marinaded in maple syrup

fan of one piece, lone wolf and cub, yotsuba, azumanga daioh, kaguya, blue period, celeste, disco elysium, outer wilds, the cosmere, realm of the elderlings, and many manga you haven't heard of. locked tomb liveblog: empty-pizza

[theybejeff]

getting into homestar runner is so funny because you'll see a character that's like strong bad but the only visual difference is that his head is thinner and everyone treats him as an entirely separate entity and is like Oh my god i fucking love Blorgus and then you finally find the origins of him and its a strong bad email from 2004 where someone asks Hey Strong Bad What If Your Head Was Thinner

[tsunflowers]

I've seen people draw ralsei and mettaton smoking blunts but I want to see queen taking hits off a usb thumb drive like it's a juul

[tsunflowers]

Kris Trucie Come Smoke This Shit

We Will "Bond"

It Will Be: Great (TRUE)

[legorockraiders]

Birdling Come Here I Know How To Make You Less Or More Annoying

[algebraicpizza]

Do Not Tell Lancer He Stole My Last Gigabyte

[disfiguredgrace]

heard guillermo del toro say that the creature’s name is adam cause he’s the new first man and i had the completely self interested idea of a shtetl taking him in…. adam ben victor….. rabbis arguing about whether he can convert or not cause he’s like 20 different guys…… is this anything

[cephalopodvictorious]

That’s also what he names himself in the book!

But the Halacha around him would send rabbis into a frenzy because while he is made of dead things and therefore unclean, he’s also a whole living thing so…

[ofthegoldenlyre]

(Here I was possessed by this idea...)

On the third of Tishrei It showed up at the shul.

It was Rabbi Gamliel who opened the door. He opened his mouth, and then shut it again. He blinked several times in quick succession, and wondered if it was possible he was still half-asleep.

"Shalom," the strange being greeted him, its voice at once both gravelly and smooth. "It is nice to meet you. I am Frankenstein's Monster."

Indeed the creature looked quite monstrous. Its face was riddled with stitches and scars. Mismatched patches of skin overlapped messily on every single inch uncovered by clothes. One hand was skinny and the other was fat. One iris was brown and the other was blue. It had a half-grown beard on the left and no hair on the right. It stood very tall and it hunched over a lot.

Rabbi Gamliel took this all in. Then he took it all in a second time. "Shmuli," he called, "I think you'd better come here."

But it was not Rabbi Shmuli who came over but young Yonatan, who cried out in shock when he saw the thing's face. His voice cracked terribly halfway through, which made him cry out again, even louder this time (he tried to sound more manly the second time round). His high-pitched shrieks brought the others running, and a chorus of gasps met Rabbi Gamliel's ears.

"Shalom," Frankenstein's Monster said again. "It is nice to meet you. I am Frankenstein's Monster."

"Frankenstein! Feh!" Cantor Pinchas cried, for he knew Frankenstein from his childhood shul, and had jealously scrutinized all of his work. "That fakakta shmuck, that idiot fool. I knew one day his meshugas (*craziness) would arrive."

"I am not Meshugas," Frankenstein's Monster explained patiently. "I am Frankenstein's Monster. I have come from afar. May I come in?"

The Rabbis all looked at each other, alarmed. Rabbi Gamliel was the first to recover, having had several minutes of a head start.

 “'Love thy neighbor as thyself' (*Leviticus 19:18)," Rabbi Gamliel quoted, and tugged the door wider. "As this Monster is not of our nation, we may treat him as a neighbor. As he has traveled far, we may treat him as wise. And as he is in need, we may treat him as needy. Let us open the door as we do Eliahu; let us pour out the wine as we do for a friend.” 

Rabbi Shmuli scoffed at this grand pronouncement, and crossed his arms defensively. "I have heard of Frankenstein before; I have heard of his corrupt work with corpses and Sheyds (*demonic spirits). That which is born of such wicked act has never seen the tempering of yetzer ha-ra (*evil inclination). In accordance with the teachings of Nitai of Arbel, we must distance ourself from any bad neighbor, and do not join in its wicked presence."

