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mcmansionhell · 3 months

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we've found it folks: mcmansion heaven

Hello everyone. It is my pleasure to bring you the greatest house I have ever seen. The house of a true visionary. A real ad-hocist. A genuine pioneer of fenestration. This house is in Alabama. It was built in 1980 and costs around $5 million. It is worth every penny. Perhaps more.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Come on, Kate, that's a little kooky, but certainly it's not McMansion Heaven. This is very much a house in the earthly realm. Purgatory. McMansion Purgatory." Well, let me now play Beatrice to your Dante, young Pilgrim. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

It is rare to find a house that has everything. A house that wills itself into Postmodernism yet remains unable to let go of the kookiest moments of the prior zeitgeist, the Bruce Goffs and Earthships, the commune houses built from car windshields, the seventies moments of psychedelic hippie fracture. It is everything. It has everything. It is theme park, it is High Tech. It is Renaissance (in the San Antonio Riverwalk sense of the word.) It is medieval. It is maybe the greatest pastiche to sucker itself to the side of a mountain, perilously overlooking a large body of water. Look at it. Just look.

The inside is white. This makes it dreamlike, almost benevolent. It is bright because this is McMansion Heaven and Gray is for McMansion Hell. There is an overbearing sheen of 80s optimism. In this house, the credit default swap has not yet been invented, but could be.

It takes a lot for me to drop the cocaine word because I think it's a cheap joke. But there's something about this example that makes it plausible, not in a derogatory way, but in a liberatory one, a sensuous one. Someone created this house to have a particular experience, a particular feeling. It possesses an element of true fantasy, the thematic. Its rooms are not meant to be one cohesive composition, but rather a series of scenes, of vastly different spatial moments, compressed, expanded, bright, close.

And then there's this kitchen for some reason. Or so you think. Everything the interior design tries to hide, namely how unceasingly peculiar the house is, it is not entirely able to because the choices made here remain decadent, indulgent, albeit in a more familiar way.

Rare is it to discover an interior wherein one truly must wear sunglasses. The environment created in service to transparency has to somewhat prevent the elements from penetrating too deep while retaining their desirable qualities. I don't think an architect designed this house. An architect would have had access to specifically engineered products for this purpose. Whoever built this house had certain access to architectural catalogues but not those used in the highest end or most structurally complex projects. The customization here lies in the assemblage of materials and in doing so stretches them to the height of their imaginative capacity. To borrow from Charles Jencks, ad-hoc is a perfect description. It is an architecture of availability and of adventure.

A small interlude. We are outside. There is no rear exterior view of this house because it would be impossible to get one from the scrawny lawn that lies at its depths. This space is intended to serve the same purpose, which is to look upon the house itself as much as gaze from the house to the world beyond.

Living in a city, I often think about exhibitionism. Living in a city is inherently exhibitionist. A house is a permeable visible surface; it is entirely possible that someone will catch a glimpse of me they're not supposed to when I rush to the living room in only a t-shirt to turn out the light before bed. But this is a space that is only exhibitionist in the sense that it is an architecture of exposure, and yet this exposure would not be possible without the protection of the site, of the distance from every other pair of eyes. In this respect, a double freedom is secured. The window intimates the potential of seeing. But no one sees.

At the heart of this house lies a strange mix of concepts. Postmodern classicist columns of the Disney World set. The unpolished edge of the vernacular. There is also an organicist bent to the whole thing, something more Goff than Gaudí, and here we see some of the house's most organic forms, the monolith- or shell-like vanity mixed with the luminous artifice of mirrors and white. A backlit cave, primitive and performative at the same time, which is, in essence, the dialectic of the luxury bathroom.

And yet our McMansion Heaven is still a McMansion. It is still an accumulation of deliberate signifiers of wealth, very much a construction with the secondary purpose of invoking envy, a palatial residence designed without much cohesion. The presence of golf, of wood, of masculine and patriarchal symbolism with an undercurrent of luxury drives that point home. The McMansion can aspire to an art form, but there are still many levels to ascend before one gets to where God's sitting.

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#architecture #design #mcmansion #mcmansions #ugly houses #interior design #bad architecture

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neil-gaiman · 8 months

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Hi Neil. I’ve let a lot of my questions go unanswered or stuck to my own speculation because I know you’ve got quite a full inbox, but there’s one scene that I can’t seem to make any sense of even after doing outside research. When Crowley and Aziraphale go to the pub in S2E2 and Aziraphale asks Crowley if he knows who Jane Austen is, Crowley says that he’d never forget her because she was the “mastermind” behind the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery. When I first watched the episode, that reference did seem familiar to me but I couldn’t place my finger on where it was from. So I did some research on this supposed heist and all that comes up is text posts of people on Tumblr quoting that conversation from the show, or the Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate in the 1980s-‘90s. The Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery isn’t a real thing that happened, is it? What is Crowley alluding to with that? Or who is he getting Jane Austen mixed up with?

I'm surprised that enterprising people haven't created an entire website by now telling in detail the story of the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery. Perhaps it was hushed up.

#jane austen #go2 spoilers

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vintagegeekculture · 8 months

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Someone deeply influential in a subterranean way to comic book culture passed without comment this week: female bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, who was 70. Even if you've never heard of her, I guarantee you've seen her image, or a takeoff of one of her images.

If she seems familiar in some way, there's a reason.

You see, every single artist in the world has it drilled into them that an art swipe (tracing from figure studies or other artists) is unethical, but here’s the thing:

Every single working comic artist does it!

Is it really cheating if everyone does it? Artists love to mock Rob Liefeld for his art swaps, but it is possible to do the same if you dig into the art catalogue of nearly any comic artist, even today. Nowhere else can I find a better example of the old quote that "hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue."

In any case, there’s no better figure at the center of this than Lisa Lyon, who in the 1980s, was a female bodybuilder who was the center of an enormously influential series of sophisticated physique study photographs by superstar photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It sounds almost quaint to remember now, but Mapplethorpe was so influential that he was the first photographer to be called to congress for obscenity in the 1980s, based on his male nudes and study of the gay BDSM scene, in a moral panic that sounds extremely familiar. He was also the first photographer to get a video game, the Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe on CD-I, which was essentially just an image gallery set to muzak, famously reviewed by a completely baffled Angry Video Game Nerd and his sidekick.

youtube

Mapplethorpe’s favorite subject was Lisa Lyon, and his photographs were so widespread that they were essentially traced and used for art swipes over and over by comic artists that need a study of a muscular female physique.

So at different points, photograph swipes of Lisa Lyon were the model used for Wonder Woman, She-Hulk, tons of fighting game characters....it's impossible to list all the times a Lisa Lyon photograph was swiped. We may never find them all. Most importantly of all, she was not only swiped but was the physical inspiration for the appearance of Elektra.

Frank Miller always had a foot in the fine art world, and like his mentor, Philip Jose Farmer, was also interested in the theme of how violence is often a substitute for sexuality in the lives of adventure characters. Miller was always fascinated by BDSM (which to me, explains a lot of 300), and explicitly said in many interviews he based Elektra physically on Lisa Lyon and was a great fan of Mapplethorpe.

