#the quality of this image makes it even funnier to me

[menlove]

every time I see ppl talking abt how they wish they could be a carefree child again and thousands of people agreeing I'm just like

[mackmp3]

had a very vivid dream that i was using none pizza with left beef to explain to my mum why memes are funnier when the image is really bad quality

[leftneb]

There is Something Seriously Wrong with this Logo..... Chapter Two

So. Lots of you have seen this post by my dear partner ( @lailau7904 ) in which the Williams F1 design team get absolutely torn to bits. In the case you haven't read it yet I highly recommend you do because a) it's really fucking funny and b) it makes what I'm about to tell you even funnier. Though you don't have to, this post touches on entirely different things still regarding this one goddamn logo.

The original post starts like this:

Innocent enough, we made an assumption in good faith that the logo displayed on the Wikipedia page would be the same one as the official version used by Williams. Buckle the fuck up because I'm about to tell you why that was the worst mistake we could have made.

Please. Please I beg of you keep reading this took YEARS off our lifespans. Like the original post was fun and all but it was merely the top of the iceberg. If this were an hbomberguy video this would be the part where he reveals that the background was a greenscreen the whole time. More below the cut!!! :333

The Truth

Already after only a few hours after hitting "post" on the dissection, people started pointing out to us that we'd missed an absolutely crucial detail on the Wikimedia page we got the logo from, pay careful attention:

See THIS?

Yeah this means that that image is not, and never was, the official logo of Williams. All along it had been the work of a Wikipedia user by the name of Juanchocarbonero. Here you can even see the (admittedly painful) history of the file as provided by Wikimedia, this image was uploaded all the way back in 2016, it even underwent an update when the team changed their colour scheme to a lighter blue without getting fucking fixed.

But to me the absolutely most painful part about this page is the "File Usage" section. Which gives you a quick preview of just how deep the goddamn disease that is this piece of graphic design sin really spreads.

And just to clarify: the official version of the logo used by Williams on merch etc is perfectly fine. It's a nice piece of graphic design. I still quite like it. But the story doesn't end there. Not even close.

Consequences

When you look up "williams logo" on Google the image provided by Wikimedia the very first result that pops up, if you're looking for a high-quality .png of this logo that, logically, is what you'll end up using. And I mean, why wouldn't you? What reason do you have not to use it? As long as you don't look to close (oops) it's a perfectly fine, high-definition, clean and transparent image of the logo! No shit people are going to use it!

But this raises a question: Why IS it the most widespread version of the logo? That's fucking weird isn't it? Surely if the actual logo used on ex.: the official Williams F1 website (which, again, is perfectly fucking fine) was available they would've just used that, right?

Now. Small problem. If you want you can go ahead and open whatever search engine you use, if you do that I'm gonna need you to type in "Williams logo" into the search bar, and just try finding a picture that is

of the actual official logo (you can tell the bootleg from the real thing by checking if the middle segment of the W has spiky ends or flat ones. We're looking for flat ones here)

high quality (no pixels or blurring visible to the naked eye)

a transparent png (none of that chequered background bullshit)

NOT a logo with any words (such as: Williams or Racing) visible in it. those don't count.

If you didn't feel like doing any of that, I'll just tell you the answer: you fucking can't. Nothing like that EXISTS. The closest I could get are these two, both of which are mid to ass quality, so they don't count either.

No sensible individual is going to scroll google search results for 5 minutes straight just so they can use a 200x200 image, especially when they think a perfect alternative is right there.

I even found several recoloured versions of the diseased logo, including one as a sticker on Redbubble! Fuck me that's a horrible sight!

The Search

Because I wrote the previous paragrahps after we'd figured out exactly what had happened, you might be under the impression that by this point in trying to answer the question "Why the fuck is that image on Wikipedia instead of, idk, the real fucking thing?" we'd at least established the existence of said "real Williams F1 logo". You'd be wrong, because for somewhere around 24 hours after we'd made the initial, horrifying discovery of just how fucked the Wikipedia version is, we genuinely could not tell if that was the official logo or not.

The ones displayed on their website weren't at all downloadable or even copyable, a non-ass quality of the damn thing just didn't seem to exist anywhere, so we didn't dare draw any conclusions. And we were still foolishly operating on the assumption that Wikipedia wouldn't just lie to us. (this is why your teachers hate it when you use it a source btw. like this is the ONE time it's actually been reasonable)

So, in the hopes of finding the offical Williams Racing logo, the non-scuffed one because clearly it exists, somewhere, we consulted an expert on Intellectual Property: my mother!

What this "consultation" actually roughly looked like was: we went on a walk and I started rambling about the Situation from Last Night before she cut me off and pulled up the website of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, aka the place they store all the Copyright information of like, everything.

BEHOLD:

(pictured; THE ACTUAL FUCKING LOGO I CANNOT BELIEVE IT'S EXISTED THIS WHOLE TIME)

Link to the actual real official legal document because goddamn this rabbithole just kept getting deeper so I like, have that now.

For refence, here is the official copyrighted version and the Wikimedia file overlayed on top of each other. As you can tell, it's disgusting. It's a poor, eyeballed imitation at best.

The copyrighted logo is horrifically low quality because, guess what, that image also isn't downloadable or copyable from the page. I really really cannot blame Juanchocarbonero for uploading his own version to Wikimedia because there legitimately does not exist a version of this logo that is freely available to the public. Like that goddamn abomiation is all we have. It's the effort that counts I guess.

My mother suggested that a possible reason for this could be avoiding the production of knockoff merch, or at least making it recognisable in case it is sold. Think about it, when your logo Doesn't Exist online, no one can use it without a license! It's kind of genius! I'm also about 99% sure they didn't orchestrate it so, it was good luck I guess?

interlude: How the FUCK does Copyright even work

I did immediately think to myself "we should REALLY fix the wikipedia version, like, stat" because I cannot in good conscience have this information available to me and not do anything with it, for the good of the people. However, this poses an issue: was the logo really not scuffed on purpose? Could it be that that version uploaded to Wikipedia isn't a 1:1 of the official logo because of copyrighting issues? To find out I had to look deeper, by comparing the official, website-available logos of various other F1 teams I came to conclusion that: [........................]

Yeah so I wrote that paragraph before actually checking for refences, but even after probably an hour of trying very hard to make sense of the copyright documents and copyright law in general we could not make sense of any of it. According to my mother (again, the closest we have to an expert, like she actually works with copyright in the context of companies but she's not specifically an IP expert. just to clarify) it's actually a lot worse for Wikipedia to have a falsified version of the Williams logo, than it would be to use the copyrighted version. This is because they're spreading misinformation by pretending that's the actual logo. And yet.

According to the Copyright Tag (the one on the top) in the Licensing section of the Wikimedia page for the thing pretending to be the Williams F1 logo, it's fine to use it because just a bunch of shapes. The thing is however, that it says that for pretty much every F1 team's logo, most of which are sourced straight from the official website. So this doesn't really mean anything tbh. According to our local expert (still my mother) it's fucking confusing. So I've decided to leave that at that.

update October 20th: as far as the Wikimedia pages on copyrighting tell me, uploading the official logo could, potentially, get me into serious legal trouble with Williams because of copyright laws. Which is still confusing because as said, every other team's logo is sitting uncontested on their respective Wikipedia pages. So basically we still don't know.

Okay. Backtrack. We forgot to ask something very important:

HOW?

HOW does one fuck up a perfectly fine logo THAT BAD.

WHY does one make their own scuffed tracejob and HOW does it end up like THAT. Clearly something must have gone horrifically wrong for it to end up like that.

I have a theory as to what might have happened:

It was either drawn or painted by hand, for a physical paintjob it's actually sort of impressively precise, but still objectively fucked. For a while I outright refused to believe that it could have been done in a digital program with the types of mistakes that were made, but you'll see this theory (partially) disproven later on so I retract it for now.

Operating on the assumption that it wasn't done digitally, a likely theory could be one involving a picture of scan of the paintjob. If the picture was taken at an angle or the logo itself was on a curved surface that COULD potentially explain the weird sort of slide everything has to it.

From then the picture might have been inserted into a digital art program, and the area of the logo might have been automatically selected using the magic wand tool, which could explain the weird growth at the top and that odd rounded off corner.

We also drew the conclusion that the file itself had been "tampered with" (aka cropped manually) by a human, because no computer would generate a resolution of 3356x2543 (you can that this is the original resolution on the Wikimedia page)

WAIT HOLD ON IS THAT IT?

The question of how the Fuck this guy managed to mess up the logo, and even more specifically why some edges were fine and some weren't (ant colony looking thing on the top left) bothered us so much that I at one point started just looking up "WIlliams logo" with the results filtered down to pre-2017 in an attempt to find when exactly the messed up logo was created. As if that would be any help.

