screaming into the abyssal compost heap

my brain doesn't ever stop trying to hand me ideas for products, films, novels, and academic research - so I am dumping them out here. like a junk drawer for ideas.

[halftoning-deactivated20240224]

cmyk test pages r like angels to me

[halftoning-deactivated20240224]

do you understand

[mortimermcmirestinks]

I made you something OP

[tikkety-tok]

“No that’s an oil tank I’m not interested” 😂

[fieldbears]

#Me when I see realistic plants in video games#BABE THEY DID YARROW COME LOOK#BABE THESE GRAPES ARE CORRECTLY TRELLISED ( @bonzicatgirl )

[deathcomes4u]

THIS IS WHY I MAKE REAL PLANTS IN THE GAME. FOR NERDS LIKE ME.

[changelingsrule]

Same energy:

[thou-creature-of-the-deep]

I can listen to somebody talk about their interests like this forever. Please please tell me what realistic plants you found in your game. please tell me about all the propane tanks you saw in your game.

[what-even-is-thiss]

You know the idea of a secret magical world kind of loses its appeal as an adult because you realize that a) everyone is terrible at keeping secrets and b) there are parts of society you never think about that have all of their own secret rules and jargon but they’re like. Electricians.

[what-even-is-thiss]

There are in fact entire layers of society that you never see or think about that have strange technology but they’re all like transportation logistics or the one guy who supplies dirt to baseball teams.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I think if there was going to realistically and successfully be a secret underground society of magic users they’d have to not even be trying to hide. There’s gotta straight up be an office for the witch’s union in a strip mall somewhere that nobody ever wonders to question why it’s there until they apply for like an accounting job there.

Wait witches are real? *sigh* yes we get that question a lot. Now, do you have any other questions before we get started? No? Okay why did you leave your last job?

[unsubconscious]

“There is no other home”, Soviet poster, 1986.

[thedupshadove]

Opera plot: Local Noble realizes that his affections for Pretty Village Girl have a rival in the form of Honest Laborer. Having read enough romances to know that a girl asked to choose between a rich man and a poor man will always pick the poor man, whereas in a love triangle between two rich men it's anyone's game, he decides that his chief object must be to elevate his rival's wealth and status as quickly as possible. What the Compte de Genre-Savie over here forgot to account for, however, was the overwhelming power of the Pygmalion Effect, and now he has to deal with watching two people he's in love with develop ever-stronger feelings for each other. Eventually all of this resolves via...I don't know.

[queenofattolia]

#first of all: ''comte de genre-savie'' is PERFECT. just great. absolutely no notes.#I would love an opera with this exact plot. bonus points if the comte is genuinely genre savvy#he keeps bringing up opera tropes only for the other characters to look at him like he's insane.#the score is diagetic to him; when he points out reoccurring themes or transitions to minor keys#the other characters ask him what the hell he's talking about. the whole chorus gets together to sing about how#comte de genre-savie is going mad. the comte tries to sneak away and keeps getting pulled back in.#I wonder if you could even push it further - have it so that only the comte can speak or 'hear' spoken words;#all other characters communicate in recitativo secco or formally composed songs#then you can have scenes where the comte is speaking but the other character in the scene can't hear him.#this can be played for laughs (the comte tries to order something from a shopkeeper; the shopkeeper walks away as he's talking)#and for dramatic effect (the Honest Laborer is singing a heartfelt duet with the Pretty Village Girl#and neither of them can hear the comte saying 'I love you' in between their lines)#........I am into this actually. I had to convince myself that this wasn't just cyrano de bergerac but no. it isn't. I'm into it.#upon the stage (via @notbecauseofvictories)

[pitchingintothevoid]

I had a dream about pitching updated cartoon plots for more serious problems:

Quest for Peace - Jonny Quest and Hadji attempt to reconcile their life experiences with new information about Dr Benton Quest and Race Bannon’s actions and roles during the Cold War and Vietnam. Hadji grapples with his place in the Quest family in light of his growing knowledge of Western Colonialism.

Josie and the Posse - the pussycats learn a lesson about the dangers of groupthink.

Brittle - the Peanuts gang learns a lesson about community when crack cocaine floods their sleepy town.

[javert]

lot of people are extremely invested in there being a hard boundary between "artists" and everybody else. i've got good news though! there's no such thing as art.

[jeanritchie]

now what were your great-grandfathers' jobs. that's more interesting. mine were a factory worker / industrial baker, a security guard, a lawyer, and a dairy farmer.

[pitchingintothevoid]

Aerospace worker, minister, coal miner, and not the foggiest clue for the last one. The differences between the West Coast side and the Appalachian side of my family are pretty stark in that context.

[podcastwizard]

if you're in the throes of cosmic despair i cannot recommend museums enough. art or science or history it doesn't matter. oh we're all connected, all of us and everything, throughout all time and space, and no one, no one, no one is alone? awesome. that's what i thought i just wanted to make sure.

