#blabbing Haddock

[thatbanjobusiness]

What piece of bluegrass do you think best fits the description of "banjo music plays menacingly in the distance"?

After months sitting here being like, "I need to think of a better answer..." I suddenly remembered.

Oh duh.

Banjo Odyssey, The Dead South.

Not prototypical bluegrass but people can eat my Scruggs rolls, this is a fantastic answer.

[lefthanded-sans]

Hello, I'm fan of your culinary book of Deponia. It looks amazing but I can't find the full version of it. Is there any chance where I can find it or purchase?

Anyway thank you for your amazing work

Hey there and thanks for stopping by! I don't think I've made a culinary book for Deponia - I can't even cook waffles right! Does anyone else here know where it might be? Best of luck with your endeavor to find that full version!!!

[kingofthewilderwest]

I feel like I have, sort of. It's been over a decade and I've been in a fever dream since. What happened? I don't know. I don't know how I don't know.

There were multiple bookstores on the downtown street, several big, and all delightful. I was walking through downtown on my way to the usual used bookstore I visited. This place was a treasure, one of those used bookstores where the shopfront looks tiny, but you step inside and it runs deep; there's rows and rows and rows of books in invitingly dark niches, every shelf stuffed to max capacity, and then mountains of books stacked every which way on all other space—book skyscrapers conquering the limited floor real estate, book stacks climbing up the desk where the employee would take your card, book stacks morphing into the shelf so you hardly knew where the shelf ended and the freeform stacks began—the ultimate organized, chaotic clutter of books, books, books. You never knew what you'd find, but the books ran heady and obscure, a delightful deep-dive of knowledge.

But on my way, a man beckoned me to an unassuming door. I'd seen the door before, I think, but it'd always been a locked mystery. It was on the main street filled with store fronts, but it might've been squeaked between two buildings. There was another store cheek-and-jowl next to it, so it had to be a tiny sliver of real estate. It was a regular door and there was no accompanying storefront to show you what was inside. Just a door, and on it, the name of the store. Another bookshop, allegedly. Allegedly, again, because that door was easy to miss, and because I'd never seen anyone go in or out of it or seen signs of life that you could go in and out of it.

Today was different. This man, he beckoned me in. The door, it was opened to me.

And inside was a bookstore six times the size I thought it could be. Books displayed in inviting stacks on tables in the front. Bookshelves snaking about the interior, all in their eclectic order. Books climbing up the walls to the ceiling. The interior was cramped and maze-ish, but, at the same time, it was vast.

I didn't see all the books at once, but therein lay the magic of it. Every time I thought I'd seen more books than I could expect, I came across another passage that opened into another area. The books climbing to the walls could be accessed by a staircase to a second floor. A second floor! Here? How?! The entire way up to the second floor: books covering each inch. And then you'd turn and there was the final room, books again covering every inch. Lots of old books—not trashy, but those types of heavy, beautiful, rare treasures.

It was enchanting.

It was so enchanting, in fact, that I feel like the bookstore upright disappeared after I left it.

Not just the bookstore.

But the door.

The damn door.

Disappeared.

In this city that I'd been living in years, on a street I'd been shopping for years and knew every inch of.

I kept looking for that door on the way to the used bookstore I usually went to. I kept saying, "Well, it's an easy door to miss." I'd keep peering at the nooks and crannies between buildings, thinking, "It was this intersection, right? Or did I remember wrong?" I never... saw that door again. I never went into that bookstore again.

I don't have dreams that are realistic and can be mistaken for reality. I'm a vanilla person who doesn't even consume coffee, let alone something that could make me trip.

What the heck happened? What did I remember wrong? Because I had to have remembered something wrong—where the door was, what building it was, what it looked like inside, something, something, something! My mind vividly tells me where the door is, but there's no door there! There's! No! Door! There! There's no door anywhere up and down that street in the vague vicinity of where I was teleported away to this fucking fae-ass bookstore.

