#the house that cthulu built

[thebibliosphere]

We're looking at decor ideas for Mothman's office, and I'm absolutely living for it because the aesthetic he's going for is like a blend between cyberpunk meets modern gothic Dracula lair. Meanwhile, I'm across the hall in my arsenic mint green office with the bubble gum pink ceiling, living out Barbie's Haunted Dreamhouse with all the skulls and bats everywhere hgkls.

[injuries-in-dust]

I can't remember what it's called, something like "Hostile Architecture."

A theoretical design that would be made in places built to house hazardous stuff like nuclear waste.

Because in ten thousand years, or a million years, or more, humanity may be gone, blasted back to the stone age, or just developed and grown so much they've forgotten their ancient history.

But the nuclear waste will still be a danger.

So the idea behind the hostile architecture (if that is the name) was to build a place that just looks wrong. It just screams "danger" and "Keep away."

You're supposed to look at it and think " that place looks like somewhere I don't want to mess with." and walk in the other direction.

Well, it just randomly popped into my head that lovecraftian creations, like the city of R'lyeh, also fit that description.

"non-Euclidean geometry, colossal structures, and shifts in perspective that can make an observer unsure about what is vertical and what is horizontal."

"vast angles and stone surfaces […] too great to belong to anything right and proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and disturbing hieroglyphs."

"abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours."

It makes people uneasy to look at, makes them want to turn away and leave the area.

Was Cthulu just trying to keep us out of the city just because it was so dangerous?

[ms-demeanor]

We have an electrician coming to give us an estimate tomorrow and it has un-invisibled all the things that I've been overlooking since we moved in so I left after that minimalism post to clean my bathroom ceiling with a magic eraser.

Fan in the bathroom is broken, the window is along the neighbor's yard, which reeks of cat piss so we can't open the window or turn on the fan to air it out and my cousin didn't either when she was renting the house so when we moved in there were water stains from the condensation on the ceiling and after an hour on a stepstool now there aren't.

Now, on to the other bathroom. Which is less of a disaster because fewer people shower in it (either now or when my cousin lived here; she was bad at controlling the ants here so there were ants in the bathroom a lot and it freaked out her kids so they all used the master bath so the hall bath is in pretty decent shape)

(except for the fan that I had to take down the cover for because at one point I was showering in there and I turned the fan heater on then smelled smoke and it turned out the heating coil had broken loose and was burning a hole through the plastic cover)

(This is not the house that cthulu built, this is the house that ADHD ate because all the repairs in the last thirty years have been put off until the last minute and then fixed until "good enough")

[theguywithaoriginalname]

Terraria has got to be the most funniest and chaotic game i have played (also spolier warning ig!!!), you start the game, make a character, create a world and then you're just plopped in there. No tutorial, nothing. You see some dude with brown (i think) hair and just press right-click, see a dialogue option labelled 'help' and think "oh! this gotta be how to go to the tutorial!" and NOPE! Think again fucker 'cause you better chop some wood and build a house because the night is dangerous (OoOoOoOh very spooky). So, you look up "Terraria Beginner Guide" (or something along the lines of that) and y'know you just get going, build houses, explore the underground, maybe built a hellevator, and you even built an arena (im so proud)! Then suddenly the text "You feel an evil Presence watching you" pops up and you know that you better get to your arena 'cause its very spooky big eyeball time (hooray).

So after you beat the very big Eye of Cthulu you get some loot, fast forward to The Wall of Flesh. This is it. The final challenge in Pre-Hardmode. The Gate to see if you have what it takes to go to Hardmode. And now, it begins. After you throw the doll of the person who pranked you out of a Tutorial into the lava below, you hear a roar, before a wall made out of flesh with two huge Eyeballs and a gaping wide Mouth comes at you. It was a great battle, with you seemingly being at equal with the giant fleshy wall. You threw everything you got at it: Bullets, Fire, Ice, even that Imp you found on the street. Ater a long Battle with many Hardships, you won. But only now....

The Fun really begins.

