Guys.

Y’all.

I…

I just. I just… i have discovered something. And I have laughed too much. I have laughed every time I have tried to explain it to someone. I cannot get through this.

Look. Okay.

There are two things you need to know, here.

First: There’s a style of Greek pottery that was popular during the Hellenic period, for which most of the surviving examples are from southern Italy. We call them ‘fish plates’ because, well, they’re plates, and they’re decorated with fish (and other marine life).

Like this one, currently in the Met:

Or this one, currently in the Cleveland Museum of Art:

They’re very cool. We’re not 100% sure what they were for, because most of the surviving ones were found as grave goods, but that’s a different post.

The second thing you need to know is that when we (Classics/archaeology/whatever as a discipline) have a collection of artefacts, like vases, sculptures, paintings, etc. and we do not know the name of the artist, but we’re pretty sure one artist made X, Y and Z artefacts, we come up with a name for that artist. There are a whole bunch of things that could be the source for the name, e.g. where we found most of their work (The Dipylon Master) or the potter with whom they worked (the Amasis Painter), a favourite theme (The Athena Painter), the Museum that ended up with the most famous thing they did (The Berlin Painter) or a notable aspect of their style. Like, say, The Eyebrow Painter.

Guess what kind of pottery the Eyebrow Painter made?

dawnhasrisen

whetstonefires

the-punforgiven

I wish wizards were real so bad imagine coming out of a wal mart and seeing some guy with long robes and a big hat in the parking lot surrounded by wacky particle effects screaming some shit like "By the moon and the starlight, by the shield and the sword, I summon to me, my Honda Accord!" And then just getting into his car and driving off

whetstonefires

so there's basically two reasons he would need to do this and they're both funny

his magical honda unsummoned while he was in Walmart; this means it's not even a real car and could look like anything and he picked or was forced somehow to pick a Honda Accord
his normal honda was left someplace while he came to Walmart by other means, and he can teleport the car to him more easily than he can teleport himself places

dawnhasrisen

toskarin

the problem with the current wave of discord phishing scams is that I don't think you can blame people for clicking links without checking where they go. internet safety isn't really taught in schools anymore, sure, but there is literal research being done on how the omnipresence of social media has eroded people's ability to parse what we would otherwise identify as untrustworthy behaviour. it's blaming a structural problem on individuals

if you wanna hear someone explain this effect better than I can, check out this video essay that goes into the problem in more detail

dawnhasrisen

alivehouse

the problem with fanfiction is that theres too many coffeeshop aus and not enough aus where the characters are trapped in an alivehouse psychological horror situation or perhaps a labyrinth of sorts

dawnhasrisen

linguistness

Masterlist for learning languages

Requests / Asks:

-> you can find all my answered asks by searching for #ask, #ask response or #request

dawnhasrisen

sui-imi

licollisa

Asgore undertale coming back to the podium 5 minutes after declaring war on humanity to say his wife has left him

sui-imi

Toriel undertale leaving the ruins 5 minutes after letting Frisk fight for their life alone just to insult Asgore

dawnhasrisen

starryaike

I did this in like 2 days and a half I'm gonna pass out bye

dawnhasrisen

prokopetz

sagalink asked:

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?

prokopetz answered:

(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.)

dawnhasrisen

prokopetz

When I was a kid I read a lot of sword and sorcery fiction from the 1970s and 1980s, and there was an extremely specific recurring trope I encountered in those novels and literally nowhere else.

There'd be this villainous duo – typically servants of the principal villain – consisting of a scheming mastermind middle-aged father and his hyperviolent lunatic teenage daughter. The daughter would constantly fuck things up due to her erratic behaviour, and the father would put up with it because they were stuck in this intensely toxic codependent relationship that left the daughter with no meaningful social relationships apart from her father, and the father unable to refuse his daughter anything she wanted, no matter how unhinged.

I ran into this exact trope in at least half a dozen different novels by as many different authors, all in the same subgenre of fantasy literature, all clustered around the same period of time, and nowhere else. (To anticipate the inevitable request for recs, Sorcerer's Heir by Paula Volsky springs readily to mind; I'd have to drag my library out of storage to pin down the others I'm thinking of – it's been long enough that I'm not confident of my recollection of specific titles!) For over thirty years this remained the case, and I was prepared to chalk it up to simply being an artefact of its time.

So, with all this context in mind, imagine my surprise when I checked what was trending on Netflix around November of 2021.

prokopetz

(And of course the notes are full of people going "oh, [insert media here] also has that!", where [insert media here] includes literally none of the trope's salient features apart from "a villain has a daughter".)

dawnhasrisen

catgirl-catboy

Celeste: you flirt and kiss and for what? love??? pathetic.

Hifumi: to level up my charisma stat.

Celeste: ah, a gamer. you may pass.

Mukuro, on the phone with Makoto: she’s in the kitchen again…

Sayaka, reading a recipe: “beat three eggs.” In what? Hand to hand combat?

Makoto: GET. HER. OUT.

Hina: That’s one of my biggest fears. Like, if I ever woke up as a donut...

Sakura: You would eat yourself?

Hina: I wouldn’t even question it.