I looked for years, guys! I have looked for years trying to refind just the door!

It's a mystery that's nagged me for over a decade, and it'll nag me for decades more.

yeah libraries are cool but have you ever found a library with a secret doorway disguised as a bookshelf that leads to a smaller, hidden library filled with ancient books full of mysteries and forgotten knowledge? me neither and i'm sad about it

[kingofthewilderwest]

Organs are so underrated

[thatbanjobusiness]

I caved and bought a novel that combines two of my passion areas. I'm not expecting a masterpiece, but you had me at "an encounter with Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys makes the POV character realize he has to time-travel back to his previous life as a samurai" because that's a sentence you read every day

[lefthanded-sans]

Well, you've been inactive for 6 years, but I wanna say hi anyways! I'm a fellow Papyrus lover and new to the game.

Awwww, not writing UT meta doesn't make me inactive (Ｔ▽Ｔ) (Ｔ▽Ｔ) (Ｔ▽Ｔ) ;) but a great big howdy to you! I'm so glad you reached out! It's always fantastic to meet another fan of a series, especially someone coming in with new enthusiasm. Papyrus forever! Seriously, feel free to chat with me if you'd ever like. I don't have the knowledge base for serious meta anymore, but it's always fun to have casual convos about things like Undertale.

[kingofthewilderwest]

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ [sends love] so grateful we could do it

the real danger of spending too much time with friends is you stumble out of ten days of happiness and good food like oh my god THAT was real life. my job means NOTHING

[kingofthewilderwest]

Professionally sending emails that translate to "bruh are you unable to read?"

[kingofthewilderwest]

Gosh the amount of talent on this site is unbelievable. Breathtaking. Dumbfounding. Overwhelming. Every day you log on and see thousands of exquisite artists. Like, people say, "Oh I'm not that good," but that's because you're walking into a living art studio every time you open tumblr. You're good. You're great! You're all great. Look at all the drawers and painters. Look at all the writers. Look at all the writing. Look at the gif makers and the analysts and enthusiastic fans with fantastic recall for what they love. Look at the music. Voice acting. Video editing. Animation. Comedy. Look at the shitposting, a talent of joy if there ever was one. Look at the kindness to compliment each other's stuff. You think you're mediocre? Wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! Each person here is a star in the sky and together we make constellations.

[kingofthewilderwest]

Neither CDs nor DVDs are dead! Both are readily available with new releases at the nearest Walmart. Due to interest, LPs have come back, and those have existed in basically their current form since the 1950s. Certain business powers-that-be are trying to phase CDs and DVDs out, like dropping internal players in laptops and cars, but it only has to be outdated if we decide they are. The perks of permanent internet-less ownership and tactile media is something I see people yearn for in a broad variety of demographics. Change is a nature we've gotten used to in today's rapidly-progressing tech, though I'm sure you've seen the large amounts of dialogue of why people value and push back with physical media ownership. It's your decision if you're not into it yourself, though I don't think anyone is naïve or out-of-date for caring about this. I for one dread losing options for permanent ownership and permanent copies of unchanging media.

we need to go back to dvds guys. we need to all agree on this and make it happen. we need video stores back NOW

[kingofthewilderwest]

what is concentration? how do you get it? it's about orange juice, right?

[kingofthewilderwest]

As a chronically long-haired person, it makes me sad when people's default design idea of taking a character with long hair and showing time has passed / they've aged / matured is to cut their hair. Cherrypicking atm to gab, but it's not just me that I see it everywhere, right???

I think there might be some internalized idea that long hair in especially childhood is something the parents put on so of course it gets cut for maturity's sake, or it's something that gets outdated or outgrown or out of touch with the self or something else?

Yeah when you grow up with long hair it often happens, and there's nothing objectively wrong or inaccurate with that happening. I know people who explored or took control of their sense of identity by changing their childhood cut, etc. etc. Or sometimes you're just curious. I cut my hair short once.

