kreitler
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Latest Posts by kreitler
the most insane thing about moby dick is that i have never, ever felt more of a personal connection with a narrator - in the way that i feel like ishmael really is telling me the story. that i'm some stranger that happened to sit beside him, maybe ask his name, and suddenly he's taken my hand and telling me his story. except he suddenly disappears from his story, and it barely seems about him anymore. it's about the crew, it's about queequeg, it's about the young boy pip, it's about starbuck and the family he'll never see again, it's about ahab, it's about the ship, it's about the brutality of the whaling industry, it's about the beauty of these men who take it on, and the beauty of the creatures they hunt, and it's about god and how small and insignificant we are. and suddenly ishmael allows himself back into the story but it doesn't change anything. everything and everyone is dead and gone. 'and i only am escaped alone to tell thee.' the drama's done and the sea rolls on just as it did 5,000 years ago. the story is all ishmael has left of them. it's all he can give you. 'do you understand?' ishmael is asking you. 'can you bear the weight of their story? when remembering is all we can do to give any of this meaning? can you give any of this meaning?' and it's too late for you. you carry the story now, too. now you have to remember. grieve and remember and give it meaning.
Tell us more about Moby Dick!! :D
Ishmael is a fascinating little specimen let me tell you. He has a reputation for being a “boring narrator” but that’s complete bullshit. Right out the gate he’s like “hello this is my (fake) name, I’m poor, I’m depressed, but luckily when I can tell I’m about to kill myself I hop my ass on a boat because the water can cure whatever’s wrong with you, also we are all being controlled by the puppet strings of the divine and free will is an illusion. It is now Page Three.”
The entire first part of the book is his story of meeting, falling in love with, and marrying a hot tattooed Polynesian man in what may be the first recorded case of the “there was only one bed” trope and it only gets wilder from there. This really caught be off guard tbh, I had no idea that there was so much gay stuff in this book.
I honestly cannot even pick my favorite Ishmael moment. Could it be him being adamantly on the wrong side of the “are whales fish or mammals” debate? That he suggests narwhal’s horns would be good for turning the pages of small books? When he hides behind the mast and eats some spermaceti because he just has to know what it tastes like? When he tattooed himself with measurements of a beached whale but rounded all the numbers because he also needed room for the poem he was writing on his arm? The gay sperm squeezing chapter? When he made his drunk listeners fetch him a priest and a Bible so he could swear he was telling the truth? And then lied????
Ishmael’s musings range from beautiful, lyrical prose that makes you stop and reread the section because damn, and chapters about How Rope Works and encyclopedic writing about the whaling industry. There are lofty theological debates and accusations about the reader being a fish. You spend much of this book wildly seasick because Ishmael’s voice is manic, hilarious, and disorienting. Once you’ve finished this story, you, too, will feel like you’ve spent three years aboard a whaling ship.
Although the unhinged tangents are often amusing, many people complain because they probably account for 90% of the book with only the remaining 10% devoted to the plot. Surely if we just got rid of Ishmael’s Nonsense it would be better, correct? No. This is Ishmael’s memoir. He knows how it ends. These plot-delaying anecdotes are purposeful; he does not want to reach the end because it is The End. The death of his friends and his husband. The inevitable, unforgiving blade of fate that slices the lives of of the Pequod’s crew short and leaves him alone and adrift at sea. Enjoy his journey, because it may seem long now but it ends all too soon.
Art for the Stormlight RPG World Guide for Kholinar, the Warcamps and Herdaz.
They kickstarter is going midblowingly well and by now not only the no° 1 RPG kickstarter of all times but maaaaybe it'll even get to be the most successful board games kickstarter... 👀 (this fandom really never ceases to amaze!) 55 Hours still to go. The kickstarter ends on Thursday night (Or Friday morning if you are in Europe). So if you are interested you can still join (and add late pledges later 😉) There is also this lovely chat I had with Argent not too long ago, if you want to listen to us (well mostly me) enthusiastically rant about world building and making art for the Cosmere RPG for way too long. 😅 (But you can see some of the progress that went into some of these pieces here.)
