#its a statment

[koszmarnybudyn]

Yeah I know that's not a tape recorder this is a doodle and i didnt google it before i drew it. Anyway.. dndads tma au because its plauging my mind again so have a little snippet that i wrote in class:

Uh...Willy, told me to do these logs now as a way of catalouging our "adventures" and archiving the older stuff. I heard before my times there were reports but it seems kinda hard to belive since i've worked here for ages and never seen any, literally none. Guess some unfortunete soul needs to get stuck with the paperwork and today it just happpens to be me.. great. For some fucking reason writing or recording this shit digitally doesn't work, so Norm decided we could use these..tapes? Or whatever, I'm not a nerd. So yeah I'm now stuck in this stuffy basment speaking into a beat up dictaphone like some wacky sci-fi scientist that's going crazy, I guess. *Sigh* Fuck I spend too much time with Norm i'm starting to sound like him.

So where to start..? *Pause as the voice gets slightly further and muffled supposedly reaching under the desk* I guess one of these is as good as any, I think its from... Well definitly before i started working here. Let's just get this over with...

[crows-junk-pile]

Context

Tldr : Vase in TMA stole a guy's husband, the Tma fandom now refers to that vase as The Homophobic Vase

Thank you for lending me your pen. I thanked you when you handed it to me, but I don’t know if you’ll remember. I wonder, will you… forget you lent it to me and believe that it was my pen all along? Maybe instead you’ll forget that I ever had one to begin with, and think of me as an idiot who turned up to give a statement without a pen, so you had to lend me yours. My own fault for putting it down, really. Assuming I did ever have one. I’ll try to keep a slightly closer hold on this one.

I’ve been in the antiques business for a long time. It’s not what it used to be. [Nervous chuckle] I’m sorry, I know. I always did that, try to make myself feel more comfortable with jokes. There’s a follow up to that one, you know. Something along the lines of the joke being so old only an antiques dealer would be able to sell it. I love that one; I think it’s clever, but in my whole life it’s only ever gotten a laugh once. That’s why I remember buying the vase so clearly. I remember that the seller laughed.

In the old days, I never would have considered buying wares from the likes of Mikaele Salesa. He has a good reputation for quality, but a… bad reputation for legality, as it were. I’ve had more than one acquaintance sell on a particularly valuable find they got from him, only to discover that it didn’t have proper import papers, or that it had been reported stolen years before. Charlie Miller even did some jail time over a Georgian brooch he bought off him, so as a general rule I’d have given Salesa’s stuff a wide berth, but… Well, the antiques business isn’t what it used to be. That isn’t a joke. I had to close up my shop a few years ago, you see. Actual antiques don’t sell to the mass market anymore. Oh, young people will snap up vintage clothes or have any number of cheap faux-antique replicas strewn about their living rooms, but as soon as they get a look at the price tag for the real thing? They’re out of there like a shot.

So I went the same way as a lot of my peers. Lose the premises, start selling only high-margin goods direct to specific clients who can afford them, or shift a few guaranteed sellers on the auction. It’s the only real way to stay afloat in the business nowadays, but the competition is intense, and getting the calibre of artefact you need has become a more cutthroat affair. I’m not the only one in the business to recently soften their attitude towards buying from people like Mikaele Salesa.

It was my first meeting with him, back in March, and I was nervous, so I told my joke. Just off-hand, almost a reflex. I didn’t expect any reaction, really, I… I certainly didn’t expect him to laugh. But he did, this sudden, deep, throaty laugh that seemed to come out of nowhere. He didn’t say anything afterwards, just continued discussing business. But it stayed with me. There was nothing particularly strange about the laugh, not really. Why do I remember it so clearly?

