Some people have asked me if I can publish my mapmaking tools. So I developed a software. 🙂
Here is the result:
eyimpostinghere asked:
Hi Neil,
How much has your work been inspired by Goncharov (1973)?
neil-gaiman answered:
The whole of Season 2 of Good Omens was inspired by Goncharov. Dottie and Sadie, Aziraphale and Crowley’s wives, were basically my take on Perdita and Brigitte, the two tourists who worked in the condom factory, and the whole Goncharov helium balloons and clowns sequence. For that matter, without Goncharov it would never have occurred to me to have made the comedy in episode 4 the fact that Dottie and Sadie and their husbands have unknowingly all been booked in the same hotel room, or to have had the Archangel Gabriel played by a chinchilla. Yes.
Audio Drama Recommendations, Pt. II
For part one, click here. I went on another audio drama binge and I found some that were pretty fun to listen to. I usually tend to go after the ones that are completed because the longer the wait, the more likely I will forget the details, but this time I just went for anything that caught my attention. This also isn’t in any particular order.
USAmericans: This pride month, talk to the queer people who actually live in all those bad evil icky red states and find out what it's actually like, how we actually feel about it, and who here is actively fighting against it. No more telling us to "just leave" or reducing us to innocent victims who are "trapped" here. There are so many of us and we live here for so many reasons, none of which should be justified. We are resilient, we are powerful, and we are fighting against the fascist laws working to eradicate us or scare us away. Being trans in a red state right now is in and of itself an act of resistance. That being said, pay attention to the brave souls on the front lines, pushing against the laws, making good trouble, and refusing to be silenced.
I won't let myself be talked about like I'm stupid to live here.
I won't let myself be talked about like I'm a helpless victim who's trapped here.
If you can't join the fight by standing beside us, then the least you can do is empower us, amplify our voices, and pay more attention to the ones who are FIGHTING AGAINST THESE LAWS than you are to the chucklefucks trying to pass them.
I love how character-driven Mash jokes usually are
the ways the characters joke generally aren’t interchangeable, they all have differing senses of humour, and the jokes are usually less situational and more ‘characters reacting in particular ways to a situation’ (or creating a situation)
take the pegging joke in Carry on Hawkeye. it’s not an objective ‘lol inadvertant role reversal due to their positioning that highlights their dynamic’ joke. Hawkeye plays it up on purpose, and then dies of laughter when Radar walks in and thinks something sexual is going on. it doesn’t feel like a conveniently funny misunderstanding, it feels organic because the characters are in on the joke.
imo Hawkeye (and whoever else) laughing during funny moments tends to elevate the humour of those moments, making them funnier and also more realistic and grounded. it’s not a bunch of witty characters deadpan riffing off each other to make the audience laugh - when they riff off each other it’s to make each other laugh. and Hawkeye, Trapper, and BJ are regarded in-universe as funny guys, it’s a deliberate aspect of their personalities. whereas, say, Radar’s funny moments usually come from his naivete, Henry’s came from his awkwardness, Frank’s from his idiocy, Klinger’s from his audacity, Potter’s from deadpan reactions, Charles’ from dry wit, Margaret’s from hypocrisy or later on, just her vibe since she’s rarely deliberately funny, Mulcahy’s from earnest awkwardness and the occasional cute joke he makes…
it also, yk, suits the premise of the show very well, in which the characters aren’t in an objectively funny situation, they have to create their own levity just to stay sane.
like this isn’t every joke ofc, eg the dark satirical jokes can be more objective and situational rather than character-based, but yk, when it comes to the jokes the characters themselves make I really love that it feels like people actively trying to entertain each other or make fun of each other and find humour in a dark situation, rather than the sort of writing where it feels like we’re in an alternate universe where people are always witty, or where funny things happen but the characters seem blind to it.
June 29th, midnight
Dracula: Still at your devotions, my friend? You must know that it is far too late for that...
Jonathan: actually no. After all that business with the wolves I thought I should make up my will
Dracula: this?
Jonathan: yeah I had to write in on both my Kung Fu Panda DVDs because for some reason I couldn't seem to find any paper
Dracula: ehehehe yeah...
Jonathan: so anyway can you get the ladies over here to help witness it for me?
Dracula: uh...sure?
Jonathan: Great!
Dracula: wait a minute... this says you're bequeathing all the blood in your body to someone called Wilhelmina Murray!
Jonathan: it sure does.
Dracula: I'm very hurt by that! I thought we were friends!
Jonathan: witnesses can't be beneficiaries
Dracula et al: *surprised Pikachu face*
Jonathan: anyway sleep well! I know I'll sleep better with all that taken care of
Dracula: curses! Foiled by the unbreakable power of English Probate Law!
