#archived web content

[vikenticomeshome]

Cyberchase Comics: The Great Cyber-skate by Ron Barrett

Here is the first of a group of three one-shot Cyberchase comics produced by Ron Barrett for the pbskids.org website sometime in 2011. They were placed under the "activites" section, but they have since been removed. I will transcribe the dialog.

The Hacker: This museum is all about me! I love it!

Caption #1: Buzz ironing my lovely cape

Caption #2: Generous me giving toys to Delete

The Hacker: Only one thing is missing...

The Hacker: A pedestal for my statue!

Buzz: Hey boss, look! There's a skateboard contest on Radopolis!

Cyber News: Trophy to be awarded to winner

The Hacker: That's it! The perfect pedestal! I'm going to win that trophy

Buzz: Too late! Entries are closed. Besides, you don't own a skateboard and you don't know how to skate.

The Hacker: FEH! I never let ignorance stop me!

The Hacker: I'll put together the ironing board and bunnies...

The Hacker: Presto! - A skateboard!

The Hacker: OOOOPS!

Narration: On Radopolis...

Jackie: Ouch! I hit my thumb!

Slider: Let me take a look at that.

Nezzie: Oh Slider, you did a terrific job designing this skateboard challenge.

Matt: Hey, guys! Can we finish building it?

Matt: Why do I suddenly feel invisible?

Slider: Well, I'm off to enter the contest!

Jackie: It is a challenge - It's got a banister, crazy cones, broken sidewalk...

Inez: Sewer half-pipe, a loop...

Matt: and a judge.

King Dudicus: Judge Dude.

The Hacker: Pardon me, young Radopolite, what time does the contest begin?

Young Radopolite: 2:30, its 2 O'clock now.

The Hacker: 2 O'Clock? May i see your watch?

Young Radopolite: Sure, mister.

The Hacker: Ah-ha! You're wearing it upside-down! It's only 8:30!

Young Radopolite: Silly me. I must be tired. I should rest before the contest.

The Hacker: Good idea! I'll hold your number for you.

Young Radopolite: Thanks.

The Hacker: He just dropped out. I am taking his place.

King Dudicus: You, dude?

The Hacker: Want to give me the trophy now or wait 'til after the contest?

King Dudicus: The dude who's best at finishing the course wins it.

The Hacker: Listen up, you bolts buckets - after I complete my great skate, I want you to cut a hole on the course...

The Hacker: So Slider will become a stumbler!

King Dudicus: Let the cyberskateboard contest begin! The first skater is... The Hacker!

King Dudicus: Go dude!

Jackie, Inez, and Matt: Hacker?

The Hacker: Whooooayy!!

The Hacker: Ai-yi-yi-yi!

Buzz: There he goes. Start cutting.

Digit: Oh no! The contest has already started. Huh? Hacker? Buzz? Delete?

The Hacker: HELLLLP!

Buzz: Heh-heh

Digit: I'd better squawk on the Sqwak! Earthlies! Buzz and Delete are cutting a piece out of the course!

Buzz: A hole to be filled by Slider.

Delete: Finished.

Jackie, Inez, and Matt: Thanks Didge! We're on it!

Inez: There's a whole piece missing. How do we make one that fits perfectly?

Jackie: It's a rectangle.

Matt: We can measure the hole...

Matt: and cut a new plank to fit out of this broken skateboard.

Jackie: measure with what?

Matt: I can measure with my shoelace.

Matt: It's one lace long...

Matt: by one third of a lace wide.

Jackie: Draw the lace lengths on the board. Hurry! Slider's starting.

Inez: Gee, it looks more like a tangle than a rectangle.

Matt: It should have square corners.

Inez: Wait! Here in our toolbag - A carpenter's square!

Inez: You can use it to square off the corners.

Matt: Great! I'll measure one lace length...

Matt: across the top and redraw the line.

Matt: Then measure and draw one third of a lace down the side...

Matt: turn the square...

Matt: so the corner is at the side. Draw one lace length across here...

Matt: Then turn the square and draw a line upward!

Jackie, Inez, and Matt: The rectangle is untangled!

Jackie: Cuttin' it out!

Matt: Perfect fit!

Digit: Nail! Nail! The gang's all here!

Inez: Thanks, Didge!

Narration: Just in time!

Digit: Go Slider!

Narration: Up ahead, Hacker enters - the loop!

Narration: And as he does...

Narration: The legs on his ironing board spring open!

Ironing Board: Sproing!

Narration: As Slider rolls past him to the finish!

Narration: And is awarded the trophy!

The Hacker: My pedestal! Sob! Sob!

Buzz: Don't be sad, boss. We'll fix up a nice pedestal for your statue.

The Hacker: I am gorgeous.

Delete: You're the iron man, boss.

Buzz: Yeah, we're never board with you!

That is the end of the comic.

So, what did I think about it?

Slider is great, but why is he entering a skating contest on a course that he built himself? That gives him an unfair advantage. Why did they keep the contest running while the kids tried to fix the sabotaged ramp?

We now know that citizens of Cybersite Radopolis are called Radopolites. Buzz's line about making a hole to be filled my Slider creeps me out.

[okaydays22]

[ghost-in-the-corner]

web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon web jon

[vickozone]

I never did post these here, did I?

