Eats-Cheese-And-Cries's Trash Heap

Enby (demigirl?), pronoun indifferent, Venusic, Autistic. Avid world builder and wannabe author. Everyone's valid except me :)))

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

I know I’ve said this before but vampires

don’t show up on camera

can fly/scale walls

immune to bullets

can break into any safe by turning into fog or some bullshit

could probably hypnotize security guards as needed

therefore I am in dire need of a heist film where a group of vampires band together to steal back their old stuff from museums

[theonewiththesoks]

Oceans 1100 AD

[bleachedshadow]

Very interested in the hardest part of this beign the vampires trying to trick someone into granting them permission to enter the premises earlier in the day

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

I feel like this has several simple solutions!

they enter the museum while it’s open to the public (and the Welcome sign is on display). they turn into bats and hide in the rafters until the museum closes. the only hiccup is when the overhead announcement comes on and politely requests all visitors leave for closing. the vampire are forced to flee, but come back the next day with tiny bat-sized earplugs.

downside: this requires going out in daylight, leading most of the team members to show up in long black victorian formalwear, complete with lacy parasols, which they insist on carrying with them throughout the entire heist (much to the frustration of the team leader, who just wore sunscreen and a raincoat).

depending on how invitations work, it is possible any random human can invite them in. one of the vampires gets their Ultimate Frisbee buddy Oakley to tag along and invite them in after closing.

downside: the gang spends the rest of the heist gently mocking the idea of a vampire playing association ultimate frisbee (“so what, you turn into a bat and catch it with your fangs? do they make you crawl up the wall when it gets stuck on a roof? if you turn into a cat to get it down from a tree, do you end up stuck in the tree?”) this ends in a Climactic Twist Ending when Oakley reveals they don’t play ultimate frisbee, just dog park frisbee. In the sense that they met when the vampire transformed into a wolf to gatecrashed a game at the local dog park.

(Bonus points if Oakley is a werewolf. extra bonus points if this is revealed in a post-credits epilogue where, on the next full moon, the entire gang transforms into creatures of the night and joins Oakley at the park for a frisbee game of Bats vs Wolves)

Final option: to gain legitimate entry, an invitation is needed from a museum employee. this presents two possibilities:

the vampires pretend to be incredibly rich eccentric patrons who want a private nighttime tour of the museum. (this is convincing due to the fact they are rich and incredibly eccentric.) the vampires get inside, planning to hypnotize the Curator supervising their tour.

downside: they immediately discover the Curator has been left immune to hypnosis by years of post-grad exposure to droning history lecturers. the vampires leave their least competent member to distract her while they carry out the heist–in the ensuing 90 minutes, the vampire and the curator accidentally Fall In Love after bonding over their shared fury about british archeological theft.

(In the sequel they get married and spend their honeymoon robbing the British Museum in order to return sacred objects to the cultures from which they were stolen. this is made more complicated comical by the fact vampires are unable to interact with holy objects. also, they are lesbians.)

alternatively: the gang simply bribes a security guard into letting them in after closing. the security guard then tags along, offering helpful advice for disabling alarms and transporting antiques. it turns out Security Officer Greer only applied for the job bc they too were planning an Elaborate Acrobatic Burglary, but then their partners quit to join Cirque du Soleil and “I can’t exactly perform a Double Cartwheel Birdie Flying Trapeze Boomerang Special without a partner.”

downside: the gang becomes too attached to ask Greer to leave. They carry out the heist as intended, but this time pretending to be circus performers to explain their vampire powers. Turning into a cloud of smoke to bypass locks? Magicians never explain a trick. Spider walking across ceilings to bypass alarms? Contortionist. When it comes time to fly from roof to roof, they decide turning into bats would give away their secret, so instead they help Greer, in a sparkling moment of triumph, execute the perfect Double Cartwheel Birdie Flying Trapeze Boomerang Special!

Greer and the gang escape (by tightrope walking) into the night with all the plunder they can carry. Tearfully, the gang begins to say goodbye (bc they can’t keep up the pretense of being circus performers forever) when Greer casually asks how a bunch of vampire ended up working in a circus.

(Greer assumed from the beginning they were vampires, because of “how you dress, how you talk, and mostly because none of you showed up on camera back in the CCTV control room. Why did you think it took me so long to let yall in?”)

I cannot for the lives of me decide which synopsis I like best

(all ideas shared on this blog are public domain, feel free to go nuts. you can find more story ideas like this on my ko-fi)

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

[tea-withnofixinsplease]

It never fails to tickle me how Studios could have billions of dollars to work with, yet a random tumblr user still comes up with a story that’s still infinitely more interesting than any story that’s come out in the past 8 years.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Microsoft announces it will shut down ebook program and confiscate its customers' libraries

Microsoft has a DRM-locked ebook store that isn’t making enough money, so they’re shutting it down and taking away every book that every one of its customers acquired effective July 1.

