multivers & tea

he/him who loves writing, fandom, art, fanfiction, music and more. check out my blog to see the various things that i like.

[malibuklaus]

[galadriel1010]

Sometimes you get a brief glimpse into the American worldview and decide that you don't want to know.

[transcyberism]

I cannot stress enough that this meme is entirely literal. there's no reference or subtext you don't know. these are simply the objectively most popular works of art from each denomination.

[multitraveler]

Ha, um getting warm... texting me back is reccomended ☺️🧡

Hello, Darling

[drcgonhide]

Visit Original Link

The mashup you never thought would work

[dieharddaae-24601]

Congratu-fucking-lations.

[oneforcasual-oneforbest]

I would pay so much to have this as a ringtone I’m not even joking.

[theatreortheater]

Why?????

[calamitycons]

The face I made while listening to this was so visceral I had to draw it before reblogging it

[chandra-nalaar]

this is what having a panic attack feels like

[bace-jeleren]

Play this at my funeral as they lower me into the ground

[sawed-on-shotgun]

i am of the sincere belief that if ur on ur computer a lot you should visually customize it to high hell and back not just for funsies but also because it has literally made me less depressed before. its kind of like how rearranging your bedroom is good for your brain, yknow. i do stuff like this every few months

[sawed-on-shotgun]

and if anyone wants to follow suit

LIVE WALLPAPER: wallpaper engine. only thing on here that costs any money (its like 5 bucks on steam). im sure theres free alternatives but this one has a lot of presets and stuff so its less hassle and its what i use. might be a bad idea for lower end pcs tho

CUSTOM TASKBAR: retrobar on github (lots of different options)

CUSTOM CURSOR: theres a lot of places to find these, but rw-designer open cursor library is a good place to start

DISCORD: betterdiscord, im using the clearvision v7 theme with a custom background

EXTENSIONS (these are for firefox, might or might not exist on other browsers):

tabliss for the new tab theme

stylus for tumblr -> specifically the 'tumblr - custom dashboard pallette' theme for colors + bg, and this for the pre-twitterifcation layout

enhancer for youtube for custom youtube colors

the browser theme is just one i found on the firefox theme 'store'

[gaylor-moon]

[gothicprep]

one of my classic texts, from the archives

[flower-crow]

[id: photo of a door with scratches around the doorknob, and a text message that reads "i know from context that your sister's dog did this, but it's a bad look for a guest room." end id]

[disc80s]

pasta art

[mikkeneko]

That is. Not the caption I was expecting

[lasernahrwal]

PSA

This is not fabric

This is pasta

[cpericardium]

parried three bait posts in a row

[mallalada]

[amandaoftherosemire]

A Cowtown Puppet Show Saved My Life

TW: Grief, Suicidal Ideation, Death

I needed to take a minute and say something about pop culture in general and MST3K and Stardew Valley specifically.

Culture matters. Whatever you want to call it: entertainment, pop culture, escapism, storytelling, literature, music, doesn't matter. The art we create and share does matter. Like, save-a-life MATTERS. Let me tell you a story.

When I was seventeen, a few months into my freshmen year in college, two thousand miles away from my home and family, my father died unexpectedly of heart failure in the middle of the night. I left school, and went home, because my family needed me, my mother needed me. I do not regret it.

I didn't cope well with my father's death, as to be expected, but my mother almost didn't survive the grief. We held together, as best we could, and both of us made it through the pain to the other side. Grief is heavy, something you drag with you, always pulling you down toward oblivion. After awhile oblivion begins to look inviting. Mom felt the pull more than I did. She leaned on me, which added to her grief, as she felt like a burden, and I did the best I could to carry all of us, her and I and our dragging grief. This manifested in intractable insomnia. I couldn't sleep, couldn't get my mind to stop eating itself long enough to rest. Unless.

I would put on old VHS tapes of episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and fall asleep to the sound of bad movies and good jokes. The sound of Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, Joel Robinson and Trace Beaulieu lulled me to sleep for years. Their voices were soothing, I'd seen the episodes so many times that I knew them by heart, and this was an escape, a place I could go that wasn't my own mind, where all the weight was gone. On the Satellite of Love, I could forget that I was barely an adult and yet having to deal with a myriad of adult things, like getting work to help pay the mortgage, or get my mother to a doctor before she did anything drastic.

When she got better, stronger, Mom carried me more times than I can count, so please do not think that I bear any resentment for the suddenness of my transition into adulthood. I understand what happened to her and have long since made my peace. My father was the love of her life; it was no wonder that his loss took the legs out from under her. She never remarried, never even dated again, despite my encouragement, would only say that it would be unfair to ask someone else to live up to my father's memory.

When she died, I buried her with him, as she asked.

When she died, MST3K didn't work the same way. The escape I found this time was in Stardew Valley, a lovely place where I could fall in love with the sweet redhead with a love for books and children. I built a life on Winedrunk Farm, with Penny, and our children Calliope and Julius. It was a lovely place, where I didn't have to think about probate attorneys and an apartment full of the things a person collects in their life and leaves to their loved ones to sort through when they die. The things that carry the barbs of a thousand memories ready to stab the unwary.

Sometimes we need someplace to be that is not ourselves, and our shared stories give us that. Someone else's world doesn't carry those barbs, cannot stab us in the same way. Without someone else's world there would be no escape from ourselves. I would not have survived the grief of losing either of my parents if I had not found these worlds. I NEEDED to escape my grief, and a silly satellite with a mad scientist and bad movies, or a rural town where I have made EVERYONE love me, is exactly what I needed.