Byakuya: You are a solid 11/10.

Toko: Aw, thank-

Byakuya: Which is 1.1 because you look like shit.

Makoto: Is Hifumi sleeping or dead?

Celeste: Hopefully dead, I hated his guts.

Makoto: Yeah, so did I.

Hifumi: Okay first of all, heck you-

Makoto: I see the red flags, I acknowledge that they're there, and then I completely ignore them.

Byakuya: All of your existences are confusing.

The Class: How so?

Byakuya: Your presence is annoying, but the thought of anything bad happening to any of you upsets me.

Celeste: Ew. What kind of tea is this?

Hifumi: I boiled gatorade.

Taka: Why are you like this??

Mondo: I used too much "No More Tears" shampoo as a kid and I haven't felt a single emotion since.

Mondo: Who wants to make fifty bucks?

Celeste: How?

Mondo: I need someone to take the fall.

Celeste: What did you do?

Mondo: I can't tell you. Yes or no, no questions asked.

Taka, from the other room: Oh my god.

Mondo: ...

Taka: OH MY GOD!

Celeste: Make it a hundred.

Mondo: Deal.

*Squad stargazing*

Kyoko: Do you guys ever... wonder about things?

Hina, Hiro, & Syo, in unison: No.

Taka: Imagine if someone handed you a box full of all the items you have lost throughout your life.

Kyoko: It would be nice to get my sense of purpose back.

Mondo: Oh wow, my childhood innocence! Thank you for finding this.

Hiro: My will to live! I haven’t seen this in 15 years!

Leon: I knew I lost that potential somewhere!

Sayaka: Mental stability, my old friend!

Taka: Guys, could you lighten up a little?

Celeste: I don't want a valentine, I want 8 million dollars and a fast metabolism

Byakuya: I’m gonna need a human skull but you can’t ask why.

"Toko" (pre-reveal): Only if you don’t ask why.

"Toko": *pulls four pristine human skulls out of her bag* Choose one.

Byakuya:

"Toko":

Byakuya: This one will do.

dawnhasrisen

atalana

actually because i keep seeing polls around that vastly underestimate how long most people have been on this site, might as well make my own!

you know the drill, more reblogs equals more votes!

dawnhasrisen

timeflow

could just be me, but it feels like the way that the staff account clarified that the dashboard wasn't going back after making it sound like it was was done intentionally so that we would feel less bad about the other features in the post that actively clash with what people currently want. yes yes it's all well and good that the chronological dashboard isn't going anywhere, but what about the part about sending emails when push notifications are turned off? or the part about potentially removing duplicate reblogs from your dashboard? (actually, depending on implementation, the entire section about reblogs/replies sounds concerning to me.) the way that everyone immediately decided everything was fine feels almost like a planned thing to distract us from the rest of the post is what I'm saying

dawnhasrisen

staff

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience.

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content.

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.
Provide high-quality content with every app launch.
Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.
Retain and grow our creator base.
Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.
Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

dawnhasrisen

Thank you for sharing your strategy.

I think some of the plans here can do good and help out, especially those about fixing errors confusion. However, some things seem odd to me.

Send emails when a user has push notifications turned off.

I don't understand this one. If a user decided that push notifications are to noisy for whatever reason, they will be forced to still receive them, but in the form of emails?

I'd assume emails would be it's own toggle on, toggle off feature? Either way, personally, if I see to many emails from the same sender, I tend to consider it spam.

Removing clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads.

With collapsible reblog chains, the idea might work if it implemented as an optional thing. But, there are some post that are interesting because of a reblog chain it carries. Collapsing those might make posts feel less interesting than what they could be.

What would be even considered clutter? And whatever it ends being, how would you know that there would not be sections of the user base that considers this clutter valuable. This section feels vague, and a little reductive.

Also, are duplicate reblogs a problem? People complained about that? I'm surprised.

Experiment with logged out Tumblr.com.

When I'm redirected to the Tumblr website (to somebody's post), I only get to see three posts before I am asked to login and prevented from seeing more. I don't know about others, but that just makes me click out of the site.

Btw, I agree with other comments about adding a small tutorial/ suggested following for new users.

dawnhasrisen

robogal328

I found this camera on the subway and look what was inside...

I would marry this man

guys we broke another post because this one’s not showing any notes

lualmu

When I liked it, it flashed “0 notes”

It’s showing -1 notes

i’m gonna keep reblogging this and you can’t stop me

I liked it and it said ‘1 note’

tf is this crap?

1 NOTE I’VE ONLY COME ACROSS 3 OF THESE POSTS IN MY LIFE

ITS STILL SAID 1 NOTE WTF?????

legendary

What the fuck

YES BUT DID HE GET HIS CAMERA BACK?? WE NEED TO KNOW!

WE WILL NEVER KNOW… =((((

IT still says 0 notes?? WTF!!

softmushie

This is the first thing I saw on my dash

I’m shook

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS FUCKERY

WTF-

preciousgaby

SAME HERE!!! I JUST GAVE IT A LIKE AND IT DIDN’T STAY

lizzy7064

1 note WTF.

@foolishly-snowy

3rd time and it’s still broken. This lovely cursèd post.