this email could have been a meeting

Caddis/Elle, 30+, not spoiler free! occasional NSFW. attempts to tag responsibly. pfp: octomaris on twt (ty!).

[contritecactite]

Hello! I'm elle (which caught on) or caddis or dran (which didn't, but I still Am). Any* pronouns for me are fine, and I'm happiest when they're switched up frequently! *(Like, seriously any. If there's something you want to try for yourself but are nervous about, or something that a friend is using that you need more practice with, feel free to test it on me first.)

I do a few main things here:

Blabber about myself and my thoughts, which you'll find tagged as #cactus chatter.

Post about fic I write, which you can find in #my fic.

Share posts I think are important, helpful, or thought-provoking, which are collected in #important shit.

Reblog things! Many of these are related to Ace Attorney and Good Omens, though you will also find various Star Treks, Final Fantasies, other jrpgs, and assorted silly text posts. I try to tag fandoms, but I often forget to tag characters. If there's anything you need me to tag, let me know <3

Ramble in the tags like it's going out of style (I am afraid that it may be, but I will persist). If ever I reblog something of yours with any variation of shouting, yelling, "!!!" "hey," or "oh," please rest assured that it's entirely positive. I don't hang around here to bash things.

Capitalize things for Dramatic Effect

I could put a fic list here, but they're all on AO3 (where I'm also contritecactite; same for twitter). It's primarily Ace Attorney and Good Omens over there, though I like to think there's a good variety of themes, characters, and fic lengths represented.

Anyhow—and none of this is said lightly—I love you, I'm proud of you for waking up today (even if you didn't actually sleep last night), I think you have inherent value that no one can take away, I think you should imbibe a hydrating beverage, and my asks and messages are always open for questions, infodumping, or writing prompts/requests.

[quoththemaiden]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Dedicated to my dear friend @contritecactite, for Yell “Fudge” at the Cobras in North America Day — something that does not happen in this fic, but which one must imagine does happen occasionally while on holiday.

“Fast-Breaking”

Words: 1,300 Rating: General Audiences Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley Setting: South Downs Cottage; NOT Good Omens Season 3 Compliant The world is safe. The universe is safe. There is no next “big one” to be preparing for. Eventually, however, one has to stop just recovering and resume living. In other words: Crowley and Aziraphale go on a dessert date.

[lakemojave]

Corporations precisely on june 1st:

[quoththemaiden]

Reconstructing S3

It seems likely to me that the 6-episode version of Good Omens season 3 always went roughly this way, and the script was cut down to 90 minutes instead of being rewritten into a clear, satisfying, 90-minute arc.

With that thought in mind, it makes me wonder what the missing pieces would have been, and how they would have built up to this ending feeling like a clear fit. I.e., how do we get from S1's Adam being convinced not to replace his friends' parents and S2's Sitis saving her children to S3's clean slate approach?

I think there are snippits within the remaining 90 minutes that hint at how the necessity for rewriting the universe could have been supported by what was in S3.

The decay of Whickber Street could have been a case study in it: Aziraphale left, and in the span of just a few years, it utterly collapsed. Why? Well, Aziraphale wasn't there supporting it. When he lived there, he wasn't just passively failing to collect rent; he was supernaturally molding the environment around him to provide sturdy buildings that don't require maintenance, protect it from gangsters and government inspectors, and everything else to ensure that he and his neighbors never encountered any serious problems.

Tadfield could have been another case study: We saw at the end of S1 that Adam kept his powers. The first newspaper headline in S2 says "Is Tadfield the Best Village in England?" Adam presumably kept using his powers to make it a wonderful place to live, with idyllic weather, no devastating highway construction or predatory corporations moving in, and neighbors who never moved away. Adam renounced being Satan's son, but even without his conscious meddling, he still kept Tadfield intact.

Crowley's plants are a case study as well: Without miracles, he has only one left alive, and it doesn't look like it will last much longer.

Aziraphale leaves, and Whickber Street crumbles. Adam stays, and Tadfield remains. Crowley loses his miracles, and his plants die.

Why can't the current universe exist without God? The same reason Whickber Street can't exist without Aziraphale.

To lean into the trend of angels and demons pairing off (from S1's Aziraphale/Crowley, S2's Gabriel/Beelzebub, and S3's Muriel/Eric), this could even be because of angels and demons, not God Herself.

We only ever see Aziraphale and Crowley stationed permanently on Earth, but in S2, Shax calls herself "Hell's representative in London." The implication is that there are hundreds or thousands of angels and demons stationed all over the world.

