Callmesalticidae

Worldbuilding Resources, Fiction Commissions, etc.

[txttletale]

mtg's the hobbit set is fucking hysterical because as it turns out there are not enough things in one very short book to make even a small magic set and so they are literally having to make cards of every ranbdom sentence that was said in the book just to fill slots

[something-soup-something]

wouldn’t the Lord of the rings work better in that case?

[txttletale]

ah, well, you see, they already made a Lord of the Rings set in 2023. it was a huge success and so they decided that clearly iut needed a sequel, and what better to form a sequel adaptation of comparable scope than the hobbit, something which has never gone wrong before,

[nonevahed]

#“what if we just adapted the Silmarillion instead” challenge impossible to pass for literally everyone

Issue is that Christopher Tolkien was unhappy about the Lord of the Rings movies and as such was very protective over the Silmarillion and Lost Tales, even if the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings IPs had flown the coop.

[centrally-unplanned]

My memory here is foggy - was that the barrier for the Rings of Power series? They have that insane "adapting the appendixes" thing going on, was that because the Tolkien estate just refused to play ball? I would believe it ofc - I am also curious if anyone was really trying, or if they viewed the Silmarillion as essentially "unfilmable".

[gcu-sovereign]

I had heard Christopher Tolkien didn't approve of the initial trilogy, but I can't recall anyone discussing his reasons. Hobbit, I understand for the reasons provided by OP

[centrally-unplanned]

I do imagine for Christopher, beyond the fact that the movies are just a very big shift from the books, it was pretty frustrating that Tolkien himself had sold the rights in 1969 for a relative pittance as a result of some deeply unfair IP circumstances in the US. They had dubious control over the New Line Cinema films, and they fought that big lawsuit over revenue shares in the 2000's. Probably just soured them on the whole enterprise and made them a lot more skittish on ceding any authority.

But Christopher Tolkien has passed away now, and in the end they did make a huge stack of money from all of this. I wonder if they are thinking of actively shopping around for The Silmarillion. Ofc, the Rings of Power complicates the whole picture. It hasn't been a big success, and has crowded the market. But on the flip side it is an opportunity for a "faithful" adaptation branding strategy play...

[centrally-unplanned]

Poking around, while it isn't anything substantial, it does seem like the above dynamic is playing out and there are Silmarillion adaptation rights being discussed. I wouldn't have Peter Jackson direct them myself; he seems a bit stuck aesthetically on the whole universe, you wouldn't want a rehashed vision for something so distinct. Fine as a producer ofc, and his involvement would probably be necessary to put all the pieces together.

[wmb-salticidae]

They should give it the framing device that this is being told by some dude in the Fourth Age, so any inconsistencies with the text as assembled by Christopher Tolkien are just the product of this dude making shit up or getting shit wrong.

(In the second season we find out that there are other people recording other versions of these stories: Every scrap of every version of The Silmarillion that Tolkien ever wrote is "canon," in the sense that all these contradictory fragments were placed together and bound, with everything else, in the Red Book of Westmarch.)

[wmb-salticidae]

I am reading There is Nothing to Fear and I have a question : In that fic, Lily has every reason to join the death eaters with their propaganda for equality and all. With her bond with Petunia fading, she could be a prime target for radicalisation. And yet.....she chose to fight them. Why? (I remember you saying that Lily saw the parallels between rhetoric by muggle revolutionaries and Riddle but.....i don't think that a working class girl would have access to that history. Also.....people didn't knew about Soviets' brutality till 1991, did they? (Genuine question))

Another question : If canon Tom and this version Tom were in Hogwarts growing up (or maybe twin brothers).....how do you think the fate of the wizarding Britain could have gone? Like not individual duel but proper canon vs There is Nothing to Fear from politicking to terrorism....... would Dumbledore ally with one brother to defeat the other?

James' role in the series is quite small when you look at the bigger picture. But I still like his story. I don't know if you know about Jeverus ship but I ship There is Nothing to Fear James x Canon Severus........I feel there is so much you could do with that dynamic. Your thoughts? (Canon Severus x There is Nothing to Fear James)

(also will we see Dmitry again (real Dmitry)? IDK why but I have grown fond of him for some reason.......)

I also wonder what if James survived and Lily and Severus had a child? Would he run towards Drumstrang to raise the said child? Or would he look for some other school? Would the child take path of Harry and try to assassinate Riddle? How would Sirius react to the fact that James survived, that Riddle lied to him, he tortured Bellatrix for nothing. (Pretty sure that he would be betrayed by the fact that James chose Snivellus' child over him). Or instead of running away, James would try to negotiate a place for himself in Riddle's Britain?

