#paul bunyan cut

[fieriframes]

[LOOK AT THAT. COMES OUT REAL NICE. COOKS REAL EVENLY. AND THERE IS EMOTION, AND THEN THERE IS WHAT YOU DO ABOUT IT. IS THAT THE PAUL BUNYAN CUT? IT STAYS REALLY JUICY COMIN' OUT.]

[berserker-showdown]

ON the Right, Standing taller than the trees, Hero of the american pioneer fantasy, should have class advantage versus all the fantasy trees. you know her you love her: Paul Bunyan!

ON the Left stands the white berserker of mooncell, the being that lays claim to the domain of Archetype:Earth. The last True Ancestor herself Arcueid Brunestud

[eregyrn-falls-art]

Here's my 2023 Art Year in Review!

Oof. Yeah, not a great year for output. As you can tell by my having to put in some photos I took for May and October, since I didn't have any drawn art for those months. What I used for January and Sept. is definitely fudging things (in a "hmm close enough" way.)

So, here's the damage: 15 pieces total (all but one full background and color); 54 individuals.

BUT.

I'm not going to be super hard on myself, because this year is when I organized a big fan project that I'd been wanting to see get done for years and years -- the "Trouble" multi-artist lyric comic. (Art here, video version here by the amazing @stariousfalls.) As I've said before, absolutely awesome seeing 72 people step up wanting to do a big GF fan project in 2024! I was truly blown away by what a spectacular job everyone did.

And while I'm noting some of the stuff I can feel good about, I was happy to finish the Stan Twins meet the Jersey Devil comic that I'd also been meaning to finish for years.

So, not a great year personally, but some things to feel satisfied about.

Saying it here: my new year's resolution is just to DRAW SOMETHING in every month. Even just one thing!

Links below the cut.

2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017

(For this year's images, I am in the process of updating the original posts with image descriptions in the image ALT text. I should have all of them done by the end of tomorrow, January 4th.)

January: Fiddleford as Disney Mirrorverse Kermit

February: GF Finale 7th Anniversary

March: Not What He Seems 8th Anniversary

April: DTIYS: Mystery Farm AU Stan and Jackie

May: (a photo I took of a sunset that I didn't even post, lol)

June: The Pines family and Paul Bunyan Day

July: My Portal Ford page for the "Trouble" lyric comic

August: A pinch-hit Stan page for the "Trouble" lyric comic (collab with @stephreynaart)

September: My polaroid for the "Trouble" lyric comic

October: Sunset photo from LBI in October

November: Fiddleford Friday - father and son fishing

December: The Pines family around a Winter Solstice campfire

Template by @mossygator

[seat-safety-switch]

Have you heard the legend of Paul Bunyan? It’s not the kind of thing that they’d tell you in that fancy college-boy college, no siree. Paul Bunyan was a real American, seventeen feet tall and capable of killing a British soldier just by looking at them real hard. What kind of car did Paul Bunyan drive? A goddamn ox, that’s what. Oxen are like a cow, but all fucked up, as evidenced by the special plural form of their name.

That said, he probably only drove the ox because nobody had yet invented the car. Nobody wants to drive an ox; they get terrible fuel economy and you have to keep feeding them even when you’re not driving them, sort of like keeping oil in a BMW. Henry Ford wouldn’t kill several bystanders test-driving his exotic hot rods for another couple of decades, which meant that Mr. Bunyan was plumb out of luck when it came to automotive enjoyment. I like to think that, if he were alive now, he’d eschew the current trends towards crossovers and crossover-based pickup trucks, and go right for the gusto: the Isuzu NPR.

“Isn’t that a commercial vehicle?” I hear you whine through my kitchen floor furnace grates, and although I am thankful you have stopped crying for food so often, do not mistake our newfound conversational ease for camaraderie of any sort. You will remain chained up down there until Nissan pays the ransom, which is not gonna happen while you’re making all this noise and making me forget to put the note for the aforementioned ransom in the mail.

Yes, the Isuzu NPR is a commercial vehicle. So what? Paul Bunyan’s a lumberjack. He can get his air-brake endorsement no problem, if he needs to. Really, the only obstacle for him would be to cut the roof off the vehicle so he can fit inside it like an enormous Power Wheels, which probably won’t even impact its crash safety all that much.

[fatehbaz]

Regarding this post going around:

Recommend checking out an article by Kasey Keeler and Ryan Hellenbrand, published at Edge Effects in 2021, which, aside from addressing the Ojibwe story about the Nanabozho fighting against logging, also describes the origin of Paul Bunyan as an icon of clear-cutting timber industry and, later, as a symbol of the advent of the US federal government’s “German-style” forestry management.

