#long example tag

[goatsandgangsters]

how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

[ladybeug]

I drew the same comic twice because I didn't think the first one was funny enough. I don't know if the second comic is funnier though??

Here's both of them

Side by side because i couldn't decide which one to put first - knowing the punchline changes the experience?? pick your adventure. read either one first.

which ones funnier i honestly can't tell

[svtskneecaps]

i also just want to point out the qsmp members' commitment to like never letting the inactive members die. like dantdm logged on twice and is canonically dead and everyone continues to blame mysterious happenstance on him. spreen is canonically dead and yet people are still like namedropping him even tho the house façade he built has been demolished and also probably consumed by a mountain. they meme on kameto who's barely been on except that time he was a fed spy that was iconic as hell. they just immortalize their members and they're always so happy to see old faces come back and it lowkey makes me emotional lmfaoo like missa barely logged on for a while but goddamn nobody forgot his name bc philza can't go one day without mentioning him and mariana barely logs on but every time fit saw the homeless mariana in roier's city no matter what he'd stop dead and tell it "come home" and when slime came back to the server for elections after having logged off for the last like two months everyone was still excited to meet him bc the others had kept his memories on the server fresh and alive, maxo died canonically in the nuke and pierre pasted his face all over the server, luzu vanished for months and we never forgot him either thanks to the computers and foolish's wack ass family tree. like when purgatory teams were chosen and team red constantly joked about how it would be so over for the other teams once germán logged on despite the fact that germán had only ever logged on ONCE, the way they cheered when they snatched rubius in the split of green despite the fact that rubius hadn't logged on more than twice since march. they just keep the names alive all the time and it's like

it just makes me really happy to see. like it makes me really happy. like the admin team and the members alike are like 'no way in HELL are we letting your memory go' like damn once ur on isla quesadilla you really are stuck as an islander forever :D

[anipgarden]

Things to Do that Aren't Related to Growing Plants

This is my second post in a series I’ll be making on how to increase biodiversity on a budget! I’m not an expert--just an enthusiast--but I hope something you find here helps! 

Some of us just don’t have much luck when it comes to growing plants. Some of us simply want to aim for other ways to help that don’t involve putting on gardening gloves. Maybe you've already got a garden, but you want to do more. No problem! There’s a couple of options you can look into that’ll help attract wildlife in your area without even having to bring out any shovels!

Provide a Water Source

Oftentimes when I see ‘add a water source’ in informational articles about improving your backyard for wildlife, it’s almost always followed by an image of a gorgeous backyard pond with a waterfall and rock lining that looks expensive to set up, difficult to maintain, and overall just… not feasible for me. Arguably, not feasible for a lot of people. And that’s okay! There’s still ways to add water in your garden for all kinds of creatures to enjoy!

There’s tons of ways to create watering stations for insects like bees and butterflies. A self refilling dog bowl can work wonders! Add some stones into the receiving tray for insects to land on or use to climb out, and you’ve got a wonderful drinking spot for all kinds of insects! You can also fill a saucer or other dish with small stones and fill it, though it’ll likely need refilling daily or even several times a day during hot times. 

I've seen people online use all kinds of things to make water features. Some go with terra-cotta pots, pebbles, and a cheap pump to get a small and simple fountain. Others use old tires, clay, and a hole in the ground to create an in-ground mini pond system. If all else fails, even a bucket or watertight box with a few plants in it can do the trick--though do be wary of mosquitoes if the water isn’t moving. In situations like these, a solar-powered fountain pump or bubbler are great for keeping the water moving while still making it a drinking option for wildlife (it not even more appealing for some)--and these items can be obtained fairly cheap online!

Bird baths are an option as well--a classic way to provide for birds in your area, they can be easy to find online or in a gardening store! The only downside is that a good, quality bird bath can be pricey up-front. However, a nice stone bird bath should last a long time, be easy to clean and refill, and be enjoyed by many birds! I’ve also seen tutorials on how to make your own with quickcrete! Bird baths will be a welcome sight to birds, as they provide a space for them to drink and bathe to regulate the oils in their feathers for flight and insulation. Putting a stone in the middle will also help insects to escape if they fall in, and provide a place to perch so they can get their own drink. You’ll want to change the water and clean the baths regularly--as often as once a week, if you can manage it.

If possible, it’s highly encouraged to fill and refill water features with rainwater instead of tap water. Tap water is often treated, so instead of using hoses or indoor kitchen water, collecting some rainwater is a great alternative. Collecting rainwater can be as simple as leaving cups, bins, or pots outside for awhile.

Butterflies and other creatures will also drink from mud puddles. If you can maintain an area of damp soil mixed with a small amount of salt or wood ash, this can be fantastic for them! Some plants also excel at storing water within their leaves and flowers (bromeliads come to mind), making them an excellent habitat for amphibians as well as a drinking spot for insects and birds.

