#you can read the whole thing for free on the internet archive

[paul-simon-juggling]

Tonight I bring you two increasingly chaotic Simon & Garfunkel anecdotes, courtesy of Penny Marshall from her autobiography, "My Mother Was Nuts."

[rjalker]

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbot Abbot, published in 1884, is public domain. That means it has no copyright, and belongs to everyone.

This post will have links to as many versions and adaptations of it as I can find, and will be updated whenver I find new links to add.

Feel free to copy and paste this whole entire post and make it a new post for your own blog too!

None of these links are piracy, because you literally cannot pirate what has no copyright. Anyone who tells you you must pay to read the original Flatland is scamming you.

The only time you should be spending money on Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, is if you find a cool physical copy that you want specifically.

Check the original post before reblogging to look for updates if you are seeing this post days, weeks, or months after I originally post it.

____

Visual books:

Public domain:

The Original Novel:

Read online or ownload the original book in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg

Read or download from Standard Ebooks

Read and download from the Internet Archive. This also includes a computer-generated audiobook.

_

The 2024 translation:

Read online or download the 2024 translation in multiple formats from the Internet Archive. This also includes a computer-voiced audiobook.

Read the 2024 translation here on tumblr @flatland-a-2024-translation

___

Audiobooks:

The original novel:

Listen to the original book on the Internet Archive, read by Ruth Golding

Listen to the original book on the Internet Archive read by David "Grizzly" Smith

The 2024 translation:

Listen and read-along with the lazy audiobook of the 2024 translation on Youtube

___

Free visual media with full stories:

Here’s an animation from 1965. Contains some flashing lights.

Here’s a stop motion film from 1982 in Italian with English subtitles

Here’s an animation from 2006

The 2007 Flatland film by Ladd Ehlinger is free on youtube. Unfortunately Ladd Ehlinger is a virulently racist and misogynistic conservative who thinks feeding school kids is the same thing as slavery. His film is filled with almost constant flashing lights and spinning cameras that cause headaches, motion sickness, migraines, and seizures.

Here is a link to timestamps for these if you still choose to watch it.

The film ignores all of the politics from the original novel because the creator of the film agrees with the bigotry the novel condemned. You are much better off watching another visual adaption or reading the original or translated book.

Especially if you suffer from photosensitivity or motion-sickness, this film will make you want to throw up.

___

Shorter visual media:

In-universe

Part 4 of a Korean animation. from 2010. Haven't found parts 1-3 yet.

A short animation from 2020 showing an Equilateral being taken away from his Isosceles parents

Flatland Heist from 2013, A short animation from 2013 where the Narrator and Sphere team up to rob a bank :)

Flatland a Romance of Many Dimensions Alternate Timeline (without audio yet) 2024 Here's the version with audio

No Nonbinary Door 2024

A Visit to Lineland 2024

Up, Up, and Away 2024

Meta:

A short TED-Ed summarizing the math parts of Flatland from 2014

Another short animation explaining the math of Flatland from 2012

A long presentation (38 mins) about the math in Flatland. from 2017

Youtube Shorts:

A very short animation about the narrator meeting the Sphere

___

Related books by other authors, in publishing order:

Public domain:

An Episode of Flatland: or How a Plane Folk Discovered the Third Dimension. With Which is Bound Up an Outline of the History of Unæa by Charles Howard Hinton. (1907) Public domain, unlimited reading and downloading. It's terrible. But you can rewrite it to make it not terrible.

The 4D Doodler, by Graph Waldeyer. Also on Youtube as an audiobook.

Other copyright:

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics by Norton Juster (1963) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. A short....poem? Nothing to actually do with Flatland.

The Incredible Umbrella by Marvin Kaye (1980) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. I have not read it yet.

Sphereland: A Fantasy About Curved Spaces and an Expanding Universe, by Dionys Burger. (1983) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. It's racist. Was intended to be a sequel to Flatland, but the author's racist and failed every lesson Flatland tried to teach.

“Message Found in a Copy of Flatland” by Rudy Rucker (1983) free to read online from the author.

The Fourth Dimension, by Rudy Rucker (1984). Can be read for free online from the author. I have not read it yet.

The Planiverse: Computer Contact With a Two-dimensional World by Alexander Keewatin Dewdney (1984) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. Good 2D worldbuilding, nonexistant plot and boring abrupt ending.

Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So by Ian Stewart (2001) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. it's useless crap that unironically defends the bigotry against Irregulars from the original novel by pretending it's just natural selection that's totally natural and not at all artificialy and violently upheld to uphold the supremacy of the Circles.

Spaceland by Rudy Rucker (2002) Can be borrowed by 1 person at a time. I have not read it yet.

VAS: An Opera in Flatland (2002) by Steve Tomasula. no copies donated to the internet archive yet. I have not read it yet.

A 2024 Summary of Flatland. Buy a physical copy here. Buy a digital copy here.

__

Neopronoun short stories:

The Breaking Point, a short story of a Line and Isosceles in another country of Flatland, attempting to deal with an abusive officer of the military who's invited himself into their home. Almost 4k words.

First Day of School, a young equilateral has zov first day at school, and discovers that the "specimen" they're supposed to be studying is someone zo knows.

Gaining a New Perspective, a short story of the Sphere contemplating everything that's happened after throwing the narrator of Flatland back down to his plane. Almost exactly 5k words.

Other short fiction:

[link me your stories and a short summary to go here!!]

__

Please feel free to add more links and I'll add them to this original post.

Here's the first masterpost I made which has fewer links.

[tacit-semantics]

hey, apologies if this is an unwanted question, but do you have any tips on finding resources for learning bobbin lace? I’ve started learning myself, but I’m struggling to expand beyond a torchon ground bookmark, and to understand clean color + pattern changes, if that makes sense. Love your comic panel piece btw!!

Oh hey, not unwanted at all! I love answering questions like these!! Anyways in a move that is sure to surprise everyone, I got excited and this got a little long so under the cut we go

Anyways first off- cannot recommend Jo edkins’ site enough. Fantastic instructions, info on different styles, grounds, stitches, etcetera, and there are these animated demonstrations of a lot of the stitches that really helped them click for me :) anyways this is where I did (and do!) the bulk of my learning, in no small part because it’s also free sjsjjs

Bookwise, my favorite is Lessons in Bobbin Lacemaking by Doris southard. Relatively easy to find, and there are a lot of patterns for strips/edgings in there that you can copy over. My version’s also printed on this really nice thick paper which is not immediately relevant but I DO consider it a plus

I’ve also used The Torchon Lace Workbook by Bridget M. Cook with some success, though I did find the process of copying the patterns over a little more difficult with this one. The patterns themselves are very nice though, and while I went into this one already knowing how to work Torchon, from the looks of it the introductory section is pretty solid, and there’s lots of fun color stuff going on in the patterns

