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A View From My Window

@dotterelly / dotterelly.tumblr.com

A Sugar Plum Fairy of good standing, lover of tall tales, poetic verse and grand adventure. Occasional artist/writer, singer of songs and lifelong dreamer. Expect dungeons and dragons, video games, random fun stuff and sailing (I love sailing)

The mighty alien race comes to the human leaders, pledging their unconditional surrender, and even offering peace gifts of immense monetary and technological value. The only problem is that we had no idea we were at war, or that aliens even existed.

So I thought I'd actually write something as a starting point for ways to watch and discuss Good Omens 2.

To be honest, if I had my druthers, Good Omens 2 would be released daily or weekly. There are mysteries and things to work out and speculate upon that build episode by episode. There are things to think about before the next episode begins.

I do not have my druthers* and when Good Omens 2 drops on the 28th it will drop all at once. Which is good news for people who want to binge and don't want to talk about it until the end.

But there will be people who won't want to go online and have people who watched the whole thing spoil or discuss or reveal. There will be people who will watch Episode 1 and puzzle and hypothesize and imagine. And then, when they are ready, watch Episode 2, and ponder and suppose and so on.

So I'd suggest that the G02 fandom think about ways to be able to discuss episodes up to a certain point. That there's an episode 1 group, and episode 2 and so on, with spoiler warnings, taking you through episode 6, by the end of which most of your questions will have been answered.

I'm throwing this out in a post for people to discuss, come up with suggestion, ignore or reject. There may be ways to make it work, there may not.

Mostly I want people to be able to talk and guess and trade their ideas without being squashed by those who have seen it and without squashing people who are not up to that point.

*If the Writers Strike had not happened it's possible that my suggestion that we drop the episodes daily over 6 days might actually have been acted upon. But it did and it wasn't.

Oh ho HO let's see what villainy is afoot today *opens up the 1891 London Illustrated Police News*

Ah yes, "The Illustrated Police News", Daily Mail / Express * (or possibly Sunday Sport / National Enquirer) of its day

* Mail & Express are famous notorious for, when at a loose end, publishing Madeline McCann / Lady Diana stories despite their increasing lack of currency.

In much the same way, IPN published nearly 200 Jack the Ripper front-page stories in the four years after those murders ended. Illustrated stories, of course. Also like them, IPN featured many anti-immigrant "here to take your jobs" stories.

IPN got good mileage from murder (mostly horrible, sometimes ghastly, occasionally just shocking), violent or scandalous goings-on (with illustrations to show how violently scandalous) and things to be outraged at (with illustrations to assist in being outraged...)

It was also partial to the adjective “fair”...

...and I was quite surprised that this one missed out on "fair somnambulist".

The captions didn't miss out on much else.

Stuff like these:

Or indeed these:

Has there ever been a compilation of The Best / Worst Of Illustrated Police News?

I'd buy it for the chuckle factor. ;-P

Spent this week on making a bunch of faux oldschool anime screencaps. Had a blast making these, I’m especially happy with the background in the third one. I’ll probably keep making these, so look forward to more of these in the future!

They are using Matte paintings in the Barbie Movie like in the early movie days instead of using CGI

And here’s a look at Skipper, she’s living with Midge in Chelsea’s treehouse :-)

I swear, the set design for this film is making me feral.

Tired of love stricken mortals making up a sizable chunk of the underworld’s traffic, Hades decides to help mortals with their love problems before Aphrodite can answer them. It turns out that mortals are a lot more satisfied with Hades’ help than with Aphrodite’s.

As a noble your clothing was ruined by an orphan worker. As punishment you gave her the worst fate imaginable: chores around your mansion, plainest clothing, 3 meals a day, and schooling, which you abhorred.

Let me tell you about the time I let a turkey interrupt a math exam.

This was summer 2020. Covid lockdowns had just started and we had to use Zoom for classes. I was taking Calculus III that semester. The Professor's policy for exams was we didn't need a lockdown browser, but we needed to be on Zoom with cameras and mics on.

Enter The Problem.

I was raising a baby turkey at the time. I had to have him by my side at all times because he had imprinted on me and he would scream and cry if I wasn't around. Sometimes, he'd scream and cry even if I was around.