Bird Feeders and Bird Houses

Some of the fancy, decorated bird feeders are expensive, but others can be pretty low-cost--I got my bird feeder from Lowe’s for around 10 dollars, and a big bag of birdseed was around another 10 dollars and has lasted several refills! If you don’t mind occasionally buying more birdseed, a single birdfeeder can do a lot to attract and support local birds! If you’re handy, have some spare wood, and have or can borrow some tools, you may even be able to find instructions online to make your own feeder. You may not even need wood to do so! Even hummingbird feeders, I’ve found, are quick to attract them, as long as you keep them stocked up on fresh sugar water in the spring and summer!

An important note with bird feeders is that you have to make sure you can clean them regularly. Otherwise, they may become a vector for disease, and we want to avoid causing harm whenever possible. Also keep an ear out and track if there’s known outbreaks of bird diseases in your area. If local birding societies and scientists are advising you take your birdfeeders down for awhile, by all means, do it!

Bird houses are naturally paired with bird feeders as biodiversity promoters for backyard spaces, and it makes sense. Having bird houses suited to birds in your area promotes them to breed, raise their young, disperse seeds, and generally engage in your surrounding environment. Setting them up takes careful selection or construction, preparation, and some patience, but sooner or later you might get some little homemakers! Keep in mind, you will need to clean your birdhouses at least once a year (if not once per brood) to make sure they’re ready and safe for birds year after year--you wouldn’t want to promote disease and parasites, after all. But they could be a valuable option for your landscape, whether you purchase one or construct your own! 

Again, do make sure you're putting up the right kind of boxes for the right kinds of birds. Bluebird boxes are some I see sold most commonly, but in my area I believe they're not even all that common--a nesting box for cardinals or chickadees would be far more likely to see success here! And some birds don't even nest in boxes--robins and some other birds are more likely to use a nesting shelf, instead! Research what birds live in your area, take note of any you see around already, and pick a few target species to make homes for!

Solitary Bee Houses

A bee house or bee hotel is a fantastic way to support the solitary bees in your area! For a few dollars and some annual cleaning, you can buy a solitary bee house from most big box nurseries. Alternatively, you can make one at home, with an array of materials you may already have lying around! You can even make them so that they’ll benefit all kinds of insects, and not necessarily just bees.

Though you don’t even necessarily have to break out the hammer and nails, buy a ton of bricks, or borrow a staple gun. Making homes for tunneling bees can be as simple as drilling holes in a log and erecting it, or drilling holes in stumps and dead trees on your property. You might even attract some woodpeckers by doing this!

Providing Nesting Area

There are tons of different kinds of bees, and they all make different kinds of homes for themselves. Not all of them make big cavity hives like honey bees, or will utilize a solitary bee house. Bumblebees live in social hives underground, particularly in abandoned holes made by rodents--some others nest in abandoned bird nests, or cavities like hollow logs, spaces between rocks, compost piles, or unoccupied birdhouses. Borer, Ground, and Miner bees dig into bare, dry soil to create their nests. Sparsely-vegetated patches of soil in well-drained areas are great places to find them making their nests, so providing a similar habitat somewhere in the garden can encourage them to come! I do talk later in this document about mulching bare soil in a garden--however, leaving soil in sunny areas and south-facing slopes bare provides optimal ground nesting habitat. Some species prefer to nest at the base of plants, or loose sandy soil, or smooth-packed and flat bare ground. They’ve also been known to take advantage of soil piles, knocked over tree roots, wheel ruts in farm roads, baseball diamonds and golf course sand traps. You can create nesting ground by digging ditches or creating nesting mounds in well-drained, open, sunny areas with sandy or silty soil. However, artificially constructed ground nests may only have limited success. 

Providing Alternative Pollinator Foods

Nectar and pollen aren’t the only foods sought out by some pollinators! Some species of butterflies are known to flock to overripe fruit or honey water, so setting these out can be an excellent way to provide food to wildlife. You may want to be cautious about how you set these out, otherwise it can help other wildlife, like ants or raccoons. Butterflies may also drop by to visit a sponge in a dish of lightly salted water. 

Bat Houses and Boxes

Big or small, whether they support five bats or five hundred, making bat boxes and supporting local bats is a great way to boost biodiversity! Not only will they eat mosquitoes and other pest species, but you may also be able to use the guano (bat droppings) as fertilizer! Do be careful if you choose to do that though--I’ve never had the opportunity to, so do some research into how strong it is and use it accordingly.

Provide Passageway Points

If you want your area to be more accessible for creatures that can’t fly or climb fences, allowing or creating access points can be an excellent way to give them a way in and out. Holes in the bottom of walls or fences can be sheltered with plants to allow animals through. 

In a somewhat similar manner, if you’re adding a water fixture, it’s important to provide animals a way to get into and out of the pond--no way in, and they can’t use the water. No way out, and they may drown. Creating a naturalistic ramp out of wood beams or sticks, or stepped platforms out of bricks, stones, or logs can do the trick. 