Ahh. I love this fic and how clever and brilliant it is. I don't always understand the world building (especially regarding spells and duels) but I enjoy it all the same.....

ah geeze, so much for "I'll definitely answer this tomorrow" (x,,x)

I have only recently returned to the land of the living, and there are a number of questions here, so I'm going to chunk this up and answer subsequent questions in replies, maybe every day or two.

In that fic, Lily has every reason to join the death eaters with their propaganda for equality and all. With her bond with Petunia fading, she could be a prime target for radicalisation. And yet…..she chose to fight them. Why? (I remember you saying that Lily saw the parallels between rhetoric by muggle revolutionaries and Riddle but…..i don't think that a working class girl would have access to that history. Also…..people didn't knew about Soviets' brutality till 1991, did they?

Lily is pretty well-situated, as it happens. Setting aside historical stuff (e.g. Orwell's writings on Stalin, Khrushchev's "Secret Speech"), the term "tankie" (referring to pro-Soviet Communists) comes from the suppression of public demonstrations and political reforms with, well, tanks. The Prague Spring was in 1968, just a few years before Lily would have entered Hogwarts, and was world news.

She probably wouldn't be familiar with e.g. Holodomor, but Lily would still have reasons to think that Wizarding Stalinists could be bad news. (And remember that Petunia's not the only Muggle that Lily knows or cares about.)

[elliespectacular]

Happy 24-6-01!

[notlikingbestgirl]

Out of Touch

[hustlerose]

Out of Touch Thursday

[arbyscurlyfries666-deactivated2]

OUT OF TOUCH THURSDAY

[snuv]

but im out of my head when you’re not around…

[rockmilkshake]

happy birthday.

[saltwatersweets]

this is the only out of touch thursday you can reblog this

[dirtbaby2016]

[teratocybernetics]

Oh, Schlitz: How a Historic Ad Campaign Helped Kill America’s Biggest Beer Brand

For more on Schlitz’s infamous 1977 ad campaign, tune in to the Taplines Podcast episode: Schlitz’s Epic Self-Inflicted Downfall. Throughout

sure why not

[psshaw]

Important to note that the ad never literally said “drink Schlitz or I’ll kill you”. A mountain man just told his pet cougar to eat a competing beer representative.

[wmb-salticidae]

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Milwaukee-based Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company held the gold crown as America’s largest brewer. Its flagship beer, Schlitz, known as “the beer that made Milwaukee famous,” was a beloved and iconic American-style lager. Then a series of business decisions, including a disastrous ad campaign, dubbed the “Drink Schlitz or I’ll kill you” campaign, precipitated the downfall of America’s biggest beer brand. It became known as the “Schlitz mistake.” [...] It was weird. The ads were an immediate failure, leaving viewers uneasy and wondering if they had just been threatened by their favorite (or formerly favorite) beer brand. Ten weeks after they first aired, Schlitz pulled the commercials off the air and fired their ad men.

"Oh, Schlitz: How a Historic Ad Campaign Helped Kill America’s Biggest Beer Brand," Ashlie Hughes

[snugglesquiggle]

cooked up a lil magic system and presented in one of those "spent $15 on your build" choice formats. only i added too many options so it's more like spent $20

anyway read it and tell me what sort of evil snake wizard you choose to become

You are a snake wizard and you’ve got $20 to buy the power to devour the world. Choose wisely.

[wmb-salticidae]

Bitten $0

Swift Slither $2

Heat Vex $2 (You can sense… Your venom now…)

Dark Vex $4 (Shadows become an… You move at… Light itself trembles… When you consume…) – Do shades permanently die when illuminated, or simply require resurrection again?

Earth Vex $2 (You can burrow… You have become…)

Mercurial Venom $1, Hissing Speech $1, Absorptive Scales $3, Chimerical Venom $5.

Spooky darkness snake who eats people so that they, in itself, will live forever.

[afloweroutofstone]

Do you have any response to folks who say that the moon stuff is all propaganda and development for the military industrial complex and nobody should be hyped about it? I don’t necessarily think this, but I’ve seen this take going around.

As a certified hater of the military-industrial complex, my opinion is that I love NASA and I want to see our space exploration budget greatly increased.

I understand why some people are skeptical, because historically NASA and the military-industrial complex have been bound together by the aerospace industry and military R&D funds, and NASA would never have gotten off the ground in the first place without the Cold War as an excuse for new science spending. But NASA has a fundamentally civilian mission, their goals do not require any violence in our foreign policy, and they cooperate peacefully with other nations around the world (including some of our official "enemies" through stuff like space traffic management). The fact that they maintain close ties to the Air Force and Space Force doesn't change the fact that they serve a civilian mission, and they serve it well.