The original TMA dice are so expensive so I went “what the heck” and made my own.

[webothblackedout]

“in your brother. you live in each other’s body.”

querelle of brest — jean genet / the white lotus — mike white / the ballad of reading gaol — oscar wilde

[pines-eyes]

ITS LIVE YALL--- The trailer for my Fan Magnus Archives ttrpg podcast is out on Spotify!

We started this back in October as a way to chill after classes but now it's becoming a big thing. With audio editing, original music, new statments and voice acting! It's all horror, comedy and mystery.

Fallow to get the lastest updates!

Over art by one of my players--- (ily so much)

[filesbeorganized]

On love that triumphs even after death.

The Magnus Archives 167 - Rusty Quill Podcast // A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini // The Magnus Archives 161 - Rusty Quill Podcast // Love Wins All - Lee Ji Eun/IU // The Magnus Archives 200 - Rusty Quill Podcast // And The Gods Heard Her Prayer - Once on This Island // The Magnus Archives 200 - Rusty Quill Podcast // Love Wins All - Lee Ji Eun/IU

[ozzyd27]

Web Statement

*It's been a while since my last statement post, but I only have 3 Fears left to go and I'm not a quitter!*

The Ozzy Statements Episode 13: Young Blood

Statement of Tommy Wailsburg discussing his time exploring an abandoned high school. Original statement given December 13th 2018. Recorded by Ozzy, The Archivist.

Statement begins.

My childhood, back 60 years ago, was filled with amazing memories of this school and great friends made there. The school had unfortunately closed a year prior, under apparently benign circumstances. This is Miller's Heath High School I'm talking about, which of course nobody has heard of, because it did nothing notable and closed down without controversy or much of an uproar. There was no murder case, no massive scandal, nothing. It was simply the case, so the citizens were told, that they ran out of funding. It was also the case, so the citizens were told, that the teachers, parents, and children all just happened to move elsewhere and that their disappearance was nothing noteworthy. For some reason, nobody found this strange at all.

I was one of the unlucky souls who happened to neighbour said high school. But even when the decrepid webs began to spread out from its ruins, clawing their way to my garden, I didn't think much of it. This was one of the only abandoned places in the town, maybe all the spiders were just euphoric with the new real estate and decided to all march towards the school. Another neighbour - Blake - was instantly more suspicious since the very start, and shrugged off my stupid theories. I still remember him saying to me “Spiders don't have a housing crisis Tom, there's a bloody forest!” Every week he nagged me to go and check it out, he even had guns at the ready.

Still, it took me the course of that year to finally decide something odd was happening. This epiphany occured when I woke up one night to see one of the spiders. It clattered awfully against my wall and I instantly shot up in bed. The thing had, of course, 6 eyes. They weren't… normal though, the bulbs were black as the void of space, with tiny star-like pinpricks of oppressed white in the center. Even as it stared, the grey chitin of its legs clinked hastily to carry its massive hairy torso down my wall. Yes, down - it was striding it's way to me.

Suffice to say I panicked, launching out of bed and grabbing the nearest object that I came upon. This happened to be a glass cup filled with water and it careened through the air, sailing towards the creature until shards of glass shattered in every direction. The creature let out a shriek, a great chittering wail, and in truth so did I - obviously with less chittering - but when I brushed the glass off myself I found that the spider was still there, marching onwards. One of the legs was hobbled, as a shard of glass had imbedded itself in the crevice between the plates of it'sl armor, and deep orange blood matted the fur of its freakish body. Yet still, it seemed undeterred, and it kept scuttling towards me.

Blake must have heard my screams, because he burst through the door, splinters flying everywhere. His eyes locked with the spider and with a war cry he raised the shotgun in his hands and blasted the thing to oblivion. Hastily, he reloaded and shot again, and again. Sickly orange liquid splurted everywhere, and by the end there was nothing left of the spider aside from a puddle of entrails and stray twitching legs.

We both stood there for several moments wondering what on earth just happened. Blake put down his gun and went to get some cleaning utensils. While we cleaned the visceral scene, Blake informed me that he had indeed heard my screams for help, but oddly felt more drawn by the cry of the creature. He just couldn't resist investigating. He also, more apologetically, informed me that he had needed to kick down my front door, because it had been locked. Honestly, I was more impressed than anything, and a door was far beneath my list of priorities in comparison to the protection of my life. The next time he opened his mouth to speak, I knew exactly what he was going to say “We've got to investigate Tom, we don't want this happening again!”

I sighed, and wearily agreed, my old bones already screaming at me to just forget about it all and keep living obliviously. Alas, his excitement was palpable, so there was no quitting now.

The very next day, I woke up to an equally terrifying view as the previous day: Blake staring at me eagerly with a whole host of guns strapped to various places on his body in addition to what looked like several grenades slotted into his belt. I lifted my head groggily and exhaled. Within the hour I was suited up in a bulletproof vest, thick army gear, an automatic rifle, a pistol, and a couple of the grenades. I looked quite ridiculous, all of this intimidating equipment shoved onto a frail and short old man. Still, we ate quickly and then swiftly marched to the high school.