#lisa lyon #photography #robert mapplethorpe #comics #Youtube

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hotvintagepoll · 2 months

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Propaganda

Yvette Mimieux (Dark of the Sun; Joy in the Morning; Where the Boys Are)—She is so enchanting on screen... that ethereal presence paired with her dark, sparkling eyes gives her an almost dream-like quality...

Xia Meng, also known as Hsia Moog or Miranda Yang (Sunrise, Bride Hunter)—For those who are familiar with Hong Kong's early cinema, Xia Meng is THE leading woman of an era, the earliest "silver-screen goddess", "The Great Beauty" and "Audrey Hepburn of the East". Xia Meng starred in 38 films in her 17-year career, and famously had rarely any flops, from her first film at the age of 18 to her last at the age of 35. She was a rare all-round actress in Mandarin-language films, acting, singing, and dancing with an enchanting ease in films of diverse genres, from contemporary drama to period operas. She was regarded as the "crown princess" among the "Three Princesses of the Great Wall", the iconic leading stars of the Great Wall Movie Enterprises, which was Hong Kong's leading left-wing studio in the 1950s-60s. At the time, Hong Kong cinema had only just taken off, but Xia Meng's influence had already spread out to China, Singapore, etc. Overseas Chinese-language magazines and newspapers often featured her on their covers. The famous HK wuxia novelist Jin Yong had such a huge crush on her that he made up a whole fake identity as a nobody-screenwriter to join the Great Wall studio just so he can write scripts for her. He famously said, "No one has really seen how beautiful Xi Shi (one of the renowned Four Beauties of ancient China) is, I think she should be just like Xia Meng to live up to her name." In 1980, she returned to the HK film industry by forming the Bluebird Movie Enterprises. As a producer with a heart for the community, she wanted to make a film on the Vietnam War and the many Vietnam War refugees migrating to Hong Kong. She approached director Ann Hui and produced the debut film Boat People (1982), a globally successful movie and landmark feature for Hong Kong New Wave, which won several awards including the best picture and best director in the second Hong Kong Film Award. Years later, Ann Hui looked back on her collaboration with Xia Meng, "I'm very grateful to her for allowing me to make what is probably the best film I've ever made in my life."

This is round 1 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut]

Yvette Mimieux:

Xia Meng:

#Xia Meng #Yvette Mimieux #hotvintagepoll #ladies 1 #fuck that old woman

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prokopetz · 10 months

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Hey why DO all those old tabletop RPGS and adventure games have such weird obtuse "act in this one scene or softlock forever" moments? Like, these weren't designed like arcade games that munch quarters... Why was this sort of thing so commonplace?

(With reference to this post here.)

Funnily enough, for tabletop RPGs there's actually a good answer.

If you're familiar with the popular history of tabletop roleplaying games, you've probably heard the idea that they developed out of fantasy wargaming. That's not actually terribly accurate; tabletop RPGs and fantasy wargames are more like two parallel branches that split off from the recreating-historical-battles kind of wargaming at about the same time, and for the first couple of decades there wasn't a bright line drawn between them like there is today. Many are genuinely hard to classify by contemporary standards – there are a lot of early fantasy wargames that look more like modern tabletop RPGs, and vice versa.

One of the consequences of that lack of sharp distinctions between tabletop RPGs and fantasy wargames is that early tabletop RPGs were often played in a sort of "competitive co-op" format at wargaming tournaments. Multiple groups would run their parties through the same adventure in parallel, and be ranked on their performance; sometimes this would involve scoring points for completing specific objectives, or speedrunning the adventure and aiming for the fastest time, but the most popular tournament format was the survival module: adventures which were deliberately designed to be unreasonably difficult, with whichever group's last surviving character's corpse hit the ground furthest from the dungeon entrance being judged the winner.

The upshot of that popularity is that many published adventures early on – and certainly the greater part of the more infamous ones! – were originally written as survival modules, created to be run competitively at a particular tournament, and later repackaged and sold as commercial products. Of course, practically none of them actually explained that; like nearly all tabletop RPG material of their day, they were written under the assumption that all tabletop roleplayers had come up through organised play at university gaming clubs, and thus already had all the context I've just outlined. This ended up causing no end of confusion when the hobby's mainstream visibility exploded in the early 1980s, and suddenly there were folks who'd picked up the rulebooks at their local bookstores trying to teach themselves how to play from first principles with no prior contact with gaming club culture.

As for why adventure games were also like that... well, this is going to sound bizarre by contemporary standards, and I don't blame you if you don't believe me, but once upon a time, point-and-click adventure games were considered the gold standard for Serious Gaming. Unforgiving routing, bizarre moon-logic puzzles, and a bewildering variety of unique ways to get yourself killed off were held up as the mark of the serious gamer in much the same way that janky soulslike combat systems are today, and a large chunk of the genre was made to cater to that ethos. Gamer culture is a hell of a drug!

(If you're about to ask the obvious follow-up question, "what changed?", the point-and-click adventure game's fall from grace and subsequent dismissal as casual fluff tracks more or less directly with a large demographic shift in the late 1990s that saw the genre's player base skewing predominantly female – and, well, you can probably connect the dots from there.)

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #video games #game design #adventure games #violence mention #death mention #sexism mention #swearing

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kaleldobrev · 4 months

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From Russia With Love

Pairing: Soldier Boy (Ben) x F. Supe!Reader

Summary: You’re the first person Ben goes to see after escaping from Russia

Word Count: 1.5k

Warnings: Cursing (5x), Fluff

Authors Note: The sequel to Memories Are All I Have | If you liked this, don’t forget to like & reblog. I really appreciate it! Feedback is always welcome ♡

Forty years. Forty Goddamn fucking years without you. Forty years of not being able to kiss you or hold you in his arms. Forty years without being able to tell you how much he loved you; or hear you saying it in return.

But there was a part of him that started to wonder if you had moved on from him because of how long it has been. There was a part of him that wouldn't have blamed you if you did, but he dreaded the thought of you being with anyone but him. You were the only person he ever dreamt of being with, settling down with. You were the first person to ever tell him, "I love you," and it wasn't just empty words — you had actually meant it.

Despite it being almost forty years without you, he still loved you just as much as he did the last time he had saw you back in 1984.

As he walked along the Manhattan streets, memories of the two of you walking along these very streets started to flood him. He could hear the sweet, sweet sounds of your laughter. He could feel the softness of your hands in his calloused ones. He could hear you faintly saying "I love you" to him in his ear.

But that very brief memory he had of you was quickly started to fade away, as he heard music playing — a song that was all too familiar to him and not in a good way. It was a Russian pop song that the scientists would often play when they would experiment on him. When they would pierce his skin with various knives and force feed him chemical mixtures.

He dropped his bag that he had slung over his shoulders onto the sidewalk; and he could faintly hear someone asking him if he was okay, but their words sounded so muffled like he was under water. Hunched over, everything went pitch black.

