Lurking and Reblogging @lurkingandreblogging - Tumblr Blog

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jurisffiction

how do you people even find some of these posts

dragongirlsnout

When you drink a minuscule amount of alcohol and still get absolutely wasted: Night of the Hog

When you drink a ton and yet feel nothing out of the ordinary: Night of the Wolf

dragongirlsnout

I reference this literally every time I'm at a bar because I somewhat convinced I saw it in a tumblr post somewhere but I have been informed that this is not in fact a known tumblr post in circulation and I was shown a prophetic vision at some point leading me to form the dichotomy from first principals

strudel-fatpaws-deactivated2025

who was the guy who said every indie game is named either "empoisoned" or "swumbles big jumble" . i swear this is a real thing someone said

strudel-fatpaws-deactivated2025

gonna start sorting my steam library like this

zentilde

ilions-end

i'm rereading aeschylus' seven against thebes (Actually Aware of Who The Characters Are edition). i mostly remember i really enjoyed the shield descriptions for the seven, and yeah they still rock.

list for my own future reference:

tydeus' shield: a night sky with stars, and the full moon at the center. also the shield has bells hanging from it to "make a fearsome sound". exploring new avenues of fear tactics, i like it

capaneus shield: a naked man carrying a flaming torch in each hand, and the text ‘I will burn down the city’. ZERO subtlety. capaneus oh my god

eteoclus' shield: an armored man scaling an enemy wall, and the text, 'Not even the war god Ares can dislodge me and hurl me from the wall'. B-. too much of a mouthful. come back when you've found a more succinct way to disrespect the gods and tempt fate.

hippomedon's shield: fire-breathing typhon encircled by twining serpents. sounds like an instant classic. good. (also OF COURSE his opponent's shield depicts zeus with a lightning bolt so. you know how this will play out)

parthenopaeus' shield: the sphinx eating a theban man. now THAT'S going above and beyond, that's reading up on your enemy team before the match. chef's kiss.

amphiaraus' shield: isn't decorated in any way because he isn't boastful and wants to let his actions speak for themselves 🥺 amphiarauuuus man you're like. the coolest guy here

polynices' shield: a man in golden armor led by justice personified, with the text ‘This man I will lead back, and he will have his land and will roam free in his ancestral home.’ noooo you could have had something DEVASTATING and you went with like. a political newspaper cartoon. and too many words again. polynices i NEED you to get your head in the game here

kingdeath000

now, pecker means penis. and wood means boner. so of course you would make assumptions about the term woodpecker. but no. the bird

chantssecrets

Carson McCullers

skaletoncarnage

Just found the best word in the English language

english-history-trip

elodieunderglass

Thank you @sweetlyfez ! I used to hate gongoozlers and now I am one.

Here’s a funny passage from Narrow Dog to Carcassone:

ewingstan

While I think most people know that Moore’s Watchmen is a big intertext for Worm, I haven’t really seen people discuss how his V for Vendetta was a very likely point of influence for Twig, especially it’s later sections (for better or worse). Remind me to flesh this point out tomorrow once I get my laptop in a functioning state.

ewingstan

Deep in the draft mines rn. Running the risk of both being too caustic and too laudatory towards Moore and Wildbow’s respective cracks at the pulpy freedom fighter serial.

baldgonia

girl what. im obsessed with you.

wiah

she was absolutely fucking insane for this one i cant even lie

prokopetz

Life sim set in a fantasy small town whose economy has gone to shit because it's one of those open world console RPG settings that got retooled to be more fast-travel-centric a couple patches back and the town is located in one of those kinda fillery bits of countryside that everybody skips over these days.

chromegnomes

prokopetz

It's fascinating to me how many people in the notes apparently think this post is riffing on Cars (2006) and not, like, the real Route 66.

twomothsholdinghands

mmgceramics

Just submitted this guy and some others to a cup show. Hopefully I’ll hear back soon!

tenochre

too cool to jerk off to pictures of women with impossible hip to waist ratios yet not cool enough to jerk off to the concept of being killed, the rōnin pervert wanders this land in search of a slightly-higher-concept yet not totally abstract form of fetish posting

cagenails

hey thanks, I heard you uttered my name while I wasn't around thus making me real.

starrypawz

So I've been thinking about a discussion over on the Discworld reddit recently

Basically someone was like 'Discworld has become my go to cosy read'

And someone was like 'Disword isn't cosy it's actually very satirical and can be quite scathing and not escapist fluff'

But to me I would also class Discworld a cosy/comforting read.

And I think the fact the series does go to some pretty dark places is part of why I find it comforting, because Discworld doesn't shy away from the fact that bad things happen and you have to just get on with it and the fact it's full of characters who are often kind of fed up with everything but still go and do the Right Thing anyway even if it's hard and I actually find that more comforting than if it was like 'Oh nothing bad ever happens' setting.

onbearfeet

It's also got a lot of non-fluffy cozy traits! While its primary genre is not mystery, a lot of the books overlap strongly with the cozy mystery genre. For example ...

