industry, that all writers strive to join, but they're a passionate bunch that can make your legacy last for years to come

instead you'd rather sit on the bottom of a barrel being like everyone else typing out the same crap in 5 minutes a junior high student could in 2

batman has made billions of dollars from the excellence of others

and they'd rather sit down and take, what's not even a lot of money given that it's comics, and accept it, then make somethings of themselves, and perhaps with enough lucky make the company and business worth something again

there's no point in not trying

all they'd do is get more out of it with a bit of trying and effort, and passion and metaphorical sweat put into it

why should i read Tim Drake: Robin that can't even remember how Tim would talk about Damian right, and can't be fucked to not make his boyfriend look like a generic twink instead of himself, when i could go back and read something from about a decade before my own birth when it was good (if written by a massive fucker)

i've spent nearly a decade on and off criticizing comics, mainly dc and the bat-family, look at my blog name, it's 'ThatTimDrakeGuy' (yes that's how i personally spell it, with the capitalization), and all i've found are holes and tears in it since i've began back in 2015 when Rebirth was only news and headlines

and i've yet to see things get better when i read some classics and became aware at what was, and what could be

nonsense that people with enough passion to get their asses in gear to get the job and the assignments, with plenty of talents, especially the artists, my goodness regardless if they can remember what characters like tim or damian, and sometimes even easy to remember ass jason todd look like, they still have impressive skill, ability, and talent, that far surpases what the majority of the population on the whole planet can do

so it's not that they can't do it

it's that they don't try

often they try the opposite for quick cheap rewards, in the form of twitter stan brownie points "LOOK THEY HUGGED" "LOOK THEY'RE CRYING" "LOOK HE'S SO SHORT" regardless if that's thhe character, it makes sense, the story needs it, or it'll be remembered in years to come

give me and others a reason to come back

otherwise dc might as well die, which i hate to say, and don't mean all the way because of the jobs that would lose

but how else can i verbalize the general feeling and sensation it gives me, when all of that effort goes to waste with medicore at best products that won't be recalled months from now by any amount of peopel that's substantial?

you could go and be a legend in the field, or another turd in the bucket that's about to fly away in the wind to never be seen 'til their next splatty mess

quite sad and i hate it

and shit, with so many people acceptint it, and talking it up, the idea i can't even see a character i used to enjoy look like themselves at times is a wee miserable

how stupid is that when you think on it

how do you get to that point?

comics aren't serious

but the passion a lot have is

(never hurt anyone over it tho. those people are just wild, and not in a cool way)

[lockandkeyhyena]

Bit of a party pooper..

sorry, you’re right, lets keep clicking the ‘please forget about our transmisogyny and zionism’ button. my bad guys. you’re right.

[crimeronan]

probably i SHOULDN'T migrate elsewhere if tumblr goes belly-up. i just scrolled thru my dash for 20 minutes and in that short span i could feel myself transform from a mildly tired 27-year-old butch into an active serial killer.

[eddardofthehousestark]

I am an idiot, I went on twitter and decide to see if there was any cool Cat or Ned stuff on there. Obviously there was some good stuff. Sadly, it was sandwiched between horrible takes.

[cursedsappho]

'They cancelled Dead Boy Detectives because of G*iman' they did not guys, Netflix doesn't give a shit, you can see for yourself they are keeping Sandman. I don't even think it's really about the viewership or homophobia (even if... a lot of what they cancel is queer so who knows) they do this with 90% of their shows, they cancelled David Fincher's Mindhunter and gave an ultimatum to shows like Bojack Horseman to wrap it up because they wouldn't renew it again and those were the big hits, there's no hope for any show on streaming sites that work like this

[vault81]

dragon age twitter anytime anything is announced about the game

[larsnicklas]

you mean to tell me everyone was losing it over the caps buying capfriendly and calling it "unspeakably evil" (lmao btw) only for puckpedia to immediately step up and already add the one (1) feature that folks were whining about losing with their new puckgm interactive tool..... lmao.