19 dead and 12 injured — read the news banner in big, bold, black letters across the bottom of the screen. "Holy shit," you mumbled to yourself, watching the news footage in absolute horror. One second the building in front of you was standing tall and proud; the next second, the sounds of glass shattering and floors collapsing in on itself. Scorch marks could be seen distinctly.

As you watched the news footage, a part of you wondered what Supe could have caused that immense amount of damage. But for the life of you, there was no Supe that you could think of. Homelander briefly entered your brain, but his beams wouldn't be able to cause that kind of damage. Yes, Homelander was powerful, but there was no way he would be able to do something like that, not unless Vought somehow found a way to give him more power than he already had.

"We were able to get the CCTV Footage of who could have caused this terrible tragedy. Unfortunately, due to the angle of the camera, the face could not be seen. But if you think you may know the terrorist reasonable, please contact Vought immediately," the news anchor stated; Vought's number flashing across the screen quickly.

As you watched the footage, it was grainy, black and white, and hard to tell who the terrorist could have been. But from what you could see, it just looked like some guy with an unkempt beard wearing a tracksuit that you hadn't seen since about the 1980s.

The man was standing there holding some kind of bag, and all of sudden the bag just dropped to his feet and he hunched over, kind of like he was having some kind of stomach pain, and a large beam of light just exploded from his body. "Holy shit..." you mumbled.

When Ben arrived at his — your apartment — he couldn't help but have a small sense of nervousness, like there was some kind of knot in the pit of his stomach. This kind of knot was something that he always experienced whenever he was about to get tortured by the Russians, as he never knew what kind of cruel experiments they were going to do on him.

He eyed the door and sighed, hoping that you were still living here, as this was the last known address that he had for you. It was the only place that he had hoped that you would be, as this was the only place he had pictured starting and having a family with you. It was a cozy penthouse about a few blocks away from Vought Tower; and it was a place that you and him had bought together as a home away from home away from Payback.

With a deep sigh, he knocked on the door, praying quietly to himself that you would be the one to answer the door and not someone else.

As you were in the kitchen making yourself some coffee, you heard a knock at your apartment door and raised a brow as you weren't expecting anyone or anything today; not even a package.

As the coffee started pouring into the mug, you started making your way to the front door, and yet there was another knock; but this time, the knock was quicker, almost impatient sounding. You rolled your eyes, and let out a small groan. "Christ on a Cross," you mumbled quietly to yourself. "I'm coming, I'm coming!" You called out, hoping that the impatient knocking would cease.

Ben heard the pads of your bare feet walking toward the apartment door, and he could hear you slightly groaning on the other side of the door, cursing every so often. But one of the phrases you said had caught him slightly by surprise. "Christ on a Cross," he heard you mumble; and a smirk tugged the corners of his lips.

He heard the chain come off the door, and within seconds the door was open before him, and there you were looking exactly the same way you had the last time he had seen you forty years ago. "Fuck, you haven't aged a day Sugar," he said, his voice sounding more gruff than he had expected it to sound.

"Fuck, you haven't aged a day Sugar," a man that strongly resembled and sounded exactly like Ben said before you. But there was no possible way that this could of been him, as you were told by not only Payback, but by Vought and Legend that he had been killed by the Russians, and that his body was taken behind the Iron Curtain. But he had just called you Sugar; and Sugar was a nickname that Ben and Ben alone had called you, and tended to only call you when it was just the two of you alone together.

But the way he was looking at you was the exact same way Ben had always looked at you. It was the look of pure adoration and joy; the look of 'you are the most gorgeous person in the world to me.' And those eyes...those distinctive hazel-green eyes that only Ben had had were staring directly at you.

You were unsure if you were seeing a ghost or having one of your hallucinations, but you reached out your hand toward him and gently placed your hand on his cheek, feeling the caveman like beard underneath your palm. When your hand made contact with his cheek, he almost melted into your touch, and his free hand made contact with the one that was on his cheek; almost checking to see if you were real too.

When your hand touched his cheek, he had to hold back all of the feelings that he had slowly building up over the course of four decades without you; he had envisioned this reunion for so long. "Ben..." your voice was low, soft, almost slightly hesitant as if you were trying to make sure that it was actually him before you. "It's...it's really you isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's really me," he responded almost as low as your voice was.

Your hand released from his cheek, and you stared at him with such longing in your eyes; almost as if you were trying to hold back tears. Without anymore hesitation, you wrapped your arms around him, using that super strength of yours (practically squeezing him, and knocking the air slightly out of him), as your face buried a bit into his chest.

In that instant, Ben dropped the bag that was slung over his shoulder at this feet and wrapped his arms around you; giving you a similar type of embrace that you were currently giving him and rested his chin on the top of your head. "I've missed you so much," you told him; your face nuzzling even more into his chest.

He smiled into your hair and kissed the top of your head; an action that he didn't realize how much he missed doing until now. "I missed you too," he said. And for the first time in his life, he heard his voice breaking.

Tag List: @syrma-sensei @k-slla @justletmereadfanfic @deans-daydream @midorimachisenpaii @rachiem4-blog @taraswifes @zepskies @jackles010378 @mrsjenniferwinchester @globetrotter28 @deans-spinster-witch @mrlonelycat @zombie-freak @waywardlatina @crystal555 @missscarlettangel @livingordeadwhoknows @79winchester @savagemickey03 @grx-deanslovr @wirdbeimaufhebengebunden @the-achievementhunter If you’d like to be added to a tag list please follow this link

#soldier boy x reader #soldier boy x you #the boys #the boys amazon #the boys imagine #the boys one shot #Ben x you #Ben x reader #female reader #reader insert

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colleendoran · 1 year

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Misunderstanding

I received a note from someone who was upset I “failed to cite Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics” in my research for my work on Neil Gaiman's Chivalry and the essays I wrote about it.

I really appreciate that people want to make sure credit goes where it's due, and I have a lot of respect for Scott McCloud's accomplishment with his wonderful book.

I haven't read it myself in some years, and didn't cite it in my articles because I didn't reference it. I don't even know where my copy is so I don't know what McCloud referenced, either.

The information in my articles re: illuminated manuscripts and the Bayeux Tapestry, as well as other theories about the development of sequential art from prehistory, not only predate McCloud's work (and in fact, predate McCloud's birth,) but they are so common and so well known in comics circles that asking me to cite them seems as weird to me as asking me to cite the information that George Washington was the first President of the United States.

A part of me wonders if someone is trying to play, "Let's you and him fight."

No.

But I’m happy to bring to your attention some reading material.

Stephen Becker in his 1959 work Comic Art in America: A Social History of the Funnies, the Political Cartoons, Magazine Humor, Sporting Cartoons, and Animated Cartoons was among the first to discuss the Bayeux Tapestry as comic art. I read that book sometime in the 1980’s. I think a lot of people assume the Bayeux tapestry as comic art was McCloud’s idea, but we don’t all walk around with a reference library in our heads, so there you go. I can’t find my copy of Becker’s work to quote, but I did find an article by Arthur Asa Berger with a mention of the Bayeux Tapestry as comic art in the summer 1978 issue of The Wilson Quarterly.

