kingofrhun

soup

[heypax]

kaz refuses to admit this but this is the post crooked kingdom dynamic

[kingofrhun]

oh, how I miss them 😭

[reasonsforhope]

Btw I think it's worth mentioning that I'm like. In some ways an extremely cynical person:

Literally, one of my major opinions on humanity is "Humans really seem to like committing genocide???" (Looks, obviously genocide is a fucking atrocity, and I'm in no fucking way diminishing that. It's just also something that people keep fucking committing.)

I work professionally with survivors of abuse, rape, and incest.

I think that most people are (by design, aka evolution!) fundamentally self-interested (and also that that's usually okay)

I am more caught up on the news than like/at least 90% of people.

So when I say that I think that:

Hope is real

There is real, substantial evidence for hope

I think we're going to beat climate change

There is a ton of evidence that supports us beating climate change,

We're going (continue) making the world a better place

The good of humanity and the world ultimately outweighs the bad

It's not because I'm sticking my head in the sand. It's really, really not!

I'm saying that in very real knowledge of how fucking shitty things are and can be.

And despite all that, I'm still hopeful. I'm still optimistic.

I still think hope is going to win.

You don't need to be some huge optimist to have hope.

Anyway here's a link to my masterpost on why we're going to beat climate change,

And here's a link to a great article on all the reasons that this century is, on average, the best time to be alive in human history.

[moonlightredfern]

Thinking about how wild it is that enshittification starts as a way for the rich to squeeze the populace for more money but ends up infecting everything so even luxury products decline in quality. They’ve got more money than fucking God now and for what? Literally they can’t even buy fun nice stuff for themselves because they killed craft.

Anyway this post is about Dhaka muslin but it’s also about everything.

The ancient fabric that no one knows how to make

Nearly 200 years ago, Dhaka muslin was the most valuable fabric on the planet. Then it was lost altogether. How did this happen? And can we

[eldritchwyrm]

guess it's time to post agha shahid ali's poem about dhaka muslin

[the-final-sif]

Fun fact! Revival of Dhaka Muslin has been ongoing for quite some time. The headline of the above article is very very misleading, we know exactly how Dhaka Muslin was made. The process was very well documented. We know how it was made, but colonialism ruined the fabric's production area and devalued the skills needed to make it such that they no longer existed. But the process itself was not lost.

That being said, efforts to bring it back are underway, and they have been making amazing progress, and succeed in creating Dhaka Muslin yet again.

The Muslin Miracle: A passion for revival

It all began with a search for ‘phuti karpas’ – muslin’s unique cotton plant which is known to have become extinct. However, starting in 201

This is a pretty good updated article, it has a lot of the same info as the BCC one (which also discusses some of the revival efforts) but with more of a focus on that process, an update to the story, and it details some of the other ongoing projects working on the revival!

Here's the first weaver to manage to produce a finished piece in nearly 200 years, Al Amin.

His first piece was 300 threads, according to the article they have now been able to get into the 700s for thread counts, which is absolutely incredible.

Several projects are actually underway now each with different weavers and slightly different methods, producing fabric intended to meet or best the original!

And if you're curious, "okay but can it pass through a ring" yes! Yes they can!

All three of these photos are of pieces made in the modern century, photos by Wasiul Bahar!

It's a very time consuming process, and a very expensive fabric to purchase, but love and passion for it have been steadily bringing it back!

[accumulated-error]

I am constantly oscillating between two states of being. Namely "I need to be a girl" and "I need to purchase a thermal scope for my helmet"

[apfsds]

All girls have a thermal vision toggle btw

[numbersareimaginary]

This is true it comes with the hormones

[fleshengine]

wait wait wait wait wait wait what

I'm sorry? If I'm reading this correctly you have partial thermal vision? How does that work? Can you tell us more? That's so fucking cool.

[traaansfem]

So, there are a few ways people can have thermal vision. One has two near infrared photons processed as one photon of green light, and the second has three near infrared photons of a slightly different wavelength processed as a photon within the "actinic light" spectrum (largely at the high end of the human visual spectrum).

This is why our family had an infrared toaster for a while, but it broke so quickly- my mother and I were using it for the most minor reasons because of the "pretty lights that looked like a hole in reality". We got another, but that only lasted a year. And then we got a boring one with standard convection heating and the joy in our souls departed for the undying lands, leaving us adrift and untethered-

Uh. Anyway. I got that from my mother, she got that from her mom, and so on and so forth. It's quite fun! It even makes not walking into things at night way easier if it isn't too cold to see the blackbody radiation! :3

[forgettableandtired]

I am so looking forward to biohackers being able to do cool things instead of just like fixing lactose intolerance like now.

