I Didn’t Mean For This To Be A Star Wars Blog

Our Lady of the Damp and Rain

Look upon this mighty work! Our Lady resplendent in gold!

“oh no, my audience has begun to guess the big twists of my story and are accurately predicting what will happen!”

incorrect response: write the rest of the story to be as twisty, shocking and counter to expectations as possible, regardless of whether this is a logical or satisfying way for the plot to go

correct response:

can someone elaborate on the “make hoax” and “post angry tweet about “leak”“ part. i’m stupid and don’t understand things

sure!

(you’re not stupid. I posted this thinking it would amuse a handful of mutuals who all knew the context and that would be about it, so I didn’t think about providing any other explanation. I had no idea it would spread this far.)

I’ll start from the very beginning just to be thorough. so this is Alex Hirsch, creator and head writer of Gravity Falls, a show which had a big focus on mystery, conspiracies, codes and ciphers, etc. the whole plot is kicked off by one of the main characters finding a mysterious old journal in the woods, which detailed all kinds of weird and supernatural things, but then ended abruptly with the author saying they had to hide the journal because they were being watched. the central driving mystery of the show, therefore, was the question of who wrote the journal and what happened to them.

now, the thing about Gravity Falls is that, while it must be said that the writers weren’t always quite as sure of their plans as we tend to like to think they are, it is very much a fair play mystery, with legitimate clues to what was going on. but the writers were caught off guard by how quickly the show attracted a dedicated audience, including a lot of people outside the primary presumed demographic, who started solving the clues faster than expected. so some of the fans were able to correctly guess who the author was before it was revealed in the show, and the theory started spreading. this put the writers in something of a panic, because this was THE mystery that the whole story revolved around, with ¾ of the show building up to the dramatic reveal in the middle of season 2. they wanted it to be a mystery that could be figured out, sure, but they weren’t prepared for people to solve it so far in advance of when it was planned to be revealed, which would have really taken away from the big moment. they weren’t going to change the main story itself, but having been caught unaware by how much attention the fans were paying, they wanted to up the ante and make the mystery more complex to solve going forward–but first they needed to buy some time and throw the fandom off the scent for a little longer.

hence, Alex’s plan as described above. they whipped up a fake shot that appears to give away the identity of the author as being another character in the show, put it on a screen in the studio as if it was a real animation frame, took a picture of it, and ‘leaked’ it online. it was initially decided to be a hoax (albeit, I think, presumed to be a hoax originating from outside the production team), until Alex posted this tweet:

…before quickly deleting it (though not so quickly that it didn’t get seen, of course).

it worked well enough to distract most people for a while, and wasn’t revealed as a hoax until a year later, when an episode aired that definitively proved that the supposed screenshot could never have happened, at which point Alex owned up to the whole thing as seen in the tweet above. by then the episode with the real reveal wasn’t far off, and while people did still work it out ahead of time, it was more of an “OH MY GOD I KNEW IT!” moment than a “booooooring, we’ve known that for ages” moment, which of course was what the writers wanted all along.

personally I find this a fascinating approach to dealing with the problem of spoilers, because it doesn’t affect the story itself at all; if you watch Gravity Falls today–or if you were watching it when it aired without any significant contact with the fandom–you’d never know about it. ultimately, the problem the writers were facing wasn’t that some people might guess the answer to the mystery–they never wanted to make it completely impossible to predict–so much as it was that they hadn’t designed the story to stand up to so many people working on the puzzle together, which resulted in a sort of total output of puzzle-solving ability that far outstripped the capability of any one solo human being. so their solution is something that’s very much targeted toward delaying that group problem-solving, without actually affecting the experience of any individual person watching the show.

plus, it’s very in keeping with the overall tone of the show.

and now you know!

if your audience guesses the ending of your story

don’t:

do:

Normalize toys during sex. Roll that hot wheels over them titties. Skurt.🏎

Car dependency is so deeply engrained in the United States that we don’t dare to imagine rolling a z-scale Amtrak ALC-42 over them titties. Choo. 🚊

HOLD THE LINE!! KEEP PUSHING!!!!!

Sorry babes but as someone who lived lug around 500 cds they can die. To me lps are at least pretty and pretentious like a fine wine. Cds have no point

the point is cds are sexy as hell. sorry you dont know what sex is.

visual diagram btw ^

@danepopfrippery

The real point is that you OWN a CD. You do NOT own anything digital you purchase.

Google Play stole hundreds of dollars worth of music I paid them for from me by forcing me to upload it to YouTube Music (or lose it entirely) which is behind a subscription paywall, requiring me now to pay more money every month if I want to listen to MY music I PAID for without constant advertising.

You do not own anything digitally purchased. It can be taken back from you at any time and it is fully legal for big corporations to do so for some reason.

CDs can't be taken from you unless they come into your house or car in person to physically pry them out of your cold dead hands.

That's why the resurgence. As funny as that person's reply to you was, it's not in fact because they look sexy. It's because you actually own them.

Look- CDs are your friend. CD-ROMs and CD drives with the capacity to burn? Are your friends with benefits.

Can anyone teach me how to burn Digital only songs into CDs?

i can ask my dad!! i think you need a certain piece of hardware, but i dont think its difficult!

not rn tho hes asleep

I would love that thank you!!

here you go!!

My contribution to the discussion

My burner in my old desktop works like this:

Empty cd in the slot

Open cd on desktop

Drag music files in

Done

I spent so many hours burning CDs in high school. AND I STILL HAVE THEM. IN A CD FOLDER IN MY CAR. Because sometimes I drive through the mountains and lose cell reception and can no longer stream Spotify over bluetooth.