But the most important reason to be in favor of space exploration is not just that it's inspiring or an impressive achievement in itself. Public research spending at NASA has been behind some of the world's most important technological discoveries over the last century. Literally thousands of technological developments have come out of government-funded NASA research. If you wake up on a memory foam mattress in a fire-proof apartment building and make a breakfast smoothie using freeze-dried fruit, then you've just benefited from three NASA developments before you've even started your day. Every dollar we spend on NASA produces several dollars worth of useful technology that benefit all of us. This is the kind of public sector innovation that keeps the world running.

In my ideal world, we increase NASA's budget alongside cuts to the DOD and the rest of the security state; reduce our over-reliance on private contractors (which Artemis II is a great example of!); repeal the Wolf Amendment blocking direct cooperation with China; and call for the eventual creation of an International Lunar Base, inviting both the original ISS nations and the other space powers that have emerged since then (Australia, Brazil, China, India, South Korea, etc.)

[radiobarf]

An Artemis plush being in the NASA Mission Control Room during Artemis II's journey is the sweetest thing and it makes me very weepy 💖

[charlesoberonn]

I think the Pope is about 500 years too late to excommunicate the King of England.

Not that it matters because this "breaking news" is entirely made up. Leo and Charles have no beef

[gaul-the-unmitigated]

You can't excommunicate an Anglican King but you can excommunicate a catholic vice president.

[charlesoberonn]

Trump would declare a "Church of America" if that happened, and try to revoke Pope Leo's citizenship.

[the-grey-tribe]

Honestly he has no business having any citizenship except Vatican as its head of state. That goes for every nation and every pope. It's not a high priority to enforce it, and popes usually don't do things with their citizenship, so it's moot. But in principle...

[centrally-unplanned]

Bro don't undermine the Dems in 2028 like this, we need him :(

[argumate]

could they nominate the pope for president? serious question

[centrally-unplanned]

I don't think it is settled law, but a traditional read of the Enoluments Clause would prevent anyone who holds a foreign office from becoming president. However, as others noted, recent judicial precedent may have rendered the Enoluments Clause non-functional - it is unclear who, if anyone, would actually have standing to challenge the President on these grounds, or if Presidential Immunity would shield them from such cases. It hasn't been litigated but it could go either way.

Additionally, the Enoluments Clause actually allows a simple majority of Congress to waive it. So if the Pope won the election and also won Congress, they could just go "too bad don't care" to the clause.

However, what *could* stop the Pope is that the President does in fact have to be a US resident, and have been so for 14 years before. I think the Pope isn't a US resident anymore? But he has time to fix that ofc, and the 14 years requirement doesn't need to be consecutive years.

Authentically if he tried and the stars aligned I do think a Pope could become president.

[wmb-salticidae]

Pope Leo v J D Vance would be the most beautiful 2028 match up.

[byjove]

I do not agree with veganism as a moral standard. If it is your personal moral stance, that is fine. If you think humans eating meat is inherently immoral, I don’t want to deal with you, you’re hopeless. Vegan ideology behaves more like a sect of evangelical Christianity than a dietary choice.

[literallycrashingoutrn]

Veganism is better for the environment, but claiming that it's a morally superior choice ignores cultural and economic factors that make people eat animal products.

[byjove]

It is not inherently better for the environment. That is the thing. When you begin trying to explain that local, sustainably sourced animal protein is better for the environment than imported plant proteins that are farmed 3,500 miles away using slave labor, they start tuning you out. Down is better for the environment than polyester stuffing, leather is better for the environment than pleather. We should work on making animal agricultural practices more sustainable instead of trying to shame everyone into eating plant products that are also farmed unethically and unsustainably.

[wmb-salticidae]

"Personal moral stance" is an incoherent concept to me.

I do not drink alcohol. This is because there are many alcoholics in my family, and alcoholism has a genetic component. I do not judge other people for fact that they drink alcohol.

But none of that means that "I do not drink alcohol" is a "personal moral stance," because I don't have one set of moral standards for myself and another set for other people (or rather, insofar as I do, I am a hypocrite and you are right to criticize me for it).

If you can't apply it to other people, then that's not a moral standard, that's just a vibe.

[clonerightsagenda]

You too can be a Hugo-nominated author if you have friends with ballot access who want to do you a thoroughly undeserved solid

[isaacsapphire]

I thought that’s just how the Hugos and tbh all media awards worked.

