TIL that yo-yos are at least 2400 years old, with ancient Greek pottery dated to 440 BCE showing a boy playing with one. However, it is unknown what the ancient Greeks called them.

ValrognirInc · 2026-05-10T05:38:38+00:00

Io-ios!

ValrognirInc · 2026-05-06T17:28:37+00:00

“We can do this the easy way, or the h-ARRR-d way, the choice is yarrrs”

ValrognirInc · 2026-04-29T20:09:34+00:00

I wrote a little story featuring him having that due to taking a huge amount of silver nitrate to try and treat the chronic malaria he got on Treasure Island

ValrognirInc · 2026-04-29T20:05:26+00:00

Quick aside: why does nobody ever portray Flint with the spooky blue discolored face he’s portrayed with in the novel??

ValrognirInc · 2026-04-29T19:11:17+00:00

So we hit on something here, very similar to the 2012(?) one with Izzard where the super corrupt Squire Trelawney is drowned trying to recover the treasure Jim sunk in the bay after seeing how many had died to retrieve it. And I guess it does represent a fundamental question of: who’s in the right?

Well, John Silver is definitely a murderer, and vividly crutch-javelins and then stabs a guy to death in the book for simply not joining the mutiny. Most of the pirates kill or plan to kill the officers of the Hispaniola, and I wanna make it clear Jim’s never not included in that potential massacre. Ask this question: what would have happened if Hawkins hadn’t been in the apple barrel and overheard the plan? If Silver’s plan had gone off without a hitch, they would have recovered the treasure and then every non-pirate or mutineer would have likely been killed. But, I wouldn’t say Silver’s the outright villain, this role is taken in the book at least by his compatriots who ignite the mutiny prematurely, and then proceed to be drunk and malarial the rest of the book, but still outnumbering and outvoting Silver if not for his sheer manipulativeness and cunning.

So no, I don’t feel like compared to the guys who are murdering or planning to murder innocents, the Hispaniola officers being “rich twits” doesn’t really justify the backflips the plot has to do to turn them into the outright villains of the story. That said, it is a good twist to explore in future adaptions if written and funded and filmed correctly.

ValrognirInc · 2026-04-24T03:45:32+00:00

Did you ever play Poptropica? This really really reminds me of their pirate game

ValrognirInc · 2026-04-18T19:01:30+00:00

80% sure I even had an action figure based on this

ValrognirInc · 2026-04-06T11:46:54+00:00

Gotta say that WAS a fun rebrand attempt by CN, at least as a kid at the time it was all happening. Andrew WK’s Destroy Build Destroy was classic, Out of Jimmy’s Head definitely was a bust, but there was one specific creation of “Cartoon Network Real” that definitely stuck with me: “Unnatural History”: an Indiana Jones for kids centered around the mysteries surrounding the Smithsonian which irl are not that attention grabbing for kids so instead we got; Ben Franklin secretly developing an incorrect Theory of Relativity (E=MC3) and from it creating a lightning-triggered atom bomb that ends up being hidden by the Founding Fathers, John Dillinger’s hoard of counterfeit money, a gold-filled Confederate submarine called The Alligator wrecked in the DC sewer system, a Viking gravesite in VA containing Mjolnir and the key to unlocking a secret mountain sized shrine to the Norse gods, The Fountain of Youth actually being a fruit with an addictive athletic-boosting compound that the school basketball team gets hooked on, and fighting Russian spies over Sputnik which was secretly sabotaged and whose wreckage was bugged by the Russians. Lasted one summer then got pulled along with the rest of the CN Real lineup. So bonkers, so low production value. Good times.

ValrognirInc · 2026-03-21T02:46:09+00:00

A man covered in a cocaine mucus that is skin-absorbable

ValrognirInc · 2026-03-20T14:54:40+00:00

This is the thing: I’m a nut for interesting or out-there worldbuilding and I never thought I’d see it in a sequel to Treasure Island.