Jonathan: Age of the Clerk, baby
October 5th or whatever
Van Helsing: so we should all make wills before heading to Transylvania
Jonathan: oh good reminder! I need to update the one I made last time I was there
Van Helsing: *looking at Kung Fu Panda DVDs* you are leaving all the blood in your body to Madam Mina?
Jonathan: you see why that needs to be updated
Van Helsing: Ah yes, under the circumstances it would probably not be wise to -
Jonathan: because see I list her as Wilhelmina Murray, but her name changed when we got married. That's exactly the type of clerical error that can cause no end of difficulty
Van Helsing: ...um...
Jonathan: also we own a house now so I'm assigning that too. Getting caught up on thresholds is the last thing she needs right now
Van Helsing: ...............
Van Helsing: Friend John we really need to find some way to separate the Harkers
Seward's terrible self-esteem strikes again! Little does he know they would both probably hit that (if he asked nicely).
part of being an ally to trans men is not being a dick to cis men for their appearance btw
the short trans men hear you. the trans men with bottom growth—or who are post-phalloplasty—hear your bad jokes about small dicks. the trans men undergoing hrt who are losing their hair hear you talk shit about bald spots.
also, hot take, you should care about not hurting random cis men in addition to not hurting trans men. like just because some guy is being an asshole online doesn’t mean the thousands of young boys reading your comments about someone with their same acne deserved it. i don’t care what your reason is, even if you think someone is bad enough to warrant being bullied, who gave you permission to hurt the innocent bystander?
hey y’all should spread this version bc some people need to hear this context
Look, it's like when people mock the ex prez for being fat when FASCIST is right there. Assholes have plenty of earned flaws to point out, making fun of body shapes and types is just lazy and cruel and likely to hit innocent bystanders. And lots of people manage to be decent people while also being fat. The fat isn't the problem, the fascism is.
It's not just pointless, it's markedly less effective at calling attention to the real evils.
gonna post a controversial take alright are y’all ready??
…
actually typing out emoticons like XD and :D and :V never should have gone out of fashion and you can pry them out of my cold dead hands okay I know emojis are fun but THEY DON’T CAPTURE THE EMOTION IN THE SAME WAY
so like
…yeah that was basically it, thanks for reading
also websites that automatically replace your typed out <3 and :D with emojis upon sending them are a Danger To Everything That’s Good In The World
bring back nose smilies :-)
There is no emoji that captures what I mean by :P (I do NOT mean “hur hur goofy-ass face!”) and the one for :^/ is not great. And lest we forget, 🤷🏻♀️ is absolutely inadequate compared to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Faces no emoji has ever managed to capture, imo:
:P
^_^
:3
^u^
:/
O.o
0.0
>:/
<(^u^)>
I am too old to stop using XD
i have never yet found an emoji that fully captures the shifty energy of:
>_>
<_<
Oh man, I’ve missed O.o
Especially alternating to really capture how boggled you are.
O.o
o.O
O.o
Whatever the name of this team is, I am on it
this is awesome
._. is pretty good too and 😐 just ISN’T THE SAME
XD, ^-^, :3, <3, and =P until death
¬_¬ is the most eloquent keystroke combo
U_U is my fav, and also O_O
the SHEER MISCHIEF of OvO
me af
I use emoji, kaomoji AND emoticons. They all have different moods!!
🤷🏻 is like ‘i have no idea’.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is like ‘who knows. nothing in life matters & we were all born to die’
Don’t be forgetting uwu
Wait when did we stop doing this
:c
and
c:
and C:
all have far greater energy than any smiley/sadface emoji
:D is not the same thing as 😃
And NOTHING conveys the sheer horror of
D:
or the horror/shock-fueled rage of
D:<
Bring back emoticons, pls kthxbai
“In 1984, when Ruth Coker Burks was 25 and a young mother living in Arkansas, she would often visit a hospital to care for a friend with cancer.
During one visit, Ruth noticed the nurses would draw straws, afraid to go into one room, its door sealed by a big red bag. She asked why and the nurses told her the patient had AIDS.
On a repeat visit, and seeing the big red bag on the door, Ruth decided to disregard the warnings and sneaked into the room.
In the bed was a skeletal young man, who told Ruth he wanted to see his mother before he died. She left the room and told the nurses, who said, “Honey, his mother’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming!”
Ruth called his mother anyway, who refused to come visit her son, who she described as a “sinner” and already dead to her, and that she wouldn’t even claim his body when he died.
