Back on here after god knows how many years because I think this is my last truly anonymous internet platform.
It's been an awful few months, and I think 2025 might be my worst year in recent history. I hate diaries because you're supposed to keep them private, but I really need literally anyone to witness my suffering. I can't tell anyone I know how bad I feel inside right now. I cry almost every day. I'm concerned I'll be alone forever. I'm scared for myself. I keep wondering when I'll actually make it after so much faking it.
I tried to have an iced coffee today. I'm not supposed to have caffeine, I think. It triggers my anxiety and ruins my sleep which is why I'm awake at 2:30 am to write this so I can send it into the void.
Something about tomorrow has to be different from today.
I love that I share my house with one of the most efficient apex predators millions of years of evolution could produce. I love that two of natureās most prolific machines met and were like āhmmm. We should lay around and do nothing togetherā. Now weāre both fat and happy and full of meat. The hedonism of it all
Humans keeping cats and dogs as family members is like three prodigy assassins being introduced in the back of a shady nightclub and 45 minutes later theyāre 6 crunchwrap supremes deep passing a blunt in the back of a shag carpeted Volkswagen microbus rating Oreo varietals by fuckability
tumblr users have the unique ability to string together sentences never before seen in all of human history and yet they conjure up such specific visceral imagery that you canāt help but be a little in awe. and i think thatās beautiful
My firmest TSC take will always be that Jace should have gone by Lightwood in the end. I get that him being a Herondale makes sense in the grand scheme of the TSC universe (him, Will, James, Kit, and Edmund are all birds of a feather), but his personal arc is far more dependent on the family who raised him. Learning about his biological parents is of course important to him, but calling himself a Herondale doesn't actually feel like a resolution to his identity crisis. TMI is all about rejecting the hatred handed down from previous generations, which is why neither Clary nor Jace identify as Morgensterns. While Stephen was nowhere near as bad as Valentine, he also did even less to shape Jace into his adult self. Robert and Maryse on the other hand actually raised him for half his life, and Alec Isabelle and Max grew up alongside him as his siblings. He's a Lightwood in every way that matters, I don't get why Jace (in-universe) would choose to identify himself as a Herondale when there's nothing tying him to that family but blood spilled before he was born.
Anyways, I'm a Jace Lightwood truther for life, thank you for coming to my tedtalk
āI think I want to be a Herondale,ā he said abruptly.
āSo be a Herondale.ā
āI donāt want to betray the Lightwoods,ā he said. āTheyāre my family. But I realized that if I donāt take the Herondale name, itāll end with me.ā
āItās not your responsibilityāā
āI know,ā he said. āIn the box, the one Amatis gave me, there was a letter from my father to me. He wrote it before I was born. I read it a few times. The first times I read it, I just hated him, even though he said he loved me. But there were a few sentences I couldnāt get rid of in my head. He said, āI want you to be a better man than I was. Let no one else tell you who you are or should be.āā He tipped his head back, as if he could read his future in the curl of the manorās eaves. āChanging your name, it doesnāt change your nature. Look at SebastianāJonathan. Calling himself Sebastian didnāt make any difference in the end. I wanted to spurn the Herondale name because I thought I hated my father, but I donāt hate him. He might have been weak and have made the wrrong decisions, but he knew it. Thereās no reason for me to hate him. And there have been generations of Herondales before himāitās a family thatās done a lot of goodāand to let their whole house fall just to get back at my father would be a waste.ā
āThatās the first time Iāve heard you call him your father and sound like that,ā Clary said. āUsually you only say it about Valentine.ā
I actually really love this conversation and the decision despite also being a Jace is a Lightwood truther till the end. Which is why I always call him Jace Lightwood Herondale and I imagine this is the name he goes by later on when he's more settled, not so close to this confusing period of change. There's also the fact that he'll lose the right to the name completely in less than a year after this and I think that influences his decision.
That conversation is definitely a good scene, I guess I just don't find Jace's reasoning there to be super convincing. I do enjoy Jace's relationship with the memory of Stephen, but the idea that there's any importance to keeping a name alive just isn't something that appeals to me (though I accept that it is important to Jace).
The rest of my explanation kinda turned into a rant about the whole demon blood thing, so I'm putting it under a read more in case anybody doesn't want to see that.