[cainite-bite]

no i dont want to use the app! i dont even want to browse it on my phone! let me open that shit on my desktop! why is everything barred to a stupid app on google store! get that outta here!

[extoller]

am i the only one who doesn't get the bluesky hype orrrr

[waugh-bao]

IORR Review of the Stones’ show in Amsterdam, Netherlands (July 7th, 2022)

[ehlnofay]

It’s not until she hears Sissel’s knees hit the floor that Efri is jolted back into her body.

She blinks, whipping her head around. Sissel is kneeling, bracing a palm on the ancient stone pavement, at the barrier – no, the barrier’s gone, it’s just Sissel on the floor. She lifts her head and meets Efri’s eyes; her hair is wispy and wild, the little plaits meant to keep it neat come loose and tumbling, her eyes wide. The barrier's gone, but still, her pale face is lit up blue.

“Are you okay?” she asks. She doesn’t speak loudly, but it echoes in the great stone chamber.

Nine, Efri doesn’t know.

She blinks again, looks down at her hands, clinging to the metal stick so fiercely that her joints ache. (Her own stick, her nice wooden one, is still on the floor somewhere, where it slipped out of her grasp when she hit the wall.) The lumpy heavy end of it, the clobbering end, is still resting on –

Not on. It’s in the thing’s head, fitted neatly in the opening of its dented helmet, the horns spiralling over the floor. There’s a tooth, perfectly preserved, by Efri’s foot.

One by one, she unwraps her gloved fingers from the handle of the metal stick, letting it drop to the floor with a clang so loud it makes her wince. Kazari is nosing at her side. (When did they let go of it? When did they get so close? She must have missed that. She feels out of the loop. Her heart is juddering like fish on a line, battering like some frightened trapped thing at her ribcage, and her breath is coming fast and heavy.) Absentmindedly bringing up a hand to press over her sore shoulder, she says, “’M fine. Not too – barely touched me.”

Kazari turns and spits on the floor. Efri blinks. She does it again, tongue lolling out of her mouth, face very disgruntled – and oh, Efri gets it. She does not glance down at the thing at her feet; she doesn’t need to, she knows what its arm looks like, chewed almost to pieces even through its banded armour. (If she hadn’t been so busy being scared of it, that sight might have made her a bit scared of Kazari. But not now, when they’re trying to hack and spit the taste of dead man arm out of their mouth.)

Efri unclips her canteen from her belt and holds it out. “Here,” she says. Her voice is rough. Her heart is racing too much to let constructing sentences be easy. “Not much, but –”

Kazari stands still while Efri tips half of the remaining water onto her tongue, and then Efri watches her swilling it around in her mouth, trying to bathe all of her teeth in it, before she spits it again on the floor at the dead thing’s feet.

The water is still clear. That’s something, at least; the dead man was too old to still have blood in him. Or maybe he was embalmed, drained of it hundreds of years ago, thousands.

“Are you okay?” Efri asks Kazari when they’re done, because they were the one doing most of the fighting, who was closest. They tip their head, shift their weight – wince when they put weight on one foot. Their lips peel back from their teeth. Their clothes on that side are singed.

Efri points it out. “Your robe,” she says, which makes it sound much fancier than it is. She’s too tired to think of a better word. She rubs a hand over her face, pushing the hair back over her forehead, says, “I’ll reinforce it for you when we get out.”

Kazari noses at Efri’s shoulder – the shredded fabric of her dress, the fraying edges stained with blood. Efri says, “I know. I’ll have to sew that up too.” Over her shoulder, she calls, “Kazari’s leg’s hurt, I think.”

“There’s blood on you,” Sissel replies. She peels her hand off the floor and leans back on her heels.

Efri touches her shoulder again. “’S fine,” she says. “Just a scrape. The blood’s drying already.”

