The fun thing about smutty fanfic is that kinks are weird and nonsensical and often impossible to predict based on someone’s public-facing persona, so most of the time it’s basically impossible to be out of character. Is Batman into petplay? Does Hans from Frozen get off on being beaten with sacks of oranges? Go for it - it’d make as much sense as anything else!
Batman fights crime in a borderline-daddy leather fursuit with only his eyes and mouth visible and you’re wondering if he might be into weird shit.
To be fair, Batman lives in a world where that sort of thing seems to be regarded as normal.
Are you implying that Batman’s outrageous kink would be vanilla sex?
Well, kinks are defined in relation to societal norms.
sometimes you fight, not because you think you can win, but because you need to be able to look back later and say, “i fought.”
“In King Lear (III:vii) there is a man who is such a minor
character that Shakespeare has not given him even a name: he is merely
“First Servant.” All the characters around him – Regan, Cornwall, and
Edmund – have fine long-term plans. They think they know how the story
is going to end, and they are quite wrong. The servant has no such
delusions. He has no notion of how the play is going to go. But he
understands the present scene. He sees an abomination (the blinding of
old Gloucester) taking place. He will not stand it.
His sword is out and pointed at his master’s breast in a
moment: then Regan stabs him dead from behind. That is his whole part:
eight lines all told. But if it were real life and not a play, that is
the part it would be best to have acted.”
– C.S. Lewis, “The World’s Last Night”
So Stanford professor Ken Taylor has a whole lecture on this in Hamlet, and the role of defiant resignation (citing Kierkegaard’s concept of resignation) where you are urged to act despite understanding that it won’t change anything, simply to demonstrate your dissatisfaction with the world as it stands, and your belief in what it should be. But Steve demonstrates a lot of this.
When nothing you do matters, all that matters is what you do.
Prince Geoffrey: My you chivalric fool… as if the way one fell down mattered.
Prince Richard: When the fall is all there is, it matters a great deal.
there’s a lot of evidence that the iliad and the odyssey were actually composed by a variety of poets through an oral tradition rather than just by one poet, so what if the homeric texts are actually just a very long game of D&D
homer, the dm: okay achilles, agamemnon has just taken away your war prize, what do you want to do achilles’ player: i roll to have a diplomatic conversation with agamemnon achilles’ player: *rolls a 1* homer: you throw the staff of speaking at agamemnon’s face and storm off to sulk with your boyfriend
Homer, the DM: Your beautiful Patroclus is dead. What do you do? Achilles’ player: I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: You can’t fight everyone. How would you even– Achilles’ player: *rolls a 20* I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: *sighs* Fine. You cut a path through the Trojan army, enemy dead strewn in your wake. Achilles’ player: How many? Homer, the DM: …lots. Enough to clog the friggin’ river with bodies. Achilles’ player: I fight the river. Homer, the DM: You. can. not. fight. the. river. Achilles’ player: *reaches for dice*
Homer, the DM: Okay guys, so the war’s over, you had a bunch of losses but you won in the end. Time to go home, let’s roll to see who gets there firs—
Odysseus’s player: I got a critical failure.
Homer: The cyclops asks you who you are. What do you do?
Odysseus’s player: I say, “Who me? I’m nobody.”
Homer: Roll for deception.
Odysseus’s player: I got a natural 20.
Homer: The cyclops now completely believes that your name is Nobody. He shouts for help from the other cyclops but they ignore him because he’s telling them that “Nobody hurt him.”
@fairkid-forever this is the Aragorn/Arwen fic and it’s super short but DELIGHTFUL and also I might write a version because I am madly in love with it.
They were used to bleed patients, back when virtually every illness–mental and physical–was treated with bloodletting, purging, and blistering. It punctures the skin at many points and draws the blood like a syringe, so the doctors could measure how much blood they were taking. It was considered more scientific and more humane than a knife, a blood stick, or a real leech, which were also in use. They were used at Bethlehem Royal Hospital in the 1700s. They were, of course, medically useless, although no one knew that at the time.
There are pink starbursts on the inside of Thomas’s elbows. The scars trail up the vulnerable skin of his inner arms in perfectly even rows.
“You weren’t sick,” James grinds out, fingers digging into that tender skin.
Thomas looks utterly vacant for a moment, his breath slow and steady. “They believed they were helping me,” he says after a while.
It’s often been remarked that Spider-Man’s schtick wouldn’t work nearly so well if he didn’t live in a town with so many tall buildings, but consider: how well would Batman’s “I am the night” routine work if he was operating out of a normal city where people actually live, rather than a perpetually twilit urban hellscape that looks like the Art Deco movement had a one-night stand with Soviet Brutalism in a wrought-iron-and-gargoyle factory?