Jace talks in that passage about how a name doesn't change the truth of who you are, and I just really don't like that sentiment. He says that Sebastian changing his name didn't change who he was, and implies that he was born a Herondale and thus is inherently a Herondale forever. It just feels so contradictory to the main thesis of TMI; to claim that the name someone was given at birth is somehow bound to their immutable self. (As a sidenote, this is why I don't like Sebastian as a villain. I think it's uninteresting to say that "he was born evil because of demon blood and that can never change"). I think TMI would be more interesting if Sebastian was capable of change, and I think that the story falls flat if Jace isn't. The demon blood storyline felt like it was building to Jace realizing that his genetic composition doesn't make him inherently evil, but instead it ended with him being reassured that actually he's biologically good and it's somebody else who's biologically evil. (It's not "your blood doesn't define you," it's "don't worry, somebody else got the demon blood so he's the one being defined by it"). Rather than learning that his relationship to Valentine doesn't define him, he gets to learn that actually he has a different father and a different family to be genetically predefined by. I'm not saying that I want Jace to be related to Valentine (I'm a Clace shipper after all), but I wish that the demon blood hadn't turned Sebastian evil either, and that Jace and Clary would be forced to deal with the fact that it was just Valentine's shitty parenting that made him turn out that way. Jace is treating it as a fact here that people can't change, that he's a Herondale and denying that fact would do nothing good for anybody. I think that people can change, and that the names belonging to your ancestors mean nothing on their own. He may not hate Stephen, but I don't think that he's got any reason to take his name (and it's very noticeable that he doesn't even consider calling himself Montclaire, even though as far as I'm aware that family would also die with him).
That got more aggressive than I intended, and I hope you don't think any of it was directed at you. I do think that him going by Jace Lightwood Herondale would be a good compromise so that he could express multiple facets of his family history, I just got distracted by how much the demon blood storyline annoys me (I still love TMI to bits though). I also think you made a really good point about him losing the right to the name in a year, since time pressure could definitely freak a person out. In a way it's safer for him to go by Herondale, because it's something he could lose; while the Lightwood family will always be open to him.
ooo to add onto this, I feel like this whole situation become so so much more interesting & complex when you read it with the knowledge gained from the infernal devices. because by the time city of heavenly fire is published, it's very very clear that Jace is Tessa's descendant; the family tree literally spells it out for you. TID's main plot is all tied up in Tessa's weird ancestry, ultimately being revealed that she is the daughter of an unblessed Shadowhunter & the greatest of all Eidolon demon and by being her descendant, Jace is their descendant too. the mortal instruments works best when you're aware of the irony that Jace really did have demon blood all along, and that was intentional fairly early on (Tessa first appears in at the end City of Glass and is clearly there talking to Magnus bc one of her descendants just appeared out of thin air lol).
I definitely have my critiques with how Jonathan & his demon blood was handled at times but also CC does hint towards the flaws of how the characters view Jonathan & I know I forget that sometimes lol. like the second half of tmi, where we see the most of Jonathan, was directly juxtaposed with the infernal devices when it was being published. there's an obvious parallel between Tessa and Jonathan, as they're both the product of child experimentation combining angel and demon blood in order to create a new species of people, but Tessa very decidedly not evil because she wasn't raised by a egotistical manipulator who wanted her to be. multiple times are we showed both Jocelyn and Valentine having biases about Jonathan that aren't actually found on anything, although with Valentine these tend to come from extra content (theres a mini comic & Jonathan's "fun fact" in the flower book comes to mind too). I do wish there was a little more within the actual series tho tbh.
as for Jace reclaiming the name Herondale, I think it's just that. Valentine raised him to be anyone, and thus no one, a changeling (Tessa parallel??). his name wasn't given to him, but someone else, and he grew up living someone else life. as far as anyone was concerned, Valentine especially, there was no baby Herondale. To me, by choosing the name Herondale, Jace defies Valentine and all his plans by reaffirming he was someone before he tried to erase him. Valentine told him who he was, who he should be by constantly robbing Jace of what he had, and the very first thing he took was Stephen and Celine, and their parents (directly or indirectly). Jace can't hate them or love them, because he never knew them. and if the Herondales die without him, then it just another thing Valentine stole from him.
like idk to me, it's less about whether or not Jace had a relationship with Stephen (or any Herondale) that justifies him continuing on the family name, because he doesn't. but by being a Herondale, he survives Valentine and everything he did. everything Valentine did was meaningless in the end ā he didn't need to do it! circling back to Tessa, if Valentine wanted a shadowhunter with demon blood that badly, he had one standing right next to him willing to do whatever he wanted! nobody asked him to start sacrificing sons to the cause of creating a better world in his image.