[hazard-symbols-that-fuck-hard]

I don’t see myself as being particularly computer-y, but I’m now realizing that that’s only because to pull the things off that I pull off, I need to be surrounded by guys that are 100x even more computer-y than me

meanwhile most people in my real life don’t know how to make a folder in windows

and I’m sitting here like “ah, no. i’m not a tech guy. i only know one programming language and sometimes it takes me a second to run something from the command line”

[hazard-symbols-that-fuck-hard]

“i don’t use linux on my main device; it’s only on one of my virtual machines, and even then, it’s just a debian-based distro. i’m not a hardcore geek”

guy next to me: “what the fuck is a zip file”

[drchucktingle]

while it may not seem like it to someone scrolling by with a cursory look, what i am creating is not ‘ironic’ nor a ‘get rich quick scheme’ and it is certainly not AI GENERATED. it is a genuine expression of my heart and my beliefs about sexuality and art and love and freedom and curiosity and joy

i was very concerned to hear the skeleton trotting on cover of latest tingler appeared to be AI generated. i am not sure if it really is or not, as the image was purchased from a stock photo website like all of my images, HOWEVER these sites are getting flooded with AI slop just like everything else

could have easily just left it and i think 99 percent of buckaroos would never notice, but this is something i care about a lot. there are authors i will not name that i get tagged with all the time who proudly slop around with their AI, and i will never do that. the soul of these books is not theft

i have updated cover with new stock skeleton who SEEMS to have been rendered by human. as time goes it will be harder to tell but you can trust i will try my best to craft with love and honesty. these is not 'bad covers' or 'ironic content' to me, it is art that i care deeply about. thanks buckaroos

[pitchingintothevoid]

My ideal Halloween costume.

[pitchingintothevoid]

WIP of a story idea

A troop of goblins acting as henchmen for a warlord get absolutely fed-up with the poor treatment and repeated lack of promised rewards - decide to split off to make their own path. They leave the warlord's army and bring along the one scruffy werewolf/berserker knight/mercenary who is more at home with the goblins than with the rest of the warlord's troops. The goblins initially want to just sell their insider knowledge to an opposing kingdom, but get immediately rebuffed/rejected/driven away because they are perceived as "evil" creatures. They say "eh, fuck it, more than one way to skin a cat" and plan to steal a tower-bound princess to ransom for money/land so they can settle in somewhere. The princess is locked by magic to the tower until a marriage agreement/deal has been made, so the goblins decide the best way around this is have Sir Awoo over there offer. (He is fully on board with "this is obviously a stupid trick to get past a curse, we both know that no one is getting married.")

Princess + imprisonment in a magic tower until marriage = a princess with a lot of time to read and practice = a fucking wizard in a pretty dress.

Princess ICanAndWillCastFireball critiques their plans, suggests who would be the best person to contact for the better ransom payout (some powerful cousin), and agrees to be "stolen", because she doesn't want to be stuck in the tower to be held in reserve as a pawn, and if she can get these wretched creatures to escort her safely to more helpful family, all the better?

So ex-henchmen are trying to transport a stolen princess, and the princess is like "cool, I want to be a scary fucker too! give me a sword! I am gonna show them why they should have just let me go to law school!"

Princess FireballIsAnOption very quickly goes from "do not let that little freak near me" to "I am going to knit it a little hat so we can match" regarding the goblins.

And Mercenary Knight goes from highly sarcastic use of "wife" to refer to the princess with much eyerolling, to "if you do not use my lovely bride's full titles and honorifics when speaking to her, I will present your offal to her as a courtship gift."

[pitchingintothevoid]

My new pitch for merch for the city of Houston, TX -

"WELCOME TO HOUSTON.

WE HAVE PROBLEMS."

[pitchingintothevoid]

I realized I didn't share this here yet. Making goof-ass collages to make my friends laugh is the entire reason I pay for Canva.

[pitchingintothevoid]

Imaginary business idea: rentable mechanical velociraptor.

Transported via themed vehicle, which will tow a small enclosed cargo trailer which has been clad/skinned to resemble the raptor transport cage.

Way more exciting than a mechanical bull!

[pitchingintothevoid]

Based on the popular trending horror tropes of fear of nuclear accidents, fear of spooky forests, and fear of "weird deer" that seems super popular with horror stuff.

Rudov the Rad-Nosed Reindeer - Soviet Christmas Experiment Gone Wrong.

Soviets created an intercontinental present delivery system to send the gift of communism all over the world in one night, but after the fall of the iron curtain, the experimental super-reindeer were abandoned...

(https://www.newsweek.com/cannibal-ants-soviet-nuclear-bunker-1469573)

With the Council of Claus preoccupied with the pressing Gävle Defense Readiness preparations, there is little focus on the unconfirmed reports of strange yule harbingers. Investigation and containment is left to one team of North Pole Peace Keepers, but after their transport goes down in a mysterious fog, their fight for survival is no reindeer game.

Rankin/Bass-style stop-motion animation. If you like: Predator (1987), Violent Night (2022), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)