Get or Keep Logs and Brush Piles

I’ve already mentioned logs a good handful of times so far in this post. To be used as access ramps, or as nesting areas for solitary bees. But they have value as much more than that! Logs on the ground provide shelter for all kinds of animals, especially depending on size--anything from mice, reptiles, and amphibians to things like turkey vultures and bears will use fallen logs as shelter. Inside of a decaying log, there’s a lot of humidity, so amphibians are big fans of them--meanwhile, the upper sides of them can be used as sunning platforms by things like lizards. Other animals can also use the insides of logs as nest sites and hiding places from predators too big to fit inside. Fungi, spiders, beetles, termites, ants, grubs, worms, snails, slugs, and likely much more can be found inside rotting logs, using the rotting wood as food sources or nesting places. They can then provide food for mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. They can also be regarded as a landmark or territory marker as wildlife get more familiar with your space.

So how do you get logs for cheap? Try Chip Drop! I talk about them more in a future post, but you can mark saying that you’d like logs in your drop, so they’ll give you any they have! In fact, you may even get a drop faster if you're willing to accept some logs. You may also be able to approach arborists you see working in your area and ask for logs. There may also be local online listings for people selling logs for cheap, or just trying to get rid of them. If there’s land development going on near you, you may be able to snag logs from trees they cut down to make space. Do keep in mind, you don’t need to have huge gigantic logs laying around your property to make an impact--even small logs can help a lot.

If possible, creating and leaving brush piles on the edge of your property can be a great boost to biodiversity--even if you may not see the wildlife using it. They’ll provide shelter from weather and predators, and lower portions are cool and shady for creatures to avoid the hot sun. The upper layers can be used as perch sites and nest sites for song birds, while lower layers are resting sites for amphibians and reptiles, and escape sites for many mammals. As the material decays, they also attract insects, and as such they’ll attract insect-eating animals too. As more small animals find refuse in your brush pile, their predators will be attracted to them as well. Owls, hawks, foxes, and coyotes are known to visit brush piles to hunt. Making a brush pile can be as simple as piling branches and leaves into a mound, as big or as small as you want. You can even use tree stumps or old fence posts near the base, and keep stacking on plant trimmings and fallen branches. Do note that you don’t want to do this near anything like a fire pit.

Don't forget, with all of these, your mileage may vary for any variation of reasons, so don't worry if you can't take all of even any of these actions! Even just talking about them with other people may inspire someone else to put out a bat box, or leave a few logs out for wildlife!

That's the end of this post! My next post is gonna be about ways to get seeds and plants as cheaply as possible. For now, I hope this advice helps! Feel free to reply with any questions, success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in!

[housederiva]

Is it just me or is there way less fanart being made for this game than the previous ones? Kind of makes me sad, I remember with dai I could check the tags every few hours and find something new weeks after launch, now I only can get away with only looking a few times and week and miss nothing.

I don't think that's Veilguard exclusive.

Things I and my mutuals draw now are getting less notes/reblogs than they did even one year ago, regardless of the fandom. Fanfiction is getting less comments and kudos on ao3 too (not that they were getting many comments in the first place) Less gifs are being made because gif makers weren't getting reblogs. Hell, most of the post I make have a huge discrepancy between likes and reblogs and add polls into that? A thousand people voted on something and only a dozen people reblog it. It's a hollowing feeling when you realise you're calling out to an empty void, I don't blame people for creating less art because of that.

I don't see a vast majority of the people who follow me in my notes because I have likes disabled. Multiple times someone has sent me an ask apologizing for spamming me with likes and I don't understand it? That is not a bad thing And unless you reblogged anything along the way, I didn't even realise you were doing it in the first place. And the people whose notes I do see are not annoying in the slightest, I love the tags you add and I'm sure the original poster does even more so

I'm not trying to shame anyone Into interacting with the fandom spaces they're in but the whole point of Tumblr and what makes it a blogging platform and not social media is that this is a show and tell website. You're supposed to look at something you think is cool and then wave it around for your followers to see and then they pick it up and do the same regardless of how old it is

When you reblog an ask game from someone it used to be common courtesy to send that person one of the asks from it. Folks used to leave comments analysing paragraphs from stories people wrote and theorising about what would happen next on every chapter. We used to send each other asks just asking about our ocs unprompted

If there's no interaction or community when you create something, then what's the point of creating it? It sucks that fandom is morphing into something to be consumed and thrown away the second it's more than a week old unless you're one of a handful of blogs that got lucky and picked up traction at just the right moment

I'm sorry for the rant but I get emotional when I think about the decay of fandom spaces for too long. And this goes without saying, but you guys can reblog anything on my dash if the button isn't disabled on it

[remxedmoon]

You should tell us about color psychology that sounds cool as hell

YES… HA HA HA… YES!