Some quick tidbits from their article:

- References to Bunyan appear in local print media from the 1890s onward, but Bunyan became more widely known in 1916 after a scholarly publication about the folklore. In the same year, 1916, an important mass media pictorial representation was made in a promotional pamphlet by the marketing team of a major logging company as a move to give them a folksly and “local” charm as the corporation expanded from Minnesota to California.

- That same logging company had owned the land that would become both Paul Bunyan State Forest and Chippewa National Forest.

- The first national forest created by act of Congress rather than presidential proclamation was actually Chippewa National Forest, which has been described as “a laboratory” to solve “the Indian problem” and discipline/contain Ojibwe people.

- Paul Bunyan was a sort of icon of German folklore in the region. Ironically, even though Bunyan was originally associated with clear-cutting, it would in fact be "German-style” forestry policy that (in Minnesota and later across the US) replaced the original clear-cutting industrial extraction methods with a "modern" and "sustainable" management approach meant for "sustained yield" (which still just treats forests as a resource to be extracted for profit).

---

Anyway, some images, captions, and text from the article [all text below is excerpted from the article]:

Across the Northwoods, a geography that spans the U.S.-Canada border, stories are used to make and claim space. [...] Throughout northern Minnesota, legends of Paul Bunyan, the fictional giant lumberjack, have been used to claim space. [...] Bunyan has been credited with creating Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes, the Mississippi River, and the Grand Canyon, while simultaneously logging millions of acres of forest. [...] Together, we juxtapose the history of two forests -- the Paul Bunyan State Forest and the Chippewa National Forest -- to reveal how German settlement, logging, and forestry have contributed to placemaking narratives, and how [...] nostalgia links past and present. Paul Bunyan’s literal and figurative imaginings advance American Indian erasure narratives, leading to the invisibility of these same communities today. [...] The Northwoods have been popularized and imagined as America’s version of northern Europe. [...] Across Minnesota, towns like New Ulm, New Munich, Heidelberg, and Luxemburg bear witness [...]. More recently, Native scholars Michael Dockry and Christopher Caldwell have examined [...] “the Menominee people’s profound sense of place and their intimate relationship with place.”   [...]

---

Ojibwe dispossession, well underway by the late nineteenth century, is not told in any Paul Bunyan story. [...] The "heroic labor" of logging formed a significant portion of Great Lakes region economies [...] on the heels of, and entangled with, Ojibwe dispossession. [...] Formally established in 1908, the 1.6-million-acre Chippewa National Forest (CNF) lies nearly contiguous with the Leech Lake Reservation. [...] [T]he CNF was the first national forest created "for the benefit of [American] Indian people." [...] In 1902 came the Morris Act. Authored by [a] Duluth congressman [...], the act "created the first forest reserve established by congressional action rather than presidential proclamation." The act established the 225,000-acre Minnesota Forest Reserve as a “compromise,” a way to tackle the “Indian problem” while allowing for timber harvest. Here, Ojibwe homelands became “a laboratory for the first comprehensive forest management plans undertaken by a federal agency.” In 1928, the forest was renamed the Chippewa National Forest, as it remains today.

---

While the Chippewa National Forest forces us to consider the many ways logging and forestry has usurped American Indian peoples’ access to land, the nearby Paul Bunyan State Forest encapsulates the material legacy of symbolic myth. [...]

Officially recognized in 1935, the Paul Bunyan State Forest evolved from the site of the Red River Lumber Company sawmill. Founded in 1884, the Red River Lumber Company (RRLC) directly participated in and contributed to Ojibwe dispossession. By the end of the nineteenth century, he RRLC had purchased most of the land that comprises the present-day Pual Bunyan State Forest, milling millions of board feet of lumber at the company town of Akeley. [...]

The expansion of RRLC to California precipitated another key move: using Paul Bunyan in their marketing. William B. Laughead (pronounced Log-head), advertising manager in 1914 and a logger himself, spun another Paul Bunyan tale for the promotional booklet “Introducing Mr. Paul Bunyan of Westwood, Cal,” which included Bunyan’s first pictorial representation. This marketing campaign relied on the new and growing nostalgia for the grand logging days in the Great Lakes to keep the transcontinental corporation rooted in place.

With logging long established throughout the Great Lakes region, the ecological damage was clear. To remedy this, in the mid-1930s (German) forestry was introduced to manage timber on a sustained yield base. This, then, is the irony of the Paul Bunyan State Forest: named for an American legends who is said to have literally cleared the path for settlement, forest management now proposes to maintain the integrity of the forest. [...]