Confined space, limited cast: A cozy mystery usually takes place in a small community with a limited pool of suspects, all of whom are known to the reader by the halfway point. The witch books often take place in a small village (obvious exceptions for Equal Rites and Witches Abroad). The Watch books take place in a pretty small area of Ankh-Mprpork with a recurring cast (except Thud! and Snuff, the latter of which takes place mostly in a village). Unseen University is a pretty closed setting, as are the various institutions Moist von Lipwig runs. Even the standalones can have that closed-circle feel, as with the unit in Monstrous Regiment and the newspaper office in The Truth.

Amateur protagonist: While this is usually an amateur sleuth in cozy mysteries, Pratchett really liked writing protagonists who were not really meant to be doing what they were doing. Yes, Sam Vimes is a professional copper, but he's not exactly a professional duke, and a lot of what the books ask him to do isn't really coppering (e.g. Night Watch). Susan is NOT a professional psychopomp. Moist is a professional con artist, but the fact that his con-artist skills apply to public service is part of the joke. Polly Perks is a bar manager turned soldier. William de Worde is inventing his profession as he goes, just like a number of others (Imp y Celyn, anyone?). The wizards are allegedly professional wizards, but they're quite obviously making things up as they go (cough cough Ponder Stibbons). The witches are really the only consistent professional protagonists we get.

Non-explicit violence and sexuality: Look, no series of books where a corpse is found in a condom factory can be said to be free of sex and violence, but it's not usually the point of the scene it's in. Sometimes it's a joke, as with Mr. Fusspot's favorite toy. Sometimes it's tender but mostly off-page, as with Angua and Carrot. Sometimes, yes, there's blood around, as at the torture room in Cable Street and the crime scene in Thud. But it's very rarely described in graphic detail—often, as with the orc flashback in Unseen Academicals, it's no more than absolutely necessary to establish a key fact. Nobody reads Discworld for the explicit bits.

Cozy doesn't mean nice. It mostly just means not hardboiled. And Terry Pratchett knew his way around hardboiled, but he used it strategically—mostly to make us all tear up over an egg.

elodieunderglass

Four things that I try to take forward from Terry Pratchett, when crafting cosy-feeling material with a bite:

1. You can - more or less - trust me. Sometimes I’m arch or flippant or frivolous. Sometimes I’m in a bad mood. Sometimes I’m catty, often sarcastic, and quite often motivated by spite or rage. But I am not seeking to betray you. My writing may hurt - often, what I want to write about is hurtful. But I don’t want to harm you. I am not here to be a bully. I derive no pleasure and no power from being an asshole. Since you know that? You can relax. You can trust me.

2. I like you. I am not the enemy of my readers. I am glad you are here. I like you and want you to be well. I believe in you. I also trust you a lot. I trust that if I write about things that are uncomfortable, you’ll come with me. But most of all, I trust you in return: if I fuck up, you’ll forgive me. This makes me braver than writers who have to cringe in fear.

3. Someone has to be the grownup (and I hate it when it’s me.) Terry Pratchett often wrote from the perspective of being the adultiest-adult in the room. He was a partner, a parent, a member of his community. He had earned wisdom to draw on. Reflecting strong experiences and lived character is a true, vital, brave characteristic of a powerful writer, and it shines. It isn’t just about “writing children accurately” or “writing old people on purpose” but that’s a hallmark of someone strong and brave; someone who has experienced enough of life to understand the interiority of other people. I might not be the best at this, but I try. The effect, at first glance, is cozy and lived-in. Zoomed out, you realise that such rich, rewarding textures tend to come from people with rich minds.

4. It’s fucking funny. That’s ultimately it. That’s where people fall down when they try too hard - they’re not funny. That’s why viral posts do well - they’re funny. That’s why a lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on - the lie is funny. Wherever possible, Pratchett was funny. Where he couldn’t be funny, he at least had the craftsmanship to be witty. Because people like to laugh, his work will create a good feeling in the reader, no matter how heavy the material.

Rich and funny stuff tends to have high re-read value, which makes it VERY cosy indeed. If it’s also trustworthy and wise, it will become a treasure over time.

I’m not claiming to live up to any of this, but if I ever get into a hole or corner, I try to remember how to be brave and funny and true, and I often get out of it that way.

cozyrogue

imagine you're teucer coming back home. you just sailed back from troy and you watched your family unmistakably die, sometimes as a witness and sometimes as a sniper. the high walls that justified your mother's capture and brought about your own existence are crumbling.

you leave carrying your nephew eurysaces. your mother's family is gone. your half-brother is gone. this kid is all you have left, aside from your father back home. you get back to telamon and he takes eurysaces and exiles you.

so, all of it meant nothing. teucer chose loyalty to a father he couldn't please, no matter what he did. it was the most violent thing teucer ever experienced because it stripped the meaning of what he did. it stopped being filial and it turned teucer's actions into something that was never meant to happen. he should have been killed by crossfire in the first year.