Rabbi El’azar HaKappar, to Rabbi Shmuli's left, used one hand to point at Shmuli in agreement, and the other hand to stroke his beard, for he knew this action made him look wise. “It is yetzer ha-ra which tries to tell us that the grave is a refuge; what could believe in this more than a being made from that grave?” 

Young Yonatan, who was a long ways off from being a Rabbi, but very close to the boldness of one, especially with adrenaline pumping through his veins, shouted out, a bit too loudly: “Children shall not die on account of their fathers acts (*Deut. 24:16)! Children may not follow in their father's paths! We mourn the tenth plague, so it will not come again!"

Cantor Pinchas slammed his fist down on a table, making everyone jump, including the wine. “Enough, Yonatan! It already is the dead firstborn of its father, the plague having already passed through his house! Frankenstein's Monster is deeply impure, disturbingly defiled; a single touch will make us tamei (*ritual impurity for 7 days from touching a corpse). It must face cherem (*banishment)-- we must close the door to It at once!”

Pinchas’ rather more level-headed wife, Aliyah-Sarah, gently shouldered Rabbi Gamliel aside. She poked curiously at the Monster's arm, while her husband watched on in abject horror. Aliyah-Sarah bat Rachel (a long-passed and well-respected matriarch in her own right) turned back to the group, and held up her hand. “And yet this Monster is warm, just like the living; Its eyes are bright, just like the living; It has desires and It has needs, just like the living. Perhaps we are seeing gilgul neshamot* (transmigration of souls into new vessels to rectify past failings and complete spiritual work) taking place right before our eyes. What mitzvoth (*good deeds) have you yet to complete?” Aliyah-Sarah asked Frankenstein's Monster kindly.

Frankenstein's Monster opened its mouth, but did not speak, for it was not yet sure what all the mitzvot were. 

Rabbi El’azar HaKappar frowned deeply at this. He stroked his beard much more pointedly, in case she and Yonatan had missed it before. “A Monster cannot perform a single mitzvah, for it is neither a corpse nor alive, but a large golden calf in muddy disguise; a heretical fusion of hundred different men, with a hundred different gods, made solely for the purpose of unholy worship.”

Rabbi Gamliel, who had started feeling increasingly bad for the Monster as the discourse went on, reneged on his earlier assertion and said: “If we cannot love our neighbour as ourselves, what about love for one of our own? For who here can say with certainty that no part of It is Jewish; out of a hundred men, we Jews exist.” 

Chava bas Chana, who was not technically supposed to be in the room, but thought all of the ‘men-only’ nonsense was just that, added: “Either way, such guesses matter not. Jewish descent is passed down through the mother; it with no birth mother, being created in the image of man, is the indesputible child of Shechinah (*God, as the divine feminine)-- and Shechinah is, without a doubt, Jewish.”

A cacophony of voices rang out at this, any sort of consensus impossible to discern. Hands waved and eyebrows raised and the chatter swelled in a rising crescendo; Aliyah-Sarah touched her husband with the same hand she had touched the monster with, and he hurried off to wash that arm thoroughly; Rabbi Shmuli took up the gauntlet in his place, firing off aphorisms at a riled-up Yonatan and an aggrieved Gamliel; Chava made no effort at all to quiet her giggles as Rabbi El’azar started wringing his long beard in dismay.

Gradually a single voice began to emerge from the rest, lilting and swaying, rising and falling: for the ever-silent Rabbi Yosef  Kahon had begun singing a familiar tune. 

As one by one the rest fell quiet, compelled to listen and hum along, Rabbi Yosef drew the niggun (*Jewish wordless hymn) to a gentle close. He waited a beat, and then stated softly: 

“We are in need at this very moment of five generous men; four more Jews for a minyan, and a Shabbas goy for the lights. Every week we recruit, and every week we lament. Can you not see when a prayer is answered? Adonai has bestowed us all five at once.” 

And in the stunned silence Rabbi Yosef beckoned the the thing forwards; and into this silence Frankenstein's Monster walked. Chava closed the door softly behind it, and Yonatan rushed to get it a Siddur. 

Rabbi Yosef Kahon, smiling and serene, allowed one final wisdom to pass from his lips. 