Now what I definitely didn't expect to find was THIS

ENHANCE

Yes, you're seeing it right, THAT is the original 'Williams logo with the fucked up arm angles and lenghts'. Which PROVES that, contrary to our previous belief, Juancocarbonero was NOT the origin of the mistakes. Instead it was [checks notes] a DeviantArt user by the name of Nerdkid56?

The original DeviantArt post, which as of 9:47pm CET on the 13th of October 2024 I am about 90% sure is the actual first appearanace of the scuffed logo, is from May of 2015, which lines up well with the original upload date of the fucked up logo onto Wikipedia (November 2016). At the time that DeviantArt post was almost the only source for the logo.

And in the case you needed any convincing that those two logos are the same, here they are overlayed. You may notice that it's one shape (excluding the rounded corner which isn't visible at this resolution.)

This discovery is essential to understanding why the current scuffed version is the way it is. You might remember our confusion about the way some edges are fine while some are attempting to leave the image, the whole thing is a weird Frankensteinian amalgamation of vectors and magic wand mistakes. With this knowledge we can now assume that the mistakes happened in 2 layers:

Nerdkid56: likely just eyeballed the proportions. I'd guess he drew one arm before the other and flipped it around without really checking the angles. Also didn't give a shit about whether the arms lined up with the base or not. Legitimately bad design made in a digital program.

Juancocarbonero: why he used the scuffed W logo instead of the normal ones that were also perfectly accessible by 1 goddamn Google search is a mistery. HOW he even got access to it is another question I do not think we'll have answers to. And I've already explained some of the things we think may be responsible for the uneveness and bumps. Point is he fucked it up even more.

My theory for why Juanchocarbonero used the scuffed version instead of any other available picture goes like this: it was the only png he could find. Practically every other search result for "Williams Logo" that predates 2017 is a jpeg or absolute ass quality (sometimes both for good measure) so, despite it's flaws, Nedkid56's trace of it could have been the best option available at the time (the quality is actually very very good since it's a vector image, and I guess our friend Juanchocarbonero doesn't have an eye for design considering he didn't notice uhm, everything that is wrong with that model.)

Conclusion

The only way to right these wrongs is to go back, to the very beggining of this saga. Wikipedia. Williams I'm so sorry for what you've had to endure. I know what I have to do now. When I eventually make a proper vector image of the official logo and upload it to Wikimedia it'll all be over. And I WILL do it (but not rn this has already robbed me of like 3 whole days of my life. soon)

All of this is, admittedly inconsequental, but also absolutely fucking hilarious. Like imagine. you. one single guy, you make ONE mistake in a silly little "tracing this logo" project because you couldn't be arsed to check the angles of a silly little W. And some other guy, who you likely don't even know, over a whole ass year later, takes your flawed piece of design, makes it even worse somehow and uploads it to a site from which your little tiny innocent mistake becomes the most widespread version of a logo used by an actual real company worth over 700 Million US Dollars. HOW. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN. WHY HAS NO ONE FIXED THIS??? IT'S BEEN 9 YEARS

Just to give you a final look on just how widespread this plague is, here are some examples of media the fucked up version of the logo is featured in:

this Mr V's Garage video (the original reason we started this conversation in the first place)

the thumbnails of these two videos by Tommo, this one by FP1Will, and this one by RicksF1Addiction

such an amount of random places. likely fanmerch and fanart, and like, pretty much any place someone wanted to use the logo. it's everywhere. if you've ever had the Williams logo displayed in anything you've made I can guarantee you 99.9% chance you used the fucked version

and late thank you to everyone ( @bumblewyn @mid-nighttiger @vro0m @lemonsgovroom @mikraas @leclerced fucking hell I kept needing to add people to this list because compiling all of this took absurdly long) who pointed out our misconception in the reblogs of the original post and contributed to us actually looking into this further. and sorry to everyone for accidentally spreading misinformation lmao (it's too funny not to have been worth it tho) (ALSO it's not really our fault is it)

and to keep the tradition of ending on a live discord reaction:

[beanytuesday]

GUE CHAPTER 4: LIVING DEAD

[But first: a brief message from the creator, which would have appeared BEFORE the comic, if I didn't just barely slide in under tumblrs 30 image limit]

Hello Everyone,

I was in the process of inking this comic when I suffered my debilitating hand injury, which set me back nearly a year. Even before I injured myself, I never intended for GUE 4 to take this long— and so in the interest of expediting it’s release, I took some shortcuts in the inking process through the use of generative AI.

Hah! Just kidding. But now it sounds less bad to say that I did save time by using modified pencilwork in place of inks, and the result is an end product that is decidedly a little rough.

I promise, nobody is upset about this as much as I am; I really wanted to present everyone with a perfect end product. But creative stuff like this has a half-life, and as much as I am proud of my work on GUE 4, I am ready to move on and get to work on other projects. (Maybe even… GUE 5? )

If it makes you feel better, just pretend that I’m the Thief And The Cobbler guy, and that GUE 4 is merely an unfinished masterwork pieced together after my untimely death at the hands of Disney gestapo. (Or whatever actually happened to him-- It’s funnier if I don’t look it up. Haha. Parody. Don’t sue me Disney)

And please, don’t freak out when you get to page 5. I started using a new drafting method while working on this comic, and I promise the art gets cleaner quickly. In fact, I think an adapted version of the rough inking method I used here can actually be used to in the future for faster turnaround, without sacrificing quality. Many exciting adventures await.

My deepest thanks for your support. Please enjoy GUE part 4.

[fwoopersongs]

责子 - Admonishing (my) sons

by 陶渊明 (Tao Yuanming, ~365 - 427)

白发被两鬓 肌肤不复实 bái fà bèi liǎng bìn  jī fū bù fù shí White hair greys both temples, skin sags, no longer firm -

虽有五男儿 总不好纸笔 suī yǒu wǔ nán ér  zǒng bù hǎo zhǐ bǐ though blessed with five boys, none have love for paper and brush.

阿舒已二八 懒惰故无匹 ā shū yǐ èr bā  lǎn duò gù wú pǐ A-Shu now twice eight, is so lazy none can compare.

阿宣行志学 而不爱文术 ā xuān xíng zhì xué  ér bù ài wén shù A-Xuan, coming to fifteen where others pursue study, dislikes all things literary.

雍端年十三 不识六与七 yōng duān nián shí sān  bù shí liù yǔ qī Yong and Duan, aged thirteen, find strangers in the numbers six and seven.

通子垂九龄 但觅梨与栗 tōng zi chuí jiǔ líng  dàn mì shí lízi yǔ lì Tongzi who is nearly nine, seeks only pears and chestnuts

天运苟如此 且进杯中物 tiān yùn gǒu rú cǐ  qiě jìn bēi zhōng wù Now if Heaven’s will is truly thus, drink up, whatever’s in the cup

………………………………………………………………………………………….

Notes 

(translations below are all mine):

This is a homework poem - from many weeks back xD - that I’d like to share. It’s by Tao Yuanming, a poet whose lifetime spanned the late Eastern Jin Dynasty and early Liu Song Dynasty. 

I really like his writing, and one thing I appreciate a lot about it is that he (usually) writes very plainly, but if we think about it a little, we can uncover hidden delights! He’s also just a very cute* person in general, which I think is what makes reading his works such a pleasure xD It also feels quite safe leaving this poem without any commentary because of the above mentioned quality of his writing - perhaps the only thing that needed some clarification was 志学, which was glossed in the translation anyway. 

So! Feel free to leave a message and tell me if I’m right, and also what you spot!

Also, as Jing said in the chat, tag yourself! Which lazy kid are you? :P

Oh and Tao Yuanming is a super famous writer of the Northern and Southern Dynasties actually, so you can probably look him up very easily if you want to. I’m just trying something different with him where I want to go through all of his works, and then go snooping through other people’s writing about his life.

* I said he was very cute earlier. Here is proof in his 归园田居·其三 Retiring to Fields and Home (part three).

种豆南山下 - Planting beans ‘neath the Southern Mountains, 草盛豆苗稀 - weeds abound, while the seedlings are sparse. 晨兴理荒秽 - Rising with the dawn to cull the weeds, 带月荷锄归 - retiring with the moon and a shouldered hoe; 道狭草木长 - the paths are narrow, the grasses tall, 夕露沾我衣 - and the evening dew dampens my clothes. 衣沾不足惜 - But dampened clothes aren’t worth lamenting, 但使愿无违 - so long as my ideals and actions, aligned, remain.

When he’s in a lighthearted mood, he likes to raise his readers’ expectations or tease at something and then reveal a hilarious twist. And often it’s very good naturedly self deprecating without being disparaging or underselling himself, so you laugh with him but not at him. 