The door was unsurprisingly locked, but again Blake demonstrated his shockingly powerful method of kicking down doors. As soon as we entered, the challenge very much so presented itself. The thick wiry webs layered on every surface and interrupting every corridor was the least of our worries, for the tiny things that lay upon them were far more terrifying. These were not the type of spider that had accosted me previously, instead they were far smaller. While the other one had been several inches wide, and grotesquely engorged, these zipped quickly across the webs on imperceptibly tiny legs. There were so many though, a thick swarm of the small creatures littered every surface, crawling over eachother in an ocean of arachnids. For the purpose of clarity, I will henceforth refer to these as Swarmers, and the other behemoth as a Strider. There was no hint of a Strider anywhere in this corridor, I said as much to Blake and he theorized that perhaps they were some sort of more evolved form, and that they were protected deeper in the school. We decided to enter the corridor despite the Swarmers, as we noticed that they didn't really care about our presence. They were mostly invested in forming their massive cultish blobs of themselves, and stayed away from our exploratory footsteps. Aside from the obvious, the school was in relatively good condition. It seemed that even dust was victim to the large nets of web, rendering any spiderless surface virtually clean and spotless.

Carefully, we stepped onwards, Blake naturally leading the charge. Suddenly, a sharp whipping noise could be heard echoing throughout the corridors, as if a belt had been snapped tight. At that moment, Blake looked up unnaturally - his head tilted up and to the right - I tried to ask him what was wrong. It was too late though, and his feet stumbled his unwilling form further on, lurching like a zombie. I shouted after him, but his shoes stomped messily into the lumps of Swarmers, causing high pitched hissing to pervade the hallways, like a rush of a dozen gas leaks. The Swarmers ran about haphazardly, distressed and hostile.

I could already see the tiny black creatures crawling on his skin, but he was utterly unphased. He strode on for at least a minute into the increasingly maze-like school, and I watched as his hand sternly reached forward to a door knob literally three times its natural size, engorged by the flesh of hundreds of Swarmers. As soon as his hand touched it, the enraged hissing increased tenfold, and they colonized every crevice and wrinkle of his unfortunate hand. Still, he opened the door, and inside was a dark classroom, although the chairs and tables were hanging limply from the ceiling. Below, there was a series of concentric circles of Swarmers, mindlessly scuttling around and around. Right in the middle of these ritualistic circles was a massive Strider, almost twice the size of the one which has stalked me. Four of its armoured limbs pressed firmly into the ground, while it's four middle legs were raised up above its bulging torso. The sharp tips of these raised legs were rubbing, clanging together in time to the dance of its underlings. All the while said minions chittered a discordant harmony of screams. This whole performance resulted in a mind melting noise much akin to the rushing sand of an hourglass, tinged with the cries of the damned.

My own limbs shook and shuddered with a compulsory force, but somehow I was far better off than Blake. His eyes were cold, fully dilated pinpricks of obedience, and his legs strided confidently towards the circles. Shakily I reached down for my pistol, for the shotgun would take too much effort to retrieve from my back. The grinding of the master Strider’s claws grew louder, and I screamed trying to fight against its power. My hands fluttered and floundered against the hilt, some of my fingers even being driven harshly backwards by this force. Sweat rolled down every inch of my skin and my face grew red with effort, but still I perservered and my clumsy fingers wrapped around my gun’s handle. I lifted it with both shaking hands, aiming vengefully into the soft hairy center of the Strider.

The noise of the event became infected with the growls of the creature, and eventually the interruption of two successive shattering bangs. The first was the result of the Strider grinding it's armored legs together too hard and too fast, culminating in the crack and crumble of its terrifying claws. This then ceased the hellish cacophony, and released me from my hesitant stupor, meaning I could shoot straight and true. Familiarly, the room was splattered with a shock of slick orange, while the Swarmers screeched in shock and fled to the sidelines.

Blake was lying screaming on the floor when I gained my composure again. He appeared clean in terms of spiders, albeit very unclean in terms of other ailments: 4 of his fingers were broken at gruesome angles, and his shin was splintered in two with one end of the bone piercing through his leg. This must have happened when my efforts increased and intensified the hypnotic noises, but now he was very aware and very in control, highlighted by his tortured writhing.

I kneeled down and started fussing over him, panicked and babbling. He was telling me to calm down, even through his gritted teeth. That's when he started scrambling maniacally at his chest through his shirt. The blood in my ears was roaring too hard for me to hear much of his explanations as to why, but it seemed quite dire. So, I ripped his shirt open, assuming that it was some sort of wound that needed treating. The instant I did, I regretted it.

The stench of feces and blood invaded the air as the ripped shirt revealed a gaping hole in Blake's torso filled with Swarmers. They were gnawing and driving into his flesh, leaving excrement and stray webs behind, all coated in gore. The empty classroom went deathly silent as me and him were lost for words and exclamations. We just stared at the festering crater of arachnids. I searched my pockets idly but I had nothing that could possibly help me with this. He began saying the words “Tell my wife…” but he trailed off when his eyes began to undulate with black shapes within them. Suddenly, both eyes popped and hundreds of tiny spiders flooded down his body to greet their brethren, with others opting to delve into the depths of his mouth. I stumbled back, and fumbled for the door. He was surely dead, and I couldn't bear to stay one more moment.