Though Paul Bunyan narratives dominate the landscape of the Northwoods, if we look closely we can see the ways Native people resist the legendary exploits. Indeed, a lesser-known Ojibwe oral story reminds us that the Anishinaabe people, their culture, and their histories will always prevail over dispossession and logging. In the story, Nanabozho, an Ojibwe trickster or cultural figure, confronts Paul Bunyan, who had already logged off most of the northeastern states before making his way to Minnesota. Nanabozho tells Paul to leave, to not log any more timber. A fight ensues, and [...] Nanabozho swings a Red Lake walleye at Paul, knocking him off his feet. As Paul stumbles, Nanabozho pulls at Paul’s whiskers, making him promise to leave the area. This is why, today, Paul Bunyan does not have a beard and why he is facing west at the statue on Lake Bemidji, as he prepares to leave the region.

This is also why we have the Chippewa National Forest, because Nanabozho and his Ojibwe kinsmen saved it from being logged. It is this contemporary narrative that highlights the complexity of Ojibwe storytelling [...].

---

Images, captions, and text as published by: Kasey Keeler and Ryan Hellenbrand. “Paul Bunyan and Settler Nostalgia in the Northwoods.” Edge Effects. 2 December 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks added by me.]

[melliotwrites]

are you working on a musical/play currently? if so when will it be out on youtube (if you know)

We are currently hard at work on our next show, Ghost Story! We don't have a production lined up yet, much less any kind of video, but we'll update as we go along with getting it in front of eyeballs :) (Probably the first iteration of it will be a reading in New York City -- or maybe New Haven, CT. -- so if you're around there keep an eye out for more info once we finish writing it!)

For now, have our first demo for Ghost Story :) and follow our demos playlist for more stuff in the future!

lyrics:

ANTHONY: OUR MAP IS OLD, THE SIGNS ARE WRONG BUT SINGING SONGS, WE ROLL ALONG THE WIDE OPEN SPACES OF THE LAND OF THE FREE

AS THE SETTING SUN GROWS BRIGHTER THE TOWNS AROUND GET WHITER JOEY STAYS SMILING AS ALL EYES TURN TO ME

HAO: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY, GAZE AT TAXIDERMY SHOPS SEE YOUR BEADY EYES UP THERE NEXT!

HAO/ANTHONY: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY

ANTHONY: GETTING CIRCLED BY CROPS, WATCH YOUR SERVICE DWINDLE DOWN TO TEXT

ALL: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH WHAT’S MORE EXCITING AND NEW?

JOEY/JOZEF: WOLF IN SHEEP COUNTRY

ANTHONY/HAO: YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH

ALL: SOMEONE WHO’S ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE YOU!

ANTHONY: REST STOPS BEGIN FEELING STRANGE BIT MORE LIKE A FIRING RANGE PULLING OVER FEELS LIKE LIFE-AND-DEATH JOEY TELLS ME THEY DON’T MIND

HAO/ANTHONY: BUT THEY CAN TELL I’M NOT THEIR KIND SO I’D RATHER HOLD MY BLADDER THAN HOLD MY BREATH

HAO/ANTHONY: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY

ANTHONY: BETTER WATCH YOUR BACK

HAO: TEETH AND CLAWS COULD COME FROM ANY DIRECTION

HAO/ANTHONY: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY

ANTHONY: OFF THE BEATEN TRACK

HAO: ‘ROUND THESE PARTS, YOU BETTER CARRY PROTECTION!

ALL: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY

JOEY/JOZEF: YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH

ALL: EVERYBODY BETTER BEWARE! SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY

JOEY (turning to HAO): CHRIST!

HAO (turning to JOZEF): AH!

JOZEF (turning to ANTHONY): HELP!

ANTHONY (turning to ALL): FUCK!

ALL: EVERYBODY ’S IN FOR A SCARE!