Oh, you thought that you could go out at night? Think again fucker, mf-ing Werewolves. You thought that Molten Armor/ Meteorite Armor was gonna protect you? Dont make me laugh. "Atleast I have my NPCs?" Wrong! You feel vibrations from deep below. Hardmode is the game's most challenging part imo, because not only is everything new, but also beefier, stronger, and more annoying to deal with. Oh, there's also a new Biome where, you guessed it! Everything kills you! It isnt as bad if you're more experienced and prepared alot of stuff, but unfortunately, most newer Players dont do that, and I've even seen some leave permanently because dying constantly wasnt fun anymore. But we dont quit, do we? No. Because our Mamas didnt raise us to be quitters! Uhh motivational quote, yadda yadda yadda etc. So. you actually persist, get better gear, and even kill a mechanical boss! So you get better weapons and gear, kill another Mechanical Boss and the last one is now dead. So you get clorophyte (No i will not look up how it's spelt and i really couldnt care less), get better-er gear and fight Plantera. This pink plant bitch is probably one of the best bosses in the game, and i am sad that it has some of the worst loot in the game imo. anyways, you unlock the temple, kill golem (Man Re-logic really need to buff this dude) get better-er-er gear and fight the lunatic cultist. Kill him, get the only drop (Man Re-logic really need to buff this dude's loot) and fight the celestial pillars. cool, you can now make weapons from SpAaAaAaaAAaace. Each of which correspond to a class (Solar=Melee, Vortex=Ranged,Nebula=Mage,Stardust=Summoner). but suddenly, the screen gets darker and more wonky, the music is gone and then,

The Moon Lord has Awoken!

Out of bloody nowhere, the final boss is here. The Final Challenge. The Wall between you and the End. After having improved so much and died so much, like, WOW those are alot of deaths, you are at the final blockade. And after a battle you will remember forever, you come out on top, victorious. You are at the top of the 2d Mountain. You have beaten everything. You have beaten

Terraria.

[asmuchasidliketo]

#...honey? #do you want a project? #let me rephrase #I have a project for you tags by @thebibliosphere

The finished result! I’m so ridiculously proud and pleased with how it turned out!

This was an ordinary door + 3 pieces of mdf board. I carved and sculpted them with my dremel multitool, inspired by the carvings I saw in Bali, mounted them and then painted and sanded the whole thing in several layers before adding a final tint of gold. 💙

The door and side panel I sculpted myself. The top carving is from Bali.

[mothman-etd]

Quick hide the power tools

The house that Cthulu built always provides...

[defiantlywhole]

Hey @gallusrostromegalus and @thebibliosphere today's my dad's birthday, so guess what we're doing!

[thebibliosphere]

These relentless thunderstorms are killing me.

It feels like I'm getting smacked with a miniature migraine every few days from the weather pressure.

Anyway, did you guys know the average cost of building a 2 car garage is apparently $50k? Not including the cost of pouring a new slab? Haha, wild.

Anyway, if my current garage happened to get struck by lightning so we could claim the insurance, that'd be great... (dear universe, I am only partially kidding. Please be careful with your aim.)

[quill-of-thoth]

Okay so. House On The Rock is a Wisconsin tourist attraction, (approximately) in Wyoming, Wisconsin, on Highway 23. It's west of Madison, east of The Dells, and just south of Spring Green, which is the seat of Frank Lloyd Wright's cult. (Spiritual seat, at least. Most of the non-Taliesin houses are not in Wisconsin.) House on the Rock is not a Frank Lloyd Wright house. It is an ANTI Frank Lloyd Wright house. It was built when an aspiring Taliesin fellow got to meet his hero and was told by FLW that his designs sucked and he wasn't capable of designing a chicken coop. At which point the aspirant, Alex Jordan Jr, stormed out and on the drive south pointed at a random rock chimney, swore to whoever else he was traveling with that he was going to build a Japanese house on top of it that would be better than anything Frank Lloyd Wright ever built. Allegedly. The timeline does not match up and given the dubious authenticity of many of the other historic artifacts at House on The Rock, everything about the story could be fake. What's clear is that House on the Rock is built in an imitation of Frank Lloyd Wright's style, with tumors of imitation Japanese architecture, midcentury architecture, imitation gothic architecture, modern, postmodern, skybridges, scifi concept art, half a carnival, and an airplane hangar. All built on a 200 foot rock pillar, though some of the later additions are on the mainland, because an airplane hangar would not have fit. Not all of this is Jordan's fault - the place is constantly building new stuff with all the disorganized fervor of a mutant ant colony. At one point the original structure was a house, but it was haphazardly converted into a museum of literally any and all junk they could find. I have been there at least half a dozen times and am never sure if it exists fully in this universe. Jordan may have been a disciple of Cthulu instead of Wright. The whole place is SEVRELEY CURSED. Some highlights, mostly from my memory:

It is bigger on the inside. Likely because the amount of junk within it has created some sort of wormhole.