My first exposure to the idea of comics as descendant of fine art was Maurice Horn’s 1976 The World Encyclopedia of Comics which was my first read re: comics history. I still have my tattered 1976 edition.

While Horn scorned the idea that tapestries and manuscripts could be comic art (see, it was a matter of discussion way back then, so much so that authors were writing snarky asides to one another about it,) he believed the origin of sequential art was in the Renaissance sketches of Leonardo da Vinci - which I think everyone now agrees is kind of a bonkers idea.

I think Horn was just intent on elevating the comic art form by hooking up with da Vinci.

You go, boi.

Comics as descendant of art on scrolls is a very common theory, the easiest to trace being in Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics by Fred Schodt published in 1983 when I was still a teenager. I can't find my copy to show examples, but this text is still in print and you can go read it for yourself.

I was introduced to manga by cartoonist Leslie Sternbergh and bought Schodt’s book at Books Kinokuniya on (I think) a trip to New York around the time of first publication of Schodt’s work. And years later took a trip to Japan with Fred Schodt and a group of cartoonists including Jeff Smith and Jules Fieffer, Nicole Hollander, and Denys Cowan as the guests of Tezuka Productions.

Here we all are.

So, I’m familiar with manga, see.

As for comics as descendant of cave paintings, hieroglyphics and ancient art in general, Will Eisner’s 1985 Comics and Sequential Art not only made all of those points, but made those points with comic art examples. Like these.

And this.

And more than a few words on this:

I find it amusing that someone is questioning why I didn’t cite McCloud when what you should probably be questioning is why more people don’t cite Eisner who produced his book eight years before McCloud published his and who is well known to have influenced McCloud.

Whatever. My book's autographed.

I also danced with Eisner. Eat your heart out.

Understanding Comics is a terrific work with huge advantages over every book (that I know of) about comics that came before: it taught comics entirely in the language of comics.

But the discussion in it about the origins of comics and my work especially re: illuminated manuscripts/tapestries, did not originate with McCloud. I research illuminated manuscripts because it’s my hobby and it informs my art.

I encourage everyone to read Understanding Comics because it is an outstanding work.

But it’s not the book that introduced me to the concepts of the development of comic art. It’s not even the point of origin of those concepts. So, there is no reason to cite it.

Also, shocking as it may seem, I occasionally come up with ideas on my own. While I'm younger than McCloud, I've actually been a comics pro longer than he has. So I've had plenty of opportunity to, you know, read things and toss things around, and decide for myself.

When I first read Chivalry and first begged Neil Gaiman to let me adapt it, my head full of the work of Alberto Sangorski and his art for Tennyson’s Le Morte D’Arthur, Understanding Comics hadn’t been published yet.

It's been a good twelve years since I last read McCloud's work, and I don't think I've spoken to him five times in the last three decades. But I'm pretty sure he never mentioned Sangorski.

I hope that clears everything up, and maybe introduces some of you to some works you might not be aware of.

Have a great day.

#understanding comics #comics history #neil gaiman #scott mccloud #chivalry #jules fieffer #tezuka productions #manga #will eisner

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12triceratops · 5 days

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Where the rubber meets the road.

These two didn't just have a relationship, they had a (soul)utionship. "The Prophecy" Hand on the throttle Thought I caught lightning in a bottle...

What these two had was magical. There is no debate that Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift were electric: (I am using past tense for the moment, I will refer to them in present tense a bit later in the post)

Fast forward a decade later to Fortnight. This record did not hit me immediately the way "Folklore" and "Evermore" did, It has almost been a week since its release and I hadn't been fully onboard with TTPD. I was expecting something different, something not familiar and I had quite literally thought maybe Jack Antinoff and Taylor Swift had reached their limit together as collaborators. The music produced by Aaron Dressner had flavors and connections to "Folklore" and "Evermore," while parts of the album was reminiscent of "1989." My next thought that maybe the three of them had done all they could do.

And then the Matty Healy conversation exploded across the net (le sigh), and I just about gave up on the record.

I damn near had a sanguinary struggle within myself over The Tortured Poets Department (I know, that is very dramatic lol), and then I finally got it. The brilliance of this woman is unmatched.

The last song "The Manuscript." Now and then she rereads the manuscript Of the entire torrid affair

"The entire torrid affair" meaning the last decade (probably longer, but I am sticking with 2014-2024). The title isn't lost on me and many others - The Man-U-Script.

The last segment of the song

The only thing that's left is the manuscript One last souvenir from my trip to your shores Now and then I reread the manuscript But the story isn't mine anymore

She is closing the chapter on all of it. It's over, the countless theories, the stories we all have created about her. They're our stories now, we built them into a formidable, monstrous entity that took on a life of its own. "The last souvenir" are her words to us on this album. From the Swifities, to the Gaylors/Kaylors, to the haters, critics, industry, fans, media. She won't play this game anymore. Taylor gave enough clues on this album to make EVERYONE'S theory plausible (Karlie, Joe, Matty, Travis, Harry, Kim etc). She connected threads to come full circle, which brings us back to "1989," that 1980s syth-pop (hello! "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart"). This is why she and Jack Antonoff brought us back to where it all began, Karlie Kloss and #Kissgate (Dianna Agron, too, who can forget "Wonderland). Aaron Dressner summons moments within this records of the two albums that fractured my soul, F & E. That folky-pop melody that gets into your skin to change the DNA. No joke, I sobbed listening to "Folklore" and "Evermore."

With TTPD, Taylor comes in like a thrashing, tumultuous storm; at times seething and others admonishing. She is singing to herself, for herself and without need of approval from the mainstream radio (or anyone else). TTPD is messy, too much, not enough, vulnerable, real, relatable and she is tired of our collective shit.

Back to "The Manuscript" This Era has come to an end and she is leaving us with the ruins, the aftermath of what she went through: being forced to hide who she really is, having to placate the rabid fans who believe the stories of every boy she has ever dated. She has had zero privacy and the only safe place Taylor has ever had was her music, she is the ONLY one who knows to whom she sings. Does she love her fans, of course, but Mother is tired and done. She is ready to come clean and live the life she has crafted to keep in secret in order to protect the innocent.

The beards, NDAs, slight of hand, she is smashing all that we know. It's not her reflection she seeks to shatter, it's the illusions. In "Fortnight" the nurse, a woman (cannot convince me that it's not Karlie. A doorframe is 6'8" and that nurse is about 5" shorter that frame, which would make that person 6'3" :), comes to save her, gives her the key to set her free. The men in the video are the ones who are torturing her. Like the last 10 years, The poet has been tortured by the department of men: Joe, John, Conner, Jake, Harry, Calvin, Tom, Joe, Matty, Travis, Scooter, Scott, and the list goes on.

It's "Robin" that has got a choke-hold on me.