HAO: I LEARNED TO COPY WHAT THEY WEAR, CUT AND COMBED AND SLICKED MY HAIR MAKE SURE NO ONE LOOKS AT ME TOO CLOSELY

TAKE THE SHORT WAY HOME AT NIGHT I’M NOT LOOKIN’ FOR A FIGHT STAY ALONE AND MIND MY BUSINESS (with a glance at JOZEF) …MOSTLY

ALL: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY

HAO/ANTHONY: PERFECT ALL OF YOUR SMILES SO YOU LOOK A BIT LESS LIKE A THREAT

ALL: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY

HAO/ANTHONY: NO ONE LIKE YOU FOR MILES

HAO/JOZEF: (to ANTHONY) AT LEAST YOUR BOYFRIEND HASN’T NOTICED YET

ANTHONY: AND YOU SHOULD BE HAVING FUN YOU CAME HERE ON VACATION IF YOU’RE GONNA BE UPSET, GO BACK TO WORK

BUT NOW LOOK WHAT I’VE DONE I’M CRYING OUT OF FRUSTRATION TRYING NOT TO RUIN IT LIKE A JERK

HE’S IN THE KITCHEN CHOPPING ONION FRYING PORK TO PATSY CLINE HAPPY PLAYING AT PAUL BUNYAN THE LEAST I CAN DO IS SAY I’M FINE

ANTHONY: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY I CAN USE WHAT I’VE GOT MAKE THEIR MOUNTAINS MY NEW FRONTIER

HAO/ANTHONY: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY LIKE IT OR NOT

ALL: BUT I’M BUILDING A HOME RIGHT HERE!

ALL: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH THOUGH IT FEELS LESS THAN GREAT SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY WE ALL LEARN TO TOLERATE SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY

HAO/ANTHONY: I’LL TAKE WHAT I’M GRANTED

ALL: SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY

HAO/ANTHONY: I’LL GROW WHERE I’M PLANTED! I’M A SHEEP IN WOLF COUNTRY BUT HERE I’LL

ALL: STAY!

[purplbear]

road trip slide show!

It’s not the destination, but the journey” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Road-trip to view the 2024 total Solar Eclipse in Missouri, USA was packed with experiences (only 3 minutes of which was viewing the total eclipse). See/read the slide show under the cut!

Our journey started on Saturday and we expected to spend at least 5-6 hours in the car each day (it is 12 hours drive time to our eclipse viewing location in Missouri). Actual time spent on road each day was around 9 🤣 - so our greatest effort on the math figuring out how long our days would be. Ufda, getting to your Airbnb at 9pm each day is exhausting.

There are three humans and one animal on this trip, myself, husband, friend, and friend’s dog.

First event we experienced: the Mississippi River!

Now this needs some background - I live 3 minute drive away from the Mississippi in Minnesota. Could walk to it if I wanted. I’ve been to the headwaters in Itasca, MN and the delta in Louisiana. I cross this river almost daily for the grocery store or to see family … it’s like a big part of life where I live.

We arrived in Guttenberg, IA to Lock and Dam #10 and I’m like - ooh big river! Hey guys, which River is this?

🤔

Yeah, the big River here in this part of the United States is …. The Mississippi River. 🤦

Laughs all around - we enjoyed a short walk near the lock and dam, enjoyed all the fun street names, found a bathroom, and got back on the road.

By the way - one of our road trip companions was very cute and a very good puppers for the entire trip. Just amazing!

So day two - husbeast (husband) loudly stated a desire for a roadside attraction during today’s driving. The world’s biggest something, or weirdest whatever …. Something cool. Our friend did some kick butt research and found …. American Giants museum in Atlanta, Illinois. A mere 15 minutes off the hwy; and we were incredibly fortunate cause it was the first weekend they were open on Sundays too!

Upon entering the main downtown area we were greeted by: Paul Bunyon (hot dog man)

And our Minnesota hearts were so happy to see this large giant friend who is also a Paul Bunyan - but different name spelling cause of copyright issues 🤣🤣🤣 (or so the sign stated).

The dog was NOT a fan of hot dog Paul Bunyon man, but we were!

And the museum - y’all it was top notch! A single room, but like, FABULOUS write ups for the history of the Big Friends fiberglass works. Just awesome. The volunteers - also top notch. So friendly and happy to chat.

And if you’re anywhere near there, Memorial Day weekend they are getting one of the last remaining 6 Texaco giants!

Back on the road and onto our next stop which was ….St. Louis and the Gateway Arch.

And guess what! We saw a BIG RIVER! Hey guys, which River is this ….. it’s the Mississippi, still. 🤣🤣

Back on the road to Union, MO to rest up for ECLIPSE DAY!

Many many many friends and family informed us that the traffic TO the eclipse would be pretty good … but leaving the eclipse location would double or triple driving time. WORTH IT!

Many people have written about viewing an eclipse, how it’s an amazing experience. The highlights for me?

