#youve been kinder than i could have ever dreamed
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vvyapayapa · 2 years ago
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Uh, Hi!! An update!!
Oh gosh I'm sorry for being gone for so long! I'm not dead, I promise! I actually had some amazing things happen to me the last few months - I got a full time job!!! And I have insurance now!!! And while it's kept me incredibly busy, I'm happier than I've been in a long time and am finally in a position to start a savings and prepare for other adulting activities that are still rather new to me. I will be back soon with new Saw art, but I just want you all to know I appreciate every word of kindness you have left on my art - it means the world to me, so so much!!!
Thank you for bearing with me and I look forward to creating some new pieces for you all!!!❤️❤️❤️
-Vera
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rarepairnation · 8 months ago
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augh this is driving me truly crazyinsane. i think he has always known that his story would end in tragedy. he is a numenorean lord who has dared to vie directly with the enemy. and separately, she knows the same. she is a princess with elvish blood named finduilas who marries a tragic hero. they can each, individually, only delay their own fate. fighting the long defeat. but i think finduilas is very clear of both of their endings, but denethor is not. he knows his own end, but never anticipates hers. perhaps before her he always thought he would be facing that end alone, and dares to think that perhaps he has been granted one single great blessing, that she will stand by his side to the end (because she would have, if she could have, and he always knows that). he thinks that perhaps for once in his life he will be able to have both love and duty in his hand. she is his political partner and the love of his life and both of these are true. and then all of it gets torn away. yeah youve said what i have to say about his grief i am personally going to go to the desert and let the scarabs take me.
#what if DENETHOR dreamt of finduilas dying. i mean i’d rather he didn’t bc THEN there would be a lot of potential for angst and his self#destructive behaviour. what if denethor DIDN’T FORESEE HER DEATH. BUT WISHED THAT HE DID.#GOD. HIM WONDERING IF HE COULD HAVE SAVED HER. DONE SOMETHING SOONER TO PREVENT HER HEALTH FROM DETERIORATING#but no. nothing he could have done would have changed what happened. THAT’S WHY it’s a tragedy. but *he* doesn’t know that (op's tags) truly you cannot leave this one in the tags it is eating my brain. if he doesn't foresee her death and feels like his mind, his strongest best asset, has betrayed him and betrayed her and if only he had known he would have saved her. now i like to play really fast and loose with the specifics of everyone's powers because it is fun for me but i think canonically denethor leans more towards the mindreading realm rather than the prophetic dreams. so, ok really Get Ready for this one, what if. if he doesn't have foresight at all, but faramir does, and GOD does he resent him for it. i would have used the power better i would have known her fate i would have saved her, is what he thinks; you do not deserve to have it. and it's one more brick in the wall of resentment they build up between each other and if she had lived to see it it would've broken her heart and that! does not help!
and the worst part about it is that in a kinder world it doesn't actually matter. foresight or no, he knows he couldn't have saved her. but i think there's a part of him that is simply not emotionally intelligent enough to know that she never would have wanted her death to ruin him. she was always the one who kept him out of the worst of his moods, who drew him out of the despair, and without her he has kind of. no clue how to regulate that. it becomes less of managing it and more of simply getting up each day and continuing on just because he has to. it is the war, and nothing else.
there is, however, one thing he will never ever do and it is resent her for leaving him. because he knows everything about her because she is a better version of him and she is his perfect partner and she is one he would raise to the black seat in his place if he ever needed to. and he knows she would make every sacrifice for gondor. just like he would. (she has already made a massive sacrifice, leaving dol amroth behind, but she does it both for duty and for love and that is a thing he very much understands. what he does not know and will never know is that she knew it would kill her. and perhaps...she even knew it would kill him, too. and yet she did it anyway. maybe we will be letting finduilas make one (1) bad choice tonight).
god. anyway. you're so right it makes it so much more tragic, the way they understood each other, and how he loses a lot of his ability to understand himself once she's gone. the sacrifices they are both willing to make And what they will cost the other. when love is never going to be enough to save anyone but it still matters. even though it is a part of the fall, even though it is a part of the doom and the despair, there is never regret. he has never feared death but after she's gone any vestige of fear leaves him forever. she has already walked that path and when his time comes he need only hold out his hand, and she will be there to take it. all he has to do until then is hold on, and fight until he no longer can. after her he knows he will never be able to save anything or anyone he has ever loved. he does not expect it to be love, in the end, that breaks him.