Salesa was taking me through his ‘showroom’. There was a fancy-looking sign above the door, but it didn’t do much to hide the fact that it was basically a warehouse. More of the antiques were still in their packing crates, and I couldn’t help making a note of how quick and easy it would be for him to pack everything down and disappear if he needed to. Still, I’d made a few good purchases already and was cautiously optimistic. I’d bought a pair of cavalry sabres from the Revolutionary War, absolutely excellent condition, and a British artilleryman’s tunic from World War I, a few other bits and pieces as well. I recall I felt a moment of relief that I didn’t deal in books, as I caught sight of several crates packed to the brim with heavy-looking volumes. I was looking for something big, though. Something that would make an actual dent in the mountain of debt I’d been piling up.

I found it in that old Chinese pot. From the Jiajing period, so Salesa said, and the construction seemed to back him up. The glaze and the workmanship fitted with mid-to-late Ming dynasty, but there was something… off about the actual design. Instead of the pictures or scenes common to the ceramics of the period, the blue glaze was painted on in crisp, thin geometric lines. They repeated perfectly and seemed to get smaller and more intricate the closer I looked, but the shapes they formed never lost any of the precision, seeming to continue on however closely I looked. The effect was disorientating, and made the vase seem smaller than it actually was. It made my head hurt a bit when I looked at it for too long. It was amazing.

When he saw me staring, Salesa clapped me on the back and named a price that almost made me choke. We haggled a bit, and eventually reached a price I considered only a little bit unreasonable. I hurried my purchases home, feeling slightly soiled by my visit to the warehouse, and very much hoping it would be a good few months, if not years, before I was in such dire straits that I needed to go again. I got home, had a shower and some food and immediately started to look into finding a buyer for my latest acquisitions. I remember I was planning to make a few calls, but my headache got so bad that I had to have an early night.

The problems started soon after. It was little things at first. Like my shoes. I’m not a particularly fashion-conscious man at the best of times, so I have three pairs of shoes. Comfortable loafers for everyday use, a pair of walking boots for hiking, and some well-shined, polished, leather brogues for fancier events. Well, I had a rather upmarket auction that I needed to attend, so I went to put on my nice shoes, but they were nowhere to be found. Not the shoes, not the box I kept them in. Instead there was a bag containing two shirts that I know for a fact I threw away the year before. When I asked my husband, David, about it, he told me point blank that I had never had any such shoes. Claimed I always wore my loafers when I went to auctions or parties.

I know that compared to some of the ghost stories you must hear in this place, a pair of misplaced shoes seems perfectly trivial, but something felt so… wrong about the whole situation. In the end I did go in my loafers. I don’t remember if anyone at the auction noticed.

It was about a week later that I got the invoice from Salesa. It was a pleasant surprise, far less than I thought we’d agreed on. That feeling lasted until I looked through the itemised list and realised why the cost was so low. He hadn’t charged me for the Ming. I’ll admit that I was somewhat conflicted over whether to raise the issue, but in the end I decided that even if Mikaele Salesa did work with thieves, I was not going to be counted among them. So I phoned him to try and explain the mistake.

He seemed to be in a fine mood when he answered the phone, and asked me if I’d had a chance to try out the sabres yet, which I’m pretty sure was a joke. I told him that there was an item he’d missed off the invoice, and he said that no, everything had been double-checked and was correct. I was getting suspicious at this point, and thought he might be trying to pull a fast one of some sort with me, maybe get me to take the blame for some illicit scheme gone wrong. I told him so in no uncertain terms, and described our encounter and the vase in minute detail. He was quiet for a few seconds, and then asked me if I could send him a photo of the pot. His tone was different, and he sounded oddly wary when he made the request. I was very on edge by this point, but could come up with no good reason not to agree, so I took a few pictures with my phone and sent them through to him.

It was a long time before he spoke again, and when he did he sounded… different. Almost scared, I thought. He told me that I could keep it. No charge. I began to protest again, but he ignored it. I remember his exact words: “I do not remember having that thing, which means it belongs to you.” Then he hung up.

This was all very strange, of course, but even then I wasn’t worried. Not like I should have been.