For example, in an earlier part (Part Two) of the above poem, he talks about the peaceful rural retirement with down-to-earth neighbours and the things he is doing with his land. Then in part three, he starts off with a romantic-ish image only to dash it immediately with the next paired line, stated soooooo proudly. It gets funnier with every addition as you realise how hard he worked to get that result. But then there is a twist again - he says, all this and he doesn’t mind! Why not? Because it was his choice. Bro is truly committing to the unworldly farming life.

…Anyway, there are six parts to 归园田居. I highly recommend reading it all if you can because I’m totally not doing him any justice xD

For all of y’all who can read Chinese with a bit of help, here is another piece of his writing related to his kids. They make quite a number of cameos in his other poems, but I chose this one because it's actually addressed to them! He was writing in anticipation of the birth of his first son - if internet sources are to be believed.

Note: Veryyyyyyy rough, first draft-y sort of translation. I was just trying to get the meaning across as easily as possible.

命子 - Guidance for my son 悠悠我祖 爰自陶唐 邈焉虞宾 历世重光 御龙勤夏 豕韦翼商 穆穆司徒 厥族以昌 Long, long ago, my ancestor lived; Yao, who was of Tao and Tang. In the distant past, honoured at Yu, Danzhu paved glory for generations after. Surnamed Yulong, they served in Xia, as Shiwei, were wings to Shang; Great Minister over the Masses, Tao Shu led our clan’s rise.

纷纷战国 漠漠衰周 凤隐于林 幽人在丘 逸虬绕云 奔鲸骇流 天集有汉 眷予愍侯 The chaos of the Warring States, the fall of weakened Zhou; the Feng fades into his forest, hermits retire to their mountains. The Qiulong winds through cloud, whales ride monstrous waves; heaven-blessed was the coming of Han, it favoured Marquis Min.

於赫愍侯 运当攀龙 抚剑风迈 显兹武功 书誓河山 启土开封 亹亹丞相 允迪前踪 Illustrious Marquis Min; the time for him and his Emperor just arrived. Sword in hand against the wind, he achieved impressive martial feats. Fulfilling his lord's promise of everlasting glory, he was bestowed land, titles. And a tireless, diligent Chancellor followed in the footsteps of his father. 浑浑长源 蔚蔚洪柯 群川载导 众条载罗 时有语默 运因隆窊 在我中晋 业融长沙 The gushing of a river long from its source, the luxuriance of towering trees; all streams began from somewhere, all branches grow from some trunk. There is time to speak or be silent, for fortune has sharp vicissitudes; In our Jin at its zenith, Changsha’s brilliant achievements shined.

桓桓长沙 伊勋伊德 天子畴我 专征南国 功遂辞归 临宠不忒 孰谓斯心 而近可得 The fearsome, heroic Duke Huan of Changsha, with outstanding merits and virtue upon whom the Son of Heaven bestowed a hereditary title, leads wars in the South. Victory achieved, he retires home, unwavering despite glory and favour. Who dares say that such a heart can be easily found in recent times?

肃矣我祖 慎终如始 直方二台 惠和千里 於皇仁考 淡焉虚止 寄迹风云 冥兹愠喜 Rigorous he was, my grandfather, careful to the end as he was at the start. Fair and upright was his influence at Court; wisdom spread through his lands. Praiseworthy was my late fathers benevolence, though he sought no fame. He gave himself to Office and took both gain and loss with equanimity.

嗟余寡陋 瞻望弗及 顾惭华鬓 负影只立 三千之罪 无后为急 我诚念哉 呱闻尔泣 Lamenting my ignorance, I look to my ancestors, unable to reach their heights. I was ashamed, for despite my greying hair, alone in my family I stand. Among three thousand crimes, gravest - to leave no descendants. Over this I was deeply worried… until I heard your babbling cries.

卜云嘉日 占亦良时 名汝曰俨 字汝求思 温恭朝夕 念兹在兹 尚想孔伋 庶其企而 Observing the portents on this good day, divining this to be a good time, I named you Yan, gave you the courtesy name of Qiusi. Be respectful and aspiring day or night; remember well your name as Kong Ji remembered his. Such is my wish for you.

厉夜生子 遽而求火 凡百有心 奚特于我 既见其生 实欲其可 人亦有言 斯情无假 A diseased man’s son was born at night; with lamp and urgency he went to check. Every person, being ordinary, would have such a worry; I am no different. Witnessing your birth, truly, I wish for your future success. Though something often said by man, the sentiment in this is sincere and true.

日居月诸 渐免于孩 福不虚至 祸亦易来 夙兴夜寐 愿尔斯才 尔之不才 亦已焉哉 Days and months will pass swiftly, my son will leave childhood behind. Fortune's roots are always there, disaster also easily arrives. Be diligent: rise early, sleep late; may you be blessed with talent and success. But if you do not, then alas, though that is also fine.

(Referenced this source and this one for annotations)

I thought the intertwining of the imagined past and illustrious connections with traceable ancestors, grandparents and parents was a very charming way of expressing this narrative. Especially so when you think about the way the whole longass grandmother story is told shapes the message to his son! Noticing his efforts to emphasize the great achievements that could come about because of opportunity and fortune right after his rather soul stirring introduction (Parts 1 and 2) was DELIGHTFUL and actually very touching.

What makes a man good? Diligence, steadiness and dedication to doing what is good and right. What makes a man great? First, opportunity i.e. luck, but also, most importantly - strength of character - not losing sight of his heart despite power or fame.

All that leads up to his concluding verses - that it's human nature for parents to wish sincerely that their children will do well, so that their own regrets in life do not repeat. But the world is so unpredictable! Just do your best to lay the foundations for fortune when it arrives, then let things happen as they will, and let's be contented whatever the outcome.

Just taking his attitude at face value, what an un-stressful way to live life :D !!!!!!!!

And after reading this poem, how do you feel about Admonishing Sons that we started with in this post? GO read it again!

I love him so much.

[incesthemes]

HELLO! I have to know, what did you think of Madhouse at the End of the Earth??? What were your favorite parts?? :3c pls share your thoughts

OMG THANK YOU i will say i have literally not stopped thinking about this book since i finished it early last week. i have a normal amount of sticky notes marking my favorite quotes/events and other notable moments.

(pictured: exactly 120 sticky notes.)

literally i don't even know how to move on from this book, it made me so insane. i NEED to do horrible and illegal sex acts to adrien de gerlache. there isn't enough de gerlache rpf to satisfy my desire to see him stepped on. he's so utterly pathetic and useless and stupid. no redeeming qualities whatsoever. just a soggy idiot who gets them stuck in the pack on purpose and then has the audacity to regret it. like how do you get any better than this. i cannot believe this man was real and actually existed in the same world i live in today. what the hell man.

anyway. favorite parts are probably. de gerlache and lecointe getting the belgica stuck in the pack on purpose was like, an unparalleled reading experience; i physically yelled out loud while reading it because i couldn't believe my eyes. but here's my full-ish list of every part i marked for being completely deranged:

lecointe SLEEPING on the tonite to thaw them out. literally what an insane man. ok girl (secondarily: lecointe thawing out the tonite by holding them close to the fire. GIRL)

that time cook and amundsen tore apart a seal and drank its blood directly from its veins while tollefsen watched in horror

every single time sancton described cook's nose (the "peninsula" comment got me bad)

"strangely enough the thing in sir john's narrative that appealed to me most strongly was the sufferings he and his men endured," amundsen wrote. "a strange ambition burned within me to endure those same sufferings."

and by god he did. even if he had to force the issue (the iceberg plan is a particular fave)

everything about the penguins, from de gerlache's petulant, childish refusal to eat them because he was salty the men didn't like the food he picked out, to amundsen's obsession with eating raw penguin meat, to the fact that they lured the penguins to the ship with van mirlo's godawful cornet playing

the time they caused a fire on tierra del fuego and had to go put it out, only to return to the ship to see it decorated for christmas. nothing says season's greetings like the minor destruction of someone else's land

they ran the ship aground. TWICE. before ever even making it to antarctica. TWO TIMES!!!!!!!!!!

cook and amundsen's first date climbing up a mountain and nearly plummeting to their certain deaths once each

de gerlache hosting a meeting about what to do when they were out of the ice, being pathetic about it, then begging lecointe to let him change the minutes so he'd sound cooler

DANCO'S BODY STANDING UPRIGHT AT HIS FUNERAL AS IF IT WERE POSSESSED

the fact that everyone hated michotte's cooking and yet no one bothered to even do anything about it. like what. if you hate it that bad make your own food cmon girls......

