The (false) Royal’s dumping pit @flamelordytheking - Tumblr Blog

reblog to microwave them faster

There is a species of butterfly that lives in the mountains.

When it hatches as a caterpillar, it lowers itself to the ground on a strand of silk, and then produces a chemical that smells like the larvae of ants. An ant eventually discovers it, lured by the scent, and brings it back to the anthill, where it is cared for by the colony until it pupates. After a few weeks, the adult butterfly crawls back up through the anthill, through the dirt and the winding tunnels, and out into the sunlight before it can finally open its wings.

Some say that the caterpillar “tricks” the ants into doing this. I don’t know if I agree – I think it’s too small a thing to accuse of guile, don’t you?

With this in mind: Once upon a time, there were seven dwarves.

They lived and worked in the mountains, mining for gold and jewels and precious things. And one night, after a long day’s labour, they heard a knocking at the great stone doors of their mountain.

Outside, shivering and small, they found a human child.

I’m sure you can guess most of what she told them. Stepmothers were involved – it’s not important. What’s important was that each of the dwarves felt a dire and pressing need to care for the child, and they took her into their home, fed her, clothed her, and gave her a warm bed to sleep in. And many seasons passed around that mountain, with the dwarves raising the child as one of their own, until one autumn’s day.

The girl laid, slender and still, in a coffin of spun glass. And some weeks later, one of the dwarves had the idea to call for a prince. This was of course the sensible thing to do, and the prince of a nearby kingdom who listened to the story thought an ensorcelled girl would be a grand thing to rescue.

Poor devils. It feels cruel to judge them. But there were so many questions they could’ve asked – what was this stepmother’s name? Was she real? Did she exist? Who had made the glass coffin? Surely one of them must’ve thought of the question. And why did it grow more opaque with every passing day?

Were they wrong to trust?

I guess it doesn’t matter now.

The moment the prince stepped into the subterranean chamber with the glass coffin, it shivered with a twinkling, plinking noise. Threads of glass exploded into glittering, razor-edged confetti.

A claw split the great glass cocoon.

The thing that spilled out of it, hulking and huge, knew in the fog of its mind, in a base animal sense that screamed, that it was in a room too small for it to fit. It wanted up. It wanted out.

In front of it was some twiggy little thing holding a sword.

It took its first breath.

The flames were the colour of cornflowers.

The dwarves fled. The thing followed close behind, up, up, up through the stone and the winding tunnels, not to chase, not to hunt, but to get up, to get out, out, out–

It struck the great stone doors at a run. They crumbled like gingerbread. And then there was sunlight, and the open sky…

And it could finally open its wings.

Convergent evolution is a hell of a thing.

The dragon, of course, lived happily ever after with its loot of gold and jewels from a hastily abandoned dwarf mine. Being much bigger than a caterpillar, we could accuse it of tricking the dwarves who were kind to it, had taken it in, had fed and clothed and warmed it.

It probably wouldn't mind.

caffeinewitchcraft

YOOO!!!!!!!!! I love this so much. It's like a folktale wearing the skin of a fairytale, I am so obsessed

I am also deeply into monstrous princesses (as they should be) right now, so this just made my day.

pidgemagi

The knight rescuing the princess as a form of reverse cuckoo birds, convincing another to willingly take in your young and bring them into a safe and secure place where they mature well fed on the plunder of their hosts. What difference does it make to the peasant, their food is still taken, who cares that the king got eaten by their step daughter, just one distant tyrant for another.

rowanpuppy

Adding my two cents here (interestingly from a lecture I just came from, it’s an evolution class and we’re are talking about convolution stuff with a focus on cuckoo species, it’s interesting) but basically there is a set/species group of cuckoos that look pretty much the same at adulthood, but are genetically different cause the place we’re the speciation arms race occurs is at the chick stage (if the cuckoo chick doesn’t look like the host chick it gets killed, so the chicks that look more like the host survive and pass on genes to look more like the host chick, the hosts will evolve to look different/develop a new strategy for identifying cuckoos etc) and as the genetics for controlling the looks come from both parents, there are multiple species/subspecies. However, in the common cuckoo, the main arms race is in egg colour, which is a maternally derived trait (the dads genes have no impact - in birds the gender with the different sex chromosomes is the female not the male), so it is one species, as a male can mate with a female that was raised by any of the host species and there is gene flow.