denethor is said to have been greatly affected by finduilas’ death, right. and i know their marriage was a political one but i like to believe that they still loved each other. not in the ‘traditional sense’ i guess but they loved each other’s spirits, their souls. the duty (as they viewed it) to protect their people & the willpower to do it, they both shared. and so i think that more precious than love, they understood each other perfectly. as no one else could, or did. i can’t stop thinking about denethor’s grief at losing her. to love someone, and to have them understand you, but to lose them so abruptly… no wonder denethor became embittered by her death. i think he became sad too. closed-off. built even more walls around him, not wanting to be seen as vulnerable by anyone. but his anger, at what (or whom), exactly? he already broke up with god when he was young. at the universe? at his fate? to have lost her so unfairly.
i came here to talk about their love & somewhere in the middle lost myself in his grief lol. never mind, bc what is grief if not love persevering????? they loved each other. i can’t. i CAN’T get over this simple truth. the love was there. it wouldn’t have been this tragic if there’s wasn’t. the love was there. and isn’t that enough (it isn’t. but it is. IT IS). the love was there. THE LOVE WAS. THERE. sobbing. truly sobbing DON’T TOUCH ME
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a-panda-reads-act-omega · 8 years ago
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ACT OMEGA PART 24
THE 04/02/17 UPDATE
Hey look at that, I’m bored and I can’t urge myself to close that act omega tab. You know what that means. I’m doing another part today, w o o o o o 
Alrighty, last time. Aranea showed up, and I reacted in a perfectly calm and orderly fashion. Let’s see where this goes!
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Yup. Nobody’s happy. Put that grin away Aranea.
MEENAH: serket?? MEENAH: HOLD the GLUB up MEENAH: i thought you like MEENAH: got owned or w/e
She did indeed get owned or w/e. By you, in fact. You from another universe in which you became a giant hot troll wearing a goddamn skintight outfit.
Oh yeah, and she is currently destroying the hell out of the kiddo’s back at the lily pad.
ARANEA: ... Nice to see you too, Meenah.
Pssst.. it’s not nice to see you aranea...
ARANEA: Just as anxious to get to the point as ever. 8ut as per usual, I encourage you to exercise a 8it more p8tience. ARANEA: All your questions and concerns will be addressed eventually, I assure you. MEENAH: UUUGH MEENAH: i cannot B-ELI-EV-E this MEENAH: you go all crazy and try n pull off some ridiculous timeline divine intervention stunt MEENAH: prolly kelped actin like a hotshot all the way up to getting fuckin WAST-ED MEENAH: im out here thinkin i aint never gonna sea you again cause you got it in your head you had ta be the ultimate magnanimous blowhard just like your STUPID ALT S)(-ELLF MEENAH: AND T)(-EN MEENAH: you reappier outta NOW)(-ER-E MEENAH: lookin just as smug as you got no business bein MEENAH: and you tell me i gotta put up with whatever sanctimonious salmon youve prepared before i get any answers?!
LET ‘ER HAVE IT MEENAH. Can Aranea get the idea out of her head that SHE has got to be the one everybody looks up to? Because everytime she’s had an effect on this story, it’s made everything completely horrible. Honestly, she just tries too hard to be worthy of admiration. If she were like Vriska, she’d care more about doing what needs to be done instead of being admired by all. Merely because Vriska isn’t so dependent on the approval of others, and is happy with doing what needs to be done just so she can brag to herself and others. Alright, I kinda feel like getting deeper into this. How Vriska and Aranea differ and parallel eachother, because it’s a pretty thin line that doesn’t feel obvious. But here’s a very simple way of putting it:
Vriska wants to be the hero Aranea wants to be seen as the hero
Vriska wants to force dead weight to carry itself Aranea wants useful people to depend on her
I feel like that sums it up fairly well, really. Maybe I’ll start making sideposts of character analysis if I feel like getting deeper into these topics.
ARANEA: Sanctimonious what? MEENAH: OH MY COD I M-EANT S-ERMON
GET MAD MEENAH. IMPALE HER WITH YOUR POKEY FORK.
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And here we find Porrim, in her natural state of “tired of everybodys shit”
PORRIM: Meenah. Yo+u might want to+ reel yo+urself in for a mo+ment.