GGGOD I WISH I WASN’T OUT OF THE HOUSE RIGHT NOW. but i’ve been thinking about colors literally all day so you all get to be subject to my madness! sorry this is long and rambly wauaua. nightmarishly long post under the cut.

okay. first things first, a few basics. color theory and color psychology tend to get confused a lot in discussions, but they usually refer to different things. color theory is more about we physically perceive colors (color wheels and color schemes the like), while color psychology focuses on our emotional response to colors. if you’re familiar with the children’s hospital color theory post, that poster wasn’t actually talking about color theory, but color psychology (and also it’s incredibly surface level and heavily misunderstands the subject because in what fucking universe does the quantity of positive associations with a color matter more than the context it’s used in and sorry i have personal beef with this tumblr post).

color theory is also a special interest of mine but i’m not gonna touch on it too much here because it’s not entirely important. mmmaybe another time…

essentially, certain colors (and color combinations) have associations in our brains and that affect our behavior and emotions. these associations are also very much affected by the context a color is used in. colors don’t exist in a vacuum! so while red can symbolize passion and love when used in something like a dress or a bouquet of flowers, it has a very different connotation when it’s, say, splattered on the walls or smeared on the ground in a snail trail.

or for a less Children’s Hospital Themed example, i’ll put my euphrasie and king designs here!

(of course the saturation and brightness of these blues play a massive part in how they’re perceived but this is not a post about color theory this is n)

and, of course, combining colors in a piece can also change their meanings!! i’m about to get real fucking normal.

i’m gonna be focusing on the color combo of red and yellow here because it’s the one that’s most relevant to my art (and also it’s really interesting.) basically, seeing these two colors together activates the part of our brain that controls our appetite, making us actually feel hungry. this is why so many food companies use red and yellow in their branding! it’s neat stuff!!

also, if you’re familiar with it, this is why the mv for butcher vanity uses this color palette!! along with red’s general associations with danger and blood, the color combo also physically induces hunger. pretty fitting for a song about cannibalism!

(there is also red’s association with lust and passion and how that intersects with the double meaning in the lyrics but i cannot derail this post into being an analysis of butcher vanity i’m sorry. we’d be here all week. maybe another day... wipes a tear from my eye)

and i think this might be the reason why some people feel hungry when they see my art, even when i’m not drawing food. while i don’t tend to use red outright, most of my art has very warm undertones (red-oranges and yellows especially), which could be activating that hunger response??

(ah fuck color theory managed to weasel its way into this post again)

admittedly this part is just speculation on my end. i think my rendering style and Shapes also play a role in it, but it’s interesting for me to think about!!

this is only scratching the surface of how complicated colors can get. i was going to go on an entire tangent about color grading and how green lighting can make a scene feel unnerving but this post is already Too Fucking Long. aaaa super sorry if this is Rambly or hard to understand!! i’m not Entirely sure how much the average person knows about color theory and psychology so if there’s any confusing terms here i’m fine with adding stuff for clarity!

wauauuaa thank you so much for asking!!!! i love talking about colors.

tl;dr colors have a bunch of different emotions and meanings tied to them, but you’ve gotta pay attention to the context in which it’s being used. so maybe take a step back before you put that thick red trail on the floor of your children’s hospital.

[canisalbus]

I want you to know that your art is very important to me, and I'm very invested in all of the characters I have seen from you. Also, the discussion about Finnish and other languages having gendered words or not has been the last little push to get me to start learning Finnish which I think is fun.

I'm making this a little compilation post of all the language asks I got. Thank you for sharing, this was genuinely really interesting!

[chaoticamelay]

elon "world's most dangerous antisemite" musk spoke at a far-right extremist political rally in germany and said he thinks people need to 'move beyond' the holocaust, so i've shelved my original post planned for international Holocaust Remembrance Day and instead i am going to talk about how european cities are built with jewish gravestones.

during ww2 the Nazis and their allies were in search of places to get good quality stone for building. then they realized they had countless: the cemeteries of once thriving jewish communities they were targeting. An unknown number (we will never know exactly how many, but it is high) of matzevot (jewish gravestones) were removed from our ancestor's graves and used as construction materials. even after 1945 our cemeteries kept being used as quarries. because our communities were never the same afterwards.

all over Europe, you can find roads, sidewalks, buildings, tools, christian gravestones... even a children's sandbox, made of gravestones stolen from our old jewish cemeteries. sometimes the cemetery land was 'repurposed' into something else as well, with no regard for the human remains there.

Poland

There were 1200 jewish cemeteries in Poland alone, and more than four hundred of them did not survive the war times. They were rearranged to provide sites for housing estates, sports fields, garbage dumps, or sand quarries. The sand mined from them to build houses was mixed with human remains. Only a hundred and fifty graveyards still have more than a hundred gravestones, but before the holocaust there were at between a few hundred thousand or a few million.

Between 2008-2011, photographer Łukasz Baksik documented some places in poland where Jewish gravestones were ''repurposed" during and after the war. Here are his photos: Matzevot for Everyday Use

Top left: A cowshed in Starowola by Parysów, a village in east-central Poland, made of cobbled together jewish gravestones. Top right: A children's sandbox in Szczecin, a city in the West Pomerania Province built in the 1960s/70s. Bottom left: School playing courts in Kazimierz Dolny, a town in eastern Poland. The schoolyard was built, in the 1950s, on the grounds of a Jewish cemetery, and there are fragments of matzevot in the walls. Bottom right: In the town of Brok, in eastern Poland, the interior of a workshop contains a mounted grindstone carved from a jewish gravestone.