(Some warnings of rape and fucked up shit that happens in original fairy tales, I think both Snow White and sleeping beauty, vaguely but decided to put a warning just in case)

Now in the fantasy setting this could be applied in fascinating ways.

If the knight rescues a “princess” dragon cuckoo, and has a child with her before she metamorphoses into a dragon, this could indicate that the “juvenile” dragon form is the dragon’s sexually mature form. It also may indicate that there are only female dragons.

Alternatively, if dragons are a species with lower numbers than humans (as is very common in cuckoo/host relations), and are long lived, then you honestly only need a handful of mosterfuckers each generation to keep the population of dragons going.

Another interesting thought that I had (though it doesn’t really fit the original Snow White post as greatly) is that perhaps sexual maturation/pregnacy is what triggers the metamorphosis, ie the princess is rescued, marries the prince, becomes pregnant and that triggers the metamorphosis (potential cover of “difficult pregnancies” maybe - I think there are several princesses who’s mothers had difficult pregnancies/died in pregnancy). Or if you want to get truely fucked up (and more following older versions of fairytales) upon sexual maturity, a cuckoo dragon princess will fall into a “coma” and if raped and impregnated, this triggers the metamorphosis.

Could thus also be a dual system, which could be why I think in rescue the princess type tropes, the news of a captured princess is sudden, as the dragon mother is attempting to cuckoo out her child as she begins to reach sexual maturity, as there is a set biological imperative to have kids young (or on the younger side if a dragon cuckoo princess matures more slowly than humans) and maybe falls into a coma upon coming to a point where the ability to produce offspring is reduced, thus “freezing” their biological potential until it is fulfilled.

So many potential ways that this could go, especially if there is speciation amount dragons to cuckoo in different ways. So there could be generalists species that can breed/cuckoo in multiple ways, some that only do it in one, some metamorphosis is triggered in other ways, etc. (this could also imply that, like flightless birds exist because they once where bird that could fly but over time evolve only to live on the ground - or other ways that something evolves then is made redundant - there could be a dragon species in this hypothetical world that relies solely on monsterfuckers to reproduce).

This train of thought went somewhat out of control.

flamelordytheking

#writing ideas for later

walcutt

ok. on date. we aren't quite hungry yet so we go to the used game/movie/whatever store down the street. we look around at dvds for especially good or bad finds. a thought strikes me that i kind of want to watch jupiter ascending. i turn. instantly make eye contact with the one copy on the shelf. show it to them. they've never heard of it. perfect. i can inflict it on them. go to checkout. all is well. it's like $6 which is way too much but i still want it. cashier opens box. someone has absolutely 1000% stolen the disk for 2015's masterpiece, jupiter ascending, starring eddie redmayne, you know, that one. pilfered. vanished. me and the cashier are dumbfounded. THIS movie? he reaches under the counter and fiddles around in a box. finds a second, loose, disc. puts it in my box. still charges $6. sends us on our way. who is out here stealing jupiter ascending. why didn't you just steal the whole box. it can not have been that much harder

wizardwithnogoodspells

Little known fact about me but I like to go around to my local used movie/games/whatever stores and steal the discs of Jupiter Ascending out of them.

Only the discs though, the boxes can stay.

miraclemaya

MADOKA - “I’m thinking I’ll order a beef udon bowl, since Sayaka-chan told me that they make those really good here. What about you, Homura-chan?”

CONSERVATION OF ENERGY - Food needs can be met with an expenditure of 1.23% of total magic. Proceed?

GRIEF SYNDROME [Trivial: Success] - MAGICAL GIRLS THAT IGNORE FOOD ARE OFTEN MORE PRONE TO GRIEF ACCUMULATION. MY ARMS WILL ALWAYS BE WAITING FOR YOU, HOMURA, BUT IT’S IMPORTANT TO BE HAPPY UNTIL THAT DAY. BESIDES, MADOKA WANTS TO EAT WITH YOU. DISAPPOINTING HER WILL FILL YOUR SOUL GEM WITH A HALF A GRIEF SEED WORTH OF DESPAIR.

