Flamboyant Monochrome @immortalhome - Tumblr Blog

the fact that we only have “herculean task” and “sisyphean task” feels so limiting. so here’s a few more tasks for your repertoire

icarian task: when you have a task you know you’re going to fail at anyways, so why not have some fun with it before it all comes crashing down

cassandrean task: when you have to deal with people you KNOW won’t listen to you, despite having accurate information, and having to watch them fumble about when you told them the solution from the start (most often witnessed in customer service)

feel free to chime in i ran out of ideas much faster than i anticipated

sherbertilluminated

Promethean task: opposite of a Cassandraean task. You have the right information, and SOMEONE has to share it. But it's all in the delivery and if you're the person to identify the problem you WILL be hated forever.

thearrogantemu

Oedipal Task: (1) Attempting to avoid an unspeakably awful outcome and in doing so creating the circumstances that will bring it about. (2) Trying to solve an problem and discovering that you are in fact the problem you are trying to solve.

theoppositeofprofound

Odyssean task: you’ll complete it but it’ll take 20 times longer than it should and involve multiple side quests and mini-adventures

lierdumoa

Pandorean task: some people fucked around and now it's your job to make sure they find out

bettinalevyisdetermined

fromevertonow

Suzanne Collins is one of the few contemporary writers who realizes the importance of names in her stories and the significance they bear. They add so many layers to the story, additional meanings that otherwise would not have existed.

The original trilogy:

Katniss: named after a plant of which you can eat the roots. Her father taught her where to find it and told her that “as long as you can find yourself, you’ll survive” (quote may be a little bit off, but it’s from one of the early chapters in THG). Additionally, the leaves are in the shape of an arrowhead, referencing her skills with the bow which her father also taught her how to use.

Peeta: literally bread lmao. But bread is one of the basic nutritions humans need, a little bit goes a long way to keep you alive. Peeta’s presence in Katniss’s life also kept her alive, literally and figuratively—the burned bread he threw her in the flashback and their complicated relationship.

Primrose: a plant with medicinal purposes, even more significant in light of her work as a medic in Mockingjay.

Gale: literally means “strong wind” and considering that in every encounter with Katniss he’s caused some reaction, he pulls her into directions she maybe initially doesn’t want to go in. Additionally, his name also represents his determination and steadfastness in his beliefs.

TBOSAS

Lucy Gray: named after William Wordsworth’s poem “Lucy Gray” which is about the titular character of the poem who got lost during a blizzard. She literally got lost in snow. Rachel Zegler sang this poem in two parts on the original soundtrack of the movie. When Snow asked who the girl in the song is, Lucy answers that she’s a mystery, just like her.

Snow: aside from the obvious snow references, I think his name is most significant in relation to Lucy and the poem. The only one who knows what caused her disappearance is Snow. He is the reason that Lucy is gone. But her traces in the snow are still visible. He will always remember her because the memory of Lucy has manifested itself in every part of his life.

Coriolanus: named after the Roman general (and also the titular character of Shakespeare’s play), Coriolanus wanted to attack Rome and become its ruler. He was scorned and celebrated by the people, only to be later exiled from the city by them. In TBOSAS, Coriolanus is the star pupil at the Capitol’s academy but sent into exile to the districts after he won the Games with Lucy through cheating.

Volumnia: Coriolanus mother who played a part in his ascent to power. In TBOSAS, she almost serves like a mentor to Coriolanus, teaching him how to think in terms of power.

(Edit) Sejanus: a roman soldier who was betrayed by the roman emperor Tiberius, just like the future president betrayed him.

(Edit) Plinth: got this info from here, but it was too good not to include here. A plinth is a base for a statue or vase to stand on. After Sejanus’s death, all of the Plinth fortune was given to Snow for being such a good to friend him. It was this money that skyrocketed the Snow family from poverty to filthy rich. The Plinth money was the foundation upon which Snow built his power.

There are so many other names that have historical (mostly Roman and Greek) connotations—Plutarch, Seneca, Cinna—but also regular names like Trinket and Beetee bear meanings that represent the character beautifully.