That is my favorite description of the Batman aesthetic ever.
OMDFG that’s a perfect description.
Imagine Spiderman ballooning in wide open areas. No, sorry, can’t get to that crime, its against the prevailing wind.
Also, Batman brooding on top of a Wafflehouse.
Batman: God, this stupid city with its sufficient lighting and lack of crumbling infrastructure to shoot grappling hooks into
Superman: Everyone for miles has lead poisoning, I’ve spent the entire night stopping crossword puzzle museum robberies and heists at the Second National Bank of Gotham on the corner of second street and second avenue, and earlier the wall of…clouds? smog?…cleared up for a minute and I’m pretty sure the sky was literally blood red
As an entry-level DnD player can someone explain to me in the simplest possible way how to differentiate wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers from each other?
wizards is imbued with magic, you just need to prepare mentally your spells.
sorcerer studied magic, you need to physically prepare your spells and often need materials.
warlock has magic because of demon, you have access to mainly dark magic as well as eldritch blast as a free unlimited cantrip.
to be honest, play-wise wizards & sorcerers are very similar as they tend to have a lot of shared spells. sorcerers get to specialize in a school of magic more than wizards though. and warlock its pretty much just dark magic.
this, except reverse wizards and sorcerers.
sorcerers innately have their magic (usually because someone fucked a magic being. often a dragon)
wizards studied magic and learned accordingly. they also tend to be older, but not always.
warlocks get their magic from pacts with magic beings (which i don’t think necessarily have to be demons).
Wizard: … I’m ninety, live in a tower, and read all day. where the fuck do you think? (Alternate answer: Basically radically experimental guerilla chemists)
Sorcerer/ess: Natural ability and a stupid amount of work!
Druid: The plants love me! I love the plants! Have you met my wife she is a shrub! T H E P L A N T S E M P O W E R M E
Cleric: I am a literal saint back the fuck off and do your job if you want heals.
Bard: IDK i was in a rap battle and the other guy literally caught fire so like…. yeah.
Reblogging again for the Druid, Cleric, and that bard line.
As an entry-level DnD player can someone explain to me in the simplest possible way how to differentiate wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers from each other?
wizards is imbued with magic, you just need to prepare mentally your spells.
sorcerer studied magic, you need to physically prepare your spells and often need materials.
warlock has magic because of demon, you have access to mainly dark magic as well as eldritch blast as a free unlimited cantrip.
to be honest, play-wise wizards & sorcerers are very similar as they tend to have a lot of shared spells. sorcerers get to specialize in a school of magic more than wizards though. and warlock its pretty much just dark magic.
this, except reverse wizards and sorcerers.
sorcerers innately have their magic (usually because someone fucked a magic being. often a dragon)
wizards studied magic and learned accordingly. they also tend to be older, but not always.
warlocks get their magic from pacts with magic beings (which i don’t think necessarily have to be demons).
Wizard: … I’m ninety, live in a tower, and read all day. where the fuck do you think? (Alternate answer: Basically radically experimental guerilla chemists)
Sorcerer/ess: Natural ability and a stupid amount of work!
Druid: The plants love me! I love the plants! Have you met my wife she is a shrub! T H E P L A N T S E M P O W E R M E
Cleric: I am a literal saint back the fuck off and do your job if you want heals.
Bard: IDK i was in a rap battle and the other guy literally caught fire so like…. yeah.
Reblogging again for the Druid, Cleric, and that bard line.
Actually you know what. Just don’t mow. Get rid of your lawnmower. Turn your whole yard into a wildflower field or an edible garden. Lawns are the invention of the upper class to show wealth through wasted plots of grass that is meticulously tended for no reason other than to be grass. It’s literally an empty plot of land they kept because they had so much money they didn’t need it to grow food. Not using a yard as just a yard is an act of rebellion.
One of the main industries still supporting lawns is chemical pest control companies, and they’re also responsible for the insecticides that crashed the bird populations in the 40s and 50s as well as a lot of what’s killing bees and butterflies now. The herbicides they produce specifically targets “bad” plants like dandelions, buttercups, and clovers, which are plants bees rely on for early spring feeding. Grass is just grass; it would be great for feeding small mammals if people would let it grow more than three inches, but they won’t.
So, yeah. Kill lawnmower culture. Plant some native flowers. Grow some vegetables and fruit trees. Put out bird feeders and bee sugar spots and homes for both. Be kind to bugs and birds and rabbits and opossums and whoever else might wander by. Make your neighborhood a lot more beautiful.
I can be evicted for not mowing, so my alternative is to tear out the grass (itself an invasive species planted by the owner) and replace it with low growing native ground covers. In my area, that means certain species of white clover, and alpine strawberries.