It was my book next. A signed copy of Catch-22, my favourite book. Vanished from its place on my bookshelf, leaving only an empty space behind. David just gave me another blank stare when I asked him about it. I admit I almost lost it at him then. Shoes were one thing, but that book meant a lot to me. I accused him of playing some stupid joke, and tried to remind him what I’d gone through to get it, flying over to America for Joseph Heller’s last book tour, queuing for hours and then that dreadful evening I thought that sudden rainstorm had ruined it all. By the end he was looking… very alarmed indeed and started to ask me how I was feeling. He wanted to know if I’d been under a lot of stress at work, if there was anything I wanted to talk about. I left.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I am crazy. It makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it? It would make it neat. Except no. No, I would need to have gone mad a long, long time before this for the idea of it being in my head to hold up. My perceptions are the only ones I can trust. Maybe. I don’t know.

This went on for months. The tie I got for my last birthday, my grandfather’s teapot, the tunic I bought from Salesa, things just kept going missing, and every time David would tell me that whatever it was didn’t exist. Or it wasn’t mine. Or I was misremembering. For a while I thought he was actually trying to gaslight me, make me think I was losing my mind, but when the tunic went missing, I called Salesa again. This time he laughed when he told me that he didn’t remember selling any World War I items to me on my visit. I checked the invoice, and it was no longer listed there. Just empty, accusing paper where the words had been.

I know these things were real. I know they existed. Why won’t anyone just believe me?

This is where I started to come undone a bit. To be honest, I don’t think anyone would do much better in my situation. I hadn’t made any connection between the old Chinese pot and the disappearances. I mean, why would I? But I also hadn’t been able to sell it. Whenever I tried, something would get in the way. The other person would forget to send through a crucial email, or they’d stop responding. Once I managed to get it as far as posting it out to a buyer, but it was returned immediately with a note asking why it had been sent to her. Gradually, I began to get suspicious of the thing. Sitting there, with its cascading, maddening patterns in that vile cobalt blue. Trying to tell me that I things didn’t exist, that they hadn’t vanished when I know they have.

I took to watching it. I wasn’t getting much sleep and David was worried sick about me. I know he was talking to various doctors about getting me help. There were certainly a couple of points I was worried about him having me sectioned. None of it helps in the end.

It was about a month ago. I had placed the vase in the centre of the table, and was sat staring at it. Keeping an eye on it. Checking for… god knows what. This had been my ritual for the previous week, keeping my vigil into the small hours, but that night… that night I fell asleep in front of it. I don’t remember my dream. Running, maybe? I know I woke with a start sometime around 2 in the morning.

As I tried to rub the sleep from my eyes, I heard a sound from the table in front of me. It was the dull thump of a heavy book hitting the tabletop. I looked and, sure enough, there was my copy of Catch-22, just lying there in front of that strange ceramic thing. And not just my book, there was a small pile of objects around the base. My shoes, a tie, things I don’t even remember losing. One by one they rose up out of the mouth of the vase and tumbled to the table. It didn’t matter how big they were, they all seemed to fit.

And then came the moment when everything had been disgorged. I saw all the things that I had lost, and I thought it must be over. It must be done. What else could possibly come of there? And I saw the pale shapes of long, thin fingertips begin to creep above the lip of the pot. I remember thinking that it couldn’t be a normal person living in that pot, because the fingernails were too dirty. Isn’t that an odd thing to think at a time like that?

I ran, of course. Turned around and sprinted out of the door and into the street and didn’t return until morning. Maybe I should have called the police, but I was in no state to do much of anything except shiver under a tree for hours. David was gone. I allowed myself some brief hope that maybe he’d just left me, maybe he’d escape with just a divorce. But no. One call to the housing association confirmed that, as far as they were concerned, I’d always lived alone.

I want to smash that thing. I want to dash its maddening patterns to the ground and stomp on it until there is nothing left but powder. But it’s also disappeared, of course. I can’t find it anywhere. It’s still taking things, though. Sorry about your pen.