“If not now, achim (*brothers), then pray tell me: When?” 

The Monster opened the Siddur.

And so that was that. 

[rratpower]

six seven?? uhh yeah i sure hope it does

[rratpower]

[algebraicpizza]

i'm seeing a lot of what is probably misinformation regarding the 15th doctor's departure. so to be clear: based off of everything we know, it is very likely that Ncuti chose to leave.

this is not a defense of the absolutely atrocious episode that The Reality War was, nor of the very real cases of racism in RTD's writing that people have rightfully been calling out. i still can't fucking believe they put Belinda in a box for half the episode and reality warped her entire character into being obsessed with a baby she never even wanted beforehand. but i also think it's not good to additionally blame the show/RTD for racism for 15 regenerating after such a short run when that was very likely Ncuti's own decision. i think we should keep it to the facts — the facts are already bad enough.

i say likely, not certain, because well, it's entirely possible that every behind-the-scenes rumor is wrong, and that Ncuti's own statements are false for the sake of PR, and a bunch of other circumstantial stuff points in the completely wrong direction. but based off of all of that, Ncuti is probably the one who chose to leave.

Ncuti outright said he wanted to leave because the stunt work was too much, which is a notorious part of the role and is why Matt and Peter chose to leave (both got knee injuries from the role!).

behind-the-scenes rumors have been circulating for months about Ncuti choosing to leave. the reasons varied from him having too many Hollywood prospects that the show was getting in the way of, to him not wanting to stay attached when the show is going to be in limbo for a few years (thanks, Disney!).

the show is basically outright confirmed, by leaks, to have gone back to do reshoots to completely change the ending of The Reality War, specifically to have 15 regenerate. now, to be fair, that doesn't prove that Ncuti was the one who wanted it. but we can at least say that this was not the plan.

(by the way, it's very likely they wrote the entire getting-Poppy-back sequence to make him regenerate. it's very possible that Belinda's original ending was entirely different. if Ncuti was the cause of the changes, then it is NOT his fault that Belinda's character was done this dirty — they could have just written something less stupid.)

RTD has outright talked about having a three season plan for this era and 15. and the Rogue subplot was clearly intended to be picked back up. like it is amusingly awful how the show literally left 15's boyfriend in hell, but also i feel like it's pretty fair to say they were expecting to be able to write him coming back.

RTD clearly really liked Ncuti and was into him? this is not even a defense of RTD so much as it's just trying to be accurate about the way in which he's problematic. but it's very clear he picked an actor he found very hot. he literally wrote 13 commenting on how pretty 15 was in their scene together.

if i've gotten anything wrong in that, or if there's additional information that contradicts what i've said here, then please let me know. but as far as i can surmise, Ncuti very likely chose to leave. the reason the first black Doctor got such a short run of episodes is that he decided to get off this sinking ship.

[lurinatftbn]

VN adaption news!

Got a different sort of announcement than the usual chapter one (which I forgot until days later again…) this week! As many of you are already aware, a visual novel adaption of The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere has been tentatively in the works for a while. Since I don't really like keeping secrets for the broad-strokes details of something like this, I thought the time was ripe to do an informal 'announcement'. So here's that!

(Example of our current art and interface direction. Actual sprites and background used for this scene very much not final!)

Though honestly, there's not a lot to say. The project will be more or less a direct translation of the work into a new format, though with some… minor adjustments to the storyline, in the interests of keeping the mystery elements fresh and amending a few of the bugbears I've personally built up regarding the plotting over the years. The game will be built in Ren'py (predictably), and joining me in development will the very talented Zerovirus, who'll be handling the art, while Benedict (Cordyceps, Star Seeker in: the Secret of the Sorcerous Standoff) is helping with some of the programming. Contributing to the OST will also be Xeecee, creator of lesbian murder nun game Misericorde, with the remainder handled by myself. (At least assuming I don't flub it and end up resorting to stock music lmao)

(The character bio menu. Also WIP.)

While we're undecided on the release model, the tentative plan is to release a short free demo at some point this year. After that, we'll put out a series of further updates semi-episodically, playable through a one-time purchase on itch. This will continue until we have enough for what feels like a 'complete' release - probably 1/3rd-ish of the story? - at which point we'll put this on steam or something, then start the process over for the next segment.