Lawn tearing is a hugely involved project that has pressed my entire household to the limits of our disabilities, however.
For most people, the best choice is “overseeding.”
This is a technique wherein you acquire enough seed for the replacement ground cover to do the entire space 2-3 times, and seed the lawn area thoroughly enough that the grass simply cannot compete with the sheer number of other plants.
To learn about local ground covers and flower mixes for your area, try contacting the farmers associations and agricultural boards nearby. FFA and the 4H are both happy to provide this info.
To buy the seed in large quantities, be prepared to shop from a farm supply chain. While flowers will usually need to be purchased from a garden supplier, ground covers such as clover and rye are best bought from the fallow field or grazing pasture sections of farmer supplies. This will ensure you get the large quantities needed for over seeding at the lowest possible price.
White clover in particular is native to give swaths of the US and Canada (please check your local area though), and for lawn replacement over seeding, you want 10lbs of seed per acre.
If you have pulled your lawn, you can get away with 5 lbs per acre.
Mix in a local wild flower collection with your cover clover and you’ll have a flower field yard that is truly spectacular in short order.
If you’re not at risk of fines or eviction for having ground cover over 6 inches, then you can simply aerate your yard, throw down the flower seed, and let it go wild.
If you have the time and patience and energy, a more traditional lawn replacement- one more closely reassembling the neighbors lawn and garden rather than a wild lot - will be “xeriscape” areas made with local species. Xeriscape is a style of yard designed to use no irrigation, while still remaining pretty, alive, fertile and active. Most tea and culinary herbs grow very well in xeriscapes, but fruits and vegetables tend not to get enough water to produce well.
If you have a way of irrigating, such as large rain barrels or a cistern, a high water table, a stream spring or pond on your property, or just regular and thorough soaking rain interspersed with strong sunlight and sun exposure, a fruit and vegetable garden is very rewarding as well, but it will require constant maintenance that your xeriscape or flower field will not.
If you get Heritage flowers that will reseed themselves, the flower field will require effectively no maintenance after planting. A xeriscape should be touched up every season, or thoroughly pruned and maintained once a year.
An edible garden, however, is an often daily commitment.
The easiest place to start is local berries. Whatever berries grow (or grew) wild in your area. Berry bushes are extremely low maintenance, but when they fruit, you should try to pick the fruit relatively quickly. Otherwise it will draw ants, flies, and other unpleasantries to your yard and, if the bushes are near the house, into your home too.
The next lowest intensity plants would be fruit trees and fruit vines. Again, these need to be determined by your climate. In Florida, for example, oranges and passionfruit are great choices. In Pennsylvania, apples and grapes will do better.
Run the vines along the property fence if you have one, or trellis them up a sun-facing wall of your home.
Fruit trees need full sun exposure, and have very individual planting requirements based on the age, type and size of the tree. The store where you purchase the tree will provide you with detailed information.
As for more traditional vegetable garden content, all of it will be more work and commitment than the fruits listed through here, but the easiest place to start is with vining vegetables such as cucumber and squash. Leafy greens, tomatoes and tomatillas are also very beginner friendly!
However, greens grow best in the cooler, dimmer early spring and late fall seasons.
Onions and potatoes that went to sprout in your kitchen will grow easily, but getting a good harvest from them is more tricky, so leave that until your second year when you are more confident in your skills. That said, potato and onion flowers are quite pretty, so feel free to let them grow!
If you’re interested in a good reference book for designing and dealing with an eating garden as a yard replacement, Half Acre Homestead is a hugely valuable book.
For xeriscapes, because they vary so hugely by location, you’ll want to stick to local information sources : your local gardeners guild, the future farmers association, 4h, and the local agricultural oversight board. All of these people are hugely passionate about plants and the environment, and will be invaluable resources.
Additionally, they will know who has the best rotten hay and animal manure for mulching and composting.
This for longer than I meant it to, but hopefully it will help you get started on destroying lawn culture and getting more in touch with the local environmental community!
unfortunately, a lot of rental properties won’t let you do that either fuck the lawn culture pushing landlords
also worth noting that overgrown/long grass lawns can really fuck with people with limited mobility (at least the grass where I’m from, it tires me, able bodied, out trying to navigate), and also brings the danger of hidden venomous snakes (i’m australian, enough said). of course, the solution to this would be low growing ground covers.
That’s true. My landlord “misplaced” my security deposit of over $1000 USD and refuses to do any necessary home maintenance tasks like plumbing or replacing a broken kitchen stove, however, so I’m taking a very “well fuck it” attitude towards all this.