BEAD JUG/GAY JUG ITS TO COMBAT THE HOMOPHOBIC VASE

[caruliaa]

whenever i think abt podcasts i think abt how most of the rly good ones i like involve at least woman and then think abt all those shitty alpha male podcasts and i start to think this is why we only need podcasts by women theyre all good and then i remember

[dark-twist-fairytales]

Now that my heart has FINALLY calmed down (pretty sure I nearly gave myself a panic attack from excitement), I can show off the little skull I got!

I got him halfway through my insanity mindset of mumbling and muttering to myself about decoding and deciphering.

Her name is Strahdanya Elise.

[dunhoof]

may i be extremely pedantic and annoying about the ai generated image policy

[causalityparadoxes]

Btw if someone asks if you support israel and you say 'what could ever make you think that how DARE YOU' maybe don't have multiple easily findable posts on your blog about how "israel is good actually"?

Faux-progressive zionist apologists really love to say "dare you accuse me of doing the thing i did". Silence is not neutral. Especially when in the past you've only ever used your voice to legitimise a genocidal oppressor.

[1eos]

Re: your post about the kardashians/bts being pop culture slaughter:

Respectfully, this take makes no sense. Are you basing your idea of BTS on the three english singles they’ve released in their 10 year career? If so, then I can understand how you might come to the “soulless pop” conclusion, but you are leaving out 99.9% of their actual work in saying that, making your point invalid. Also, I severely disagree with you using BTS specifically to make the point about music nowadays being “all about numbers”. A much better example of this would be the rise in tiktok songs which are solely designed to be promoted on tiktok and get 30 second clips played on the platform for views. BTS fans only work so hard for streams because in the beginning, BTS weren’t recognized. They were cut out of performance shows, their performances were blacked out by fans of other groups to make it seem like they were performing to empty audiences, they purposefully trended other artists to make any attempt BTS made at promoting their music unsuccessful, and routinely called into KOREAN award shows to dispute results or argue against them winning anything. This isn’t even taking into account the fact that while BTS have a significant western following and have since the start, they’ve only really gotten tangible recognition from the western music industry recently. Even when they were first becoming popular their main recognition here was by numbers (albums sold leading to their positions on the billboard charts) or solely for online influence because of their fans (top social artist awards) and not to do with their music. Even now a lot of the awards they win in America are based on the fact they’re Korean and not due to their actual music. (i.e. only being nominated in “best k-pop artist” category rather than for anything related to the actual music they put out). 

Also, to your point about cultural appropriation- I want to ask, can you point to specific examples? I’m more than willing to have a dialogue about this issue because it’s obviously nuanced and I’m never going to think I am 100% correct about it but I’d like to hear where you’re coming from. Is it the clothes? Is it because they rap? I’d like to ask what you’d have them do instead. They have routinely paid homage to the black culture they take their musical style from and never shy away from hip hop and raps roots. In fact during their early years they had a whole series about going to LA and learning about hip hop culture from real hip hop legends like Coolio to become further educated on where the style originates. They have an entire song dedicated to them loving hip hop and naming black hip hop artists where they got inspiration and who they admire (it’s called hip hop phile). Would you have them stop rapping or stop making hip hop? Would you have them stop delving into soul? If that’s the case would you have every non-black artist stop making soul or RnB or hip hop music? These are genuine questions. I just don’t understand where you are drawing the line. Where is your line between appropriation and appreciation? Is any non-black artist who delves into these genres only bad if they become famous because of it?

Also take issue with your comment about how no one can sing because they’re fitting into corsets or whatever. Have you listened to actual clips of BTS singing live without backing tracks? Of course everyone has their own opinion but they are FAR from objectively bad singers. (Jungkook actually appeared on the korean version of masked singer and almost won. I understand that’s one member of 7 and he’s the main vocalist but to say they all can’t sing is incorrect, and even though the other vocal members don’t have those accolades they are still quite talented.)

