tyrantisterror

[tyrantisterror]

do you condemn the grinch

Ugh. People acting as if the grinch is still cancelled really just expose the problems with the online social justice movement. Not only did he apologize, but he returned every gift, cut the turkey for the dinner, and his heart grew three sizes. Acting as if the actions of the grinch still deserve condemnation is making it known that you don’t believe that people can change

[tyrantisterror]

I was at a bookstore looking through the art section and I saw a spine that said The Camden Town Nudes which was interesting because this didn’t seem like the bookstore where I would ever find something like that and I wanted to have a casual look but like. This also wasn’t exactly the bookstore where you felt like you could look at naked pictures let alone just suggestive paintings of them, it’s a really small shop as well, so I was like right I’ll just take a quick peek, I’m an art student, I love history, maybe I’ll buy it. I looked both ways and saw the shopkeep had left momentarily and no one was about, so I opened it and found it was an entire book featuring nude Edwardian women all painted by Walter Sickert between 1905-1912 and it was actually quite a revolutionary set of paintings for its time given that it featured very raw depictions of working class nude women in dark London instead of the elegant, white bedsheet clad, Demure middle and upper class women usually depicted.

And of course RIGHT as I flip to this lady’s boobs practically taking up an entire double page spread, every customer in a 5 mile radius appeared from around the corners of the shelf including the shopkeep and immediately regressing to a wet, pathetic Edwardian man from 1908, startled, I dropped the large book which caused a giant SLAP on the floor in this already silent store thus causing all patrons to look down at me scrambling on my knees to close a giant book of Edwardian boobs and let me tell you it would not have been nearly as funny had I not immediately felt like some Edwardian local pervert who just tried to sneak a cheeky peek at the erotic book in the bookstore only to drop it dramatically causing a scene, red up to his ears trying to shove it back on the shelf. Like such a casual and normal thing in modern day but looking at Edwardian women suddenly turned it into this egregious act as I apparently became possessed by the spirit of a moustached man in a bowler hat and morning coat going Good Heavens I mustn’t gaze upon these images in public lest the constable haul me away!

[tyrantisterror]

so once me and my wife were watching a documentary where a snake ate like a million eggs. that snake just went to fucking town on eggs. and the snake made the eggs look so good that i kept thinking about it, and thinking about it, and thinking about it, and eventually it was 11pm and i ran out of willpower and decided to eat one (1) singular raw egg just to prove to myself that the snake was surely a liar.

the snake was not a liar. texture is like, super important to me and raw eggs are very Texture so i had another one, and then another one, and then another one, and eventually i ran out of eggs.

i had like, fifteen raw eggs.

i didnt really know how to explain this momentary madness to my wife, so my Plan was to put all the eggshells into a grocey bag, and then throw that grocery bag in the dumpster, and if she never noticed that would be Excellent and if she noticed immediately i could lie and say that the eggs went bad.

except i cant lie very good, and of course with murphys law being such, i got salmonella.

so i threw up a lot and my wife asked me what poisoned me so and i tried very hard to dodge the question but i was oozing shame like oil from a room temperature cheese and eventaully i gave in and told her everything and to her enormous credit she was more flabbergasted than actually upset. she did make me promise to not eat any more raw eggs, which i have stuck to, and she gives me weird looks during nature documentaries now as if desire was the only thing keeping me from eating thousands of pounds of krill anyway i made a joke earlier about being able to eat my age in eggs and my sister in law in law made a drawing to comemorate the moment and also because it was my birthday. she's excellent. thank you 10000000% @cintailed. you should all visit her page and admire her work.

[tyrantisterror]

At Sea Without a Map pt. 53

You subtly give Calibani's shoulder a reassuring squeeze as you ask Dr. Warefore, "Why do you have a sea serpent in your underwater laboratory?"

Dr. Warefore grins. "Ah, yes, the Psychorax specimen I knew she'd catch your eye. We keep her to study, of course. There are lots of adaptations she sports that we're trying to replicate - I know she may look like a dumb animal, but do you see those fins on the sides of her head? They're psychic receptors. If it weren't for the dampening field we built into her tank, she'd be able to call out for miles and miles till one of her kin heard her message, and we might be none the wiser."