Perhaps they're all constantly, subconsciously keeping things running, the same way Aziraphale does with Whickber Street, Adam does with Tadfield, and Crowley does with his plants. They don't need to be purposefully trying to keep the world running; their desire to have their own small part of the world be nice is what keeps the whole world worth living in. (And isn't that a nice thought, by itself?)

Telling them not to meddle wouldn't be good enough; they're meddling subconsciously, all the time. The bookshop has no rats because Aziraphale is an angel. Shutting off their miracles wouldn't save the world; it would crumble, just like Crowley's plants.

The existence of angels and demons was built into the fabric of the universe, and they can't be removed from the ecosystem without everything falling apart. The only way to have a universe without supernatural meddling is to change the very fabric from which the universe was made.

I'm not saying this is the ending I would have written myself. Looking at the pieces that still remain in S3, however, this is my current best guess for how they could have built up to this ultimate conclusion.

[lutraslutra]

Little gift I made today

We all know where this is from, have some Crowlotl for the soul, some Tancheen for the finale nerves

[keepcalmandcarriefischer]

It's the last day of April

[my-little-bologna]

Wake up babe, new meta layer just dropped

[oneawkwardcookie]

[Image description: photo of a saucepan on a stove, filled with boiling water

/end]

[thehummingbirdsmatter]

I love when a meme gets so many steps away from its source material that it would be completely incomprehensible if I didn't know what today's date was

[cuttledreams-bugs]

Finally drew the Bugs ✨ (plus a few friends)

[widowbiter]

"what do I gotta do to get these hands on me?" "what, these old things?"

Sam & Bucky for @contritecactite! Thank you for taking part in @fandomtrumpshate, and for your generous donation!!!

[contritecactite]

So, my three-month(ish) Finch streak broke last week due to my schedule entirely disintegrating, and once that happens to me, I have a really hard time feeling like it's worth it to get started again. I might! I might not! But here is a summary of what I learned about myself in my (almost 100 days 😞) daily use:

For me personally, being rewarded for tasks had diminishing returns, especially when they were simple things that I felt "should have just happened throughout my day." For example, I felt bad about getting rewarded for doing something I enjoyed every day and about leaving that goal broad. This means that I should have fine-tuned the goals I listed, but I never felt like I had the time or brainpower to optimize that.

The goal system is really flexible and can be personalized and negotiated and adjusted to a really great degree! It's usually pretty easy to find something close to my actual goal and use that to personalize more. The categories are also quite nice and would be great for setting up a weekly schedule. I just... never did the setup required to make the most of it. The app even gently prompts you weekly to do this! But I did not.

Sending/receiving things to/from friends ended up turning into a fatigue/guilt cycle (no one did anything wrong!!! This is the same reason I don't thrive on games with dailies or with player-to-player aspects.)

Got emotionally attached to birb, which also mostly pushed the guilt and anxiety buttons (and also isn't surprising given that I got emotionally attached to one particular hand truck this weekend because it had a layer of dust on it and obviously had been passed over for newer and shinier ones)

Did not successfully fully develop and establish habits (see: brain wasn't receiving the ideal chemicals), but I did become more aware of some things, like how taking 5 minutes to pick out clothes the night before saves me 25 minutes the next morning and how the clearest sign that I'm feeling overwhelmed is leaving laundry on the floor.

Specifically, never developed the habit of giving myself credit for tasks completed after about 10:30 PM. I usually try to put my phone away by then, and if I pick it back up, I'm using it minimally (hanging out in one small discord server with friends or reading something I'd picked out earlier). My notifications also turn off at that time, so setting a reminder wouldn't have helped unless I gave it an exception, and then I risk getting sucked into more robust phone use too close to bedtime. So, anything that I listed as a bedtime routine goal (this includes setting out tomorrow's clothes) usually went unchecked, and it never felt right to me to try to go back or to move them to the next morning or any sort of workaround.

I like it!! I think it's a great tool with a lot of support built in and a lot of flexibility regarding how to use it. I think it was good for me and could be again when I'm ready to spend more time figuring out exactly how to make it work with me instead of against me.

I absolutely recommend it if you've been on the fence. Even though it didn't, like, magically make me more likely to make the choices I wanted to make, it gave me more insight into what I do need, and that's a worthwhile outcome.

[pardalote]

It's been a while since I bombarded you all with a swarm of beetle photos. So here are some beetles I've stitched, including some little peeks under 'the hood'. :D

[masoney]

@wyrmst @contritecactite

[wyrmst]

Your orc knight is more than easy to pick out a crowd.

