you get used to it

HI!! I'm Noel (or Arbor, whatever) and sometimes I draw things and sometimes I talk about my dogs or fish and most of the time I am yelling with various stages of coherency about even more things. It is tons of fun. I keep most of my reblogs over onto a sideblog, but sometimes I just want to talk about things here. I try to be super mindful of my tags - if I ever post anything and I'm missing a tag that you want me to use, please don't hesitate to let me know!

[drawsomething]

you know when sometimes you see a nesting rabbit and they pause and its like you can see them realize they have a mouthful of grass and fur and it's like they're thinking "...what am I doing??" before they snap back to it?

[awkwardarbor]

for yonks after moving i put off getting a library card for libby because 1. I like physical books more than ebooks, and 2. the arm with the severed muscle is a weakling and holding my phone or e-reader up too long hurts but I also knew that driving 25 minutes to get to my small town library was going to be too much of a burden for me to do weekly. so i finally caved, got library card just for using libby

yall i love libraries so much. books i have been able to read since march: Life of Pi - Yann Martel The Berry Pickers - Amanda Peters Black Beauty - Anna Sewell The Bog Wife - Kay Chronister Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton Thin Places - Kay Chronister The Outsiders - S. E Hinton. We Are Okay - Nina Lacour The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M Auel The Drowning Kind - Jennifer McMahon This Day - Wendell Berry Birth of the Firebringer - Meredith Ann Pierce Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt The Long Walk - Steven king The Deep - Nick Cutter Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir Arthur - Mikael Lindnord The Martian - Andy Weir Exodus - Peter F Hamilton (I did choose to DNF this one about 34% of the way into the book, but with the caveat that I might give it a second try some day. I didn't dislike it, necessarily, it just wasnt the right book at the right time.) Two Old Women - Velma Wallis Artemis - Andy Weir We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson libraries are such a gift. I know why I kept putting it off and they were legitimate reasons but also. libraries. libraries my beloved

[beroebluejeans]

There is a quality of books (or movies or shows) that I can best describe as “stickiness,” which is separate from being good or even enjoyable: a sticky book is one I just keep thinking about. Sometimes it’s because a book is very good (e.g. The Locked Tomb), and sometimes it’s because a book is very bad (e.g. ACOTAR), but there are also very good and very bad books that are slippery, such that when I’m done reading them they slip from my thoughts like water from a hydrophobic surface.

[beroebluejeans]

Twilight is such a good example. First, when something is that popular, it’s automatically a bit sticky not only because of its ubiquity, but also because there is the question of why it’s so popular, especially if it’s not that good. Like what is this saying about the culture at that moment.

Furthermore, there are the layers of subtext, which I think are especially sticky when you cannot tell how much of it the author intended. In Twilight there is the surface-level weirdness e.g. about Edward comparing the sin of premarital sex to the sin of murder, and then you learn Stephanie Meyer is Mormon and you see that ideology, and then you get into the really weird stuff where you’re like, Stephanie I can’t tell if you thought this through girl and my goodness I hope you didn’t.

[carys-the-ninth]

Exactly. "Vampires can't be black because their venom destroys melanin." Stephanie, what do you mean

[hihuddy]

Artist: Tim Brierley

Posting this for my soul cat Kenzie (she passed a few years ago but I still think of her every single day) and for everyone else who has lost someone they love. ❤️

[memorydatas]

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

[memorydatas]

for context:

[dragonquestv]

[an-actual-lion-deactivated20200]

“Beep Beep Bitch, You’re Gay!”

[leolikesaccountability]

Updated the lesbian flag and added nonbinary, pan, ace, and aro for all your tacky LBGTQ+ barcode needs.

[non-binary-ary]

Hope yall  like my abomination

[thegrimmlovely]

That last one is fucking moving istg

[silverjirachi]

at last. the gaydar

[cargopantsman]

[anathemaegg]

[effeminate-wastrel-deactivated2]

The only pride flag I care about anymore

[awkwardarbor]

person with persistent lifelong cough stops drinking ice water and starts drinking hot water

or, to rephrase

person with A KNOWN COLD ALLERGY stops drinking ICE WATER and COINCIDENTALLY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THEIR ADULT LIFE DOES NOT HAVE A PERSISTENT COUGH

weird how that happens.

[hellenhighwater]

Does anyone else get a little excited when you're reading and come across a word you don't know and you get to look it up and add it to your vocabulary pile? weehoo! a little treat for me, a little exotic snack

[madeofklay]

What I learned not to do in art school

[athanza]

From Veronica Tucker via Pinterest

[translatingpostsinfrench]

pourquoi du pain est masculin mais la baguette est féminine....... la baguette est transgenre ?

je vais laisser la communauté parler:

la baguette, icône trans?

oui

non

Voting ended onOct 12, 2025

[translatingpostsinfrench]

eh bah

[translatingpostsinfrench]

10k notes pour un post francophone sur tumblr macron où est mon poste de ministre de la culture

[sunderwight]

Mulan AU where she does get caught by the other fresh recruits while she's bathing but Mushu helps her spin it like the lake is cursed by an evil lizard demon and will turn men into women if they stay in it for too long.