The scientist jots another note on her clipboard. "But it's her size that marks her as a real prize. Creatures here do not attain that size without surviving a long, long time. Oh, sure, some can have temporary growth spurts brought on by extreme emotional responses, but to maintain it they have to have survived a great deal of hardship. Such power is hard-earned - well, if you're content to play by the Sea's rules, anyway." She places her clipboard on a desk and regards the captive sea monster.

"Nature plays the long game, but Spindle isn't content to wait for results. Even with the differences between our realities, there are rules that can be followed - everything is reducible to chemical reactions in the end. By studying this creature's biochemistry, we can learn to unlock the adaptations it gained from its long life and grant them to our own custom made organisms. Why climb a mountain when you can just take a helicopter up, eh?"

The gaze of the serpent moves from you to the scientist, and as it does you see anger creep into the massive eel's face. She opens her jaws in a silent snarl, and Dr. Warefore laughs.

"It was quite a spectacle, you know, the day we brought this monster to heel. She fought hard, but we have weapons no creature here is prepared for. Capturing her alive was the tricky part, really - there were several moments we feared we'd killed her." Dr. Warefore laughs again, a cruel, mirthless sound. "I suppose she feared it too - do you know that many creatures here will reproduce if they think they're dying? Most of the natives can do it asexually, you know. It's the final gasp of their Lamarckian need to survive at all costs. She laid an egg as we were subduing her, and despite our best efforts we weren't able to recover it." Dr. Warefore shakes her head. "A shame. I would kill to see what adaptations the child had in response to our attack on its mother. How would it try to counter the ingenuity of human beings?"

You can feel Calibani trembling beneath her arm. This is why she grew up alone, without a mother, without any sense of community. This is why she was built to prey on humans - so she could defend herself from them. Everything that led to her isolation began right here - with human ambition.

If Dr. Warefore notices your companion's emotional turmoil, she doesn't mention it, instead strolling calmly to a wall of monitors in the room. Each one displays a live video feed of different creatures - some lurking in the sea, some in holding cells like poor Sycorax here, and some... well, some appear to be outside the sea itself.

"Establishing this base has been one of Spindle's crown achievements. We have your friend Dr. Neptune to thank for it - he was a contractor working for our R&D department, and the first to figure out how to facilitate purposeful travel to this universe by utilizing the Veil Knots on the corners of the Bermuda Triangle. That's why I'd really like to bring him back into the fold - we could learn so much from his brilliant mind."

She turns to you with a smile that almost seems comforting, if she wasn't clearly some sort of sadist with delusions of grandeur. "And we would be happy to add you to our ranks as well. Gifted field agents are a rarity - there are few people who could survive the Sea of Monsters on their own, much less tame two of its residents to serve as their henchmen."

Oh fuck. She knows.

"So what do you say, Sailor? I could send you back home right now, if that's really what you want, but think about what I'm offering you. It's a steady paycheck, a resources to explore this Sea to your heart's content, and the prestige of contributing to the bright future Spindle is building. Are you bold enough to take it?"

You consult your compass.

[tyrantisterror]

Mmm, yep, seasonal depression's hitting hard this year. I know it's bad when I start thinking about trying online dating again.

[tyrantisterror]

I wish there were more stories about people going on grand adventures with kitty companions. Sometimes my cat Bean follows me around at night and I just think there's a lot of untapped potential in how cats work with humans as a team vs. the more commmonly portrayed dynamics between humans and dogs or humans and horses. I love how my little guy will walk ahead of me pretending he's doing his own business, only to look back when he thinks I'm not looking to make sure I'm "following" him, or how he'll stop and change directions to figure out what and how he can get in the middle of it. Or how I'll think he got bored and wandered off only for him to pop up from behind me and walk in front again. There's a lot of stuff you can do with that that I've never seen in fiction before. More cat sidekicks please.