His presence tends to fill an entire room, and even in an outdoor gathering like today's equinox festival, he is very hard to miss.

And yet, you've walked the entire grounds at least thrice over since slipping away from your family's boring obligations, and haven't laid eyes on him.

So where exactly did he get off to?

You skulk off on your reconnaissance mission, quite experienced with sneaking around without dirtying your fine clothes by now.

"Well, what do we have here?" You ask breezily as you lean over the railing of the stone half-wall to look down at him, as if you didn't seek him out with purpose. "What is my personal knight doing all the way out here?"

"Following orders." He says gruffly, not flinching or moving from his post at all, and then remembering to add; "My liege."

"Well, you can't exactly bodyguard effectively from all the way over here, now can you?" You sigh, absently picking at a spot of crumbling mortar in frustration. "It would seem the king and queen still haven't truly grasped what the personal part of a personal knight means."

The orc doesn't comment on that directly, apart from a simple, neutral grunt- in his position you suppose you wouldn't be caught admitting to questioning your employer's judgment, either.

"Gatehouse duty." He explains curtly.

You look out at the desolate, dusty road leading out into the nearby farmland and see that it is as deserted as you expected. Almost no one uses this side entrance on most days, except for the local farmers bringing in loads of crops- and of course none of them are working on a festival day.

"Hmph. I'm surprised they didn't install a very important new latrine, just for you to watch over." You tease, only half-joking.

That does get a muffled chuckle out of him.

Your parents' meddling aggravates you to no end. He is your knight, not someone to be commandeered by your parents and set to work doing menial tasks that are insulting for his skill level. Not to mention the fact they clearly put him over here to exclude him from the festivities…

You're going to have to have a talk with them- again. You, and they, are well aware that by ancient law, your will and word supersedes theirs when it comes to your own personal knight- even if they are the king and queen. But you don't doubt they would take advantage of him not knowing that, being an outsider to your culture.

You take a breath and put on your best commanding voice.

"From now on, you only take direction from me. Only me. Do you understand?"

"You… have that authority?" He asks, seemingly trying to phrase it in the least disrespectful way possible.

"Are you questioning a direct order?" You scoff in a way that you've been told many times is unbecoming of a young royal.

"No."

"Then, come back with me, please. We've missed your chance to dominate the tourney, I'm afraid… But the celebration hasn't fully winded down. It's got some life left yet to enjoy- Please."

He pauses, helmet tipped slightly back in thought.

"…I apologize. I cannot."

"Why not?"

"I… do not think that my presence would be appreciated."

"I appreciate it."

You take the luxuriant flower crown made of crocuses, pale roses and laurel leaves off your head. Then, leaning over the ledge precariously, drop it gingerly atop the orc's helmet.

After a moment lost for words, he scrambles with a horrible clanking noise to take the favor off his head once he's realized what's happened.

"My liege, I cannot take this-"

Unfortunately for him, you've already darted off in the other direction, back towards the heart of the celebration.

"Well, I suppose you'll just have to give it back to me, then!"

[baldursghaik]

commission for @coolseabird!

[quoththemaiden]

Fandom Trumps Hate 2026 Craft Bazaar

Quoth the Maiden's Crocheted Decorations

Option 1: One ($15+) or two ($40+) decorative stockings, suitable for hanging Option 2: One ($30+) filet crochet piece, suitable for flat display Fandom: ANY! See my stall for example designs.

Stall type: Auction Click here to bid Click here to see the current top bid Auction closes on Sunday, March 15 at 8:00 PM EDT!

Full terms: Go to my stall page for full details, including size, color options, and shipping fees.

New to Fandom Trumps Hate? @fandomtrumpshate has the info you need!

In my case, you bid for the opportunity to have me crochet you something. If you win the auction, you donate the promised amount to an approved charity, and I design and ship you a decoration as a thank-you gift. A charity gets money, you get a cool thing, and fandom thrives!

Can't bid but want to support charity? Please reblog to spread this post outside fandoms I know! I'm very happy to make decorations for sports teams, favorite mountains, or that indie game you made that has eight downloads but you love it with all your heart. (Sharing a link to my stall outside Tumblr is also very welcome!)

Want to see some fun designs? Keep reading...

If you're one of my mutuals, I've got two guesses for what fandom you're in, so let's start with those:

Inspired by Good Omens

If you can't guess by the fuzziness of the photo, I made this coaster back when the show was still airing:

Inspired by Yu-Gi-Oh!

How about something for the most recent thing I watched?

