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What even is this??? Why are there so many shapes? Why is there a fake mining tunnel with cars about to drop off a bridge like in a bad western?

There is just. So much going on here. And I love all of it. Supposedly that garage fits 11 cars and comes with a lift and a painting setup.

IMAGINE the DND games you could have right here.

Look at this fucking castle shit. Apparently there’s a huge dumbwaiter to bring up your firewood. And does that support pole have a tiny rock climbing wall???

OH MY GOD IT DOES. And there’s a piano with…rails? IDK.

I have 10% of an idea what’s happening here but is that…bench? covered in a string of heads??? With some kind of…prayer kneeling thingy at the end there? What is happening. What kind of weird religious bastard built this place?

I have so many questions about this random mining tunnel thing. So fucking many.

it is totally fine to ask buckaroo. i think part of issue is that i am a naturally funny person even when i dont try to be. some of this trot is accidental, and some of it is on purpose. this is pretty common with autistic people i think, because a very effective form of comedy is the 'fish out of water' trot: one person contrasting with the world around them

so if i just honestly talk about the way i see things, as a neurodivergent person, there is going to be comedy. i recognize that. i use it as an artistic tool sometimes. i can learn into it or pull back from it

but all of that said, it is not the purpose of my art. when i write a tingler i never think: this is for someone to laugh at. i simply recognize that they probably will, and i am more than happy to give them that

personally, i dont even really like comedy, it is not at all my preferred genre. just not for me.

every once in a while someone online will post a sort of hot take thats like: 'i just dont think chuck tingles books are funny. why is he still making the same joke?'

and i always kind of get a kick out of that because i think

one: a dont think my books are funny either

two: because im not making a joke

so i guess me and the haters have a lot in common.

anyway, the art that i make is not JUST MINE. it is a collaboration between me AND you in a sort of endless loop. just because im the one who made it, that dosent mean i know what it is any better than someone else. in other words, if you laugh at it, you are not wrong. you are just as correct as i am when i dont laugh

so what is MY reaction to the tingleverse? what are the things i feel when i see my books? i think: that is fun. that is cute. that is clever. that is joyful. that is sweet. that is interesting. that is whimsical.

but personally, never 'that is funny.'

This coming out just days after it was revealed in the Jeffrey Epstein email dump that powerful people manipulated American and British news, political figures and forums to push transphobia to distract from people looking at their child abuse ring.

This includes chief anti-Corbyn-ite in Labour Peter Mandelson, directly feeding anti-trans stories to UK and US newspapers, actively bullshiting "biological studies" that trans people are idk ontologically evil (we have proof of Epstein pitching this exact thing), and creating /pol/ and then feeding anti-trans conspiracy theories for years until it all boiled over.

sure thing!

when you say "great lakes" and "cursed" in the same sentence, we usually think you're just talking about Lake Superior.

the great lakes are huge, sure! combined, they're roughly the size of fucking France.

but Superior is the granddaddy of them all.

the largest of the great lakes in terms of surface area, depth, and overall volume, Lake Superior contains 2,903 cubic miles of water, or 10% of the world's entire surface freshwater supply.

that's enough to cover the entire surface area of North AND South America in a solid foot of ice-cold murkish water, and probably also a bunch of confused sturgeons. yow!

but sturgeons aren't all this lake contains, by any means!

it's also full of corpses.

see, Lake Superior is just SO fucking hugebig and deep (about 1000 feet at its deepest point) that it doesn't warm up very quickly, even in the depths of summer! its northerly location and the amount of time it spends frozen over each year means that this lake reaches an average surface temperature of 46-56 degrees fahrenheit, even in the hottest months.

don't even think about the coldest months.

that's cold enough to kill you dead as a Sim with a deleted pool ladder if you fall in and can't get out! and it's ALSO cold enough that if you do die, your body will just sink into the icy depths, and stay there. you won't rot, and there isn't even anything alive down there that might consider your corpsicle a worthy feast because there's so little oxygen; you're basically just stuck down there in the world's largest meat freezer for the rest of eternity.

but you're in good company! since everyone who dies on the lake and sinks to the bottom is still there, there are an estimated 10,000 corpses lying around on the lakebed right now!