For mobility purposes, I find that the best choice is just to make a path. Packed dirt, or paving stones, leading to the kinds of places you might hang out in your yard, and let the rest grow tall. I use a cane, though, not a chair, so I’m not sure how well that will work in all cases.
reblogging for rebellious, disability-friendly botany
I was watching Rogue One the other day and the hammerhead ships are one of the most fantastically human responses to things I've seen in a while.
Admiral Raddus: That goliath of a star destroyer’s been disabled, let’s smash into it with a hammerhead! Profundity Crew: *Looks suitably confused*
Raddus: We can smash one ship onto another and blow up the shield generator in one move! Crew: That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, how would that possibly work? Raddus: Do you know what group pilots the hammerhead? Crew: That’s the Aldeeran Reds, a human cre…. ahh… *Gives the order*
the thing I love most about Kirk’s string of ex lovers across the galaxy is that every time he runs into one he’s like
“!!!!! How are you!! I missed you so much!! How’s your career?? Successful?? I’m so happy for you!! Haha, remember that time we almost got married!! But both of our careers were in the way?? That hasn’t changed but I’m still kinda in love with you and I’m happy you’re doing well!!! Goodbye forever again it’s a shame we never got married but I understand!!”
Bring back this kind of male hero please and thank you.
Hey, so I don’t talk about politics much on here, tumblr’s my safe zone both for myself and my followers
(Because who doesn’t need the break?) BUT
I did want to mention something that I do that is much less overwhelming than a lot of the MUST CALL THIS ONE NOW
AND THIS ONE
until you have a list of fifty million things that are ALL TERRIBLE and you feel like it’s your fault the world is about to end because you can’t do them all yourself RIGHT NOW
‘cause of course that’s no good for anyone, especially yourself but also the world
which numerous other people have mentioned, but in case you’ve missed it, is a website which gives you a manageable list of issues, pulls up the appropriate phone numbers for who to call, and gives you a script as well as a place to record your feedback (ie message, talked to someone, etc) so you can chart your progress.
but jilly, my followers say, the telephone is an infernal device that triggers my anxiety and maybe I can make a call or two or maybe I can’t but either way I end up having a panic attack and crying next to my desk all morning HOW IS THIS BETTER?
wow, think the other half of my followers who don’t have weird phone issues, that is a very specific example jilly, are you ok over there? to which I reply I AM NOW BECAUSE I STOPPED TRYING TO MAKE PHONE CALLS
5calls.org is, even if you’re not actually making literal phone calls, an excellent organizational tool to help prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed by ALL THE TERRIBLE EVERYWHERE and gives you a bullet list of Actual Things To Do and tells you just to start with five of them rather than trying to do 100 at once. Yay. <3
which brings us to the how do you use 5calls.org if you’re not calling people, jilly?
Now, you can uses resistbot either via texting on your phone OR facebook messenger (which may help some of you because Easier to Type At Computer or if you don’t actually have a smartphone, though I know politicians never believe that that is a thing) and it will FAX your comments of whatever sort directly to your Senators’ office(s). (YES THEY STILL HAVE FAXES! It’s amazing.) Avoid the phone! Don’t buy stamps! Just say whatever and it will print it FOR YOU. (It will unlock additional options as you use it, but that’s where it starts, faxes to your Senators. It has a very nicely paced progression.)
AND, if you are also using 5calls.org, you can just … use their list and copy their scripts so if you don’t know what to say while typing any more than you do while having to talk, it’s all right there for you.
So hey, be an adult, participate, but there are tools out there so doing so doesn’t make you even more stressed than the news does to begin with. (There are way more tools than just these two, obviously, but they are very user-friendly and easy to access with a computer even if you’ve never been politically active in your life.)
“Call your mother. Tell her you love her. Remember you’re the only person who knows what her heart sounds like from the inside.”—wow this made me sad. (via bl-ossomed)
could you imagine The Enterprise having like a yearly inspection and Kirk bugs out every time because the best running ship in the fleet certainly doesn’t become so because they follow therules. He has to remind the crew a week in advance to actually call him Captain and use formal titles. Bones and Scotty’s shared bathroom which is one hundred percent a liquor cabinet/distillery cannot be a thing.
Sulu has to collect all of his plants out of everywhere that’s not the Botany Labs and hide the illegal ones he picked up during their journey in his quarters. Scotty has to remove all of his Scotty-Approved-Modifications from Engineering. Spock can’t work four shifts in a row and break the ensigns that challenge him in the gym to sparring matches. Bones can’t medically offer alcohol to anybody. Uhura needs to not curse every ten minutes, in any language. Chekov needs to focus more on his console and less on every pair of legs walking by his station.