Buried down deep And out of your reach The secret we all vowed To keep it from you in sweetness

She is singing to a child, a kid, and I am going to say a little boy. Is this song about Levi? I am going to say yes. Hands down the gem of the album, and our cue to realize she is telling us what is next, her family, the loves of her life: Karlie and the kids. That is what she wants and that will be her next chapter. We struggle to interpret the Taylor that is always ten steps ahead of us. Her Eras Tour, this will be the last one for a while. Once it has wrapped, I wouldn't be surprised if she disappeared for a spell. Will she produce more work, sure. Perform, probably, but this last decade has taken a toll, and this tour has been a herculean effort. Hence, its wild success. Could she retire (FLORIDA)? It's possible, but she would never tell us, we would have to figure that out for ourselves.

I have more to say, but it's late and I am sleepy. As I get lost in the piano of "The Manuscript" I am reminded of the book "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo"

Not sure if anyone is going to see or read this, but I needed a place to write my thoughts about this extraordinary album that I almost let slip through my fingers. Good night and sleep well everyone <3

#taylor swift #karlie kloss #the tortured poets department #matty healy #gaylor #kaylor #jack antonoff #aaron dessner #1989 era #the eras tour

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commodorez · 4 months

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I still believe the craziest form of computer program storage format from the 1980s is the cassette tape. Logical I get it but to store entire programs on little tape (that I only remember using to play music) is just crazy to me. Idk

Agreed, cassette tape for data storage was really clever. The concept had its heyday was the 1970s in a wide variety of encoding schemes for different computer platforms. It did persist into the 80s, mostly in Europe, while the US switched to floppy disks as soon as they were available for systems. The majority of my Ohio Scientific software is on cassette.

Talking with UK vs. US Commodore 64 users in particular will highlight the disparity in which storage mediums that were commonplace. I've got a few pieces of software on tape for mainly the VIC-20, but I rarely bother to use it, because it's slow and annoying. To be fair, Commodore's implementation of data storage on tape is pretty rock solid relative to the competition. It's considered more reliable than other company's but Chuck Peddle's implementation of the cassette routines are considered quite enigmatic to this day. He didn't document it super well, so CBM kept reusing his old code from the PET all the way through the end of the C128's development 7 years later because they didn't want to break any backward compatibility.

The big thing that really made alot of homebrewers and kit computer owners cozy up to the idea was the introduction of the Kansas City Standard from 1976. The idea of getting away from delicate and slow paper tape, and moving towards an inexpensive, portable, and more durable storage medium was quite enticing. Floppy disk drives and interfaces were expensive at the time, so something more accessible like off the shelf audio tapes made sense.

I've linked two places you can read about it from Byte Magazine's February 1976 issue below (check the attribution links).

You might recognize a familiar name present...

There are a few ways to encode binary data on tape designed to handle analog audio, but the KCS approach is to have 1's be 8 cycles of 2400Hz tone, and 0's be 4 cycles of 1200Hz tone. I say cycles, because while 300 baud is the initial specification, there is also a 1200 baud specification available, so the duration of marks vs spaces (another way of saying 1's and 0's), is variable based on that baud rate. Many S-100 computers implemented it, as do a few contemporary proprietary designs.

The big 3 microcomputers of 1977 that revolutionized the industry (Apple II, Commodore PET 2001, and Tandy TRS-80 Model I) each have their own cassette interface implementation. It kept costs down, and it was easy to implement, all things considered. The Apple II and TRS-80 use off-the-shelf cassette deck connections like many other machines, whereas the original variant of the PET had an integrated cassette. Commodore later used external cassette decks with a proprietary connector, whereas many other companies abandoned tape before too long. Hell, even the original IBM PC has a cassette port, not that anybody bothered to use that. Each one used a different encoding format to store their data, rather than KCS.

Here's a sample of what an OSI-formatted tape sounds like.

And here's a Commodore formatted tape, specifically one with VIC-20 programs on it.

I won't subject you to the whole program, or we'd be here all day. The initial single tone that starts the segment is called the "leader", I've truncated it for the sake of your ears, as well as recorded them kinda quietly. I don't have any other tape formats on hand to demonstrate, but I think you get the idea.

You can do alot better than storing programs on tape, but you can also do alot worse -- it beats having to type in a program every time from scratch.

#kansas city standard #cassette tape #commodore vic-20 #ohio scientific

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drarryspecificrecs · 2 months

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2024.02 ~ Top 6 longest fics posted on AO3

1. The Stag and the Dragon: The School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by Jesse_James [T, 180k]

►On the night of October 31st 1980, in an attempt to subvert prophecy, The Dark Lord Voldemort launches a pair of attacks to rid him of the one chosen to defeat him. But when one fails, the world is changed forever. But in this universe, things are different. The rules are not always the same. And things will not always be as we remember. And with a different choice made with a young orphaned Harry's future, the consequences of this one act will echo across fate. /// Meanwhile, in a different family, another boy struggles against what he is, and what he was born to be. All while his father seems to orchestrate more than just his life.

2. Empty Spaces by nori_mari [T, 125k]

►What do you do when everything you know comes to an end? The battle is over, Voldemort's gone, everything they ever wanted has come to pass. So why is it so hard to return to a “normal” life? How does one simply pick up the pieces and move on? When your entire life and identity have revolved around this one thing for so long… what do you do you have left of yourself when that one thing is over?

3. Papa Needs Daddy's Help by @amillionregrets [E, 94k]

►Harry's life revolves entirely around work these days, and he's deeply engrossed in it, as usual, when an urgent fire-call from Ron abruptly turns his world upside down. Apparently, a four-year-old girl with emerald eyes and long black hair has shown up at Ron's shop, claiming to be Harry's daughter and seeking his help to save her papa.

4. The Boy from the Piano Shop by @soliblomst [M, 90k] *typo

►After going blind in a reckless attempt to avenge Ginny's death, Harry battles with severe depression. One day, he stumbles upon a quaint piano restoration shop in the heart of London and meets the owner, a kindly old man, and his introverted young apprentice, whose voice sounds strangely familiar. As Harry and Draco slowly reconnect through private piano lessons, the small workshop becomes Harry's refuge, offering him a glimmer of hope in a world without eyes.

5. An Addendum For Depressed Authors by @queenie-jinny [E, 86k]

►‘The Misadventures of Harrison Portier’ six-part book series by J.E.P has been on the Daily Prophet’s best sellers list for 177 weeks straight, despite the author’s insistent anonymity and continuing avoidance of the public eye. After a long hiatus, the elusive final novel in the septology is about to hit the shelves, and Draco Malfoy, avid reader of the series and self-proclaimed number one fan (a proclamation he’d made to absolutely none save for himself), is determined to be the first person to read it. When the epilogue of the book leaves much to be desired, Draco has no choice but to take matters into his own hands. Thus begins a stormy correspondence that threatens to disrupt Harry’s hard-earned peaceful routine and maybe change his life in the process.

6. Draco's Splendid Decisions by @jocundasykes [E, 69k]

►Stuck in the doldrums of a rubbish summer holiday, an unexpected invitation beckons you back to the halls of Hogwarts for an eighth year. Should you go, and endure another round of academia? Dive into the mundane drudgery of work? Or escape it all with an international getaway? /// You're a free man. What happens next is up to you.