(there are a number of explorable shipwrecks in Superior that are known to still, uh, have crew on board, so to speak. divers are expected to leave them alone and treat their death sites respectfully.)

and that's not even counting the literal thousands of years humans were paddling around on the lakes in pre-colonial times either, so in all honesty that's probably lowballing it.

and that doesn't seem likely to change, anytime soon- as long as the lake exists, those corpses are just going to be stuck down there, waiting around for whatever comes next.

so uh anyway, if the concept of the eternal preservation of your mortal form bothers you, stay AWAY from that lake! and maybe just become a volcano researcher instead, I dunno.

At first glance, it sounds like it criminalizes this behavior:

But actually it exists specifically because of the unrotting dead in Lake Superior. See, the wreck of the Eddie Fitz was located, and dive teams took video of it in 1994. The Edmund Fitzgerald went down in 1975, with all hands, and some of them were visibly still at their posts in the documentary film made about the discovery of the site. If you do the math, that's not actually a super long time between the sinking and the discovery of it, and so there were still quite a few surviving relatives of the crew who were, understandably, upset about the airing of the footage. They also largely did not want their loved ones to be retrieved from the wreck, and so they remain. And to protect them, MCL 750.160a was passed, as well as some similar legislation in other regions that border Superior.

I'd like more...

Astrologers helped design the study

No one did better than random chance, even though they only included people in the study who are experienced with astrology and stated that they expect themselves to do better than random chance

They gave every astrologer a set of 50 things about a person and 5 birth charts to choose from. They weren’t even coming up with the chart themselves!

After taking the test, most thought they nailed it. Zero out of 152 did better than 5 out of 12. None nailed it

Astrologers who rated themselves highly experienced (“world class experts”) did the same or worse as those who said they have limited experience. Both performed the same as random chance

I often hear a discourse where Celine in K-pop Demon Hunters, Alma in Encanto and Ming in Turning Red are seen as vilains. They’re the ones who restricted the younger generation, hurt them, and are ultimately responsible for their pain, trauma and self-doubt. They’re framed as the real villains of the story. But I’d like to differ.

These are stories of intergenerational trauma. They are women who survived, repressed, and tried to protect their families the only way they knew how: through control, perfectionism, and emotional suppression.

And yet, when the next generation begins to reclaim joy, freedom, softness — they become the obstacle. Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re scarred. Their minds cling to survival strategies, unable to recognize that the environment has changed.

Alma is still stuck fleeing the colonizers.

Ming is still afraid of her true self.

Celine believes that fear and mistakes must be hidden.

It’s not about hating these characters. It’s about how unprocessed trauma twists love into control. How survival, unexamined, turns into rigidity. These women were never given space to process their own pain and they project it onto their daughters and granddaughters.

And here’s something we rarely say enough: intergenerational trauma can create toxic patterns but that doesn’t always mean there was abuse or conscious harm. Even when their love becomes suffocating or controlling, these women are not necessarily “abusive parents.” They are daughters of silence, fear, and sacrifice. And they were never taught another way. It’s important to make that distinction, especially in a world that often pushes a binary, punitive reading of family dynamics.

They’re the product of a generation that was told to endure. But endurance without healing becomes its own kind of violence.

What’s powerful in these stories is that they don’t end in vengeance. They end in confrontation and transformation. The confrontation is necessary: the younger generation refuses the silence. Refuses the shame. Refuses to carry a burden that wasn’t theirs to begin with.

The house is destroyed in Encanto.

Mei accepts her full self.

So does Rumi.

And in the best cases, this confrontation allows the elder to soften too. Alma opens up. Ming listens. And I’m hoping in the sequel, Celine will open too.

Maybe that’s also why these stories speak so deeply to POC audiences. These aren’t stories about cutting ties. They’re stories about how hard it is to transform them, to protect ancestral bonds while refusing to perpetuate inherited pain. In many racialized families, collectivity, loyalty, and intergenerational duty are sacred... even when they come at the cost of personal boundaries.

And sometimes, Western individualist frameworks read these tensions as dysfunction or villainy. But for us, they’re just the difficult truth of growing up and trying to do better.

These women aren’t villains. That would be too easy. They embody the fragile, necessary work of bringing change without breaking the thread. These stories are about refusing to inherit their pain without reflection. Because love, without accountability, is not enough.

These stories show us that each generation has something to learn from the next. And the new generation must also break free from the chains they inherited while preserving what is meaningfull.

But it’s not just their story.

One day, we’ll be the older generation.

And we’ll need to be humble enough to learn from the ones after us.

So don’t be a fool.