…and that's it! Stay tuned for future updates. I'm obviously in the privileged position of already having a fair few fans of the work, so I'd love to get feedback from people on things like the script changes or the character designs, so we'll hopefully be showing tidbits off semi-frequently going forward. Thank you as always for reading!

[innuendostudios]

New Alt-Right Playbook! This one's on spurious claims and how they don't even need to be ARTICULATED to follow you around.

If you wanna keep this series coming out (and maybe help it come out a little faster) do please consider backing me on Patreon or subscribing to me on Nebula.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, you are the kind of progressive leftist with a platform who gets a share of harassment - seasonal or perennial - from reactionaries. In this situation, you will, inevitably, hear one who positions themself as a reasonable moderate ask, “Why Don’t You Respond To Criticism?”

There’s a lot going on in that question, more than is obvious, and it’s worth understanding.

First is that the question is not only directed at you. It exists as a marker, showing up in your Q&A’s, comment sections, or Twitter threads, to imply to anyone paying attention to you that there is some wealth of legitimate criticism you have long ignored. There may well be a specific point this person is referring to, but it’s often left unspecified or generalized, so that the content - and the quantity - of the criticism is left to audience imagination. It is meant to publicly undermine your legitimacy.

Second, it’s meant to make you question whether there is some legitimate criticism out there in the din of people screaming at you. You’re not perfect, and a knock-on effect of being harassed is you get numbed out, unable to discern good faith from bad, often removing yourself from the streams through which your peers used to correct you because of the endless flow of garbage coming through those channels now. But the only way to verify the ambiguous claim that there is criticism worth responding to is to once again strap on waders and climb in, which is often what your critic really wants.

Third, the question isn’t really “why don’t you respond to criticism?” Odds are, you do respond to some criticism. People in your position are often addressing or pre-empting criticism all the time, arguably too much. No, what this nonspecific question is really asking is, “Why don’t you respond to my criticism?” They’ll let it sound like you’ve been ignoring everyone, but they mean “why are you ignoring me?” They are going to insist you owe them a response, that their critique, regardless of your opinion of it, is valid, and demands immediate attention. Odds are there are dozens of people saying the same, all at once.

Fourth, odds are good that you have, in fact, addressed their specific complaint, but not in a manner they will accept. This one person’s criticism is likely not unique, you may have covered it somewhere in your output purely because you know what kind of arguments are getting thrown at you and you want to cover your bases. There’s a decent chance your critic doesn’t actually consume enough of your work to have seen it. But it’s maybe even more likely that they are aware of your counter-argument - possibly one of your fans directed them to it - but don’t consider a response legitimate unless it is directed at the critic. Covering it in a different context or on a different platform doesn’t count. They are owed a statement they can respond to directly, because they want the argument to continue. Really, the question is, “Why don’t you respond to my criticism on my terms?”

Finally, even if you did respond to them by name, it’s likely your response would still be disqualified. If you were to summarize their argument in any way, they would claim you are building a straw man. If you isolated any specific critique, or pointed to the cruelty that accompanied it, they would claim you’re cherry-picking. You must, it seems, first present the criticism, full and unabridged, before you may respond to it. Which is to say: the only “correct” way to respond to criticism is to platform the critic.

And there are dozens who expect this of you. Who will tear into you for not addressing, in meticulous detail, every single critique they’ve ever tossed your way, and, in the same breath, make fun of you for talking too much. Because they don’t want to move on from “Why Don’t You Respond to Criticism?” As a rhetorical tactic, it’s pretty ace. To announce, before the argument is even stated, that it is thus far undefeated? ::chef’s kiss:: Because any response you make will keep the focus on you and not their argument. “It’s not worth responding to.” “Well why should The Accused get to decide what is and isn’t worth responding to?” “I have responded, repeatedly.” “Well why didn’t you respond in this particular way?” None of this looks at whether the argument had any credibility to begin with, only at whether your rebuttal is following procedure.