The corpse was shrinking by the minute anyway, victim to the Swarmers as a meal. So, I ran. Tripping on the webs and kicking dozens of Swarmers, I sprinted out of the building. Somehow I was unhurt when I burst out of the front doors, panting and sobbing.

Since then, I've thought a lot about that night. I have a theory that the mind control of the Striders has something to do with age. After all, Blake was utterly unable to escape their influence, while I could struggle and resist. In essence, it seems that the younger the victim, the less power they have. If this is true… It's no wonder they took over a school.

Statement ends

[artsy-dreamer]

Shoutout to the many Neko Atsume books that never got localized 😔

Some of these are packed with lore you’d never know otherwise… and these aren’t even all the Neko Atsume books in existence!

[ollieofthebeholder]

And If Thou Wilt, Forget: a TMA fanfic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr || AO3 || My Website

Chapter 59: Time flies, hope flags, life plies a wearied wing

Tim knew waiting up until Gerry got back from returning the van rather defeated the purpose of him not tagging along, but he was pretty sure the anxiety would kill him, so while he obediently changed into sleep pants after being dropped off, he went back out and sat on the sofa. Rowlf hopped up beside him, and Tim rubbed his ears and settled back to wait for Gerry’s return. He decided to use the opportunity to go over everything they’d learned and everything they would need to do while he waited.

The next thing he knew, someone was gently shaking his shoulder. “When I said you needed to get some rest, I was thinking somewhere that wasn’t going to be hell on your back, you know.”

“Hwh—Gerry?” Tim blinked up at Gerry uncomprehendingly, then suddenly was wide awake. “Shit! What time is it?”

“Six oh two. Relax. You’ve got plenty of time.”

“No, just—shit. I didn’t actually think I was going to sleep.” Tim glanced at his hand. The ring still sat loose and unobserved. “I didn’t dream, either. Not even waiting for Jon.”

Gerry shrugged. “Probably because you know he’s safe. Either he’s not sleeping and you know he’s not going to pass out, or he got a dreamless night too and you don’t have to worry about him.”

“Hopefully the latter. He deserves it.” Tim bit the inside of his cheek. “I have a feeling these last few days are going to make both of us glad he doesn’t have room for dreams of his own anymore.”

“If you’re not going to go to bed, scoot over.” Gerry wedged himself onto the sofa between Tim and the arm, then pulled him half onto his lap. “You did it. You saved him. Without getting caught, might I add. If the Stranger even knows he’s gone yet—I know they will before long, but they might not just yet—they don’t know you’re the one that took him. They’ll know he escaped somehow, but not precisely how. And as long as we make sure he’s not alone any time soon, they won’t be likely to get him again.”

“What did they even want him for?” Tim mused. “You remember, when he was on the phone and they grabbed him, one of them said Miss Orsinov changed her mind. Shit, that means he’s talked to her before. I’m going to kill him.”

“Sounds like if you wait a few weeks, something else will do that for you. Kidding,” Gerry added when Tim twisted his head around to glare at him. “I’m only kidding. Do you think it was while he was in hiding?”

“No,” Tim said after a moment’s thought. “I think it was only a couple days before he went missing. It’s probably why I was so tense and cranky, because I knew he was in danger but not the details. God, I hate the Stranger.”

“You hated it before.”

“I hate it more now. Bad enough what it did to Danny, does it have to obfuscate everything?” Tim sighed. “Don’t answer that. I know that’s its nature, to conceal. I just…hate that he was hurting and scared and I couldn’t find him.”

“But you did,” Gerry reminded him again. “Just because you couldn’t tap into the Beholding and use it to pinpoint his location down to the exact coordinates doesn’t mean you didn’t find him. It wasn’t luck. No matter how powerful the Stranger is, it can’t hide the Archivist from his Guardian for long.”

“Thanks. I think.” Tim gave Gerry a crooked grin. “I’m going to take Rowlf for his morning walk and then grab breakfast. You heading to bed?”

“No, I can sleep while you’re at work. I’m coming with you.” Gerry kissed the back of Tim’s neck. “The Stranger is going to find you more interesting than it does me, so I’d rather you weren’t alone more than necessary right now.”

Tim decided not to argue. “Right. Let me go put a shirt on.”

There were a couple other early morning commuters at the Tube station when he left, so Gerry—reluctantly—didn’t insist on coming all the way to the Institute with him. Tim was just passing Stockwell when his phone buzzed, and he glanced down to see a text from Martin, with more typos than he usually did, as if he hadn’t been able to properly concentrate on the keyboard or his phrasing, or as if he’d typed it with his eyes closed. [Sorry tim. Wont be in today. Im hav hedache.]

Tim smiled. Clever lad.

It was a cold, gloomy, overcast day, the sort of day meant for curling up in an armchair with a good book—which he didn’t doubt for a minute Basira was prepared to do. Things would probably be pretty quiet for them. They still needed to finish sorting through the mounds of boxes that had come down, and today it was just going to be him and Melanie working on them, but at least Research wasn’t going to dump even more on them. Probably.

The usual ritual of opening up the Archives meant he didn’t have to think too hard and could let his mind drift. He strongly suspected Jonah was going to make an appearance today. While it was possible he didn’t know exactly where Jon was, or had been, he had to have known Jon had been kidnapped…and he almost certainly knew he was with Martin today. The real question was if he knew Tim had had anything to do with it. Tim was betting not, but he was likely to be suspicious at the very least, so he’d come poking around to see what Tim knew and what he’d give away.