(side note, I imagine the reason he doesn't consider the Montclaire name is because it's probably already been reclaimed by the Clave or has other members still continuing it. Herondale was still being used by Imogen up until her death in City of Ashes so it dying out is a very recent development)
it's 2am this might have stopped being coherent ages ago but like also idk if I read that as Jace saying people can't change tbh. to me he's saying that names in and of themselves don't really change anything, like Jonathan dying his hair black didn't change anything either. a name is just a name, and Herondale was supposed to be his. something could also be said on how it parallels Clary too because Jocelyn spent her own life pretending she was Clary Fray, a normal mundane girl, but she wasn't. Valentine would have wanted her to be Clary Morgenstern, but she wasn't that either.
I really like this addition. I feel like you captured the reason why itās so important that Jace does go by Herondale.
I feel like Jace choosing to go by Herondale is similar to Emma choosing to remain a Carstairs and Ari choosing a new name for herself at the end of Chain of Thorns. With all three of them itās a statement about how while the circumstances of their lives may have changed this is their way of honoring where they came from.
I feel like Ash is going to go through a similar arc in TWP and come to terms with his shadowhunter heritage and start going by Morgenstern which will juxtapose Kit learning to accept his Faerie heritage and the powers that come with it.
Idk exactly how to explain this but the softness of real wool and real linen is very different from the artificial softness of polyester āsherpaā, fuzzy faux-fur, spongey acrylic knits and people have gotten too used to the soft plastics and now associate wool with āitchyā and linen with rough and cotton with ātoo heavyā and then go and wear 100% polyester fleecy sweatshirts and say itās so warm and cozy but actually theyāre just staticky cooking in their sweat locked inside a plastic membrane and you are paying too much to be wearing filaments of petroleum products and the money isnāt going to the people sewing them either. Iām saying you all need to touch grass and the grass in this situation is good quality textiles made of natural fibres.
this is your periodic reminder that for all the artifacts and errors and "tells" one could possibly list, the only reliable way to actually determine if an image is ai generated is to investigate the source. it is becoming increasingly common for "fake classical paintings" to circulate around curative aesthetic blogs, and everyone should be using this as an opportunity to not only exercise their investigative skills but also appreciate art more in general. you're all checking out the artists you reblog, right? š«£
so what are some signs to look for? let's use this very good example.
what a lovely late-impressionist piece blended with evocative leyendecker-esque themes! why haven't you ever heard of this artist before? surely tumblr would be all over an artist like this. who is justin brown?
your two options from here are to do a search for the name, or a reverse image search. i prefer reverse image searching, particularly when it comes to a common name like "justin brown". so what does that net?
Immediately, without looking at any text, something is wrong: it barely exists. an actual historical piece would turn up numerous results from websites individually discussing the piece, but no such discussions are taking place. Looking at the text, though, does show the source-- and at least in this case, the creator was honest about their medium.
But let's also look at the "exact matches", in case a source doesn't make itself apparent in the initial sidebar results like this.
This section will often tell you post dates of images, and here it can be seen that the very first iteration of the image was posted 15 days ago. It did not exist online prior to that.
Seeing how long an unsourced image has been floating around is a skill applicable to more than just generative images! See a cool image of an artifact or other intriguing item with a vivid caption? Reverse search it! If all the results are paired with that caption and only go back a few months, you might just have viral facebook spam.
Sometimes generative creators are dishonest about their medium and do not tag it like in the example, so that's when establishing "jpeg provenance" becomes important. While it can be a little trickier to determine if someone is using generative images and not admitting to it if they aren't trying to pass it off as a classic, something to consider is the age of their account and the frequency with which they post. Here are some account red flags:
-Did they only start posting art after 2022, or if they did before, did their style/skill level WILDLY change? Not gradual improvement-- I'm talking amateur graphite portraits straight into complex digital renders. Everyone starts somewhere, newness is not a red flag alone; it's newness combined with existing in a vacuum away from any community.