But that's not specific to long hair. Anyone is liable to switching their hair out after childhood. And maybe it's just me coming in with my bias, it's probably bias, but I feel like other characters' flashforward designs are more likely to retain their length and / or style. Long hair feels picked on. Like it has to be cut, whereas the others' don't. It's the first thing used to demonstrate a change in time or adulting. Sometimes I just feel, "Leave their hair alone, y'alls!!!"

Because. Long hair also is, like, a personal choice that contradicts the norm (pending on culture, of course, I am absolutely talking about my segment of Western culture). It can be tied to a personal sense of identity exactly because it's an unusual length. Sometimes I want to see flashforward art of my favesies where it's waist-length all these years later, dammit. Can't I have adult designs where people have lonk locks like me? Like yes. Embrace that identity of long hair. Embrace that part of yourself because you're awesome. It's not a phase. It's not childhood. It's you and you like it and you're gorgeous for it.

Gonna throw out here me currently regrowing my hair to waist-length, in my thirties, is a badass statement of identity and personal pride. Not that I will crumble into a psychological crisis if my hair were elsewise, but I had long hair my whole childhood and for most of my life. I love it. It's decidedly me. I went bald from chemo, and now the longer my hair gets again, the more I can proudly middle finger the cancer I conquered. Look who came out on top [swishes hair] because of course I did, of course I kicked butt. Isn't that sick, guys? Isn't that cool? Long hair can be cool, y'all, in characters' expressions of themselves. Grow it out. Mature and grow it out.

[kingofthewilderwest]

Hi Haddock! I'm currently writing my master's thesis on Tumblr, specifically on the way the technology (e.g. the UI) offered to us through the years has changed and brought forth Tumblr culture! For that, I need to do a deep, deep dive into Tumblr history (among other things) and I struggle to remember what was different about the site 12+ years ago - both from the technological and the social angle. Since you & your mutuals are some of the oldest tumblrinas I'm kiiinda aware of, I wanted to ask if you'd possibly be able and willing to list some of the things that you remember... it doesn't matter whether those were mechanics you loved or if they sucked lol.

For example, we used to have a better ask culture when people without an account were still able to chime in, but on the other hand, I recall post formats to have been sooo shitty haha.

It'll also be interesting to gather some aged screenshots from back then. I wonder if the wayback machine will help, but other than that, do you have any idea where I could find photos of a 2013 dashboard or some blog posts or anything??? The internet's search functions are so broken by now that I've grown tired of struggling for workarounds.

Your insight would be greatly appreciated!!!

Cheers!

HEYYYYYY SO I DO NOT WANT TO DELAY REPLYING ANY LONGER SINCE I AM SURE YOU ARE ON A TIME CRUNCH AND I MIGHT BE TOO LATE ALREADY

I would LOVE to grab some things for you. I might even have screencaps and more for you of 2014 tumblr if I get looking on my old laptop

My life has been Chaos and a Half

I have been flying by the seat of my pants so hard that my pants should register with the Department of Non-Motor Vehicles as a flying carpet

Let me know when your deadline is and I'll try to help

I think things are finally going to be calmer after this Sunday [knocks on a forest of wood]

[kingofthewilderwest]

Bwahahahahahahahahahaha amazing, this is accidental art.

I guess it's not not dragons since it's a vague reference to non-dragons posts which makes it dragons related which makes it [descends into increasingly haphazard justifications]???

It should've been tagged non-dragons but heck if I'm gonna fix it now.

I love when people with carefully themed blogs tag stuff that's an exception to the theme. you'll be scrolling through reblogs on a shitpost and someone's tagged it "#not bugs" or "#not photography" or "#not early medieval siege warfare" and it's like hey stranger glad you stopped to have fun with us

[kingofthewilderwest]

Just because someone links a scientific paper to their claim doesn't mean they read the paper right (or read it at all beyond the title). Watch out for the disconnect between a person's claims and what the paper actually says.

[kingofthewilderwest]

aaaaaaaaand they just announced Shrek 5