When the sun is totally eclipsed you are able to see SUNSET colors at the horizon EVERYWHERE - which is just like …. I love clouds and sunsets and that was AWESOME

Again, totally eclipsed you can see STARS (maybe it’s a planet?) - like the brightest starts are visible!

as the sun returns, the sky opposite the sun looks like twilight, while the light illuminating your front is like day. It’s wild.

total drive time on eclipse day:

1.5 hours from Airbnb to eclipse viewing spot

4 hours to travel same distance away from eclipse

Oh, and side note, traveling to our overnight after the eclipse, we crossed the Mississippi again. “Hey guys, what big river is this?” 🤣

The eclipse was a real highlight of the trip. But not the only highlight.

On the final day of travel, our picnic lunch location took us to a small town in Iowa. As we turn off the highway we see “Welcome to Riverside, IA” and immediately husbeast is exclaiming …

“We’re going to the future birthplace of CAPTAIN KIRK!” We’re huge Star Trek fans in this house - and we met the friend traveling with us thru a Star Trek podcast group many years ago. She’s been to Trekfest in Riverside before, and highly recommends attending. It’s a sweet gathering of wonderful Star treky people … and the few locals we spoke to in Riverside were very friendly!

Fabulous trip. on final count, we crossed the Mississippi 4 times, and I asked which River it was only 3 times. Go me.

It wasn’t just about the destination, but the journey along the way.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

I don't really feel like there's anything inherently awful about having a Paul Bunyan reference card but I really don't like it's inclusion in Outlaws of Thunder Junction, and honestly there is SO MUCH HERE that I need to point out as stuff that bothers me.

Paul Bunyan is a folklore story that does not originate from the geographical period that Thunder Junction is based on. Thunder Junction is heavily based on the American Southwest, particularly the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. Paul Bunyan is from the heavily forested areas around Michigan and parts of Canada, which makes sense when you consider their folklore is all about clear cutting.

Deserts don't really have much in the way of dense forests. There are some tree species which can survive in desert locations, but they tend to be a lot shorter. Plant size has a pretty good correlation with precipitation.

This means they've made towering cacti trees. I'm not against it on principle but there are aspects of it that really bother me.

They have tree trunks. Some cacti do have a central stem which can be a much firmer body, but the stem is where the cactus does all of its photosynthesizing. In addition, cacti store all of their water inside their fleshy bodies, so having long tree trunks doesn't actually make sense.

Cactus trees that big would inevitably be out-competed by normal trees. These plants thrive in arid environments because that's what they're adapted to. They have an entirely unique carbon fixing pathway (Crassulacean Acid Metabolism, or CAM for short) where they take in carbon dioxide at night to preserve water. For them to grow that tall would require a lot more precipitation which means you would just have trees instead.

They're there because if you don't have trees for Paul Bunyan to cut down, it doesn't make sense to include it in your set.

So we have cactus trees that are basically normal trees with funny cactus shaped bobs at the top.

Also its just Uro again

Is this all petty? Yes. But I'm allowed a little.

EDIT: ALSO TO BE ENTIRELY CLEAR. A COW IS NOT EATING CACTUS. NOT HAPPENING.

[cutebatart]

I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'RE REALLY UP THERE, BUT IF YOU ARE... PLEASE, PAUL BUNYAN, GIVE AN OLD MAN A FUCKING BREAK!!!

Image without text below cut

[msmargaretmurry]

Please elaborate about the border patrol incident

okay so, the border patrol incident is not really that dramatic, but it is very funny to me. when i was a young 20-something, one summer a friend and i decided to go on a month-long roadtrip across the continent and back. we had a lease on an apartment that didn't start until september, shitty little service industry jobs that didn't care if we disappeared for four weeks, and absolutely no standards for like, sleeping conditions or whatever. we got a hotel or motel room every 4-5 days to shower and stuff but mostly we were living out of my 2001 toyota camry, which ran just fine but was not in the best shape aesthetically due to being pretty old and also due to young me having sub-par depth perception and occasionally backing it ungently into things. also, because we were between apartments, the vast majority of our earthly belongings were packed into the backseat and trunk of this car.

the route of the trip was pretty meandering, but some stretches of it were based on the summer tour dates of bands we liked -- one of my favorites things to experience in a new city is its small/medium music venues, so this was a great excuse for doing that. anyway, we'd started the trip by driving north to montreal and then cutting west, but instead of going over the great lakes through western ontario we headed south, crossed back into the us at sarnia and went up through michigan's upper peninsula, wisconsin, minnesota. the night before we crossed the border again, we parked the car in the massive parking lot of the walmart supercenter in bemidji to sleep, which i remember distinctly because of the paul bunyan and babe the blue ox statues looming suddenly upon us in the middle of the night as we drove into town. that's not important to the story, but i am setting the scene here, which is that leading up to this encounter my traveling companion and i had just spent several days driving through a lot of deeply rural lake country with very little human contact except each other. the plan that day was to hit a concert in winnipeg and so we awoke with the sun, availed ourselves of the bemidji walmart supercenter facilities, and headed north.

