It's not a dog. It's some sort of thing.

[targetedknowledge]

[elodieunderglass]

Bear, aged 9, had an assignment in school.

“Inspired by The Hobbit or other books containing maps, create a map that could support a story. Include obstacles, geographical features labelled in cursive, and conflict relating to people or place”

Bear dreamily produced a map and proceeded to think of something else, until time was called and the children were told to present their maps to each other, justify, and grade them on the criteria. Flicking quickly through the criteria, Bear realised they’d forgotten to add any conflict.

So Bear improvised. The Goblin Kingdom and the Territorial Giants dislike each other heartily, but are thankfully separated by a mountain range, limiting their ability to be offended or aggressive.

In the mountain range is a cave network inhabited by a furtive and unpleasant (family? Species? Political affiliation?) of gollums, with one Gollum per cave.

The policy of the Goblins and Giants are to pay the gollums to prevent each other from crossing the mountains. The gollums do this effectively and it is a known barrier. In addition to not wanting to tangle with the Gollums by crossing, the factions do not want to offend them, as then the Gollums won’t block the other faction.

However, the factions cannot resist provoking each other, and so they pay the Gollums an even larger retainer to receive, remember and pass on verbal abuse aimed at the other side.

Thus, when you march up the mountain to visit the Gollums, you will be met with a delivery of abusive verbal messages from the other faction. You pay the Gollums and leave your own abusive messages to the other faction. You may not copy the content of any messages or cheat by asking the Gollum to repeat them to the other side; you have to accept your verbal messages and produce new ones. but that’s okay, as the malicious pleasure of creating your own is half the reason the factions are in conflict. If you’re drawing a blank, you can commission a gollum to simply hurl verbal abuse, but it isn’t as good.

Bear’s partner heard them out and ticked the criteria. Bear immediately forgot it, until I asked politely about their map, and their expression went totally blank, and they said “Mummy! I made all that up!”

I love that this is their idea of conflict, though.

[elodieunderglass]

Thinking about it further, it really is a good example of how exploring a fucked-up situation makes an interesting story.

You wonder how this was set up, politically.

You wonder if individual members of warring factions, in the process of leaving messages, have ever fallen in love.

Or if they’ve fallen in love with a Gollum.

What do the Gollums do with all the money?

How do the Gollums repel invasions so effectively?

What goes into the construction of a really good hatemail?

Does trade also happen across the barrier? Do the Gollums run a black market on the side?

Bear envisions the goblins as being gleefully quarrelsome and enjoying it. They pictured ‘giants’ as being only slightly larger than ordinary people, territorial, slow-moving and quite shy, which in addition to reminding me a bit of Diana Wynne Jones’ The Power of Three makes me wonder what this quietly obscure strand of humanity has within itself that is so continuously provoked by the goblins.

Because I do wonder what KIND of insults they trade, and why it’s so compelling to continue over long years of conflict. I expect the giants just don’t want to let the goblins have the last word.

The City of Wizards right spang in the middle of the mountain range is the only pass across the mountains accessible to everyone else, so I do wonder what the heck they think of it.

It’s just interesting to show how you can start asking questions and build a little story out of a throwaway conflict

[stahsm]

Overlock Stitch by @clothes_reetzy

[thatisuseful]

Damn, that's useful

[weonsinnombre]

[shieldfoss]

oH RIGHT This was before LotR pioneered cgi for massed crowd behavior

There was so much cool cgi in those movies I just assumed all the clones were too but back then I guess they still couldn’t really be

[chilewithcarnage]

this is so sexy

[luckyladylily]

I wonder what happened to all the agent smith masks

[roomtemperaturesuperconductor]

I can actually answer this! So the latex/rubber they used, while standard for Hollywood at the time, reacted REALLY BADLY to being doused in pouring water nonstop for an entire day of shooting. They ended up corroding, which caused them to stink really badly and glob together at the seams. The original plan was to hand out masks to various crew members on the final day of shooting as souvenirs, but the sopping wet, melting, rotting rubber got so gross that by the end of that shooting day they’d already thrown most of them out. Somewhere in a landfill are hundreds of disgusting, bloated, slimey Hugo weaving heads fused together into a nightmarish rotting amalgam :)

[roach-works]

it’s what he would have wanted

[sunshinetomorrow]

hey there, you've arrived at a Tumblr checkpoint!

are you thirty? have a sip!

are you hungry? have a spack!

have you been snitting in the sale proclation? mack your tabbers!.

are you stick? purt your indies!

do you need to prot a buntle? go! now!

are you tired? break your togs!

do a quick snat of your vitals. are you fond? do you need to reduct your plandles? if you have a trick, tog it. if you need to sitch, go so.

are you grod or too trinking? if you need to break off a grint or mend the bontle, go to that now!

