https://brin-bellway.dreamwidth.org/11841.html
Tags:
#oh look an original post
Author: Brin
ive developed an eccentric character for a hypothetical youtube series called ‘ishtar ray: tactical botanist’ and i feel like i need to get it out of my system so heres the setup
-by the year 2174, plants have evolved into a violent threat against humanity and initiated a plant apocalypse. ishtar is a grad student of tactical botany sent back in time to try to prevent the apocalypse with three missions:
1. try to teach everyone he encounters about very specific plant biology with the hopes that it will give humanity an advantage when the time comes,
2. try to intercept current plant research to send back to his time period, as much of the higher research on plant biology was destroyed in the apocalypse. refers to all plant research as ‘intelligence’ regardless of the situation
3. in our time period, the evolution of plants into violent antagonists has already begun. ishtar must venture into the field attempting to find these individuals and eliminate them with his anti-plantometer before they can breed. these individuals are usually depicted as like. a plant with a knife taped to it
-ishtar carries around a camera to document his adventures, which he then edits into episodes (each one focusing on a certain plant/plant subject) and puts onto youtube
-ishtar wears only post-apocalyptic clothes. theres mud and dirt smeared on his face, and within the first episode we become aware that he literally lives in a tent pitched in a comically public area. he wears a military jacket with ‘KNOW YOUR ENEMY’ painted on the back (the tagline of the show), carries his anti-plantometer and various futuristic anti-plant weapons with him at all times, and overall is EXTREMELY out of place in literally every situation in both behavior and clothing to a ridiculous degree and is completely oblivious to it
-teaches the content in a deranged ranting way with the strong implication that the viewer will have to know this to defend themselves, also implies that botany is a military science
-is HORRIFIED at the idea of houseplants. also refuses to touch any plant with his bare hands and carries salad tongs for this purpose
-once an episode stands in a public area with a relevant picket sign frantically trying to tell people about how dangerous the plant of the episode is
-occasionally interjects weird, vague comments about plant violence from the future. ‘my uncle was killed by a moss. crawled up through his window while he was sleeping. ive never seen so much carnage’. never elaborates on exactly how the killing was done
-acts very seriously but its impossible to take him seriously
-literally never relaxes
-like bill nye but botany-based and chaotic evil
this is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. please make this.
Tags:
#story ideas I will never write #plants #apocalypse cw
The Thingie, round 3!
I have returned after recovering from (moderate-to-large homework assignment that would have been infinitely easier had I not left it until the last… three-ish hours before the deadline? after knowing it was due for over a month?) to say more nice things about people on the internet!
One of your about pages implies that you only follow highly interesting people. This is an excellent strategy because it makes your follows feel important and insightful even if they’ve only sporadically participated in a couple of ask memes since September
You’re really good at finding interesting articles from the Outside World and having thoughts about them. This is why you’re one of my favorite options for archive-trawling. If I accidentally like a post from three weeks ago please do not be alarmed
I’m most familiar with your blog as part of the @xhxhxhx, @lambdaphagy, etc. triad of people whose economics/sociology opinions I may or may not agree with but always enjoy reading. This is an A+ sphere of Tumblr in which to be involved
1. pink hair!!! yes this deserves its own point
2. excellent taste in sushi, artsy hobbies, pretty dresses, and Instagram people
3. blog typically has more horses than sharks, despite what one may expect from the title, but they are very excellent horses
4. makes the CUTEST THINGS like omg
5. very fun to hang out with! also apparently people I have actually met in real life get bullet points not sure why this is
You have a really pretty Tumblr avatar. I don’t know what it’s of, but it’s always nice to run across it as I’m scrolling through my dash and see it off to the side being all vaguely rainbow-y. This usually isn’t the kind of thing people hope to be complimented on, but avatar choice is important and you have chosen wisely
I don’t know about the approximation part, but the ‘reasonable’ half of your url is definitely applicable to every post of yours I’ve seen.