[bambamramfan]

The point of artistic awards is not to be a correct selection of the best work in a narrow range each year. Who cares whether Sinners or OBAA is the “best?”

The point of awards is to be there when a once-in-a-however-long work of genuine power breaks through the social games and someone needs announce as much. It’s not like an Everything Everywhere or Three Body Problem is gonna come out every year. In those fallow years it’s just gonna be chum to the sharks.

So, what does this make presidential elections?

[wmb-salticidae]

okay but Three Body Problem is terrible

[funstyle]

Im always like "i will not add my two cents. i will not add my two cents" but i cant lie the pennies are getting sweaty in my hand

[cryptotheism]

YOU'RE THE HYPNOECONOMICS WRITER???

Yup

[bambamramfan]

I think this is the most interesting comment I have ever gotten on anything I've written.

I'm at least flattered they liked the original blog.

But look at the actual claim, or rather, what it implies.

Back in 2017 I was something akin to crazy and wrote a series of half readable posts about Lovecraftian-chaos-gods, good enough that people still like them.

It never would have occurred to me then that THIS will not only be remembered fondly, but as the prelapsarian age I will have fallen from.

Now in 2026, you could accuse me of acting crazy and over the top about AI. Not for its financial potential, but because "whether we can make AI" is the most important question since "does God exist?"

And if you were put off by that sort of mania, fair enough.

But it's 2026 and that's not the party line about AI. AI is all about selling out, about letting human ideas be ground into "undifferentiated pulp," don't you know.

So you have to take the position that uh, checks notes, a ten page thesis about Jewish mysticism with a chant about the clay never stopping, is too assimilated normie-core.

When what's actually happened, is that I was a (metaphorical) believer in 2017 and actually acted like it then, with a sort of mad religious fervor, and 9 years later I'm a (metaphorical) believer in something else and actually act like it now. With the requisite sort of mad religious fervor.

And some people are lounging in their seats yelling "play the old stuff!"

[wmb-salticidae]

And some people are lounging in their seats yelling "play the old stuff!"

I haven't posted on 4chan for a long time, so I can't really speak for Anonymous or what they meant, but for me and my house, I'd rather read any three random posts from Prequels Redeemed (and there are some real duds in there) than your favorite post that you generated with AI.

If I just wanted Maximally Good Posts then I'd just skip ahead to trying to wirehead myself, but at the end of the day what I'm looking for is relationships with people. You told Anonymous that you write for yourself, which is cool if it works for you, but I wouldn't write if nobody read what I wrote, and I'm not sure I would read very much if I learned that I was the only conscious mind in a sea of zombies.

I don't want you to just play the old stuff. But I do worry that you're going to stop playing anything at all, because from the outside, from my perspective, it feels like you went from "feeling insecure about the quality of AI writing" to "generating a bunch of AI stuff" in the space of a couple of months. It's, idk, it makes me think of KM, a little bit, in terms of sudden and fierce the change has been.

[bambamramfan]

And some people are lounging in their seats yelling "play the old stuff!"

yeah, I didn't mean anyone who has an opinion on my quality is a nostalgic boomer. I was only surprised at the people who think this is "undifferentiated pulp" when it writes a 180 word sentence about universalism. And it was an easy shot to take. My laziness.

But like, movie reviews? Look at this review it made yesterday about Super Mario Galaxy (SMG). I don't know what you or others think of Prequels Redeemed, but to me *this is better* than any review I've written in years. And I can't in pride write another knowing I am ignoring better ones.

Maybe I don't see the quality difference only because because I get to read the AI ones as an audience now, but I doubt it. (Though that is a feature for me.)

I think the thing that unites all of my writing is looking for "encounters with the Real" and disdain for people who avoid that. People who just read the culture war about a movie and don't seriously watch the thing itself, I mock. People who say interesting things that show they engaged with it, I love even when they disagree with me.

The relationships thing is a good point, even if it doesn't apply to me. And I took that advice seriously when you gave it. But when does a found document, that is so good it alters your worldview, become the thing that reflects who you are better than you'd say yourself? Cuz the missing grammar of proportionality is that thing to me. When is it cowardice to pretend it doesn't exist because people don't want to hear it?

[wmb-salticidae]

I don't know what you or others think of Prequels Redeemed, but to me this is better than any review I've written in years. And I can't in pride write another knowing I am ignoring better ones.

So, this is where I'm kind of like, oh my god, you're cooked. Because that Mario article is shit.