the unexplained random screaming that amundsen, cook, and koren heard but no one else did............. okay! #normalthings #sanitywin

cook going off the rails worshiping the sun. antarctica claims yet another victim (cook's sanity)

speaking of cook, the fact that the most likely theory for why everyone went insane was cyanide poisoning. from cook's photo developing solution. the DOCTOR did all this. it seriously doesn't get funnier than that

cook hanging penguin carcasses along the belgica's hull as they made to escape the pack. like imagine being in puntas arenas and seeing this ship no one is expecting come into port and everyone has these crazed eyes, some of them are screaming and in the throes of a full mental breakdown, and there's fucking penguin carcasses hanging off the ship like some kinda charms. the mental image alone sent me into hysterics i swear

and most importantly, the fact that all of this happened and they still managed to keep the ship. i think sir john, crozier, and shackleton (et al) are rolling in their graves over this expedition. most incompetent freakass men you know got to keep their ship and yours is at the bottom of the ocean. i can't even believe it.

on a serious note this was just genuinely a great book, it's written so well and in such a particular way; reading nonfiction has never been so fun—sancton made these cold boys sound like shounen anime characters, for real. it was awesome seeing the steps they took to ensure survival and the mistakes they made which undermined the expedition. there's a lot to learn from this expedition and a lot to admire about it, for what it was. it was also just an insane ride from beginning to end—everything went wrong, nearly every guy on that ship was in way over their head and completely wrong for the job, and they kept making the worst possible choices at every turn. the fact that they survived is a miracle and honestly i do think, even though cook was probably accidentally responsible for how crazy they got, he deserves a lot of praise for keeping the ship together and being so proactive in their survival. and never have two people matched each other's freak the way amundsen and cook did, oh my god. they're calling tollefsen the madman while yearning to plummet from an antarctic mountain or live on an iceberg. but sure tollefsen was sooooo crazy.

anyway sorry this is really long but holy shit this book made me so crazy. it's gonna take such a long time for me to get to a point where i can be normal about the belgica after reading this. holy shit man.

[emerson-grimes-apologist]

Hihi don't mind me but do you got any voice headcanons for the funky puppets ʘ⁠‿⁠ʘ I'd love to hear them

I have a few I'm thinking about :)

Horace: The Peculiar Purple Pieman from Strawberry Shortcake? Possibly? I don't know, he reminds me too much of Waluigi I think

Thade: Either Snufkin or Jon Arbuckle. I see people headcanoning him as having this smooth, posh, elegant voice, but I think it would be funnier for him to look like an elegant goth but have a voice that makes him sound like a silly guy. Because he is a silly guy! To me

Sariah: I can see lots of high-pitched "princessly" voices fitting her tbh, including but not limited to Snow White, Thumbelina, Strawberry Shortcake.... I like Beatrice's voice from Over the Garden Wall because it isn't SUPER gentle and has some sassiness to it, but I think it would be cool if ALL my voice claims came from sources from, like, the 70s or 80s, and have that crackly low-quality sound to reflect that Candle Cove is an old TV show. Maybe I could put her voice through a filter...

Dr. Heartfelt: Ludwig von Drake (I'm kind of on the fence about this because he sounds pretty exuberant while I imagine Heartfelt to be more soft-spoken. I might look for clips of him talking softly and see what I think then. My other choice would be Matthias Schweighöfer, but he sounds too normal to me (as in not cartoony)).

Dr. Mort: Louis Jourdan (I was also on the fence about this for a while because he tends to sound a little too suave and debonair in his roles while I image Mort to sound like a little creep, but I think this clip specifically matches him vibe) (sort of unrelated but here's a clip of him SINGING! I think about it often)

Red Mary: Amanda Palmer

Susan Siren: Probably Ballora from FNAF, but I still like my older voice claim, which is Fiona Apple singing this song specifically.

Roger Rogerson: The Globglogabgalab

Bubba: Kris from Santa Claus is Comin' to Town

Starson: I said before that I was thinking of John from the Beatles cartoon for him, but now I'm thinking of Smart Gary from Spongebob. He just sounds like a little smarty.

I want to make a looooooooong voice claim video at some point so I'm in the process of looking for voice claims, but it's slow work :,) especially since I don't really have a solid "feel" for a lot of the characters (I only really really care about like 5 of them. The rest I'm kind of uninterested in rn, even though I want to develop them more in my head and get more invested in them so I can write fanfics with them and stuff like that). But I want to bring it into existence!

[thislovintime]

Peter Tork, 1965, 1967, and 2004 (photos 3 & 4 by Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images).

“[T]hen I said [to Bob Rafelson], ‘Listen, I know another guy that’s a lot like me and he’s probably a little brighter, and he might be a little bit quicker and funnier.’ […] I called him [Peter] up. He said, ‘I’ll come down.’ And two days later, I found out that he had gotten the job and he called me to thank me. It was funny. I was amused that he took it because he was kind of a hipster.” - Stephen Stills on recommending Peter Tork for The Monkees, 1988 interview quoted in Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and Music of Laurel Canyon (2009)

“Steve knows this guy, and it turns out to be Bob Rafelson, one of the producers, who says to him, in his own inimitable way, ‘Well, we like ya a lot, but your hair and teeth are wrong for our production, they ain’t photogenic. You know anybody who looks like you who’s got good hair and teeth?’ Stephen said, ‘My friend Peter.’ And so Stephen called me and said, ‘Go try out for this thing.�� And I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, sure, Steve, yeah, right, instant success, gimme a break.’ And he said, ‘No, no, really, try out.’ ‘All right, all right, all right.’ So, you know, I took my hard-earned savings, which I’d been making washing dishes at this club in southern, way southern California, fifty miles south of Hollywood, and took a bus up to Hollywood and back down again, and up and down for auditions. And eventually won the part.” - Peter Tork, NPR, June 1983 (x)

“There was one guy, Steve, whom I liked enormously. Unfortunately he wasn’t quite right, but he had musical intelligence and I went so far as to ring him up and ask him along again. When he realized he wasn’t going to make it he suggested I get in touch with someone he knew, a certain Peter Thorkelson. I might have said ‘Yeah’ and forgotten about it — particularly as this Peter Thorkelson hadn’t even answered the ad and we had a lot of guys who had. Yet I remember I went to great lengths to contact him. I found him working as a dishwasher — not even as a musician, so you can imagine it took a while tracing him. But when I heard him, I knew at once he was right. I was knocked out.” - Bob Rafelson, NME, August 12, 1967 (x)

Q: “Do you have any regrets about the Monkees?” Peter Tork: “Oh, dozens of little ones, sure. But in a way, nothing that I had any handle on. There were stands I wish I had been able to take sometimes, but you can’t do what you can’t do. If I had been the person who could’ve taken the stands, maybe they wouldn’t have chosen me. You never know how this goes.” Q: “But you’re happy they chose you?” PT: “Oh sure. You know, I’m not going to tell you the story but I promise you that there were a number of events leading up to it that lead me to think that there was a certain kind of ordained quality to it all. I’m not a mystic, by any chance, but I’ve seen a lot of connections occur that standard, conventional Western logic isn’t large enough to take in. And I believe that this was pretty much set up somehow. It’s almost as if I had no choice. Things sort of occurred. For instance, Stephen Stills called me and said, ‘Go try out.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ and hung up and left and didn’t think about it. Well, he called again. Nobody’s ever called me with a suggestion like that twice. Not before, not since.” - The News and Observer, September 13, 2004

[cloudsoffire]

congratulations to shirou emiya, our winner for this face-off! you truly are a hero of justice!

thanks to everyone who voted! this got a lot bigger than i expected. of course, with size comes confusion, so i'll be including an explanation of this poll under the cut. (there's also a bonus image)

i appreciate your participation!

what was the purpose of this poll?

archer lost in round two of the tournament i mentioned in the original post. this poll was meant to present a scenario in which archer would 100% win.

but he lost!

HA

why did people find this funny?

well, i can't speak for everyone, but here's what i consciously put into it. (spoilers for fate/stay night)

the production quality: there's no reason for there to be so much fire and lightning. it's purposeful overkill that while probably overlooked by most, i feel intensifies everything else.

dramatic irony: archer and shirou have fought in the source material, and archer loses, which makes the line "here's a matchup he'll definitely win" funnier if you have context.

setup: archer lost in the archer tournament, which is why i placed him in this poll, stating that he was for sure going to win. if he did win, that'd be fun, but that's only part of it. if he lost, i propped him up only for him to trip over quite literally his own feet. it was going to be fun for me either way. (so that's why i chose a side, person in the replies. it was funnier.)

oh yeah: shirou and archer are the same person, in spite of their differing worldviews. archer is just a future version of shirou that became a heroic spirit. the poll was fully rigged. archer lost, but he still won.

explaining the joke definitely makes it less funny, but i think i reached my target audience for the most part, so this is primarily for people who were out of the loop.

once again, thank you for participating! even if you didn't get the joke, i hope you had fun voting!

since archer lost the @blorbo-archers-tournament, here's a matchup he'll definitely win!

let's go, archer!