We may be Mei, Rumi, or Mirabel today.

But tomorrow, we could be Ming, Celine, or Alma.

And when that time comes, we’ll realize how hard it is to unlearn what once kept us safe.

So let’s have compassion for all these characters.

Because these stories show us not just how the cycle of generations works, but how it can make us better, stronger, and more connected... if we’re all willing to go through the change.

∘₊✧──────✧──────✧₊∘

If you’re curious, I’ve written more on K-pop Demon Hunters:

A post on the mental health themes woven through the songs — right here.

A breakdown of Celine-Rumi in comparaison to Gothel–Rapunzel dynamic — here.

An analysis about Rumi, Jinu, and the danger of sinking together — here.

I'm not saying white people don't have intergenerational trauma but that communities of color also have the intersectional trauma of trying to assimilate our own pain, fear and suffering into ways that still allow us to function in a world predominantly focused on the pain of white people.

Commander Data is living his whole life just casually stomping over the feelings Vulcans swear they don't have like 'It is my objective purely logical opinion as a machine incapable of emotion that logic isn't all that awesome, actually, I'd like to be able to laugh at a joke'

Vulcans left and right SO PISSED OFF but have to pretend they aren't because how the fuck can they argue with him

Vulcan: 'you waste a lot of time ingratiating yourself to your emotional colleagues, how is that logical?'

Data: 'They work more efficiently when their morale is high and my work proceeds more efficiently when they like me and want me to succeed'

Data: 'It's logical for me to know their customs and avoid offending them"

Data: 'Someone who refused to do that would be very illogical'

Data: "In fact-"

Seriously, people. Where do you think we even got the word "sponsor" from?

In its original usage it meant a guarantor: someone who promised you that you were going to get something out of what they were doing.

Throwing a ludus / game or a series of games was expensive. Local (or national) Roman politicians put down good money to pay for the rental of the event space (you think the Colosseum was cheap to rent? Think again. The Imperials who built it liked to make their money back...), the wages (and overtime!) of the hundreds of venue support staff, the fees required by the fighting talent and the schools that owned them (or their own management, if they were free), and so forth.

Whoever was footing the bill for a given Game (or sequence of Games) was formally known by the title sponsor, and got to parade around the arena at the beginning of the game to remind people in the stands just who was fulfilling their civic duty by throwing this entertainment for them. The message was, "I'm doing something for you. Next election, don't forget to do something for me!"

And it was always political. Never lose sight of that. (Especially when a local political party promises to build you a nice new stadium if you elect them. The more some things change, the more they stay the same...)

Ads were written on blank gable-ends often painted white for the purpose...

...and while the ones in that pic are political slogans, this one is an ad for the wines available at that shop...

...including prices ranging from two to four Asses.

The As was a Roman coin, so you lot at the back can stop giggling.

Other ads were outright endorsements (with appropriate payment, of course) and included stuff like "Felix the Thracian, five-time winner at the Saturnalia Games, says 'Tiburnian Olive Oil Keeps My Sword-Hand Swift!' "

Or "Diocles, Top Driver for the Green Team, uses Scaurus-brand garum at every meal!"

Ridley Scott was told about this during the making of "Gladiator", but ignored it as "unrealistic" - then went on to double the size of the Colosseum "for artistic reasons".

Considering how he's treated historical accuracy in later films, my response to his dismissal of graffiti and ads is this:

I made up Tiburnian olive oil, so it's (probably) fictional, but Scaurus-brand garum was real, and famous enough to appear by name in Pompeii mosaics.

Evidently the name carried weight, just like "Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce".

There are other Worcester sauces, but L & P is THE Worcester sauce - or so they would like you to think - and used to be advertised as "not genuine without this signature".

Whether this was suggesting that all non- L & P Worcester sauces were in some way fake, or because there was a rash of Worcester-style sauces packaged to resemble L & P as closely as possible, I don't know,

However, as regards overly similar packaging (deceptive rather than outright deceitful, relying on accident or inattention more than fakery) take a look at this row of Ancient to Modern L & P...

...compared to another sauce called Henderson's Relish, and note that one label, AFAIK for US sale, refers to it as Worcestershire Sauce.

It's from a different county - Yorkshire not Worcestershire - and is made to a recipe so different it can be marketed as vegan, which real Worcester isn't because of anchovies, so it most emphatically isn't any kind of Worcester sauce at all.

