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Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

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"Read Banned Books" a new full page cartoon essay published in The New York Times Arts & Leisure section today.

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THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

1993 | dir. Henry Selick

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X

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it'll all get blended the way people today mix up random shit from the middle ages and the renaissance

some chap playing the doom song on his hurdy-gurdy

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If I was gonna follow up a character from the original Star Wars, it would be one of the storm troopers that got knocked off his bike on Endor, not the one that got eaten by Erik's, but the other guy who limps away and quits the storm troopers in abject disgust after getting his ass handed to him by a combination of teddy bears and inanimate objects followed up by watching the second indestructible superweapon of the empire explode into a million piece again.

So he hides all his gear and bluffs his way off Endor because at that point no one's looking too hard for bad guys, pawns his armor and speeder bike chunks for a ticket into the ass end of nowhere onto one of those planets where it's 90% swamp and humidity, hires on as a ranch hand in some bumfuck cattle farm a thousand kilometers from any spaceport, spends the next four years jabbing the weird hippo-catfish like beasts they raise to supply the greater galaxy with extra tender meat products. He's got a careworn leather poncho and widebrim hat and rides on these heron lookin stilt legged motherfuckers to keep the herds in line.

He keeps his shit secure and himself to himself and far as everyone is concerned he's just a quiet dude, reliable and good with a rifle during the seasonal rush of giant wasps, and doesn't bother anyone. He makes a nice little home and has a little nest egg to maybe start his own ranch one day, someday til one of his old buddies comes spinning out of the sky into the lake outside down in a new order transport ship full of several million bucks worth of high octane space cocaine or whatever, he's been dealing on the side in his unit but almost got caught and had to bug out fast with the latest payload. Only problem is the suppliers and the cartel bosses all think he split with the product to make a quick dollar on his own enterprise.

But neither he nor his deserter buddy know about that he's just some old friend who needs to crash out and lay low while his leg heals up and they haul his little skip out the muck. And honestly no one around there is the type to pry about who skipped out on what draft, everyone has their problems. All up until the cartel and a hundred of their finest killers cruise into town.

They want their product, they want the army buddy's head on a plate, and they want interest paid on their time. It's been years and years since he got pulled into shit like this but in a that time this long past storm trooper has grown a backbone and got tolerably well acquainted with a blaster. There's a hundred killers in town but he's done with running. It's time to start counting.

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new dnd character: the former omelas kid

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sharing a very sage bit of advice from The Simpsons' own John Swartzwelder that i've been trying to hamper down in my writing and drawing alike. let your inner crappy little elf do his worst

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In the library I have been reading lots of books about pesticides and related topics. The library's physical print collection skews toward older books, so there are lots of books over 50 years old.

I will share the findings in subsequent reblogs, but for now I'll say this: Filmmakers and novelists working in the most gory, nauseating crevices of the horror genre could never dream something more twisted, disgusting and absolutely blood-curdling as a book about Turfgrass Lawns from the 1960's.

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DRAGONS OF THE MESOZOIC

I got commissioned to design a pterosaur back tattoo, and decided to use the opportunity to redraw my original dragons of the Mesozoic design.

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the unbearable lightness of being: five out of five bowler hats

this demonstrates what is possible with the form of the novel. please read this book. warning: sadness

this classic european novel follows a small group of czech citizens while they go about their lives, their romances, their work, and especially their relationships with each other. you spend a lifetime with them, vital, living people, and the fruits of their choices. the period of the novel, which does figure in the plot, is the immediate before and after of the soviet invasion of czechoslovakia in 1968.

for anyone who even remotely might be interested in reading a philosophical but never dry story about humanity, this book awaits you. it comes with my highest recommendation.

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the dream-quest of vellitt boe, by kij johnson: 3.5 out of 5 zoogs

the dream-quest of vellitt boe is a deliberate callback to h.p. lovecraft's dream-quest of unknown kadath, a surreal adventure set in the land of dreams. it sets out deliberately to address and not just counter but also explore the racism and misogyny for which lovecraft was infamous. the story begins with a reversal: instead of following a dreamer in the land of dreams, this story follows a native.

vellitt boe is a professor at a respectable school who goes into quest mode when one of her students disappears with a dreamer. the quest will take her past many of the wonders lovecraft plotted and beyond, into a confrontation with the very boundaries of her reality.

dream-quest is well written and engaging; it's short, but it's very rich. i would encourage any lovecraft fan to give it a read, but it's also perfectly accessible for any fantasy reader who wants to explore the edges of the real.

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watch this if you're curious about dune but don't want to read it.

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Sometimes reading Arthuriana feels like reading Alice in Wonderland.

“Well,” said Alice, “these are a dreadfully strange assortment of objects!”

“They all symbolize different aspects of Our Lord’s martyrdom,” said the Fisher King, casting a line into his teacup.

“Indeed. I am sure everything symbolizes something else, for if everything was only itself I should be very confused. Might I ask what the point of the bleeding lance is?”

Alice regretted asking the question as soon as she had done so, for she saw the pun that would likely be made about the word point. Instead, however, the room erupted in applause and shouts of “The Grail! She has achieved the Grail!”

The next castle she visited, Alice resolved to herself as the inhabitants of this one danced for joy, would be more sensible.

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Dune author Frank Herbert on "how to win the battle between good and evil."

(The Baytown Sun)

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i don't care whether this is real, i'm sharing it anyway

everyone needs to stop doing fan edits trying to recreate the theatrical cut and updating the special effects and find the 03 Chilean cut immediately