S)(-ELL NO
MEENAH: >38( PORRIM: Maybe try to+ avo+id making the same mistakes as the yo+unger Serket.
DONT BRING VRISKA INTO THIS 
VRISKA: Excuse me???????? PORRIM: O+h, hush. Yo+u’ve spent far mo+re energy externalizing yo+ur frustratio+n than you+ have do+ing anything pro+ductive. PORRIM: We can o+nly take so+ much o+f this. We're here to+ try and do+ so+mething with o+ur afterlife o+ther than willfully subject o+urselves to+ its infinite echo+ chamber o+f teenage drama.
Porrim
porrim, baby
i love you, i do
but this is n o T JUST TEENAGE DRAMA? I mean, Aranea killed EVERYBODY.
PORRIM: I myself have had eno+ugh o+f that fo+r at least two+ lifetimes. PORRIM: So+ if either o+f yo+u are ultimately o+nly go+ing to co+ntribute to+ the endless caco+phany, rather than fo+cus o+n getting results, I suggest yo+u mo+ve it to+ so+me o+ther bubble. PORRIM: If no+t, then co+nsider jo+ining the rest o+f us in seeing what Aranea might have to+ o+ffer to+ o+ur cause. ARANEA: Why, thank you, Porrim. That was very eloquently put. I promise you won’t 8e disappointed. ::::)
Goddammit Porrim, you gave her a reason to be smug. Just because Porrim is tired of the arguing, doesn’t mean you’re somehow at all justified in anything you’ve ever done ever.
ok im salty
PORRIM: Hmmm. We’ll see. ARANEA: Really, I was well prepared for my reappearance to cause something of a stir. It’s completely understanda8le to want an explan8tion.
UUUUUGHHhfadjnkms SHuuut uppp
ARANEA: I’ve 8een lying low for quite a while now. Gathering inform8tion, drawing conclusions, revising and perfecting plans... All of which will certainly prove invalua8le for you all in your current predicament! ARANEA: It really is a shame you’ve landed yourselves in such a 8ind! It was ultim8ly inevita8le, 8ut unfortun8 all the same. ARANEA: Isn’t it lucky, then, that I’m here to put this tr8n 8ack on its tracks?
Im gonna die from salt poisoning help
PORRIM: SIGH...
SIGH...
PORRIM: If yo+u have any interest in keeping that pro+mise o+f yo+urs, I suggest yo+u skip the preamble.
Thank you Porrim. I’m trying to find somebody to latch onto here, but everybody is starting problem’s n s t uf f . 
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Everybody looks so
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VRISKA: Hold the fucking phone! Why should we listen to ANYTHING you have to say?
YOU sHOULDN’T
VRISKA: Your track record isn’t exactly stellar! And from what I’m seeing right now, you haven’t learned from your colossal fuckup one iota!
WOAH, VASKA... who the hell says iota????
VRISKA: I have a8solutely ZERO interest in letting the same washed up has-8een whose mess *I* had to clean up waltz up here and act like she’s my goddamn s8vior!!!!!!!
YEAH TELL HER VRISKA! EVEN THOUGH IM PREEETTY SURE YOU DID NOTHING AND TEREZI DID EVERYTHING...
And, oh god my memory of the timelines and stuff are getting me confused. I’m sure I’m probably wrong about this, but y’know what I’m gonna talk about it anyways. Would this Vriska really even know about Aranea? I mean, she didn’t die, so... maybe just in her dreams or something. or. gdi im confused.
ARANEA: Come now, Vriska. You of all people should know that there are 8etter times to choose for throwing hissyfits!
This isn’t a HISSYFITS. This is clear and rational thought. And I don’t get w hY NOBODY ELSE IS QUESTIONING THESE THINGS.
ARANEA: And 8esides, what a8out your little plan? We can all pl8nly see how well that turned out. You were smacked down just as unceremoniously as I was, so don’t act as if you’re suddenly the only person who can pull their own w8 around here.
Yeah, but you know what? Her plan didn’t revolve around dooming EVERYBODY. Her plan had essence of COMPETENCE.
ARANEA: You may 8e incredibly stu88orn, 8ut you can’t 8e so foolish as to dismiss common sense purely for the s8ke of your ego. I’m your 8est shot at m8king it out of this alive. While your army was 8eing eradic8ed, I was 8usy uncovering the truth. ARANEA: If you would just allow me to expl8n, perhaps you could finally reg8n your wits and 8e a8le to focus on what TRULY matters.
oh god i hate her h e l p.