[diario-de-un-cocazo]

Even the most mundane moments become precious in the future.

I'm at my grandfather's house. We gathered to celebrate something, it doesn't matter what. The table is too small for everyone, we are more people than before. So I finish my plate and go to the hammock in the corner to take a nap, just like when I was a child. And suddenly I'm in the past. But I'm not at the same time. The noise of their laughs are the same, but the living room is different. There's no sight of grandma's bed. It is gone, just like her. And where are all the toys? Looney tunes? Rugrats? Where are they? And my feet aren't tangling from the hammock, I can easily stand up if I wanted to. Maybe I should go to the store, I wanna grab a bag of chips. But they aren't $1.50 anymore. They are $18 if I go for the cheap ones. And there won't be any Pokemon tazos inside. What if I turn out the TV? Will Dragon ball be airing on channel 7? Ah. Was the animation always this, cheap? The quality of the image, and the sound, was it always this bad? Everything looked like this back then so, I never complained. Oh, but I have a small computer in my hands now. I don't have to go to a cyber cafe in order to have internet. But everything we liked back then is gone. None of the cartoon network games remains anyway, and maybe it's for the better. And it's so quiet. Since I breathe from my mouth, no one can tell I'm crying. There should be a lot of barking. Why is Colita not barking? She is always barking. She was always barking. She lived for 20 years, it's cruel from my part to wish she was still around.

And I cry because I wanted this. I wanted to be able to reach the medicine cabinet. I wanted to be able to drink a beer with the grown ups. Now I work and have paychecks, and don't have to play with mom's make up cause I can buy them for myself. But I don't want to. It was funnier when I wasn't expected to use it everyday. Everything was funnier back then. And I keep crying. And I want my sister to pick me up in her arms, but she can't do that anymore. Instead I carry her children in my arms. One boy and one girl, and it's perfect because I have two hands. And it's bitter sweet cause my nephew cuddles a plushie that used to be mine. They don't know how much they will miss this day either. They don't know that my mom only has some strings of gray hair, but one day it will all her hair. I remember one photo of grandma carrying me in her arms. My mother looks exactly like her right now. And I wanna cry even more. She still cries whenever someone mentions Grandma, and I know I will do the same. She is still here with us, and I'm already missing her. But I don't want to think about it. So I will go wash my face, and grab my nephew and niece hands and go to the store. And get each one of them a bag of chips. And hope that one day, when they are grieving their own childhood, they have something precious to cry about too.

[tyonfs]

I know this may be abit of a hot take but I've never been down bad for Jaehyun. He is attractive obviously but I either see him as the biggest fuckboy around. I know that man gets mad pussy. I also kinda just feel bad for him in a way, like he just seems sad alot and awkward. What good is all the sex in the world and all the women throwing themselves at you if you aren't happy, knowing he is objectified so much in general but especially in NCITY. I know all idols are to a basic degree but it's like all NCTZENS see him as a hunky of meat, a dick and nothing else to offer. Thirst is one thing but many dont talk about his weight struggles and how he is withering away before our eyes (alot of them are, but that's a topic for another time, yuta really worries me in this regard, I can go into heavy detail on him, yes he's my bias in NCT) sometimes they talk about his voice but even then it's in a sexualized matter. This is why I feel bad for Jaehyun ALOT and people just completely ignore that it's a problem because why should it be? Same happens with Johnny alot, atleast Jaemin has the 4D personality to help his image as more than just a face and body to NCTZENS. Jaehyun acts, sings, raps, dances, and MCs but everyone just reduces him to thirst traps. Idk man I just dont view him "that way" and I think that's the best thing for him tbh

ooo personally i don't think jaehyun seems sad a lot, but that's just what i've noticed!! i think he does have some awkward qualities but that kind of makes him humor all the more funnier to me actually, but i do feel like that vibe might be bc the rest of 127 is pretty expressive/boisterous in a way?? like how he smiles to himself when he's about to make a joke bc he knows it's gonna be funny or when he posted his feet in the sand just to see our reaction to it LOL

but i agree that he gets sexualized and treated like an object of desire a lottt </3 i was so sad when he had to diet for his role in dear.m but yeah the whole dieting culture in asia is very toxic and i notice how bad it is with companies like starship and such ://

i will say tho i spend more time on twitter where people gush more over jaehyun/johnny/yuta's personality and funny moments and talent and such instead of just being fixated on looks. i think i would have the same viewpoint as you if i just stuck to tumblr and tiktok tho

[digital-dhampirs]

vnc episode 12 thoughts

The thrilling conclusion to the Vanitas no Carte anime’s first cour is out, and I have thoughts! I’m still considering doing a full season/ fill cour review, but I have a Lot of episode 12- specific opinions, so this review / breakdown / thing will focus around e12!

A warning before we begin— review will contain spoilers for events that take place in the vnc manga and not in the anime, and will most likely spoil some sections of the anime’s next cour. With that, let’s get started!

Episode 12 of the VnC anime covers chapters 19, 21, 22, and 23 of the manga.

To begin this review in a brutally honest way, this episode was… in my opinion as a manga reader… bad. It did have some ok moments, but generally devoted a lot of its time to a plotline that (while adorable) isn’t actually super important compared to what was left on the wayside. Vanitas and Noé’s fight over blood drinking is fine, I guess, but why’d we get that minute long flashback compilation and not Dante’s conversation with Dominique, or Roland and Olivier’s complete conversation, or Astolfo’s excitement to hunt vampires, or Mikhail?

I really truly wish the show had taken some of the money and time that went into the Vanitas and Noé fight from chapter 23 and put it into the arguably much more important and interesting parts of this episode. Ruthven drinking Noé’s blood, Roland’s threat, and Chloé and Astolfo’s introductions all had some very janky stills and animations. It truly irked me to see that time and effort went into making Noé’s mouth move while he’s mentally monologuing about wanting to drink Vanitas’s blood, while Roland’s fantastic threat from Chapter 22 got… this. click on image for worse quality

The episode also decided to continue E11’s habit of chopping scenes up and mashing them together. In E11 this was a very not great decision, but was ultimately somewhat forgiveable from a tone point of view. In E12, meanwhile, it’s just all out chaos as the anime tries to string five completely separate scenes into something coherent (Noé and Vanitas in the hotel, Ruthven and Jeanne in the street, Domi and Dante on the stairs, Roland and Olivier in the chasseur compound, and a flashback to complete the Ruthven and Noé encounter from E11). Suffice it to say the anime does not succeed in this endeavor.

What really irritates me about this is that the manga already provided a framework for the anime to work these scenes together into. A frantic Vanitas reunites with Noé, Ruthven meets Jeanne in the street, Roland and Olivier speak about the beast, we see a mysterious flashback of Chloé calling for Jeanne as they talk, cut to Jeanne in the present as Dante and Ruthven’s attendants simultaneously tell Ruthven and Vanitas about the beast’s return.

I really wish the anime could’ve just given us the conclusion to the Ruthven scene at the start of the episode, done the OP, and then followed this series of events to a T. But it didn’t, and the result is a bit of a mess.

The anime’s choice to omit half of Roland and Olivier’s conversation means Dante’s announcement about the beast being back has no meaning or weight; Vanitas running to the hotel before we know what actually happened to Noé at the cafe ruins the drama and irony of the scene; Noé’s lack of memory of what happened at the cafe is muddled by the weirdly placed cafe flashback right afterwards; the anime putting Olivier’s “what that man believes in isn’t god” line seconds before the reveal of Roland’s intelligent and scheming nature doesn’t give the line enough room to breathe and stew; and the transition scene with Domi and Dante just doesn’t fit. I can honestly say I would have preferred Dante just teleporting from the streets of Paris to Vani and Noé’s windowsill than have that scene smack dab in the middle of what’s already a confusing mishmash of way too many unconnected events.

Wow. That was a long, critical paragraph. one might even say it was just as chaotic and disorganized as the episode itself. I feel like I’m really living up to my fullest potential as a bitter manga simp. So! Let’s turn things around and talk about some of the good parts of this episode!!

First and foremost I want to compliment this episode’s music..! The soundtrack of VnC is just all round fantastic no matter what— whether it’s playing during a goofy scene or a fight, it’s is bound to be fantastic. I think my favorite pieces are the ones that play at quiet, ominous moments— the music during Vanitas and Dante’s conversation about the beast is excellent, adding something truly incredible to the atmosphere created by the illustrations of the beast and the eerie green light of the scene. The way the music lines up with Olivier’s “what that man believes in…” line during that one flashback is similarly awesome.