Or more objectively, I really dislike it, so you and I must value different things about the writing. But last night, to check my "three random posts" statement before I said it, I read three random posts. The second was "There is another.", which is an absolute banger in comparison, and pretty good on its own merits. I mean, the Mario article was a genuine slog to get through, like wading through knee-high mud in a Great War trench, but I read and re-read the Star Wars article, and re-re-read it, last night. The missing grammar of proportionality article was better, but still not nearly as good to me.

Again, you're the authority on your own taste in things, so I can't, and don't want to say, that the Mario article is just fundamentally terrible, but there is apparently something that Bambamramfan could do better ten years ago than Claude can do today.

(Normally, I wouldn't do this, but under the circumstances I think you would appreciate it: twelve times, I asked Claude to compare the Mario and SW articles and tell me which was better, and what it meant by "better," switching between Haiku, Sonnet and Opus, between my work account and my personal unpaid account, and between my default personal instructions and no personal instructions. 11 out of 12 Claudes agree: the Star Wars article was better. Once more, I acknowledge that this isn't an objective measuring stick, but I hope that it at least confirms that there is something happening in one article that is not in the other, and I'm not just bringing anti-LLM bias to the judgment seat)

[bambamramfan]

I think this is the most interesting comment I have ever gotten on anything I've written.

I'm at least flattered they liked the original blog.

But look at the actual claim, or rather, what it implies.

Back in 2017 I was something akin to crazy and wrote a series of half readable posts about Lovecraftian-chaos-gods, good enough that people still like them.

It never would have occurred to me then that THIS will not only be remembered fondly, but as the prelapsarian age I will have fallen from.

Now in 2026, you could accuse me of acting crazy and over the top about AI. Not for its financial potential, but because "whether we can make AI" is the most important question since "does God exist?"

And if you were put off by that sort of mania, fair enough.

But it's 2026 and that's not the party line about AI. AI is all about selling out, about letting human ideas be ground into "undifferentiated pulp," don't you know.

So you have to take the position that uh, checks notes, a ten page thesis about Jewish mysticism with a chant about the clay never stopping, is too assimilated normie-core.

When what's actually happened, is that I was a (metaphorical) believer in 2017 and actually acted like it then, with a sort of mad religious fervor, and 9 years later I'm a (metaphorical) believer in something else and actually act like it now. With the requisite sort of mad religious fervor.

And some people are lounging in their seats yelling "play the old stuff!"

[wmb-salticidae]

And some people are lounging in their seats yelling "play the old stuff!"

I haven't posted on 4chan for a long time, so I can't really speak for Anonymous or what they meant, but for me and my house, I'd rather read any three random posts from Prequels Redeemed (and there are some real duds in there) than your favorite post that you generated with AI.

If I just wanted Maximally Good Posts then I'd just skip ahead to trying to wirehead myself, but at the end of the day what I'm looking for is relationships with people. You told Anonymous that you write for yourself, which is cool if it works for you, but I wouldn't write if nobody read what I wrote, and I'm not sure I would read very much if I learned that I was the only conscious mind in a sea of zombies.

I don't want you to just play the old stuff. But I do worry that you're going to stop playing anything at all, because from the outside, from my perspective, it feels like you went from "feeling insecure about the quality of AI writing" to "generating a bunch of AI stuff" in the space of a couple of months. It's, idk, it makes me think of KM, a little bit, in terms of sudden and fierce the change has been.

[cyan-renegade]

Today, the Artemis II crew is further away from earth than any human has ever been before! Here's a silly lotr meme to celebrate this milestone :)

[bambamramfan]

In defense of being wildly out of touch

At least I know I’m a huge weirdo.

Most of the people I know personally who I’ve asked about it significantly underestimate the share of Americans who agree that “It is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking.” But beyond that, even those who know that pro-spanking is fairly widespread and may have grown up in spanking households or communities tend to assume there’s an age gradient. The spankers they know are old, and the younger parents they know are non-spankers. But this isn’t really what’s going on. In General Social Survey data, senior citizens are the most spanking-skeptical and contemporary parents are if anything more enthusiastic about physical discipline. I don’t have any great insight into this either. What I do have is the insight that my whole life has been kind of weird, and that there is usually survey data available if you want to find out what people think about stuff. I first looked this one up years ago, found that other people were surprised by the results, and have always remembered it since. The key thing, though, is that I looked it up.

[wmb-salticidae]

senior citizens are the most spanking-skeptical and contemporary parents are if anything more enthusiastic about physical discipline.

I wonder how much of this is down to something like, "It's easier to realize, 'Maybe I shouldn't hit a child,' when you don't have to deal with that child every day."

# spanking is definitely wrong though

The shockingly controversial position that it is wrong to physically strike another human being because they didn't listen to your rules.