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pLEASE.. DOUBle DEATh HER.
VRISKA: I already HAVE my wits! And I was just a8out to use them to whip this 8unch of losers into sh8pe 8efore YOU and your 8loated delusions of grandeur showed up! ARANEA: Is that what you were a8out to do? I never would have guessed. Considering from my perspective, you were in the middle of some sort of mental 8reakdown 8rought on 8y 8eing utterly incapa8le of comprehending the magnitude of your own failure!
At least she DAMAGED HIM. SHE INFLICTED SOME FORM OF HARM TO THE UNKILLABLE GOD TRYING TO FUCK THEM OVER. You literally just got everybody killed with no positive result, you cannot claim that you are A N Y better than her.
ARANEA: If you had been p8ying attention, you might have t8ken note of when I mentioned that this outcome was inevita8le. There was hardly anything I could have done to prevent it. YOU, on the other hand... ARANEA: The mishap with your dice could easily have 8een avoided if you had simply realized how thoroughly outmatched you were. Did you actually try your little luck-stealing trick on LORD ENGLISH?
FIRST THE  F U C K OF ALL... If this outcome was inevitable, then that literally makes EVERYBODY IN PARADOX SPACE JUST AS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS DISASTER. NNGH YOU CANNOT PIN THIS ON VRISKA JUST TO MAKE YOURSELF LOOK BETTER
VRISKA: Yeah! I did!!!!!!!! That’s kind of what I DO? VRISKA: 8ut... it didn’t WORK. ARANEA: Tsk, tsk. Of course it didn’t. Lord English is hardly on the same level as the 8lack king, or the myriad low-level imps, hapless trolls, and pitiful ghosts from which you’d previously acquired your ill-gotten fortune. Your a8ilities aren’t even close to developed enough to stand a chance against such an opponent! ARANEA: 8ut say, I think that perhaps we can strike a deal. We all know that time has 8een kinder to me in that I’ve had enough of it to refine my powers considera8ly. 8etween the two of us, I am clearly the superior Hero of Light.
. . . . . . . . F U C K Y O U .
Can’t deal with this. Can’t TAKE this girl’s superiority complex.
God im turning into the human equivallent of a salt shaker.
VRISKA: Oh, yeah. Sure. 8ecause I’m totally interested in whatever 8ogus “deal” you have to offer. Especially when you phrase it like THAT! ARANEA: And yet you don’t deny truth of my words. A smart choice. VRISKA: Are you going to w8ste time gloating, or actually get to the point?! ARANEA: My point is that I would 8e more than happy to lend you my services. Allow you to maximize your potential in a more... expedient fashion, given the sizea8le constraints we are currently under. ARANEA: All you would have to do is ask nicely. May8e even apologize for raising your voice? A little more respect and deference would 8e appreci8ed as well. ARANEA: What do you say? A deal is a deal? ::::)
GOD. DAMN IT I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS. I REALLY REALLY R E A L L Y HATE HER. NOBODY WANTS YOUR HELP. Oh god this is turning into the worst liveblog ever, B U T SERIOUSLY I HATE HER AND THAT IS LITERALLY ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT RIGHT NOW.
VRISKA: How a8out this: I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP!!!!!!!!
YEs. PRECISELY 
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OHFUCKHIKANKRI
KANKRI: *PHWEEEEEEEET!!!*
...
O k you know what. For once, I’m actually happy about Kankri existing. That fuckfest needed to end.
And jesus. I need to calm myself down.
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Oh god poor Mituna is freaking out.
KANKRI: I think that is QUITE en9ugh 9f that f9r n9w. While I n9rmally endeav9r t9 enc9urage c9nstructive de6ate in the interest 9f inf9rming the ign9rant masses, this argument has 6ec9me far t99 pr96lematic f9r me t9 all9w it t9 c9ntinue!
Gdi I haven’t even read it yet, but it already hurts to look at.
Alright. So yeah, this is getting out of hand and he’s putting a stop to it with his space jesus powers.
KANKRI: There isn’t nearly en9ugh time f9r me t9 g9 9ver all 9f the deeply distur6ing c9mments disparaging n9t 9nly the magically disadvantaged, 6ut the mentally challenged, which I have just 69re witness t9. S9 I will settle with 6riefly chastising y9u 69th f9r y9ur cavalier disregard 9f y9ur inherent privilege, and enc9urage y9u to 6e m9re aware 9f h9w the nature 9f y9ur w9rds might affect the very imp9rtant feelings 9f pe9ple that aren’t here.