It was a reasonably good bet that he wouldn’t get anything out of him, but he wasn’t prepared to bet his life on that, or Jon’s, so he was going to have to stay on his guard.

Melanie turned up a few minutes early with a tray of coffees, one of which she handed to Tim. “Hope I remembered your order right. I, uh, kind of feel like I owe you an apology. I’ve been a little bit of a jerk lately.”

“Apology accepted, and I hope you’ll accept mine as well. I’ve been a lot of a jerk lately.” Tim glanced at the scrawled letters on the side of the cup and took a sip of the flat white. “It’s understandable on your end. You’ve been through a lot, what with the whole getting shot thing, then getting thrown into a new job, then finding out that said new job had bound your soul into a contract with dark powers in an irrevocable blood compact. What’s my excuse?”

“That you’ve been bound to an irrevocable blood compact twice as long as any of the rest of us, had your boss murdered out from under you, and nearly had your second boss killed as well?” Melanie suggested dryly. “I’m not saying I particularly like you, but, you know, if we’re stuck here until I figure out how to kill Elias, we might as well get on, right?”

“Likewise.” Tim saluted her with the coffee cup. “Be careful with those murderous tendencies, though, that opens the door to things you’d really rather left you alone.”

“Thanks for the warning. Where’s Martin, by the way? He’s usually here first.” Melanie liberated another coffee from the tray.

Tim waved his phone at her. “He texted me this morning and said he wouldn’t be in today. Says he has a headache.”

Melanie snorted and looked around at the boxes. “I don’t blame him. This would make Seshat go cross-eyed.”

“I love that you’re familiar enough with the Egyptian gods to say Seshat and not Thoth.”

“Why should the men get to have all the fun?” Melanie thumped her coffee down on the table. “And speaking of gods, I can’t believe the Institute was open Friday and Monday.”

Tim realized with a sinking feeling that he had been so worried and stressed about Jon that he had completely forgotten about Easter. And how darkly fitting that Jon had been abducted on Maundy Thursday. “That’s my fault. Not that the Institute was open, I mean, but that I didn’t…I think technically they’re optional working days. And, you know, we’re salaried, so it’s not like we get overtime or anything as long as the work gets done. I just didn’t think about it. Last year Martin was living in the Archives, so we all came in to make sure he wasn’t alone for four days, and the year before that I’d just got back from overseas and Gertrude was—I thought—missing, so I had a lot of work to do. At least I went to Mass then, though. I’m going to hell for sure.”

“Just for missing church? Not for anything else?”

“I mean, I’m Catholic, so ‘bound directly for hell’ is kind of my default state of being,” Tim drawled, making Melanie actually laugh. “But I don’t think completely forgetting the holiest day of the year is going to be something I can wipe away with a couple rosaries.” He reached for one of the boxes. “You religious at all?”

“Not really. Used to go to church when I was a kid, at least on big days—my grandparents died when Dad was little and the uncle who took him in and raised him was a bishop—but after my mum died, I stopped believing in God.” Melanie took a pensive sip of her coffee. “Weirdly, until I started doing Ghost Hunt UK. Then…well, I still don’t do church, and I still don’t think I’m religious or anything, but there’s definitely something out there, you know? I think once you get into this sort of thing, it kind of kills any vestiges of doubt that there’s some kind of higher power. Just maybe not a benevolent one.”

“Preach it, sister.” Tim held out his fist. Melanie bumped it without trying to break any of his fingers, so he figured that counted as a victory.

Basira arrived precisely at eight, accepted her coffee with a muttered “thanks”, and took it over to the corner where she had all her books neatly stacked on a small table beside one of the study chairs. As usual, she ignored the other two as she buried herself in the top book from the pile, which looked like it might have been on alchemy. Tim and Melanie looked at one another, shrugged, and got to work.

“What are we looking for, anyway?” Melanie asked, pulling out yet another folder and frowning at it. “Or is this a ‘you’ll know it when you see it’ type thing? I mean, I know it’s stuff that’s going to help Jon, but help him with what? He’s been asking a lot about circuses, but…”

“Circuses. Mannequins. Taxidermy. Anything you might class as ‘Uncanny Valley’ type stuff.” Tim eyed Melanie sideways. “When did he ask you about circuses?”

Melanie winced. “Look. Don’t tell Martin, but I was helping Jon out while he was…you know, hiding. I’m friends with Georgie Barker, and she apparently let him know I was back from India and had a new job, so he got word to me and got me to agree to help him.”

“Makes sense. Tonner was watching Martin too closely in the hopes he’d lead her to Jon, and I’d been so mad at him for so long he wouldn’t have trusted me if I’d told him carrots were edible.” Tim flipped open a folder to check the date on the statement. “As long as you’re not the one who set his hand on fire, I don’t have to kill you today.”

“Uh…no, but I think that might have been my fault anyway,” Melanie confessed. “You remember I asked you about Jude Perry? That’s the last information I passed on to him before he vanished for three days and came back with his hand bandaged and his throat cut.”