TEA WITH MAMI-SAN [Legendary: Success] - Sayaka says the beef bowl is good? Maybe go for that. She knows Madoka’s tastes better than anyone — and if Madoka likes something, you will certainly like it too.

“I will have the same as you, Madoka.”

“I’m not feeling very hungry.”

[CALL AND RESPONSE - Medium 10] Come up with an order on your own

CALL AND RESPONSE - [Medium: Failure] - You’ve eaten here before, you’re pretty sure. Was it Loop 32… no, Loop 12..? No, wait, it was on the first Friday of Loop 68. No… that’s not right. You’ve never eaten here before. In a stunning display of incompetence, you have taken Madoka on a date to a restaurant that you have never experienced before.

THE ANGEL - It’s okay, Homura-chan! I don’t mind if you haven’t eaten here before. Remember what real me said, Sayaka thinks this place is good! And even if it’s not perfect, that’s okay, just spending time with you makes me happy.

THE CRAVEN MASSES - Sayaka has raised her blade against Madoka 16 times before. You should leave this restaurant and kill her. It would only take-

FALLING SAND [Trivial: Success] - 1528 seconds on average.

CONSERVATION OF ENERGY - It can be cut down to 1243 seconds with an expenditure of 2.7% of total magic pool.

THE CRAVEN MASSES - Exactly. Do it in front of her family and make it bloody. Kyoko would likely try and stop you, but even she isn’t immune to bullets. And if Mami comes for revenge, well, you know the exact words you could say that would destroy her, don’t you?

THE ANGEL - A-Ah, I think that’s a bit of an extreme reaction, Homura-chan!

HUMAN SHELL - Your heart rate is increasing. Stop that. You have absolute control over your flesh. Act like it.

MOE INSTINCT - AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WHAT ARE WE GOING TO ORDER MADOKA IS GOING TO LAUGH AT US

WITCH’S NIGHT - Is… is this a trap? Walpurgis may be defeated, but you know that the stage witch never truly ceases its show. Perhaps this restaurant is a part of the stage?

MADOKA - “Um, are you okay, Homura-chan?”

MOE INSTINCT - OH GOD SHE HATES US

“I’m going to kill myself.”

“I’m so sorry. Would killing myself make you feel more comfortable?”

Isn’t there anything else you can say?

YOU - Isn’t there anything else you can say?

THE DEVIL - Come on, Homura. It’s high time you do it. Really, this is just another in the long, long chain of failures that make up your life. The only way to fix it is to kill yourself.

CLOCKWORK PRECISION - Target: Located on right ring finger. Target is not moving. Chance to hit: High. Plan: Retrieve pistol. Aim pistol at ring. Pull trigger.

THE ANGEL - Oh my god, please do not do that!

"I am going to kill myself."

"I'm so sorry, I'll kill myself if it makes you feel better."

"I'm so sorry. Should I kill myself?"

There. There has to be better options than this.

YOU - There. There has to be better options than this.

MOE INSTINCT - I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE. THE ONLY RECOURSE IS IMMEDIATE SUICIDE. THAT’S THE ONLY WAY MADOKA WILL LOVE YOU AGAIN.

"I am going to kill myself."

"I'm so sorry, I'll kill myself if it makes you feel better."

"I'm so sorry. Should I kill myself?"

YOU - “I’m going to kill myself.”

MADOKA - Madoka’s face twists, her eyebrows raising slightly in shock. Whatever response she was expecting, it was clearly not this.

GRIEF SYNDROME [Challenging: Success] - IF MADOKA WAS A MAGICAL GIRL, HER SOUL GEM WOULD FILL BY A QUARTER HEARING YOU SPEAK THOSE WORDS. THAT WAS CRUEL, HOMURA.

MOE INSTINCT - WHY DID YOU SAY THAT?

MADOKA - “I’m so sorry, Homura-chan. Please don’t do that. I… I really care about you and so does everyone else.” Madoka’s eyes fill with tears as she speaks. She hugs you.

DAMAGED MORALE -4

CALL AND RESPONSE [Trivial: Success] - Quick, tell her you were making an edgy joke that didn’t land. You’ve gotten away with that before, you’re pretty sure.

