Where All Ladders Start @shiftofgallifrey - Tumblr Blog

Thinking about doctor who and contorting myself into shapes unknown to science

i know this is tumblr and we’re all playing perverts but i just think some of you would be excellent company for a late night walk and a four hour conversation about absolutely nothing

hellenhighwater

Something just occurred to me in the category of "experiences I feel are universal but are probably not." So here's a poll!

Have you ever been tent camping?

Yes, but not since I was a child

Yes, I have camped in a tent as an adult (possibly also as a child)

No, I have never gone camping in a tent.

Remaining time: 5 days 21 hours

We're including any kind of tent, but not RVs, campers, or cabins. Open-air camping (with no tent) or with tarp tents counts as tent camping for purposes of this question.

#yeah but a few years ago we switched to hammocks because I was less tolerant of sharing a space #and they’re more comfortable and lighter to carry #I’ve also slept in shelters I made myself

approximateknowledge

once you learn enough about evolutionary biology you start seeing ghosts everywhere

approximateknowledge

after the end cretaceous extinction event, basically all megafaunal niches were suddenly empty; and most got filled in some way. proboscideans instead of sauropods, carnivorans instead of theropods, ungulates instead of ceratopsians and hadrosaurs etc...

but the thing is: only *most* got filled to some extent

not all

because there used to be dragons

and now their niche is just *empty*

it's like i can feel the gap they left, in everything from open grassland ecosystems to isolated islands; the world we know is shaped by the absence of a truly big flying predator

no bird could ever fill their niche, because of plain and simple anatomical constraints

because they cannot use their wings to jump

birds could never be azdarchids

they could never be dragons

there are no more dragons

but there used to be

there used to be...

astronicht

Look the Tolkien elves are primarily Norse-Scandinavian but pull extremely heavily from early medieval vernacular Irish stories and especially the immram genre (ppl argue that this in turn could be derived from earlier sea journey epics like the Odyssey; that doesn’t matter). Assuming a basis in medieval texts, that the elves can sail to the Isle of Joy Valinor but everyone else would loop around to the east coast of middle earth should not be because to elves the world is flat. I would argue that this was a misunderstanding of Tolkien except I think Tolkien also believed and was troubled by this (elf flat earth). The thing is, the elves aren’t sailing on a flat earth because the ocean they’re on likely does not have its seabed on the earth. They’re doing something weirder, because they’re mimicking Irish and Old English stories about a universe in which the earth floats (earth usually given no shape, though a few ppl refer to it as a sphere) in a near-endless sea. It does have a seafloor but one totally disconnected from and much larger than the earth. They’re in a cosmic bath.

I’m on the train but iirc see: Bisagni, “Where Does the Sun Go At Night” for the Irish stuff. John Carey also but PSA he gets a bit speculative. If you know the voyage of st Brendan, there are some earlier stories too like that. Sailing to a heavenly island to the west is a standard Irish trope.

catasters

chrisdoesart24

You receive a postcard.

Also alt version without the text under the cut

spaceshipsandpurpledrank

unheardoracle

I love characters who are like "I'm a terrible person" but when you look closer it's more like

"I adapted to survive something and now I don't know how to stop being that version of myself."

#romana #narvin #even leela later on

the-evil-skull

Romana: I'm going to become dictator of Gallifrey

K9: Mistress?...

Romana: Braxiatel left and he was 80% of my impulse control

gotyouanyway

also deeply charmed by leela going “no romana doesn’t need therapy she needs me, her friend, to help her through this” because it’s true their love for each other will save them both but it’s also insane because romana definitely needs therapy too and swiftly

triviallytrue

Can't tell you how frequently I encounter posts on here for people with entirely opposite issues to me

weevil-mastermind

#‘your art is good just because you made it’ okay first of all I don’t have self esteem issues. second that’s not true #everyone tells me which parts are good I want to hear which parts are bad

regicidal-defenestration

This Be The Verse - Philip Larkin

…

#my library got drew hayden taylor to give a talk a few weeks ago and I MISSED it #aghhh #only twenty dollars too

eilooxara

Oat milk was discovered much more recently than you may have known. Like many now-familiar technologies, it was found by accident during the Apollo program when NASA learned what a zero-g environment does to goat milk.