I reached out to the professor about that and asked if I could be muted. His response was "No. It will be fine." And so I decided "Okay, whatever happens is your fault now" and I washed my hands of any responsibility.

Day of the exam, I have my camera and mic on. The Problem is perched next to me. As soon as the exam opens, The Problem screams. Now you might think turkeys are all "gobble gobble". I wish that was the case. This is a baby turkey. They scream with the intensity and frequency of a car alarm.

So now everyone is trying to take an exam with what might as well be a car alarm blaring at them. And they know it's me. At one point, I pick up The Problem, put him to the camera and just say "He won't stop." with the most dead expression in my face.

And I didn't care. I did everything I could to stop that, and I was just following the Professor's rules. I was not trapped with them. They were trapped with me. Everyone in that meeting got to experience what my life had been like for the last 3 months. And as far as I care, it was the Professor's fault. And you know what, I would have muted myself if the professor asked, but he never did.

The Problem only stopped when the exam ended. For the next exam, the policy was we had to have the cameras on, but we could mute ourselves.

So yeah, turkeys don't like calculus.

it should be illegal to tow a car as punishment and i’m not even kidding

you park in the wrong spot somewhere. maybe at a friend’s apartment complex, or at a store when you’re actually walking somewhere else, or whatever. they could ticket you—still charge you a fine for parking where you’re not supposed to. but instead, in a far more crippling way than a fine (which is already hard enough for low income people), they call a third party and steal your car. so you have lost your means of transportation, which you will only learn the next time you need your car, because they don’t have any need or care to notify you.

so first, you have to figure out which towing company they used. which you can only do if the place that decided your car was in the wrong spot is still open, or if you can get someone on the phone.

assuming you figure out which company towed your car, which one time took me over an hour on its own because the number on the signs warning about towing in the parking lot was a dead number, you then have to figure out how to get there. without a car. god help you if you don’t have someone in your support network to pick you up or public transportation, because most of the time it’s at least a mile away.

you find a way to get there, you call them to see if your car is even really there, and they tell you they won’t give your car back until you pay them. how much? well, it’s not regulated, so they can pretty much say whatever number they goddamn feel like. i recently got towed by a company infamous in my college town and they charged me a whopping $180–half of my paycheck for two weeks during the school year. when the same company towed my brother last year, and we both have the same sized cars, they charged him $300. they don’t have to justify the charge, they don’t have any itemized receipt, because what are you going to do? not pay it? you have to get to work and you’re already short on time because you had to walk to the goddamn towing place or have someone come get you to bring you there or spend an hour on the phone with different people trying to figure out where the fuck your car was in the first place.

it’s extortionate. it’s absolutely insane that they can, without exaggeration, steal someone’s car and hold it for ransom under the assumption that you will pay anything to get it back, because of the extent to which our society is dependent on cars.

I need people to understand…that if you believe in paying people a livable hourly wage…most hand-knitted clothing should cost hundreds of dollars

“My grandma could make that!” YOUR GRANDMA LOVES YOU ENOUGH TO SPEND A MONTH MAKING YOU A SWEATER FOR CHRISTMAS, I HAVE NO SUCH AFFECTION

In the recent Undertale newsletter, Toby Fox showed off an unused scene that would have occurred in the Judgement Hall had the player decided to speedrun the game! This scene features Sans chastising the player for being early and slowly eating an ice cream for about a full minute while an original, slow song plays. I’m sure this would have been quite a headache for speedrunners!

(The scene can be viewed in it’s entirety here)

As climate change increases the temperature and makes larger portions of spring and summer days unbearable we can, must, and should bring back and universalize the siesta. I want to clock out after lunch and go tf to bed. Humanity already solved the "it's too damn hot out to work" problem in tropical and subtropical societies the world over and more than ever we need to unionize for naptime.

As @staff further refine the polls while they're rolling them out (still haven't gotten mine sadly), here's a suggestion of mine: Polls with a ten year time limit.

As of right now, it's impossible for polls to turn into long-running legendary posts. You can try, sure (see the bug race), but it's a week and then it's locked, fixed, done, and all that's left is for people to reminisce about that time there was a poll.