SPACE-TIME MASSACRE - Twelve quarter shifts left and two up from your current space-time position, and there’s a Japan that it’s actually illegal to not commit suicide in.

FALLING SAND - You’ve been seated for 5 minutes and 32.5 seconds already and still have not ordered. Mami has requested your presence at her apartment in 3.4 hours from now.

TEA WITH MAMI-SAN - She wants to help you find a hobby. She’s really worried about you, you know.

STRINGS OF FATE - You can feel Madoka’s heart beat in sync with yours as she holds you. Everything will be alright, as long as you follow the beat.

THE ANGEL - Yeah! It’s okay Homura-chan. Just explain what’s been going on and Madoka will understand. And then order something, it’s important to eat a full meal!

YOU - “Ah, sorry Madoka. I was… overwhelmed with choice, and my… brain spit out the first thing it thought. I am not planning on killing myself.”

MADOKA - “Um, I think we should probably talk about this more, Homura-chan….”

CALL AND RESPONSE - Ask her a question to change the topic. It’s worked in three different loops, it should work here.

RATIONALITY COMPLEX [Trival: Success] - Ask her if she wants to try anything else and then order that for yourself. This will accomplish your goal of deciding on what to order, as well as showing Madoka that her desires are important to you.

YOU - “Is there anything else you’d like to try, Madoka? We can share our dishes.”

MADOKA - “Uh, okay Homura-chan. Maybe get some tempura?”

Order 10000 yen worth of tempura

Order 1000 yen worth of tempura

Order 100 yen worth of tempura

YOU - “Excuse me waiter, give me 10000 yen worth of tempura.”

HUMAN SHELL - Calories and magic are just two different types of fuel. Feed me and control me.

THE ANGEL - T-that’s probably too much, Homura-chan. Maybe you can sneak some into your cool shield, though!

MADOKA - Madoka doesn’t say anything, but her eyes do bulge out slightly. She gives you a gentle pat on the shoulder and smiles at you.

HEALED MORALE +1

RATIONALITY COMPLEX - Displays of wealth like this can broadcast value to potential mates. This will increase your value in Madoka’s eyes, furthering along one of your goals.

THE ANGEL - I think you should just focus on enjoying the food, Homura-chan. Take a break, everything is okay.

Thank you.

Why don’t you hate me?

YOU - Why don’t you hate me?

THE ANGEL - Because I care about you, Homura-chan! And besides, you hate yourself far too much already.

Thank you.

THE ANGEL - You’re welcome! Now, please, enjoy your meal with real Madoka. She loves you a lot too, you know.

prokopetz

The real reason your sapient dragon character needs a "rider":

Dragons on the wing are vulnerable to being mobbed by smaller, more agile flyers, particularly in your large rear blind spot, like a bird of prey being mobbed by crows. Having a human armed with a long spear perched on your back helps to dissuade anyone from getting any funny ideas.

Breath weapons are impressive enough on the ground, but in flight they're really only good for strafing stationary targets; trying to use your breath weapon in an aerial dogfight is a good way to get fire up your nose. A real fight calls for sterner measures – and, concomitantly, a crew to aim and reload the cannons.

In today's competitive world, it's not enough to devour a flock of sheep and call it a day if you want to keep your edge. You're accompanied at all times by a qualified personal alchemist tasked with carefully regulating your internal furnace to ensure peak performance, and sometimes you even listen to them.

No dragon of any quality would be caught dead without their valet. It's not as though you can announce your numerous long-winded titles yourself when introductions are called for, can you? You suppose next you'll be expected to pick up the spoils of your conquests yourself, like a common brigand. Perish the thought!

probablyevilrpgideas

Dragon pirate who acts as both captain and ship with a full crew of kobolds running over its back manning cannons

prokopetz

Based purely on this game's title and cover art, if you had to take a wild stab at what it's about, what would your first guess be? No wrong answers.

flamelordytheking

I’m gonna guess a weird combo of match-3 puzzler and erotic horror.

animepopheart

★ 【BlackFoxes】「葬3 」 ☆ ✔ republished w/permission ⊳ ⊳ follow me on twitter

prokopetz

Catgirl leaving her surplus kills lying around in shared living areas as a sign of affection, except instead of decimating the local songbird population she's just constantly shoplifting random shit. She's banned from every Target in the tri-state area. You have eight blenders.