I started this as an essay on the importance of even "pop" art, but I ended up just wanting to put my gratitude out into the world. To all the people who've made the things I love, but especially the creators and writers of MST3K and ConcerncedApe, the developer of Stardew Valley, whoever they are, for saving my life. It sounds dramatic, but it's true. I'm here because of a cowtown puppet show and a farming sim video game. Maybe that doesn't matter, really, in the big scheme, but it matters to me, so thank you.

Thank you to all the artists, who save lives, and never even know it.

[memeuplift]

[mostlyvalid]

A proposal

Sometimes, in fandom, we just want to write id-tastic fic that rolls around in tropes that might be viewed as problematic. But we don’t want to address the problematic side of things in this particular fanwork; we just want to roll around and wallow.

It is considered courteous to give readers a heads-up via use of AO3 tags. I propose a tag that signals that a given fanwork is for rolling around, not giving a measured evaluation of anything. The MCU has carved out a space for this sort of fic with the “HYDRA Trash Party” tag, for which I commend them. Trash Party is a bit too specific to cover all of the ground I’m thinking of here, though; I propose “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.”

For those of you not familiar with Arrested Development, Michael Bluth finds a paper bag in the freezer labeled “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.” He opens the bag, finds a dead dove, and reacts as follows:

[gif of a white man saying “I don’t know what I expected” in a deadpan manner]

The “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” tag would essentially be a “what it says on the tin” metatag, indicating “you see the tropes and concepts tagged here? they are going to appear in this fic. exactly as said. there will not necessarily be any subversion, authorial commentary condemning problematic aspects, or meditation on potential harm. this fic contains dead dove. if you proceed, you should expect to encounter it.”

(more at KnowYourMeme: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-dont-know-what-i-expected)

[lazy-universes]

WHOA WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS THE POST THAT SPAWNED DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT

[yourlocaltinsmith]

Happy dead dove do not eat birthday!

[pixelartpeach]

[pixelartpeach]

[ryukiki]

[phantomrose96]

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[greater-than-the-sword]

I bet those astronauts are pretty excited to be the farthest from Earth anybody's ever been. You might even say they're over the moon about it

[ghazal67]

[teamnowalls-deactivated20180918]

this is literally how i dance

[askinfresh]

This went from “wow that’s pretty neat” to “WTF ITS ALIVE” real quick

[excima]

she did that

[spooky-pens]

If I don’t reblog this Puerto Rican ass mouse assume that I’m dead.

[escapismroom]

today I was wearing my “yes homo” shirt and some lady told me “you’re going to hell” and I said “with you around it’s like we’re already there” and I swear she made this exact fkn face

[escapismroom]

I cannot believe this post I made in 2015 is still going around…. anyway plot twist this same lady got famous on my town’s facebook gossip group for divorcing her husband for a woman 💅🏻✨ I like to believe my yes homo shirt pointed her in the right direction

[victusinveritas]

Like this sort of thing? Follow sluttyprimarysource on Threads and think about reading Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson.

[serps-up]

so happy and free

[reachartwork]

this is going to be a silly reblog but i have kind of a fixation on animal qualia and the idea of an animal's umwelt, so i ended up wondering whether pudding was actually "enjoying" this.

which meant i went and read about snail brains.

here's the bad news, at least by human standards:

snails do not have anything like a centralized brain. their nervous system is made up of small clusters of neurons (ganglia) that mostly handle very local tasks. they don't have a cortex, they don't build big integrated models of the world, and they almost certainly don't experience things like appreciation, anticipation, or savoring.

pudding is not looking at the sky and thinking it's beautiful.

snail eyes are basically light sensors - they can tell bright from dark, but not form images. snail "taste" is done through chemoreceptors on their tentacles and around their mouth. those receptors don't produce flavor the way ours do; they just detect chemical compounds and sort them into "approach," "ignore," or "avoid."

so there's no evidence that snails enjoy food, or wind, or views, the way mammals do.

and that does sound kind of sad. but then i thought that maybe we are asking the wrong question.

snails do have valence. they detect aversive things (like salt or dryness) and withdraw from them. they detect non-aversive or beneficial conditions (like moisture) and stay extended. when pudding is stretched out like this, it means his nervous system is basically saying "this is safe; nothing is wrong."

if we define pleasure not as our human experience of dopamine and reward chemicals but instead as "the absence of aversion" - a state where the organism is open to its environment instead of defending itself - then this does count as something positive, even if it's extremely nothing like human enjoyment.

pudding isn't appreciating the wind. but his body is registering humidity, safety, and the ability to keep functioning, and that matters to him in the only way his nervous system can make things matter. he does not think "this is great, this is awesome, i love the weather", because he doesn't think in the way we do at all, but the neurological action in his ganglion tell his body that he is safe, that the moisture is an acceptable level, that it's not too dry or windy, and that there's nothing imminently threatening.

i think a lot of the sadness comes from assuming that a good life has to look like ours: full of enjoyment, meaning, and aesthetic experience. but a snail isn't missing those things. its world just isn't built to include them.

snails don't have a sense of flavor. they don't even have tastebuds. this seems like a gimme, right? but again that might be asking the wrong question about what "taste" is. biologically speaking, it's chemoreception. we taste sweet because it indicates high value, high calorie sugar molecules. we taste salty for salt, umami for proteins. so in what way does pudding's chemoreceptors differ from ours instrumentally? we can say "by our human perspective, pudding can't experience "preference" or "savoring" or "anticipation of delicious food"", but from pudding's perspective we have radically overengineered ourselves for the task at hand. pudding can tell what's salty, what's high value, what has the chemicals he needs. the functional outcome is that he can discriminate food souces based on their composition. is that not taste?

so maybe the point isn't "this is sad because he can't enjoy it," but "this is a reminder that minds come in radically different shapes, and value doesn't have to be rich to be real."