[tyrantisterror]

My conduct this year landed me on Santa Claus's fabled and controversial "Kill-at-all-Costs" List. Turns out the reason the big man and his people don't exercise that option more often is that they really aren't good at following through on it. Well outside their core competency. He's delegated to the elves, and they've got this ingrained assembly-line mindset that doesn't translate at all to the adaptable and fluid mindset needed for siege breaking. They just haven't adjusted their playbook at all from when they're doing rote deliveries. Armed Elves have been rappelling down my chimney one at a time into the roaring fire I've kept going nonstop for the last week. They haven't even thought to try my front door yet. Whole house smells like peppermint, which it turns out is what burnt elf meat smells like. Thought I was being super clever putting cyanide-laced almond milk out with the cookies as a last line of defense, but none of them have made it even the scant few feet to the side table where that's sitting. At the rate things are going the real danger is that I'm gonna forget what I did with that and accidentally drink it myself while I'm watching the show

[tyrantisterror]

Your insane kaiju lore for the day, courtesy of Wikizilla's Les.

[tyrantisterror]

Car accents 🐈😺

[tyrantisterror]

[tyrantisterror]

You know how there's some posters in the tumblr ecosystem who, like... they're not really famous in any traditional sense, but you know you've seen them on your dash numerous times despite not following them, because you guess they're just kind of prolific? And you don't necessarily have strong feelings about them one way or another - your feelings about seeing their name are more or less, "Oh yeah, there's that guy again, saying something I may or may not agree with about this topic." But also whenever the rare occurrence of their name showing up in your notes happens you feel a dread chill run up your spine as you realize your post is about to get a lot more engagement and all the negative attention that entails?

I... I'm not one of those people, am I? I was just thinking about the number of posts I have that sporadically come get bursts of attention, some of which were reblogs of other people's posts and... I'm not a harbinger of tumblr's dread gaze, right? Right?

[tyrantisterror]

You have a really good sense of visual language, the Sea Serpent picture immidiately read as Calibani's mom to me even before see the text below the pic. Thanks for making ASWAM its so much fun !

Thank you! That means a lot to me - I'm not particularly confident in my illustration skills, but I keep trying to improve them.

[tyrantisterror]

At Sea Without a Map pt. 52

"My questions are pretty simple," you tell the scientist lady. "Probably really easy to answer, so why don't you ask yours first instead?"

She cocks her head and scrutinizes you closely for a moment. "Fair enough," she says skeptically before taking a page from the middle of the stack on her clipboard and moving it to the top. "State your name, please."

"Um... Sailor."

She stares at you. "Your full name."

"...that's as far as I got," you admit sheepishly. "I, uh, kind of don't remember what my real name is. Is... is that normal for people who enter this place?"

The scientist continues to stare at you until you almost prickle at the heat of her gaze. "It's unusual," she finally says, "But not unheard of. Normally the stress induced amnesia is induced on the return trip from the Sea, but there we have a few cases on record of it occurring at the entrance as well."

"We?"

"Spindle Inc," the scientist says. "The company I work for, which made this marvel of modern science you're currently standing in. We've been researching these alternate universes for many years now." Her eyes flit to your companions. "And what are your names, ladies?"

"Calibani!"

"Bobbulynne, but you can call me Bob!"

You wince in frustration, though more with yourself than with your friends. How did you spend so much time disguising their appearance and fail to think to tell them to pretend to have human names? It doesn't seem to escape the scientist's notice, either, as she arches an eyebrow at the two responses before jotting a note on her clipboard.

"Fascinating. I suppose since we're doing introductions, I should be polite and do the same. My name is Dr. Antonia Warefore, head researcher of Outpost 851. Her eyes roam over Calibani and Bob before returning to catch your gaze. "Tell me, Sailor, what strange phenomena have you encountered on your trip here? You must have seen at least a few things that are, well, to put it simply, monstrous."

You can feel the tension in the air. While this woman looks human, she's setting off the very finely tuned fight or flight responses in your brain with every second of this interaction, and you can't stop yourself from wondering if the answers you give her may bite you in the ass later. Then again, anything you could do to secure her trust could be what you need to save yourself should things turn hairy. You decide to split the difference with a partial truth. "Well, I was attacked by these big storks that disguise themselves as palm trees, then a monster that was like a big glob of rotting faces and tongues, there was a giant killer dolphin, an island that turned into a crocodile, and a big shark with molten lava for skin."

"Interesting," Dr. Warefore says as she jots down a few more notes. "How did you survive encountering such horrors, exactly?"

"Oh, luck and quick wits, I suppose," you say humbly before hastily adding, "And thanks to the help of my friends, here."