sweetmeatdale

Marinette having gossip and girl talk with Alya about her dates with Kagami and Adrien and just general stuff about whatever dumb things they get up to together and then Alya texts her this

antlershade

i WILL make lump fish a Trendy Animal like axolotls and isopods. no one can stop me

a-book-of-creatures

Very beautiful, very powerful

prokopetz

The real reason fantasy and sci fi book covers painted by human artists are superior to their AI-generated counterparts is that when the AI gets everything wrong it's almost always a trivial exercise to figure out what prompt it was given and how it free-associated its way to the result, but a human artist will hit you with an elaborately laid out black-velvet rendering of a scene which absolutely does not happen in the book, populated by people who in spite of their distinctive and wildly eccentric designs are not identifiable as any specific character, and the challenge of puzzling out what the fuck they thought they were painting is often more interesting than the actual book.

prokopetz

The book: Paint-by-numbers Tolkienesque fantasy.

The cover artist: Fuck you, here's a cowboy on a spaceship.

Me: This is the happiest day of my life.

flamelordytheking

Mr. prokopetz, I would like to see the described image.

prokopetz

There are surprisingly few common objects over a meter in length that it would be inherently funny to accidentally summon.

flamelordytheking

There needs to be a possibility of summoning a kitchen sink.

#Apologies if I missed that.

prokopetz

I feel like people who say that playing Disco Elysium from Kim's perspective would be like being forced to pick the normal, boring dialogue option every single time are forgetting that "Kim says something bizarre with a perfectly straight face and the narrative treats it as logical, sensible and sane purely on the strength that Kim is the one who said it" is literally a running gag in this game.

prowl-apologist

ineffablegender

parkchanwoohoo

"Hey this person (who happens to be fat) is hot"

"Hmmm... sounds fetishistic to me" Shut Your Fuck Up Lmao

parkchanwoohoo

If anything I think it's weirder for people to be like "Oh there's no way you're into people who look like this unless you have nefarious intentions" like okay you can surely hear why that makes you the worse person right

lesb0

This explains so much about why 20 somethings are just unable to read to any level of complexity beyond a tweet. The miserable failure of US pedagogy

lesb0

They didn’t teach children phonics for TWENTY YEARS because they just hoped this “balanced literacy” bs would magically work out???

lesb0

this still kills me. 20 years. that’s nearly every public school gen z kid in the US

iirulancorrino

There’s a really good five-part podcast series about this that recently came out from American Public Media called Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went so Wrong. It does a great job of explaining this issue and goes into the political situation and profit motives that kept balanced literacy going for so long even when there was, this can’t be emphasized enough, *zero research* to back it up.

One of my personal big takeways from listening to this was the danger of turning facets of education policy into politicized issues along left/right lines–according to this podcast one of the reasons for why phonics didn’t catch on earlier is because it was being promoted by the second Bush administration, which led to teachers unions and other left-of-center people to be suspicious of it. I think that’s really unfortunate and sadly we saw that same dynamic play out during the pandemic, when in so many school districts how to handle public education became a culture war battle more than anything else.

Obviously everything is political in some way and it’s always worth analyzing who is promoting which ideas–but I think when aspects of public health/science/medicine/education become polarized we all lose out because the issue becomes so much harder to analyze on their merits. And it’s especially awful when the people most impacted are children who are still developing the basic skills needed to think critically for themselves.

lesb0

oh that sounds worth a listen

tikkunolamorgtfo

I’m fucking gobsmacked. Firstly, here’s the link to the full article for anybody who wants to read the entire thing, or can’t view the image text:

Is a controversial curriculum, entrenched in New York City’s public schools for two decades, finally coming undone?

