Going Postal

Hoarding bits and pieces too big for Twitter.

[ahyperactivehero]

obsessed with dungeon crawler carl lately, so enjoy these text posts 1/?

[persbadart]

my partner and i are reading the dungeon crawler carl series together and im really enjoying it

[jazzy-lea]

Princess Donut is downright lovable.

[bottleshark]

I can't stop reading Dungeon Crawler Carl

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.

[kaelio]

How did Dogma, a relatively low-budget film, manage to have the only good-looking angel wings? Like, even movies with tons of FX dollars tend to fuck them up and they look bad. These are very stylized, and you can tell they’re not real feathers, but they actually look… better than real feathers? They have a balance of curvature and sharp angles that just make for a great silhouette and they move wonderfully. I cannot figure this out!!

e: I looked on The Internet

[your-naked-magic-oh-dear-lord]

I don’t know this show but that’s a fucking practical effect??! Better than most cg. Holy shit.

[daciafu]

Please go look up the Crooked Feather. They make practical wings! They are so cool. Someday…. Someday I will have a pair 😂

[mindlessmunkey]

This is great. You can see how much effort it takes Baffleck with his core muscles to keep his posture upright when they wings are moving. Which I love, because having enormous, working wings would put a huge strain on a humanoid body. It’s good when things don’t seem effortless.

[ghost-of-morrowbright]

Honestly just reblogging an excise to add these. Alan Rickman in eyeliner and wings? Yes please.

[frogseyy]

mutuals feel free to do this

[mite75]

I love this lil guy he looks so happy ;_;

[lavenderhayes12]

Everybody and their mothers understood why removing Sokka's misogyny in the ATLA live action was a bad idea and made the story worse but suddenly when they remove Sanji and Zoro's misogyny in OPLA it's a good thing?? Make it make sense

[myrskytuuli]

Sure, I'll make it make sense. Because comparing the two starts from a place of false parallelism.

In ATLA, Sokka's misogyny was present for 3 episodes in the very beginning of the show, and then used to deliver narrative carthasis in episode 4, in the form of Sokka's 180 turn into feminism. The tension of flexing the rubber band of Sokka's misogyny was brief, and the release of that tension then felt appropriatly sized, because it came so soon in the series. The the rest of the show continued slapping instant karmic punishments to characters who expressed misogynistic beliefs. (Anyone who underestimated Toph, Yue's bethored, the guys who catcalled Katara, etc, etc). The world of ATLA is such, that it bends itself to always prove the misogynist wrong. (of course atla also has it's weak points where it falters with this aim, but the express aim is clearly there) The audience is primed, so that they can ignore the flinch of hearing a misogynist micro (or macro) agression, because they can expect the cathrasis of a karmic punishment to follow.

This works very well in the genre of escapist fantasy adventure. Shows like Succession, or Breaking Bad, or IWTV can present misogynist characters, who never learn or face any consequences, because the cathrasis of those shows comes from watching unpleasant people wallow in their self-inflicted miseries. They are shows about characters you love to hate.

Escapist fantasy adventure as a genre doesn't want to create characters you love to hate. It wants to create characters you love to love.

One Piece is an escapist fantasy adventure. It wants to create characters we love to love. So, it also has to ask the question of: How much can we pull on the rubber-band of discomfort before delivering any kind of cathrasis to the audience. The complaints that animanga One Piece faces, comes from the fact that for a lot of people, the answer is not this much.

Complaints about ATLA liveaction removing Sokka's *Suki teaches him about feminism* moment, and complaints about animanga One Piece having characters dropping misogynistic microagressions casually all over the place, come from the exact same emotion. 'I wanted to see a moment of fantasy-wish-fulfillment where a man changes how he behaves, and I was not delivered that emotional cathrasis.'

This has nothing to do with whether any of the misogyny of the characters makes sense in universe.