—

※ Word count: 1k ~ 10k

※ Word count: 10k ~ 40k

alive is a color you don't own by sectumsempra [E, 15k]

armstrong limit by @brosamigos [E, 11k]

Crossed Wires by @skeptiquewrites [E, 11k]

Enclosed is a Memory by Anonymous [M, 12k]

I'll Find You Again (I Always Do) by @dodgerkedavra [E, 15k]

The Month of Giving by Justlikewriting [M, 20k]

Nobody Except For You by @mistsound [T, 10k]

Oh, Overwhelming Passion and Seduction by AtelierOfStories [E, 19k]

These Old Feelings by Reloumi [E, 24k]

Time to indulge by @onehundredflamingos [E, 10k]

Until Now by crpage [T, 11k]

Warm Touch Makes No Sound by @rainjulyx [E, 13k]

—

Ongoing Fest/Exchange

※ Fics would be listed elsewhere.

Frottage Cottage WFAUFF Challenge

Knot Another Writing Fest: Knot Again 2023 | @hpknotfest

#drarry #drarry fanfic #drarry fic rec #harry potter #draco malfoy #monthly review #2024

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after-witch · 6 months

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Horrorfest: Party Time [Yandere Mahito x Reader]

Title: Party Time [Yandere Mahito x Reader]

Synopsis: Mahito just wants you to have a nice Halloween.

For Horrorfest request: Mahito putting his darling through a House of Horrors.

Word count: 2823

notes: yandere, kidnapped reader, body horror and gore, Mahito is his own warning here

Maybe it said something about your inherent ghoulishness that, when Mahito granted you the rare favor of allowing you to pick an activity to do outside the damp tunnel where he kept you, you chose this--going to a haunted house.

A cheap one, too. One of those kinds that was retrofitted into an existing building during October and then packed out like a cheap weekend carnival on November 1st. The kind that ignored safety violations and tended to hire teenagers who showed up high or drunk or both.

It was more cheesy than anything else. A series of dimmed rooms with strobe lights and spiderwebs, or people jumping out in mediocre costumes or revving up fake chainsaws. No, it wasn’t really scary… but to be fair, your definition of “really scary” had been completely upended the moment that you were kidnapped by a curse with a penchant for torturing people in ways you never thought possible before.

But it was still a tradition, damn it, and if you couldn’t get through October without at least one Halloween tradition under your belt, you might just lose your mind. Or what was left of it, considering your circumstances.

Still, did Mahito have to be a spoilsport about it? He’d been grinning at the start, one arm slung around your shoulder, even though no one else could see him. By the time you’d gotten to the third room, he was pouting. Complaining. Whining.

And now, at the end, as you walk out following one last jump scare involving an oversized doll costume, he’s rambling on and on about how these humans were terribly uncreative in their creation of a supposedly haunted house. Like you were just walking through the park and not a poorly lit room blasting spooky ambiance music as some tired teens tried to make you shriek.

“I know humans are capable of better than this,” he muses, sourly, as you make your way out of the parking lot and back onto the side streets that will eventually lead you “home.” Not your home, never your home. But the only home you’ve known since he took you, and it’s better to consider it something familiar than to fully face the reality of your situation without a gloss of comfort.

“It wasn’t that bad,” you say, lightly, blandly. “I think you’re being too harsh.”

Mahito sighs, and pulls you closer. To anyone on the street without the gift of sight, you might look a bit drunk. Stumbling now and then, leaning into nothing at all. Mahito likes this, you think, and that’s why he does it all the time on the very rare occasions that you’re allowed out.

“But I’m not wrong!” You glance at him. The almost childish expression of disappointment is stomach-turning. “You didn’t even flinch or scream or anything fun. You weren’t scared.”

You start to answer, then stop. He’s right. A year ago you probably would have shrieked yourself silly, as simple and ridiculous as the haunted house was; but that was a year ago. That was before.

“I’m… not scared of much any more.” Your words come out slow and carefully considered. It’s a habit ingrained in you by now. Mahito did love to take your words and run with them.

“Oh?” Mahito turns his head to look at you, and you catch the last moment of a grin that he pastes over with a solemn expression as soon as he sees you looking.

“Poor thing,” is all he says.

You don’t talk much on your way home after that.

“Mahito--”

“I promise, this will be fun!”

“Mahito--”

“Don’t worry so much, you’ll get wrinkles! Not that I’d mind, but I read this book from the 1980s on beauty perception and--”

“Mahito!”

Mahito pouts, puffing his cheeks out ridiculously. When he doesn’t say anything, you sit up straighter.

“I’m just saying this isn’t necessary.” You keep your tone gentle, sweet. You don’t want him to accuse you of being ungrateful again. The last time he did that--the less said, the better. “I already got my Halloween fix at the haunted house, really. And we watched a horror movie the other day, didn’t we? And you got me a book…”

Your hand gestures ineffectually towards your nest of blankets, where a battered copy of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary lay. Mahito found it in a box of books someone threw on the curb and proudly brought it to you, like a cat bringing a dead sparrow to its owner.

Mahito’s expression turns sticky, and his voice coos to match. “Ohh, you’re being so sweet, pet! But I want to do this for you. Since you like Halloween!” He resumes setting out a small collection of large bowls, most with mismatched lids, humming a song you don’t know all the while. “I worked really hard on this, you know!”

“I…” You start to protest, but it doesn’t get far. There was never any use arguing with Mahito or even reasoning with him on most things. Curses did not have the same reason as human beings. That much you knew by now.

So you sit obediently on the ground in front of the beat-up coffee table he dragged in here not so long ago--for this very purpose, maybe?--and try to calm the writhing ball in your stomach.

“Where did you get this idea, anyway?” You ask. Your voice shakes a little, from the cold or worry, you don’t know.

Mahito hums, setting down what must be the last bowl and surveying his work. “I read it in a magazine of Halloween party ideas! Some of them look pretty fun. Bobbing for apples…” He looks up at you with an almost hungry smile. “Your hands have to be tied behind your back for that one. Humans sure get kinky on Halloween, don’t they?”

Your cheeks heat up horribly but you don’t answer. It’s smarter not to indulge Mahito in any questions related remotely to sex.

The line of bowls on the table looks like something out of a sad potluck. You wonder why he picked this idea, or anything in a book about Halloween parties.

You recognized the idea at once. It was one of those old fashioned party games where the host put food in bowls and told everyone it was something gross, like brains or eyeballs. You remember playing this game only once in your life as a child, and everyone thought it was dumb and boring even then.

Well, it was probably the easiest to do with only two of you; you’re grateful, anyway, that he decided not to go for apple bobbing, if what drew him to it was the rope.

“One final touch!” He practically skips over to you and holds out a ragged strip of black fabric. A blindfold.

Oh, no. Nope, nope and nope.

“Um, can’t we just turn off the lights?” There were a few flickering bulbs built into the walls--for service workers, you think, back when this tunnel was actually serviced--and Mahito kept a few battery powered lanterns around that he threw out and replaced whenever the batteries died.

A pout. A shift on his legs, a hand on his hips.

