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Forced to learn how tumblr works because quotev has officially killed itself ☹️ (please tell me terms and stuff i should know) (and explain it like youre talking to your mom about your favorite media)

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horse pulling a very odd looking carriage in fact it appears to be a car upon a wheeled platform and even more surprisingly there seems to be a man in there this is a truly puzzling image

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Did you ever hear the tragedy of bog-thing the swamp monster?

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Appa

Who is it?💕

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I reblogged it earlier but I'm glad the Something Awful Forums 9/11 thread was archived because it's an incredibly important slice of internet history. For the record I think 9/11 was thousands of personal tragedies for the direct victims of the attacks but one big national farce that led to America's ongoing slide into fascism, and the nationalism and remembrance around it is a joke especially in the wake of the same amount of deaths every fucking day in the US during the height of coronavirus.

Nevertheless I think it's important that if you do not remember because you were too young or just didn't exist on Sept 11, 2001 to read the Something Awful 9/11 forums to get an idea of what the internet was like at the moment when America changed to 24 hour news cycles and renewed hyper-nationalism not seen since WWII.

This all happened before Twitter, Facebook, before Discord. Before smart phones. Before most people had cell phones. When a lot of people still had dial-up internet, even. Some people in the thread were relying on radio because internet and TV weren't keeping up.

It was a live event of internet denizens reacting to the biggest national event (and among the biggest international events) of the past 25 years. It was also a slice of what the internet was like at the turn of the millennium. Not only that, but people accurately calling out who was responsible, and what would result before the attacks even finished.

Keep in mind that the links that follow contain images of the event, lots of Islamophobia, people calling for the Middle East to be nuked, people blaming Palestine, casual racist and homophobic language (this was Something Awful after all), etc etc. They preserved the first 17 pages which spanned about 24 hours during the events. It's the origin of the "WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR" screenshot.

Links under the fold. I've also annotated the pages with notes regarding the timeline and any posts of interest. Note the thread was preserved in Pacific Time even though the page says times are Eastern. That's incorrect. Post timestamps are 3 hours behind Eastern Time, which is the time zone where the attacks occurred:

Page 1 - Note the first post was edited to include images of the second attack. The thread started after the first plane hit. Second plane hitting the WTC happens here too.

Page 2 - Poster accurately calling out Bin Laden was responsible at 9:14 AM EST

Page 3 - "WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR"

Page 4

Page 5 - First official acknowledgement it was a terrorist attack.

Page 6 - Pentagon hit

Page 7

Page 8

Page 9 - Commercial flights grounded by FAA (Federal Aviation Administration)

Page 10 - First mention of towers collapsing at end of page

Page 11 - More reactions to collapse of first tower. People thinking it was a bomb or yet another plane. Rumors about a fourth plane just missing the White House (these are false and predate the actual 4th plane crash by minutes)

Page 12

Page 13 - By this point there's just rampant speculation about more bombs at the WTC, the US Capitol building being hit, etc (all false). Remember this is all just people reacting to TV news and radio and the rumor mill via phone, AIM, IRC, and maybe text messages.

Page 14 - By this point internet news sites are overwhelmed

Page 15 - Second tower collapses. First acknowledgement of the fourth plane that crashed in PA.

Page 16 - There's an abrupt time jump in the threads, I think it was the result of admins pruning the activity or the SA forums going down. This page starts on 9/12 even though it is page 16. American flag signatures and ribbons start appearing.

Page 17

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IT'S FINALLY HERE! The true full size of my "do you love the colour of the sky HD remake director's cut" tumblr post

This ended up being 2 3/4 inches wide by 36 FEET LONG. 

The 2 3/4 inch width was chosen because that's the same width as a pretty average phone screen, and I wanted to know how physically far you have to scroll to get past this post.

also dont tell my boss that I got into the art gallery before we opened just to set up this rainbow CVS receipt looking motherfucker. in my defense i literally couldn't find any other location that was long enough to show this off

Please consider subscribing to my Patreon to gain access to my original content a week before its posted on tumblr!

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every so often im struck by the memory of one of my college professors getting very angry with our class (art history of pompeii 250) because when she excitedly detailed the ingenious roman invention of heated floors in bathhouses via hearths in small crawlspaces, we asked who was tending the fires. she said "oh, slaves i suppose. but that isnt the point". and we said that it actually very much was the point. she had just told us that in roman society there were dozens of people, maybe hundreds, who spent every day of their enslaved lives crawling in cramped, hot, smoky tunnels to light fires to warm pools of water (which they were not allowed to swim in). how could that not be the point?

she wanted us to focus on the art, on the innovation of heated plumbing, on the tiles and decorations of the bathhouses, and all we wanted to do was learn more about the people under the floors. and she didn't know anything more about that. in fact, she said she thought we were focusing too much on superfluous details.

it feels almost hokey to put too fine a point on the idea im getting at here but i will anyway: There are a lot of people who are still under the floors. all these beautiful, convenient, brilliant innovations of modern society (think fast fashion, chatgpt, uber, doordash) are still powered by people working in inhumane, untenable conditions.

the people who run these systems want you to focus on the good - who doesnt love warm water? - but if anything is going to improve or change in our lifetimes, you need to examine these things with an attentive, critical, and empathetic eye. and for fucks sake stop ordering from amazon

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NOTE TO SELF-SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!