On the other hand, if a ten year poll gets popular, it can become part of Tumblr lore while still being updated. People can write passionate appeals for their vote and fight in the notes. Others can make graphs to show how the poll's majorities shift with each different US president or Taylor Swift album. People can make memes about "remember 2025, when option 3 was in the lead? That was a crazy time".

Why ten years, though, instead of a hundred or just no time limit? Because that way, the end becomes an event. People who voted in the poll when it was just a few hours old can watch the final countdown together, and there's a new point in Tumblr history: That day when we finally all agreed on the best option, and presumably also some important political stuff happened.

Now, granted, most ten year polls would never reach this level of notoriety. But it only takes a few polls like this to be worthwhile. Maybe this shouldn't be an option for users to select, but something the Tumblr website grants/pushes on you at random?

So, yeah. Ten year polls. They should be a thing.

Can you imagine the chaos of a 10 year poll with the options

Super

Who

Lock

Can you imagine

the chaos of a 10 year

poll with the options

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

WHAT

Tumblr is so funny because you can make a post like "hey do not mix bleach and vinegar in your cleaning, you'll make chlorine gas and you do not want to make chlorine gas. It is dangerous to mix these two specific chemicals together", and the comments are like

"Um vinegar isn't dangerous?? My mom cleans things with vinegar all the time and we have never had lung issues. White people are insane." (<- does not use bleach, missing the point)

"OH MY GOD BLEACH IS CHLORINE GAS? NOBODY EVER TOLD ME I'VE BEEN CLEANING WITH BLEACH MY WHOLE LIFE, I WILL DIE." (<- has literally never used vinegar in cleaning, and never mixed the two, missing the point)

"This is just stupid fearmongering, we use bleach and vinegar to wash the floors all the time, OP is lying." (<- does not actually know what "vinegar" is, and is confusing the word for something else)

"Yeah this is true enough but also keep in mind that this kind of household cleaning product chlorine gas is too weak and unreliable to use for domestic terrorism purposes." (<- raises concerns, but potentially has a point)

Every time you sleep, you have nightmares about apocalypses. One day you had a lucid dream and managed to stop an apocalypse, after which you woke up feeling refreshed. Little did you know that in another timeline, the people of that world is looking for their missing saviour.

And now, for a Water Rating Special Feature:

The Lost Sea, Tennessee

About 20,000 years ago, a giant Pleistocene jaguar ventured into a small opening in the mountain foothills, but soon found that this cave was far bigger than it bargained for. It lost its way in the dark, winding passageways, wandering for several days before eventually falling to its death in a narrow crevice, leaving behind its bones and perfectly preserved paw prints for us to find thousands of years later.

This was the first, but not the only, record of those who ventured into Craighead Caverns. Pottery, weapons and jewelry from the Cherokee people have been found in rooms up to a mile from the entrance, dating back at least a thousand years. Later, the caverns were used as a refrigerator for storing food in the summer, as a mine, a mushroom farm, and even as a dance hall. All throughout its history, there were legends of a great underground lake somewhere inside the vast caves, but no one knew where.

This changed in 1905, when a 13-year old boy was exploring the cave. Three hundred feet below the surface, he crawled through a narrow tunnel, and found himself standing in an enormous, half-submerged chasm. It was so large, in fact, that his light illuminated nothing but water. He began to throw balls of mud in an attempt to find the walls of the cavern, but he only heard splashing in response.

We now know that this lake is about four and a half acres, making it the largest underground lake in North America and the second largest in the world. But that’s only on the surface.

Diving explorations have revealed that this lake is seemingly bottomless. Beneath the ethereal water lies a series of caverns so deep that no end has been found. Divers have mapped about 1,500 feet in depth in just one of the main passageways. One diver, descending into a previously unknown chamber with a sonar device, hugged the wall and took readings all around him. There was nothing but more water in every direction.

At present, there are no further plans to continue exploration, due to the hazardous conditions in the depths of the sea. It seems, then, that the true scope of this lake may forever remain a mystery. Perhaps it is best that we leave alone this strange, bottomless abyss far beneath the ancient Appalachian mountains, to remain as dark and unknown as it was when that jaguar took its first ill-fated steps inside.