Czech Republic and Ukraine

In the 1980s, cobblestones made from Jewish gravestones were used to pave a busy part of Prague's Old Town, a main city square called Wenceslas Square on Na Prikope, a popular shopping street. (As of 2019 they are apparently going to be returned to the Old Jewish Cemetery).

In 2018, a road in L’viv, Ukraine was being repaired when city workers found over 100 Jewish gravestones used in paving it. Matzevot have been found here in the past and brought back to the Jewish cemetery by volunteer teams.

Left: Cobblestones used to pave a busy street in Prague, taken from Jewish headstones. The Hebrew letter hey and the numbers 895 are visible. Right: Matzevot used as paving in Lviv, being rescued by volunteers.

Belarus and Lithuania

in Vilnius, Lithuania, jewish tombstones were used all over the city in construction, including for an electric transformer substation, church steps, and the grand stairway in the trade union headquarters. They are being rescued and returned to the cemetery as they are found.

In Belarus, matzevot were used for house foundations, porches, fences, backyard paving, roads, or they were turned into millstones.

Left: A man examines the memorial made from gravestones that had been used to build stairs in Vilnius. Right: 2016 photo of Jewish gravestone used as stairway of church in Vilnius.

Greece

People often forget about Sephardic Jews and the Holocaust, but Greece and especially Salonika (Thessaloniki), the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," were devastated by the Shoah. Salonika's major jewish cemetery contained hundreds of thousands of graves- when it was completely destroyed by the Nazis (with the help of Greeks who wanted the land), the gravestones were used in construction projects around the city. Aristotle University sits on the site today. Fragments of matzevot can still be found around the city in churches, buildings, even sidewalks, although now when they're found they're brought to the new Jewish cemetery.

Broken up Jewish gravestone used for construction In Thessaloniki.

Eighty years is not a long time. We are not moving on. We are seeing rising fascism, scapegoating of minorities, violent nationalism. We said never again, not for anyone, not ever - the history books are right there telling us this is wrong, and we are NOT going to ignore words written with blood.

now that i have written all this out i don't actually know how to end the post so. i guess let's go with this: i'm not naive. ordinary people do terrible, awful things and I see how it is hard to trust anyone to not do terrible things to you when it matters most. but ordinary people also do wonderful, life-affirming things! i am a sephardic jew who is here because ordinary people resisted. stood up and threw themselves into the gears of the genocidal system that tried to kill my ancestors in greece and italy during the Shoah. people hid their neighbours, became resistance fighters. in athens a police chief gave jews false id cards and an archbishop gave jews false baptismal certificates. my family always taught me and my siblings that solidarity saves lives. you can start that right now!

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all! –Mario Savio

[crookedfivefingers]

3.13 | ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀꜱᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ʟᴏʀᴅꜱ

link to the post I accidentally wound up prattling endlessly about in the tags 💀

[luna-rainbow]

CATWS and its building of stakes

Part of the reason why CATWS was so memorable in its appeal was the way it built the stakes throughout the story. Each of the major characters had something(s) at stake by the final act, and that was pivotal for the plot to sustain its tension and for the satisfaction in its final payoff.

The overarching conflict was the global, existential threat of Hydra getting their mass murder machine up in the air, and the ideological question of what the middle ground between freedom and security should be. But what made the final act so moving was the intimately personal stakes for many of our characters.

There was, obviously, the very personal stake Steve had to surmount in having to physically get through Bucky in order to protect the freedom he was advocating for. But apart from Steve, every other major character was challenged with a personal sacrifice in the final showdown. Nat was faced with having all her covers blown and her past - that she had tried so hard to hide - revealed to the world. Sam was confronted with going back into the field after losing his partner so traumatically that he changed careers. Fury was grappling with dismantling the organisation that he had devoted his life to build. And on the other side, Pierce and Rumlow had invested decades of their lives in an ideology which if successful would install them at the top of the food chain.

There was a great meta from years back talking about how well the movie established the competencies of the characters before introducing threats -- and how we were then able to quickly understand the threat because of how competent we have seen our protagonists be. Every action sequence served a purpose and built upon the previous one.

The Lumerian Star sequence was fantastic in how effectively it established the competence of not just Steve and Nat, but the entire Strike team. Rumlow and Rollins were good at their job; they're not super soldiers or super spies, sure, but they were skilled enough to keep pace with Steve and Nat.

This was an important foreword for the elevator fight, which itself was a pre-requisite for the Causeway fight. We have seen both Steve and the Strike team capable of taking down multiple pirates swiftly, so when the elevator fight started, there was a genuine sense of threat to Steve, even if he would make a quick job of disabling them. Then, after seeing Steve's skills against a very capable Strike team, it became all the more terrifying when the Winter Soldier almost nailed him to a van about 2 minutes into their fight.