And yet there's that bottle shape, also the label design and colour, so I wonder if, way back when, it was someone's deliberate choice.

The other sauce from Yorkshire is "Yorkshire Relish", made both in the usual thin style and also a thick version like HP Sauce (aka Brown Sauce or Steak Sauce).

Although the label isn't orange, both versions have easy-identification bottle shapes (long-neck cylindrical for thin, short-neck square for thick) characteristic for their contents.

It was apparently like that 2000 years ago, because archaeological finds...

...suggest that the one-handled, high-necked "footed" amphora shown on those mosaics was THE standard shape for garum-jars, thus an instantly recognisable form of product packaging.

Zoom in on each photo, and you'll see writing on the jars. Whether either or both read "Scauri" I can't tell, but if they're from Pompeii I'd make a small wager (maybe even, ahem, bet my As) that Aulus Umbricis Scaurus did indeed put his name - "not genuine without this signature" - on any jars which left his factory.

This one is ours. The shape isn't exact (too short) but pretty familiar...

...but though @dduane and I have racked our brains for what was originally in it (not garum!) we've come up blank. Currently it's full of lemon-infused olive oil, but if we ever buy some modern garum, we'll have somewhere obvious to put it. :->

*****

That short-lived but excellent series "Rome" got it just right. This ad for free wine and cakes is both commercial and political, so covers all bases - and ends with a hint that he gets to read that bloody Guild of Millers bloody slogan Every Bloody Time... :->

But as a fight nerd, there’s one other thing I want to point out about this fight, and it goes back to @mikkeneko’s point about the knife:

This isn’t a magic fight.

Yes, they’re both super soldiers. Yes, WS has a vibranium arm. Yes, Steve has a vibranium shield. But there are no magic blasts going on here. There’s no wuxia and minimal wire-work (mostly protective for the actors).

WS shoots at Steve until he runs out of bullets because that’s the most efficient way to murder him. Steve either dodges or hides his whole body behind his shield because that’s the most efficient way to not get murdered. The shield gets thrown, caught, thrown back, wedged in a car. Then it’s a knife fight. Throughout, it’s really obvious that neither of them are fucking around. WS is trying to just straight-up kill Steve, Steve is trying to not die. No banter. No dick-measuring. No quips.

This fight is brutal, efficient, and not flashy. Steve’s knife defense is textbook, and aside from that cool little flip that was almost too fast to clock, WS’s attacks are textbook. He’s doing his best to control Steve’s defense and open a hole to wedge that knife in. Steve’s doing his best to control that knife hand and keep just enough space between them that he can close those holes before WS can get to them. It’s telling that he’s paying so much attention to the knife that when WS finally gets through his guard, it’s with his empty, vibranium hand. (Still no idea why he tosses him instead of crushing his windpipe though, that was 100% movie logic.)

When Steve does that flying knee at WS, that’s not about flashy martial arts moves, that’s about brutal efficiency. Your knees and elbows are the hardest points on your body. Steve can engage in fisticuffs with normal people; he can knock out hitler over 200 times. He could also break his knuckles on WS’s face before doing any appreciable damage, and we watch him figure that out. So it’s not kung fu, it’s muay thai. It’s krav maga. Those flips aren’t for show - that’s pure Jiujitsu, the ruthless throws that are supposed to segue into joint locks and dislocations. That is the way to take your opponent apart, literally. He was trying to rip WS’s non-vibranium arm out of its socket.

That pile-driver? That was meant to break WS’s neck. A normal person would die instantly if Captain America pulled that WWE shit on them. We are into the gritty shit now. We have two extremely strong, extremely skilled men who are just trying to kill each other because the only way to win this fight is to die last, and it shows.

They scramble for position through the fight. When one move fails, they don’t bother breaking apart before finding the next-most-efficient killing move and trying that. This is what two people who are actually trying to murder each other look like - most street scuffles stay on the ground once they get there and don’t involve this much skill, but we can excuse that because it’s Captain America and the Winter Fucking Soldier. I still recognize the blocking of this fight as a real fight, not a spar. The urgency, breathlessness, the pragmatism, the messy transitions between moves as you just keep trying to improvise faster than the other guy… that’s all correct.

There’s no magic. There are fists, feet, elbows. There’s a shield and there’s a knife - the first and oldest human-made tools of war. There are chokes. There are joint locks. Not a word spoken. And it helps that they are really there - landing on cars, landing on asphalt.