Tim mentally filed Jude Perry’s name in the Desolation category. “Not your fault. He’d have found her name somewhere with or without your assistance, and I’m sure he would have stuck his nose in it anyway. And by the way, I am sorry for yelling at you about the whole…Sasha thing. That wasn’t your fault either.”

Melanie looked up at him in obvious surprise. “I accept your apology. Why did you blame me for that, by the way?”

“Because I was angry at myself for not realizing she was a…well, a stranger,” Tim said honestly. “Gertrude taught me better than that, I should have been able to sense it a million miles away, but I didn’t and Jon nearly got badly hurt, even killed, because of it.”

“I didn’t think you liked him all that much.”

“I didn’t, but it’s my job to protect him. Which also pissed me off. Nothing quite like being forced to lick the hands of someone whose throat you’d happily tear out given half the chance.”

Melanie shuddered. “I honestly think I’d rather cut my own throat than be in that situation.”

Tim gave her a crooked smile. “Helps that there were other people who benefited from him being okay. I might have happily killed him if given half the chance, but not if it meant putting Martin at risk.”

“Speaking of, I assume he’s not coming in today either. Jon, I mean.”

“He hasn’t said anything to me,” Tim said with perfect accuracy. “But I assume not.”

They worked in silence for a couple more hours, sorting the statements by date to start with. The slight tightening of Tim’s ring on his finger was all the warning he got before Melanie asked distractedly, “Did we ever figure out where that calliope ended up?”

Even without the alert that they were being spied on, Tim wouldn’t have given anything away, but he’d have to play it really casual. “What brought that up?”

“This statement is going on about a carousel.” Melanie waved the folder she was holding. “Something about the music being haunted or possessed or something like that. I just wondered if they were connected.”

“Can I see?” Tim reached for the folder.

In that instant, the phone on his desk gave the cheerful, slightly mocking beep that meant an interoffice call. Tim sighed in exasperation and picked up the phone. “Archives, Stoker speaking.”

“There’s a gentleman here to give a statement, Tim,” Rosie trilled. “Elias said to send right for you to come and get it.”

“Do me a favor, Rosie. Tell Elias where he can shove it, assuming he can find room around the stick and his head.” Tim slammed the phone down before Rosie could respond. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“What does he want with you?” Melanie asked suspiciously.

“There’s someone here to give us a statement, and Elias wants us to take care of it. Dammit.” Tim rubbed his forehead and sighed. “Can you take this one?”

Melanie blinked. “I mean…I guess, but why?”

“Because I already took one this week. Look, have you recorded any statements before? That won’t go on the laptops, I mean?”

“Just one. I felt really weird afterward. Like I had the flu or something.”

“Yeah, that happens. They can be pretty draining until you get used to them. And I don’t…it’s complicated. But I can’t do two in a week without getting sick, and since I don’t want to abandon you to all this…” Tim swept a hand at the boxes.

Melanie looked uncertain, but nodded. “Yeah, um, sure. I’ll, uh, I’ll just go get him, then.”

“Thanks, Melanie. I appreciate it.” Tim waved her off. “Tell you what, while you’re doing that I’ll run and grab lunch. You like falafel? There’s a place a couple blocks away that does a good falafel.”

“Ooh, Fadlan’s Falafel? Yeah, they’re great. Thanks.” Melanie gave him a thumbs up and headed towards the steps. Tim checked on Basira, then headed out the side door.

It wasn’t quite noon, which meant he had a bit of time before things got too crazy. Tim glanced up at the leaden sky and made his way towards the river and the falafel truck. He was very aware of the incessant squeezing on his middle finger—whatever had been watching them in the Archives was still watching him, which was…odd. Good, because it meant it was leaving Melanie alone…probably…but not great. Shit, had it wanted to get him alone?

As the thought crossed his mind, he almost bumped straight into the only other person on the Chelsea Embankment at quarter to twelve on a gloomy April Friday.

“Oh—excuse me, miss,” he said, stepping aside politely.

The woman smiled, showing off very white teeth. She was tall and thin and dressed similarly to how he remembered Sasha dressing, except that where Sasha’s were merely of a somewhat vintage aesthetic, this woman’s granny square skirt, floral peasant top, and army surplus jacket all seemed to come directly from the 1970s. She had a puff of bleached blonde hair and looked as though she had a lace maid’s cap pinned to her curls.

And Tim recognized what she was immediately.

“What are you doing here?” he growled.

The woman’s eyes sparkled. All six of them—two where her normal eyes should be, and two more ghostly silver pairs above them. Tim got the impression they either weren’t actually there, or weren’t normally visible to other people. “I was looking for you, Tim. Can I call you Tim?”

“Are you actually going to call me something different if I say no?” Tim scowled at her. The Ceaseless Watcher tapped him on the shoulder, metaphorically speaking, and supplied her name. “You can call me Tim if I can call you Annabelle.”

“Of course.” Annabelle Cane fell into step beside him. “This won’t take long.”

“I hope you know you’re only getting away with this because we’re walking away from the Institute.”

“Oh, I know. And I know the Archivist isn’t there right now, either, or you’d probably shove me in the river,” Annabelle said conversationally, as if they were chatting about the weather.

Tim answered her in the same tone of voice. “No, if the Archivist was there, I’d snap your neck first, just to be sure. I might still shove you in the river.”

Annabelle shrugged, as though it didn’t matter. “Spiders can swim, you know.”