I have NEVER been there without some kind of weird, localized weather going on. Once the sky dropped an olympic swimming pool's worth of water on the roof of the airplane hangar in the space of one minute, leaving everything else bone dry. Another time autumn leaves were making knee-high tornadoes in the parking lot.

One year it was infested with biting False Ladybugs (Asian Beetles). Floor to ceiling in some spots. We're talking no visible wallpaper on the southern side. I have never, ever been bitten by that insect in any other circumstances, even the year my house got infested with them and we had to air blast them out from under the siding.

That's not even starting on the exhibits. Anything dubiously old, vaguely creepy, absolutely inexplicable, or explicable only because this place opened in the 60's? It's got it. It's also got some real stuff and when I was a kid there was a suit of samurai armor standing in a stairwell that you had to squeeze past, which I only ever saw once out of all my visits.

At one point the airplane hangar had a "history of Aviation" exhibit that was just uncanny valley dolls and model planes. Nothing was labeled. Everything was viewed via a rickety spiral ramp that circled the hangar at an angle that was definitely not built to code.

I cannot overstate the number or the creepiness of the dolls. I have not yet found a video that captures their sinister quality.

There's an exhibit that's self-playing / mechanized instruments. You can hear them in parts of the building that you probably shouldn't, but the building is a maze so there's probably a logical explanation? Wright was known for clever built in storage and amenities, so maybe Jones copied that and there's actually a pipe that carries the sound halfway across the house.

The exhibits in the main building and the path through them are one way, theoretically to cut down on people getting stupidly lost. It does not help.

Approximately two decades ago, the layout of the exhibits made the meandering house even worse because some exhibit rooms you had to squeeze through a two foot wide gap between giant wooden display cases to access. Other places if you try that you've skipped half the tour and will be prevented from coming back.

Basically nothing is labeled. Not that you would be able to read signs, as some parts are strictly enforced no standing no stopping zones to make sure people circulate on time. Other areas you can stay in for half an hour and be the only ones around. You will also completely loose your sense of time and direction. No matter what you see there, you will never find it again.

Extremely wheelchair inaccessible. Maybe they've cleaned up the display cases, but there are surprise stairs everywhere, with highly variable riser heights, and often no railing.

There are odors. They're not bad, but they're not identifiable. Even after actually working in museums and science labs I'm not sure I would know what they are. Possibly it's just the junk.

My favorite candidate for the odor source is the half a carnival squeezed into a space that absolutely should not hold it. That carousel had a former life I don't want to know about.

Based on the sheer, overwhelming nature of this place's assault against the senses, as well as the fact that I was probably thirteen the last time I visited, I have no coherent memory of a large number of the exhibits? It's just creepy self playing strings, samurai armor, dolls in planes trains and automobiles, jumpscare samurai armor (didn't we already pass this?), and Whoops! All Ocean!

In comparison I have been able to navigate the Field Museum's exhibits instinctively since age eight. In conclusion, the mundane explanation is that it's a tourist attraction built by someone whose architectural sensibilities were so deranged that they generate disorientation and superstition. The other explanation is that it's the most haunted, cursed, possessed place in the state and people pay a stupid amount of money every year to be herded through it, learning nothing and severely creeped out. It is a place that you do not go alone, because unlike real museums, meeting someone without obvious companions sometimes makes people irrationally defensive and paranoid - and also you need someone else to take on the burden of seeing some of it, or you will be overcome and collapse on a 70's shag carpet next to a poorly taxidermied animal of unidentifiable species. At best, your experience is like a semi-lucid dream where you understood all the non language gibberish that everyone around you spoke, and were profoundly affected by the obvious and universe-altering importance of what you witnessed. At worst, you come out like my mom, muttering about why there have to be so many damn creepy dolls and how the heck you got talked into going here AGAIN, you should have known better after the last three times. I miss it but it also gives me the sense that I'm lucky to have emerged at all.