I hope this helps! and I hope your tunderfal day :-)

[ampervadasz]

[thecatalogues]

Kitty!... long leg kitty!.. uh, creechur?... OUPPY

[slavetomyheadcanon]

I WAS NOT FUCKING PREPARED

[ablndfsh]

teeheehee

[purplelilies]

"that’s not actually Crown’s boyfriend, Nona, it’s her sister, but I don’t think anyone could blame you for getting confused" is a wild line and it's describes their whole t h i n g with terrifying accuracy but the best part is how everything becomes even worse after

[parkayquarts]

hbo max blocks screenshots even when I use the snipping tool AND firefox AND ublock which is a fucking first. i will never understand streaming services blocking the ability to take screenshots thats literally free advertising for your show right there. HOW THE HELL IS SOMEBODY GONNA PIRATE YOUR SHOW THROUGH SCREENSHOTS. JACKASS

[parkayquarts]

somewhere out there is a guy who meticulously takes screenshots of every individual frame of his favorite tv shows and then painstakingly etches each one onto a roll of film which he puts into his old timey projector and recreates the footage as a silent film with his own lavishly hand-lettered dialogue cards and original score that he plays on his upright piano and charges audiences one shiny penny a play. at last, big media has finally outsmarted ol' Zachary Zoetrope

[theheroheart]

PSA for everyone who doesn't know, explained simply

this is NOT because of blocking screenshots, it's because of HOW streaming sites use your computer's hardware to optimise performance, which means the thing rendering the video and the thing capturing your screen aren't the SAME thing. so they can't talk together.

you can fix this by going to your browser settings, searching for "hardware acceleration", and turning that off.

[team-thickness12]

This also fixes screen sharing to other screens. It has been GODSEND

[lucarleigho]

type this in the toolbar to find this setting in firefox: about:preferences#searchResults

[mctreeleth]

ol' Zachary Zoetrope is back in business!

[thatneoncrisis]

69ers but..... their keys

[runasulienadanika]

reading Gideon the Ninth made me realise that there are so few women characters that are funny Like That. it's literally always a man :(

[depsidase]

[frebirb]

@elodieunderglass

[elodieunderglass]

Oh my goodness, this is really rare, it’s one I’ve never seen! 

[stuttercut]

The way I first saw this as flipping double birds

[megacarapa]

ok so this is another long shot but a few years ago there was a twitter post (in japanese i think?) that had measurememts for how to make this book stand thing out of cardboard that you could use to double up books and use up more space on shelves

back then i made a bunch of these but by now i lost the pic and dont know how to find the original post anymore

if it comes down to it i can just take one apart and get the measurements from there but i would be very grateful if anyone happens to have the original post or something similar??

[megacarapa]

don't mind how long it's been since i made this post, anyway i realized that i don't even need to take one apart to get the measurements when i can literally just unfold it and refold it /FACEPALM

so anyway here is the diagram for anyone else who is interested!!

this requires pretty big carboard pieces, if you have a really big box or something you can make it from one piece, but if you don't, you can also just make each of the pieces individually and then tape them together

and then in the end you put it together like this!!

and then when you make a bunch you can put them all next to each other and stack your books like crazy

EVERYONE START GETTING MORE USE OUT OF YOUR SPACE NOW!!!!

[goth-queen]

[anka-dm]

My illustrations the most based poem about tigers by Nael, age 6

Every time I read it I feel space inside my chest expand in very *emotion* way.

[importantpics]

[thebutchtomb]

Gideon and Harrow

[devinellekurtz]

My very first tiger drawing and my latest

[formaldehydedoesstuff]

Your skill level is unquestionable but listen.

I love him.

[toasthaste-art]

me also. as well.

[devinellekurtz]

This is the COOLEST thing I’ve seen in AGES. You both completely made my entire week.

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

i was watching a video about how regional cheeses are made around the world, and was shown a type of mozzarella called zizzona (the z/zz pronounced like the 'zz' in 'pizza', with a 'tz' sound), which, yes, means "mother's breast".

so rest easy tonight knowing they have titty cheese in italy.

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

they also make special GIANT 66lb zizzona

so rest easy tonight knowing they have hummina hummina aWOOGAH iyiyiyiyi GAZONGA cheese in italy