"Your friends Calibani and... Bob?"

The two fish girls look at you, both now aware that their cover may be blown. "Yep! Couldn't do it without them!" you say with great enthusiasm. "They're real friends, tried and true!" Remembering that one of your most valuable friends isn't in the room with you, you speak up again. "And so is my boat! Please don't hurt my boat!"

Dr. Warefore gives you a look that's both apologetic and patronizing, like a parent who's decided to humor a child's delusion is a very sympathetic way. "We won't hurt your boat, Sailor. I imagine it must have served you quite well, given how far much it seems to have transformed. You did notice that it has eyes and a mouth, correct?"

"Yeah, it, uh, didn't always have those," you admit.

"Then you must also realize you are not in the normal world anymore," Dr. Warefore says. "You're in-"

"The Sea of Monsters, yeah, I know, I've been told," you say. "Dr. Neptune gave me the whole monologue - oops." Roses bloom in your cheeks as you realize you accidentally let something slip that you'd tried to hide.

And, sharp as a tack, Dr. Warefore caught the slip. "Dr. Neptune?"

"Um, yeah, he's a - a guy I met out here," you stammer. "Gave me some directions, but didn't come with me. Guess he likes it here."

Warefore's eyes grow wide. "Dr. Neptune is alive?"

Oh no. Oh you really shouldn't have said that. "More or less?" you say with a wince.

The Spindle scientist looks away from you and drums her fingers on her clipboard. "Ironteeth, the island crocodile, the corrupted custodian, the storks... easy enough to figure out where he could be hiding from those details..." She jots down a note. "Thank you, Sailor, that was helpful."

"You're - you're not going to hurt him, are you?" Despite the... let's say mixed bag of an encounter you had with Dr. Neptune, you don't actively wish ill upon him. "He helped me."

Dr. Warefore laughs. "You make me feel like I work for the CIA! Spindle Inc isn't in the business of hurting people, Sailor. We're trying to build a better future, that's all. Here, let me show you."

Without so much as waiting for you to agree, Dr. Warefore struts out of the laboratory and into the hallways of the sea station, leading you deeper into its bowels with each step. "Dr. Neptune no doubt explained the nature of the Sea of Monsters to you and its relation to the universe we hail from - or, well, the kind of universe you and I hail from, I can't take for granted that you aren't a human from one of the many similar yet different universes out there."

"A - wait, what?"

"I'm saying humanity is not a rare commodity, Sailor, keep up," Dr. Warefore says. "There's every possibility you and I are from different universes despite all appearances to the contrary."

A pang of existential dread hits you at that concept - that humanity might not be unique in the multiverse - but you think of something that might allow you to subdue the thought. "Is Spindle Inc like that, too? Because I have vague memories of a Spindle Inc in my home."

The smirk that appears on Warefore's face sends a shiver down your spine. "Very smart, Sailor. No, Spindle Inc is unique to our home reality. There's only one Spindle out there that matters." She looks ahead as she leads you down a winding stair. "While the rest of humanity struggles to so much as reach another planet, we at Spindle Inc have realized that there are far greater frontiers to explore, ones that, ironically, are far easier to reach. The Sea of Monsters is but one of many that we've begun to explore on behalf of the human race."

She turns head head as if to look you in the eye, but instead her gaze falls upon Calibani. "Do you know, Sailor, how life in this reality adapts? It's very quick compared to our world - no trial and error with random genetic mutations, but quick, decisive reactions to dangerous stimuli. Where our reality's evolution is cold war arms race, here in the Sea of Monsters they progress from bronze age tools to industrialized societies in a span of a single generation - sometimes within a single individual."

"Stress-induced adaptations," you say, remembering Dr. Neptune's words for it.

"Exactly," Dr. Warefore says with a smile. "Imagine if humans had that ability! Imagine how easily we could traverse our world, our solar system, our galaxy! Imagine the frontiers mankind could reach, the disasters we could endure and survive, the heights we could achieve!"

A door opens before you as she steps through it into an enormous chamber, the left side of which casts an eerie blue glow over the rest of it. "That is why we're here. The Sea of Monsters holds the key to the next step in human evolution, and we aim to find it."

You step into the room after her and are greeted with a sudden shock.