I don't know who else has both listened to The Magnus Archives and been to House On The Rock, but that place is one hundred percent a Leitner building.

[jbird-the-manwich]

Chaos magic is waaaay more than just sigils

The thing I really like about chaos magic is it provides a nondogmatic framework for experimentation and encourages total personal agency in developing new methods and therein lies the secret to its unbelievably wide inclusion of seemingly totally disparate methodologies. Full spectrum is covered. Like

You wanna try to summon cthulu? That's cool.

You wanna use qr codes rather than sigils? Dope.

You wanna spend the weekend crafting a system of planetary intelligence evocation obfuscated behind obscure Sailor Moon references? Go for it. Just take notes.

You wanna uuencode your grimoire and upload it to pastebin? Totally fine.

You wanna turn your childhood stuffed animal into a servitor housing? Get at it, booboo.

I even like that wannamagus edgelords glom onto it tryna sound intimidating.

Like "oh yeah. Chaos magic. Me too. Big scary. Lets bond. Here's the index for my barbarous toungue and yes ALL WORDS ARE MADE FROM PIECES OF ANAGRAMS FOR THE NAMES OF THE ORIGINAL CAREBEARS MOFO!!"

Who doesn't LIVE for bumping into wastedudes on the internet with a thumbnail of himself making his scary face trying to be the big spooky cuz he heard the name and thought it sounded 1337EV!L when anyone who knows the system knows it is possibly the most lighthearted and toungue in cheek system of results based magical experimentation to have ever existed? I FUCKIN LOVE IT.

Rather than a rigidly dogmatic cathedral system that helps protect and elevate megalomaniacal would be cult leaders you have bait-and-switch exposure of fake gurus practically BUILT IN.

Outwardly it can seem like a flippant do-what-you-want system and viewed through a certain lens, it is - but therein is the beauty because if it DOESN'T WORK then it isn't worth repeating anyway until you've puzzled out why it didn't and if it DOES then you get to play with the underlying theories of why it _did_ when it seemed like it totally shouldn't have. Gnosis first, trappings second, aesthetics never UNLESS the aesthetic was partially responsible for reaching gnosis. Handled well it can be the single most no-nonsense form of magical experimentation. OR it can be the most all-nonsense form of magical experimentation and both approaches are deemed valid in pursuit of results for the sake of experimentation.

Fuckin LOOOOVE IT.

Even has built-in stagnant practice / boredom protection.

Tired of using the same spell all the time? Practice gettin a bit dusty? Do it over from an entirely new angle, utilize a different model and compare your results. Total sandbox plus possibly the closest thing we have so far to a unifying theory of psycho-magical efficacy.

I FUCKIN LOVE IT.

[oldtumblhurgoyf]

CABS Review October 5, 2018

Wow, I really haven’t been to CABS since May. Like I know I’ve been fairly busy in the past two months or so but it seems a bit silly that I skipped 4 months. For those of you who aren’t aware, CABS is the Columbus Area Board game Society and it meets on alternating Fridays and Saturdays at 670 Lakeview Plaza Blvd E, Columbus, OH. They have hundreds of members and thousands of games all ready to play. Your first visit is free and after that it’s either $5 per visit or a year long membership for $60 (prorated throughout the year, so I think it’s just $20 now). If you’re in the area I strongly encourage you to check it out. They also have a pretty active Facebook page.

Buckeye Donuts was the food truck tonight and actually a big motivation for me to get out there again. I waited until they were set up to get a bacon donut hamburger--a glazed donut bun for a hamburger with cheese, egg, and bacon. I prefer to leave the egg off and add BBQ sauce but had it with the egg tonight and no BBQ and it was still plenty tasty. Make one for yourself some time. Just cut the donut in half and toast it slightly on the pan you cooked your burger on. Incredible.

1. Evolution

The first game we played was Evolution. All I could think of it was those three part mix and match picture books...