And people that ARE here. Like, you know. The mentally challenged Mituna right behind you. Though I’m pretty sure you’re speech his having a worse affect on him than they are. Also, how the hell did they even offend any mentally challenged people??
LATULA: ummmmmm, l1k3, not to b3 UN-r4d or wh4t3v3r, b3c4us3 th4t 1s TOT3S not my styl3, LATULA: but m1tun4 1s l1k3, R1GHT h3r3??
Thank you Latula, the poor guy is dying at all these words.
KANKRI: He is?
Oh my god Kankri, seriously? Were you too busy ogling at Latula to realize that their were handicapped people who needed defending in the area?
MITUNA: 1 H4T3 Y0UR FUCK1NG W157L3 KANKRI: 9h. Right, 9f c9urse. My mistake. Ap9l9gies, Mituna. I h9pe y9u d9n’t mind that I have taken it up9n myself t9 help speak 9n y9ur behalf, c9nsidering y9ur vari9us issues with speaking at all.
kANKRI. that is not how you speak to handicapped people. Is he just salty that he’s dating Latula? Yeah. he’s totally salty about latula.
MITUNA: UM KANKRI: Exactly. Y9u’ve 6een rendered n9n-ver6al 6y the sens9ry 9verl9ad caused 6y all this unnecessary sh9uting. Which makes the wh9le thing w9rse, really. Right, Mituna? MITUNA: WHY 4R3 7HR33 S0 M4NY W0RD5 MITUNA: 175 4LL MITUNA: 8UZZ1NG LATULA: dont worry 4bout 1t b4b3! 1ts 4lmost ov3r. MITUNA: 5H0U71NG 4ND MITUNA: 5TUP1D 8ULG3 WH1FF1NG WH157L35 MITUNA: FUCK
Latula is literally the best supportive girlfriend. Is she gonna cover his ears for him next?
KANKRI: Even m9re sincere ap9l9gies, Mituna. Even if the use 9f the whistle was vital in the c9nstructi9n 9f y9ur safe space, I understand that it did upset y9u and that y9ur feelings 9n the matter are valid. KANKRI: 6ut thankfully, and despite the unf9rtunate side effects, it did its j96 9f helping 6ring every9ne t9 their senses. KANKRI: Really, this wh9le thing c9uld have 6een av9ided if y9u 69th had just listened t9 P9rrim's advice. PORRIM: O+h. PORRIM: Kanny, did yo+u just... AGREE with me fo+r o+nce? KANKRI: ... KANKRI: I 6elieve I have asked y9u several times n9w n9t t9 call me that!
what has this devolved into? What is this BICKERING. Can anybody remain on the same page for more than two sentences? Honestly, I’m surprised Lord English hasn’t just killed them all yet.
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AND HERE THESE TWO ARE, indifferent as always.
SOLLUX: (well.) SOLLUX: (this is pr0bably the worst clusterfuck i have ever had the f0rtune 0f n0t seeing.) SOLLUX: (are y0u sure we can’t just leave?) SOLLUX: (as if whichever smug fuck that ends up running the idi0t brigade is g0ing to s0lve 0ur impending d00m. it’s alm0st starting t0 feel like the wh0le pirate crew bullshit all 0ver again.) SOLLUX: (except s0meh0w even m0re 0f a catastr0phe.)
Sollux, there’s one thing you’re forgetting. The pirate ship was a disaster, yes. but now you have one KEY FACTOR that will lead you all to victory. The power of F R I E N D S H I P. Can’t you just feel all the good vibes radiating off of these assholes?
ARADIA: (we cant go yet sollux!) ARADIA: (i have no intention of leaving) ARADIA: (and while i understand why you may want to this time it really is somewhat imperative that you stay) ARADIA: (we all have a part to play in the preservation of reality) ARADIA: (a mission which is even more critical now than it has ever been!)
Alright, so this team’s objective “SAVE REALITY” Team lilypad’s objective “DONT.. DIE” Team Lowas’s objective “THERAPIZE ERISOL”
SIMPLE ENOUGH.
oh god i just remembered Calliope already died and that’s s A  D ...