Customers will receive refunds.

This puts the difference between DRM-locked media and unencumbered media into sharp contrast. I have bought a lot of MP3s over the years, thousands of them, and many of the retailers I purchased from are long gone, but I still have the MP3s. Likewise, I have bought many books from long-defunct booksellers and even defunct publishers, but I still own those books.

When I was a bookseller, nothing I could do would result in your losing the book that I sold you. If I regretted selling you a book, I didn’t get to break into your house and steal it, even if I left you a cash refund for the price you paid.

People sometimes treat me like my decision not to sell my books through Amazon’s Audible is irrational (Audible will not let writers or publisher opt to sell their books without DRM), but if you think Amazon is immune to this kind of shenanigans, you are sadly mistaken. My books matter a lot to me. I just paid $8,000 to have a container full of books shipped from a storage locker in the UK to our home in LA so I can be closer to them. The idea that the books I buy can be relegated to some kind of fucking software license is the most grotesque and awful thing I can imagine: if the publishing industry deliberately set out to destroy any sense of intrinsic, civilization-supporting value in literary works, they could not have done a better job.

https://boingboing.net/2019/04/02/burning-libraries.html

[greenycrimson]

If you’ve got an ereader and want to actually own your books, I heartily recommend using cailbre to scrape the DRM off and so you can backup the files.

Cailbre d/l:

https://calibre-ebook.com/download

How to use cailbre to remove DRM:

http://www.geoffstratton.com/remove-drm-amazon-kindle-books

[dee-the-red-witch]

Seconding calibre as a brilliant tool for ebook management in general. 

[neolesbian]

so disney is using emily gwen’s lesbian pride flag with no compensation, and she’s still in need of money. i implore anyone who cares at all about the lgbt community to donate to her instead of paying for fucking mickey mouse pins

About Emily

About Emily

[dailyfrogs]

Today’s frog is

YOU

[teneral]

HUH??!

WHAT THE….. HUUOAAAAAAUUAAAAGAAGGHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRIIIIIIBBIT!!!!

[hornedchick]

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”

[sariahsue]

“I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them.”

I need this quote framed in every room of my house, thanks.

[frogcomic]

Froggy helps out a penguin! 🐸 🐧

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

finding out that modern americans work more hours than medieval peasants whose life was controlled by feudalism & the Church–that shit changed something in me

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Ironically, I’d say it is the Church and Feudalism that made their work days much easier. Because you HAD TO have sunday off (church day and all!) and since your job was to handle the fields/animals/etc. you really had a lot of off-time while the produce grew.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

The “efficiency” of capitalism refers to the more efficient exploitation of human lives & labor

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Things Traditional Publishers Can Learn From Fanfiction

tagging systems are a big draw for readers. both for content/trigger warnings, and for genre information. knowing the tone of the story and whether the ending will be happy/sad/satisfying is a deciding factor for many readers.

word count: especially important as digital books become more common. books are more accessible when readers have a way to check both the total word count and the chapter word counts.

there is a big audience for short stories featuring characters from book series. It used to be more common for authors to release short stories or anthologies in between novels, with shared characters & settings. (Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse, and the Rumpole series all did this.) Unfortunately this has fallen out of practice, but as fanfiction has shown, there is still a huge reader interest.  

there is a demand for expanded universe content, particularly for content with a different format or atmosphere than the original canon. audiences like variety; e.g. fans of high-stakes/dramatic stories are also interested in seeing their favorite characters in low-stakes/humorous situations. these stories are not inauthentic nor do they pander to the audience; they simply allow audiences & creators to explore characters through a different lens.

similarly, there is a big interest in spin-off content featuring secondary characters. audiences see a great deal of potential in supporting characters, with most fandoms having clear “favorites”. short stories expanding on such characters have a great deal of marketing potential, and allow writers to explore expanded canons without any risk of altering primary characters/storylines.

Give audiences accessible, satisfying stories in a variety of formats.

ko-fi

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Less focus on parents “monitoring” their children’s media/internet use, and more focus on discussing. ‘Parental supervision’ shouldn’t mean “controlling what children are allowed to see.” It should mean having thoughtful discussions with your kids so that they are informed about the common biases, harmful tropes, and adult themes they are likely to encounter in their media consumption. 

Less focus on controlling young people and more focus on communicating. Treat kids with respect & encourage them to think critically, and you won’t need to control their choices.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

wow ya’ll really liked the tags huh: #i mean yes you can and absolutely should have rules around like. pre-teens watching r-rated movies or accessing adult websites. i’m not saying an 8-year-old should be allowed to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But at the end of the day you cannot control all the choices your child makes. Parental controls & content blocking can limit what is easily available to your kid, but you can’t actually stop them from accessing age-inappropriate stuff if they are determined to. And invading your kid’s privacy is MUCH more likely to make them determined to go around those controls. 