It’s really sore, actually – the flesh abraded and tender, an ache sinking deep into the muscle – but it’s normal sore, the kind of sore you really should be after being thrown into a wall. It doesn’t feel sprained or dislocated or anything like that.  Just like it will be bruised a whole rainbow of colours come tomorrow.

Kazari noses at it again. She leans too far forward and falters on her maybe-hurt leg – rights herself, wincing, and rolls her shoulder. It gleams, just for a moment, and she nearly stumbles again. Efri puts out a hand to steady her. (It doesn’t really accomplish anything – Efri’s strong, but she’s not that strong – but it’s the principle of it.) “What was that spell?”

“Pain relief,” Sissel says from behind her. “I think. Doesn’t actually fix anything, but.”

“You’ll be okay ‘til we find someone?” Efri asks, and Kazari nods. She presses a hand against their shoulder and nods back.

They both turn to look at Sissel, then, who’s just kneeling on the floor, sitting on her heels.

“You all right?” Efri asks her.

“All right,” Sissel confirms. She doesn’t look at them. “Didn’t even come near me.”

She’s staring.

Efri crosses the floor to stand with her. (She needs to lean on Kazari – her legs are too wobbly, and she doesn’t want to touch the dead thing’s stick, doesn’t want to look for her own. Kazari limps a little on their sore front leg.) There’s a moment of total, humming silence – all of them still and staring, necks craned back, looking up at the thing.

Whatever it is.

It’s a ball. Big and blue and shimmering, it floats above a wide crystalline dish set into the floor, spinning on an axis. Just spinning and spinning and spinning, endless motion. Its smooth surface is cut through with dark wavering lines, etched with lettering, and it doesn’t quite glow but it doesn’t not glow, either, the light moving across it silkily, like clouds in a blue sky. It looks like something that should be humming – a low pitch in their ears, an eerie shiver dancing over their skin – but it’s silent. Inert, maybe, but for the spinning.

“What is it?” Efri asks. Her voice cracks as she speaks. She looks down at Sissel’s face, staring as though mesmerised, illuminated by the room’s dim lighting – the fires that should not still be burning down here, the luminous not-glow of the ball.

Sissel says, “I don’t know. Something important.”

Hovering above the dish, it spins, and spins, and spins.

“Is it what the ghost was talking about?” Efri asks. She tilts her head and squints at it. It doesn’t – well, it looks strange and unearthly and powerful, but it isn’t doing anything. And it hadn’t been clear what the ghost was talking about, exactly, according to Sissel, just that it was something important – but what else could it be?

Sissel, still watching it, shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says. “I think so.”

Efri watches it with her, brushing a bit more hair out of her face. It’s sticking to her sweaty forehead. She feels a drip of not-dry blood running down her arm under her sleeve.

Kazari is staring at it too – just as confounded as the rest of them. Efri sees the light in their irises shifting as the ball spins.

They’re not learning anything from staring, the ball staying strange and mysterious as ever, so Efri raps her knuckles against her sternum to steady her breathing (it’s slowed a bit – not normal, but closer to it) and climbs up onto the stone rimming of the dish. Kazari, behind her, lows in consternation; Sissel catches her breath, a noise like a creaking door. “Careful,” she says.

“Promise,” Efri replies, and places her feet very, very carefully on the glassy blue flooring. Nothing happens. She doesn’t step on the dark curved lines as she treads toward the ball in the centre, slow and wary as if she were approaching a skittish animal. Nothing happens.

She reaches out, and, with just the tips of her fingers, she grazes the ball’s surface.

Nothing happens.

It’s cool to the touch, and smooth, like polished metal or not-frozen ice or delicate glasswork. It continues to spin gently under her fingers, warming her glove with friction, no smudges left on its clouded face.

 It really feels like there should at least be a tingle running up her arm, a strange and unfamiliar current, a spark. But it’s just Efri, standing with an arm outstretched, pressing her hand to a ball.