…This kind of sounds like a ‘damned with faint praise’ scenario, but seriously, reasonableness is one of the few characteristics that all of the writers I admire invariably share; it’s also important and that kind of consistency is admirable
I haven’t posted them because space-conservation reasons, but your compliment meme request was the funniest! So you win on that front! and yes it was a competition this whole time
Your blog seems like a decent source of non-USian news and general Canadian-ish-ness. As your country has just elected an exceptionally cute prime minister, this is an incredibly important feature and I hope to see further updates in the future
I have a hard time finding blogs that contain Tumblr-typical humor without being too Tumblr-humor-y, so your blog is a great resource! Your anything-that-makes-me-laugh-this-much-deserves-a-reblog tag has been instrumental in bringing the Mint Mistake to my attention, for which I owe you my thanks
(I want to use this as a context link, but @floresapriles got force-safe-moded (for some probably-bullshit reason) and is too dormant to try to do anything about that. So, I skimmed through her blog on the dashboard view until I found it (I knew roughly when it was posted, so it wasn’t all that hard to find), and I’m reblogging it here. A link to this post will be showing up shortly, in an aside on a comment roundup.)
Tags:
#(October 2015) #The Last Tumblr Apocalypse #compliment meme
a fun activity to do with your girlfriend is torment her by randomly shouting lines from GPT-2-generated Moloch when she least expects it
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(I wouldn’t say I *endorse* this behaviour but it *is* hilarious)
Harry, Hermione, and Ron are killed early in their search for Horcruxes. Voldemort orders a full invasion of Hogwarts to find the remaining ones. In a panic, Hogwarts is evacuated. One student slept through the evacuation order: 4th year American transfer student Kevin McCallister.
I would like to go on the record as saying….i hate this…….
He’d win
That is part of why….I hate it……bc I genuinely to the core of my being believe that Macaulay Culkin could probably have finished Voldemort faster than the golden trio & Dumbledore combined…………this kid could play a fake recording of Dumbledore saying “Merry Christmas ya filthy animal” with the sound of spells being fired off from the Room of Requirement and Tom Riddle would be tf out of there so fast & slip on a Portable Swamp and fall down a changing staircase…………..
OK but what if the final battle was like this instead.
Like.
The Hogwarts students have spent the entire year peripheral to a war zone, with some of the enemy already present and actively tormenting and then hunting them. They have some idea that Hogwarts might be invaded by Voldemort at some point in time.
As part of their ongoing campaign of defiance of all things pureblood-supremacist and to keep up morale, they have a series of movie nights wherein they get everybody together and watch Muggle films on a TV that they’ve gotten Flitwick to charm into working at Hogwarts.
One of these films was Home Alone.
It was such a hit that they watched the other movies in the series.
And somebody, some little first year who’d been Crucio’d six times that month, raises her hand and suggests, “what if when HE came, we were prepared like Kevin was?”
And they spend the next four months booby-trapping every single inch of the castle.
People use the DA galleons to communicate, and the graduates provide supplies and research and high-level spellwork. Fred and George turn their joke shop’s entire production output to the purpose. Muggleborns, despite being on the run from the now-corrupt Ministry, buy technology like video cameras, remote controls, computers, and Muggle explosives, and research every method of sabotage, petty revenge, and dirty trickery they can think of.
When the evacuation order comes, the younger students retreat to the Hog’s Head with their arms full of screens and remotes and VR headsets, each with their assignment of an area to watch and a set of traps to deploy.
The older students prepare for battle.
The first casualty, as it were, is Severus Snape, who takes a swung paint can to the side of the head and spends the first half hour of the war locked in a disused classroom, before he can do more than demand Harry Potter’s whereabouts from Minerva McGonagall.
When Voldemort arrives with his Death Eaters, giants, werewolves, and assorted other lackeys in tow, and demands Harry Potter, the answer–from Neville Longbottom–is “If you want him, come and get him, you snake-fucking arsehole.”
Minerva has to turn a laugh into a hacking cough, and surrepticiously awards ten points to Gryffindor when nobody’s paying attention.
When Voldemort strides up to the doorway, the lawn collapses and he finds himself chest-deep in a Portable Swamp.
Ginny Weasley, responsible for the first line of defense at her own request, is downright gleeful as she activates the hundreds of freezing charms the students had added to it, and he and several Death Eaters find themselves temporarily stuck in the ice.
Everything is brought to bear. Electricity, zapping some Death Eaters. Tar and feathers, turning some werewolves into a sticky mess. Maple-syrup balloons, hidden in nets suspended from the ceilings. Legos and D4 dice, scattered across the ground after a set of permanent sticking charms that attach the attackers’ boot soles to the floor.