[numbersareimaginary]

I mean fixing lactose intolerance is still pretty fucking cool

[questbedhead]

Elves (and other long lived fantasy races) as serial monogamists who have set end dates for their marriages; your first marriage contract is set for 50 years, and you can renew it if you're still happy by the end of it- but if not, or if you just want to try something new, you can part ways amicably and move on.

A second marriage is supposed to last longer (you should know what you like now that you've had practice with your first!) but you need a 'cooling off' period between marriages so many people don't get second married until their late 100's or early 200's... and of course you want to match with someone who is also on their second marriage, though 'mixed' marriages do occur. The calculations for the appropriate end date of a marriage based on age and previous status is a complex affair.

In the later stages mixed marriages are less of a problem and often considered ideal- towards the end of one's life one wants a slightly younger partner to be able to take care of them after all. Young enough that they'll have time to find a 'ending' partner of their own once their current spouse has passed, but not so young that they at completely different stages of life. Match makers are much more common for older folks than younger ones for this reason.

Of course this also creates avenues for unique tropes in the elven romantic annals. Star Crossed lovers who found each other when one was near the end and the other was just beginning; remarrying your first partner centuries later as you realize they were what you wanted all along; people coming to the end of their marriage who realize they don't want it to end- but does their partner feel the same???

The complex web of previous marriages this creates in elven societies is also a font for drama, and elves need to keep track of their various step parents and half siblings to avoid crossing family lines- (yet another reason not to date to far outside your age range). Nothing is more awkward than bringing home a new partner only to realize they're your mother's first wife.

[jokerfic]

2 bits of news for the crush/jerome valeska/gotham fx fans

first, barring death, taxes, or a complete crisis of productivity, I'll start posting the sequel to Crush at some point in December, it's called I'm Your Man and it's on track to be over twice the length of Crush

second, I've found faces for both isabel and jane

devyn garcia for isabel

kathryn newton for jane

more to come soon!

[kingofrhun]

NEW STUFF NEW STUFF NEW STUFF

[professorerudite]

brat girl summer is over, it's time for the fall of númenor

[kingofrhun]

Someone please write more Adar x Halbrand!Sauron fics, I beg of you

[kingofrhun]

Thank you all for your service, we are eating good this season

[ikomahis]

my emotional support psycho villain & me

[iaconite]

this show really is cheeky when it comes to sauron and his relationships with other characters. galadriel? implied. adar? implied. celebrimbor? implied. your ex? implied. your ex's ex? implied as well. your mom? unfortunately, implied as well.

[swiftie-as-a-coursing-river]

No thoughts only ✨THEM✨

[momoro66]

[onion-souls]

“Why does Batman need to be a billionaire?”

“He has to fund the Justice League. They often have a space program.”

“But couldn’t he do more good if he just invested-”

“The Earth is routinely invaded by aliens, gods, and the forces of an extraterrestrial god of tyranny.”

[darker-than-darkstorm]

He has, like, three charitable organizations he funds, named after his father, his mother, and Alfred.

Between both Bruce and Batman’s contributions, Gotham should be a better city than it is, and the only reason it isn’t is DC Editorial Mandate that basically says Gotham has to get worse and worse and worse or there’s no Batman stories they can tell (and, obviously, they have no other characters besides Batman).

[feotakahari]

There’s a reason Batman thinks the city is literally cursed.

[onion-souls]

I want to see Bruce Wayne go off

“Oh, oh, just charity my way out of dealing with the Penguin, a living, breathing 19th century Marxist’s cartoon of the bourgeoisie? Just fund anti-Clayface measures? Crack down on corporations who put out shapeshifting cosmetics? What socio-economic pressures turn botonists into actual fucking dryads?! What inspires anti-animal terrorism? THAT’S NOT EVEN A REAL KIND OF ECO-FASCISM!”

[sandsbuisle]

For the record, Gotham is canonically curse, because it sits on some sort of evil swamp. I think.

[onion-souls]

There are like, half a dozen curses. The Lazarus Pits are leaching into the water, Slaughter Swamp is an unconnected body of water a few miles outside of the city that also ressurects people (see Solomon Grundy), the Bat-demon Barbatos and his followers (the Court of Owls) have been fucking up the city psychically and financially, the malevolent influence of the warlock Doctor Gotham’s tomb in the center of the city, the madness hypersigil of Amadeus Arkham (in Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth), there were several outposts of subterraneans and aliens beneath the city during the Silver Age, constant chemical warfare that makes it the equivalent of a WWI trench managed by MK-ULTRA, it’s in New Jersey, and I think God just hates it

[sindri42]

tired: Batman could do more good by running charities than by fighting criminals

wired: Batman could save literally every other city on the planet simultaneously with the amount of effort and resources he’s pumped into Gotham, which is a lost cause, but this is his city damnit.