Secondly, I’m just… is this not basically the gist of the scam in The Music Man? Y'know, where Harold Hill—who can’t play of note of music—passes himself off as a band leader, telling everyone he has a “revolutionary new method called The Think System where you don’t bother with notes,” and says ““If you want to play the Minuet in G, think the Minuet in G”? Like sure, context is helpful for reading, but having it be the basis is… WILD. I’m so sorry Gen Z 😭

idk-my-aesthetic

Guys. Guys is this not how you learned to read. Bc this is how I learned to read.

derinthescarletpescatarian

NO THIS IS NOT HOW WE LEARNED TO READ WHAT THE FUCK

In the rest of the English-speaking world, children are taught to read phonically. There are multiple systems for this, from “winging it based on usage” to structured, tiered systems like Jolly Phonics. They’re taught the sounds that letters make, then the sounds that dipthongs and unusual combinations (like “magic E vowels”) make, and they are taught how to string the sounds together to sound out the words. Common words with unusual spellings/rules (or just really common words that the kid needs to know before they know the relevant rules, like “the” and “should”) are taught as “sight words” and expected to be memorised rote (although research suggests that children don’t memorise these words, but memorise whatever the tricky part is as an exception and read them normally, by phonically sounding them out in their head). This is so that children can get to reading common sentences and simple stories as quickly as possible, providing them with valuable practice and motivation.

As children get practice reading over many years, the most common words get memorised via repetition, and new words are sounded out and memorised if they come up enough. (This is why it’s common for people who read more than they watch tv/converse to mispronounce words for many years – I was over 20 before I knew the correct pronunciation of ‘misled’ or ‘rendezvous’.)

We certainly weren’t taught to check the first letter and then guess based on vibes. If you read like that then there’s no point in the rest of the word being written down. How would you learn new words and advance your skill that way?

headspace-hotel

Well, this explains a lot about how people in my notes process my posts.

unitydruid

I was taught to read using Saxon Phonics, which teaches you how to associate letters with sounds, chunk words into phonetic segments, and then string them together.

I can read, write, and speak much better than most of my peers, and I’m sure this is why. I actually learned how to extract information from letters, rather than trying to recognize each word as a symbol for a concept. Phonics are essential for reading comprehension.

catgirlhell

oh my god is this why no one else knew how to read in my class

catgirlhell

Ok, so like. Allow me to explain myself on this.

I was born on the turn of the century in the year 2000. This… technically makes me a zoomer. The fundamental difference between me and most of my classmates, however, is that I did not begin with traditional schooling– before I was 4 years old, I had an at-home tutor that I frequently saw several times a week (there was a government program for it back then, I don’t remember the specifics), and frequently read books both during bedtime and during the day with my mom.

When I went to public school for first grade in 2007, I had a lot of culture shock. But probably the most unusual and disturbing thing to me was my classmates’ almost universal incapability to read properly. With the exception of the handful of other gifted kids, I quickly discovered that I was one of about 5 kids all the way to high school in any given class that understood phonics. I knew how to sound words out, I knew how to comprehend metaphor and simile.

I’m 22 years old now and a college-educated adult, and I still have classmates that. Can’t read??? And I don’t mean they have stage fright or aren’t good at presenting, I mean they don’t understand the words they are reading and saying. Now naturally I understand that the American education system failed us, sure, but seeing this really puts into perspective how much it did. I really did not have any idea as to why 20-somethings at a private university failed so often to comprehend basic texts or sound out words, but now? Now I GET it. And I suppose it falls to me to make absolutely certain my younger brothers do not wind up the same.

ramblingandpie

OH MAN I got out of teaching so I was not aware of this. But. When I was in undergrad 15 years ago, New York state was just exiting from a “vibes-based grammar” period that, according to my professors, was because this one time a dude was put in charge of the state’s education standards and he had a personal vendetta against formally learning grammar because he, personally, hated doing it as a student? So it was “we no longer do this, and if kids read enough, they’ll pick it up” which is how he, personally, learned grammar? EXCEPT. They have studied it since then and only like 5-10% of people have brains that go “OH I am recognizing patterns in how commas are used to construct lists; I will now formulate An Rule For This” but without knowing that it’s called a serial comma bc no-one ever teaches the word???

Anyway uh that was a pedagogical disaster.

whencartoonsruletheworld

did i tell u guys i got into an argument on twitter bc i said foxes are dogs and someone tried to bring up their actual fuckin. classification or whatever and i just said “foxes are dogs cause they are fluffye” and they kept arguing with me. the entire time i was like “you will not survive the immigration to tumblr you are lucky we are not there right now”