Apprentice of the Universe

 Aspiring erudite/jack-of-all-trades. Jaded beyond belief, desperately clinging to what's left of my faith in humanity. This blog is a treasure trove of stuff that tickles my fancy. Sometimes, I may add comments to the posts I reblog - if you think they're derailing the post, feel free to delete them before reblogging (I'm not gonna mind, or care). If you feel like cancelling me: go ahead, just don't bother sending me anon hate about it - this isn't the airport.

[antlered-vixen]

I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture. All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line? The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy? Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess. I want the fat left it. I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence. Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."

[fuckyeahcomicsbaby]

You don’t have to love your body

[naamahdarling]

I really needed to read this today. Thank you.

[basniarka]

A snip of my arthurian short-story: "The Wedding Night of Dame Ragnell"; Polish translation by the one and only @ladylierre. Word of explanation: I'm a Pole, and I don't usually have any problems with translating from Polish to English/English to Polish... unless it's my own text. Then, it exists in my head only in the language I've written it in, no other. So yeah. I wrote a short-story in English and my friend had to translate it into our native language ^^".

[damienhaaas]

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Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.

[deathstars]

so much could have been improved in the sequels if kylo ren hadn’t been force sensitive

[deathstars]

no wait think about it. kylo ren not being force sensitive, but so desperate to be so he’s willing to do anything. he feels cheated out of his grand destiny, his powers that his mother and uncle (and cousin?) have. give me the story on the entitlement towards the force. it would have shown that the force is beyond biological, it always has been. it would have given a better reason for kylo ren to “fall to the dark side”, so desperate for a connection to the force that he plays the part of a dark sider, swinging a cracking red lightsaber around with no finesse or training, killing hoping that it will push him further into a dark side of the force he cannot feel. it would have given a reason for him to hate han; that because han isn’t force sensitive, it’s his fault that kylo isn’t either. kylo’s character would have been stronger because his choices would have been his own, instead of whatever whisper dream manipulations they were in canon. his evil has nothing to do with the force, but an entitled man trying to claim a power he believes is his by birthright.

this would have foiled perfectly with finn, too- one is a child born to the most powerful force sensitives in the galaxy who cannot feel the force. and finn is a child who was taken from his family, forced into soldier-hood, who feels such a deep and powerful connection to himself and the force that he breaks free. kylo ren, seething and entitled trying to claim a destiny and power that just aren’t his, and finn, who has suffered at kylo’s actions and still connected to the powerful light inside of him. the “nobody” hero of the sequels who has the power of the force and the legacy-born villain who doesn’t.

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

In these two Tumblr posts you've come up with a better plot for free than we got in a trilogy that cost MILLIONS of dollars to make

It would fit with Kylo's character in the first two films as well where he's basically a pathetic manchild edge-lord desperately doing space fascist-cosplay because he wants to feel important and powerful if it turns out that he wasn't "corrupted" by anything...the dark side didn't influence him at all, he's just deliberately choosing to be a monster because he WANTS to dark side to corrupt him further

[nyansense-the-nyanbinary]

via @firebirdeternal add that to the main post-

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[cricketcat9]

LOUDER for the people at the back

[victusinveritas]

[clickerpunk]

For your viewing pleasure

[batbetbitbotbut]

@jackironsides you delight me and I wish to give enough context for everyone to enjoy (though I have never been in your morris team or any archaeology department)

STARTING WITH THE ASIDE:

this is just a strigil for horses

A strigil is a curved metal scraper to remove dirt and oil from the body, used by some ancient Romans.

AND NOW FOR THE MAIN POINT, A TIMELINE, FILLED IN WITH CONJECTURE:

Carboniferous period (like 300 million years ago), formation of the Durham/ Northumberland/ what-would-become-northeast-England coalfields

End of the last ice age (like 13000 years ago), start of continuous human habitation in what-would-become-England

1069-70, the Harrying of the North: William the Conqueror basically destroys northern England. Like, 75% of the people living there are just gone - some killed directly, far more displaced because their farms were destroyed, land remains unused for many years afterwards because there's just nobody there. Northern England for the next millenium has low population density and increased poverty compared to southern England.