This episode also has very nice voice acting..! Despite all of its struggles in the visual and plot department, pretty much everything to do with the VnC anime’s audio is stellar. I’ve become a big fan of Jeanne, Roland, and Olivier’s voices (I can’t wait to see how Olivier’s VA works with all his screaming in the Gévaudan arc); Astolfo’s voice is perfect for him (I am similarly excited to see his clipped, polite tone take a turn for the insane as the Gévaudan arc moves forwards); and as always our protagonists’ voices are great.

My one singular problem with the voice acting this episode is Chloé. I don’t know why, but she sounds like a catgirl from a fantasy anime rather than a multiple- centuries- old vampire. I don’t know what I was expecting from her voice, but this wasn’t it. I really hope Chloé’s voice will grow on me like Roland’s did, but there’s just something about it that feels off to me.

However! That one detriment doesn’t detract from the fact that this episode does have some very beautiful moments, especially during that one last scene with Chloé at the end. Visually, Chloé is absolutely spot on— I only hope the show has the budget to keep giving her pretty, pretty scenes like this. The scene where Vanitas and Dante discuss the beast is also very very nice to look at. The monochromatic red section of Ruthven and Noé’s scene is excellent. And, while I’m still annoyed that this scene got so much love put into it and others did not, Noé’s spotlight-lit monologue is aesthetically pleasing as well.

With that, we’ve covered all of my main thoughts on the final episode of the vnc anime’s first cour! My feelings towards this episode’s plot and pacing are overwhelmingly critical, and the episode’s visuals are a toss up (leaning on the side of bad, @/ that Roland screenshot), b u t the episode’s music and voice acting are both fantastic. And honestly? That’s kinda how I feel about this whole cour of the anime.

Episode 12 might not have been “good”, but I believe it’s a very neat representation of the best and worst of what Vanitas no Carte as an anime has to offer.

Despite all my critiques I am still legally obligated to love this anime, and can’t wait to see the Gévaudan arc in the next cour!

Fun Fact

The weirdly technological background when Noé realizes he’s hungry makes absolutely no sense for an anime set in 1889, but for some reason that just makes this scene funnier to me

[thecascadesystem]

Oh my god they actually made it in

I love Randy x Danny so so much but I feel like it's my duty as the one original GuardiCard Truther to provide some evidence to my propaganda. (This post will be pretty long, and some of the images may cause eyestrain because they're from old flash animations - just a heads-up.)

Here's a screenshot from Guardian Angel's first appearance (poorly edited for clarity about who is who):

This is from one of Edd Gould's older animations, so the quality is a lot lower than his later stuff. I think it adds to Guardian's charm, and makes this pairing even funnier than it already is.

Guardian sticks by Edd's side throughout the whole episode, giving him guidance with a dramatic "kill the root of the problem before it grows" approach.

Despite being so prominent of a character to Edd's character development (though this is not to be taken seriously, because the show is based in absurdist comedy), Guardian only shows up in a single episode.

This is a screenshot of Hellucard's first appearance in the episode "Spares" (please disregard the fact that he's surrounded by Edd clones):

He shows up as a gag in multiple episodes, trying to greet Edd each time (though mispronouncing his name as 'Hedd'), but Edd never returns the acknowledgement. (I'm going to disregard the weird retconning comic that makes Hellucard talk to an actual floating head, because the comics aren't entirely canon anyway).

Hellucard actually ends up dying in the episode WTFuture, when he is shot by a future version of Edd that travelled back in time. Due to this, even his last words were an attempt at his typical greeting.

However, this isn't the only time that Hellucard is shown as being dead for an on-screen gag. He's also shot by Paul in the intro to Space Face, and seen as a zombie astronaut in Fun Dead (it's likely that his dead body was somehow retrieved from space and somehow became a zombie back down on Earth).

So we have a guy who's a literal angel and a guy who dies a lot, both with opposing relations to our main character. I think this ship would work in a sort of "unrequited love triangle" sort of way, or maybe even a "doomed by the narrative" concept. I don't quite know how to explain it, but these silly little guys are so perfect for semi-ironic angst.

I have literally no more photo evidence for this pairing because they never interact and this is all themeing, so I made a list of traits instead to show how truly "opposites attract" these characters are.

In conclusion, I have no issues with if you decide to vote for Danny x Randy (I'd do the same thing if I wasn't so damn passionate about this ship). In fact, I consider it a win that GuardiCard is even included in this tournament. But if you did vote for this ship it'd make me so damn happy - I need other people out there to rant about this ship to.

Rants!

Hellucard/Guardian Angel: Eddsworld is an animated series created by Edd Gould, starring the fictional counterparts of his friends. All of the characters featured in his animations are fictional and the plot lines follow fictional absurdist events (just clarifying in case you worry that this is RPF - its not).

In the 2005 Christimas Special, a Guardian Angel comes down from heaven to show Edd what the lives of his friends would look like if he didn't exist. Guardian Angel helps Edd to be more generous and kind towards his friends because of the visions he grants, in a plot line comparable to A Christmas Carol, and he gains his Angel wings as a result of the successful task. He is never seen again in any other episode.

Hellucard is a recurrent character that exists solely as a gag, frequently seen waving at Edd and greeting him with a catchphrase (he says "'Ey Hedd" instead of "Hey Edd"). His last few appearances in Eddsworld featured his death (in WTFuture) followed by Easter Egg cameos of his dead body (seen floating in space in Space Face, and seen as a zombie in Fun Dead).

I (@thecuddlesystem ) first created this ship after entering every Eddsworld character into an online spinner wheel and using the wheel to create crack ships, solely out of boredom. Hellucard x Guardian Angel was one of the results, and I've been obsessed with it ever since (despite there being literally no fanart or acknowledgement of this ship in the fandom).

The main focus of this ship is due to the "opposites attract" trope, and how the two characters can be seen as narrative foils of each other.

Hellucard has blonde hair and wears a black shirt, while Guardian Angel has black hair and wears a white shirt. Hellucard constantly tries to interact with Edd throughout multiple episodes (for no real reason) but never succeeds, while Guardian Angel interacts with Edd directly with purpose for a single episode. Hellucard is associated with death and has the word Hell his name, and Guardian Angel is...well, an angel from Heaven.

I'm also pretty fond of angst content for this pairing because I think angst content for such minor characters in a comedy-centric flash animation series is a funny concept.

In conclusion: please consider my blorbos for this bracket. They'll probably lose but I'll be so damn pleased if they're even mentioned by anyone but myself.

Danny Fenton/Randy Cunningham: You can just call this ship EctoHam for short. Danny is half-human and half-ghost due to an accident with his ghost-hunting parents' ghost portal, and he fights ghosts as a superhero called Danny Phantom. Randy was chosen to be the Ninja, a role that is secretly passed down between the citizens of Norrisville every 4 years, and he has to fight robots + monsters to protect his highschool. Neither Randy or Danny can reveal their secret identities to the public due to how dangerous the outcomes would be (both are at risk of death). That's pretty much all you need to know for context about this ship - if you remove the secret identities, they're just two dorky teenagers who struggle with a lack of popularity.

[honeyteawrites]

government assigned obey me lore uquiz responses part 2

here’s the quiz!  

☆ thank you to everyone who took it ☆

ngl I forgot that I had a uquiz account and was very shocked when I saw that the amount of quiz takers had tripled since I last checked. I’m sorry if I didn’t manage to find everyone who responded, I am not going through all the takers again. (I rlly wish that you could chose just to see who responded to the optional section at the end. if that kinda thing exists then I am a fool because idk how to get there)

oh also click the images for better quality 

wahh thank you!

very true, i’m not very active with om now but when i was i had no life

it’s because he would read books in the car haha

awee I know that they all have their own stars or something but constellations are cooler

me too he’s underrated tbh

lmao don’t apologize there’s someone named meow that has taken this quiz like five times

thanks i had absolute om brainrot when i made this uquiz so it’s chaotic. also yes Dia and Luci are bfs

yes I read your headcanons and I enjoyed them! I was rlly excited to see this response

NOW THIS IS A GOOD ONE. it also makes that one audio drama with Mams and Barb even funnier

[tricktster]

Hey, I'm just letting you know I noticed some of your posts have been reposted on facebook by "Just Sock Thoughts"

Yeah, I feel like I get my Premium Original Content scooped by aggregators pretty frequently, and for the most part I don’t mind (or like... just don’t see it because I can’t bring myself to actually get into Instagram). But there are two aggregator incidents that stand out in my mind as particularly remarkable:

Incident 1:

I’d probably have a much bigger head about the relative frequency that one of my posts takes off if I didn’t know that becoming an Extremely Minor Internet Personality is way less about making good content than it is about... random luck, I guess. 