SOLLUX: (ugh. really?) ARADIA: (yes!) SOLLUX: (s0 i’m like. imp0rtant s0meh0w?) ARADIA: (does it help you feel better to think about it like that?) SOLLUX: (... kind 0f? bizarrely en0ugh.) SOLLUX: (where did that c0me fr0m all 0f a sudden?) ARADIA: (i couldnt possibly tell you) ARADIA: (but what i can tell you is that i think this brief setback will be over soon) SOLLUX: (fine, if y0u say s0.)
All setbacks can be overcome with enough  TIME. HAHA.... TIME JOKE. The hell am i doing with my life.
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Oh shit is Davepeta here to drop some calm bombs on the group?
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < man this is just getting sad DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but guess i oughta toss my two cents into this clusterfuck DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < beclaws honestly i KIND of agr33 with vwiskers a little? DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < my subconscious is clawing at me that we totally cant trust aranea at all ever
THANK, you. 
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < cause shes seriously bad news DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < i dont have any real concrete memories or anything to support it but DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < i dunno! thats just how i f33l DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < meow on the other paw DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < we kind of are in some purrty hot water DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < and i ALSO have the conflicting f33ling that whatever info she has fur us will be impurrtant DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < so if anything we should just hear her out DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < so long as you dont try to pull anything fishy!!
SIGH... I G U E S S. It still feels horrible to even let her get a word in, just because she’s literally gonna act like every useful information she gives is worth everything, and they have no right to blame her for anything.
ARANEA: Er... ARANEA: Thank you for the endorsement. And the warning, I suppose. ARANEA: If there won’t 8e any further interruptions? MEENAH: yeah sure fine whatever MEENAH: but u beta believe im gonna be gilling you later ARANEA: I look forward to it.
I’m gonna hope that was a fish pun, and what she meant was ‘killing’
TAVROS: i THINK VRISKA LOOKS LIKE, sHE IS READY TO STOP SHOUTING, TAVROS: sO WE CAN BEGIN LISTENING, TAVROS: wHICH IS GOOD, bECAUSE I AM VERY CURIOUS, TAVROS: eSPECIALLY SINCE, i SORT OF, aLWAYS LIKED YOUR STORIES, aRANEA, TAVROS: wHEN THEY DIDN’T RUN TOO LONG, aNYWAY,,,
N O B O D Y A S K E D Y O U  T A V R O S
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putthatfuckingsmileaway
ARANEA: Don’t worry, Tavros. I will try and keep this as 8rief as possible. ARANEA: While also ensuring all vital inform8tion and context is provided, of course. ARANEA: Now, allow me to 8egin...
...gjdkgfignjfij
conflicting feelings about everything here. Alright. WELL, that is the end of this update. you can listen to my whine a bunch on the next part. SO. yeah.
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viralhottopics · 8 years ago
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Net nostalgia: the online museums preserving dolphin gifs and spinning Comic Sans
Archivist Jason Scott has made it his mission to record digital culture for future generations. But why are we so keen to relive the days of Geocities websites and 56k modems?
Jason Scott is a guerilla internet archivist. Someones got to be. If youve got some content embedded in a site thats about to disappear, then he and his team of coders and data engineers go in there and Oceans Eleven the joint. In the name of digital archaeology, they migrate as much data as they can to a safe harbour even as the main site goes down. We swoop in and, to the best of our ability, take a snapshot, he says.
Scott is interested in conserving the stuff we have forgotten has value. Increasingly, our culture plays itself out on the internet, yet even now we have a tendency to view what we do on there as trivial. Or we make the mistake of assuming that digital means for ever. The problem is, the internets systems have been designed as though everything goes on indefinitely, he says. There are no agreed-upon shutdown procedures. When users die, what do you do? Because their accounts live on, and suddenly Facebook is telling you your dead friend also likes Snickers bars. Often, you dont even know whos running a site. Its as if you didnt know who was in charge of your water supply; then one day, it just stopped …
As one of the earliest adopters in the pre-world wide web 1980s, Scott took thousands of screenshots of bulletin-board systems early internet message-boards. In 1996, he decided to share his ASCII joy by building a website to host them all: textfiles.com. Its still online today, a piece of retro-within-retro. The site made Scott famous in net-nostalgia circles, and its legacy has made him one of the key movers in how we interact with and conserve an online kingdom, parts of which feel as faded as any Mayan temple.