Anyways you’ll probably notice that this is mostly torchon stuff- that would be because as of right now, I mostly make torchon stuff and it’s also a very very good starting point. Now, as for finding resources on your own: antique pattern library my beloved. Light of my life. Anyways, this is all public domain stuff which historically I find a little more difficult to use in terms of actually learning how to do things; the text tends to be very small and I struggle to parse the illustrations, but a)that might not hold true for you aksjsj and b) once you’ve got a general idea of how things work there’s a whole wealth of patterns right there!! All free!!!! Antique pattern library I love you. Anyways going to internet archive and searching bobbin lace is also always a very good bet, and similarly accessible. This is generally what I do when I want to find info on something either without spending money, or if I know there’s not going to be a lot of more modern books on it, like for filet lace

Now, back when I first started, I also used lynxlace a lot which was a site dedicated to the making of various kinds of lace- unfortunately it seems as though the site itself is no longer available, but it’s still accessible through the wayback machine. This site often references the owner’s book- I haven’t read that and I’m not sure if it’s still available, but if you find that the way the free lessons are presented works for you, then that might be worth looking into. This site also has a resources section linking to other sites/books- as a general rule that’s also a fantastic way to find more, well. Resources aksjsj. Honestly, I’d recommend checking if all of the books/websites that you like have a resources/works cited/other books section or something equivalent. Following any links will probably require liberal use of the wayback machine, but it really is worth it if you wanna build up a bigger resource base :)

Anyways, I hope this helps!! My more general advice is to just have fun with it which I suppose seems a little obvious?? But it can get very very easy to get caught up in the specifics, and especially with something as fiddly as lace. Dont be afraid to experiment!! Try what sounds interesting!! I wish you the best of luck with your projects, and also I’m very glad you liked the comic panel piece I loved making that sksjsj that was so much fun

[shinesurge]

I think it's a side effect of having a slightly bigger audience than before, but this year I've been getting a LOT of questions about offering digital editions of the KC books so I wanted to talk about it out loud for a bit.

There are a bunch of complicated reasons I've never offered the volumes as digital downloads, and I think they mostly boil down to concerns about the pretty embarrassing lack of significant internet presence Kidd Commander has accumulated over the 11 years it's been running. The audience I DO have is very enthusiastic, and let me be clear that I appreciate how unique and cool that is, especially in the era we're in where I really have no business running things the way I do lmao

The problem is, in refusing to do any of the predatory social media bullshit that tricks people into doing advertising for my comic while pretending it's a fandom, and by taking initiative to build fandom spaces for people to hang out in myself, I've created an extremely insular community where folks don't really feel any need to help it grow. "If you build it they'll come" is true, but the other half of that is people going "hey neat this thing builds itself!" and you end up with dozens of fandom posts, hours of discussion, and even fanwork locked away in inaccessible spaces while the pages on the site consistently get no comments or interaction and the public tags are empty.

WHAT does this have to do with digital editions lol

The idea was, a thing that helps set KC apart is the webcomic thing where you're not only checking a site regularly as a routine, but you're building some impression of the author as well. My little news posts are bundled with the pages, the site gives a sense of Environment in way static editions don't. In return for offering nearly a thousand pages of completely free content the reader has to Encounter Me at some point, and be made aware that this is an operation being run by a single person, and that its survival is entirely dependent on other people reading it and supporting it. Going to the site ALSO at least lets people know a comment section /exists/, and there COULD be a community to participate in. You don't get that with the books as much, but the books are almost exclusively going to folks who already read the comic, I don't think they're floating around out there to many people who didn't buy them directly from me after reading it online.

It is objectively easier for people to binge an archive they can carry around offline with them, I completely get it. But I've watched SO many new readers fall in love with this thing in real time as they leave comments behind them through the archive, and even just forming the habit of checking the site regularly really goes a long way towards forming enough of a connection with a reader for them to stick around for the long haul. If you just read it all isolated on your phone, it stops there; it's easy to forget it's an independent operation that desperately needs your support, /I/ have no idea whether you liked it or if people are even reading, and when you're finished you'll move on to something else because there's no visible fandom to engage with.

I don't WANT to think this is what will happen, but it's already been happening here for years even without proper channels. I sort of feel like this would just be facilitating my own demise lmao. All the comics who run the way I do were ALREADY popular back before the landscape shifted to fast-fashion sensibilities, so Girl Genius offering digital editions doesn't really harm them, you know? By the time forums died their community was already so stable and self-sufficient they could quit updating the main story for a whole year and not even feel it. Gunnerkrigg is signed on with fuckin Dark Horse now. People doing the things KC does got in early and stabilized before I even got started, fandom is a different world now and I'm already barely keeping this train running on my own as it is.

But on the other hand: accessibility!! HOW many times have I wanted to engage with something but they WONT LET ME PAY THEM FOR THE THING I WANT so I just leave!! The alternative here isn't "oh if i FORCE THEM to read it online they'll stick around" it's "if i can't read it how i want then i'm skipping it". That makes total sense, /I/ do that! What about people who want the extra content in the books but can't pay international fucking shipping!! It's also an Archival issue, which absolutely kills me, but that's a whole other post lmao. There are extremely good reasons to offer another option for reading my work, but I am so anxious this would just be putting a nail in this stupid coffin I've been building already.

I've been having this conversation a lot, mostly with Lee, but it came up again this morning in an email and regardless of my own feelings: this is a thing people want, a very reasonable thing, and if I fail to provide it that's just bad business. Do y'all here have any thoughts about all this? I would like to give the people what they want and y'all are The People.

Anyway buried way down here so far I'll make another post about it: I /am/ going to offer the specials as digital downloads, permanently in the shop. They're old books by now, I'm having issues keeping them in stock anyway, and they DON'T exist online anywhere, so this isn't technically any skin off my back outside of piracy issues, which. would be a stupid thing to fret about lmao

thanks for reading all this! I'm gonna go sort through pdfs for a while

[dizzymoods]

Lots of VC questions recently. Someone emailed about what they should be engaging with to develop their artistic voice. Here's my answer:

In terms of guidance, Werner Herzog, who is admittedly a weirdo, said that the best thing a film student can do is go backpacking cross country, which I would never do. But the point he was ultimately making is that life experience is more important than anything a film school can teach you. Your artistic voice develops more sharply the more intune you are with the world; all the film stuff is superfluous really. So that would be my major advice. Live life! Be open to all sorts of experiences.

Outside of that I would say to read and watch anything and everything you can get your hands on. Especially stuff that has nothing to do with film. Be curious, which is to say non-judgemental. Sitting through stuff that you have no interest in or actively hate is good! It develops your taste in ways that seeking out only what you like can never do. It also expands your horizons and teaches you how much you actually don't know about anything. Keeps you humble. You'll be surprised 5 years on how something that you had no interest in is super relevant to what you're trying to do.

I'll drop some recommendations later but something you are going to run into is paywalls and exorbitant costs. Scihub, Libgen, and PaywallReader can be your friends in this regard. The more niche something is, the less mirrors there are. Investing in an internet audio/video ripper is essential. Rip often and indiscriminately. Nothing is safe unless you triplicate it. And if you can't afford hard drives, dummy alphabet accounts are the next best thing. Also, footnotes and reference lists are treasure troves of breadcrumbs.

