Friedrich Kunath (b. 1974, German artist)
“Storms Never Last”, 2023
Oil on canvas, 121.9 x 97.8 cm.; 48 x 38 1/2 in.
Private collection
DEAR READER

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blake kathryn
Cosmic Funnies
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

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JVL

@theartofmadeline
Not today Justin
Stranger Things
Today's Document
Xuebing Du

oozey mess
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

Love Begins
KIROKAZE
dirt enthusiast
RMH
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

Product Placement

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@cycas
Friedrich Kunath (b. 1974, German artist)
“Storms Never Last”, 2023
Oil on canvas, 121.9 x 97.8 cm.; 48 x 38 1/2 in.
Private collection
AI Quietness
The word 'quiet' is starting to give me the twitch. Any social media post that mentions the word 'quiet' or 'quietly' is almost certain to have the tell-tale... how can I put this. The telltale 'standardised' emotional storytelling flow of an AI post. You can spot them a mile off if you've followed a page for a while and then suddenly everything's 'quiet'. Not on Tumblr really, where the reactionary old guard still hammer their words out by hand, but everywhere else.
'Quiet'. It used to be such a good word.
AAAAAAAAARHGHHH *runs off into the sea*
Unless, of course, I'm just hallucinating it, and people really do say 'quiet' more often than I think they do.
I mean, I probably overuse quiet in my writing. But that’s a remnant of being taught not to freely use more specific words so as to not cheapen their impact (which is, like all writing advice, not objective despite how often it gets treated as such. Do I have strongly held opinions on this? Yes; yes I do.)
That said, there’s a reason style editors have been able to flag how often you use a certain word for years before gen ai. Sometimes it’s just indicative of less polished storytelling.
I definitely use the word 'quiet' and 'quietly': they are perfectly cromulent words.
What I'm annoyed about really is the automatic flinch reflex to those words that I've developed in the last year.
Yes, 'ai detection' in text is silly because ai creates text that obeys grammar rules and is shaped as a very average way to write a sentence.
But on the other hand, if you are used to reading text from a specific person, that text usually has an... 'accent' ? Maybe, for want of a better word. A sort of vocabulary colouring, a set of phrasing and punctuation habits that isn't contrary to any grammatical rules, but is still recognisable, in the same way that you can recognise a face or a voice. So, if the way someone writes text changes, and becomes more standard, medium and average, I find I notice that, and it's jarring, and when that HAS happened in the last couple of years, I find 'quiet' is one of the words I notice first. Which is annoying, because there's nothing *wrong* with quiet. I'm just amassing negative associations with it and it's putting me off using it, like a dog that gets bopped on the nose when it hears the word 'bad'.
I had the sudden urge to draw ereinion with a jellyfish cut:
He's still a baby in this drawing. Not high king yet. I hc that he kept his hair relatively short when he was younger but once he became king maintaining it was the least of his problems so it grew out. No specific reason why I hc this other than I like the idea of him with this haircut. Maybe I'll figure out something deep later.
I also challenged myself to do a different lighting angle and clothes so yayy :)
The artificial lighting makes him look a little more yellow than in person (even though I used a filter to try and counter the yellowness but oh well. Maybe I'll take a better photo in the morning.)
I'm drawing Finduilas next!!
The Danish training ship “Georg Stage” (1934) dresses in rainbow colour, 2021
not the kind of gay ship I’m used to seeing on tumblr but cool
ship georg is an outlier but SHOULD be counted
AI Quietness
The word 'quiet' is starting to give me the twitch. Any social media post that mentions the word 'quiet' or 'quietly' is almost certain to have the tell-tale... how can I put this. The telltale 'standardised' emotional storytelling flow of an AI post. You can spot them a mile off if you've followed a page for a while and then suddenly everything's 'quiet'. Not on Tumblr really, where the reactionary old guard still hammer their words out by hand, but everywhere else.
'Quiet'. It used to be such a good word.
AAAAAAAAARHGHHH *runs off into the sea*
Unless, of course, I'm just hallucinating it, and people really do say 'quiet' more often than I think they do.
AI Quietness
The word 'quiet' is starting to give me the twitch. Any social media post that mentions the word 'quiet' or 'quietly' is almost certain to have the tell-tale... how can I put this. The telltale 'standardised' emotional storytelling flow of an AI post. You can spot them a mile off if you've followed a page for a while and then suddenly everything's 'quiet'. Not on Tumblr really, where the reactionary old guard still hammer their words out by hand, but everywhere else.
'Quiet'. It used to be such a good word.
AAAAAAAAARHGHHH *runs off into the sea*
the thing is that the quest for the silmaril was clearly intended to be celegorm and curufin's shot at redemption and it's not anyone's fault but their own that they continually beef it. the quest cannot succeed without the hound of celegorm and the knife of curufin. there are clearly celegorm and curufin shaped holes in the questing party to retrieve the sacred objects to which celegorm and curufin are oathbound. it is the fault of no one except celegorm and curufin that they aren't there for the main event. i wonder if that's why angrist snapped is because beren and luthien only needed the one but it would have held for all three if celegorm and curufin had been where they had every chance to be. shame they'll never know
#top 10 things that made Maedhros jump into that volcano