Take, for example, the hypothetical criticism that you should not listen to me because I am just four eels in a trenchcoat. How would I respond to that? What can I say that isn’t exactly what four eels in a trenchcoat would say? “I’m not even wearing a trenchcoat”? Well, the first thing four eels would do when people start to catch on is wear hoodies. Show my birth certificate, saying I was born a single entity to a human mother at a weight four newborn eels wouldn’t add up to? Well, did that work for Obama? Or did the guy saying the birth certificate was fake get elected President? And, of course, anything I have to say about how fascism has evolved on the social internet is suspect if I can’t even prove I’m human. What do fish know?? We stayed at war with Iraq for seven years after the government announced the Weapons of Mass Destruction we were looking for never existed, and some people, to this day, still think we found them. What hope would I - a warm-blooded mammal who would make very mediocre sushi - stand in the face of that? [bell chime]

So, if you ever see this claim out in the wild, “why haven’t you responded to _____,” ask: do you know what _____ is, do you yourself agree it’s a valid question, and are you sure it hasn’t already been answered? And don’t repeat the question unless you’ve got three yesses.

[nomette]

dorohedoro is about class resentment. it's about how your body is meat. it's about wouldn't it be fucked up if a cockroach played baseball. it's about how seeing a huge beautiful butch woman would heal anyone. it's about the immense distortion that power inflicts on those with it and those without it. it's about being a gay loser. it's about true and real friendship. but most of all, dorohedoro is about gyoza

[strayknight]

if i lived in the mushroom kingdom luigi and i would be best friends

[strayknight]

mario and i would have a mutual respect for each other but we never really clicked

[strayknight]

princess peach would have me executed via firing squad for the role i played in the infamous toad town murders of '96 but it would be later discovered that my involvement was greatly exaggerated and the severity of my sentence will weigh on peachs mind as she feels like it sullied her reputation as a fair and just ruler

[strayknight]

daisy and i would play tennis

[bigmeatpete69420]

Waluigi and I fucked

[strayknight]

waluigi and this guy fucked

[galactica-phantom]

objects you would see in homestar runner

[rratpower]

[nightmargin]

You can now wishlist Margin of the Strange on Steam

Margin of the Strange on Steam

Margin of the Strange is a gardening-themed mystery-exploration game about the world of human dreams from the developers behind OneShot. Ove

[ewzzy]

I love this dude.

[starry-carrousel]

Posting the girls on this beautiful Flower Thursday

Read Flower if you haven’t already!

[lurinatftbn]

hello! Like the description says, I made this blog to post about my webnovel, The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/28806/the-flower-that-bloomed-nowhere), currently hosted quasi-inappropriately on RoyalRoad, the online hub for progression fantasy and dubious user ads. I am intending to set up a site in the near future, but have been procrastinating.

TFTBN is a weird project that I've been working on at variable pace for coming up on four years now. To try to sum it up, it's a psychological whodunnit in a science fantasy setting that is 1/3rd depressing yuri and out there sci-fi concepts, 1/3rd my decade's worth of fermented thoughts on Ryukishi07's library, and 1/3rd my hyper-specific grudge against critical response to a bunch of ideas surrounding life extension espoused in certain strands of nerd/tech culture, most particularly the rational fiction community. It's kind of an over-complicated mess but I'm also proud of it, so please consider reading if you haven't and any of that sounds appealing!

I haven't posted on tumblr in almost a decade, so I'm not 100% sure what I'll do with this beyond announce updates. But if you have any questions regarding my writing or the story, setting or characters of TFTBN, my asks are open, so please go hog wild.

[algebraicpizza]

Strongly recommend checking The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere Out! To put it bluntly it's one of my favorite works of fiction lmao. It's a slow burn but delivers absolutely insane twists and reveals and metanarrative funkiness. It pulls you into a strange world until you realize you're way more invested than you ever expected to be. It's the kind of story that throws things at you that you didn't realize stories were allowed to do. It's also got one of the best anxious depressed psychologically fucked up codependent relatable lesbian protagonists I've ever seen.

Umineko fans and Locked Tomb fans take note.

[themetalhiro]

POV you are the firecracker they set off in the bathroom

[rratpower]

osaka tarot card 1!!