From there it's not actually difficult to get the other soldiers onboard with covering up the fact that poor Ping took one for the team and got afflicted by the vagina curse, especially since it would have been all of them if they hadn't gotten the warning ahead of time. So they agree to help him cover it up, because obviously the army's not going to understand.

Shang is... tentatively glad that the men are bonding and getting along, even if they continue to be deeply weird about it.

[great-art-and-a-purple-tongue]

Ling: Hey man, what's up— you've got boobs?!?!

Mulan: Uh, what boobs? Huh? Where did these come from?

Mushu: *facepalms and thinks quickly* (speaks from the shadows) I AM THE SPIRIT OF THE LAKE! BEWARE MY CURSED WATERS FOR THEY WILL TURN MEN INTO WOMEN!

Ling, Yao, and Chien Po: Oh no! The spirit of the cursed waters!

[scribeofchaos]

Chi-Fu: SHE'S A WOMAN LI SHANG!

Mulan: Look-

Ling, Yao, and Chien Po: WE CAN EXPLAIN!!

[One convoluted, chaotic explanation later]

Shang: ...is this why you've all been insisting we don't camp anywhere that doesn't have a lake.

Shang: and then none of you actually swim in it.

Shang: and you all keep jumping at shadows.

Shang: wait a second Ping did this happen before or after you became insanely good at fighting?

Shang: did you get better at fighting after you became a woman.

Shang: are women better at fighting than us.

Mulan: ....uh. well. maybe? no one's ever tried to find out.

Yao: [thinking very fast] y'know Captain it's just so hard to find recruits these days.

Chien Po: Real shortage of men.

Ling: Lots of women, though.

Mulan: [catching on] Without marriage prospects.

Shang: You're right, men. The spirits must have done this in order to show us that we should be recruiting women as fighters.

Mushu [from the shadows, seeing an opportunity to do the funniest thing]: EXACTLY, LI SHANG. I HAVE TRANSFORMED PING INTO A WOMAN BECAUSE YOU HAVE TOO LONG OVERLOOKED THE TRUE WAY TO WIN THE WAR.

Mulan [seeing an opportunity to get all the stories straight]: O Great Spirit, is it reversible?

Mushu: WHY WOULD YOU WISH TO REJECT MY GIFT? I HAVE SEEN YOUR HEART, CHILD, AND HAVE ALREADY ALTERED THE MEMORIES OF EVERYONE WHO KNEW YOU BEFORE YOU LEFT FOR THE ARMY. YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THEIR DAUGHTER.

Li Shang: Welp, the spirits have spoken. Ping - wait is your name still Ping if you're a woman now?

Mulan: Uh. Actually, I was thinking of renaming myself. How do you feel about Mulan?

BONUS:

Mulan [climbing out of the eleventh lake the men have arranged for her to swim in]: Yeah no, it didn't work. Still got boobs. [tries to appear dejected].

Chien Po: If it makes you feel better, they're very nice boobs.

Mulan: Thanks, Chien Po.

[somestorythoughts]

Mulan and Mushu, somehow opperating on the same wavelength: oh haven't you heard?

[awkwardarbor]

So mad and offended at a horror book being so spectacularly bad and pointless and feeling like it wasted every minute of my time that I spent with it that I was laughing at the end because what else can you do but laugh at the absurdity

[kingcatnine]

can you reblog and tell me which of your ocs has the stupidest name

[dragonomatopoeia]

some of the best characters are the ones where you know if they sat down and discussed ghosts the conversation would end with them attacking each other with furniture

[dragonomatopoeia]

like this

[awkwardarbor]

I am so outrageously defensive over the Dallas Wyland Whaling Wall. News articles talking about it (tl;dr Fifa painted over a mural thats 27?? years old without full permission and everyone is big mad about it. I am so big mad about it) that are ALSO like "this is outrageous and offensive" keep saying completely minor lines with the writer's opinion of the mural, and it isn't complimentary and I'm just like SHUT UP. IT IS ICONIC. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL. WHO ARE YOU TO SAY IT WAS NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS!!!

Apparently this mural was my son and I cannot stand to hear a single negative word about him. You learn new things about yourself every day

[lhoandbehold]

The full saga of Margie and the Nuns (so far). Realised I never compiled these in one place.! Also, bonus Margies!

[awkwardarbor]

I started reading Haunting of Hill House. I'm real early on - Eleanor has just arrived at the eponymous house. She's got her first look at it, and is like oh, ew. gross. icky. (I paraphrase, obviously,) shes never seen a house more awful and clearly evil and full of The Bad! But then shes like welp! Gotta go inside because if I leave the gatekeeper will laugh at me and thats so much worse than an evil house built with evil.

i am endeared, but eleanor, my love, i think perhaps we should adjust our priorities.