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, Historical RPF, Kubla Khan; or A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment - Samuel Taylor Coleridge Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Finrod Felagund, Samuel Taylor Coleridge Additional Tags: Elves in History, Difficulty of being a Romantic Poet, Porlock - Freeform, Our World Is Middle Earth, Pantisocracy, 1797, Idealism Summary:
Two enchanters meet on a hillside in Somerset. I read most of Coleridge’s collected letters for this and learned quite a lot about the late 18th century.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, Historical RPF, Kubla Khan; or A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment - Samuel Taylor Coleridge Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Finrod Felagund, Samuel Taylor Coleridge Additional Tags: Elves in History, Difficulty of being a Romantic Poet, Porlock - Freeform, Our World Is Middle Earth, Pantisocracy, 1797, Idealism Summary:
Two enchanters meet on a hillside in Somerset. I read most of Coleridge's collected letters for this and learned quite a lot about the late 18th century.
Do people not know that A03 has a Share button that will automatically generate a Tumblr post with your title, rating, summary, link, and tags that you can just post?
I've been seeing what feels like an increasing amount of folks just slapping the link in a post -- and not even a hyperlink, just the raw link -- and calling it good.
WHAT
Please, my friends, spread the word! Show our fellows there is an easier path to share their work!
Elfbruary Day 8: Arwen the Smith
I noticed in my recent reread that the banner Arwen makes isn't described as embroidered or woven. It's described as "made" and "wrought." Words Tolkien uses for things made through smithcraft. And the materials mentioned for the banner are metals, not any specific cloth.
And then I remembered both the brooch she left for Aragorn in Lothlorien and that it isn't mentioned who reforged Narsil. Arwen is associated with smithcraft, so why not her? :)
"Mirkwood would judge Legolas so hard for Gimli-" Wrong. Gimly has consistently charmed the pants off every single elf he's come across. The elves of Lothlorien went from wanting to kick him out to loving him in like 2 days. He's Galadriel's special little guy. My man is out there singlehandedly tearing down centuries of prejudice because he's just so damn charming. When he was nearing the end, he didn't even go to Durin's halls - he just went with Legolas to the undying lands so he could hang out with elves for the rest of time. Gimli would have Thranduil and the rest of the elves of Mirkwood wrapped around his dwarven finger in a week's time. Ideal son in law except for the beard.
What's everyone's favourite flowers that aren't like. The normal ones. Like everyone's a fan of roses and sunflowers what's a more niche one. One you don't get in gift sets. Mine's sweet peas
Centaurea Montana, the perennial cornflower, or mountain bluette. It's not native to Britain, but a European flower that has widely naturalised from garden waste, and the first time I met it, I was a child exploring a shadowy sycamore woodland, and I came across a place where the trees didn't quite meet and a sunbeam came in, illuminating this gloriously blue flower with long elegant florets.
My father was Cunoval, bearer of the blue war-shield of the Brigantes. Lord of five hundred spears.
Have hit the point with this fic where I'm staring at it in absolute despair. Why the fuck did I spend 5000 words and a month of agonising and researching, only to write this pile of utter and total bollocks. *swearing loudly*
When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.
Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.
So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.
Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.
One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.
It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."
The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.
Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.
It missed my lilac by inches.
The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.
I think next year, I'll see flowers.
Hello, everyone who scheduled this post to remind themselves to check in - which seems to be, uhh, quite a lot?? First of all, thank you for the interest and all the lovely notes on this post. It means a lot.
The lilac is doing very well! It's got almost a dozen new little branches and it's covered in more leaves than ever before. It looks so, so healthy - and that's where it's prioritizing its resources. No flowers this year, because the lilac has chosen essential growth and fundamental health over ornamentation and reproduction.
It's a good choice, I think. It looks so good. So many little leaves, so much new growth. Bits I thought were going to be dead are beautifully green. I decided not to take pictures of it; something about it felt wrong to do.
The other lilacs in the yard have bloomed, though, and I did get pictures of those. Plus the little potted one on my deck, which has teeny little flower buds on it.
I hope that you'll all be here next year to check for flowers with me again. Because you really never know.
And who knows? Maybe you'll have flowers to show me, too. I certainly hope so.
Have you ever wanted to write about your job? Not like an autobiography, but more a fictional story that happens to take place in a setting familiar to you, your job.
Yes, and I wrote it or part of it
Yes, I didn't write it but I'm seriously considering it
Yes, didn't write it, considering it but not seriously, as a joke
No I've never considered it but see how it could be helpful/ interesting
No I've never considered it and I don't think it would be interesting
Nuance
Results
Have you ever wanted to write about your job? Not like an autobiography, but more a fictional story that happens to take place in a setting familiar to you, your job.
Yes, and I wrote it or part of it
Yes, I didn't write it but I'm seriously considering it
Yes, didn't write it, considering it but not seriously, as a joke
No I've never considered it but see how it could be helpful/ interesting
No I've never considered it and I don't think it would be interesting
Nuance
Results