Like, this is actually a sideblog (so for any of my longtime buddies on here who might be wondering why I’m not following you? I prooooobably am). At the time I made this sideblog (2015-2016?), I never thought it would pick up more followers than the 200 or so I had managed to coax into following my main blog over the course of four-ish years. 

I was wrong, this account rapidly accumulated followers, and now I get scooped by aggregators on the reg. And like... it’s not like I’m doing anything different on this one than I was doing on my main, other than obscuring my identity a little better? I’m not funnier here, I’m not changing my formula, it’s just that I got enough followers when I first made this sideblog (through my patented process of Writing Explicit Undertale Fanfic in the Hopes of Getting Enough Monetary Donations That I Could Afford To Eat) that now even though I’m just posting my own weird niche bullshit on here, the odds are stacked in my favor towards any one of my posts picking up a lot of notes. If I posted the same exact thing on my extremely obscure main? The odds swing HARD the other way. In the 3-4 years before I made the trickster account, I was lucky to break 10 notes on a post, and 500 was as high as any of them went. 

Except for one. 

You’ve probably seen the post I’m talking about. It’s surpassed my most popular trickster posts by like... several hundreds of thousands of notes. I’m not linking it here for two reasons: 

A) I never scrubbed all my selfies off my main and I don’t need all y’all discovering that I’m hot as hell, and more importantly 

B) the post in question fucking sucks. 

It’s like the lowest effort meme, it’s smug and annoying, and it basically reeks of the worst era of r/athiesm. It’s the sort of shit that gets popular on facebook groups that wish they were “I fucking love science” but can’t achieve the same degree of quality... even though it’s an extremely low hurdle for them to jump. It evokes the concept of a fedora. Whenever I see it on tumblr, I want to hop in a time machine, travel back to the 17th century, convince Matsubayashi Henyasai to take me on as a pupil, train under his tutelage until he declares that I have mastered my chosen weapon, hop back into the time machine, travel to 2013, infiltrate my old apartment, and finally, at the precise moment my former self is about to click “post” on that dumbass meme, destroy her mouse, laptop, and cellphone with an incredibly accurate barrage of shurikens. 

Still, like... while it makes me cringe to my very soul whenever I encounter it, there’s a tiny part of me that has spent the last eight years just BASKING in the validation of knowing that there are several hundred thousand anonymous people out there who think I’m funny. It is not an attractive part of me, but shit, I’m an Extremely Minor Internet Personality, and you don’t become that unless you’re in some way motivated by the approval of anonymous strangers.

I’m giving you all this backstory so you can understand the significance of something that happened last month.

There I was, innocently scrolling through my news feed to see how my Trumpy uncle was justifying the whole coup thing, when I came upon a familiar image. I recoiled in horror, and then examined it more closely.

The Coolest Guy I Knew In College But Never Succeeded In Really Befriending (Because I Was Too Intimidated By How Cool He Was) had just shared my smug, cringy-as-hell meme from 2013 on his wall... and the version he had shared had been not only watermarked by one of the aforementioned wannabe “I fucking love science” groups, but also had a copyright symbol on it next to the name of some dude I’ve never even heard of.

THE MAELSTROM OF CONFLICTING EMOTIONS IS STILL OVERWHELMING ME TO THIS DAY. I AM WINCING. I AM INDIGNANT. I AM REASSESSING WHETHER THAT GUY WAS ACTUALLY AS COOL AS I THOUGHT HE WAS. I AM WEIRDLY AMUSED. I AM EXTREMELY CONFUSED. 

I AM SUSPICIOUS THAT SOMEONE MIGHT BE MAKING MONEY OFF OF MY NONSENSE, AND IF SO, I WOULD LIKE MY GODDAMN CUT. 

...

i’m fine

i’m gonna be fine

Incident 2:

This really requires a lot less elaboration than the last one, but @anagha-draws brought this aggregator post to my attention and I just can’t stop thinking about the fact that there’s a guy out there who got paid some amount of actual U.S. dollars to write a book report about the time I accidentally played WAP for my mom’s book club. 

[goose-books]

goose-books productions: a 2020 review

view the image in higher quality here! (open the image in a new tab to zoom in.) thank you to my dearest @yvesdot for the template

transcripts and month-by-month details under the cut! for reference, you can find my projects here :-) overall, new and old followers, thank you for another good year over here! [holds your hand] [holds your hand] [holds your hand] [holds your h

january

i spent late 2019-early 2020 working on 2019’s nano project, quark, aka the speculative fiction thing about new york city and prophets and dissections of the chosen one trope and gay people. quark is my second-oldest project (five years!), but it’s also probably the most ambitious, so it’s been... difficult to wrangle into place, and i didn’t end up finishing a first draft. oh, well.

enjoy a snippet that is devastatingly emblematic of everything about quark. the tone. the homoerotic tension. the ensemble cast all talking over each other. the fact that caelum has spent pretty much this entire scene crying. fun autopsy report meeting.

Marble stares at the notebook in Shade’s hands. Or maybe he’s staring at Shade’s hands. Dawn feels a little voyeuristic, so she does what she does and says a dumb and unrelated thing: “Augustus, I think this pizza-on-the-floor thing is hurting my ass.”

Augustus flutters his hands. “Sometimes nonconformity is painful.”

“At least we’re originals,” Caelum mumbles into his sleeve.

“Exactly,” Augustus says.

“True originality doesn’t exist,” Marble says.

“Oh,” Shade deadpans, “it’s going to be a fun autopsy report meeting.”

It isn’t.

february

in january i stressed myself out trying to make the plot of quark work. so in february, i decided to take some time and write something Entirely For Fun. like, entirely for fun, no rules. and. my god. how do i explain the project i started calling “third eye for the bad guy.”

it was an unholy mashup of many of my past hyperfixations, including the gone series, a tale of two cities, warrior cats, and the left hand of darkness. one of the characters was a canon scalie and one was a canon fictionkinnie. it centered around a polycule of wannabe-evil-overlord high schoolers. i only wrote like three chapters but i was lost in the sauce for all of february and then i just… like… wiped it from my mind and moved on? somehow??? one character was a werewolf and that literally wasn’t relevant at ALL

I.

Someone was going to die on these steps.

This had been Ivy Lee Palomo’s thought last year during the all-school photo, and it rose in her mind again now. The one hundred marble stairs leading up to the great double doors of Saint Constantine Academy were the school’s pride and glory, steep as the mountain, sharp as the blade under Ivy Lee’s skirt. With the cutting wind and snow glazing the stone more often than not, with the freshmen wild and wired on their first day of their first year, it was really only a matter of time before someone slipped and cracked their fucking head open.

It wasn’t going to be her. Not when she had Doc Martens and reflexes like an electric coil. Still. Ivy Lee didn’t want to watch someone die. She didn’t get along with dead people.

march

in march, i got back to the project i’d started in 2019 - AMT, my podcast! it’s a shakespeare retelling set in a modern high school; this excerpt is funnier and also more unnerving in context. (double, double, toil and trouble...)

INDRAJIT: What the hell are you doing?

[PAUSE.]

DEE (like she’s lying): Making pasta.

[ALL THREE OF THEM LAUGH.]

NONA: That’s right.

MORA: We have the keys to Mab’s office.

DEE: We’re using her stove.

NONA: To make pasta.

DEE: Do you want some?

[A TENSE PAUSE.]

INDRAJIT: No.

april

and darkling rears its head! all of my other projects have existed for at least a year; darkling (specfic king lear retelling) is... special. it was conceived in april, when i started hyperfixating on king lear, and i still managed to write an absolutely ridiculous amount of content for it. it was like the power of hyperfixation let me speedrun the entire process. which. okay.

iv: control

They say Cressida Stayer was nine years old when she turned her hair to gold. They laid her down in bed blonde, and the next morning, the waves cascading down her shoulders were solid metal, glinting harshly in the sunlight, weighing her down, creating that odd head-cocked expression she still wears now. Nine years old. Two or three years before most people develop enough magic skills to dye a single curl. Much less transfigure their hair into precious metal.

People also say Leovald Stayer’s immediate reaction was to hack it off her head and melt it down for cash. But generally they say that part a lot quieter.

may

in may i wrote AMT episode 15, by which i mean that in may there was a day when i sat in my room with the door shut for literally five straight hours listening to the same three songs on loop as i wrote the climax of one of the plotlines of AMT. so. that sure was… a day.

ISAAC: Do you want… do you want someone to drive you home? Hawk, you’re worrying me -

HAWK (almost cutting him off): Don’t. Don’t say that. I’m here to help. With your… thing.