...which isn’t really what’s going on but it’s not too far off. You have generic species, give them traits that effect how they get food, and then try to collect enough food to feed them all before your opponents do. At the end of the game you get points for having the largest populations of your species, the most evolved species, and the most food collected over the course of the game. We happened to be playing with a biologist so he would point out how the mechanics lined up particularly well with actual scientific concepts. It wasn’t a one-to-one match by any means but it was cool to see him getting excited that he could apply his knowledge to the underlying ideas of the game.

Unfortunately for him, he focused on a carnivore species early while nobody else did. The herbivores/omnivores built up solid defenses he had difficulty assailing and resulted in a few turns where I and another player ate hoards of food. I ended up winning handily thanks mostly to those turns despite losing a species to extinction.

2. Betrayal at House on the Hill

After that we did a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this one before and while a lot of the charm has worn for me (I’ve just played every haunt at least once at this point and most more than once, and the game play before the haunt now feels very samey and low impact to me), this game did culminate in a nice dramatic moment that made me remember why I have enjoyed it so much in the past.

Our betrayer was intent on summoning Cthulu to end the world. He easily completed the ritual to do so, summoning a demon lord that then began to hunt us down and murder us without mercy. Our big strong guy ran into the room with the demon, grabbed the book used in the summoning, and made a run for the basement. On the demon’s next turn it caught up to him and absolutely eviscerated him in one blow. That left two children to end the deep one and save the world. I ran into the room, grabbed the book from the death clutches of my fallen compatriot, and booked it (heh) to the chasm so I could toss the book in and end the game. But I couldn’t quite make it. The other kid blocked the demon’s path to me, somehow managing to survive a round of combat against the thing. I tossed the book into the chasm on my next turn and banished Cthulu from the mortal realm. It’s also interesting that we could have potentially stolen the book from our compatriot before the ritual was done, destroying it to save our friend from the madness.

3. Splendor

This is just a really solid game with a decent amount of depth. It’s easy to pick up but has enough competition and planning that it stays really interesting throughout. I took off to an early lead then fell behind in the mid game only to rocket back up to a near-victory thanks to regrouping and nabbing an important card. It wasn’t enough for the win, but I was neck-and-neck with the leader going into the last few turns.

Not sure how much I’ll be able to make it back to CABS in the next month or so with all the wedding planning kicking into high gear, but I’ll certainly have to make it out as much as possible these last few months of the year.

[kizzim03]

Scam or Not?

@thebibliosphere

Oh bibliomum! Tender of the Demon Rose, Resident of the House that Cthulu Built, Mightiest of the Hatted, Keeper of the Boners, the Blade against Terrible Vampire Porn, Scholar of Discworld, Sharer of Bread, Bride of Mothman, She that Writes so Others my Learn!....

I humbly request your advice.

The other day a message popped up on my tumblr that went like so:

"Hi! I'm sorry to barge in on your chat like that with an empty account. I've been working with a team on launching a startup lately, and we're looking for writers so I made this account to headhunt. I found your work in the SPN fandom while looking for horror and horror-adjacent content and I wondered if you might be interested in a freelance working opportunity."

I did write one Supernatural Big Bang fanfic back in 2014. It seems a bit odd to headhunt amongst fanfic writers, but to each their own.

She continues to talk about launching an App where people subscribe to stories with audio and visual elements and that the company is looking for writers.  The company is apparently based in LA and has a editing team comprised of Disney/Dreamworks producers.  

That sounds a bit... inconceivable...?

It is mentioned that since the company, SuperBinge, is so new there won't be any information to look up, but she does mention her LinkedIn profile as a reference: Fatima Klilib.

Now, as cool as it would be to actually be paid to write, I'm hesitant to reach out to such an offer for fear of it being a scam like those "audition your child to be a Disney Star" riffs.  I am also leery because if this person had actually read that old SPN fic and looked at my other stories on AO3, they would have found a tag in common with each of them.

VORE.

It's not obvious on my tumblr, but yes, I write plot-based, character-driven stories with a big vore/endosoma element. So having someone ask me to write for them seems a little out there.  

Should I request more information and possibly check out a paying gig? Or should I back the hell away?

I hope you and yours have a restful and productive day and I look forward to the release of Hunger Pangs!