#As kids get older parental controls/website blocking/usage monitoring becomes ineffective and outright harmful. So you need to have a gameplan to transition from “all adult content is blocked bc you’re literally 8 years old” to “you’re getting older and you have a right to privacy, so we’re moving on to a trust-based system. but there is a lot of bad stuff out there, so here are some things you need to know to keep yourself safe. and in return for trusting you i would like us to have some guidelines about what you are willing to share with me, and what questions i have a right to ask.”

#anyway if a kid is determined to access adult content they are going to access it. i’m not saying don’t take preventions. i’m saying assume that at some point preventative measures are going to fail, and that you should communicate with your child BEFORE that happens. if you let your kids ask questions about adult content and give them honest (age-appropriate) answers, they are much less likely to actually go out of their way to access that content. (Also, accidents happen, and they will eventually end up seeing things they don’t intend to. so give them the info they need to be prepared.)

And always remember to EXPLAIN why the rules exist! Don’t just tell kids “you will be in trouble if you do this.” Explain “this is a problem that exists in the world, my goal is to keep you safe, my solution is this rule, but I will listen to your feedback and reevaluate as needed.” Ultimately you and your kids have many of the same goals, but you need to work together and communicate to reach them.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

in the comics they always make Loki so sexy & boring when drawing her as female... sir you are drawing an infamous trickster god, a supreme being whose spirit takes utmost delight in chaos & mischief. this is not your Generic Hot Woman Comic Fantasy #6347. she deserves the same thought and depth that goes into her male character design. this is Loki for fuck's sake--stop giving them boring hot girl looks. let her have fun! let her have a personality! let her have cat ears

[eats-cheese-and-cries]

Femme Loki would wear that top and booty shorts combo Tumblr came up with where the top says “you are not immune to propaganda” and the booty shorts have “propaganda” written on the ass. She would insist on wearing this in contexts that mortals deem inappropriate.

You can’t change my mind

[everythingfox]

Seal of approval

[tikkety-tok]

POV: Ethel brings you a leaf

[official-lucifers-child]

do you know how thrilled i was to realise this has audio and the audio is gorgeous???

[bixgirl1]

Pls tell her thank you for me.

[eats-cheese-and-cries]

Broke: bringing your owner a rat carcass

Woke: bringing your owner a nice leaf :)

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

hello tumblr for the bargain price of $6.66 i will present to you one of my Top 5 Most Embarrassing Childhood Misadventures 

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Ok so here’s the setup. When i was like 7, my parents moved us into a house where my sisters and I shared the upstairs, which was split into two bedrooms. I got a separate room bc I was the most territorial the eldest. Both bedrooms had these weird little attached attic…space…things that were essentially unfinished closets. they were padded to the brim with this stuff:

i later found out the company that sells it had an advertising deal w/ the pink panther cartoons. that detail is completely unrelated to this story.

fyi that pink stuff is fiberglass insulation. my mom, presumably, at some point, almost certainly told me not to touch it, and that it contained crushed glass, and that I absolutely should not touch it, listen to me [deadname], look at me: the pink stuff is dangerous so do not touch it. 

i say presumably, bc i was unmedicated at the time and my hyperactive 7-year-old brain tended to filter out unnecessary information. 

also, in my defense, that stuff is fluffy. like it may contain glass, but soda bottles contain glass, and they don’t hurt to touch. and neither did this stuff! it was pretty soft actually. i would occasionally pat it with my bare hands while hiding in the dark swaying back and forth pretending i had been kidnapped and was being held hostage in the belly of a pirate ship and it was fine. so after awhile my brain just sort of put the pink stuff in the category of “don’t eat it or anything and you’ll probably be fine.”

i would later wish, above all wishes, that i had heeded my mother’s warning.

 ok that’s part one, i gotta go make breakfast

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

ok i had bantam bagels

PART 2

a pertinent detail about my bedroom attic: it had a crawl space. just a tiny little black tunnel that disappeared into the house beyond. i naturally, one day, became curious about where exactly it disappeared to. and how far.

my curiosity was compounded by the fact that the crawl space headed directly towards my sister’s bedroom. upon further reflection, it was very possible that the crawl space in fact connected both attics. 

i should at this point discuss my sisters’ bedroom attic. while mine was mostly used for storage and for sitting alone in the dark listening to scary radio shows that gave me nightmares my sisters had rather brilliantly decided to repurpose theirs into a clubhouse/Stuffed Animal Storage Facility. from what i had seen, it was stuffed to bursting with goddamn stuffed animals. it also had, i believe, a little tea table. and they had drawn on the walls. all in all, very makeshift and cozy.

i say “from what i had seen” because generally speaking, i wasn’t allowed in the Stuffed Animal Storage Facility. it was Their space, and of course there is not more territorial group of people that children of the age group 12 and under. Also, i was the least popular member of the household, except possibly for one of the hamsters. 