Names are important. For any lover of literature or (aspiring) writers, please look closely at them. They can shape your story into something unique.

Feel free to correct me if I’ve said something wrong. I know there are many names missing, but I can only add so many examples ✊🏻😔

the-treasures-untold-deactivate

Okay so I’m watching my friend’s cats while she’s away and she left me descriptions so I could tell who’s who

They’re pretty accurate

welcome2khaos

oh god why is this me lol help

olivialovesleggings-deactivated

I’m so glad this came back into my life

toujours-fidele-deactivated2018

ahahahahahahah omg

bauliya

“stop traumadumping to your friends tell this to your therapist” my god they paywalled human connection

big-edies-sun-hat

“If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. but if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted so that I might share in what I was entitled to share. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.”

Oscar Wilde

vastderp-placeholder

Meet the Mona Lisa of the Prado, the earliest known copy of Da Vinci’s best portrait. Similarity in the undersketch of the painting indicates that this was very likely painted concurrently with the original Mona Lisa, by a student of Da Vinci.

There is much controversy in the art world over the question of whether or not to clean the fragile Mona Lisa, but her sister has been restored and some fairly odd later alterations removed to show the original vibrant colors and lighting. Some details, such as the sheerness of her shawl and the pattern on the neckline of her dress, have become utterly obscured in the original, but in the restored copy they’re perfectly clear.

It blows my mind a little bit to look at these two sisters side-by-side and imagine how much vivid detail could be hiding in the Mona Lisa under 500 years of rotten varnish.

the-theatre-ghost

THE COPY HAS EYEBROWS

rxseblue-archive

Your response to a beautiful piece of artwork done by Leonardo Da Vinci himself is “SHES GOT EYEBROWS”. Alright. All intelligent life has been lost.

vastderp-placeholder

Yo Snooty McSnotwhine, the Mona Lisa’s vanished eyebrows have been the subject of debate and analysis in the art expert community for hundreds of years, long before your parents squirted water at each other from across the clown car and then honked their bicycle horns to indicate they really wanted to make a smug, insufferable little clown baby together.

mmkayn

this continues to be the best reply to a criticizing comment on this site

themetalhiro

la-la-lavandee

aerarius_metalworks

petermorwood

@eldriwolf sent me this, and I immediately thought of the Indian bagh nakh “tiger-claw” weapon, which isn’t usually articulated or as realistic - for a given value of realism - but was a very nasty piece of kit.

The basic version was a steel bar with two rings for index and pinkie fingers, and four steel claws for ripping into an enemy’s soft parts - probably neck and stomach, where there were no awkward bones and the result would be more effective.

These simple versions had an extra advantage of being easy to conceal…

…and sometimes the finger-rings would be gilded and decorated with gems as if they were just jewellery.

Okay, maybe quite a lot of jewellery.

I bet that if timing and location were organised properly, political assassination could be passed off - in honest belief or for convenience - as the victim having encountered a real tiger.

“But where are the marks of the tiger’s teeth?” That too could be arranged:

These double daggers have proper flattened-diamond blade profiles, and their points are too close for a full-grown tiger or leopard - but (fiction-writer imagination at work) there’s no reason why a special-purpose one couldn’t have been made with realistic separation and correct tooth-spike shape.

The modern era has seen plenty of convenient “accidents” and “suicides”(what writer Len Deighton calls XPD or Expedient Demise) so how good was Mughal-era CSI?

Or more correctly, when required by Certain Circumstances, how bad did it need to be?

If an Important Person announced: “Clearly a tiger did it. How sad. Too bad. Long live the new maharajah, my Dear Little Nephew”, the best way for doubters to maintain good health would be agreement…

*****

There was another version which - if the “attacked by a wild beast” excuse was still used - came with a suggestion that tigers in that particular region were getting disturbingly smart. (Though pointing this out may not have been wise, see above…) :->

These are bichuwa bagh nakh, “scorpion-sting tiger claws”, the dagger name deriving from its recurved blade shape resembling the business end of a scorpion’s tail.