ISAAC (quietly): I… don’t know if you should be here to see this.

HAWK (a little louder, more audibly upset): Well - what else am I going to do? Go home and - and have my dads talk at me and - and not be able to answer them? Because I can’t? I can’t. I don’t know what to say.

[PAUSE.]

ISAAC (V.O.): I wonder if this is what he feels like, on the outside, looking in at me. Watching someone else hurting. Helpless and afraid.

He still fits perfectly in my arms. I rest my chin on top of his head and pull him close to me, like I can stop him from shaking, like I can stop anything from happening the way I know it’s going to. I bury my face in his hair. He smells so familiar. He’s so warm.

God, Hawk. I love you so much. You shouldn’t be here to see this. Something bad’s gonna happen. And you’re not the kind of person who belongs in a tragedy.

june

okay, honestly, i should talk about “night shift” here, because in june i wrote a whole short story in one night (and then foamed over it for a week), but i am still in the process of submitting it places! so i am terrified to put even a sentence of it online. instead: the other thing i did this month was to finish AMT! (sixteen episodes and somewhere around 175k, iirc, but don’t quote me.) these lines are the opener to the final episode!

RAHMA (V.O.): The combined series of sophomore year disasters stretched through November. It’s June now. It’s taken me… a long time to get this all put together. I was going to make a vlog about it, initially - well, calling it a vlog sounds frivolous. I was going to make a video recounting the whole deal. All of it. From when I kissed Avery Fairchilde to the very last night. I scripted dozens of drafts; I put together dozens of bullet-pointed lists of what to cover… and it was never enough. Because Avery and I weren’t the only ones involved. Even if I was only focused on the two of us, it wasn’t just the two of us.

So… I gathered up everyone else. The whole town of Ellisburg is still talking about the week the town went crazy, but it wasn’t just a week. There was a lot leading up to it. And I think if anyone’s going to talk about it, it should be us. The people who lived it. So here we are. The most ambitious Rahma Ashiq production of all time - at least so far.

july

every july i pause whatever else i’m doing to celebrate the birthday of aurum & argentate, twins from my oldest and dearest WIP The Mortal Realm. july fifteenth! mark your calendars. they’re princes, though argentate would really rather not be; you can read the full birthday piece here.

“Do you… plan to get dressed?” A bit of the usual humor crept back into Aurum’s voice. “Although if you want to speak to the kingdom in your underthings, by all means, you have my full support.”

Argentate scrubbed at his face. He wasn’t dressed, no, but the usual malaise hung over his shoulders like a cloak. Guilt. Nerves. The sick sense that he hadn’t done something he was supposed to. The numb knowledge that it was too late to change a thing.

“I meant to,” he said. “Get dressed, I mean.” The rest went unsaid: I have just been sitting here. On the floor. Thinking about how I should get dressed.

“Ah,” Aurum said, extending his hand. “The traditional route. We’ll save the nude speeches for the future, then.”

Argentate took his hand, stumbling a little as Aurum pulled him to his feet. He steadied himself on the closest wall, taking a few deep breaths. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. His hands found their way to the cross, again and again.

august

this summer, i wrote an entire draft of Valentine Van Velt is Dead, AKA “holden caulfield goes to exposure therapy,” AKA the weird little personal side project i keep tucked into my coat. interesting features include second-person narration from a narrator who doesn’t like the main character all that much. so reading it is kind of like the book wants to kill you? with an added dash of general melancholy.

You used to live here. That’s the thing that’s got you feeling so off.

You didn’t recognize your old house. I mean, you kind of did. You remembered that the road was on a hill. That hill felt like a goddamn forty-five degree angle when you were a kid. But if you didn’t have the address written down you wouldn’t have known it at all. It would have been just another little suburban house in rows of perfect little towns that make your skin crawl.

So now you’re in this diner looking out a gross smudgy window trying to block out the elevator music pumping through the speakers in the ceiling or whatever. I don’t know how speakers work. You’re trying to tune that shit out. The waitress comes over and catches you by surprise so you just point at some coffee thing on the menu so she’ll go away. For the record: you don’t drink coffee.

There’s a public library across the street. A little square building. You probably used to go there. The lady comes over and thunks your coffee on the table and gives you a kind of look, like she wants to know what in the goddamn hell you think you’re doing here and not at school. You sip your coffee and look out the window until she leaves you alone again. And then you spit it back into the cup because, for the record: you don’t drink coffee.

september

i spent september and october prepping for nano, so i was mostly working on darkling...

It’s late spring; still, at this time of night, on a rooftop, there’s a chill. The wind plays with the end of Ruby’s coat, with her hair. She hands the bottle off to Jasper, stares up at the fogged-over sky, wishes she were lying in Dany’s arms in Dany’s bed instead of here. Wishes, even, that Dany were the one on the roof with her. At least then they’d be cold together. At least then she wouldn’t have to imagine what Dany would say; she could just listen, and watch Dany’s flashing smile and her flinty eyes.

(She cuddles. This is another thing Dany does that Dany probably shouldn’t do, based on everything about Dany; it’s not like rattlesnakes cuddle. But Dany likes to nuzzle into Ruby’s side and rest her head on Ruby’s collarbones and toss an arm over Ruby’s chest, and hold her down like she’s worried she’ll float off somewhere. She’ll card her fingers through Ruby’s hair and hum. Even though they could get caught, even though she’s probably got better places to be - Dany cuddles.)

Ruby imagines it, momentarily, both of them on the roof together, sprawled like horrifyingly beautiful gargoyles, sharp teeth flashing, blood running hot. Up here - it’d be like they ruled the world.

But whatever. Jasper’s fun. He’s hot. He’s got a sharp tongue in a lot more ways than one. And she likes when he lets the mask down. She likes seeing the soft bits underneath. She wants to sink her teeth and nails into them so hard she draws blood. Masks don’t bleed. Ruby would know; that’s why she is what she is.

october

...though i was also in creative writing class in school, and thus ended up writing a bunch of poems of varying quality (my teacher had a real thing for poetry) and also one darklingverse short story where rory and cressida hold hands! which you can find here.

Lorelai Rory Flowers is afraid of thunder.

This is a bit of an embarrassing thing to admit, as they’re seventeen (“at least seventeen,” they like to tell people, “maybe two hundred, who’s to say?”) and generally wise beyond their years, or whatever it is that adults say about kids with too much psychological baggage. Being afraid of thunder is not a very wise-beyond-one’s-years trait. And yet the state of affairs remains: loud noises make Rory want to melt into the earth. Back when they still went to school, even the fire alarm sent them scuttling under their desk to hide.

Right now, in the elevator, all they can do is shrink into their sweater.

They haven’t let go of Cressida’s hand yet.

november

and then november of course was nano which was an adventure all the way through. (opening tumblr on the fifth day of nano to find out about d*stiel... was something.)

“Apologize to me. Or get out of my house.”

Gracen’s voice is very, very low. For a moment she thinks he hasn’t heard her at all. Then he spins, eyes blazing. “What did you say?”

Gracen watches her own chest heave. She pushes herself up off the desk, stands with the effort of pushing a mountain off of her back. Leovald is six-foot-four. Gracen is six-foot-two. In her heels, in the heels she must wear to be a professional woman, to be a lady - they are the same height.

Gracen wipes her nose. When she lowers her arm, there’s a streak of blood across the back of her hand. Fire shivers in her chest; her heart rings in her ears; her voice could cut steel.

“I said,” she says, low, slow, volume building, “apologize to me. Or get. Out. Of. My. House.”

december

and finally, the poem i posted this year! it’s called the beast sonnet, and you can find it in its own post over here (with commentary! how sexy.)

i kill the beast and drop down to my knees, my blade stained dark with blood of stygian hue, and for a moment these scarred hands shake free, and hold a world unfurled for me anew. but once-mourned victims, victors, vices find; fear winged me; now its absence strips me bare. my sword now dulls, my legs, my voice, my mind; the beast, pried from my throat, leaves no skill there. and still i hear it laugh, O DEVOTEE— O CHILD DEAR, NO GLORY WITHOUT ME.

i was quite productive this year; i have to think it was because i was avoiding things... the peak of my productivity happened over the summer and in november, AKA, college app hell. (almost done with the last applications! pray for me.)

a general breakdown of what occupied me this year:

(no, i don’t know why the “various other things” category ended up so large... i blame all the one-off projects i wrote a single page for, and also whatever the fuck happened in february. yes, i do know why it looks hideous; it’s because each of my WIPs has a theme color

thank you once again for spending some time at goose-books dot gov this year! what to expect for next year: well, i very much hope i can produce AMT... also hoping to get darkling ready for beta readers, so keep your eyes out!