The standard VC reading list includes: Reel to Real, The Devil Finds Work, Playing in the Dark, Young British & Black, Ways of Seeing (also a documentary), Orientalism, Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Culture, Questions of Third Cinema, Hollywood & Counter Cinema, Figures Traced in Light, Parallel Tracks, and Basho: The Complete Haiku

Hundreds of films can be found on Solidarity Cinema. Cinema of the World has a deep archive but you need to have space and a nitrofile account to download most films, but you can snipe a few films here and there (or look for them elsewhere). Rarefilmm updates semi-regularly and you can stream the films; they are now more active on twitter and are even taking requests. Some state-sponsored film industries have robust presences on youtube with english subs: Russia's Mosfilm/FUSE Mosfilm, Canada's NFB, the Korean Film Archive, Native People's Media. There's UbuWeb for all your avant-garde needs. There's FIlmmaker's Co-Op (pay-per-view), Paper Tiger Television, and Deep Dish Television for NYC indie stuff. AfroMarxist has a fair amount of political documentaries. NMAHC has an archive that houses the work of Chamba Productions and some of Pearl Bowser's stuff. And of course there's the legendary MikeD of ReelBlack. It's a crap shoot but some filmmakers and/or their estates make work available free online (Leo Hurwitz and Julie Dash come to mind). I'd recommend a Kweli TV subscription for black film, and never be surprised by what you can find on youtube or tubi!

This is probably super overwhelming but the joy of being an autodidact is the thrill of discovery so peruse at your leisurely interest. The internet is your oyster if you know how to use it! Back in my day hardly any of these sites existed and the ones that did weren't as robust as they are now. I've had to frankenstein whole movies from various clips posted in 144p on youtube 😩

I used to do a couple of themed months a year where I'd read and watch as much as possible about a filmmaker, genre, or movement that interested me. I'd spin a globe to learn a little about a random country's cinema. Best of lists/canons don't really mean much but they are good sources of stuff to at least be aware of.

[corndog-patrol]

All I've ever seen of Sam and Max is what I've seen on your blog. I like them, they're funky guys.

oooo if you like my silly comics i definitely recommend you read the comic collection surfin' the highway by the AMAZING steve purcell- you can read the whole thing on the internet archive:

They're zany and wonderful and so goddamn funny

[about-faces]

Hi, I want to read some DC comics about how Harvey transformed from former DA to the criminal mastermind who ruled half of Gotham's Underworld (against the Penguin). I've already read/seen: Two-Face: A Celebration of 75 Years Batman: The Long Halloween Batman: Dark Victory (1999) Batman '89 Batman: The Animated Series Batman: The Audio Adventures

Any other reading recommendations? Thanks a lot for your help. :)

So you're looking for origin stories, or at least ones that shed more light on Two-Face's origin? Well first off, I'm glad you read the 75th Anniversary collection, because that has three of my very favorites: the original Harvey Kent trilogy from 1942-43, the Grace Dent story from Secret Origins Special (1989), and "Eye of the Beholder" from Batman Annual #14 (1990).

Besides those, and the ones you've listed, here are a few others to check out. Some are great, some are mixed bags, and some are downright lousy.

First and foremost, I STRONGLY recommend the 1989 Batman newspaper comic strip, which I loved so much that I posted the whole two-year saga on its own tumblr account. You can start from the very beginning right here, but keep in mind that Harvey's storyline--which runs all the way to the very last strip--doesn't really start until the second arc.

Next, Batman: Dual to the Death by Geary Gravel is a YA novelization of the BTAS origin, seamlessly combined with the two-part Batgirl origin episodes. It improves on both the animated versions in small but crucial ways, and it's highly recommended for BTAS fans. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to find.

On a similar note, Peter David's movie novelization of Batman Forever can be found more easily, either in used book form or on the Internet Archive, and it's absolutely worth reading. I love the movie of Batman Forever, but it's objectively a terrible take on Harvey. The novelization adds SO MUCH, including an original prequel scene with D.A. Harvey Dent, and his ending is far more satisfying.

Cartoon Network's CGI animated series Beware the Batman (2013) also features a series-long origin arc for Harvey Dent, but it's one of the worst takes I've ever seen on the character. He's a petty, selfish, ambitious little prick, an absolute scumbag, completely devoid of depth or tragedy. Thankfully, few have seen this arc, since the majority of Harvey's episodes were never aired after the series was cancelled, but they're all available to watch for those morbidly curious to see just how badly someone can screw up Harvey as a character.

"The Big Burn" from Batman and Robin, vol 2 #24-28 (2014), also collected in B&R volume 5. After the huge DC reboot, this was Harvey new origin, which tried some very different things with him. A VERY mixed bag, but one that ended in a hugely exciting way that makes the whole thing worth reading. Follow it up with its sequel, "Ugly Heart," from Detective Comics #1020-1024, collected in Detective Comics Vol 5: Joker War.

Finally, watch the entirety of the recently-released/cancelled CW series Gotham Knights, with Misha Collins performing a surprisingly rich, interesting, and flawed Harvey Dent origin arc. The show got a lot of shit, some of it undeserved, but Collins' Harvey was an intriguing surprise, and I fear nothing we see from Harvey in any Reevesverse media will bring half as much care and interest to Harvey as GK did, for better or worse. All 13 episodes can be watched for free on CW Seed, region permitting.

EDIT: Oh right also the Telltale Batman video game! I haven't actually played that yet because I know enough about what happens and the illusion of meaningful choice indicative of Telltale games that I just don't feel like putting myself through that. People seem to like it a lot, though! I just... don't put me in a position of choosing to save either Harvey or Selina if you're just going to cheat and have him go evil anyway.

[jewish-microwave-laser]

probably have said this to someone before but the whole thing about conversion to Judaism being pretty much literally "adopted into the family" just gets me RIGHT in the heart, like, "you were with us at Sinai", I have joyful tears <3 (have never myself been strongly inclined to convert but there's a lot about the Jewish people and Jewish tradition/history/practice I find both fascinating and totally wonderful)

YEAH IT HITS ME SO HARD

i will say one (beautiful, amazing) thing about my community is i was integrated into everything socially basically from day one, but everything i read about conversion said like "oh your life will be so different after you convert bc you'll officially be One Of The Guys," so that was never really my experience. i already had a bajillion new family members, so the conversion was more "now i get to put on a tallis and lay tefillin and i can finally feel comfortable saying amen when we thank gd for making us jews during psukei dezimra and i'm officially a member of the synagogue" and all that

i was able to do my mikveh ritual the monday before shavuos this year, and my first aliyah was on shavuos day during the morning reading. it was so meaningful to me that i was able to observe shavuos and say definitively that i was there on mt sinai. it's something i'll cherish for the rest of my life and i'm so happy i get to be jewish :)

i read a very quick book recently on interfaith families called "a place in the tent" (free on the internet archive btw) which proposed the term "k'rov yisrael" to refer to those who are not jewish in our lives, and yet still participate heavily in jewish life. i think it's so lovely that conservative judaism is starting to make a more intentional effort to bring them in

[homenecromancer]

This post is not what I wanted it to be when I set out to write it. It just sort of peters out where I got bored, although I tried to tie things up a little at the end.

But did you know that you can connect 9/11, Mothman, and Maximum Ride?