Different people will find different character flaws more or less bearable, and it's always a tight-rope you have to walk on. But creators do have a choice in what flaws they expect the audience to find interesting and where the line of so-insufferable-I'm-picking-a-different-show lies. I think for OPLA crew, the choices would have been

Leave it as it is, rubbing that *discomfort without any comfort* button way too roughly for a HUGE chunks of the new audience.

Create an entirely new storyline about Sanji and Zoro facing consequences and *changing their ways*. And I would be willing to bet actual money that the fans of the animanga would have been even more pissed if OPLA had started soloing with the storyline like that.

Just sand down the sexist corners, as the show did. And from these three options, I fully belive they picked the right one by pikcing this.

This turned into a pretty long rant, but it does bother me that it is often the case that misogyny is seen as *bigotry light* and the onus of accepting that media has misogyny in it, is put on the female audiences. I have a feeling that we as as society are much more accepting that making a character a racist is going to need helluva strong narrative justification, because the discomfort that choie like that causes in an audience is expected to be very high. But often it seems that the discomfort misogyny is expected to cause in an audience is.... much less. I don't like that assumption.

[whetstonefires]

With Zoro especially, his backstory sets him up to have rejection of sexism as part of his underlying motive as a character, which his writer then failed to follow through on.

In ways that might be partly to make the character more complex, because rejecting it and not perpetuating it are in fact different actions, with a social trend that ingrained, but I think were mostly just the writer kind of losing interest in that narrative thread.

This guy is set up to be actively angered by the idea that women have any kind of inherent weakness, because his rival he couldn't beat was convinced that she was doomed to fall behind him because of the male puberty buff to muscle development, and he was like ABSOLUTELY NOT HOW DARE YOU CHEAPEN MY INEVITABLE TRIUMPH LIKE THAT and then she died in an accident, so the question was doomed to remain unresolved forever.

Zoro by rights has a more intense relationship with sexism-qua-sexism than any of the girls on the crew. And Oda simply did not write that, because he is not up to it. His reach exceeds his grasp, which I don't resent as much as I might because I can't help giving him credit for reaching at all; it puts him well above industry standard.

Removing some of the unexamined sexism Oda put in is honestly one of those places where an adaptation has an opportunity to avoid a failure point of the original material. Not just on ideological grounds, but in that the way Oda wound up writing Zoro on gender was a failure of execution compared to the initially presented concept.

[ralfmaximus]

Younger folk are getting really good at spotting AI slop, to the consternation of marketing execs.

Found on Mastodon.

[sunderwight]

From what I remember of back when Millennials were outpacing Boomers at internet and tech stuff in general, this is going to cause a lot of issues for companies angling to use slop in marketing because the younger set are always going to be better at spotting it than the older, but the older are going to be the ones approving marketing campaigns and ads and etc. Meaning, the older people will not ever be able to tell what might actually convince the younger.

The good news is that if it persists and Gen Z and Gen Alpha continue to scoff at the generated stuff, then marketing departments aiming at them will just have to give up on using it because they won't be able to figure out how to fool their targets with it.

The bad news is that this won't apply to scams and campaigns aimed at older people, so once again we're going to have a situation where the kids will be the ones lunging across the coffee table to stop Mom from giving her financial info to that really obvious fake scam mom oh my god do NOT buy that it isn't even a real thing.

Anyway godspeed to the younger generations.

[grackleclaw]

the human body is an engineering marvel. I sneeze in bright light. if I dont get enough sunlight on my skin I get tired and sad and have to drink a lot of milk to fix it. standing too much hurts, but sitting too much also hurts. if I get a virus, my body will increase its temperature in an attempt to cook it, which also cooks my brain cells. toenails exist. I have to turn the radio down to see better when I drive. there are 17 genes dictating what my hair texture is, but it completely changes when the air is too humid. yawning is contagious. there are more species of bacteria living in my body than there are species of birds in the entire world. every few months I grievously injure my neck by "sleeping on it weird." it took seven million years of human evolution to form me, and now I'm afraid of phone calls.