“I went back in his room and when I walked in, he said, “Oh, momma. I knew you’d come”, and then he lifted his hand. And what was I going to do? So I took his hand. I said, “I’m here, honey. I’m here”, Ruth later recounted.
Ruth pulled a chair to his bedside, talked to him
and held his hand until he died 13 hours later.
After finally finding a funeral home that would his body, and paying for the cremation out of her own savings, Ruth buried his ashes on her family’s large plot.
After this first encounter, Ruth cared for other patients. She would take them to appointments, obtain medications, apply for assistance, and even kept supplies of AIDS medications on hand, as some pharmacies would not carry them.
Ruth’s work soon became well known in the city and she received financial assistance from gay bars, “They would twirl up a drag show on Saturday night and here’d come the money. That’s how we’d buy medicine, that’s how we’d pay rent. If it hadn’t been for the drag queens, I don’t know what we would have done”, Ruth said.
Over the next 30 years, Ruth cared for over 1,000 people and buried more than 40 on her family’s plot most of whom were gay men whose families would not claim their ashes.
For this, Ruth has been nicknamed the ‘Cemetery Angel’.”— by Ra-Ey Saley
She’s 60 now, she’s still doing activist and advocacy work, and working on a memoir.
my favorite thing about this story is that ruth had inherited a large family graveyard and never really knew wtf she was going to do w dozens and dozens of empty grave plots but then the AIDS crisis happened and she realized what she could do with it
When Burks was a girl, she said, her mother got in a final, epic row with Burks’ uncle. To make sure he and his branch of the family tree would never lie in the same dirt as the rest of them, Burks said, her mother quietly bought every available grave space in the cemetery: 262 plots. They visited the cemetery most Sundays after church when she was young, Burks said, and her mother would often sarcastically remark on her holdings, looking out over the cemetery and telling her daughter: “Someday, all of this is going to be yours.”
“I always wondered what I was going to do with a cemetery,” she said. “Who knew there’d come a time when people didn’t want to bury their children?”
(x)
Articles:
- Ruth Coker Burks, the cemetery angel: https://arktimes.com/news/cover-stories/2015/01/08/ruth-coker-burks-the-cemetery-angel
- Caring For AIDS Patients, ‘When No One Else Would: https://www.npr.org/2014/12/05/368530521/caring-for-aids-patients-when-no-one-else-would
And a final quote from the first article:
She hasn’t been back to Files Cemetery since her stroke. While she made sure it was kept up back when she lived in Hot Springs, it appeared to have been let go a bit when the reporter visited in late December, some of the tombstones pushed over and broken, the snag of a dead oak left to rot among the graves. Even without knowing the story of the place, it might have been downright spooky if not for the constant stream of traffic cruising by at 10 miles an hour over the speed limit.
Before she’s gone, she said, she’d like to see a memorial erected in the cemetery. Something to tell people the story. A plaque. A stone. A listing of the names of the unremembered dead that lie there.
“Someday,” she said, “I’d love to get a monument that says: This is what happened. In 1984, it started. They just kept coming and coming. And they knew they would be remembered, loved and taken care of, and that someone would say a kind word over them when they died.”
I lowkey headcanon that Gomez and Morticia have the same taste in men but quite different taste in women.
i love this shot because composition-wise it almost looks like a renaissance painting to me, and it kills me because of how quickly both margaret and BJ run to hawkeye and make sure they get him safely inside
they then do the same thing in “bless you, hawkeye”; it’s always margaret and BJ immediately ready to take care of hawkeye and make sure he’s safe and okay
so the scene in the first screencap killed me. the first time i saw it, and still to this day. the way everyone rushes out immediately at once and huddles around hawk is so intense?? You can tell how scared they all are by the way they run to him and the tones of their voice. I've just never seen that level of urgency paired with tht emotion before on the show. they're always so calm even if a patient is dying. what made that scene different was that they weren't. Plus we've never seen that many people come to help at once. usually one or two will run out to see the patient in triage. in this instance, practically the entire camp came running to him. there's so many people in the huddle you can't even see hawk. because they all care about him so much and they're all so worried
They completely fall apart when its one of their own. Its accurate. Doctors are supposed to be safe and above getting hurt. There's a little bit of a class separation -- doctoes are educated and high value and therefor protected. For someone like Radar and the nurses, they look to the doctors as a signpost of civilization and safety. So if the war touches a doctor, things start to break down and peoples coping mechanisms don't work so well anymore.
THIS ^
Anthropology major answer: “There absolutely was such a time! Modern humans and our ancestors shared territory numerous times over prehistory with cousin species like homo neanderthalensis, homo floresiensis, and many, many others!”