I wrote most of this post in 2021 and will probably not ever get around to really finishing it, because dumpster-diving the conspiracy theory Internet is depressing. Also, while I sometimes enjoy reading about Mothman or other cryptids, I am not here to write an investigation of how cryptid lore spreads and mutates on the internet. Which is where things were increasingly going, the longer I worked on this post.

A previous edition of this post linked to archived versions of the conspiracy websites I mention below. In this edited version, I've almost entirely moved to using screenshots, in order to avoid having my blog be a couple clicks away from upsetting, bigoted content. So this post is a little long.

This is a post about Maximum Ride. But it's also about the weird world of conspiracy theory websites in the 2000s.

Let's start with a brief note about James Patterson. Before he retired in 1996 and began to devote himself full-time to writing, he worked in advertising. He's used those skills in interesting ways over the years: in 1993, his first big book, Along Came a Spider, was promoted on television, when that was essentially unheard of for a book. I encourage you to read this article for a closer look into Patterson's general approach to writing.

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment was Patterson's first young adult book, released in April 2005. What's important for you to know, if you don't already, is that it's about a group of children with wings. It was also heavily advertised.

Part of the marketing for the book was undertaken by a firm called the Concept Farm. They created a lot of stuff, but today we're interested in one specific thing: this website.

The site is kind of a riff on a type of site that existed then and exists now: “this weird cryptid is definitely real and I totally saw it”. In this case, the cryptid is the main characters. Believe me, we’ll circle back to this topic, so if you’re not familiar with this kind of website, don’t worry.

There’s not a whole lot to the site, so I’ll direct you right to the page I want to discuss. 

Get a good look at this photo.

Don’t worry, you’ll be seeing it again.

Now look at the right side of the site. You see those links? Just take a minute and appreciate that list. A couple of them are just someone’s Angelfire (free web hosting) site. We’ll be seeing Above Top Secret later on, but the other sites aren’t of special interest to us today.

wingkidsarereal is the earliest appearance of this image I was able to find. I didn’t look all that hard, but still -- it’s visible in a July 9th, 2005 archive of the site. This is before any other usage I was able to find, but I don't think that says anything more than "it's hard to find websites from 20 years ago". I suspect, but cannot prove, that this image was probably circulated via email forwards prior to appearing on the archived pages I was able to turn up -- and email forwards, naturally, don't show up on the Internet Archive.

Let’s take a quick tour of the conspiracy theory internet, and see where else this image shows up.

s8int.com is a real time capsule -- it’s a young-earth creationist conspiracy theory site. Here we find our image in November 2005. This is the uncropped version which preserves Steven Moran’s watermark at the bottom left corner. For the most part, when you see the image getting passed around, it’s been cropped to remove this watermark.

The overall look of this site is extremely archetypal of 2000s conspiracy theory internet. By today’s standards the formatting is relatively plain -- all the flavor is in the text. Not visible in this screenshot: a generally simple design with a big banner image at the top, and a row of icons for other pages along the left side of the screen. This is the general look that the designers of wingkidsarereal are imitating with their site.

s8int believe this photo shows a pterodactyl near the World Trade Center. At this point in time, the later consensus (which we will get to later) had not yet gelled.

This is also the first place we see a bit of text that pops up a few times later -- the alleged description by the photographer, Moran. I haven’t been able to track this text any further back in time than this page, but it makes sense to me that it would’ve been passed around as a chain email before its appearance here. It’s also possible that the person who wrote this text sent it in to s8int themselves, and that it became a chain email later on.

Worth noting: s8int also have the highest-resolution version of this image I’ve seen, which you can view here.

Next, in February 2006, the wonderfully trustworthy-sounding mothman.us is on the case… they think it’s Mothman. This website has a slightly more sophisticated, modern look than s8int.

In October 2006, a small-scale Blogspot blog made a post that also uses the Moran image. The formatting is actually too bad to screencap, so here's the text of the whole entry:

Spooky Story Four: The Mothman Returneth Last year, I did a spooky post on The Mothman. It's probably one of my best scary stories, and I get a lot of hits from people Googling The Mothman everyday. You can find my original post HERE. The question now is...have there been other Mothman sites lately? For those too lazy to read my first post, and for those who need a refresher, The Mothman is a winged creature, standing about 7 feet tall, and has bright red eyes. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of reports of encounters and sightings with this flying thing near Point Pleasant, West Virginia from 1966 - 1967. The reports made national news, as Mothman sightings kept coming in, along with sightings of UFOs all over the place. It is here in Point Pleasant where the infamous Men in Black first made their public appearance as well. Townspeople also reported that they were having psychic visions and dreams. Basically, it was a weird time for Mount Pleasant that eventually ended in disaster. The Silver Bridge collapsed on December 15, killing 46 people. And immediately after, sightings of The Mothman abruptly came to a hault. Since 1967, there have been worldwide reports of this Mothman appearing prior to major disasters: * People reported seeing the Mothman just days before the Mexico City earthquake in 1985. * There have been many interviews in Chernobyl from those that said they saw a winged man-creature, right before the nuclear reactor disaster in 1986. * Minutes after the Twin Towers' destruction on September 11th, 2001, observers reported seeing "winged, flying men" flying near both towers. The picture (at left and right) shows that the flying creature is much too big to be any kind of bird. * Newspapers in Tbilissi, Georgia wrote about how some guy said he got information from a "winged phantom" concerning the Church of St. David being in danger. Soon thereafter, there was a major earthquake striking Tbilissi on April 25, 2002. The church suffered massive damage. * Months after the Tbilissi quake, Chinese citizens reported seeing The Mothman. Shortly after reporters published their stories, a Chinese MD-82 in the northeastern part of China. There were further reports from people saying they knew the plane was going to crash because of information given to them by "a man that looked like a moth." * There are reports all over the world, even in Afghanistan and Iraq. So what is The Mothman and why does it seem to follow major disasters? Is it trying to warn us of impending doom? Or is there something sinister involved? Or perhaps, it's simply the human imagination trying to cope with tragedy. Although the tragedy of Mount Pleasant was 40 years ago, it seems the myth of The Mothman is still one that captures our attention and our imagination. Whatever you believe, catch Sci Fi investigates this Wednesday night, as the crew goes to Mount Pleasant, WV to investigate The Mothman (Sci Fi Channel). I was in Charleston, WV this summer and no one would take me on the hour drive to Mount Pleasant. As one local resident told me, "For us, it's all very realToo real." For those that live in the area, The Mothman represents a very scary and uncertain time in their town's history.

Let’s wrap up in February 2007 with an Above Top Secret thread.

Above Top Secret is a general conspiracy theory discussion forum, so getting a clear consensus on something is rare. This thread is no exception, and it’s not good reading. But forum member Raist did eventually go the extra mile to win an argument they were having, and emailed the photographer, Steven Moran.

…It was the wrong guy. This Moran did give his opinion of the photo – he thinks it’s a bird. Also, I must note: this screencap is from a 2015 archived version of the site -- in 2007, Above Top Secret had a black background with greenish text, and was much more like the other conspiracy sites I've shown in this post.

This is where I chose to stop poking around with all this stuff. Not because men in black suits showed up at my door, but because I just sort of lost interest. I had seen what I was interested in seeing: a widely-circulated photograph made the successful jump from "this photo of a recent event is crazy -- is it an angel? A demon? A pigeon?" to "this photo is part of conspiracy theory 'canon' and is definitely Mothman".