There, behind a large window, is a massive sea serpent. The enormous eel coils around itself, trapped in the glass and metal cage that surrounds it on all sides. As the colossal fish turns its yellow eyes onto you, Calibani reaches out and squeezes your hand.

"Sailor," she whispers, "I don't know how I know this, but... I think that's my mom?"

Slowly you recognize the family resemblance - the veiny fins, the armored scutes and spikes, the teal scales, the natural eyeliner. It's Calibani-adjacent, that's for sure, and as the serpent writhes in its prison, you realize that your daring escape from the Sea of Monsters has a new wrinkle. You consult your compass.

[tyrantisterror]

At Sea Without a Map pt. 52

"My questions are pretty simple," you tell the scientist lady. "Probably really easy to answer, so why don't you ask yours first instead?"

She cocks her head and scrutinizes you closely for a moment. "Fair enough," she says skeptically before taking a page from the middle of the stack on her clipboard and moving it to the top. "State your name, please."

"Um... Sailor."

She stares at you. "Your full name."

"...that's as far as I got," you admit sheepishly. "I, uh, kind of don't remember what my real name is. Is... is that normal for people who enter this place?"

The scientist continues to stare at you until you almost prickle at the heat of her gaze. "It's unusual," she finally says, "But not unheard of. Normally the stress induced amnesia is induced on the return trip from the Sea, but there we have a few cases on record of it occurring at the entrance as well."

"We?"

"Spindle Inc," the scientist says. "The company I work for, which made this marvel of modern science you're currently standing in. We've been researching these alternate universes for many years now." Her eyes flit to your companions. "And what are your names, ladies?"

"Calibani!"

"Bobbulynne, but you can call me Bob!"

You wince in frustration, though more with yourself than with your friends. How did you spend so much time disguising their appearance and fail to think to tell them to pretend to have human names? It doesn't seem to escape the scientist's notice, either, as she arches an eyebrow at the two responses before jotting a note on her clipboard.

"Fascinating. I suppose since we're doing introductions, I should be polite and do the same. My name is Dr. Antonia Warefore, head researcher of Outpost 851. Her eyes roam over Calibani and Bob before returning to catch your gaze. "Tell me, Sailor, what strange phenomena have you encountered on your trip here? You must have seen at least a few things that are, well, to put it simply, monstrous."

You can feel the tension in the air. While this woman looks human, she's setting off the very finely tuned fight or flight responses in your brain with every second of this interaction, and you can't stop yourself from wondering if the answers you give her may bite you in the ass later. Then again, anything you could do to secure her trust could be what you need to save yourself should things turn hairy. You decide to split the difference with a partial truth. "Well, I was attacked by these big storks that disguise themselves as palm trees, then a monster that was like a big glob of rotting faces and tongues, there was a giant killer dolphin, an island that turned into a crocodile, and a big shark with molten lava for skin."

"Interesting," Dr. Warefore says as she jots down a few more notes. "How did you survive encountering such horrors, exactly?"

"Oh, luck and quick wits, I suppose," you say humbly before hastily adding, "And thanks to the help of my friends, here."

"Your friends Calibani and... Bob?"

The two fish girls look at you, both now aware that their cover may be blown. "Yep! Couldn't do it without them!" you say with great enthusiasm. "They're real friends, tried and true!" Remembering that one of your most valuable friends isn't in the room with you, you speak up again. "And so is my boat! Please don't hurt my boat!"

Dr. Warefore gives you a look that's both apologetic and patronizing, like a parent who's decided to humor a child's delusion is a very sympathetic way. "We won't hurt your boat, Sailor. I imagine it must have served you quite well, given how far much it seems to have transformed. You did notice that it has eyes and a mouth, correct?"

"Yeah, it, uh, didn't always have those," you admit.

"Then you must also realize you are not in the normal world anymore," Dr. Warefore says. "You're in-"

"The Sea of Monsters, yeah, I know, I've been told," you say. "Dr. Neptune gave me the whole monologue - oops." Roses bloom in your cheeks as you realize you accidentally let something slip that you'd tried to hide.

And, sharp as a tack, Dr. Warefore caught the slip. "Dr. Neptune?"

"Um, yeah, he's a - a guy I met out here," you stammer. "Gave me some directions, but didn't come with me. Guess he likes it here."