Some traps are magical in nature. The suits of armor, charmed to attack, and both sides of the giant magical chess set that used to guard the Sorcerer’s Stone. Others are purely mundane: tripwires that drop trapdoors full of stones, rotten pumpkins, and metal shavings on the heads of unsuspecting giants. Still more are a spectacular mix: hand grenades that bounce down stairways before exploding at the touch of a button from some second-year in the Hog’s Head.
Hogwarts’ defenders throw spells, gunfire, and molotov cocktails at the enemy, and whenever a Death Eater aims a spell at someone, a trap is sprung upon them by a watchful younger student.
When Voldemort retreats, his robes tattered and dripping with substances he can’t name and his follower count cut in half, there are no deaths among the other side.
He delivers his ultimatum anyway.
Snape, at this point, has awoken and escaped by the simple means of opening a window and flying next door; he tracks down Harry by listening to students talk, and heads to the room of requirement, dodging two or three traps (impressed despite himself) until one of the watchers contacts Harry via radio and Harry says to let the bastard at him.
What the two talk about, only they know. Hermione and Ron grab the diadem while watching them dubiously, and Snape offers to call up Fiendfire to destroy it. This perhaps proves something to Harry, who accompanies Snape to the Headmaster’s office despite Hermione’s and Ron’s, and then Minerva’s, protests.
When they are done, Harry Potter walks out the front door of Hogwarts and duels Voldemort, who starts on the count of two and kills him.
Shock, then hundreds of protests of cheating, and when Voldemort starts to gloat the chants of “CHEATER! CHEATER!” drown him out. He tries to say that it’s irrevelant; Harry Potter is dead, but is heckled in the form of thrown objects. From the shadows, Snape flings the shattered, scorched remnants of the diadem, the cup, and Nagini’s severed head. Voldemort catches the first, and shock paralyzes him long enough to get beaned in the head with the second; his shriek of rage is cut short when the third bounces right off his face.
(The Sorting Hat, begging anyone who will listen to put it on, was listened to by Snape. Being hit on the head a second time did his oncoming headache no favors, but the Sword of Gryffindor appears for bravery, and on his way down, meeting Nagini trapped in something resembling a magical tar pit, he does with the sword what the sword is for.)
There is laughter, and then that laughter becomes a roaring, thundering cheer when Harry Potter stands back up and taps Voldemort on the shoulder. Voldemort turns, and is knocked flat to the ground by a devastating punch that held every bit of misery Harry’s been through in his whole life thanks to Voldemort’s work.
Then when he gets up, Harry makes his request that Voldemort try for some regret. The Elder Wand does its thing. Voldemort falls, never to rise again.
Death Eaters escape, only to find out that some of those traps were full of pigment visible under ultraviolet light, and it is very easy for Aurors to figure out who was present at the attack.
The cleanup is a trial and a half, but the story is told for centuries.
Tags:
#Harry Potter #Home Alone #fanfic #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #death tw
Why should Germans be the only ones having this kind of fun Fellow citizens of the United States I nominate Wyoming
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you- the Bielefeld Conspiracy
You shouldn’t spread this kind of nonsense. Non-German followers may believe that Bielefeld actually exists.
the oldest yet biggest german meme
I had a friend in high school who insisted Mountain Time was a conspiracy. She didn’t know anyone from Mountain Time or in Mountain Time, nothing she bought or owned was made in Mountain Time, and she declared it was just a cover for the government to spend millions on the “rocky mountains” without accountability. By the end of junior year we all used “Mountain Time” as shorthand for something that shouldn’t exist, or that should exist and didn’t, like, “Oh no man, I forgot to do my homework, it’s in Mountain Time.”
In 1987 or so, I started claiming this to be the case with Portugal. So, the Portugese had a reputation for piracy. (Or perhaps privateering.) And my theory is: It was the Spanish, and then they wanted a cover story.
spain: Oh, no, your ships weren’t raided by Spanish ships. It was the Portugese.
everyone else: They spoke Spanish.
spain: haha, no. They were speaking Portugese. It just sounds like Spanish.
everyone else: Where exactly is this “Portugal” then?
spain: oh, it’s… uhm… between us and the ocean. Just a little strip of land. You’d hardly notice it if it weren’t for all the pirates.
everyone else: that sounds fake but okay. (updates maps)I’ve since been informed by people whose native language is probably Spanish or maybe Portugese that this sounds pretty likely.
Tags:
#unreality cw #storytime #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog
lizardbros:
ITS THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN
#always work out what year you are claiming to have been born in #it’s easier if you’re born in a nought year (agapi42)
I generally used 1980, but that was for online stuff where I didn’t need to physically pass as having been born then.