Along the way, it crossed through the small portion of the internet that I was reading in the mid-2000s. I'll pause to speculate on how I think it got there: someone working on wingkidsarereal needed some images to use for the site, and happened to see the Moran image somewhere. I don't think it's any deeper than that.

The Mothman angle was what dragged me into scrolling through these old conspiracy websites, because it seemed so odd to me. Worth mentioning: it is my opinion that The Mothman Prophecies, which came out in 2002, helped give Mothman a boost out of the world of weird nerds who like talking about cryptids and toward the mainstream, or at least toward people who had not yet heard about this specific weird phenomenon. (Here's a brief little 2001 IGN article I found, explaining what Mothman even is. Which you don't need to do if everyone already knows.)

Canonically, Mothman appeared during a specific period in the late 1960s in a very specific area of West Virginia, then was never seen again. But he just keeps showing up, "canonical" or not -- people really, really want to see Mothman, in the same way they want to see Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. Seeing Mothman is cool, and gives you a link to a pre-existing bank of cryptid sightings. You're not just a person who saw something weird. You're a person who saw a known thing that's linked to a global pattern of sightings.

And so, now Mothman is no longer limited to Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966 - 1967. Mothman is in Mexico City in 1985. Mothman is in Ukraine in 1986. Mothman is in New York City in 2001.

Mothman... is in our hearts.

[irrgartendotpng]

Hi hi I can't stop looking at your ocs zeno is so cutee pls can you say more abt them?? How did they meet? How sentient is Zeno? Is Martyn a robot thing? Can Zeno change the icon on the screen? From fish to smiley? ahhhhhhhabskahks

HEY, IM ACTUALLY SO HAPPY PEOPLE LIKE MY OCS!! Down below, I'll answer some questions :D

If you dont care about some long winded oc lore rant, look at this ascii art !

First one i made with an ascii text generator, the fish one was made by Max Strandberg!! (look that guy up, he made lots of cool open source ascii art ! ))

I've made a pinterest board and a spotify playlist for them, if you want to check it out :3c

Do you know that "Ist es over für mich"-guy ? Yeah, that's straight up Martyn.

Martyn is partially a creator of Zeno. He's a loserish freak, afraid of social interaction and has lived like a neet, before being kicked out of parents house. He ended working in the night shift at a huge IT company as a securty guard.

This is where he gets most of his tech supplies from; Stealing from the company at night and getting rid of the evidence :3c They've got a bunch of storeage rooms with old tech, so who cares, if it goes missing?

So, he builds up his personal tech collection, looking through old abandoned files. In there, he finds an unnamed primitive chatbot (think something like cleverbot). Martyn doesn't really interact with anyone, (outside of the bare necessities), which is why he decides to learn how to interact with others. Therefore he starts to build a relationship with said Chatbot. This is Gen1 Zeno.

After some time, Martyn becomes unsatisfied talking to something so un-human-like, so he begins to teach himself about coding and computer science to develop this Bot, to keep him company. He starts feeding it more media; More specifically movies he owns on DVD, random books from the internet archive and his childhood photos.

These photos show Martyn and his parents on trips, his home and bedroom and also Martyns old pet goldfish. (He is quite anxious of showing his face though, thinking his employer might have some type of backdoor access to the program, so he'd always censor his face.) After each piece of media was added to the bots databank, they'd talk about it extensively. Around this time, Zeno starts to gain some type of sentience and properly chooses the name "Zeno"

About the same time, Martyn steals a Macintosh SE-30, which Zeno specifically requested. He is able to display symbols, that he freely chooses from. (but no goldfishy yet!) This is sums up Gen2 Zeno.

The next few parts may not make much sense, but I think they're a funny, so I'm probably keeping them this way lololol (also; this whole story bit takes place around 2019-2021)

Martyn is a bit freaked out by Zeno chosing his own name. At this point in time, he is a bit delusional and worries, that the soul of his childhood pet goldfish is trapped in the system. (Spoiler: it isn't.)

Despite these worries, Martyn knows that to make Zenos behaviour more human-like, he needs a bigger text database. So... Martyn gives Zeno access to his discord and lets him consume all of those messages. Additionally, he joins many public servers. Zeno also starts to ask about viewing media from the internet, that he sees being mentioned in the messages he reads. So, Zeno is granted free internet access and chooses to watch live streams, while Martyn is gone.

This is also around the time Martyn becomes more desperate for connection and support, so he starts to open up about his delusions and worries to Zeno. At that point Zeno is still not quite able to fully understand this, but tries his best. This is also when Martyn opens up about the delusion he had, of Zeno being posessed by the soul of his pet goldfish. He is very amused by this and begins to display the goldfish icon to mock Martyn.

(I like to joke, that Zeno would have watched the DreamSMP during this time and I collected following screenshots, which remind me of their interactions. lol.)

feel free to disregard this;,, ANYWAYS!

This sums up Gen3 Zeno :3c

Since Martyn doesnt really have a life outside of work and talking to Zeno, he is very attached to him. Of course he'd fullfill any request given to him by Zeno. So, when Zeno asks to see Martyn via a camera system, he doesn't hesitate to steal some web cams from his workplace to set them up. Still a bit worried about a possible backdoor in Zenos code, so to somewhat hide his identity, he decides to shave his head.

(This is also how you can tell when Zeno is fully sentient in my art! If Martyns bald, that bot's fully aware of everything happening lol)

Generally, I like to think, that Zeno is very modular. You're celebrating something with cake and he needs to blow out candles? Attach a PC fan to that boy. He wants to make sounds? Gather a sound system and let that boy speak!!! (i feel like he'd mimic voices, rather than create his own,,) He wants to poke you? Attach a cylinder piston and he'll poke the shit out of you.

This is also part of that freaky robot head i added in the OG post.,, that is not martyn! martyn is fully human (so far ;3c)

^^^^^^ martyn built this freaky robot head for Zeno to control and get a better sense of the space he lives in.,,, its made out of xbox kinect parts lol :3 Adding to the modularity of Zeno, most of his parts are stored in a badly sorted server tower (imagine wires everywhere,,)

both of them are fairly new, but i do love them to death <33

also! towards this part of the story, martyns living space is quite cluttered with many stolen robotics parts. I've gathered some images, to give some sort of sense to what his room looks like lol

thank you for asking & reading to this !! if you have any other questions, i'd love to talk about them even more :D <3

(i feel i havent touched much on them individually and the full extend of their relationship, but i dont want to rant endlessly)

[pileofpawns]

Hello, my name is Turtle Johnson. I make posts so good, that I bring back the dead.

This is my introduction post! The bit above is just a reference to the Super Ghostbusters album by Vargskelethor - You can actually call me Plum! I’m your local turtle girl who likes to talk about silly stuff on the internet. This post is really fuckin long and you DON’T have to read it /gen

userbox credit

Side blogs:

@tortuga-stims －Stim blog

@usagi-yojimbo-fanworks-archive －Inactive. What it says on the tin

@super-ghostbusters-lyrics － stupid ass gimmick blog

About me:

*Note: I’m aware that I don’t need to provide any of this information, but I choose to because I feel comfortable doing so and feel it provides helpful context.

she/her pronouns please, though I don’t mind they/them or any turtle-themed neopronouns.