Folklore student answer: “Also, almost all cultures have something like djinn, faeries, hulder, fox spirits, and other similar creatures who can appear at least human and are very, very dangerous to humans!”
Both of these things are true, and may be connected both to the above and to each other. :D
Biology majors: it’s dead bodies guys. Corpses.
Listen I hate this take on the uncanny valley so fucking much because many subpsecies of homonids lived in the same areas but some of them got along well enough to coexist and neandertals had enough desirable genetic traits to the point where human women (see here for a blanket on female vs male choosiness) would often pass up incel homosepian for the chad neandertal.
Genetics aside, various hominid species didn’t start visually looking all that different until 50,000 years ago, while under the skin changes began as early as 89,000 years ago (ie the development of the Y chromosome but I might be oversimplifying at this point) Point being, even our non-human cousins didn’t. look. that. different. from. us. Especially comparing the diversifying of humans themselves crossing trans continental as it was. And even then neandertals still had advantagious traits for living in the Eurasian hemisphere.
Also I digress, regardless of it being intentional, and with few perserved records from that chapter in our species’ history, I don’t like the implication that the uncanny valley effect stems from humans being inherently racist (for lack of a word for hatred of non-human intelligences). I know that sounds off the wall but prejudice and sense of superiority by birthright is vastly different than othering by means of the sucess of social groups and the need to compete for territory or resources. Racism is entirely a Eurpean fabrication and it’s been proven time and time again to be a cultural outlier and purposfully designed to further the agenda of corroded theocratical religious divinity (here, here, here) and the financial benifits of the exploitation of colonism that otherwise has not been replicated by other cultures to the same degree. (this is the only example off the top of my head but I’m know there’s more.)
You know what’s older than racism?
You know what’s more flesh crawling than neandertals?
You know what LOOKS like a human but doesn’t ACT human ENOUGH? Do you know what might bite you and get you sick or turn you into something that also moves about in a non human way? Brain parasites that give you painful headaches and intensifies agression and confusion.
Say you’re a monkey and one member of your troop gets bitten by something. Later he starts twitching and swaying about. He keeps stumbling out of trees but barely feels anything when he hits the ground. He won’t eat sleep or drink. He makes guttural noises that keep alerting predators and he’s in obvious writhing agony. Suddenly he’s not your friend anymore. He doesn’t recognize you and he attempts to bite and claw at anything that moves.
Up until preventitive oral medications and vaccines were developed in the 1970s there was NOTHING stopping rabies and it still prevails today and kills hundreds of thousands of people in third world countries with limited medical resources a year. There’s no cure for rabies once youve got it and the only reliable diagnostic is a brain autopsy.
Rabies. TB. Leoprosy. Syphilis. Meningitis. Toxoplasmosis. Anthrax. Mercury Poisoning. Prion disease. These are all bad and in different varying degrees can cause limps, sores, agression, confusion or dazed trances, ambled pacing, convulsions or uncharacteristic behavior in humans.
Basically everything that people are terrified of when it comes to zombies. Vampires bite. Werewolves rip people apart. Demonic possesion? Easy. Changlings take the place of your loved ones.
Also I don’t think that it’s a conicidence that the things we find uncomfortable with the uncanny valley also just happen to line up with predatory behavior, smiling too wide or staring you down, blinking too slowly or moving towards you with a slow steady speed. It’s just a danger signal to keep other monkeys in a troop from getting bitten by an infected monkey. Simple as that.
After all what’s scarier? A dead body, or moving body that will MAKE you dead?
I’m not going to be a hypocrite by pointing out racism being excused as a stemmed human behavior without claiming that the deep seated primal fear of disease doesn’t make a good excuse for ableism as well. I mean we use othering to discern friend from foe, and then at some point decided that was a good enough excuse for racism. Theres legitimate proof that ancient homonids could and would be hospitible to the disabled out of compassion. The point of having these initial fears is to guage saftey measures first, but once someone or something is proven to be harmless that normally should be the end of it. I mean if an adult wild silverback gorrilla can look at a spycam and decide it’s chill after a moment of inspection then there’s really no excuse for any of us.
Healthy othering =/= newly invented racism.
healthy fear of infectious diseases =/= excuse to hate disabled people.
But yeah rabies is more likely the reason for the uncanny valley effect thanks for coming to my goddamn ted talk.
Reblogging this version bc of sources and I personally think this makes for much more interesting (and terrifying) lore than any other post in this thread.
Holy shit. I never thought of the “zombie virus” to be this take. It makes total fuckin sense. Shit