On the other side, the Winter Soldier's introduction was an assemblage of horror story tropes -- of unexpected manifestations and impossible disappearances, and urban myths stretching back through half a century. The two characters used to introduce him were extremely competent from what we had seen of them. There's Fury, normally prescient and wily, scraping by a very determined assassination attempt, only to be stopped by the Winter Soldier materialising in the middle of the road...which he escaped, only to be later shot through the wall. There's Nat, normally cunning and cautious, telling Steve of how the Winter Soldier successfully ambushed her, of how his kills spanned 50 years, a logical improbability.

Not only was Steve about to meet the Winter Soldier with the weight of these legends behind him, from the vantage point of Hydra, they were sending out the Asset to meet Captain America with his historical legends behind him (oh look, another narrative parallel). All of this build-up culminated in the Causeway fight. The technical impressiveness of the stunts aside, part of why that fight worked so well was because we have had all these story beats that showed us how capable Steve and the Winter Soldier were, then we see them both genuinely struggle to overcome the other.

We can't talk about the final fight without talking about the emotional stakes, and we can't talk about the emotional stakes without discussing what Bucky means to Steve. We already had the "not without you" and the "I'm following the little guy from Brooklyn"; we've also had the "I don't want to kill anyone" turn into "I'm not going to stop until all of Hydra is dead" and the "I'm just a kid from Brooklyn" callback. This movie added the "even when I had nothing I had Bucky" and the "I knew him" and the "he will (know me)" and of course the "end of the line" exchanges.

But there were also more subtle cues -- that came from Steve's frequent rebuff of Nat's suggestions for companionship, the string of betrayals Steve had to grapple with, and Steve's lamentations of guilt and regret and uncertainty. Steve could not deny that he was lonely, but he had 101 excuses for why he could not make new connections. Steve did not know what he's looking for or why he's fighting or how long he wanted to continue, until he found out what was behind SHIELD and, specifically, what Hydra had done with Bucky.

Even removing the shipping angle, the final showdown between Steve and Bucky was unique in superhero movies, even for a friend-turned-enemy battle. It was not like the fight between Tony Stark and Obadiah Stane, or Peter Parker and Harry Osborne, or even Thor and Loki or Charles and Erik -- because there was no ideological divide between Steve and Bucky. Bucky did not and could not believe in the cause he's fighting for - he simply did not have that capacity for choice. The ideological battle was carried by the other characters - between Fury and Nat vs Pierce, between Sam vs Rumlow, and between the rest of SHIELD vs Hydra.

For Steve, his fight was much purer, dearer, and more heart-rending. The final battle held such emotional significance, not just because he's fighting his best friend, but also because his best friend was an unwilling participant in the circumstances. Bucky was Steve's physical equal, but he's also Steve's shared life experience, his tragically failed mission, his unfulfilled childhood promise, his betrayed faith in SHIELD, and the price that was paid for Hydra to grow under SHIELD's nose. This fight offered closure for all of these narrative and emotional threads.

He was also, once again, Hydra's asking price in exchange for the freedom Steve wanted for the world...and Steve so desperately wanted, this time, for that world to include Bucky.

[luna-loveboop]

Maybe I should do. Linktober? A bit? I would post egg carvings on some days

Egg carvings! :D it's an area of art I do a lot and would want to grow in... it's wierd tho ':D I hollow eggshells and engrave on them or carve them into shapes... I did this one quick today for examples

If yall want me to do it a bit I will... and that top photo would count for day one- mirror. The reflection setting in the sksw final boss is so cool to me and also I love drawing lightning, tho this isn't my favourite egg I've ever done. Anyways. I could do some days? What do y'all think?

.

Edit: well I guess I'm doing it then! Happy October yall, this should be fun :D

[orphiclovers]

the paradox at the heart of teenage mercenary is that it WANTS to have the Iron Man 1 plot of "MC gets stranded in the middle east and forced to work for a cruel military organization, gets super badass and PTSD while surviving, escapes back home"

but they also don't want any 'real life politics' to ruin the mindless action fun of it all and you can't have it both ways while setting your military action story in modern day reality.

even Iron Man, most mainstream mindless action movie ever made, had to say "afghanistan". not teenage mercenary. oh of course they do everything to IMPLY it's some wartorn middle eastern country (like Afghanistan, for example) but get very uncomfortable when they have to get specific.

like avoiding saying the name of the country Yu Ijin lived in for ten years at all costs. they don't even say the CONTINENT. it could be bumfuck anywhere!!

getting teen merc to talk about the logistics of it all is like pulling teeth. I love it.

love it when a story KNOWS what it is and what it isn't. love it when an author has a really explicit line they'll never cross, and LOVE it when the very PREMISE of their story is in direct conflict with it!

the characters and the setting of teenage mercenary are gnawing thrashing kicking screaming against the confines of what they'll allow to put on screen in their standard action webtoon.

teenmerc takes the self-censorship further than any other teen or children targeted media I've seen (even beyblade allows heavier topics) and teenmerc also desperately wants to get darker more than any other story I've seen. which leads to staggering amounts of cognitive dissonance it's compelling

[shalom-iamcominghome]

As I've gotten deeper in conversion, I have increasingly imagined jewish life throughout time. And what I mean by that is...