“It’s more fun this way. Ugh, don’t be so boring…”

Ah, boring. The most dangerous word in Mahito’s vocabulary. And you aren’t being sarcastic when you think that, which is why you sigh and blow cool air out your mouth and nod at him.

He giggles, and scampers behind you with the blindfold in tow.

“This is going to be so fun,” he says, practically trilling as he ties the blindfold around your eyes. The darkness is quick and artificial and awful. “Have you played it before?”

You hum something like assent. “Just once, when I was little.”

Mahito presses a kiss to the top of your head and you fight the urge to squirm.

“If you don’t remember the rules, it’s like this: I put your hands in each bowl, and you tell me what you think it is!”

Your heart begins to speed up, no matter how much you try to tell yourself to remain calm. It was just a blindfold, no big deal. It was just a stupid Halloween party game, no big deal.

It was just Mahito… well, uh, wait a minute. It was Mahito. You were right to worry.

But you’re trying very, very hard not to--and that was as close as you’d get to remaining calm tonight.

You hear the sound of the various tops being pulled off the bowls, accompanied by little grunts and noises as Mahito perhaps struggled with the lids.

Someone takes your hands--you jump, and Mahito laughs--and guides them to the edge of the bowl.

Something squishy and a little stiff. Wet, but only vaguely. Round, like bouncy balls. But they feel more organic than that.

“Grapes,” you say. “They’re grapes.”

Mahito makes a choking sound. Did he not think you knew the tricks of the game? Maybe the first people to play the game decades and decades ago were caught unawares, but the answers were common knowledge by now. Grapes for eyeballs, spaghetti for intestines; some people got creative and made fake brains and stuff, too.

He pulls your hands out of the bowl and sets them on the next.

Your hands plunge in and find not quite what you expected, but close enough. Instead of strings of spaghetti noodles, Mahito has chosen sausages. You suppose that was more realistic when it came to feel and size, anyway. They weren’t cold exactly, but that was nothing new--there was no fridge around here.

“Sausages.” When he doesn’t respond. “Like, a whole row of them.”

Mahito huffs.

He’s such a spoilsport, you think. Maybe you ought to start guessing around to appease him. Or would he catch on that you were lying and get more annoyed at you treating him like glass? Or would that make him feel good? It was so, so hard to tell what you were meant to do sometimes.

But he does take your hands, now a little slimy with cooking water, and set them on the next bowl.

This one is… a little different from the rest, and you couldn’t quite place it. It was soft, smooth, but almost sponge-like in texture. Like a gummy or…

”Gelatin?” You’re not quite sure for this one, and it comes through in your tone. Still, your fingers squish the mystery item. “Like, an organ?” You remembered once cooking beef liver for your dad and it had the same gummy, gelatin-like feel before it was cooked. Unpleasant and odd to touch, for sure. You didn't know if it tasted good.

“Yes!” Mahito sighs out the word, and at least he’s no longer acting like a pouty child when you guess right. It makes the ball in your stomach shrink down, just a little. Even if you’re still waiting for something to happen. Maybe he’ll try to jump scare you at the end or something.

The next bowl is liquid, and you almost jerk your fingers back out by instinct. It couldn’t be water, it wasn’t thin enough. There is even a slight smell to it, almost artificial--red dye. Mahito would dye the fake blood red just to make it more authentic, wouldn’t he?

“A smoothie, maybe? Or whole milk, or cream…”

If Mahito cares that you didn’t give a singular answer, he doesn’t let you know. He only lets out a pouty whine and you wonder which of your three guesses was right.

“Last bowl,” he says, before placing your hands on the edge of the plastic container.

What in the world?

When you put your hands inside, your fingers are immediately met with a multitude of small, firm… somethings. Your fingers fiddle with one of them, feeling over the grooves. Wood, maybe? Figurines? You’re reminded, suddenly, of when cereal used to come with toys in the box. But you very much doubt Mahito collected a few dozen old cereal figurines.

“I’m not sure,” you admit. “Really big wood chips? Figurines?”

There’s a few moments of unusually heavy silence, and then Mahito whines. Whines!

“You’re awful at this game. You only guessed one of them right! I thought you’d be better at it, since you’re into this human holiday…”

Huh?

You scoff, though you’re not offended. Just confused. And tired. And wary. Nothing new there, when you think about it.

“What do you mean? The only one I wasn’t sure about was this last one… maybe the one before it, but it’s hard to tell the difference between milk and cream or whatever.”

You feel the presence of Mahito leaning over the table, feel his fingers fiddling with the back of your blindfold, and blink as the artificial blackness drops away to reveal Mahito sitting in front of you with a pouty look on his face.

And then you look down at the mystery bowl, your hands still resting inside, and bile immediately rises into your throat when you realize two hideous truths:

One. The bowl is filled with transfigured humans. Small distorted shapes of horror. A whole bowl of them, piled high, like a candy dish on granda’s counter.

Two. Your hands are red. Not just red, but red with slick, thick gore. Blood. There was no mistaking the feel of it. The second-to-last bowl is filled halfway with blood. Real blood. Human blood.

Your neck turns slowly, like you’re a broken, mechanical doll that can’t quite complete the movement. The acidic bile in your throat reaches your mouth and you swallow, swallow, swallow. But all you can do is cough and hope the real vomit stays down.

It shouldn’t surprise you, what you see. But somehow your stupid self thought he was playing a party game, a copycat out of one of his magazines.

The bowls are not filled with peeled grapes and sausages and blobs of gelatin.

The bowls are filled with eyeballs of all different colors, most of them still trailing red optic nerves like tails; with strings of intestines, thick and slimy and pale; with livers in varying shades of brown and red.

“Oh,” Mahito says, perking up, when he catches you looking at the bowl of livers. “I wanted to show you, look at this one!” He grabs one of the livers and holds it up for you to see. “He had some kind of disease, I think… see the funny lumps?”

You’re only aware that your body is shaking when your neck jerks and twinges in pain.

“What the fuck,” you mutter. “What the fuck.”

Mahito quirks his head. You hate that you know the confusion on his face is real. He really is curious about everything, all the time. Especially human thoughts and feelings and behaviors. A mad scientist if there ever was one; but at least a mad scientist had some sort of lofty, if fucked up, end goal. Mahito just was.

“What’s the matter?” He scoots on his butt around the table, not stopping until he’s sitting next to you. You don’t fight--you can’t--when he takes your hands and holds them. He doesn’t mind the gore being smeared on his own fingers, you’re sure.

You feel like your eyebrows would fly off your head if they could.

“What’s the matter? What’s the--you… you used real human body parts--real people--for this game. That’s what’s the matter! Christ--”

Mahito’s eyebrows furrow.

“But that’s the game! You put all sorts of creepy things in bowls and people guess what it is.” He squeezes your hands. “Are you sure you aren’t just a sore loser because you stink at guessing?”

How many people are in that bowl, anyway? The thought comes and goes; it would be like playing some fucked up game of “guess how many beans are in the jar!” Only there is no knick-knack prize if you guess right. Just a solid number to the bowl of horrors sitting only inches away from you.

