The ORC DJ blocks your path
My aspiration in life is to write one of those incomprehensible tabletop RPGs whose half-finished playtest draft is still being circulated in bootleg PDFs and cited as a formative influence by up-and-coming indie designers twenty years later in spite of the fact that it has never actually been played by any living human.
#“one of those” is this a common thing? #Are there multiple instances of this thing?????? (via @imsureitsaltru)
Oh, sure – I'd probably cite David Johansen's Among the Beautiful Creatures (2002) and Ben Lehman's Polaris: Chivalric Tragedy at Utmost North (2005) as notable examples of the type, just off the top of my head, though the latter's living player base isn't quite zero.
bro where the fuck can I get my hands on Among the Brautiful Creatures because I just searched it up and you were asking about it in 2005 and every link to the document itself is dead as hell.
(Content warnings for graphic descriptions of child abuse, frequent body horror, and occasional bouts of weird gender essentialism, for those who haven't perused it before.)
these are different varieties of the same type of animal
microwave mimic that just eats the food instead of cooking it
tags written by microwave mimic. "oh just reach in the moment the food is 1 second from ready. yeah your whole arm."
forever obsessed with the concept of Coruscant being what only can be described as haunted
its a giant planet with way too long and messed up history. apart from the general thing with overpopulation and pollusion and mutated animals roaming around the lower levels, the whole jedi order couldn't sense sith presence there because the vibes are just that bad
it got everything: ghost of extinct species casually walking around the markets, cryptic messages picked up by comlinks that transmit from the places that cannot be found and are written in languages that have never existed, deep tunnels that appear from thin air and lead nowhere, places and levels that seem infinite and refuse to let out anyone who enters them forcing them walk in circles for hours, every month corrie guard faces the mundane problem of one of them getting possessed during patrol
shirt that says "i went to coruscant and all i got was force related psychological trauma"
peeling those sour rainbow gummy strips into long thin strings and putting them into cheap energy drink to create something im calling battery acid spaghetti will update once ive finished it
dont do this
I really hope its not too bad bc i actually love both components.
it forms a dry skin at the top made of the sour pellets. not a great start.
tastes really good actually. i also feel like i am about to explode.
do not do this.
Unanimous consensus: Do not do this
Other people: Hold on I’m about to do this
Rip to y'all, but I'm built different. Trying this tonight
Best I can do with what I have (I'm at work rn)
Oh that is a... fascinating smell
Don't do this
i think i'll try this tomorrow actually, it can't be that bad, im sure ive made worse cursed foods before
some screenshot studies of True Detective..
Anyway kudos to Papania and Gilbough for enduring through those interviews/interogations as well as they did…
Architecture is one of those fields that’s perpetually on the border of “You’re all full of shit” to me. This is an NYC office building that was built in 1977:
Apparently that little circular doohickey up top was, at the time, a revolutionary departure from modern design principles and had every prominent architect at the time absolutely furious for that reason. 46 years on and it’s seen as an architectural treasure that made the NYC Landmark list.
It’s. A circle. Literally just a circle. I don’t get it.
I can explain this, but you have to start with the understanding that this entire thing is a gigantic in-joke of a piss take. This is going to be long.
First, you need to understand about ornamentation. Ornamentation is anything in a building that is basically a slightly superfluous detail.
In this colonial revival house (which is supremely balanced and has very clean lines), you can notice how the bottom windows have these clean ornamentations at the top, the way the columns fan out into a small design; the way the dormer windows have their own different style of decor complete with arch and keystone! That’s the ornamentation, it’s the small touches of structural decor. The majority of the time, they were there because they were needed to support something, to give additional support
Modernism changes that. The arrival of concrete and steel on architecture means you can explore structures that were never possible before, ways of getting light into a room that were never possible before, shapes that were never possible before; it basically heralds a new era entirely. For instance, Louis Sullivan’s National Farmer’s Bank of Owatonna, though a late entry into modernism (1908!):
Look how none of the voids (windows and doors!) have any sort of ornamentation. There is some ornamentation around the corners, sure, and while the ornaments themselves are very baroque and refined, there’s also a textural element on the tiling itself being patterned. But that’s very up-close detailing, or very far away detailing. You end up with a mix of the shape and texture being where detailing is explored, less so the ornamentation of before. Importantly, none of that ornamentation is, in any way, shape, or form, anything that is fundamentally structural. It’s become nearly superfluous.