[sashayed]

but ykw at least i'm not on mount everest. at least i'm not paying tens of thousands of dollars to slowly suffocate in a 300-person line at the gates of hell. never in my life will i have to be steered in a hypoxic stupor through the maze of poop and corpses atop mount everest. on this earth a lot of horrible things can happen to you without your permission but there are a few that you have to opt into. you can just say no thanks! and be guaranteed never to have to be on mount everest. much to be grateful for actually

[sashayed]

still not on mount everest this morning 😌 alhamdulillah

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

Was talking to a coworker today who explained that her grandfather was like Snow White “but Californian. And an old man.” in that the creatures of the forest would follow him around and presumably duet with him.

“When he died the ravens sat in the trees outside for a week, watching. Taking turns. A horde of raccoons tried to break into the house every night, tearing at the siding. Eventually they gave up, but it was unsettling.”

“Aww. They were checking on him!” I said, like a normal person. Internally, I thought “Maybe you could do the thing you do with dead pets, where you show them to the living pets so the living pet understands they’re gone. But I guess if you did that to a bunch of scavenging species, they’d be like “Well, that’s very sad but he IS food now.” So what you’d need, for human sensibilities, is some sort of transparent corpse barrier. Like a see-through coffin oh that’s what the dwarves were doing! You’ve stopped paying attention to this conversation about the loss of a beloved family member you gotta phase back in.”

[sun-ni-day]

oh that's what the dwarves were doing

[simply-a-dream]

“don’t take it personally” how would you like me to take it then? professionally? romantically? academically?

[creative-anchorage]

[suriandtaal]

[whetstonefires]

legally? morally? ethically? spiritually? physically? positively? absolutely? undeniably, and reliably? really? sincerely?

[shamesonlydaughter]

it doesn’t have to be good it just has to be done

[fiyero3305]

The phrase "They don't want it perfect, they want it Friday" does wonders for my productivity.

[blueindeed]

I tell this story all the time but I'll tell it again! When I taught kindergarten full time, we had a working bee one weekend where we did a bunch of gardening/landscaping in the outdoor area. One of the dads put up a bit of fencing, then stood back and had a look, kind of frowning like he wasn't sure. His wife then came along, and the following conversation ensued:

Wife: GETMO? Husband: (after a moment, with a sigh) Yeah, GETMO. Me: GETMO? Wife and husband, in perfect unison: Good Enough To Move On

Absolutely LIFE CHANGING acronym, friends and enemies.

[chekhovs-raygun]

perfect is the opposite of done

[the-big-mood]

I didn’t realize there were so many people getting destroyed by mattresses 😂

[theswordofdamntheseknees]

I love these so much.

[genjichu]

[thestuffedalligator]

It’s not a Discworld joke unless you read it, don’t parse it as a joke, and then carry on with your life for ten years until someone stops you to say something like “It’s a pavlovian response because the dog ate a pavlova” and you scream Terry’s name with enough indignant rage you hope it rattles the pillars of the multiverse so wherever his soul is he’ll hear it.

[andhumanslovedstories]

#i don’t think this is what pterry meant by ‘a man’s not dead while his name is still spoken’

I absolutely think it is

[seiya234]

I read Jingo for the first time when I was 13.

I’m 33 now, and I still discover a new joke every time I reread it.

Terry was a comedic genius

[stormsbreadth]

#shoutout to the one in Soul Music about the leopard that got thrown out of the circus because it couldn't hear the ringmaster#it was several months after my second or third time reading the book that I clocked it was a Deaf Leopard (via @morkaischosen)

god DAMMIT

[adverbian]

When I was informed that “Vetinari” is a pun on “Medici”. That pun was so painful I couldn’t even see it.

[triflesandparsnips]

...are you FUCKING KIDDING ME.

*starts thunderously knocking on the doors of heaven*

get out here Terry I just wanna talk

[amuseoffyre]

Twurp’s Peerage made me throw a book (gently) at a wall.

In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burke’s Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry took ‘twerp’, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u. 

The Book of Silly and Annoying People, based on the real thing with a pun on the name thrown in for good measure.