Warefore's eyes grow wide. "Dr. Neptune is alive?"

Oh no. Oh you really shouldn't have said that. "More or less?" you say with a wince.

The Spindle scientist looks away from you and drums her fingers on her clipboard. "Ironteeth, the island crocodile, the corrupted custodian, the storks... easy enough to figure out where he could be hiding from those details..." She jots down a note. "Thank you, Sailor, that was helpful."

"You're - you're not going to hurt him, are you?" Despite the... let's say mixed bag of an encounter you had with Dr. Neptune, you don't actively wish ill upon him. "He helped me."

Dr. Warefore laughs. "You make me feel like I work for the CIA! Spindle Inc isn't in the business of hurting people, Sailor. We're trying to build a better future, that's all. Here, let me show you."

Without so much as waiting for you to agree, Dr. Warefore struts out of the laboratory and into the hallways of the sea station, leading you deeper into its bowels with each step. "Dr. Neptune no doubt explained the nature of the Sea of Monsters to you and its relation to the universe we hail from - or, well, the kind of universe you and I hail from, I can't take for granted that you aren't a human from one of the many similar yet different universes out there."

"A - wait, what?"

"I'm saying humanity is not a rare commodity, Sailor, keep up," Dr. Warefore says. "There's every possibility you and I are from different universes despite all appearances to the contrary."

A pang of existential dread hits you at that concept - that humanity might not be unique in the multiverse - but you think of something that might allow you to subdue the thought. "Is Spindle Inc like that, too? Because I have vague memories of a Spindle Inc in my home."

The smirk that appears on Warefore's face sends a shiver down your spine. "Very smart, Sailor. No, Spindle Inc is unique to our home reality. There's only one Spindle out there that matters." She looks ahead as she leads you down a winding stair. "While the rest of humanity struggles to so much as reach another planet, we at Spindle Inc have realized that there are far greater frontiers to explore, ones that, ironically, are far easier to reach. The Sea of Monsters is but one of many that we've begun to explore on behalf of the human race."

She turns head head as if to look you in the eye, but instead her gaze falls upon Calibani. "Do you know, Sailor, how life in this reality adapts? It's very quick compared to our world - no trial and error with random genetic mutations, but quick, decisive reactions to dangerous stimuli. Where our reality's evolution is cold war arms race, here in the Sea of Monsters they progress from bronze age tools to industrialized societies in a span of a single generation - sometimes within a single individual."

"Stress-induced adaptations," you say, remembering Dr. Neptune's words for it.

"Exactly," Dr. Warefore says with a smile. "Imagine if humans had that ability! Imagine how easily we could traverse our world, our solar system, our galaxy! Imagine the frontiers mankind could reach, the disasters we could endure and survive, the heights we could achieve!"

A door opens before you as she steps through it into an enormous chamber, the left side of which casts an eerie blue glow over the rest of it. "That is why we're here. The Sea of Monsters holds the key to the next step in human evolution, and we aim to find it."

You step into the room after her and are greeted with a sudden shock.

There, behind a large window, is a massive sea serpent. The enormous eel coils around itself, trapped in the glass and metal cage that surrounds it on all sides. As the colossal fish turns its yellow eyes onto you, Calibani reaches out and squeezes your hand.

"Sailor," she whispers, "I don't know how I know this, but... I think that's my mom?"

Slowly you recognize the family resemblance - the veiny fins, the armored scutes and spikes, the teal scales, the natural eyeliner. It's Calibani-adjacent, that's for sure, and as the serpent writhes in its prison, you realize that your daring escape from the Sea of Monsters has a new wrinkle. You consult your compass.

[tyrantisterror]

"Boots" is a poem by English author and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). It was first published in 1903, in his collection The Five Nations.[1] "Boots" imagines the repetitive thoughts of a British Army infantryman marching in South Africa during the Second Boer War. It has been said that if the first four words in each line are read at the rate of two words to the second, that gives the time to which a British foot soldier was accustomed to march.[2]

read by by Taylor Holmes in 1915

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1929.

[tyrantisterror]

Cookies represent the body of Santa while the milk represents the blood of Santa

[tyrantisterror]

Art by • Joan Llopis Doménech