Late 1700s to early 1800s, the Industrial Revolution: steam engines get going and England needs a lot of coal to power them. A lot of that coal comes from the northeast. Massive increase in northern English economy, entire pit villages spring up, still poverty but there is work to be had. Winding engines raise and lower cages of miners at shift change, with levels communicated via knocking or rapping a piece of metal sharply some number of times. I can find exactly zero photos of it online, but the string-operated "rapper" in place at Beamish Museum has the exact shape of "rapper" swords that we will get to shortly.

1842, the Mines and Collieries Act: children under 10 banned from underground work in the pits. Pit ponies to haul coal become far more common as a result. (The children still likely work in coal, still likely 12hr shifts at a time, but it's above-ground work like sorting the mined coal not below-ground work like hauling coal and opening/closing ventilation shafts. Except for in the many, many pits which carried on employing them illegally, of course.) Your pit pony, very dirty after their long day hauling coal, may be scraped clean with a flexible bit of metal as shown in the video, also the exact shape of "rapper" swords.

19th century generally, you finish your 12hrs or whatever down the pit, you go to the pub, there's no space, no money, just whatever music and people you can rustle up. A particular type of close-knit formation dance emerges using these two-handled flexible pieces of metal and the style becomes known as "rapper" or "rapper sword dance". To some extent it is developed out of other (rigid) longsword dances and morris dances, idk details, a lot of it is unknowable anyway.

20th century, like many English folk dances rapper mostly dies out and is later revived, I'm not sure if it has a perfectly continuous tradition. Also Maggie Thatcher closing the mines destroys northern economy again (though not as badly as William the Conqueror managed) and the social landscape changes drastically in ways I cannot speak to. Modern rapper teams exist all over the country (not that there are many of them - it is very nerdy even by folk dance standards) and continue to develop the dance in their own ways. Nevertheless, here is a modern performance:

[yimra-deactivated20250209]

[crownepatriot1-1]

Marvel Syndrome

[sauntervaguelydown]

Josh Whedon disease

[microsuedemouse]

so uh. Ursula Vernon is an acclaimed and accomplished writer (also known as T Kingfisher) of multiple genres, including fantasy and horror - lots of horror. she also wrote and illustrated the award-winning webcomic Digger. I knew this screenshot couldn’t be showing us her whole opinion, so I pulled up the actual tweet, and I was right! she goes on to explain that many in her crowd loved it, including her husband, but that it wasn’t for her. even more relevant than her original thread, though, is this response she had to someone who was asking in (apparently) good faith why she found the lack of humour frustrating:

like. yeah. not every movie requires a comedy element. of course not! but I think this post is ripping unfairly on entirely the wrong person. Vernon was clear in her original thread that being humourless did not make it a Bad Movie, and has been exceptionally straightforward about why that lack of humour felt detrimental to the film in her experience.

[lorbanery]

I can't speak to Dune because I've never read it or watched any of the adaptations, but I want to add another point to the "movies/media should have SOME humor in them" Discourse.

Having characters joke around with each other, even in tense moments, even in genres that are about tension, even in Very Serious Pieces of Media, gives your characters a sense of camaraderie. And the type of joking they do can get across to the audience how well they know each other and what their relationship is without saying it (or can back up what they say). If they're actively teasing each other and making in-jokes about shared experiences, it shows/reinforces that they're friends or partners who've known each other for a while, they feel comfortable lightheartedly ribbing each other, and they have a deep well of embarrassing/funny moments to draw from. If they're making more general jokes that aren't about the person, but still referencing shared experiences, they may have known each other for a while, but aren't necessarily friends, maybe they're coworkers or classmates or a regular at a restaurant and their preferred server. If they're making more general jokes without references, they probably only recently met and have had generally positive interactions, or they might be complete strangers who are just trying to break the ice.

Going back to the "friends who have known each other for a long time and are comfortable ribbing each other and have a lot of material" for a moment, specifically in the context of things like horror and dramatic epics like I understand Dune to be? When you have characters who joke around with each other like that, when one or both of those characters stop joking? It can also help prime the audience to understand, "Oh shit, shit's getting real now."

Like, think about Merry and Pippin in Lord of the Rings. Both of them spend a lot of time joking around with each other and the other characters, even when they're on their way to Mordor. Both of them lose the jokes the moment things get dangerous, but are back at it when the tension's released again. In Fellowship, the jokes pretty much stop the moment they get chased into Moria and don't come back until they've come to terms with Gandalf's death enough to move on from Lothlorien. They're back to it until they get attacked by the Uruk-hai, then back to their shared mischievousness again once they once they figure out how to convince Treebeard to rally the Ents and attack Isengard and are fully joking around again by the time Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli catch up with them in the aftermath of the battle.