“Spiders are light enough that they can take advantage of surface tension,” Tim corrected her. “You, however, are not. And I haven’t heard any reason not to test whether you weigh the same as a duck.”

“Do you ever wonder how many innocent women died because their fathers sensibly taught them to swim?”

“I work for the Eye. I don’t have to wonder.” Tim could probably have rattled off names, ages, and weights if he really wanted to, with a little effort. Along with the names of every single person who should have saved them but didn’t. “So tell me, Annabelle. What does the Web want with me?”

Annabelle gave him a sly, sidelong look. “So tell me, Tim. If I gave you a straight answer to that question, would you believe a word of it?”

“Depends on what your answer was.”

“Ooh, you are clever. Gertrude was right to choose you.” Annabelle clapped her hands, obviously delighted. “It’s a shame you weren’t meant for the Web, but, well, we knew that would never be what you chose. Still, I don’t think the Merchant expected you to last as long as you did when you claimed Eye and Stranger both.”

Tim stopped. Something twisted in his chest. “The Night Market. The man with the table. Of course that was the Web.” He glanced down at the ring again. “You have already begun to pay. That’s what he meant. I’d already started paying for the Stranger by losing Danny, and I was already falling into the Eye before I knew what it was.”

“And you’ve paid for both,” Annabelle agreed. “Twelve times over.”

Tim clenched his fist and looked Annabelle in the eye. “You know I only claimed the bird to give it to the Archivist to destroy.”

“Yes, I know.” Annabelle smiled, then grew serious. “All right, Tim. One straight answer, without the twists and tangles. You’ve certainly earned that. What does the Web want with you? Quite simply, it wants to be sure you know that the Archivist will not succeed without you there.”

“Really,” Tim said flatly.

Annabelle nodded. “You know that the Web sees…patterns. An Archivist on his own follows one path. An Archivist with his protector follows another. I’ve come to warn you that when the time comes, if you don’t go with him, it all falls apart.”

Tim stared at her for a long moment, then nodded once. “All right. Consider me warned.”

Annabelle smiled again, almost mischievously, and her eyes—fourteen in total now—glittered again. “It’s likely we won’t see one another again, so let me just say, it’s been a pleasure talking with you. Good luck, Tim. I think you’re going to need it.”

“Have a good life, Annabelle,” Tim said. “You’re also going to need it.” He gave her a crooked smile, then added, “Now, stay away from my people.”

Annabelle bowed theatrically, gave him a wink and a fluttery little wave, and faded back against the bushes. A moment later there was nothing left except spiderwebs draped over branches.

Tim took a deep, steadying breath and hurried towards Fadlan’s Falafel.

No more than fifteen minutes later he was approaching the Institute, bag in hand, when an alarm bell sounded in his head. Something had been in the Archives—not the Web, or at least not Annabelle, but something else. It only took one more step before he tasted the salt and cold and knew the Lonely had made an appearance.

Putting on a burst of speed, Tim charged through the side door and leaped the steps down into the Archives. “Melanie! Basira!” he yelled, heart pounding. Please, God, let him not be too late—

“Tim?” Melanie called, and some of Tim’s worry eased back. “Did you pass anyone coming in?”

Tim slowed to fast walk and came out of the shelves. Basira and Melanie were standing by the desks, scowling at one another, but both turned to look as he approached. “No, not coming in. Why?” He held up the bag and added, “Got lunch, by the way.”

“Thanks.” Melanie took the bag from him and set it on the desk, then began unpacking it, talking as she did so. “I was taking the statement from that guy Rosie called down about—I couldn’t get a straight story out of him, he was so terrified, but apparently his flat was overrun with spiders—”

“Of course it was spiders.” Tim sighed. “I did run into someone spider related, but it was a woman.”

“Well, this was definitely a man. I tried to calm him down with some tea, but he was just…he was really having a time of it. I went to get him some biscuits or something, and when I came back, he was just…gone.” Melanie frowned. “I assumed he’d scarpered. Basira said she didn’t see him leave, but it was so cold—was the door open when you came in?”

Tim pursed his lips. “No, but…hang on.” He reached for his phone and pressed a button he normally would rather have chewed off his own hands at the wrists than press.

Rosie’s voice chirruped down the line. “Mr. Bouchard’s office.”

“Hi, Rosie, it’s Tim,” Tim said, layering as much false sincerity into his voice as possible. “Is Elias available? We seem to have misplaced something.”

“Elias is in an appointment with an Institute donor right now, but I can have him contact you as soon as he’s free.”

“Not necessary, that answers my question completely. Have the day you deserve.” Tim hung up without further pleasantries and turned to Melanie. “Spider Guy is gone, and he’s not coming back. One of the Lukases came through and made off with him. I’ll explain some other time, but just know he didn’t run off.”

“Oh. Okay.” Melanie blinked at him. “Does that happen often?”

“Not while I’m around.” Tim bared his teeth at her in a grin. It actually made her laugh. “Come on, let’s wolf down this falafel and see how much headway we can get in these boxes. I don’t plan to think about them over the weekend and I’d love for Martin to come in Monday and be relieved we didn’t let the place go completely to shit without him to help.”