the border crossing our google maps directions took us to was the one on route 59, which is a very small and not very busy crossing. i think the border guards were quite bored. in retrospect i can see how a couple of young women in this old, stuffed-to-the-gills car with virginia plates seemed pretty strange, but also in retrospect i still maintain they didn't have to be dicks about it. they checked our passports, asked where we were from and where we were headed -- to a concert in winnipeg -- and then decided that they needed to unpack the entire car to make sure we weren't carrying anything illegal, because, they said, groupies like to bring drugs to concerts.

please recall that we had so much stuff in this car. clothes and books and food and small furniture. the tetris of packing it was both an art and a science. i was NOT happy to have it dismantled by these border men. at one point they were like, ohhh see ALCOHOL and i was like, yeah, it's in the trunk so obviously no one is getting at it while driving so who cares?? and also it's not enough to have to declare so truly who cares. by the end of this process our cache of earthly belongings was scattered around the car in the road on the canadian border, and they begrudgingly allowed us into the country, but a single other vehicle had arrived at the crossing so they told us we needed to hurry up and get out of the way.

now i was already stewing in anger over a) the characterization of us as female fans traveling to a concert as "groupies" and b) the characterization of groupies as ~obviously~ carrying drugs. no disrespect to actual groupies or to drug users, live ur lives!! but we were neither if those things in that moment and i found the generalizations very gross, so i snapped at the border guards that the car takes a lot longer to re-pack then unpack and also maybe they should consider being less sexist. they did not like this very much. i also do not think they liked my lecture about their assumptions about female music fans, but imo they deserved it. afterward when we were finally driving into the grand prairies of manitoba, my friend was like, becky...... maybe in the future consider not picking fights with the border guards considering they get to decide if we cross the border. and i was like. well. we got in didn't we lmao.

in conclusion we did make it to the show in winnipeg, where we failed to read the fine print on the parking signs and also i sliced my foot open on something in the mosh pit, turning me into a person who now will tell literally anyone at any given opportunity, "yeah, i've been to winnipeg, and all i got was a parking ticket and a flesh wound."

[fieriframes]

[AND SCIENCE. LOOK AT THAT. COMES OUT REAL NICE. COOKS REAL EVENLY. AND SALVATION IS MORE ABOUT THIS LIFE THAN AN AFTERLIFE. IS THAT THE PAUL BUNYAN CUT? IT STAYS REALLY JUICY COMIN' OUT. IT'S KIND OF A HOT SMOKE.]

[3ofpents]

100 Palettes Challenge // Palette #15 // Greetings From the Pine Barrens

Today's color palette comes from a German Red Cross poster from 1914.

Are you excited? I'm excited.

It's less to do with the palette, though something about it does really appeal to me somehow.

But so let me bring you on a bit of a journey.

The other day, I was playing some classic Disney shorts for my toddler, one of them being Paul Bunyan. If you've never watched Disney's Paul Bunyan animated short, or if you haven't watched it in a while, I highly recommend it for the backgrounds alone. They're a classic example of that sort of classic painted, textured minimalist mid-century style. And as I was really looking at them, they reminded me so much of the travel posters from the 1930's and '40s. And as I was thinking about those, I just really wanted to try out the style.

So I did!

It didn't even take me that long to decide on a subject. I grew up in New Jersey and lived there for most of my life, and the thing that really pains me about cryptid fandom in the lack of love for the Jersey Devil.

Jersey Devil lore under the cut.

For those who don't know, the Jersey Devil (not to be confused with the hockey team of the same name, which was named after it!) is a cryptid alleged to live in the NJ Pine Barrens, an area that takes up about a third of the state. One of the several stories goes that, back in the colonial era, a woman either by the name of Mother Leeds or who lived at Leeds Point, NJ, discovered she was pregnant with her thirteenth child. Devastated — possibly because her husband was terrible, possibly because it was just hard giving birth to and supporting that many children — the woman hiked to the top of a hill nearby and shouted to the sky, "Let this one be a devil!"