They were sometimes carried in combat, bichuwa bagh nakh in the left hand and a talwar (curved) or khanda (straight) sword in the right.

During close-quarter grappling the claws could rake and the dagger stab, while the finger-rings meant less risk of dropping it.

In the same way that many Indian weapons had “tacticool” add-ons - miniature pistols, axe-gun combinations, concealed daggers and so on - there were bagh nakh with more than just one extra blade…

…bagh nakh with extra folding blades and a knuckle-guard…

…and this articulated contraption which (IMO anyway) was for defence as well as attack.

*****

It was, like the much simpler two-ring-no-blades version, a lot less obvious than the first photo suggests…

…and since many Indian helmets were open-faced while others had face-protection only of mail…

…a surprise slap across the face might spoil any warrior’s day.

The reason I think it also had a defensive purpose is the fairly thick metal palm and that little spur low down on it, almost certainly meant to stop a palm-blocked blade from sliding any further.

I’m not sure there’s enough articulation for such a blade to be actually gripped tightly, but once trapped between spur and claws it could be twisted aside for long enough that a weapon in the other hand could attend to its wielder.

*****

Yet again: when creating a fantasy weapon for writing or RPG, do a search for whatever you have in mind, because it may well have been made for real a couple of centuries ago by an Indian weaponsmith demonstrating what he could do to advertise his skill, or just making some oddity in steel to see if it was possible… :->

dduane

(reminding self to ask @petermorwood if he’s sharpened the kitchen knives this week)

animepolaroid

[crazytom] - reposted w/ permission

oohsnickers

curliestofcrowns

I’ve been thinking about this daily since it crossed my dash

impling

little mans is 100% correct.

animatedamerican

I'm gonna put I AM BRAVE OF THIS MEETING on my cubicle wall at work and never explain it.

dr-otter

Think about the donuts of your day!

tinsnip

Don’t assume malice. Assume ignorance. Life is easier, the world is kinder, and you can educate. Actual malice is pretty rare, I find.

froborr

Always remember Hanlon’s Razor–”Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice as an explanation.”

That’s said, never forget Fred Clark’s Law, either: “Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” There’s a certain point at which ignorance becomes malice–at which there is simply no way to become that ignorant except deliberately and maliciously.

theaudientvoid

So, like, the thing you have to understand is that prior to the mid-2000s, the "Young Adult" genre as we now know it didn't exist. The expectation was that you would graduate to the adult aisle of the book store at, like, 13-14. This worked because the only people still reading long form novels into their teens were precocious bookworms who were better read than their parents.

Harry Potter changed all this. The success of the Harry Potter books convinced the publishing industry that selling full length novels to normie children was a business model. The thing about the Harry Potter books, though, is that at least for the early books, the target audience was a bit younger than what we think of as the YA demographic; tweens, rather than teens. Now, the publishing very much wanted to keep all these normie kids buying books into their teens and beyond, but the previous model of treating teens as functionally adults for marketing purposes would not work; there was simply no way that normie parents were going to let their normie kids read fully adult novels where the characters, like, do drugs or have unprotected sex and stuff. So, in order to be allowed to market to the teen demographic, the YA genre was created.

However, teens have an inherent interest in reading about sex and violence and drugs, and so authors who are able to incorporate these kinds of themes into their YA novels in a discrete way such that it flies under the radar of the moral guardians are met with success. But this is a precarious tightrope to walk. Not enough "mature" themes and the teens will loose interest, to much or to blatant and the teens won't be allowed to read it. And so, it should come as no surprise, that the first person to successfully navigate this tight rope was a Mormon housewife with a vampire fetish.

dduane

…The editor who bought So You Want To Be A Wizard from me in 1981 would’ve been interested to hear somebody claim that YA (and particularly YA fantasy) didn’t then exist… because that’s sure as hell what she—and the book’s first publisher, Dell / Delacorte—called it. (When they weren’t also calling this subgenre “juvenile fantasy”, as in this Locus ad from its publication year)

And that single publisher was buying and publishing multiple such books every year… presumably to keep up with its competition.