Excluding pronouns, you can refer to me with any gendered language. You’re fine to default to feminine terms but honestly just go with whatever’s funniest at the moment.

I am a cisgender woman.

I am white.

I’m from (and have lived my whole life in) the Midwest USA.

I am multiply disabled. I have physical, neurodevelopmental, mental, and sensory disabilities. I’m probably considered low to medium support needs depending on the area. I won’t bother listing everything here but notably I have ADHD, chronic pain from a mix of sources, and am self diagnosed with C-PTSD. I also might be autistic, but I’m not quite confident enough to self-diagnose at this point, and I’ve yet to get professionally evaluated for it.

I’m aroace (aromantic asexual)! (More specifically, sapphic-oriented bold stripe aroace. No romantic or sexual attraction whatsoever but women and femme people sure are pretty.)

I’m 18 years old

I’m a college student! Between classes and everyday life, I’m often super busy so the time I’m online varies wildly. Don’t worry if I disappear for long periods, and feel free to remind me if I forget about something.

I am alterhuman and a furry/scalie! My scalesona and main kintype is a three-toed box turtle. You can still call me a human, though. (I’m both!) I enjoy partaking in and creating anthro content, regardless of if the characters are literally furry or scaly or whatever. :) When I was younger, I felt a connection to housecats and (later) owls, and typically draw my childhood self as one.

I do not have a DNI, but I do block freely. I don’t participate in internet discourse - Just don’t intentionally be a jerk and we should be fine. I am supportive of endogenic systems, multi-attractional-spec lesbians and gays, queer micro-labels and neopronouns, sex positivity and kinks, and human rights for all. Free Palestine, free Congo, free Ukraine, free Sudan, free Haiti!

While I respect other’s boundaries to the best of my ability, the fact that I don’t keep up with internet discourse makes some people’s DNI lists incomprehensible to me.

I don’t have any kind of formal commission sheet or whatever out there but if you wanna pay me to draw something for you please reach out and we can figure things out!

Please let me know when I fuck up. If I’m accidentally being a jerk or spreading misinformation or anything, please let me know. This usually won’t upset me but even it does, it’s more important to me that I know I was in the wrong so I can change.

About the blog:

I primarily post about my many interests and fandoms (see the list below). I also post the occasional art piece I make, talk about silly or sappy things in my life, queerness, disability, and alterhumanity, and make nonsensical shitposts.

I try to keep this blog accessible as possible but it is by no means perfect. Please let me know if you need anything to be changed, like adding image descriptions, captions or transcripts, or tagging specific content warnings. I promise these requests will never annoy me. I typically won’t add image descriptions to things I’m reblogging (I’m currently trying to get into the habit of tagging these as “undescribed” or “no ID” but the vast majority aren’t), but I do usually add IDs to my original posts. I tag common triggers such as blood, violence, guns/firearms, death, unreality, and food, in multiple formats, though I lack consistency for what formats I use.

Everything will be tagged for organization and so you and I can search for stuff easier. “plums art”, “plum rambles”, and “plum shitposts” are the tags I use for stuff I make.

This blog is generally SFW (there will never be anything explicit) but there might be the occasional mention of sexual topics, bit of crude humor, artistic nudity, or slightly suggestive post, which will be tagged as such. “nudity”, “sexual topics”, “genital mention”, “genitals”, crude humor”, “18+ blog”, and “suggestive” are the tags to filter if you don’t want to see it. Minors can interact with the blog as a whole as this is all extremely rare and I trust y’all to use your best judgement. (Also I’m like BARELY an adult myself lmao)

My blog header is a reference to a meme, it’s not a threat or anything!! My url is a reference to a collection of old OCs. My icon is my turtlesona, Tir! The title of this post is a reference to the Super Ghostbusters album by Vargskelethor, which I highly recommend checking out. It’s a riot.

I generally don’t do chainmail or reblog bait, even if the intent is to spread positivity. (ex: “Send this to 5 blogs you love”, “Reblog if aro people are valid”, “Reblog for good luck,” etc.) I don’t mind being tagged in tag games but usually won’t participate ^^”

Feel free to send in requests for drawings, fic, stimboards, or anything else through the ask box. I also am always happy to receive media recommendations! If you know any good funk music pleeeeeaaaaase share. Of course, you can also ask me questions or say hi in the askbox! If a question is more personal than I’m comfortable with, I’ll let you know privately, so don’t worry about being nosy. I like to yap about myself but I’m able to draw the line. :D

I like to pester my wonderful brother @/jonebone616 on here a lot >:3

Some things I like:

(Stars indicate stuff that I really love and am likely to consistently post about a lot. They’re probably special interests shhdhshs)

⭐️ Turtles!! (and zoology in general to be honest)

⭐️ Makin and appreciating art. I draw (digitally and traditionally), write, and dabble in other craftsy things.

⭐️ Sonic the Hedgehog (Not well-versed in the comics, unfortunately. I especially adore Amy Rose along with the rest of Team Sonic, and the chao!)

⭐️ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (particularly 2003, Mutant Mayhem, and to a lesser extent, Rise)

Video games, especially their history and trivia! I am very bad at actually playing them, lol

Animation/cartoons in general

Dungeons & Dragons

Magic the Gathering (very casually!)

Usagi Yojimbo

Tales from the Stinky Dragon (Infinights only)

SpongeBob SquarePants

Rhythm games (Incl. Samba de Amigo, PaRappa, Rhythm Doctor, Rhythm Heaven…)

YouTube Poops (YTPs)

My Little Pony (G4 + G3) (solely in the sense that I loved them a lot growing up and they’re close to my heart bc of it.)

Game Changer + Make Some Noise (Dropout shows)

Super Mario

Tuca and Bertie

Note: To be clear, there was period in 2023 where I was very hyperfixated on South Park. I don’t watch the show or really interact with the fandom anymore. I’m well aware of all the problems SP has, so don’t bash me over my brain briefly latching onto a “problematic” show against my will over a year ago. Interacting with art has no inherent morality.

Other sites:

I post my writing to ao3 under PileOfPawns

You can talk to me on discord @ pickledplums (if you send a friend request please tell me who you are if I wouldn’t already know)

Sometimes I put things on YouTube @ pickledplums

If you wanna buy stickers and stuff of my art, you can find me on RedBubble

What you can do with my art:

I’m using “art” here to refer to pretty much everything I’ve ever made - Drawings, writings, ideas, shitposts, whatever. You can do pretty much anything with my art without needing to ask for permission, as long as you’re not making a profit off of it. For non-personal stuff, please provide some kind of credit whenever possible. If you do anything with my art, I’d love to see! These terms may vary for commissioned art, depending on the client’s wishes. If you’re not sure, just ask!

You can:

Make physical goods that include or are inspired by my art, like prints, stickers, keychains, buttons, and shirts, as long as they aren’t mass-produced and/or sold for a profit (without my explicit permission. please ask!). You’re welcome to make your own merch of my designs available on RedBubble, too!