Do you think I mean Heated Rivalry or the Olympics?

My friend assures me her favorite band is very topical for this event:

Inspired by ATEEZ's OUTLAW albums

Back to childhood nostalgia:

Inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

I started with the Crest of Courage as being iconic, but a friend reminded me that Knowledge was my favorite as a kid:

Inspired by Digimon Adventure

I've only seen three episodes of Supernatural, but some kind souls on Tumblr gave me some reference photos:

Inspired by Supernatural

I didn't need a reference photo for this next one when I have one as a candy jar on my desk:

Inspired by Doctor Who

And finally, two stocking patterns for things I think just about everyone on this hellsite loves:

Inspired by the Organization for Transformative Works and VLC... AKA the open source software fandom 😇

If you like these designs, I'm happy to make you something off this list. If you want me to design something from scratch, I'm very happy to do that too!

[penny-anna]

Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?

Then about a week into their journey like

Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying

Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst

Legolas:

[penny-anna]

~*~earlier~*~

Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits

Merry: Frodo what’d he say

Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish

Merry: I mean you could do that but consider

Merry: you can only tell him ONCE

Frodo: Merry. You’re absolutely right. I’ll wait.

[penny-anna]

#legolas’ hick accent vs #frodo’s ‘i learned it out of a book’ accent #FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

Legolas: umm well your accent is horrible

Aragorn: *hollering from a distance* HIS ACCENT IS BETTER THAN YOURS LEGOLAS YOU SILVAN HICK

Frodo: :)

[storywonker]

Frodo: Hello. My name is Frodo. I am a Hobbit. How are you?

Legolas: y’alld’ve’ff’ve

Frodo, crying: please I can’t understand what you’r saying

[ramshacklefey]

Ok, but Frodo didn’t just learn out of a book. He learned like… Chaucerian Elvish. So actually:

Frodo: Good morrow to thee, frend. I hope we twain shalle bee moste excellente companions.

Legolas: Wots that mate? ‘Ere, you avin’ a giggle? Fookin’ ‘obbits, I sware.

Aragorn: *laughing too hard to walk*

[reformedkingsmanagent]

@ghostriderofthearagon

[cryptidscrypticcrosswordclub]

dYinGggGggg…

[whetstonefires]

i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.

english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.

they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max. frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.

so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.

plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.

so Frodo might sound hilariously formal for conversational use (though considering how most Elves use Westron he’s probably safe there) and kind of old-fashioned, but he’s not in any danger of being incomprehensible, because elves live on such a ridiculous timescale.

[whetstonefires]

to over-analyse this awesome and hilarious post even more, legolas’ grandfather was from linguistically stubborn Doriath and their family is actually from a somewhat different, higher-status ethnic background than their subjects.

so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!

considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.

…it’s also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.

which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.

this is elvish dialects and tolkien, okay. there’s a lot of canon material! he actually initially developed the history of middle-earth specifically to ground the linguistic development of the various Elvish languages!

[bowditch]

Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.

Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*

[linguisticparadox]

Frodo: *frantically scribbling* Hang on which language are you even speaking right now

Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?

Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?

Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.

Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.

Sam, a mere working-class country boy: Honestly y'all could be talkin Dwarvish half the time for all I know.

[sainamoonshine]

Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man

Boromir, from beyond the grave: j e s u s

[esser-z]

Tolkien would be SO PROUD of this post

[runiaimperii]

It got better

[peaceheather]

there may come a day when i do not reblog this post, but it is NOT THIS DAY

[adhdo5]

Mug of water, mug of tea

Mug of juice, and twelve saltines

Give me sugars, salt, and starch

Set white blood cells on the march

Cure my chills and aching head

Get this germ or virus DEAD !!

[i-scan-your-poems]

Scansion:

– ◡ / – ◡ / – ◡ / – Mug of / water, / mug of / tea – ◡ / – ◡ / – ◡ / – Mug of / juice, and / twelve sal/tines – ◡ / – ◡ / – ◡ / – Give me / sugars, / salt, and / starch – ◡ / – ◡ / – ◡ / – Set white / blood cells / on the / march – ◡ / – ◡ / – ◡ / – Cure my / chills and / aching / head – ◡ / – ◡ / – ◡ / – Get this / germ or / virus / DEAD !!

Metrical form: trochaic tetrameter catalectic

Rhyme scheme: AA'BBCC

[inemberrain]

Absolutely gorgeous little gull from a gull facebook group im in! I just needed to share him with y'all!

[birds-in-posts]

Little gull (Hydrocoloeus minutus)