-Do they post fully-finished paintings several times a week?
-Do many of these paintings seem iterative of a similar theme or subject matter ("three well-dressed young men face each other under shade and dappled sunlight")?
-Does their style change in inconsistent ways? An artist that can swap between painting like Drew Struzan and Hokusai should be pretty well known, right? Why is no one hyping this guy?!
-Do they have social media besides the source instagram? If so, what are they posting about? Are there any WIPs? Doodles? Interactions with other artists? Gallery dates? 3am self-doubt posts? Or is it all self-promo? Crypto? Seemingly nothing art-related at all for someone pushing out 3 weekly paintings?
Basically, if it's important to you to omit this stuff when you curate, please don't just smash reblog if the source doesn't seem to be the OP themselves. Seeking out sources was important even before this became an issue, now it is more than ever.
Hey so that was a great date, yeah, but I don't think it's going to work out. Nono you didn't do anything wrong, and I have indeed had a crush on you since we started high school, it's just... well, I didn't want to bring it up at the time but we kinda got sucked into a portal fantasy midway through. We saved the kingdom over and over, relying on our knowledge of and trust in each other every time, throwing ourselves into the firing line to protect each other and using each others' conviction as a rock. We got married and lived a happy life together until the portal sucked us back mid-battle and you gave up all your memories of our journey in order to save my life right when we ended up back in the coffee shop. Yeah that was when I got a bit weird and went to the bathroom.
Anyway I thought we could push on and make the date work but I have all of these memories of secrets that this you never chose to share, decisions that this you never made, and intimacies that this you never experienced. And it's kind of screwing with the vibe yeah. Also on the date it was really, blatantly clear that you're sixteen whereas I have memories of ruling a fantasy kingdom for thirty years so like... that's a problem all on its own. Anyway this you just feels more like a daughter to me. A daughter with the woman I gave my heart and soul to over and over and received like in return, only to lose her forever on the journey home. On the plus side I can definitely help you with your math homework now.
A group of rough looking boys walked past me today and all I heard of their conversation was āheās got that anxiety disorder bro so I went with him so heād be more comfortableā and it made me realise the world isnāt all that bad
The pet store I worked at had a pen with rabbits near the front door. On every side of the pen were huge signs saying āYou can pet me, but donāt pick me up!ā
One day two absolutely huge guys came in and one immediately reaches into the pen to grab a rabbit. Before i could say anything his friend grabbed his arm and asked him ādid you see the sign?ā
He said āyeah! it says that you can pick them up but donāt pet them!ā
Then he went quiet for a moment and softly said āI didnāt read it right did I?ā
And his friend just puts his arm on his shoulder and said āits ok, i know youāve got that thing where words get mixed up. Let just pet these cute lil shitsā
And I still havenāt gotten over that interaction.
I was walking my dog through Boston bc he likes the likes car rides. Heās a little thing tbh we call him short and long.
So this huge scary man with a full beard approaches me like āhey can my buddy and I pet your dog? He gets nervous around dogs but yourās is so small I think itās a good place to start.ā
Ofc I was like āyes heās very friendly!ā So this guy brings his equally big friend over and they sit on the floor while this man looks terrified of my tiny dog so big man number one asks ācan I pick him up?ā And i say yes so he picks him up and puts him on man number twoās lap and man number two is abt to freak out and his friend straight up just goes āhey man, itās okay just relax Iād never let anything hurt you. Heās a good boy.ā Iāll never forget it ever bc I know that man looked at me (5'3 , glasses, probably wearing a sweater vest) and my dog (kinda goofy looking little thing) and was like āah yes the two least intimidating living things Iāve seen in Boston all day heāll feel relaxed around themā and went out of his way to help his friend. It makes me so happy
My husband had this Dungeons and Dragons group ages ago, and one of the guys was TERRIFIED of cats.Ā The moment he sees one he freezes up and can barely breathe.Ā Said guy is almost seven feet tall and solid wall of muscle.Ā Whenever he came over Iād put the cats in the bedroom and chill out with a book because my cats donāt like being shut away without one of us.Ā
One of my cats was pawing at the door and meowing loudly, an indication she REALLY needs to use the litter box.Ā I let her out and decide, hey, Iām hungry, and decide to the kitchen.Ā I forgot to shut the bedroom door.Ā
Next thing I hear is the group going completely silent.Ā My husband very calmly asks me to come over and help him gather our two cats up.Ā I go over to where the group is and my black cat, Cacoa, is rubbing up against the guyās leg, purring, and doing her ālet me on your lapā meow.Ā The other cat, Jasper, is sitting at the window, chilling out.Ā I go over and pick up Cacoa and tell the big dude sheās harmless, loves laps, and would be thrilled if he pet her.Ā Very slowly he touches my catās face, and she leans right into his hand.Ā He then pets her back and sighs because sheās really soft and purring like mad.Ā After a few minutes he asks how to pick her up and if itās okay if she sits on his lap.