Nurse Chapel needs to actually do what McCoy says, rather than agreeing with him then doing something wildly different but more productive and helpful. Bones isn’t allowed on the Bridge unless called. Spock needs to sit at his console, standing up and leaning over all coy is actually a safety hazard. Scotty can’t use scottish slang over the comm system
But then something *happens* like it always does to Kirk–the “hole in space/giant glowing hand” kind of thing–and all of that goes out the window–in the course of, say, 38 hours Jim gets called “jim” 50 times, Spock never goes off shift, the ship is hit and all of sulus plants fall out of the closet they were stuffed in, uhura is swearing up a storm and Scotty’s jurry-rigging everything, checkov gets caught staring at the pretty alien, and Chapel does her damn job thank you, and Bones appears in the bridge to yell at everybody like he does.
BUT, at the end of the day, Kirk has secured a new treaty because the culture values closeness over formality, Spock’s marathon at the science station has collected enough data to keep the academy busy for *months*, one of the aliens is fascinated by the plants ensuring a new collaboration between their scientists and starfleet, Scottys improvements to the systems prevent their new friends from getting eliminated by their enemies and uhura’s swearing intimidated the enemy into backing off, and the princess is totally ensnared with Chekov–oh, and Bones discovers the cure for the new mystery illness is the bathroom moonshine, and chapel saves the fucking day.
The inspector just throws up their hands because he’d read the Kirk file, *but he never believed it was true*
Some of you are saying that the citizens of Hasetsu probably think Viktor is just Yuuri’s eccentric foreign boyfriend and I cannot say how much I agree.
“What a nice young man,” says Tamura-san, who used to run the fish shop in town and now usually sits beside the register and chats with customers while her grandson rings them up. She was born before ice skating was declared an Olympic sport and has absolutely no idea who Viktor Nikiforov is.
“Yes, we’re very glad to have Vicchan staying with us!” Hiroko says of Viktor, who’s standing behind her cradling fifteen pounds of tuna and smiling brightly at Tamura-san.
“How good of you to follow Yuu-chan home after he graduated!” Tamura-san continues, about ten decibels louder than she needs to. Tamura-san is about 87% deaf in her old age, but nobody has the heart to tell her so. “You must love him very much!”
Viktor, who has no idea what she’s just said to him but who heard Yuuri’s name, just blindly says, “Oh yes!” and grins even brighter.
“Have you seen Viktor Nikiforov?” demands a rabid paparazzo of some poor fisherman just trying to do his job.
“Who?” asks the fisherman, frowning at the lens of the camera.
“He’s tall? Foreign? Silver hair?”
“You mean Katsuki-kun’s boyfriend?” says the fisherman. Katsuki-kun’s boyfriend had run by ten minutes before with his poodle in tow, European synth pop blasting so loud from his headphones that it could be heard for a full minute both before and after he ran past. The fisherman doesn’t exactly know where Katsuki-kun found that guy, but he looks at Katsuki-kun like he hung the stars, so the fisherman can’t blame him.
In the end, he tells the paparazzo to go the opposite direction of the one he just saw Katsuki-kun’s boyfriend go.
A girl from Hasetsu graduates high school the summer Yuuri returns from America and is inspired by his experiences to go to college in America as well. She arrives in her freshman year dorm room and is greeted by a poster of Viktor Nikiforov hung up by her roommate.
“Why do you have a picture of Viktor?” she asks, bewildered. Viktor is wearing a pair of black slacks and a bright pink shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel.
“Oh, you know who Viktor Nikiforov is?” her roommate asks, excitedly.
“Do YOU?” the girl asks, incredulous. Viktor is known to her as “That foreign guy that followed Yuuri back from America when he came home” and also as Viktor-Who-Puts-Jam-In-His-Tea-Like-Who-Even-Does-That. Certainly not as Viktor Nikiforov, Five-Time World Figure Skating Champion and definitely not as Viktor-Who-Deserves-To-Be-On-Someone’s-Wall.
Come October, Viktor has started introducing HIMSELF to people as Viktor I’m Yuuri’s Boyfriend. While half of Russia reads articles about Figure Skating’s Living Legend, a sleepy town in Japan wakes up every morning to Yuuri’s Boyfriend Viktor wheeling through town on his bike with Yuuri and Their Cute Dog.
For a pair of supposedly enlightened and un-attached people, Obi-Wan and Yoda sure are obsessed with killing Darth Vader. Beginning with their first conversation in his home, Obi-Wan tries to turn Luke into a Vader-killing weapon. He fills Luke’s head with lies and half-truths and deliberately gets himself killed in front of Luke in order to make Luke want to kill Vader. Yoda not only continues to withhold some key facts (like how Vader is Luke’s father), he also claims Luke can not be a Jedi without first confronting Vader. Since when is taking on a Sith or killing your own father a prerequisite for becoming a Jedi? It’s not; it’s just Yoda’s attempt at emotional blackmail.