…So either the “precocious bookworms” market was particularly strong that decade, or else this kind of genre publishing and marketing was, well, normal… and in fact paved the way for the later success of broadly similar genre works. [waves vaguely in the direction of other YA fantasy that would follow a decade and a half later] And yeah, this is a significant oversimplification of the subject, but it’s nearly 2 AM for me and I’m not up for a full essay on it right now. Maybe later.

However, as for the thesis “the YA genre was created post-the 2000s”? …Nah.

(Meanwhile I can’t just leave with nothing but that sad B&W line art sitting there. Here’s the full cover of that hardcover first edition, by Caldecott-winning artist David Wiesner.)

eijiroukiriot

this is the funniest tweet i’ve seen in months bye

bigratbastard

fxr-yxur-amusement

chaos-storm

aaawunder

nomuru2d

these are all the geek equivalents of Lovecraft’s Cat’s Name

official-lucifers-child

his cats name couldn’t be that bad!!!! it’s a cat, what’s the worst name?

official-lucifers-child

i am wrong, what the fuck

ruriginzuishou

Me every time this post comes back

might-be-somebody

go Google why chainsaws were invented, it’s really fun :)

queer-cosette

why.

xbubbledumbbx

I’ve seen everything at this point, so why were chain saws in-

tarantula-veins-deactivated2023

oh what the FUCK WHY

polirange

Thanks I hate it.

fairyofsomething

I could have gone my whole life without knowing it, thank you motherfucker

goat-yells-at-everything

To be fair, its not AS bad when you read into detail. But ya. Still like getting slapped in the face with a cold fish.

mama-germany

i’m boutta google why chainsaws were invented now. feel like i’m going on an adventure.

mama-germany

really speaks to how i’ve been around the internet, that that wasn’t what i was expecting it to be, but it was also really close to what i expected it to be.

silverscreenx

that-wildwolf

Every time I see this post it’s gone in a completely different direction and every time it’s cursed as fuck

dead-inside-and-thriving

Surgeons really went vrrr vrrr say goodbye to your pelvis mother

free-post-store

ultimatebottom69

Sell it higher you fuck I paid my sanity instead of money

the-haiku-bot

Sell it higher you

fuck I paid my sanity

instead of money

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

bingomann

Endou Yuu versus the cosmic unknown

bingomann

have some more

bingomann

ok have one more before I go to bed

Ren is also an eldritch being

bingomann

I don’t think I ever posted this here

injuries-in-dust

Humans are Unstoppable!

Hit a human with 300 million Volts (enough to power 56 houses for 1 day) with a temperature five times hotter than the sun.

AND THEY CAN SURVIVE!!!

About 240,000 incidents regarding lightning strikes happen globally each year. According to National Geographic, annually about 2,000 people are killed worldwide by lightning. That’s 0.83%!

NATURE ITSELF CANNOT STOP A HUMAN!!!

certifiedgirlthing

Didn’t someone get struck by lightning whilst fighting a bear with a stick?

injuries-in-dust

According to Google his name is Roy Sullivan.

He was struck SEVEN times in his career as a forest ranger, between 1942 and 1977.

It was after the seventh that he fought off the bear!

He lived to be 71.

injuries-in-dust

no-longer-another-bondi-blonde

In 1990, the high school dropout rate for Dolly Parton's hometown of Sevierville Tennessee was at 34% (Research shows that most kids make up their minds in fifth/sixth grade not to graduate). That year, all fifth and sixth graders from Sevierville were invited by Parton to attend an assembly at Dollywood. They were asked to pick a buddy, and if both students completed high school, Dolly Parton would personally hand them each a $500 check on their graduation day. As a result, the dropout rate for those classes fell to 6%, and has generally retained that average to this day.