stickers for cosplay carnival 2024. see you all lol
"Messmer is Miquella" this "Messmer is Melina" that, we all know who Messmer *really* is
you know when you and that e-girl you fancied actually make it and hook up but you live in different cities and shit. yeah that was chill and dating some sort of girl creature is nice but you know when you’ve endured weeks of “would you love me if i was a lamp🥺🥺” and “please mod my stream please mod my stream please mod my stream” and “spit in my mouth” messages and you go to her place for date weekend and the smell just hits you like a wall when you open the door. homegirl got that reek. that no shower november, that cheap vodka and mcdonalds sweat vibe. That thank god you can’t smell me thru twitch kinda beat and you find her huddled in her cave watching whetever chinese cartoon is on the meme this week and before she gets at you with that “daddy i’m not dirty i’m just based and lainpilled” you drag her scrawny lil ass to the shower. she’s passed grimes and moved onto mud and baby you’re a gas station powerwasher. There’s no use resisting, you’re filled with the concerned rage of a diappointed parent. You ain’t daddy, you’re Father dearest. you hose her down properly but there is challenge waiting. the layers of filth, makeup and grease has formed a waterproof cocoon. girl putting the crusty in crustecean and you need a hammer and a chisel to break open the shell to get at the juicy pale white girlmeat inside. She makes a fuss like an angry cat and threaten to refuse wearing the asuka costume for you ever again, but she eventually drops the hissing and succumbs to the soap and water. Colours you ain’t ever seen before swirls around the drain hole and you just know you have to bleach the shit out of that later. Your creature is reborn as she emerges from the dirt and you remember why you love her. She’s beautiful. Cracked open and freed you dry her off with a towel and kiss her forehead. You cook her dinner after airing out her place and she nearly pukes before once again adjusting to solids. You two talk about how you feel as the evening drags on into the long night. Two humans connecting, breaking bread and caring for eachother. Love wins
Rykard social media feed:
“Only by embracing the strength of the Great Serpent may we throw off the shackles of the gods. Click HERE to donate to the Church of Eiglay, or sign up to give yourself up as a sacrifice!”
“Introducing the ABDUCTOR VIRGIN: a new, never-before-seen, cutting-edge innovation in weapons of war, designed specifically for the Volcano Manor’s noble struggle against the armies of the Erdtree.” [most horrifying image you’ve ever seen]
[pic of the minor erdtree on fire]
[art commission of the erdtree burning]
“Through strength, unity, and taking by force, we shall claim our freedom from the gods’ tyranny once and for all. If we must descend into blasphemy and sin to end their reign of terror, then so be it.”
[thirst trap]
[quote retweet of Elden Lord Radagon Official’s post] you should kill yourself… NOW
[retweet of General Radahn celebrating Leonard’s birthday]
girls love her for her poor posture and pathetic demeanor
made another one
Did I Deserve to Exist? No, and so on.
one of my favorite parts of moby dick is when ishmael wants/needs to tell us something but he desperately doesn't want to have to talk about it, he just buries it in a bunch of irrelevant information.
at the very beginning, he goes to church. a place filled with "silent grief... insular and incommunicable." and he sees these marble tablets on either side of the pulpit and says 'I don't really remember them all that well' (which is likely a lie. at the least it's extremely out of character for a man who directly quotes the internal monologues of other men) and proceeds to give three paraphrased examples. the first tablet is for a teenager, lost overboard off patagonia. the tablet was paid for by his sister. the second is for 6 men, taken by a whale they were hunting in the pacific. the tablet was paid for "by their surviving shipmates." the third is for a captain, killed on his own boat by a sperm whale off japan. the tablet was paid for by his widow. all seemingly normal.
except they're not. the first one is a red herring, seemingly irrelevant to our story. but the second? a memorial for a crew lost to a whale, left by their surviving shipmates? that's exactly what we're reading. the surviving shipmate is ishmael. he's all that remains. and then he pivots, drawing our attention to the much clearer parallel- the captain who loses his life on his own boat to a sperm whale. and we all immediately go "oh I know who that is! ahab!!" and ishmael succeeds. he needs us to see the sailors remembered by their surviving crew, but even more he needs to not address it. he needs us to not ask him about it. he wants this story to be told but he doesn't want to be the one telling it. he wants to pretend to be someone else, to be someone other than the one who survived. and for 135 chapters, he gets to be.
hiiii mdms (moby dick mutuals) do you guys know about power moby dick (funny name). it’s an online annotation of moby dick that provides explanations for allusions and definitions for outdated terms/whaling jargon. it is so fun i am clicking around and exploring and learning a lot of new old-timey maritime words <3
ok one more deleted shitpost lol new stuff is in the pipeline
so i finally decided to “tell” my dad about Project Moon. And by “tell” I mean “Limbus Company. Library of Ruina. They are definitely games I like” and nothing else.