He spent the next six hours spoiling my cat.Ā The next week he showed up with cat treats and toys because he fell in love with the cats.Ā He told me he was doing some research on house cats, and even talked to a vet about them.Ā A couple months later he adopted two cats and was as thrilled and excited as a new parent.Ā
I used to work at this stable for icelandic horses and every now and then this man would turn up by the field to just watch the horses. One time I walked by him as I was going to get the horses inside, and he went āI always wanted to learn how to ride but Iām afraid of horses because theyāre so huge. If I could ride ponies like this, maybe Iād dare but now Iām too big and heavy for them.ā You should have seen his face when I told them that actually theyāre not ponies, just small horses and they could totally carry him. His face just lit up. Next thing Iām helping him to get on back. Today he knows how to ride.
A few years ago my sister and I were in Daytona Beach, and we saw this huge, burly biker. Looked like the stereotypical biker: big black beard, the goggles, leather, and a bandana. He also had a baby carrier, and in that baby carrier was a tiny little orange Pomeranian. We complimented his dog and he said, in one of the deepest voices Iāve ever heard, āthanks, his nameās Little Bear!ā And he told us about how heād take Little Bear out on his motorcycle everyday and how much the dog loved it.
my friends held an intervention for me to "stop asking intimidately specific questions". i tried to explain that i am just a good listener but there is apparently "a line between follow-up questions during small talk and interrogation tactics that gets crossed sometimes". turns out my curious nature is "scaring the hoes"
when i asked for examples i was told that "do you think your tendency to show appreciation through restoration is part of a greater life philosophy or is that coincidental?" and "is your communication with allied forces satellite or radar based and is it vurnerable to cyber attacks?" are apparently "inappropriate questions to ask someone you just met at a club". but i disagree. as if you wouldn't be a little bit curious about the answer? yeah that's what i thought
[ID: question by anonymous: did they answer the question though ///end ID]
the navy officer i asked about cyber attacks did answer my question very thoroughly. he also answered other questions such as "when refueling on sea, which boat is the primary course holder?" and "would switching to another government branch affect your retirement benefits?" and generally provided a lot of information over the course of a fascinating hour that as a former government employee myself i am pretty sure he should not have told me. but i also think he would have told me his social security number if i asked nicely (i didn't, I was busy learning about the tactical advantages of speedboats).
the guy obsessed with boat refurbishment that i asked about his tendency towards preservation gave me a really haunted look, said "holy fuck" and then after a moment of consideration "i think i am too drunk. i'm going home" and proceeded to leave. in my defense, it was well and truly meant as genuine curiosity and not as the attempt at psychological warfare it turned out to be. he unfortunately did not answer my question.
...he was also the catalyst for the intervention i received.
If you had an identical twin that you get along with, you could probably have a lot of fun by getting to know other sets of identical twins and then pulling pranks with them.
Like seeing two people who look exactly the same close proximity to each other? Yeah that's totally twins. But imagine being in an art gallery where there's a group of five people on the 1st floor, and you go up the stairs and ???? the exact same group of five people is also there?? And you didn't see them pass you at the stairs?
THEY DO!!! IāVE SEEN IT!!! Those motherfuckers run across those trees head down with no spacial awareness and get so startled and bewildered when they bump into eachother. Itās hilarious
books have been the door to my adventures @astra-ad-mare - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