The crazy thing is that Darth Vader isn’t even the problem. Darth Sidious arranged the Clone Wars, he arranged Order 66, and he’s the one ruling the galaxy. Vader, meanwhile, is basically just his trained attack dog. So why is Vader the one who absolutely has to die?
For Obi-Wan it’s guilt and love. He loved Anakin (or at least the idea of Anakin) and he needs to believe that man is dead because otherwise he gravely injured his brother and condemned to a life of suffering and slavery. Acknowledging that Padmé was right, that there was still good in Anakin, would mean acknowledging that he, Obi-Wan, could have saved Anakin and didn’t. Obi-Wan needs Luke to prove that he was right, that Vader is irredeemable, and he needs him to ‘fix’ the mistake he made by not killing him outright.
For Yoda, it’s vengeance, except that he’s nowhere self-aware enough to acknowledge that. The Jedi Order was Yoda’s entire life. It defined him and gave him meaning. As a long-lived being, loving individuals was too painful, but he could love and be attached to the Order because the Order was eternal. And then it wasn’t. The boy who was supposed to be the Order’s tool, the Order’s Chosen One, sided with their enemy and utterly destroyed them. Vader betrayed him and and obliterated Yoda’s life’s work. And Yoda hadn’t even wanted him! Everything that went wrong began after they took Anakin in against Yoda’s better judgement. In Yoda’s mind, Vader is the living embodiment of everything wrong in the galaxy. No wonder he has to be destroyed.
Remember in 1993 when Jurassic Park was like…the end all, be all of special effects?
not gonna lie that still looks intimately real
I’m still somewhat convinced that someone sold their soul to create the special effects in Jurassic Park because that shit is over 20 years old and it still really, really holds up, better than the stuff in a lot of current movies, even.
Fucking witchcraft, man.
fucking look at this shit though
Literally see this post flying around with a few different responses added to the bottom each time so I’ll say it for this one myself:
THEY ACTUALLY BUILT A GIANT MASSIVELY DETAILED FUCKING ANIMATRONIC T-REX FOR ALL OF THIS THAT’S WHY THE EFFECTS ARE SO GOOD. CAUSE IT AIN’T CGI. AND IT AIN’T GUY IN A COSTUME. IT’S A BIG FUCKING ROBOT DINOSAUR. AND EVERY PART IS DESIGNED TO MOVE. IT COST LIKE HALF THE BUDGET OF THE FILM.
amazing
And they had the film it in small increments, especially in the outdoor scenes, because the rain fall kept soaking into the ‘skin’ of the rex and would slow down and mess up its movements. So they would stop filming and have a crew out there drying off this massive, fake dinosaur, and then they’d start filming again until it was too wet. Repeat until the end of the scene.
They used animatronics and detailed costumes for most if not all of the dinosaurs in the first movie.
The triceratops for instance, was also animatronic.
One of my favorite anecdotes I’ve read on tumblr is how the t-rex robot from Jurassic park would malfunction while it was drying out. How did it malfunction, you might wonder?
Motherfucker randomly started moving.
So apparently if you were on the jp set you would sometimes hear people screaming bloody murder even though they were all well aware that it was a giant animatronic puppet and wouldn’t actually, you know, eat them.
Did not know this, had to reblog for awesome movie history insights.
So, I knew about the animatronics bit but I did not know the raptors were guys in suits and the malfunctioning t-rex sounds terrifying.
And i just googled malfunctioning t-rexand was not disappointed. Apparently in order to put the skin on over the steel frame a guy had to crawl inside thet-rex while it was turned on and glue the skin down. And if somebody turned the t-rex off or the power went out the guy in the t-rex stood a very real chance of getting mangled and killed by the hydraulics.
So of course, the power goes out.
And this guy is still in there gluing the skin down.
Apparently the way to survive getting sheered to death by huge sheets of metal while you’re inside a giant t-rex robot is to curl into a ball and hope for the best.
And this guy hoped for the best and got it.
Some other people on stage pried open the t-rex jaws and glue guy crawled out of its mouth and was totally okay.
This is getting better and better.
I think they only had like 6 minutes of CGI
I’m just waiting for the T-Rex to come to life and leave its stand.
The thing about this that gets my special effects nerd going is the fact that EVERY single dinosaur was sculpted by artists based on the current existent archeological evidence of the time.