[rametarin]

Inspired: Batman’s diligence is containing the menace that is Gotham’s madness from escaping too far from city limits.

For all his billions, for all his activity, for all his efforts, Gotham is a bonfire fed by the madness of mortal people, cultivated by dark powers and just existing there makes living souls like kindling for it. And left to its own devices,it’d become a breeding ground for supernatural unrest that no mere social service system or social awareness of activist campaign, no government program, no actions of a singular vigilante, could ever hope to undo.

Batman is single handedly if need be but fortunately not alone so often, holding back the noxious psychic influences of warp and wyrd entities and what they do to the very environment and landscape through the power of sheer, unbridled humanity.

[dashaibo]

Ascended: Gotham is containing Batman, because the forces of evil, consciously or not, have figured out that if let loose, this motherfucker and his sprawling adoptive family would’ve solved every crime in the world ever, so they throw literally everything they have at his home town in hopes that he stays there.

[yeomanstuff]

Because they were foolish and let Alan Scott escape. They aren’t making that mistake again.

[kyraneko]

What if Gotham is the pump?

Like. What if, because Gotham is such a shitshow, anyone looking to improve their lives has their eye on being able to move out of Gotham, so whenever Bruce Wayne’s charitable endeavors come somebody’s way, they take it, pack their bags, and move the fuck away, and take that money with them.

Meanwhile there’s an ongoing influx of people to Gotham primarily because they’re flat broke and real estate in Gotham is dirt fucking cheap because it’s a shitshow, and there’s always places hiring because 1) they’ve got Bruce Wayne money to try to make a difference, 2) there’s no shortage of places that need to be fixed up a little, and 3) villains are always in the market for new henchpeople.

So you’re a broke millennial from any other town in the country, and you have student loans, a job that hasn’t kept up with inflation, and your landlord has raised the rent three times this year so far and it’s eating up two-thirds of your paycheck. You look for housing on the internet and discover that one-third of your paycheck will get you the mortgage for an actual house in Gotham, a house you own and will never have to deal with your scummy rentjacking landlord again. And Wayne Industries is hiring, and so are sixteen different disaster remediation places, and six staffing services with a sort of weird vibe to them but they offer benefits, since when do temp agencies do benefits, and sure the crime rate is high but the rest of the world’s heading in that direction anyway, especially if you’re homeless, which you’re gonna be in like four months if that jackass your landlord raises the rent one more time, so get in losers, we’re going to Gotham!

And you settle into your bigger-than-expected apartment and get a job that brings you a comfortable paycheck and you learn to live with the terrorist attacks and the explosions and the gunfire and the neighbors and the drunken billionaire swimming in the restaurant fountain, and you pay off your student loans, buy a car, suffer a few months’ unemployment when your boss goes to jail for trying to assassinate the mayor and then your partner loses their job for a few months when the office gets smothered in a jungle’s worth of climbing plants and you develop hospital bills when you both get caught in a hallucinogenic terror gas eruption at the mall, but hey, you’d be homeless by now in any other city, so you live with it.

And then it’s a few years later and you’re wanting to start a family, but the neighbor three doors down owns pet hyenas and the park was firebombed last week and someone froze all the water pipes and you crashed your car into one of the impromptu ice sculptures and you’d really like your kids to grow up in a normal city where they don’t have to receive advice like “don’t talk to strange plants.”

So you visit one of the social work offices and get yourself a bit of assistance, save up your money, sell your house for the price of a down payment to the sort of incoming fool you were six years ago, and use your polished resume to get yourself a job someplace that doesn’t have What To Do If Clown Attack on their safety training syllabus.

You came, you left, and Gotham remains. A shithole.

[yeomanstuff]

This is a really well thought out way in what keeps Gotham moving. Sure there’s the people that have been there they’re whole lives, families that go back generations, but these are reasons people move in. The kind of people that want out. And maybe are desperate enough to take that Job hunching.

It’s also weird to see my pithy response circle around over 20 times and end up back on my dash…

[howlingday]

When the glimmering hope continues against the tide of the hopeless.