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Batman playing Bruce Wayne playing Bruce Wayne playing Batman in the deleted Muppets scene would have to have been a challenge, even for him.

How do you put on the cowl you wear every night so badly that it basically screams this is clearly parody and can only be a gag?

Oh god, he’d absolutely be making the Madagascar penguin face on the inside. Just:

He fumbles it several times, dropping it on the floor and wrinkling his nose up at the thick rubbery smell. “God this thing looks sweaty. How am I supposed to follow the curly girl method in this thing?”

It's an adlib not in the script. Just something his brain threw out in a last-ditch attempt at self-preservation. It's so funny the crew can be heard cracking up in the background, the camera tilts up to the ceiling as the cameraman loses it. It gets kept in the final blooper reel.

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The only thing I need from the BatMuppet story that I didn't get yet is the HIIIIIIII-YA moment where Miss Piggy karate chops Bruce Wayne.

And has no idea the significance of doing so.

Oh, no, no. She doesn't do it to Bruce. She does it to the Joker.

They're at a televised charity gala, making the rounds. All the usual glitz and glam. Miss Piggy has just left to powder her snout when the shooting starts, and cries to "get down on the ground now!" reverberate through the room. It's almost half expected that the night is going to end in a hostage situation. It's Gotham, for Christ's sake. But no one's expecting the Joker. He's supposed to be in Arkham. The Bats just put him there. He shouldn't be out already.

Bruce is stalling for time, trying to give the Boy Wonder and all his other kids time to get to them. He's stammering, hands in the air, offering to pay whatever the Joker wants if he'll let all these people go. Except the Joker doesn't take ransoms. He barely takes prisoners. And he's got a gun aimed squarely at Bruce Wayne's forehead.

But Bruce keeps trying, inching forward on his knees, hands behind his head. Trying to figure out how much he can get away with in a room full of all these fucking cameras. He's going to get shot. He already knows it. It's just a question of whether he can duck and make sure it goes through his shoulder and not his head. Christ, he fucking hates guns.

"Come on," Bruce says, trying his hardest to sound both scared and amenable. "Everyone has a price. Name yours."

The Joker laughs, gesturing grandly with his free hand. "Tell you what, Brucie-boy, you'll get a price when pigs fly!"

The sound of enraged hoofs striking off marble makes itself known. A deep, guttural squeal tears through the night. The kind that hunters of old knew the fear and keep at the end of a long spear. The Joker turns just in time to see Miss Piggy flying through the air. Eyes red. Tusks bared. Hand raised. "HIIIIIII-YA!"

Jim Gordon's outside, preparing to launch a frontal assault, when the news comes in over the radio. He listens, shouldering the radio against his ear as he pulls a cigarette case out of his pocket. "To shreds, you say? What about the henchmen? To shreds, you say..."

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If your blog is empty, has no sort of title, and a picture of a real-life woman as its pfp (as opposed to a cartoon or something), you're getting reported as a spam blog. Sorry for anyone caught in the crossfire, but the bots have been very persistent lately.

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Am I the only person who actually enjoys the batfamily webtoon? I see many people who are saying that the webtoon is bad representation and too fanon. I just think the webtoon it's just the family acting domestic and talking to each one like if no one is trying to murder them.

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I think people get mixed up a lot about what is fun and what is rewarding. These are two very different kinds of pleasure. You need to be able to tell them apart because if you don't have a balanced diet of both then it will fuck you up, and I mean that in a "known cause of persistent clinical depression" kind of way.

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Are Animals Becoming Extinct in Fantasy Novels?

Recently, I read this post titled “Animals have been taken off in novels since 1835. Is fiction undergoing its own extinction event?” which talks about a study that found that since 1835, the use of wild animals in fiction has dropped drastically.

Many are blaming this “slow extinction” on modern societies disconnect to nature. After all, not everyone spends their days outside, so they might not notice mice, birds, or even the insects at their feet. If they do not think about animals in their daily life, why would they think about them while writing?

That is the theory, at least.

It is worthwhile pointing out what several other writers and readers are; there are plenty of animals in children’s fiction. That is true, but what about young adult to adult fantasy? Since that is what I personally write, that is what I wanted to talk about.

Just going off what books I think of first, it seems like often in fantasy novels, the only prey animals (like deer, squirrels, or rabbits) that we see are after nearly always during or after they are hunted. Then there is the complete lack of mosquitos, leaches, biting ants, and other annoying creatures.

Sometimes, there is a mention of the sound of birds singing, but rarely ever are there any details of the birds or what they are doing. Where are the ducks and swans on the lakes? Where are the birds building nests?

Now you may be going “What is the point? Why should I care?” and I get that, but by eliminating these creatures, your novels could be losing a sense of realism.

For example, in Stephen Kings The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon — which I argue is a light fantasy story, not a horror story — has a girl is lost in the woods and stalked by a creature. Interestingly, even most survival books fail to mention animals apart from for food, but Stephen King did not do that. He had deer, water bugs skittering across ponds, and even wasps that attack the main character. This added a sense of reality to the novel. It was not just a forest with some trees and plants, it was a forest filled with life, and that can be dangerous for anyone, let alone a young girl.

So, go ahead, raise the mood with your characters. If they are miserable, make them more so by having the mosquitos bite at them day and night or have them step in a anthill. If they are happy, they could watch a mother bird feeding its young or a swan rubbing necks with its partner.

Adding more hints of nature could not only amplify the mood, but it could also make your forests seem more real.