Scott now works for archive.org. This is the new, broader umbrella for what used to be called the Wayback Machine, the online library that can show you what a given website looked like on any given day, now encompassing more than 279bn pages. Its $18m (14.5m)-a-year running costs are funded chiefly through donations, averaging $25 a time. Alongside Jimmy Waless Wikipedia, the Wayback Machine feels like a relic of a kinder, gentler era in the life of the net before Facebook algorithms were squeezing every penny out of your newsfeed. It was, we were told, a soft-libertarian wonderworld, full of dreamers who believed that private donations plus low information costs would breed a web where we were all equal, all beautiful.
It hasnt quite turned out like that. Which could be one reason we now look back so mistily at the web of olden times. Even in 2001, there were back-to-the-landers recreating the revolving Roman columns, dolphin gifs and mismatched spinning comic sans of the Geocities age. By 1999, Geocities was the third-most visited website in the world, enticing a vast quilt of hobbyists to make their own pages about whatever interested them. When it finally shut its doors in 2009, the Wayback Machine made a complete copy of it. But nostalgia for what it represented means that theres also Neocities an attempt to reboot its elemental qualities. Not to mention the Geocitiesizer which recreates the rest of the web in the same garish colours, autoplaying Midi-songs and intrusive tiled windows. Internet artist Olia Lialina has created One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age which serves up an unending spool of Geocities page screengrabs in the form of a Tumblr blog.
Go back another generation in internet nostalgia and you hit Tilde.club a website-building engine with a lengthy waiting list, where learning a few coding skills will allow you publish some authentically rough, poorly spaced web pages from the mid-90s. In addition to these retro sites, there are emulators to recreate the blocky tedium of waiting for 56k modem to serve a page. Then graphics patches to simulate the graininess of old cathode ray screens. These are often sinkholes of processing power. Making something look slightly grainy and a bit off is, it turns out, unbelievably energy-consuming.
An old webpage as seen on the One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age blog. Photograph: oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/
This nostalgic impulse is also playing out in the real world. Last year, AMCs much-admired but little-watched Halt and Catch Fire took the early internet era and dramatised it, one IRC chat log at a time. In music, the now-fading vaporwave movement imbued the silvery cyber-joy of the early internet with lashings of melancholia, as a generation that had come of age alongside the net began to look back and wonder where their dreams had gone.
Perhaps were experiencing this boom in nostalgia because theres suddenly so much more retro to go around, and easier access to it. Or perhaps its because the innovation curve seems to have plateaued; todays web giants are between 10 and 20 years old, and much of the past five years has been about tweaks, consolidation and monetisation of previous business plans. Theres also a sense that weve come through a lot of collective mental evolution in the past few years from an age where each new social network filled us with naive joy at the possibilities for connection, to an era of subtweets, dogpiling and virtue signalling.
Scott isnt convinced. In the final analysis, people will hook their own nostalgia on to their own brains very effectively, regardless of when the technological platform started. Oh, remember when we were all on Netflix? Remember when Twitter was just this little club? In the life of any platform, theres always an early-adopter phase, where the people who were there first get annoyed by the people who have arrived later.
Its also wrong to assume that your cherished experience is everyones nostalgia rapidly becomes obscure hieroglyphs if youre outside its target market.
One day on archive.org, I put up a whole lot of under construction gifs that Id taken from Geocities, says Scott. And Id watch as people linked to them. Some of them said: Hey, remember these? But others said: Ive never seen this before. Why did people do this? Then an art museum got in touch and said: We want to make a wall of them as an art exhibition. People didnt have any connection to them theyd go wow or what is this?, but it had become about as meaningful as someone making a dress from an old phonebook. It had fallen down into this general mulch of human culture.
The mulch is vast and every layer obscures another. Were all eating and excreting so much culture now that it has become very hard to keep tabs on it. The archive team are presently recording all US TV, 24/7. One team member recently phoned the White House switchboard to record every different voicemail message on there just to have a database of what it sounded like in 2016.
But while the team try not to make too many editorial decisions, they have to accept that not everything can be preserved. Even if it is just chucking out the washing powder ads on all that TV coverage and just keeping one version, compression must come, and that means stuff will inevitably get lost along the way. Scott shrugs. Life, he admits, is a lossy format.
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from Net nostalgia: the online museums preserving dolphin gifs and spinning Comic Sans
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