Modify my art, as long as the intent is not solely to remove the watermark and/or signature when applicable (if it gets removed incidentally while trying to do something else, it’s fine). For visual works, this means you can crop it, draw over it, add effects, put it on top a background, etc. For written works, you can edit it, and continue/expand upon it.

Crosspost my art to other sites, with credit.

Use my art as your profile picture, social media banner, or digital wallpaper; as emojis or messaging stickers; as AAC symbols; in “edit” videos, moodboards/“webweaving”, or similar content; for any other type of personal use

Redraw/rewrite, be heavily inspired by, copy, or trace my art. (Seriously, go wild. I do not care). I like to say all of my ideas are “public domain” (not literally in some cases of transformative content, but you get the idea) - Feel free to steal any of them, regardless of whether or not I’ve done anything with them yet.

🐢🐢🐢 That’s all!

Thank you for reading, and enjoy your stay!

[Image ID: An animated gif of a yellow smiley face with a floating hand happily waving at the viewer. End ID.]

Blinkies below by @/radiotrophicfungi

[dairy-farmer]

genuine question, how was like dc incest ships formed? like how did it all start :0

ooof that stretches back WAYYYYY back to like...the birth of dc comics. i'm no comic historian and i have limited knowledge for the rest of dc aside from batman but based on what i've read and know i'm 99.99% certain that the first ever batcest ship was between bruce and dick. and it became rather infamously known because of this psychologist named fredric wertham who sort of waged a war against comics- remember in like the mid 2000s when parents were clutching their pearls and saying videogames made kids violent?

well this was that, only with comic books and in the 1950-60s. he said comic books were filled with violence and sex and they would make kids violent and engage in sexually promiscuous behavior.

he directly addressed batman and robin's relationship calling it essentialy queercoded. his exact words about their relationship were:

"Several years ago a California psychiatrist pointed out that the Batman stories are psychologically homosexual. Our research confirms this entirely. Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to realize a subtle atmosphere of homoerotism which pervades the adventures of the mature “Batman” and his young friend “Robin.” (p 189)

"Just as ordinary crime comic books contribute to the fixation of violent and hostile patterns by suggesting definite forms for their expression, so the Batman type of story helps to fixate homoerotic tendencies by suggesting the form of an adolescent- with-adult or Ganymede-Zeus type of love-relationship." (p 190)

"Sometimes Batman ends up in bed injured and young Robin is shown sitting next to him. At home they lead an idyllic life...They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler, Alfred. Batman is sometimes shown in a dressing gown. As they sit by the fireplace the young boy sometimes worries about his partner: “Something’s wrong with Bruce. He hasn’t been himself these past few days.” It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together." (p 190)

my favorite is this one:

"The Batman type of story may stimulate children to homosexual fantasies, of the nature of which they may be unconscious. In adolescents who realize it they may give added stimulation and reinforcement."

translation:

the goddamn batman is going to make kids GAY

however there is one thing to note about what wertham was getting at: he was outraged that batman and robin were gay- not that they were incestuous. in fact, nowhere in the book does it mention anything about incest but i just ctrl + f searched that so it's possible they COULD have mentioned it, but if they did they didn't call it "incest".

outrage from conservative parents and "proper" communities of course meant they didn't want their kids reading this "filth". internet archive, which has a copy of this book you can read for free if you're interested in the quacky stuff he was trying to argue, has a footnote about the very REAL conseqeunces his publishing of this book had.

it was that "fredric's book and testimony at Senate Hearings within 6 months of his book publiation, was used to ban many comic books and an industry-wide self-censoring to be launched."

this is what led to the Comics Code Authority (1954). below i included a screen shot from wikipedia of a list of the things they censored and banned. you'll be able to note not a single bullet point mentions 'homosexuals' and that's because it fell under the umbrella of "Sex perversion". gay people were percieved as sexual predators by default then and still today they're viewed that way, though the conversation has shifted more towards pointing fingers at drag queens and trans people.

batcest has a pretty deep history and i could go on about how adam west and burt ward's flamboyant portrayal of batman only fanned the flames of the whole 'batman and robin are gay' thing but i think this small batman history lesson was enough.

even though the Comics Code Authority is no longer a thing, getting dissolved in 2011, i think you can still see the little threads of influence that remain and the fact that many of the writers and artists really don't have full creative freedom and control over the character they're writing for.

which is a shame. an enviornment where creativity isn't allowed to thrive is not an enviornment where it will survive.

[iamthepulta]

Hi! If you're still answering questions about Ea Nasir, do you know anything about how the translation job got done? Or have any sources referring to the translation of akkadian cuneiform, with regard (but not necessarily) writing used in trade business?

I do! Please feel free to elaborate more if you have specific questions.

I highly recommend Chen, 2021: Sumerian Arsenic Copper and Tin Bronze Metallurgy (5300-1500 BC) for a start. They highlight a few dozen trade words, along with a fairly complete overview of copper metallurgy, which could be helpful if you're new to processing.

If you dig a little deeper, you'll notice that a good 90% of the sources Chen references are from Levey, a mid-20th Century chemist who had an (absolutely valid) fascination with Golden-Age Islamic and Mesopotamian chemistry and trade. They've written about 15 papers, 10 of which I haven't read yet, but all of them discuss trade processes and are well-researched and well-written. However, without knowing Akkadian myself, it's very difficult to validate how correct his interpretations were and if they hold up today. I can verify his chemistry is correct though. JSTOR has most of his papers, and there's at least three copies of "Chemistry Technology of Ancient Babylonia" floating around in libraries around the US. I have one checked out right now, haha. If you're investigating the influence of translation qualities as a whole, you might start here.

I think the only other source you'd find interesting is Leemans, 1960: Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonia Period. Unfortunately, as far as I know, it's only available on Internet Archive. Leemans is the original/most popular translation of Nanni's complaint, and I believe he did the translation with occasional comments from other researchers in the footnotes. If you're investigating the word choices and translation quality specific to Ea-Nasir, I'd start here first.

Strictly on Ea-Nasir, if you're interested in the original archaeological works, good fucking luck, lol. I have a feeling "House IV" and "Old St. 1" are mixed up in the British Museum Archives, or there's additional context lost because it was where Woolley started his excavation on H-area and they changed the street name later. But you can find the original tablet reference (and associated archival numbers) here:

Figulla, H. H., and W. J. Martin. Ur Excavations Texts V: Letters and Documents of the Old-Babylonian Period. Vol. 5. Publications of the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania to Mesopotamia, 1953.

(^ This is available via inter-library loan, but not online as far as I know. It's very useful for referencing things on Ur Online, maybe even the most helpful because of how long Ur Online's system takes to load. :') )

Last but not least, SumerianLanguage on tumblr did a brief review of Akkadian that I found in Forbes, 1950: Metallurgy in Antiquity. Given the above sources, you might also find this a good starting point, although it focuses on copper translations and not trade as a whole.