Shortly after the success of The Buddy Program, Parton learned in dealing with teachers from the school district that problems in education often begin during first grade when kids are at different developmental levels. That year The Dollywood Foundation paid the salaries for additional teachers assistants in every first grade class for the next 2 years, under the agreement that if the program worked, the school system would effectively adopt and fund the program after the trial period.

During the same period, Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995: The idea being that children from her rural hometown and low-income families often start school at a disadvantage and as a result, will be unfairly compared to their peers for the rest of their lives, effectively encouraging them not to pursue higher education. The objective of the Imagination library was that every child in Sevier County would receive one book, every month, mailed and addressed to the child, from the day they were born until the day they started kindergarten, 100% free of charge. What began as a hometown initiative now serves children in all 50 states, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, mailing thousands of free books to children around the world monthly.

On March 1, 2018 Parton donated her 100 millionth book at the Library of Congress: a copy of "Coat of Many Colors" dedicated to her father, who never learned to read or write.

bonediggercharleston

Everything I learnt about Dolly Parton was against my will and it was an absolute delight every single time

bumblebeerror

You WILL learn about Dolly Parton and what a fucking amazing woman she is and you will LIKE IT.

bevismusson

I assume everyone already knows how much I idolise Dolly, and it's because of stuff like this. She saw an issue, saw a way she could help (and importantly how she could help a community help itself) and just... did it. None of it feels like she's doing it for any other reason than because she has the facilities to do it and it's the right thing to do. She is proof that it is possible to be a millionaire and still be a genuinely good person.

ms-cellanies

Great article about the wide reach that Dolly's Imagination Library has made not only in her home town but across the world: https://cardinalnews.org/2023/01/31/dolly-is-part-of-the-answer-advocates-spread-dolly-partons-imagination-library-free-book-program-throughout-virginia/

arsanatomica

It’s always been odd to me that there are not any ocean scavengers equipped to take optimal advantage of large carcasses. Like…. in prehistoric times, the oceans were full of huge animals… was this a problem back then too?

elfwreck

That was a twist I was not expecting.

arsanatomica

So I have worked on whale breakdown teams before and it is dirty exhausting work. Even a small dolphin takes multiple people working the entire day just to do one.

So I would assume that if a team of mermaids were to break down a whale, this would be a dedicated team maybe working on rotation for for a couple of months. And maybe even up to 5 to 6 months for a large sperm whale. So most likely from they would be contracted for a certain period of time. Maybe they’re only paid a lump sum after the whole contract is complete. Don’t know anything about mermaid economy or employment practices. But it seems efficient from a employment perspective.

I’ve only broken down whales on land, so you are either on a beach or in a lab setting. But I would assume that mermaids would be stationed on the drifting whale and working on it until the job is done. Maybe attaching some platforms are scaffolding to rest after work or take breaks.

Whale break down is also mostly manual labor. It is dirty exhausting work and I can see maybe young mermaids being conscripted for something like this, especially if they are poor and lack employment options or as part of punishment as a form of community service or terms of parole. The drifting carcass essentially functioning as a labor camp and the workers stigmatized by their role. Is there a such a thing as mermaid labor law? Perhaps the shifts are long, rations are tiny and working conditions poor. Got a typhoon heading in with rough seas? Suck it up. Gotta keep cutting. Blubber ain’t going to harvest itself.

Like I can easily see this as a premise for a young mermaid to try to join up with a passing human ship in search of something better. Maybe a young mermaid from poor family and a minor criminal record with nothing to look forward to other than whale salvage, joins up with a questionable human operation such as a drugs smuggling ship or some pirates or a slave ship or Royal Caribbean cruise line, you get the gist. Adventures ensue….etc

andyboops

"The best thing we can do with power is give it away" - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:

The ongoing "Jason Todd is a cop" debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:

"A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power. I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large. But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe in fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read. The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact… The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return. Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story. But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive. We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies. But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you). The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take. So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it. That’s not why children read it. We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson… The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY." - Joey deVilla, 2021 https://www.joeydevilla.com/2021/07/04/happy-independence-day-superhero-style/

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