Even better than that, this movie ADVANCED our best understanding of dinosaurs at the time. They were blowing out a budget bigger than anything Hollywood had ever seen, and along with employing almost the last hurrah of incredible physical FX, they had a bank of those newfangled digital SFX computers. Nobody’d ever really created convincing dinosaurs in a movie before. It’d all been stop-motion animation, and even when the models were exquisitely crafted, you could just tell there was something OFF about them. Spielberg wanted THE BEST DINOSAURS EVER, and he figured on using the cutting edge of digital modeling and animation technology to build them for him.
So they got hold of some of the best paleontologists they could find and said, “We want you guys to take this tech that your labs could pretty much never afford and use it to build us the most realistic, accurate dinosaur models the world has ever seen.”
The paleontologists knew an opportunity when it bit them in the ass. They plugged in everything they knew about dinosaurs, all the skeletons and their best guesses about soft tissue and all that. And when they’d created those dinosaur models, they had the computer start moving them as they realistically would with anatomy like that. One guy took a look at those walking t-rexes and velociraptors (really utahraptors, but whatevs, fam), and he said, “Wait a minute, I’ve seen movement like that before.”
He called up film of a chicken walking. Everyone in the room said, “Holy shit.”
Prior to 1989, the idea that birds were descended from dinosaurs existed–we knew about archaeopteryx, we knew there was some minor connection there–but the idea that DINOSAURS LIVE IN THE MODERN WORLD AND THEY ARE CALLED BIRDS was not pre-eminent. Jurassic Park changed our scientific understanding of dinosaurs.
That paleontologists’d be Kevin Padian. Who is awesome.
today i have been quietly worrying about who would be a dragon in the black sails temeraire au.
having finished the show i am no nearer to a solution, except for the practically useless knowledge that charles vane would definitely be a dragon in the temeraire au.
i’m no nearer to an answer, except that
in the BORGIAS au it would be easy.
Micheletto “I was a masterless dog once, but no more” Corella is a mad unharnessed dragon and Cesare is supposed to get eaten by him as part of an assassination plot but then silvertongued Cesare starts talking to him and after about three minutes Micheletto abruptly decides to devote his entire soul to him, and to the horror of his enemies Cesare becomes a dragon captain. and at some point Cesare is imprisoned by Pope Julius and Micheletto goes wild with grief and rage and Lucrezia has to temporarily become his captain so he doesn’t raze Rome to the ground/get murdered by the papal armies, and then Lucrezia and Micheletto form a political alliance that becomes an emotional alliance that becomes an uneasy undefined quasi romantic alliance (and also Micheletto is a Catholic dragon who quotes St Paul and grimly assumes that he doesn’t have a soul), but anyway yeah the Pope’s daughter probably burns down Naples while very publicly flirting with her dragon and making everyone uncomfortable and when they eventually DO get Cesare back and raze most of the Romagna to the ground, Burchard dutifully writes down that the most evil family in history were also a bunch of dragonfuckers, and the historians argue incessantly about whether or not it was true or whether Italy just hated the Borgias that much.
me, an intellectual: video games provide tactile and visual stimulation and are designed to have a balance between reward (for completing your goals) and challenge (in difficulty of the game) with music designed to motivate the player without being distracting. all of these components work together to create a positive feedback loop that adhd people are more likely to be engaged by and enjoy compared to longer tasks with relatively smaller payoff like chores or even something like maintaining the focus to complete long books and projects
Quite a few have been saying:”But what about laughing?”, in the comments of my ‘Weird Human Reactions to Fear: the Singing Edition’ post. My question is: do you know why humans laugh when shit gets real?
Laughter is our brain’s Blue Screen of Death.
Where a computer would throw up an error and possibly crash, our brains go:”well, shit”, and hit the big red button labelled: ‘LAUGHTER (and possibly applause, but probably not applause)’. Since we need our brains 24/7, we don’t have the luxury of error messages. So our brains buy some time to figure out what’s going on by making us laugh in the weirdest situations.
Imminent doom? Laugh.
Absolutely livid? Laugh.
Distraught? Laugh.
Pretty sure you’re gonna die? Laugh.
I mean, we can’t be sure the aliens don’t have brains that work the same way, but seeing as other animals on Planet Earth don’t really have that either… that’d probably freak them the fuck out too.
Not only do the gangly bipeds sing when they’re scared, they could just as easily start laughing.
my attention span is so bad i cant watch something without being on my phone at the same time i always have to have 2 layers of activity when did this happen why is capitalism stealing my soul away the spectacle has me firmly in its grip
Psychology time!
This isn’t having a short attention span (or well maybe thats part of it), but probably something called “Optimal Arousal.”(This is psychology, not anatomy, please keep your mind out of the gutter Xp)
Optimal Arousal goes like this: When effort is low, more stimulus is better. When effort is high, less stimulus is better.