So when I looked at the Western Wall before this (maybe a few years ago), I just saw a wall. It held no deeper meaning than that. I imagined nothing when I saw that.

But now when I look at the wall or even when I'm praying idly, I'm imagining myself in the temple when it stood there. It's bright outside - a summer day so bright, I think the temple will blind me. A soft wind surrounds me. I'm stood in the middle of a huge crowd of people, simply observing. Women pass by me in small crowds, laughing and talking. Some of these women are wrangling their small children who keep running away, laughing like it's a game. And men walk by smelling of spices. The air is light, the city around bustling with people living fulfilling, meaningful jewish life. The wall now symbolizes that jewish life, and even though it's not just about the temple when I imagine it, it means something to me.

I think that's the result of seeing myself in judaism, turning the "you" into a "we," and I feel about this what I must imagine a married couple feels.

[finalgirlminamurray]

“meta horror” is another subgenre that’s kind of a hard sell for me. not that i don’t like any films that could be described that way but it’s hard to do well, i think, and if your audience is people with extensive knowledge of horror then it’s going to be especially hard to do it in a way that satisfies them. (it’s me i’m that audience.)

i thought maybe sometime soon i should watch the cabin in the woods again. i’ve only seen it once now, when i was first getting into horror movies, and since then after getting much deeper into the genre and greatly expanding my knowledge of it i probably would like it a lot less. part of that is due to the culture having soured a lot on joss whedon in the years since it came out, for good reason. part of it is due to my realization that a lot of the time when a “meta” horror movie posits certain tropes as universal or at least extremely common in the genre it’s…really not accurate.

a lot of meta horror stories are parodying or referencing slashers because that’s probably the subgenre with the most clearly established tropes and cliches and formulas, but they’ll also expand into “scary movies” in general with classic jokes about characters making “dumb” decisions and the like. the go-to slasher trope is “if you have sex you die” which i’ll agree is largely accurate but it often gets paired with “if you don’t have sex you live” and things like the killer specifically targeting people who have sex, which seems to happen way more often in parodies and meta slashers than in straight examples of the form. but then these parodies sometimes seem to inform people’s wider perception of the genre, even when film series get to the point where they’re parodying themselves. (see: jason goes to hell and jason x both specifically referencing “premarital sex” as something people do at camp crystal lake, and then stuff like that “it’s cool we’re married” meme that are based on a premise of the series following a “rule” it does not have.)

cabin in the woods doesn’t really go too far with the sex = death thing but it does assert that all or at least most popular horror films have a set of archetypes that the main victim characters always fit which is definitely not true in my experience. maybe i don’t watch enough lowbrow dumb slashers but i feel like there just aren’t a lot where you can easily sort the characters into “the scholar” “the athlete” “the fool”. there is usually at least one comic relief jokester guy and you can definitely do something with the way female characters are sorted into the virgin/whore dichotomy but most of the time there’s not really a Jock and a Nerd. it seems more based on teen movie archetypes than horror tropes and you’d have a hard time sorting most slasher movie casts into these (especially if there aren’t exactly 5 main characters, although that is a common number.) might be a consequence of them trying to reference horror movies in general and not a specific subgenre because while horror is a genre, different types of horror have different rules.

(another problem i have is that the film’s subversion of those character archetypes doesn’t really go farther than “the ‘jock’ is actually smart, the ‘nerd’ is actually a jock, the ‘fool’ is actually aware of what’s going on, the ‘whore’ is actually a Good Girl and the ‘virgin’ is actually a Bad Girl.” i do like the conceit that the designated ‘whore’ is just the girl who would have more opportunity to have sex on the trip since she’s going with her boyfriend, while the designated ‘virgin’ is just the one we don’t actually see having sex, but the film doesn’t really have time to explore that further. someone on tvtropes pointed that out. there Is interesting commentary here, it just also goes for broad strokes at other times.)

whedon has said that this film is a “loving hate letter” to the horror genre, or what popular horror films were like at the time, and i can see that - this movie came out at a time when american horror was kind of stagnating, but i also think the remake era was on its last legs at this point and we were just poised on the cusp of a new era of profitable genre trends when the conjuring got big. sources list cabin in the woods’ release date as alternately 2010, 2011, and 2012, which was kind of a transitional period for horror movies. makes sense that you might think horror was just cliches and unoriginal content at that point, but there’s good films in every era if you know where to look.