[cptsdwillgraham-deactivated2019]

beep beep sometimes when you have been in survival mode for a long time the parts of you dedicated to Wanting Things atrophy and you forget how to envision a future that feels rewarding because you are busy with the business of staying alive, and it can seem like your life must be pointless because you can’t imagine any long term goals. sometimes even when you leave survival mode you can’t remember how to Want Things. that doesn’t mean you need to give up on having a good and fulfilling life, it just means that Wanting Things is a muscle you need to gradually strengthen. the part of you that has dreams and aspirations is still there, it just fell asleep, but if you wiggle it enough it can and will regain feeling. it’s okay to start small

[the-alleged-mr-uncle]

#okay but how

I’m going to speak on this even though I’m not OP because survival mode stripped me of everything “non-essential” and I’ve put in a lot of work, so here’s what I got:

You probably know people who have desires and plans. Buddy system the fuck out of those relationships. Ask about their gardens, projects, and the new recipes they are trying out. If they are thinking about painting a room, volunteer to help them. Go to the hardware store, let them talk about this and that shade. While you are preparing the room to be painted, think about how the new paint color will look in the morning sun, or at sunset. 

Go to places where others have invested and planned. Community gardens that need watering volunteers. Neighborhood associations looking to fill potholes. Pet rescue centers that need blankets washed. Libraries looking for bodies to hand out summer reading rewards and T-Shirts. Hang out there, watch people care. Maybe lend a hand if you are able.

Allow yourself to be curious. Curiosity is the spark that leads to investment, and planning, and passion. “I wonder what hyenas sounds like” - “Huh, has anyone ever used hyena noises in music?” - “How does a person go about doing that?” - “Could I do that?” It is okay if the curiosity is easily satisfied. You are encouraging yourself to be interested, I promise that eventually you’ll hit on things that then interest you.

Buy candy bars in flavors you haven’t tried and are dubious about. Chips with unholy flavor combos. If it is tasty, share it with a friend. If it is awful, share it with a friend. Put sesame oil in milk to taste, like I did two weeks ago. Because I was curious, because it sounded disgusting but what if it wasn’t, because my friend laughed when I said I would. 

I keep a journal, more of a bulleted list collection. At the end of every day I write down things that I liked, or things I accomplished, or a simple pleasant moment. On my worst days I usually can still find something. Often it is “saw a bird” or “tea”. Just to write down anything, anything other than “survived”. I saw a bird today, so there must be something more to life, maybe.

[smellslikebot]

how to keep following people when a major social platform implodes

(...and you don't want to join 20 new websites)

First, get an RSS reader*:

Desktop: Feedbro (browser extension), QuiteRSS, Raven Reader

Android: Feeder

iOS/Mac: NetNewsWire

You'll be able to make a custom feed to follow blogs, webcomics, social media feeds, podcasts, news, and other stuff on the web all in one place. To follow something, find its "feed URL"-- often marked by an icon that looks like this ↓-- and paste it into your reader of choice as a new feed.

Some feed URLs for social media:

Twitter: Feedbro can use Twitter profile URLs as feed URLs. Otherwise, use nitter.net/username/rss (or other Nitter instance) (You can get a CSV file of all the accounts you follow using "Download a user's friends list" on Tweetbeaver)

Tumblr: Use username.tumblr.com/rss or username.tumblr.com/tagged/my%20art/rss to follow a blog's "my art" tag (as an example)

Cohost: Use username.cohost.org/rss/public (WIP feature)

Mastodon: Use instance.url/@­username.rss

Deviantart: Info here

Spacehey: Info here

Youtube: Go to a channel in a web browser, view page source, and use Ctrl-F/Command-F to find a link that starts with "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id="

Instagram: Feedbro can use Instagram profile and hashtag URLs as feed URLs. Otherwise, Instagram doesn't have RSS feeds, and due to aggressive rate limiting on their part, it's not so simple to generate a feed URL.

Facebook: Feedbro can use public Facebook group/page URLs as feed URLs.

(If you know an artist who exclusively posts to Instagram, you may want to gently suggest that they crosspost elsewhere...)

Also see how to find the RSS feed URL for almost any site. Try using public RSS-Bridge instances or Happyou Final Scraper to generate feeds for sites that don't have them (Pillowfort, Patreon, etc).

*You can set up your subscriptions in one reader and import them into another by exporting an OPML file.

[dduane]

This!

RSS feeds were a great way to keep track of things before the rise of the platforms, and (if we’re smart) they’ll be great again.

[moralanxietystudio]

Very happy with the music by Doctor Turtle that I used in Windy Meadow 🌿. Here, have a sample.

Oh, by the way, this Visual Novel be out in less than a week, on October 16.

[kingofrhun]

So excited!!!

[kingofrhun]

Raphael's fight was pretty anticlimactic, because apparently he is very susceptible to icy surfaces, so the last third of the fight was just me and my dudes kicking him in the ribs