(And no, it actually *wasn’t* porn: it was online contests. I still remember that one contest Reese’s ran that had super-common “consolation” prizes of a free Fast Break chocolate bar. My family had so many chocolate bars by the end, it was great.)
((Fast Break bars aren’t *especially* good–I wouldn’t ever pick them over the other chocolates at the checkout–but for free I was happy to take them.))
Tags:
#(I’m a week late on responding to this but oh well) #((I guess this also counts as a belated answer to that Question of the Day post about what laws I’ve broken)) #((although more of a term and condition than a law)) #((these days I *do* abide by the letter of contest rules)) #reply via reblog #my childhood #food #Hot Fuzz
You know what bugs me about soulmate aus? So, I’m assuming that this whole “the first thing your soulmate says to you blahblahblah” is a worldwide thing. So many of the aus I’ve read have a quote at some point that addresses how tragic it is when people have soul words that say something like “hi” or “‘sup” which makes NO SENSE! In a world where the first thing you say to people is THAT important, WHY GOD WHY would the culture still use standard greetings? Who the fuck is still saying hello at this point? Everyone in these worlds would surely develop a personalized greeting different from everybody else’s to prevent confusion. Like how no 2 racehorses can have the same racing name? The best part is that every time people met someone new for the first time, they would try to say something that no one else had said. You’d have people meeting eachother at a job intetview, they’d shake hands, smile politely, then one of them would be like “Every Tuesday, I hard even grape purple farm house sunsets too” and this would be perfectly normal. Or you’d go up to the cash register at Starbucks and instead of saying “Hello, what can i get for you today?” She’d look you right in the eye and say “I don’t know what Space Jam is” THEN ask you what you want and she’d repeat that to every customer in the line for the rest of her career. And because they live in the AU, nobody would think it was weird.
^^In which AUs get interesting with their world building. I love it.
A world where everyone has their own, increasingly bad, pickup lines
Sounds like my kind of world
I actually read one singular fanfic that actually used this idea and it was great, but for the life of me I can’t even remember what fandom it was for
Imagine the ultimate insult though! Saying, Hi, or Hello when first meeting someone would imply “I don’t care if we are soulmates, I don’t want to even try with you.
I would read the HECK out of this!
I’m so sorry if this is obnoxious, but I have to tag my favorite authors in the faint hope that they’ll write something like this @copperbadge @mhalachai @nyxetoile
See, I so rarely write soulmate AUs because I do think it actually requires a fair amount of worldbuilding – you have to really look at culture and see how it would shift, which is fun! But also a lot of work.
Like, it’s definitely funnier if everyone just says something different and new every time they meet someone, and I love the idea of snubbing someone by saying “Hello” dismissively (also if you have “Hello” as your soulmate keyword you know you’re in for some HARD GOING). But realistically we’re pragmatic creatures – it’s much more likely we’d develop a “keyword” and everyone just greets with their own keyword. Likely we’d just use names to greet with, and have a much wider variety of names.
I know that there are some people who don’t like soulmate AUs because they don’t like the implication that there is only ever one (or a few, in some AUs) person who is Right For You, and that your life is predestined to include them, which I get. I prefer the structure I implied in Soul Bomb, where there are basically otherworldly statistical models that know who the best person for you is, the person whose model matches yours the closest, but you’re not necessarily destined to meet them – if they die, you didn’t lose your soulmate, you’ve just shifted down the scale to the next person with a compatibility model above a certain percent. I also prefer stories where either (or both) a) not everyone has a soulmate or very few find theirs, so it’s not so crushing to be an outlier, and b) not all soulmates are romantic.
But yeah I think it requires a rethinking of basic culture and especially with keyword-based versions, some rethinking of how we verbally interact. Which is fun, but often more work than I want to put into a love story. :D
Tags:
#story ideas I will never write #(though mostly reblogged for the discussion of worldbuilding)
There’s a bar of gold hidden somewhere within Ft. Knox. Nobody has been able to find it as it’s hidden among thousands of other identical bars of gold.
{{OP by facts-i-just-made-up}}
This is an interesting example of a statement that might be true and might be meaningless but isn’t false.
Tags:
#home of the brave #I mean you’re not wrong #(though as a facts-i-just-made-up post I’m still going to tag it:) #unreality cw