I’ll elaborate. Whenever you do something easy (like maybe some homework as an example), unless something else is happening (like music or a show) you tend to get drawn away or doze off. In this homework scenario, the effort is low, so in order to keep at it and do well on working on it, you need a higher amount of stimulus, like a movie.
If something is hard, like for instance a test, you probably will try to avoid noise, going so far as to hush others so you can concentrate. The effort is high so you want less stimulus.
Keep this in mind. It can help you focus, and make life a lot easier. Dont feel bad for doing lots of different things while you are just chillin. Enjoy the knowledge!
Let’s talk about the times Robin survives Marian, when she is the fair memory who haunts him all his days, the wild eyes he learns to live without, the part of his heart he teaches to heal;
And the times Marian survives Robin, when she stands at the firelight’s edge and looks over these brave men, these few and merry men, and says with the even, carrying voice that she did not learn from Robin, this is not the end of us.
There are a hundred ways to fall in love and Marian and Robin have fallen into each of them. A shepherdess and a yeoman, a feisty noble daughter and an estranged noble son—she has fallen for his wit, his bravery, his chin; he for her skill, her beauty, her kindnesses. No matter how many arrows she loses or witticisms she drops at the audience’s feet, Marian will always be a lover.
Marian the shepherdess, with her loyal sheep dog and her loyal Robin, a Marian who understands being hungry, who understands patience and how to find a lost ewe, who knows the hills of Nottingham better than the sheriff or the outlaw and delights in outwitting them both.
Marian the archer, the way she held competition between her teeth til it begged for mercy; or the single daughter of a destitute house, who took up poaching in the king’s wood and knows the meaning of silence but somehow, despite it all, falls for a brash youth with a big mouth and a bigger heart.
A Marian who fights; or a Marian who sews and listens and whispers and smuggles out who and what Robin needs; a Marian who gets lost in the woods, who gets held up on the road or who gets suspicious in the market when rough men trade silver for bread and cloth; a Marian who is the heart of their cause and the head of their crimes.
They call her a lover so let’s call her a lover.
Let’s tell stories about the first time Marian falls asleep on hard ground beside the wheezy snores of Sherwood’s outlaws and feels safe, feels wanted, feels like she’s come home. They build something out in those woods with deer hides that are theirs only by right of aim and speed and skill, with the gold of fat rich men, and with the thanks of poor farmers whose children will eat decently five days a week instead of two.
Let’s talk about her love. Let’s talk about how she falls in love with this.
The runaway daughters, the girls hidden in boys’ clothing, in boys’ names, in boys’ bodies—Marian takes them aside when she can and whittles them bows to suit each of their strengths.
When a youth with skinned knees and tightly bound breasts weeps with rage when she can’t keep up with Robin’s combat practices, Marian tells her here’s how you fight when your center lives in your belly and not under your breastbone. Trust your legs, child. Trust your center. Yours is a different strength, not a lesser one.
Soon enough the girl is flipping boys over her hip while she stands with slightly bent knees, and Marian is making money hand over fist, betting against her opponents.
Let’s talk about how many ways there are to fall in love. Let’s talk about how the love of one man as a life’s calling is not a story I am interested in telling.
The outlaws were her children, her flock, her brothers and her right-hand men. They held each others’ secrets and each others’ lives in their callused palms and kept them safe.
Let’s talk about getting lost in the woods: Marian the shopkeeper’s daughter getting lost at fifteen, the first time she ran away from home, getting lost in the dark, the creep and tangle of it, and making it back long after moonrise by way of her aunt’s old nursery rhyme about how moss grows on the north side of trees. (At the next full moon she runs away to the woods again. She is not afraid, or, if she is, it doesn’t matter; she is in love).
Lost: Marian, dyemaker’s daughter, walking out to the woods with all the men who came before Robin, not for them but for the woods: the trees snarling overhead, the way they make her feel like life is more than this, that there is mystery, there is depth, and there is distance.
Let’s talk about how she loved Robin, yes, the quiet ways she traced his jawbone with shaking fingers, the hard way they both looked at each other across the fire and knew neither of them could long survive this. Let’s talk about how she loved. Let’s call it being lost.
Robin saw her first in a market, a smithy, a crossroads, and she was beautiful, but it wasn’t until she raised her chin that he loved her (til she smiled, til she shot, til she vanished—there are a hundred ways they fell in love).
Let’s talk about how she fell in love with herself.
Because she did: arrows and whispers, cold nights and good liars, Robin’s hand and the men who made Sherwood their own– she fell for it all. She fell for herself most of all.
Maybe your name is not Marian and my name is not Marian and sometimes hers is not either.
But we are all sometimes lost in the woods. We all sometimes find ourselves there, and open our eyes, open our lungs, fall in love.