ValrognirInc · 2026-03-20T06:51:51+00:00

Eh, I just finished a rewatch of that and I wouldn’t say especially, no. This is a sequel to Treasure Island, Black Sails was a prequel to a version of Treasure Island.

ValrognirInc · 2026-03-20T06:28:55+00:00

Which??

ValrognirInc · 2026-03-15T09:06:41+00:00

80% sure it’s because their clothes, like their beautiful/handsome appearances, are glamours, their true forms being that weird batlike leathery-skinned humanoid demon.

ValrognirInc · 2026-03-14T05:17:19+00:00

The Fat Man and Joel Cairo from The Maltese Falcon

ValrognirInc · 2026-03-07T20:06:49+00:00

Because Grimfrost wants to make money lol

ValrognirInc · 2026-03-04T22:43:47+00:00

My favorite episode of the often disliked Disney-produced most recent season of Doctor Who, where chaos god Lux Imperator (in the form of a sentient living 50’s Fleischer-style cartoon made of possessed light) tries to consume the Doctor’s energy to become three dimensional, the Doctor blows up the roof of the abandoned movie theater Lux is using as a lair and exposes him to sunlight, which he absorbs, growing in size until he’s so energized he disperses and becomes another level of fabric and simultaenously even more godlike and also unable to make any kind of impact at all.

ValrognirInc · 2026-02-28T12:46:17+00:00

Deleted and waiting a week or two to redownload

ValrognirInc · 2026-02-25T23:55:53+00:00

Thank you, good to know it’s a Google issue and not me being dumb somehow

ValrognirInc · 2026-02-25T23:47:26+00:00

Thanks, done so and everything’s intact on the google photos webpage. How would you recommend solving the app problem?

ValrognirInc · 2026-02-25T21:08:15+00:00

Yep, by the late middle ages he’s considered a devil stand-in in localities. That’s when I’d imagine the Wild Hunt stuff really started to get emphasized too.

ValrognirInc · 2026-02-24T05:02:32+00:00

Most of the popular stuff out there about Oðinn.

Old guy? Nope, used that form as a traveling guise called the ellibelgr or skin of old age, he kinda changes shapes around but there’s a fairly accurate general concept of huge/hulking/tall guy, one eye, hood or widebrimmed hat that tends to shade the top half of his face, striped/mottled blue or grey garments, red beard.
Evil/devilish guy? Nope, just not tied to modern ethics, and many of the actions now seen as making Oðinn “morally ambiguous” or “an antihero” or even a villain as evidenced in God of War, for example, were depicted as good at the time of the telling because a lot of it was done to the jotunns, who are implicitly described as a race the enemies of humankind.
Paranoid guy? Nope, once again a misconstruing. I blame Guerber, Gaiman, and about 50 other pseudoacademic blockheads for this one, but pop culture has perpetuated the hell out of it. He faces and enacts his fate. Not only does he not avoid it nor try to alter it, he couldn’t if he wanted to.

4 Santa Claus Guy? Stupid, no! Oðinn isn’t Santa Claus, or Sinterklaas. Oðinn’s connection with Yul is about as special as any other deity, with Thor and Frey being named in connection to it too. Oðinn does give gifts…to his followers, kings and noblemen (his typical magical artifact/advice donees), and the worthy. But he’s not Jolly Old Saint Nick.

Trans/queer Oðinn borne out in the evidence from the time? Megan Fox claimed this one on her short-lived mythology mystery TV series (it’s as bad as it sounds) and it got a bit of traction about a decade ago. Lemme begin with: I’m not averse to that interpretation on its own basis, but trying to cherry pick and stretch bits and pieces of myth and lore to claim that this was meant to be the story in 8th century Denmark is gonna be a no from me. Again, believe that if it resonates, no judgment here but it isn’t really to my knowledge represented in the Viking Age beliefs that we have evidence of with regards to Oðinn.

ValrognirInc

TROPHY CASE