Then, everything goes to shit. Pippin consistently shows himself to be the kind of person who doesn't quite grasp the potential danger of things and places that he hasn't experienced himself. The combination of that alongside his natural curiosity leads to things like him fiddling with the arrow in the dwarf skeleton that overbalances it into the well it was perched on, alerting the goblins and balrog to their presence. And to him sneaking a peak at the palantir. In the moments after, when Gandalf is readying things to take Pippin with him to Gondor, Merry, who's been able to, if not fully grasp the gravity of what they've been doing, at least trust their companions' assessments, listen to what their saying and read between the lines. And we finally see the seriousness and danger of the situation really sink in for Pippin.

He's seen Sauron, had him in his head, he's not just a vague concept of a Bad Guy off in a part of the world that may not exist for all that it's effected Pippin before leaving the Shire. He's seen how scared Frodo's been, seen the danger he's been in because of the ring, and now there's a possibility that Sauron thinks Pippin has the ring. Even when they left their home, Pippin still had Merry and Frodo and Sam. But then things got too dangerous for Frodo to stay so he left and Sam went with him. Now, things are so dangerous, that Pippin has to leave his very best friend and, after all they've been through, it's hitting him that he might not ever see any of them again.

This is the moment where all the jokes stop. Pippin has moments of joy and happiness and relief and satisfaction. But we never get to see being that mischievous little jokester again. I hesitate to call it character growth, because that phrase usually implies a positive change from immaturity and/or selfishness into a character with more empathy and a sense of responsibility towards other characters. Because I would argue that Pippin already had those traits. He saw that Frodo and Sam were in trouble literally moments after he and Merry ran into them leaving the Shire and he didn't hesitate to help them escape. He fought his best in every battle he found himself in, attempted to avenge Boromir against enemies he knew far overpowered him. The change from the beginning of Fellowship to the end of Return of the King wasn't character growth, it is, and was framed as, a young man forever changed by the horrors he witnessed and experiences, horrors he never could have even imagined before leaving his home, but now weigh in his memories for the rest of his life.

And you get that narrative because of the way the humor is used in Lord of the Rings.

[fromchaostocosmos]

If I'm understanding the point made by Ursula V it is not a every movie must have humor in it, bur rather it has have something in to break things up, to give some ease to the audience.

Because Schindler's List is not a movie that has humor in it, not really and not that I can remember, but it does have moments of big suspense that are then followed with by relief. Like will they pull of what they need to pull off and when they do you have your moments of relief.

I think that a certain kinds of films that due to the subject and way that the film is doing it, have humor in it would be not appropriate in way. I'm not saying that these movies should be a bore or whatever I'm just saying that it depends on how it handles the subject matter.

Like Jojo Rabbit when is very specific direction and humor is in much of the film for a reason while Schindler's list is in a very diffrent direction and having humor of that kind would do it a disservice and not be appropriate.

I think that when humor is used really needs to depend on many factors including context and subject matter.

Humor is important.

[elfwreck]

And it's not just "funny ha-ha" jokes humor.

Most of the LotR characters are not prone to jokes. There's a pair of nice "comic relief" guys, but they're not in every scene. And everyone else is working on Very Serious Stuff; fighting orcs and nazgul and crawling through caves in the dark does not make for fun-times jokes. But there are light moments, in the middle of all the battle and hardship:

(See also: "NOBODY TOSSES A DWARF!")

You don't need characters to stop searching for the evil overlord to play a quick game of charades. You don't need a random encounter with a traveling jester. You need some moments, here and there, that say "these people had a life before all this heavy stuff started happening, and they hope to have a life later, and they will need to remember this all as something other than two days/six months/ten years of solid misery and hardship."

They need to contextualize it as part of their lives. We the audience need a way to believe the story, believe this is how these people deal with hardship... and people do not deal with hardship without humor. Not if there's a whole lot of people involved.

Also, having those moments of levity lets you have That One Guy who never laughs, who never smiles, who is Serious All The Time. If everyone is serious all the time, you don't get Spock. You don't get Lan Wangji. You don't get Aizawa.

And you lose any chance of the emotional impact on the audience when That One Guy breaks character and smiles about something.