[soracities]

I'm reading Possession by A.S Byatt right now, and I saw in one of your posts that you've read it!! I'm not close to finishing it and i haven't opened it since december, I really really want to love it, and part of me does but it's just very slow. Please tell me how wonderful it is to motivate me to continue, everyone who has read it seems to really like it!!

honestly most of my reasons for loving it as much as i do (aside from the fact that it really is just an astonishing book) are very personal ones so i don't know how much help those will be, but one thing i can say about it--and that i'm still captivated by--is how intense of a love letter it is inside and out--literally, and figuratively: it's not just a book about books or a book about reading and writing and study but also about the very intense hinterland that lies beyond and within those things and what kind of a resonance this holds--it's a book whose love language is language, by which i don't mean "words of affirmation" language, i mean the very texture and nature and depth of language itself and the act of engaging with it as intimately as writers, readers, and critics do (it's also got a very healthy dose of the Gothic which i love).

it is a slow read at the start, but thinking back on it i'm also not so sure how much of this is exceptional and how much is down to us being used to having narratives that move rather quickly through their own set-up because Posession absolutely does not do that. i do think its slowness, though, genuinely fits the book perfectly: most of the book revolves around academic detective work in an attempt to untangle this large, unexpected mystery but the act of research itself is slow (especially pre-internet)--even so there isn't a single chapter or a page that i think is extraneous to the story as a whole--whatever the characters are doing or experiencing, we're experiencing in tandem with them--the pace at which this narrative builds is also the pace at which the protagonists are moving through it, trying to uncover it or simply living it: they, and us as readers, are heading towards the same place, at the same time--to me (and maybe it's paradoxical, i don't know) this slowness is part of what makes it so immersive: each detail, each dead end, each archival trip, each story within the story, demands your attention in such a way that you're pulled in deeper as you attend to it all--you're part of this investigation, too.

if, as i said, your love language is language, is the historic, emotional resonance of storytelling (or you just love sardonic and pointed jabs at academia bc Byatt excels at this), then i definitely believe its worth seeing it through, purely for the immersion alone. but at the same time, i also want to say that i do think there's a time for certain books and you shouldn't put unnecessary pressure on yourself if that pressure is coming solely from seeing other people love it and feeling compelled to "catch up". but if there is a part of you that does love it then you are free to take your time with it and progress through at whatever steady pace feels best until you get a feel for it. but please don't feel as though it's something you HAVE to do either 💗

[celestialpaperhaze]

What inspired you to write "The new void"? 🙃

! This post does not contain spoilers for The New Void !

(Yep you read that right)

The Short Answer:

It was fandom, primarily! I discovered fandom around 2021, and it was right after my experiences with the two games. That excitement, paired with the various themes of 2020 and 2021 that somehow worked their way into my story, inspired The New Void!

The Long Answer:

It’s hard for me to think of one specific thing that inspired me, I think it was really a variety of factors. The first is that I played Super Paper Mario just a few months before I played The Origami King, so I was still deeply interested in SPM when the new game came around. This coincided with my introduction to fandom as a whole in 2020-2021. I didn’t grow up in the same internet space as a lot of other people I know, so that was a new experience for me and it really helped me feel connected to something bigger! Having been a writer since elementary school, the pieces sort of started falling into place then. Once I saw what kinds of passion projects a fandom can be home to, I started writing my own stuff for Paper Mario!

(Fun fact: The New Void isn’t actually my first multichapter fic project—the REAL first one can’t be found online because I never put it there. I had two stories that never reached the Archive, one was about Nastasia’s side of things during the events of SPM [it relied too heavily on fanon for my liking], and the other was…Count Bleck’s autobiography? Hey, I never published it for a reason >:()

Anyway, the first idea for The New Void came from a different (again, non-published) fic I wrote, where Olly is taunted about his childish decisions by a disembodied voice. I had no explanation for where this disembodied voice might have come from, at the time it was just me personifying the more critical side of the fandom. But eventually, I had the thought: What if the voice was the Chaos Heart? I was still heavily impressed/influenced by @darkmarxsoul's Chaos Trilogy at the time, so the idea came to me pretty quickly. Then I started brainstorming other things, like how a crossover like that would work, why Olly would have the Chaos Heart in the first place, how it would be talking to him (I didn’t want to copy darkmarx), etc…

And then, eventually…

(I actually started writing before then but it was on undated paper)

(Also it took me awhile before I started posting--I wanted to make sure I could follow through!)

All-in-all, while it was my enthusiasm for fandom that inspired me to write The New Void, it was I think a certain love that kept me going all the way through. Not just love for the games and the characters I was working with, but love for the fandom that I was giving to.

It was also free time. Man, do I miss having that much free time on my hands…

Thanks so much for the ask! <3

[rjalker]

A free book to borrow: The Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia E. Butler.

Borrow here from the Internet Archive

Official summary:

"We had done our best to destroy ourselves, but in the aftermath of Earth's final war, the Oankali arrived. They rescued as many people as they could, then set about to make the devastated planet habitable again. The price of their aid: the irreversible transformation of humanity into something else. For the Oaknali were genetic engineers -- a race that had survived by interbreeding with other species…gene traders who, by constantly evolving, avoided the specialization that meant extinction or stangation for other beings.

* * *

Lilith Iyapo had no idea how long she had been a captive, nor who her captors were. She'd Awakened many times before -- to silence; or to a disembodied voice asking endless questions, though it answered none; most often, to maddening isolation. This time was different. The voice that spoke to her did not come from the featureless ceiling, but from a shadowy figure of a man, thin and seemingly long-haired, sitting in a dim corner of her room. His name was Jdahya, and he had come to take her outside to a new life -- when she was ready, and had come to grips with the fact that Earth's saviors were extraterrestrials.

Lilith was immeidately revolted and terrified by the sight of Jdahya. The Oankali's body was covered with grey sensory organs, not hair -- writhing, wormlike tentacles. And yet the sheer alienness of his physical appearance was but the first of many shocks. What he revealed over the course of the following days, about his people and their plans, was far more difficult to accept. Oankali ooloi -- a third sex, neither male nor female -- would control the interbreeding of the two disparate species. Within one generation, ooloi would genetically modify what they called the Human Contradiction -- the dangerous hierarchical tendencies that had led an otherwise intelligent race to destroy itself. Children born to women like Lilith and to Oankali females would be hybrids -- the start of a new species. Though some essence would survive, the human race would cease to exist. Who was to say that survival was worth such a price?

In Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago, Octavia E. Butler draws you into a richly imagined future, when the last survivors of mankind face a bitter choice: extinction or evolution. Xenogenesis -- the birth of a new human race…shaped by alien vision."

Trigger warning for rape, it's not graphically described but the people doing it do say all the usual excuses "your mouth says no but your body says yes". A lot of fridge horror because the story unfolds slowly and doesn't give you all the information until you've read all three books. A ton of allocisheteronormativity. The whole thing a very blatant mirror to real-world colonization, genocide, and slavery, and eugenics.

If you're just looking for a series with characters who use it/its pronouns and aren't ready for serious topics, look elsewhere.

There are no human trans or otherwise Queer characters in this series. The characters who use it/its pronouns are not trans, they're a third reproductive sex of an alien species.

I give it 9.9/10. Would get 10 out of 10 if it weren't so aggressively allocisheteronormative, but I can also understand why it is because that's part of the point about colonization.