“It’s not doing anything,” she reports, and Sissel clambers up onto the dish with her, fitting her palm to its gently hovering underside. Kazari balks, begins pacing agitatedly. Efri frowns. “Why isn’t it doing anything? Shouldn’t it be doing something?”

“It’s important,” Sissel says definitively. There’s ancient dust on her fingers, but none of it seems to transfer. “It’s something really special, I think.”

Efri shifts restlessly. She shifts her grip and tries to grab onto the dark ridged curves ringing its surface, but they slip easily away from her grasp as though her touch was no barrier at all. “But what does it do?”

Sissel shrugs.

Behind them, Kazari lows.

Efri drops her hand and grabs Sissel’s wrist. “C’mon,” she says, and when Sissel frowns at her, “We’re not going to learn anything about it this way. We have to look for clues!”

Kazari makes a more impatient noise. (Efri thinks she found a clue.)

Sissel gives the ball one last searching look and lets Efri tug her away, off the weird blue dish and down to where Kazari stands on the stone floor, at the head of the table where the dead man sat. Efri sniffs loudly and tries not to think about it too much. The table is smooth polished stone, worn a little away with time; Efri trails a gloved finger over the edge and directs her attention to where Kazari points with their chin.

There’s something carved into the surface, the edges blunted and shapes softened by however many years it must have been since it was put there. Efri squints, trying to make it out. She has to stand right up on her tiptoes to get the right angle to see much of it in full.

“That’s not letters,” she says eventually, frowning. She’s pretty sure she knows her alphabet well enough by now to know that. “Is it magic?”

Sissel shakes her head. “I don’t know what it is. It’s not like magical writing I’ve ever seen.”

Efri looks at Kazari, who also shakes her head. “Maybe it’s a different sort of lettering,” she theorises. It must have been written a long time ago, if it’s from back when the city had people. Onmund’s been reading all about it for ages, and he’s told her a bit – Saarthal was the city of Atmorans, populated by proto-Nordic people. All complicated history stuff. But they weren’t quite the same as Nords today, he said, so it stands to reason they had different writing, too. They’re supposed to be uncovering and cataloguing artifacts (at the thought, Efri glances back at the hovering ball and swallows an inane bubble of laughter) so she suggests, “Maybe you can copy it and we can show it to someone. I’m sure there’ll be someone at the College what knows what it is.”

Sissel, also standing on her toes, nods dutifully. “What will you do?”

The chamber they’re in is cavernous, and about empty but for the ball in the dish, the altar and chair, the body on the ground. “I’ll check him,” she says, and points. “See if he has anything on him that’s special.”

Sissel follows her finger and grimaces.

She digs out her note-paper and her stick of char, and Efri assumes it’s clues time, but when she turns she feels a hand grip her elbow. She looks back over her tattered shoulder at Sissel’s face, her furrowed brow.

“Promise you’re really okay?” she says, voice anxious and solemn.

“Promise,” Efri says, twisting her arm to touch her friend’s hand. Sissel presses her lips together and lets go of her arm.

Kazari trails after Efri to look at the dead man.

First thing is the metal stick. It’s magic someway, Efri knows – he waved it and threw her into a wall, flung spells with it – but she’s not sure how. Doesn’t know enough about enchantments. Didn’t need to, to use it; when Kazari clamped down on his arm she just ripped it from his grasp and –

She doesn’t quite exactly remember, actually, except for the bitter tang of adrenaline in her mouth and nose, the horrible grunting and scuffling sounds, the heft of the stick in her hands. Impact, over and over and over, against something that had a little more give each time.

Efri scrubs a hand over her mouth and grips the handle of the stick. It takes effort to wrest it out of the thing’s face, caught as it is by the edges of the helmet, and when it’s finally yanked free it’s – actually not as bad as she might have expected. There’s no blood, and the corpse was so desiccated it already didn’t even really look like a person anymore, so it registers less as someone with horrible violence done to it and more as a really gross art piece. It’s not nice. She doesn’t like the twisted, gaping mouth, teeth embedded wrong-ways in its tissue and scattered like coins over the floor. And one of the eyes, which had glowed unearthly blue, is now a dull, rotten black, squished like a plum in its socket.