[deathsmallcaps]

OMG I FUCKING *KNEW* VETINARI WAS A JOKE ON FUCKONG SOMETHING I JUST COULDNT GRASP IT. I THOUGHT IT WAS A REFERENCE TO WIND SOMEHOW

[sarahreesbrennan]

I am not a talented punster so I was today old when I realised about Vetinari.

[fiollaigean]

guys it's fucking close to water

[aridotdash]

[jennyofmany]

Latinclass ca. 9th grade: the text we had to translate contained the words trans means "on the other side of" or in german it can be translated to "über/ hinüber". Also silvas; silvanis means "the forest" or in german "der Wald".

Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be über den Wald

Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Überwald

My latin teacher gave me a very weird look as I suddenly facepalmed myself and groaned quietly.

[arkytiorlecter]

The Venturi and Selachii feud is what killed me when I got it.

The Venturi Effect is a scientific term referring to the acceleration of a liquid through a narrow tube (like a jet).

Selachii is a classification of sharks. (I discovered this when my stepson got really into sharks)

... fucking HELL Terry.

[nochd]

In Carpe Jugulum, Count Magpyr boasts of having helped write the Malleus Maleficarum, along with the Torquus Simiae Maleficarum, the Auriga Clavium Maleficarum, and in fact the entire Arca Instrumentorum.

The Malleus Maleficarum is a very real, very nasty and absolutely batshit insane book from late 15th-century Germany, basically laying out the procedure for catching, torturing, and executing witches. Its title translates to The Hammer of Witches. The other titles are Pratchett's inventions.

Malleus = "hammer" Torquus Simiae = "monkey wrench" Auriga Clavium = "bucket of nails" Arca Instrumentorum = "box of tools"

[sepublic]

I do think it’s interesting how the novel Dracula is meant to be a modern setting from its perspective. It’s very much that genre of story about an ancient fantasy archetype finding itself in a modern setting, complete with the rules-lawyering that often comes with modern parodies (that isn’t to say the stories of Olde didn’t have fun with loopholes either though).

Except Dracula is a story that plays itself straight. The vampire himself is not stupid. He’s possibly the oldest vampire of all which means he upgraded from animal instinct and mindless echoes of past memories to someone who’s regained his critical thinking skills. The story begins because he’s already adapted to how the modern world works now by hiring a solicitor who understands modern laws.

He knows now that he doesn’t have to march into London with an army like he used to; He can just buy property and the laws of London are forced to respect that. Similarly he’s already experimented in and discovered loopholes to vampire rules and limitations; Vampires are bound by the permission of owners so he simply uses his solicitor to buy and own a bunch of properties. If he needs to be invited in, Dracula hypnotizes someone to let him in.

Vampires need to return to their grave every dusk/dawn (whichever comes sooner), which causes their coffin to act as an anchor that limits how far from it they can travel? Dracula simply rations the earth of his grave into fifty coffins and spreads them across London so his range becomes exponentially larger.

All of these things make the story almost come across as a deconstruction and it might just be! It’s just that Dracula the novel became such a trendsetter that people nowadays see it as playing things fully straight. It almost feels as if the novel is written with the idea that readers have a basic understanding of vampires and their rules, so part of the thrill comes in the revelation of how the titular vampire is working around these rules. Likewise I’ve heard it used to be a trope in English literature for a traveler to visit some foreign land with a monster and escape by going home. But here the foreign aspect of the story is just the first (and final) arc; The monster’s plan hinges on coming to the UK itself!

So yeah. Dracula isn’t stupid and he reflects the idea that people of the past had just as common sense as the rest of us, they just had access to less/inaccurate knowledge and things worked differently back then. Dracula would be like… That bit of someone showing a medieval peasant a meme as they comprehend it perfectly and aren’t even wowed by the Doritos. If Dracula was set in the 21st century he’d probably understand social media well enough to become an influencer if he wanted to, though the issue of being invisible in cameras wouldn’t help.