And this keeps developing and developing and you arrive at things like skyscrapers. Sullivan may have been the father of the skyscraper, but I can think of no better follower than the trio of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, who are most notable for the Empire State Building, but 500 5th Avenue may be the most direct example of what I’m talking about:
This modern-day ziggurat is almost all shape - the mullions (those vertical lines dividing windows) are largely decorative, and the ornamentation is very minimal and only serves to bring forward the shapes - notice how they only exist in what’s essentially the ceiling of each floor!
So we’ve established that ornamentation is steadily going away and no longer en vogue because architects are exploring the limits of shape itself, and they’re exploring unusual textures. But fast forward some 50 years, and this has become the singular architectural style that even exists. And a trio (Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, and Steven Izenour) go to Las Vegas on a trip and come back with post-modernism. The idea is that buildings are either decorated sheds (ornamented houses) or ducks (buildings where the shape itself is the draw). The duck is a bit of joke to Americana - they passed by a duck building where the entire point was that it was a duck. There’s a disagreement, but even among the detractors, you’re going to see a more humorous take on Modernism. They’re going to make buildings that resemble other aspects of buildings, or other buildings, or whatever. It’s extremely in-jokey. It’s amazing.
Venturi and Scott Brown’s first major work is the Guild House, which is an apartment for the elderly. See if you can spot the joke:
Did you get it? The entire 5-story building is topped off with a colossal arch, treating the balconies like a void that you have to add an ornament on top. It’s a call back to the windows that we saw on the colonial house! This is a joke for a specific audience, but goddamn it’s really funny.
So the post-modernists are basically gonna set up jokes with architectural elements and play with aspects of it. It’s architecture for architecture nerds. It’s so obviously trying to be clever, and I love it.
Which brings us back to 550 Madison Avenue, by Johnson and Burgee, at the top of this post. The circle isn’t just the circle. It’s the entire slope and circle. The thing crowning the building. And you’ve seen it above doorframes and windows in a number of places.
The thing atop this dormer is called a pediment. It’s that mini roof. In this case we have a standard apex (the top) and a broken base (the bottom). This means that the top is connected and doesn’t recede to let in any ornamentation, but the bottom is broken up into two parts to let in the ornamentation.
On top of this door, you have a pediment broken on the apex. It’s filled in by that egg-like thing.
But what if you put a gigantic broken pediment one with no ornament on top of a building?
And there we have it. 550 Madison, a gigantic, supremely large scale shitpost, brought to you by technological advancements in construction and shifting design philosophies. “This skyscraper is structured like a window” is a really funny gag to pull if you’re the kind of person who actively has the same degree of architecture nerdery that I do. And architecture is one of the most common forms of art that you can observe and pull apart on your daily life.
Architecture is one of those things where because its so aggressively public, communal, and (seemingly) long lasting, its design should be equally so. But it turns out architects are just a bunch of little guys doing their weird hobby shit like everyone else, with back-and-forth fuck you’s to match. And that’s beautiful, it should never change.
everyone who ever asked “is that a bad joke?” of some bit of bad 20th century architecture feeling p. vindicated by this post
I was there when this thing was being built. My GOD but the ruckus about it! It was hilarious. :)
Anonymous asked:
How do I know if I can read cards without looking them up? I just guess and go "oh yeah that's stolen swords Joe, he's stealing swords from those dinguses who think their swords are over there in the background. But Joe isn't carrying those swords very safely..." then I look it up and it tells me something about finance and romance.
Alright bucko, here. Esoteric Knowledge Pop Quiz:
When I say "The Fool is the Magician is The Fool is The Magician." What do I mean? Structure your response in esoteric language that demonstrates your understanding. When you can answer this question, you Know.
Y'all are leaving muliparagraph essays in the comments like I didn't say "Structure your response in esoteric language to demonstrate your understanding."
You get two lines MAX.
Good occult writing is elegant, terse, and dense with meaning. That said, I will also accept Smash Mouth lyrics.
didn't make sense not to live for fun / your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb
pray_return_to_the_waking_sands.mp4
mgs2 is still one of my favorite games of all time so here is a celebration moodboard
see that in the middle i stood where he stood im a true son of liberty
Please reblog for a larger sample size.
this man found a gemstone the size of a new york apartment on the side of the road and said "sorry im excited about rocks" about it
“This is the most honkin’ skookum rock” bro.
i know a lot of people won’t know who this guy is but he’s running a company that’s building electric semi trucks because tesla sucks so bad and they named it Edison Motors because they’re stealing Tesla’s idea.
Oh man, imagine if this dude was in the jeweler business.
He would have hit the mother-load for making jade jewelry right there.