[okaydays22]

[mountmortar]

if any of you are ever looking for a place to crosspost your ao3 works, there's always squidgeworld, which is based on the open-source code from the OTW (a.k.a. it looks and acts exactly like ao3, it's just differently colored). in addition to having all the same functionality as ao3, they also have a little more in some places—for example, if you've ever been on ao3 for more than 2 seconds you know that the "&" signifies platonic relationships and "/" signifies slash relationships—squidgeworld has these and also has a new relationship tag called "vs" (literally "versus") for antagonistic relationships, which i think is absolutely hilarious. it's a useful alternative if you're unhappy with ao3 for whatever reason or just want another place for people to read your fics in the event that ao3 goes down!

[skell3]

I just wanna go home and draw.

Sketch of what I'm working on below:

Lineart HERE

[catsafari25]

out of all the rabbit holes I could fall down, perhaps bionicle lore was a deeper burrow than I had expected

[thunderlina]

In the wake of the TikTok ban and revival as a mouthpiece for fascist propaganda, as well as the downfall of Twitter and Facebook/Facebook-owned platforms to the same evils, I think now is a better time than ever to say LEARN HTML!!! FREE YOURSELVES FROM THE SHACKLES OF MAJOR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS AND EMBRACE THE INDIE WEB!!!

You can host a website on Neocities for free as long as it's under 1GB (which is a LOT more than it sounds like let me tell you) but if that's not enough you can get 50GB of space (and a variety of other perks) for only $5 a month.

And if you can't/don't want to pay for the extra space, sites like File Garden and Catbox let you host files for free that you can easily link into NeoCities pages (I do this to host videos on mine!) (It also lets you share files NeoCities wouldn't let you upload for free anyways, this is how I upload the .zip files for my 3DS themes on my site.)

Don't know how to write HTML/CSS? No problem. W3schools is an invaluable resource with free lessons on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and a whole slew of other programming languages, both for web development and otherwise.

Want a more traditional social media experience? SpaceHey is a platform that mimics the experience of 2000s MySpace

Struggling to find independent web pages that cater to your interests via major search engines? I've got you covered. Marginalia and Wiby are search engines that specifically prioritize non-commercial content. Marginalia also has filters that let you search for more specific categories of website, like wikis, blogs, academia, forums, and vintage sites.

Maybe you wanna log off the modern internet landscape altogether and step back into the pre-social media web altogether, well, Protoweb lets you do just that. It's a proxy service for older browsers (or really just any browser that supports HTTP, but that's mostly old browsers now anyways) that lets you visit restored snapshots of vintage websites.

Protoweb has a lot of Geocities content archived, but if you're interested in that you can find even more old Geocities sites over on the Geocities Gallery

And really this is just general tip-of-the-iceberg stuff. If you dig a little deeper you can find loads more interesting stuff out there. The internet doesn't have to be a miserable place full of nothing but doomposting and targeted ads. The first step to making it less miserable is for YOU, yes YOU, to quit spending all your time on it looking at the handful of miserable websites big tech wants you to spend all your time on.

[foone]

Your posts are in an AI model

and then Tumblr decided to sell them to AI models.

Now, don't get me wrong, tumblr selling out the users to AI companies is bad, yes, they shouldn't do that. It sucks.

but don't lets get this confused: your posts were already in there. Tumblr selling them is about tumblr making some money and about the AI models having more exhaustive post collections. It's not about your posts being in an AI model, vs not being in one. That battle has already been lost.

Can you find your post on google? Then it's almost certainly in an AI model already. Think about it: These AI sites showed up before all the sites were making deals to sell their users' content, right? How do you think they built them in the first place?

They scraped the posts. Just like google and bing and such do when they build their search indexes.

It's a fundamental part of how the open web works: you want your posts on tumblr to be visible to users, right? You want them to be readable?* Like, look how much stuff broke when twitter changed their whole read-while-not-logged-in policy, ruining a bunch of thread links/NSFW links. And if it's visible, it's scrapable. That's what the AI models were built on.

I've done website scraping before (not for AI models, of course. I was doing search engines and website archival), this is just how it works. You hire a few relatively smart CS graduates and tell them "build me a scraper that'll give us a bunch of tumblr posts" and they go off for a month or two and come back with a database of a few billion posts, and you stuff that into your AI model. That's how they got all the deviantart and flickr and twitter and pinterest and so on posts. They didn't pay for them: they just took them.

They only ever pay for this shit because either:

they fucked up in such a way that the site might be able to sue them for taking rather than paying

They can buy them cheaper than they can finish taking them. Maybe they'd need to pay the CS grads for an extra month? well, that might be more expensive than just throwing the site a couple hundred thousand bucks.

ANYWAY: my point is, don't treat this "oh no tumblr is selling our posts to AI" like it's a big thing that might happen and it would be bad to happen. Yes, it's bad, tumblr shouldn't do this, this'll let AI models get continual updates of content for far easier than just scraping them would be, tumblr betrayed user trust, and so on...

but realistically, this is not a black and white matter of "if only tumblr didn't do this, then we'd be safe from AI models!"

Nope. We already lost that battle. I'm sorry, and it does suck, but that's just how it is. The avalanche has already started, it's too late for the pebbles to vote. * I'm assuming here that you don't run a private blog that's set to only followers or something. You'd be safer then, of course, but you're not really my target audience for this rant