It’s usually done so humans are presented as “average”. In my conception, humans are the daredevils. The one thing a human loves more than watching another human do something horribly unsafe is doing something unsafe themselves.
It’s said that the stout and serious dwarves invented the first staircase, but it was a human who came up with the idea of surfing down the staircase on an oaken shield.
Elves have lived in the great Hometree overlooking the Mother River for untold ages. It was a human who first had the idea to jump out of the tree and into the river.
That’s the other thing - dwarves are stout and hardy, but like the stone they came from, once they break, they’re broken. Humans recover impossibly fast by the standards of other races. They’re also the first ones to get up after an explosion or cave-in, with a cheerful “I’m okay!” They can’t take as much as a dwarf, but nobody beats humans at getting back up again and again and again for more punishment.
The Hobbits appreciate Human vigor, their good cheer, and certainly their lusty appetite for food and drink, but the utter glee with which humans will attempt to harm themselves or their fellows in a misguided attempt at “fun” is horrifying. Their rituals and celebration - they let themselves be charged by bulls! - are seen as a testament to human ingenuity, creativity, and utter lack of good sense.
The humans who are most highly regarded by their peers are those who excel at SOMETHING. Dancing, throwing, singing, fighting - humans love watching other humans be excellent at things, even something otherwise pointless and wasteful, like throwing knitting needles into melons.
They are, to a fault, resilient. No Elves would DARE return to a failed settlement. The land is cursed and the dead walk there. Humans will rebuild the same castle over again with the same standing stones.
TL;DR - only humans would invent the X-Games.
Humans are Weird: Fantasy Edition
dwarf: my heart is strong as a mountain
elf: to hear the song of the trees you must cultivate stillness
hobbit: when you get right down to it, there’s no place like home
human: HOLD MY BEER
I actually love this conception of humans as a fantasy race. So much nicer than the boring ‘average’ shit writers come up with as the default.
Art forgery is the best crime tbh. It requires absolutely incredible artistic talent, technical skill, and attention to detail to make convincing fakes. Does anyone get hurt from it? No! The only people who suffer for it are the extremely wealthy who want the prestige of having original paintings in their own homes. It’s full of international intrigue and mystery. Perfect.
Also… art forgers like van Meegeren sometimes become a kind of folk hero. A swindler, sure, but a gentleman’s swindler.
I liked this guy’s story, Mark Landis, who conned several dozen museums into displaying his forgeries, but when the FBI came after him they couldn’t do anything because he had always given them away as donations. They said if they could have found that he’d ever taken anything in exchange they would have prosecuted him, but all he wanted was get to out of the house and meet people.
“The first painting Landis “donated” was a copy of a work by Maynard Dixon, an artist well-known for his paintings of cowboys and Indians. It started as impulse, Landis says, but then “everybody was just so nice and treated me with respect and deference and friendship, things I was very unused to — I mean, actually not used to at all. And I got addicted to it.””
And it looks like all his forgeries are done with cheap materials, like markers and Hobby Lobby frames.
Ok, but Wolfgang Beltracchi is probably one of the best Fraud Artists in the world.
His career brought him millions upon millions of dollars and lasted almost 40 years. He finally admitted to painting fraudulent art after the white paint he used came under scrutiny.
In The interview with Beltracchi, he said that none of his forgeries are copies, they’re all original works that the famous artists could have painted.
His wife was also in on the scam, she would dress up in old clothing and take pictures holding the paintings with old cameras to fake proof of the paintings’ ages.
At the end of the interview with Wolfgang Beltracchi he was asked if he felt he had done anything wrong, his answer was “ Yeah, I used the wrong kind of paint”
Just … the levels of con there, the fake photos and … wow. That’s incredible.
Heroes
Also fun fact we learned in class today: Michelangelo carved a sculpture of a Roman god, broke off the arm, and then buried it. The sculpture was dug up and was considered to be an authentic Roman artefact, until Michelangelo came along with the missing arm and called shenanigans on himself, just to prove he was as skilled a sculptor as the ancient Romans.
i love liminal spaces its like a location that’s dissociating and i feel like if i go there while also dissociating i’ll just ascend to the astral plane
HEY i did it i went to a scruby walmart at like 10pm while dissociating and i felt like i was a cryptid in like ghost walmart or something and it was the weirdest thing i’ve ever done
careless whisper was playing on a loop. there were 3 other people. none of the checkouts were open so you had to use self checkout. i didn’t see a single worker there. multiple lights were flickering.
Here’s the big question though: Are you the same person who went in?
i dont
i dont know
Well, there’s only one way to find out. Go back again, and see if you meet yourself in the bathroom mirror.
self care is fighting your good doppelganger in a walmart bathroom at midnight
the fact that tumblr is putting ads on people’s mobile blogs but they won’t pay bloggers says a lot…….they’re literally making money off people with high traffic blogs
You can have them taken off your blog by going into your blog settings and turning off the on blog advertising (via desktop or desktop view in your mobile browser!). I recommend everyone does it, tumblr doesn’t pay us so they shouldn’t make money off of us.
How to:
Settings>Blogs (choose blog that you want advertising removed from) >Advertising >On blog advertising