4 days later he just texts me this
how am i
supposed to respond to this
In light of recent events, let’s not forget that H. Bomberguy is responsible for driving a formerly-beloved transphobic TV writer into a downward spiral that cost him his career and his family… all by playing Donkey Kong.
Hell’s Chicken Sinner Sprites
MORE TRANSPARENT WONDERLABBERS
canto 4 prediction
comic for an ask project
some thoughts about Sinclair's past between the Christmas an lcb events... i saw no one who'd talk about that it's insane!!! so i'll be the one who'll do it (in comfortable for me art form)
the opening for Starfield is literally what happens to Emmet in the lego movie
after 1000 years, the complete mouthless catt compilation
MORE TRANSPARENT WONDERLABBERS
I wake up at 5am to go to work and as I walk out the door I hear something.
“Tarnished, a word. Before thou sees fit to return from thy daily toils, I would ask of thee, a boon. Bring to me a bounty of crispy cheese snacks, and I shall reward thee handsomely. Seek Joe the Trader in his abode, he may provide what I seek, for a price…”
I gotta piss hard. See you in a sec
CHAINSAW MUPPETS: What are "Muppets?"
a post dedicated to me laying in bed last night lining out the rules for this stupid (said lovingly) AU
CHAINSAW MAN PARTS 1 AND 2 SPOILER WARNING!
(Credit to @wyvernslovecake for the silly drawing ideas(the white text))
Once again our paths converge. Welcome to this humble emporium of wares, named after one such commander of runes, dubbed the "dollar general." I stand as thy guide amidst these mundane treasures. I ask thee, what purpose bringeth thee to this realm of commerce today? And should thou be in need of aid, callest upon me with thine inquiries.
Apparently spez has said that the blackout is 'noise' and 'will pass'. Two days was never enough. I'm not using Reddit until pigboy backs off. This blackout needs to be indefinite.
And when you leave for good, make sure to delete your valuable content. Shitheel isnt making a cent of my posts.
The content of spez's internal memo:
Hi Snoos,
Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.
We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.
There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.
While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.
I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.
Again, we’ll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.
The monetization creep has been evident for a while. Reddit has added a subscription ”Reddit premium”; offered “community rewards” as a paid super-vote ; embraced an NFT marketplace; changed the site's design for one with more recommended content; and started nudging users toward the official mobile app. The site has also been adding more restrictions to uploading and viewing “not safe for work” (NSFW) content. All this, while community requests for improvements to moderation tools and accessibility features have gone unaddressed on mobile, driving many users to third-party applications. Perhaps the worst development was announced on April 18th, when Reddit announced changes to its Data API would be starting on July 1st, including new “premium access” pricing for users of the API. While this wouldn’t affect projects on the free tier, such as moderator bots or tools used by researchers, the new pricing seems to be an existential threat to third-party applications for the site. It also bears a striking resemblance to a similar bad decision Twitter made this year under Elon Musk.
[...]
Details about Reddit’s API-specific costs were not shared, but it is worth noting that an API request is commonly no more burdensome to a server than an HTML request, i.e. visiting or scraping a web page. Having an API just makes it easier for developers to maintain their automated requests. It is true that most third-party apps tend to not show Reddit’s advertisements, and AI developers may make heavy use of the API for training data, but these applications could still (with more effort) access the same information over HTML. The heart of this fight is for what Reddit’s CEO calls their “valuable corpus of data,” i.e. the user-made content on the company’s servers, and for who gets live off this digital commons. While Reddit provides essential infrastructural support, these community developers and moderators make the site worth visiting, and any worthwhile content is the fruit of their volunteer labor. It’s this labor and worker solidarity which gives users unique leverage over the platform, in contrast to past backlash to other platforms.
You are the villain’s right hand man and you are the true power behind their criminal empire. The villain would never have achieved their status as a super villain without you, so when the hero finally arrested the villain, nothing actually changed.