Months later, possibly on a dark and stormy night, the woman gives birth to her thirteenth child. It might have been a rough birth, but both the mother and child survived. However, while the midwife was tending to the baby, the mother heard her scream. The baby changed — transformed — right in front of her eyes, its face and body lengthening, its hands twisting and hardening into hooves, a tail sprouting from its hips, and leathery wings stretching out of its back.

The next scream the mother heard was the inhuman screech of her devil child right before it killed the midwife and took flight. It might have then flown through the house, killing the entire family; it might have flown up the chimney in a burst of strength that blew the house from its foundations. But either way it flew into the depths of the pine barrens where it's rumored to have been terrorizing the residents of New Jersey ever since.

They say that anyone who's spent a night in the pine barrens has a story about encountering the Jersey Devil.

So when I thought about what location I wanted to make a travel poster for, obviously my first and only answer was the NJ pine barrens, and I needed to include the Jersey Devil on the poster somewhere.

And damn I had so much fun with this! Which you can probably tell, I think this is the most detailed piece I've ever made, and I'm so proud of it. I originally planned to have the Jersey Devil be lurking amongst the trees in a more prominent position, but with the limited palette I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it look right. And I really liked the idea of it kind of photo bombing the poster.

There was a little bit of frustration trying to figure out how I wanted to do the pine needles and the texture on the ground. But it was so satisfying when I finally hit on the look I wanted that the frustration barely even registered after that. And the tree textures, damn, I was expecting to be way more frustrated by that, but it worked out so well.

I loved the gradient around the moon so much that I added another one to the ground. I meant to play around with some gradients on the text but I forgot. I probably could've added some gradients to the trees too. When I do this again (because I'm definitely doing this again), I'm absolutely going to spend more time with gradients.

But god I'm so happy with how this came out, I might just print it out for myself to hang up.

[bizarre-blorbo-bracket]

Round 1 poll 14: the Log Chute from the Mall of America vs the Sea Serpent from The Defunct Submarine Voyage Ride at Disneyworld

Propaganda under the cut:

the Log Chute:

Listen, I hope it is okay to submit a ride, I saw some other people had submitted places (?) BUT, I'm obsessed with this ride, I have a YouTube playlist of people riding it, so I can watch it whenever I want. I live hours away from MOA, but whenever I go, I beg and plead my friend group to go with me. The smell of the ride alone makes me so happy. One time on my birthday, there wasn't a line, so the ride operator let me ride it seven times in a row without getting off. To me, it's like god's gift to the universe. I know all the fun facts about it and recite them to my friends. Also, there's a giant Paul Bunyan animatronic (the ride is Paul Bunyan themed) and they dress him in giant cute holiday sweaters every year!! And they also dress him for different occasions, which is so funny because he's literally like 15 feet tall. It also has a Babe the Blue Ox Statue that I think used to spit mist out of her nostrils, but she no longer has that function. A lot of the animatronics on this ride are no longer operational and I will point out every one while riding it. I'm obsessed with it. I guess if a ride isn't okay to blorbo, the Paul Bunyan and Babe Animatronics are also my blorbo of choice.

the Sea Serpent:

I was born many years after this ride went defunct and a lot of people are very scared of him, but I think he's such a sweet looking little guy!! He's so goofy and silly, I adore him!!!!! He is perfect!!!! I eternally envy the person that owns him!!! I wish he was mine!!!!!

[moocha-muses]

Another poem for @dunne-ias because we are friends; it is about a tree stump.

You know, this used to be a really nice forest before loggers (fucking loggers) came and more than decimated the place scared away the birds and the furry brown things all the intrepid little wood beetles. Trees can't protect themselves, can they? They're strong, solemn giants but they're vulnerable. They just can't protect themselves, which is why I'm out here in early morning with my breath fogging up the air. They're not allowed to just clear the whole area out (just fucking try it) So there still trees and some little saplings they've done a half-assed job of planting but also lots of miserable stumps for me to sit on (if I wanted to sit) jutting up from the ground white as broken off bones inside, raw and leaking marrow. I'm not sitting. I'm waiting. Because here's our lumberjack. Heeeeere's Paul Bunyan. Out here alone with his axe, which is stupid because it makes it easy for me to get up behind him and put the chloroform rag over his mouth and then inject him with something a little stronger. I didn't even have to bring my own saw. So I give him some stumps of his own, and when he comes to I've got him (what's left of him) stuck on one of the stumps, and I've already buried his legs and his arms and I'm pouring the rest of the blood (waste not want not) around the roots. I'm pretty sure he's upset but he can't say anything about it because I cut his tongue out, while I was at it. (He's not gonna need a tongue.) I give him a little kiss on the brow, and I pat his arm and I tell him "You're going to make a fine tree." And I stand back and I watch as the bark creeps up.