CDs are useful, my lambs.

Also this whole thread has made me feel Very Over 30.

And for reference, since they took the disc drives out of computers for the same reason they fucked with headphone jacks, you can get a CD burner drive with a USB connection for like $30.

still so charmed by the way rose tyler is so unapologetically lower class without the narrative like. consistently telling you that. it’s all stuff you see between her flat and her bottle blonde hair with roots poking through and and her clumpy mascara and her clothes that don’t fit quite right and her passion for looking out for the underdog. it’s just so refreshing to have the protagonist of a show not be so squeaky clean and polished or a complete antihero but just some completely normal girl shaped by the way she grew up

Rose Tyler met aliens and immediately went “Hello, do you know what unions are? Do you want to learn?” and that’s so powerful of her.

Otters will forever be the most dramatic creatures on the planet🦦

All toddlers are the same fr,,, going from screaming and crying and grabbing their mama to « oh actually I love this. Leave me alone mother. »

“There are no female aliens in our game because we don’t know how to make a female version of this alien” You know that alien you just designed? That male alien? Give it a female voice actor and have characters refer to it as she. That’s it. That’s literally all you have to do 

Make her shorter if you must

Make her BIGGER if you aren’t a coward 

Take your male alien bodytype, make her like 4 feet taller, give her an extra set of arms and sharper teeth, and as muscular as shit.

Boom.

Death and The Hermit | Cody and Obi-Wan

listen I’m not a huge fan of clones having group chats (maybe they do, maybe they don’t. I do not care.) BUT I do wholeheartedly believe that said chats would be almost wholly made up of the saluting emoji (or Star Wars equivalent)

and chats would look something like this

CC-1281: Company meeting in the command tent in five.

CT-3033: 🫡

CT-1584: 🫡

CT-4343: 🫡

CT-6016: 🫡

CT-9199: 🫡

CT-4721: 🫡

CT-4725: 🫡

CT-0060: 🫡

CT-4679-31: 🫡

CT-1222: 🫡

CC-5014: 🫡

Ooorrr if you need sillier then like.

CC-3481: If you see Sergeant Gravel in the cafeteria, please kick his ass until he leaves for his post. And kick Corporal Howard until he heads to medical bay for his vaccinations. You can’t outrun them forever.

CT-5275: 🫡

CT-3277-25: 🫡

CT-3244: 🫡

12 other troopers are typing…

Rex probably has so many feelings about how he only got to know Hevy for a few hours. Yes, they lose shinies more often than they'd like, but shinies are usually around for at least a few days before they go into battle. Hevy only got a few hours and he wasn't even part of the 501st. He was just a shiny stationed on an outpost that got attacked. He was supposed to be there for a while before eventually getting shipped off to a battalion. He wasn't supposed to sacrifice himself for the sake of his brothers and Kamino's safety.

He hardly got to know Hevy but he knew of his heart, his conviction, his eagerness, his confidence. But not the little things. There wasn't time for the little things.

But he knows Hevy's batchmates. He knows Echo and Fives. He gets to find out more about Hevy through the stories the twins share and the emotions they have about everything that happened. Sometimes he'll wonder what it would be like if Hevy was there, too, a third to the Torrent ARCs. Sometimes he'll wonder what Domino would be like just slightly more intact. Sometimes he'll wonder if his relationship with Hevy would've been similar to the relationships he has with Fives and Echo.

But he'll never know. Because he only got to know Hevy for a few hours.

"oh boy I sure wish there were a fast, free and private alternative to google chrome"

the humble mozilla firefox:

"oh gee i sure wish i could easily download ublock, change my font, and go into a reader view that removes some paywalls!"

the humble mozilla firefox:

Ok, I've seen this sentiment before, but the amount of Kindle Unlimited ads I've been seeing is forcing me to repeat it-

Kindle Unlimited is offering two free months of unlimited ebooks. As a trial. Which will then become a paid subscription.

Your local library is offering unlimited ebooks all the time. Forever. No contracts, no predatory practices, no tracking of how long you spend on each particular page in the hopes that information about your habits can be sold for a profit.

Use your library. They want so badly to give you all of the things for free.

The Library Is a Magical Place and You Should Fucking Go There

The Library Is

a Magical Place and You

Should Fucking Go There

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

I’ve been getting ebooks from the library (I have three local library systems that I’m entitled to get a card with, and I use all three) for a few years now, and I’m reading more and more widely, and discovering authors I then want to buy new releases from, and who’ve influenced my writing. Library ebook programs are great.

Slime mold was grown on an agar gel plate shaped like America and food sources were placed where America’s large cities are. 

The result? A possible look at how to best build public transportation. 

I just really like the idea of slime mold on a map of the US. It’s beautiful.

I’m—

holy shit

I have a raging science ladyboner right now.

I’d love if we could do it on a state-by-state basis.

That same slime mold once affirmed that the Tokyo subway is pretty well-designed.  

Using slime molds as a calculator.

Using slime molds as a calculator.

Using slime molds as a calculator.

Natural computation: it’s a thing, and it’s awesome. What is the universe but a really, really complicated computer?

I love this.

Slime recommended national transit map

Lord, grant me the strength to throw away this box that i'll never use, the courage to throw away this box that i'll never use, and the wisdom to throw away this box that i'll never use

Rise up trans goth girl admirers