i definitely get the positioning of the elder gods they’re being sacrificed to as representative of how people just want the same familiar stuff over and over instead of anything new or different, but it makes more sense to have them represent the studios and producers who decide what’s profitable and what isn’t, and therefore what is and isn’t allowed to get made, based on which things have already made money, right? maybe i’m too generous to blame “audiences” for the executives with the real decision-making power who are terrified of “risk” (i.e, the possibility that something might not make them a shitload of money.) and yet everyone seems to talk about the elder gods as representing Us, the Viewers. there is a literal executive committee watching over everything, but they don’t have any control over what happens, and often talk about things they wish they could see but probably won’t because the trends go towards what’s reliable, so that probably makes them the audience…

which is reinforced by the scene of them all watching the designated final girl fighting for her life on a giant screen and cheering and celebrating while she struggles. and that opens a whole other issue with a lot of meta horror in that it tries to “implicate the viewers” and question why they enjoy watching people suffer and die but here’s the thing. there’s a very easy answer to that question and it is “because it’s not real”. again there’s interesting things you can do with the concept of implicating the audience but it is awfully hard to pull off successfully for that reason. if you try to go in on in-universe characters treating the horror as entertainment, then at some point you’re not commenting on horror fiction but true crime and that’s something else entirely. like how the scream sequels have an in-universe series of slasher films based directly on the events of the actual movies, which does stretch the suspension of disbelief a bit when they’re treated just like any other fictional horror movies.

speaking of scream, the reason it works so well is because it’s primarily a good slasher first and foremost. the meta references are part of the appeal but the film would probably work just as well without them. but because it was the first good slasher film we’d gotten in a while it spawned a wave of imitators that often get called “meta slashers” even though they’re really not particularly meta, they just have other things in common with scream like their casts full of popular teen tv actors. and kevin williamson, or a passable imitation of his writing style. (i do love scream 1 and 2 but the first movie gets credited with “revitalizing the horror genre” when really it just made studios realize that horror films could be profitable as long as they were like scream. there were plenty of great 90s horror films pre-scream that just weren’t as commercially successful.)

anyway. this post was just supposed to be about meta horror in general but it turned into me musing about cabin in the woods. i really should revisit it with both a critical eye and the intent to be fair to it instead of basing my criticisms off of my own memory of watching it once. it got a ton of praise when it first came out but now i feel like most people are cooler towards it. some parts definitely hold up (the sequence when they release all the monsters in the facility is a modern classic for a reason, the office workers’ banter is fun, the cast is good all around, and there’s some legit horror in the cosmic sense of being told that your friends were murdered for a “reason” and now you have to either kill yourself or your last surviving friend to “save the world”, what are you going to do? who do you believe in that situation?) ultimately i feel like it’s a reflection of a specific moment in time for horror and movies in general, which isn’t necessarily good or bad.

i’ll see if my assessment of “meta horror for people who don’t watch a lot of horror” is accurate. (as for meta horror for people who Do watch a lot of horror? it’s more slasher-specific but; behind the mask: the rise of leslie vernon. obviously.)

[luckthebard]

One of the funniest disconnects with actual play to me is how much the viewers/fandoms have a much broader awareness of everyone’s mechanics than the players themselves - and often assume for some reason that all the players have that same total awareness.

Funniest examples I can think of off the top of my head are when Laura was convinced Caleb (AC 11 wizard) had a higher AC than Yasha (AC 15 Barbarian) - likely influenced by fear for Yasha in Ashley’s absence and Yasha’s position in melee meaning she was hit more by default. Another was when the entire CR crew aside from Laura revealed in the campaign wrap-up that they seem to have spent the entirety of C2 under the impression Jester had a very high Charisma score (her CHA was 12).

[maespri]

generally speaking i think miya chinen is a stellar character, but what i really like about him is that he uniquely and subtly subverts the ‘younger character who is unnecessarily mean to the main cast but is secretly revealed to have a heart of gold by the end of the anime’ trope by overtly caring about the other characters from like. the moment he appears on screen.

like yes, he’s cold and cocky, he calls people slimes, and his favorite pastime is tormenting reki— but he’s also pretty bad at pretending like he thinks he’s too good at skateboarding. he’s bad at pretending he hates his friends. and i think that’s where he differs quite a bit from the normal trope. miya doesn’t really think he’s better than anyone, and that becomes abundantly clear very quickly.

he’s only mean to reki because he sees potential in him, to the point that miya wants to see reki continue skating, wants to see him improve— but he doesn’t want to say that out loud, so he instead hides behind insults. he cares very deeply about reki’s opinions on his own skating and is sad when reki stops showing up at S to watch him. even just as a person, he cherishes reki as a good friend who promised to stick by his side no matter how great he got at skateboarding. even at crazy rock when miya skates with reki and langa for the first time, he asks langa, “are you really the one who beat shadow? because that slime back there (reki) was actually better than you.”

and when it comes to others, he practically wears his heart on his sleeve if you know where to look. he loses his first race against langa only because he stopped to warn langa that the rails he was skating on were broken. it’s his idea to go to the hot spring to heal reki’s injury. he has fun skating with everyone in the beach episode. he takes the time to teach reki and langa new tricks. he waits for reki in the hospital after his race with adam, and shows up when shadow’s in the hospital. he eats kojiro’s food without complaining at all. he roots for his friends and worries about their well-being.

he is literally a bundle of love!! and he doesn’t hesitate to show it when it matters most, even if he does sometimes hide under layers of aggression!! i love him