-peachnewt

[thebibliosphere]

...... I know you’re kidding but I’m pretty certain we have that same carpet in the basement lmao

Hey OP, do yourself a solid favor and make sure the electric wiring for the light switches haven’t been “grounded” into a random nail that’s been hammered into a copper rod causing sparks to form behind the polystyrene drop ceiling. You’ll thank me later...

so we moved into a new house over the weekend and while i think i’m going to like it a lot once we get everything put away and settled, we have the Most Cursed bathroom

first of all there’s a step leading into it but the door closes before it so you open it and surprise step. very easy to trip

it’s fucking carpeted. like. around the sink is not carpeted but the carpeting goes right up to and behind the toilet. what do you do if the toilet floods

there’s ... this. baby changing station i guess? weird counter

big window with no way of putting curtains on it

four places to hang towels even though there’s no shower in this bathroom

there’s also a hallway leading to this bathroom but it’s the only thing that the hallway leads to

in conclusion:

why

[thebibliosphere]

Feel free to ignore this, I’m just getting my thoughts out before I go mad trying to puzzle this out.

I’m trying to create a staging area for photographing things (books and merchandise, if you’re curious), and I think I’ve found an affordable solution that would also increase our storage space in the living room. (an ongoing struggle in this house)

The problem is, it's the only space where we can put our Christmas tree, and if I were to invest in this item or furniture, there is nowhere else it could be moved to in the house to make room for the tree.

So now my brain is like, well, maybe Home Depot still makes the holo glitter tree. Maybe you could get a smaller version and fit it next to the window...

Except then what do I do with the old tree?

And honestly, I don't like that we can’t see our Christmas tree from the couch because the couch faces the opposite direction (our living room and dining room are one room, the tree frames the dining table in the back while the TV faces the opposite wall where the tv is because it's the only blank wall without a window/built-in in the room) so maybe we should just redo the layout of the entire room???

The TV in that room is somewhat old and freezes up a lot. Maybe if we got a smaller one, it’d fit on the wall with the built-in shelves, and I could move the couch and make space for the Christmas tree...

This is the part where if I was still able bodied I’d start playing furniture Tetris until I figured this out, but alas, I am a sick bitch reliant on the help of others and Mothman’s the type of neurodivergent that hates change in his environment without thorough planning and negotiation.

We’re the epitome of immovable object meets unstoppable force.

Or we would be if I was still physically capable of the gremlin energy my brain puts out.

Anyway. I’ve been thinking about this for hours and it all comes down to the fact that I have too much stuff but also not enough of the right stuff. Annoying.

[vagabondretired]

*And skritches to Stephen King’s dog Molly, aka “Thing of Evil,” seen here with her “faithful sidekick, Dipshit the Moose.”* 70 skulls go on the cake of most-famous-Mainer Stephen King, born September 21, 1947 in Portland, just steps from where I live. (Okay, several thousand steps, but still) King is an unabashed Democrat who isn't afraid to speak his mind, which he occasionally does by blowing up twitter: » From the Book of Republicans: "Lo, we have many assholes running for President. Let us consider, and pick the biggest. And so it was done." » Trump thinks hitting a woman with a golf ball and knocking her down is funny. Myself, I think it indicates a severely fucked-up mind. » Breaking News: Reliable sources reveal that Donald Trump is actually Cthulu. The absurd hairdo isn't absurd at all. It hides the tentacles. » Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, currently in a battle to see who is the craziest man on the planet. » Our governor, Paul LePage, is a bigot, a homophobe, and a racist. I think that about covers it. » Trump promises to veto single payer health care, should it get to his desk. No surprise. His rich friends wouldn't like that at all. » Bill O'Reilly wants you to know that the slaves who built the White House were well-fed. Thanks for sharing, Bill. » Gee, looks like NOBODY killed Freddie Gray. Guess he just died of being black. Funny how that happens in this country. » Little by little, Trump is isolating himself. Soon he'll be Oz the Great and Terrible: little man, big voice, hiding behind a curtain. Today's special in the Chez watering hole, as always: half-off Redrum and Cokes.

[silversouledcat]

...this has very @thebibliosphere vibes. in fact, i believe this is p much what prompted her to share her peasent bread recipe.

...

hey bibmom, youre not secretly gaud....are you??