It's worse the more she looks. She sniffs and turns away.

“This is magic, right?” she asks Kazari, testing the weight of it in her hands, the cool surface of the metal, and they nod. “A good artifact?” she adds, and they nod again, emphatically. Efri sets the stick aside and kneels.

It wasn’t wearing any clothes, really – or if it was, they rotted away. She touches the rusted armour gingerly, tries to avoid brushing her gloves against the shrivelled skin at all. Whoever it was had expensive taste, it seems – there’s jewellery in a shockingly well-preserved beard, pendants around the neck, armbands. Efri asks Kazari if each thing is enchanted. No to the armbands, no to the beard-ring, and then, pressed against the wizened chest where the flesh contours to the ribs, she finds some kind of necklace, sharp-edged and thrumming. Kazari nods to that, and, face scrunched up like an old fruit, Efri reaches around the ancient neck to slip it off.

She tucks it into a belt pocket with the tripwire necklace they found at the weird wall.

“Done,” Sissel says. She folds her paper and slips it into her own pouch. Her footfalls on the echo-y stone floor as she approaches the body for the first time are almost silent. “Did you find anything?”

“Necklace,” Efri replies, watching Sissel’s face pinch at the sight of him. “And – stick.” She scoops up the metal stick and holds it out. “He did spells with it.”

Sissel looks at it warily. “Is he a draugr?” she asks, glancing back down at his mashed-up face.

“I mean,” Efri says, “he’s got to be, right?” She’s certainly never seen a draugr before, but what else could it be?

(Calling it a draugr makes her shiver, the set of her shoulders quaking. She’ll stick to dead man.)

Sissel shudders. She reaches out to grip the handle of the stick, and Efri’s not sure if she’s taking it or just trying to keep herself upright. “I can’t believe that happened,” she says. Her voice sounds, suddenly, fragile. “I can’t believe we’re alive.”

“Me neither,” Efri says. She presses the tip of the stick into the ground so Sissel can lean on it, stands a little unsteadily.

Kazari, with a hushed murmur, telegraphs something. Efri recognises the head incline of understanding – she’s familiar with that word, that idea – and, after a moment, the flickering ear of doubt.

“They’ll have to believe us,” she says with conviction, because she means it. “We’ll show them. They’ll see for themselves.”

Kazari presses their nose to her head.

Efri clasps her hands together. “We’ll go tell someone now,” she declares – though it’s easier said than done; they were lost in the ruins ages before they even found the crumbling wall, the halls, this horrible wonderful chamber. But they’ll get un-lost eventually. They’ll get out eventually. Surely. They have practice enough with walking. “But first – help me find my stick.”

[crimeronan]

youtube shorts is recommending me anti-trans accounts doing street interviews in portland like "omg omg ongggg kitkat look look look we made algyrythm so good. look look ❗️❗️❗️ you live here, yes?? 🥳 we know where you live?? 👉👈 you like local content?? 🥺 you like portland?? 👉👈 you want see portland???? 🥺🥺🥺 HERE PORTLAND POSTER!!! 😄" like. damn dude i actually feel kinda bad that you tried so hard. like you actually did pick up maybe one-half of a topic i like to watch videos about. it's like when a little kid tries to pick flowers for their mom and gives her an allergic reaction instead. i'm sitting here like wow. is this really what portland videos are?? is it seriously all just viral conservative clickbait and longform videos about fake meme polycules???

.....should i have a fucking youtube account where i post about being in an actual portland polycule????

[lesbiangiratina]

I should be allowed to visit any website i want :( no website i want to visit should ever be dead :( they should be archived forever :(