How many were there, how old are they, do they have family, did it hurt, did they scream--

Your lips are dry when you lick them and speak, voice shell shocked and dull. “It’s a party game. You’re supposed to use things like, like--peeled grapes for eyeballs or spaghetti for intestines. It’s a dumb party game because it’s silly and no one is really freaked out by that if they’re older than 7 years old.”

The game isn’t meant to end with you realizing that you’d been feeling up the organs of murdered people, is what you should say. But you’re not sure Mahito would recognize that for the rebuke that it is.

“Ohh,” he says, and you can see it all clicking into place in his mind. After a few beats, he grins with pride. “Well, my version is an improvement.”

You must look incredulous again, because he continues. “See, my version is more fitting ” He nods to himself. “I’m much better at Halloween than humans.”

For once, you can’t disagree--not even in your own thoughts.

His version is really scarier than the original

#yandere mahito #mahito x reader #yandere jjk #yandere jujutsu kaisen #afterwitch writes #aw horrorfest #the original title was 'it's my halloween party and I'll cry if I want to' but it was too damn long

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ducklooney · 2 months

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While the Epic Mickey video game is getting a remastered version (and that's a good thing, because that video game is really underrated), it's a shame that Disney canceled a video game project called Epic Donald for stupid reasons. It would be like Epic Mickey (spin-off to be exact), but Donald would star as the hero who saves Duckburg from various troubles and villains. Donald would be like Indiana Jones, but you should know that Indiana Jones was modeled after the Carl Barks comics and the adventures of Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck and Huey, Dewey and Louie.

That game would be based on the Carl Barks comics with some references from the OG Ducktales and in addition to Donald, there would be Scrooge McDuck, Donald's nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, Gyro Gearloose, Magica de Spell, Launchpad McQuack, Beagle Boys, Gladstone Gander and other characters (with appearances by Goofy and Mickey). And these are some of the concepts for this game which was specially left by one of the last current American writers and artists for Donald Duck comics Patrick Pat Block. This idea was put forth by Warren Spector himself. And you can learn more about it from this video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50doEJYcwv8

Articles related to this: https://www.thegamer.com/epic-donald-epic-mickey/ https://mynintendonews.com/2016/08/19/concept-art-from-cancelled-epic-donald-game-surfaces/

And thanks to gaming historian Liam Robertson for the excellent video clip analysis.

It was also planned to realize the video game Epic Mickey Racers in which famous Disney heroes would race, and one of them would be Scrooge McDuck who would ride a motorcycle together with Donald's nephews. This sounds familiar, doesn't it?

It's a great shame that they canceled this video game (especially after Ducktales Remastered Game), because if they had realized it, they would have realized how much they could do with Donald Duck, his family and friends, and the comic book material, which there is a lot of, and people, through the video game, could be interested. for Carl Barks comics, as well as other comics by other authors, especially in America where interest in Donald Duck comics has declined since the 1980s era. In Europe he would be even more popular because Donald is a much more popular character than Mickey (which is not to say that Mickey doesn't have a role in his comics, especially look at Egmont and the Italian comics) and has a significant role in those comics. I have a feeling that American Disney has a lot of intolerance towards Disney comics, which is unfortunate. Shame on you Disney!

I wish that this idea and this video game could be realized and that Donald could be restored to his old reputation. This is just my opinion.

Feel free to like and reblog this if you support this!

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legendofmorons · 2 months

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Hello there! Can I request a work on a gender neutral reader being a parental figure to the chain? Reader is both wise but chaotic, and has little quirks like humming or holding on to the boys clothing to keep them from walking to far from them.

Parental instinct

Hi! I'm so sorry this was late, but I had so much fun with it. I might just do more of it.

Pairing: chain & reader

Rating: G

Summary: A look into life and the chain's parental figure

Warnings: none

Other: If I missed anything, please let me know

You don't actually have a 2024 bingo card, but you know that being sucked into an adventure with nine heroes wouldn't be on it anyway. You should start making yearly bingo cards.

You step into something of a parental role, out of necessity mostly, but you're also probably a caretaker at heart.

So, after a few months, you've gotten the boys to really start listening to you. Which is a feat.

On days like today, you're thankful for the help Warriors, Time, and Twilight present. You need all the help you can get while coralling the heroes through the more modern hyrule.

You say modern, but you're all in the 1980s, with big hair, blur eyeshadow, and a lot of shoulder pads.

"Wind!" You call loudly, grabbing the back of his shirt to stop him from crossing the cross walk.

A car speeds by.

"What?"

"Please don't get run over." You say with that long suffering tome familiar to those responsible for chaotic gremlins.

"Didn't (Y/n) just go over traffic rules?" Legend huffs as if he didn't also have to be stopped by Warriors and the captain'squick reflexes.

"Shut up Legend you're just as bad." Wind sticks his tongue out.

"Boys!" You interject, "We're clear now, let's go."

You follow the chain, bringing up the rear.

Hearding them to a hotel and booking last-minute rooms is an experience that involves keeping Wind near you at all times.

(You promise yourself to find one of those cute animal backpack leashes. Or maybe nine of them, actually. That'd make keeping the boys in line easier.

Maybe Legend needs a monkey one.)

After you've gotten the rooms and divided them, you all settle in your room.

Four and Legend have taken a bed to themselves sitting side by side.

Sky, Wild, and Warriors sit on the couch. The three too tired to cause much trouble.

Time and Hyrule sit beside you on the third bed.

"We should totally try that pe-za." Wind declares as he flops himself over your lap.

"Pizza. But yeah, sure." You say as you toss Wild the remote to the TV.

Wild takes a minute but figures out the remote and starts flipping through channels.

You are ordering several pizzas through an app. You've got several large pizzas, lots of breadsticks, a few orders of salad, a few liters of soda, and a bunch of deserts by the time it's all ordered. Thank Hylia for rewards programs.

Wild has found full house and pit it on. Whether good or bad, nostalgia is probably there.

"(Y/n)!" Legend calls, "Tell Four to get his feet off my side of the bed!"

"Four." You say with a pointed look, "Stop tormenting poor Legend."

"He started it." Four says evenly, as though he isn't currently sticking his cold feet onto Legend.

"Hylia, grant me some patience." You mutter to yourself.

"Not strength?" Sky asks.

"If she gave me strength, I'd shake some sense into all of you."

Wind is laughing then, a little too much like a hyena, but he's happy, so we'll take it.

-------

After dinner and showers, the boys all gone to bed. You find yourself beside Time.

The old man is lying down, trying his hardest to sleep. But something seems to be bothering him.

It's instinct to start humming. The tune is old and familiar as your voice takes it on.

After a while, you look down, finding Time's face serene the way only peaceful sleep grants. Good. He needs it.

You didn't expect to gain nine kids this year, but you wouldn't trade them for the world. Ganon better watch his back, though. You'd kick his ass in a heartbeat for all he's done to your boys.

#chocolate-marrianitos #lu #linkeduniverse #misty writes #linked universe x reader #lu four #lu hyrule #lu legend #lu sky #lu time #lu twilight #lu warriors #lu wild #lu wind

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