"Everyone is all serious and intense because this is a very serious situation" is just bad storytelling. Maybe it could make sense in a single episode of a tv series, covering an event that takes place in two hours. It makes no sense at all in a movie that spans years of in-character time.

“In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.” — Bertolt Brecht

Adding humor to dark settings does not make them lighter; it makes the shadows deeper so you can see how dark they really are.

[ohmovie]

She was amazed to discover that when he was saying, 'As you wish,' what he meant was, 'I love you.' And… she truly loved him back.

THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987) dir. by Rob Reiner THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (2001) dir. Peter Jackson

[supertaliart]

Happy Star Wars Day! I’ve decided to make my Skywalker comic into one easily rebloggable post.

[supertaliart]

Here’s a bonus page in honor of May 4th!

[thecollectibles]

Siren by Michael MacRae

[lets-steal-an-archive]

[escuerzoresucitado]

[wardoffthenight]

Sven Sauer - Deviation

The installation consists of 1,200 glass shards, each of which is aligned by hand. The train is moved centimeter by centimeter and each new glass shard is turned into the correct position so that the beam of light is directed to the next glass shard. As soon as the train starts moving, this creates a chain reaction of light...

[bemusedlybespectacled]

kind of a side thought from a couple of my posts about writing but I think it deserves its own post, so here goes:

when you’re writing a conflict between two characters or factions of characters, you need to consider whether their disagreement over the premise or over the methods. put another way: do they disagree on the problem or the solution?

this is a genuinely tricky thing to identify, especially in very complex narratives, so let’s do some very simple examples.

the situation: pacifist nation X is about to be invaded by empire Y. the laws and cultural practices of the Xians make violence and death so abhorrent that even accidental death is as minimized as possible. the Ylings, on the other hand, are totally cool with straight up murder and think diplomacy is for wimps, but are also pragmatic enough that they won’t waste troops if they don’t need to. the king of X calls in his council and asks for their opinions.

character A: It is more noble to die for one’s beliefs than to live having broken them. We should allow the Ylings to invade us and if we die, we die. character B: If all life is sacred, then our lives are also sacred. We must fight back against the Ylings, even though that means we’d be committing violence.

A and B agree on premise but not solution: they both acknowledge that the Yling invasion is a bad thing that will lead to their deaths if unopposed and that the nonviolence code is important; what they disagree on is priorities and methods.

character C: We should invite them into our nation as honored guests. Maybe they’ll spare us or at least kill us more mercifully. character D: We should propose an alliance and intentional annexation in exchange for our lives. Being part of the Yling Empire is a pretty sweet deal, actually.

C and D agree on solution but not premise: they’re both okay with just letting the empire walk in and invade, but C thinks the invasion would be a bad thing and is just trying to minimize the damage, and D thinks it would be a good thing and wants to maximize the rewards.

character E: We should fight the Ylings and stay a sovereign nation; the nonviolence code is stupid and holding us back. character D: We shouldn’t fight the Ylings and try to be peacefully part of their empire instead; we’d be true to our code and reap the rewards of an alliance.

E and F disagree on both premise and solution.

Now, all possible permutations of this argument are fine. “Is this the best way to solve the problem?” and “What actually is the problem?” are both great sources of conflict. Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s entire plot is an argument over the methods to prevent death and crime, but everyone agrees that crime is bad; one of Zuko’s big character development moments is when he realizes that the problem with the world isn’t the other nations ungratefully rejecting the prosperity and unity offered by the Fire Nation, but that the Fire Nation routinely commits genocide in their quest to colonize the rest of the world.

The issue is when a disagreement over methods is treated like a disagreement over premise. The characters are positioned like one side’s entire worldview is correct and the other is wrong, but it turns out they actually disagree with what the other does rather than what the other believes.

A big giveaway that what you’re seeing is about methods and not underlying beliefs? If at any point it is said or implied that one character “goes too far.” “Too far” implies a point before that cutoff that the other characters or the reader would be okay with. You can’t go too far if going any distance in that direction is wrong. “Frollo in the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame goes too far when he tries to kill all the Romani in the city” implies that the problem isn’t racism in general, but mass murder specifically, and that if Frollo was only nonviolently racist, that would be fine!