[bluespiritfire]

Putting this out there on this platform because I don't use other social media~!

I'm an NA Fate/Grand Order player looking for people who have specific Craft Essences that I can add as a friend, then run a node with so I can register them in my CE Spirit Origin library, then unfriend. I'm hoping to get most of these during the anniversary when AP costs are cut but this is open ended!

I am mostly looking for Portrait CEs and CE EXP Cards! I know how rare the latter is in particular, which is why I'm making this post. There are also some event CEs I'm looking for, so if you have the time or inclination, please take a gander.

I'll do my best to keep this list up to date for what I need. Without further ado, the list shall be below the cut, with ID numbers for the CEs and their names.

Formal Portrait (2nd Anni) | Travel Portrait (3rd Anni) | Festive Portrait (4th Anni) | Sightseeing Portrait (5th Anni) | Touring Portrait (6th Anni)

63. CE EXP Card: Okita

77. Heroic New Year

103. Heroic Portrait: Arjuna

107: Heroic Portrait: Mephistopheles

155. Mature Gentleman

164. CE EXP Card: Kuji Kanesada

229. All Three Together

280. Fire Flower

362. Spiritron Portrait: Nameless

364. Spiritron Portrait: Karna

365. Spiritron Portrait: Altera

366. Spiritron Portrait: Gilgamesh

399. First Order

565. CE EXP Card: GUDAGUDA Meiji Restoration

566. CE EXP Card: GUDAGUDA Recruitment

597. Mordred 598. Arthur 601. Lancelot 602. Caeser 604. Arjuna 606. Emiya Alter 608. Euryale 609. Scathach 610. Karna 611. L.Artoria 612. L.Artoria Alter 613. Romulus 614. Medusa (Lily) 615. Jaguar Warrior 616. Medb 617. Quetzalcoatl 618. Marie 619. Ushiwakamaru 620. Boudicca 621. Blackbeard 622. da Vinci 623. Nitocris 625. Caster Cu 626. Mephistopheles 627. Mozart 629. Cursed Arm 631. Kintoki 633. Cu Alter 634. Heracles 635. Fran 636. Penthesilea 637. Kiyohime 638. Asterios 640. Sherlock

668. Trace of a Dream

763. Pharaoh's Great Winter Celebration

769. Welcome, Our Customer

819. Tomoe 820. Asterios 821. Atalante 823. Mozart 824. Arjuna 825. Altera 827. L.Artoria Alter 828. Salieri 830. Circe 834. Karna 836. Sanzang 837. Kojiro 838. Sanson 839. Sherlock 840. Yan Qing 841. Musashi 844. David 848. Nezha 850. Brynhildr 851. Paul Bunyan 855. Raikou 856. Munenori 857. da Vinci

1039. Astraea 1042. Mozart 1043. Arjuna Alter 1047. Ibaraki 1049. Helena 1050. Yan Qing 1055. Quetzalcoatl 1056. Ryoma 1057. Sanson 1058. Qin Shi Huang 1064. Diarmuid 1065. Tomoe 1068. Bradamante 1070. Paul Bunyan 1072. Martha

1230. Yan Qing 1236. Kiyohime 1238. Cu Alter 1242. Kojiro 1244. Sherlock 1261. Marie 1264. Murasaki

1421. Asvatthaman 1424. Saito Hajime 1433. Jason 1444. Miss Crane 1146. Asclepius 1450. Vritra 1452. Bartholomew 1452. Himiko 1454. Watanabe-no-Tsuba

Thank you very much for taking the time to scroll down this far! If you have any CEs listed above, please feel free to leave your FGO ID in the replies or DM me, whichever you feel more comfortable with! Of course, I also have some CEs and if you're looking for any in particular, feel free to reach out!

I will be actively updating this list as I fill these out.

[thelreads]

While the madness has died down for a bit. I want you to give your opinions on the following Fate chracters

1. Gawain, Knight of the Sun

2. Professor James Moriarty, Napoleon of Crime

3. Nikola Tesla, the greatest mad scientist to ever live

4. Sir Francis Drake, captain of the golden hind and 1st person to circumnavigate the globe.

5. Beni-enma, the tongue-cut sparrow, judge of hell and small bird Gordon Ramsey.

6. Paul Bunyan, North American lumberjacking legend

I'm already too used to that, the impact is not the same. They put tits on Sir Francis? Yeah, that happens.

Wait, what was that about Gordon Ramsey again?