So the scene has been set: I am a 7-year-old delinquent who just so happens to be obsessed w/ espionage and bank robberies and I have discovered a secret tunnel from my bedroom to my sisters’ Forbidden Clubhouse.

i consider myself a victim of circumstance. the events that followed really wrote themselves.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

OF COURSE I WENT INTO THE CRAWL SPACE

what possible other ending could this story have? one sunday afternoon when i had nothing better to do, i decided to test my hypothesis that i was narrow enough to fit into the itty bitty tunnel.

and i WAS! an ancient and world-weary 8-year-old couldn’t have done it, but i was just stick-like enough to manage. i strapped a flashlight to my wrist and got on my hand and knees and crawled through that fucker! this, it transpired, was a colossal undertaking, as i was only technically small enough to fit into the wall. there was very little additional room to, for example, bend my knees and elbows. i ended up propelling myself forward mostly by inching along with my toes & wiggling like an eel. it was not very effective!

i got stuck several times. i tried to go back several times. it turns out there is no feasible way to turn around in a tunnel that is exactly as wide and as tall as the width of your shoulders. in one of my darker moments (i was stuck behind the bathroom wall, probably quite close to the toilet) it occurred to me that i had no actual proof there would be an opening on the other end. this presented certain concerns. it turns out it is rather difficult to drag yourself backwards by your toes.

i persevered! propelled by panic and (most of all) a lack of other options. 30 minutes and 10 yards later, i confirmed there was indeed an opening on the other end, which did indeed open into my sisters’ attic, because i was indeed a veritable genius. 

it was at this point i discovered my sisters were not in their bedroom. they had, in fact, at some point decided to go downstairs. meaning i would not be able to burst out of the attic to the shock and astoundment of all bystanders. 

i waited patiently for almost an entire minute. and then, observed only by the glossy plastic eyes of a hundred passionless plush toes, i tiptoed quietly away and hobbled back to my bedroom. 

This was, naturally, the beginning of the most woeful, misery-filled fortnight of my short and sorry life.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

FINAL PART

So i returned to my daily life, content in the knowledge that i had once again escaped the consequences of my actions, like the protagonist i so truly was.

Until. 

The next day.

Monday evening. Oh, Monday evening. After a long, tedious day at school, I lay peacefully in bed, content in the expectation of a well-deserved rest. Set down your constant burden, human, and rest thy weary soul.

But then. A sensation of dread swept over me. It had begun.

The ITCHING.

Did I mention the crawl space was lined with fiberglass insulation?

As it turns out, dragging yourself against 30 feet of finely crushed glass does, in fact, beget consequences. Microscopic shards of glass DO NOT CARE if you were wearing clothing at the time. they go where they choose. and that miserable Sunday afternoon of my wretched folly, they had chosen to

EMBED THEMSELVES DIRECTLY INTO MY SKIN.

What words to describe the suffering of the next 2 weeks? Reader, I took so many showers. SO MANY. Hot showers first thing in the morning, directly after school, and again before dinner, and right before bed. There was never any hot water left. i SOAKED. i SCRUBBED. i WEPT like the PITILESS WRETCH i so truly was reduced to.

and the itching would. not. STOP. Everywhere, it was everywhere, arms and legs and torso and FACE. Oh my stars it was so bad. I rubbed up like a cat against brick walls and desks corners and furniture. i scratched. i prayed and discovered that the gods are either powerless or indifferent to our suffering or perhaps are merely moderately entertained. nothing helped. 

two weeks. two weeks of ITCH, before my skin finally, finally expelled the invaders. It was misery. My sisters were unamused (and somewhat bored by the matter, and told me not to go in their room). My mom was unimpressed. And me? I was not excused from school (probably due to the fact that as an undiagnosed autistic kid in chronic discomfort, the adults around me were already in the habit of ignoring my constant complaints.)

(which how fucked up is that, that my base level of discomfort was so high that the adults around me didn’t believe i was in more pain than usual when 80% of my skin was literally embedded with glass???)

Anyway. long story long:

DO NOT TOUCH THE PINK STUFF.

ko-fi / paypal

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

this post now has fanart!

by @skip-the-clumsy-dragon​

[eats-cheese-and-cries]

Remember kids, the House Meat is spicy, dont touch it

[k-eke]

hoy!

[holic-user]

[nyanbinyuri]

[arborealgargoyle]

this is what I mean when I say humans are the fae of the animal world we’re often well meaning but from the animals’ perspective we’re so inexplicably chaotic sometimes humans shoot at wild animals and sometimes humans just straight up kidnap wild animals and wrap them up in blankets

[cottageaesthetic]

[phana-banana]

I wish The Great Gatsby a very pleasant public domain.