Like, you know the joke about the guy who offers a woman a million dollars to sleep with him, then ten dollars after she accepts the million dollar offer, and when she’s offended and says she’s “not that kind of woman,” he says, “Oh, we agreed you were that kind of woman, now we’re just haggling over price”? If your characters are arguing about the best way to solve a problem, they have already agreed about the existence and nature of the problem. Now they’re just haggling over price.

Again: that kind of storyline is okay if you actually do want to discuss extremism v. moderation of the same basic principle. It’s okay for two characters to argue over the best way to free all of their country’s slaves. It’s also okay for two characters to discuss the best way of practicing slavery, if you want to show how ingrained it is in society or how even the character you think is a moderate is still evil or something. What doesn’t work is if your intention is to say how awful slavery is, but then the entire conflict is over the treatment of slaves rather than whether slavery is okay.

tl;dr: setting up the conflict as one over premise and then having all the action be a fight over methods undermines your story; at best it’s just confusing, at worst it turns your characters into hypocrites.

[annikasettergren-archive]

talk street magic to me

drawing power from the metro lines

illusionists busking illegally, shimmering lights disintegrating as they run

plant mages tending tiny rooftop and windowbox gardens

elementary school kids learning basic sigils on the playground

wixen taking a while to key into the magic in new cities when they move

alchemists dealing on the side to support their experiments

middle schoolers making friendship talismans and amulets for everyone

numerologists who’ll do your math homework for $5 or divine your fortune for $10

kids mass-texting luck and speed spells when their parties get broken up by the cops

[deskgirl]

Hell yeah, let’s talk about magic.

Like elementary kids learning silly (or inappropriate) charms from each other on the bus, the same way we learned our first swear words. Clapping games across the bus aisle, but with spells instead of rhymes.

Worrying that your friend is getting into dark magic, but not knowing how to talk to them about it. Intervention programs for kids abusing hexes and runes, because magic has given them control over something for once in their life, and they’re starting to make some dangerous choices.

Psychic teachers knowing when you’re cheating. Knowing when you’re having trouble with homework. Or at home. Knowing when you need tutoring or an AP course because you’re just not being challenged or a different teaching method because you can’t process what you’re learning in class no matter how hard you try, and the teacher tells you it’s okay, they know. They know.

Magic graffiti. Graffiti in wild places, and graffiti that vanishes when certain people roll by like the police. Or graffiti that only appears when the police walk by to insult them. Murals. Swirling, living murals on the sides of buildings. Murals that—if you listen closely—can be heard, not just seen.

In the evenings, kids hiding out in someone’s backyard or an alley passing around a joint and casting minor illusions to watch while high.

Chalk artists making works that are so realistic, they come to life off of the sidewalk.

One man bands in the park, with instruments floating around playing themselves.

Punk concerts in empty lots with amped out music and lights, but noise-cancelling spells and illusion hide them in plain sight from anyone outside of the lot.

Mediums predicting people in need, and making sure to be there at just the right moment to lend them a helping hand. “You seem upset, do you need to talk?” “Oh, you’re a dollar short? No, don’t put the milk back; I’ll cover you.” “You really ought to try taking your resume to this store. Trust me.”

Necromancers in forensics speaking with the dead to solve homicides and cold cases. Living lie detectors as beat cops and detectives and DEA agents.

Strangely cheap five star food diners that bake actual love into their apple pie, and they always know your dietary restrictions without being told.

Service golems in various sizes and shapes, making sure their magic users aren’t crowded, get medical attention, go where they need to, etc. They don’t get distracted, they can be hollow to hold things like medications, and in rare instances, they seem to develop loving attachment to their users despite not being alive.

Little old landladies who dabble in witchcraft brewing homeopathic remedies for people in their apartment complex.

Street magic is an amazing concept.

[theinktree]

Heck yes.

Cars with paintjobs covered in sigils, protecting them and others from harm.

Churches that are literal sanctuary, backed up with wards to prevent violence being done within their walls.

Practitioners of Sympathetic Magic using company logos to invoke the associated concepts - a nike tattoo makes you faster, something stamped with “Nokia” is more durable.

The old leylines don’t work, but the highways, train lines, water mains and high-tension cables do the trick.

Magic Conventions.

just. Magic Conventions.

[snailchimera]

All of this please.

[hoerrrru]

I finally finished my watercolor portrait series

So here they all are

Death didn't fit in this post TT but you can see him in my post below