To me your take seems severely misinformed, it seems like you are assuming A LOT about BTS based on your own opinions about “new” k-pop (again, BTS aren’t really “new” and are only a year younger than the group you seem to be a fan of. If a decade old is new then we have very different time barometers. LOL.). It seems like a lot of your take is rooted in the notion that BTS came from a “k-pop factory” (which in itself that idea is a bit. well. it’s not a KIND take to put on the korean pop music industry and singling out BTS while not mentioning any new american pop is crazy to me sorry) when they in fact came from an indie label and the only reason anyone knows who their company is now is BECAUSE of BTS. BTS saved their small company from bankruptcy by singing about themes their target demographic in korea (teenagers at the time, because THEY were teenagers) actually cared about (being pressured by the adults in your life to have a “dream” even though no one knows what they want at that age, the rigid school system present in their country- in general their theme as a debut idol group was essentially “stick it to the man” which isn’t a very mainstream premise and definitely wasn’t back then. no mainstream pop or idol group was singing songs like that.) and created a following and then continued to change and grow their message to speak to their audience as both they and their audience aged. To say they are bad just because they became incredibly popular discredits their artistry and frankly discredits many artists who have found fame. 

now you know damn well i'm not reading this shit 😭😭😭😭😭 DEPLOY THE LOSING GAME

[butchlifeguard]

people who dont like bugs get behind me

[mutsukiss]

Idk if you guys realize how mentally unwell you look when you unironiclaly upload to the internet a post where you spit a pre-chewed opinion criticizing group A for saying "Group B must die violently because they deserve it" and then end up with a "and that's why Group A must die violently because they deserve it"

[skeppsbrott]

If you're talking about boycotting Eurovision with regards to their continued inclusion of Israel, regardless of whether you usually watch it or not, I assume you have already contacted 1) EBU 2) the broadcasting company airing Eurovision in your region, to demand the EBU bar Israel from the contest.

[istherewifiinhell]

next customer to try some fucking wizard riddle shit i think im just gonna hit with a chair.

[butchyena]

holding a gun up to the heads of everyone on this site PLEASE understand not every post is about you

[nasty-redacted]

so many problems could be avoided if men just kissed on the mouth

[caruliaa]

read some fanfiction today. it was pretty good. The Ogre was there.

[suave-hogan]

What is your opinion on Return to Wherever

Opinion on Return to Wherever? I've got opinions for sure. I'll try to keep it short.

Solid album. I'd recommend it as a good first for new listeners. Definitely one of my top favourite albums of TWRP's

Here is a bit more ↓

I also feel like Return to Wherever was a turning point for TWRP's sound overall. It feels much brighter in comparison to earlier works. Of course they started the change back with Ladyworld and continued it in Together Through Time, but for me they really solidified that new feeling they were putting into their music. Note: I believe Doctor Sung mentioned on stream that RtW was written around the time they relocated to Los Angeles, and it had an effect on their music writing at the time. I'll try to check the vods to cite this, because I don't want to say that he said something without source (thats a lot of hour to go through, so it may be a while, but I did check the years they announced they were moving and it does match up)

I'd also like to talk about the cover art.

Lazerhorse definitely does a good job at emulating styles from the different artists he takes inspiration from, and Hiroshi Nagai is no exception. The beach is lovely, the clouds are fluffy, and the horizon calls back to Ladyworld with those otherworldly crystals. Then there is the rendering style of the boys themselves. It reminds me of that one retro airline poster that Daft Punk used.

Theres also the name stripe that holds the album name, band name, and track list. Its the perfect shade of pink and no one can tell me otherwise. It goes very well with the blue used for the sky and water, and was a good choice to make the text stand out from the artwork. Also, the vinyl release with the pink and blue colouration to match was a great choice as well.

tldr: good album.

[edlucavalden]

Someone said thsi b4 but the true kabru (and mithrun TBH) litmus test is to see what their opinion is with milsiril.

Am once again thinking about Milsiril and the general fandom impression of her, it's fascinating