Large and Neurotic

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Okay no one on Tumblr that I've seen has been talking about the wine and cheese thing, but that means no one is reflecting on the absolute weapons-grade hilarity of Boris Johnson trying to inchworm his way out of trouble by claiming that he didn't know about it

Like... that wine and cheese party was the Downing Street works Christmas do. Not just any old social, the Christmas social. There were invitations. There was music. Every single worker in Downing Street was invited, even Debbie from accounts. People who didn't work there but were important to the government got invited.

And Boris is therefore claiming that all his mates got together and had a party and DIDN'T INVITE HIM.

Not only that, but they deliberately kept it a secret from him, because no one wanted him there to ruin the party because no one likes him, and I just...

The key difference between Johnson and Trump always came down to this: Johnson wants to be liked. He genuinely does. Trump wanted to be respected and feared and obeyed, he wanted to be seen as powerful and suave and cool. But he didn't care about how liked he was. Johnson, though, really fucking does. He's a deeply pathetic little twat, and he wants people to like him.

So, his choices currently are

Tell everyone in the country that his own friends and coworkers actually cannot stand him, to the point that they arranged an entire Christmas party without him

Admit that he was there and immediately be hated by literally every single human being in the country, including his own voters (hello North Shropshire), because while the rest of us spent Christmas 2020 in a lockdown and unable to see each other and in many cases literally alone, him and his mates held an illegal Christmas party that the police are refusing to investigate

His popularity is now nosediving in the polls, and it really cannot be stated how much that will be burning him.

Also, pro-Brexit Tories are even pissed off with him now. Which is a bit like someone buying a cake called a pus cake with pictures of pus all over the box and a warning sign that says This Cake Contains Pus and Other Bodily Fluids, and then crying because when they tried to eat the pus cake they found it was filled with pus. But also really funny.

Anyway, I'm placing the bet now: we will see a vote of no confidence, OR he'll jump before he has to experience that (because it would kill him), and our next PM will be Rishi Sunak

[thebaconsandwichofregret]

And don't forget

THEY HAD THIS PARTY IN THE HOUSE HE LIVES IN!

He's trying to claim that all his friends and colleagues hosted a party IN THE HOUSE HE LIVES IN while he was upstairs apparently totally oblivious!

He really thinks we're that stupid to believe that a party could be happening literally TWO FLOORS BELOW him and he not know?

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Omg omg I forgot that part and you are so right

They had a secret Christmas party that was so big that they were sending out invites to non government members which they didn't want him at, so they... what, had his mistress drug him with hefty amounts of antihistamines? He went out for the evening (also illegal at the time) and they partied hard on cheese and wine for precisely two hours and 46 minutes, then everyone went silent and snuck out when he came back?

A whole team of cleaners had to tiptoe about for four hours so they wouldn't wake up the clown upstairs.

What a cover story.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Okay well this story has... Wow.

So, let's update for those who don't know. Bear with me, I may get a couple of dates slightly wrong. First, shout out to the incredible investigative journalism and absolutely chessmaster-level shrewdness of Pippa Crerar for both digging up this story and for picking precisely the right moments to release it, morsel by morsel, to bring down Boris Johnson and possibly the whole damn government.

So after Johnson claimed he didn't know about it, then the Mirror published photos showing he was there and hosted a quiz. So, undeniable, Boris was at the Christmas party.

The Metropolitan Police declare that, even though they are investigating and fining people up to £12,000 a pop for lockdown parties, and doing so is literally their job, they will not investigate the government because "there isn't enough evidence". ACAB etc

Then, the Guardian reveals photos of Boris Johnson, his mistress, and Dominic Cummings eating cheese and drinking wine in the sun (with others around them) in the Downing Street garden, not allowed at the time (we were literally not allowed to leave home at the time). That day, Matt Hancock urges people not to have cheese and wine parties in their own gardens in spite of the nice May weather.

Then the Mirror reveals that there was actually another whole ass party - in May 2020, where 30 gathered in the garden of Downing Street (at the time we were not allowed more than 2 households meeting outside). Boris denies that it was a party, and claims it was merely a weirdly well catered work event that included his gin-drinking mistress and baby for some reason.

Then, the invites to the party were leaked by ITV. Turns out, 100 people were invited "to make the most of the lovely weather." It also told attendees to "bring their own booze."

Then an inquiry begins, carried out by Sue Gray. She is in fact a member of Number 10 staff, but no idea how independent she'll actually be one way or the other. Either way, the police are still literally refusing to investigate so lmao that's what we've got. She did get Damien Green fired for that porn thing, though, so that's encouraging.

Then this week, Johnson goes on Prime Minister's Questions. He sort of apologises, and claims that he was only there for 25 minutes but implies he then left because it felt more like an illegal social than the work event he was expecting, which is interesting, since his mistress was necking gin next to him the whole time. He should have just asked her, like. She could have clarified.

Then the Times reveals a source at the party who says that no, Boris stayed WAAAYYYY longer and spent his time wandering around and 'gladhanding' people (side note, posh people have weird words).

Then yesterday, even though we now have evidence and a confession of criminality, the Met Police announce that they will not investigate unless/until the Gray Inquiry finds evidence of criminality, which is just...an astonishingly open display of corruption, really. A real quiet-part-loud moment.

THEN, within hours, it's revealed that there were ANOTHER TWO PARTIES, except... Okay you're going to want to sit down, because shit hit the fan yesterday.

These two parties happened on the day of Prince Philip's funeral last year, aka Put Philip In The Floor Day. At the time, restrictions meant just 30 people could attend that funeral.

Which means, the Telegraph ran this headline and image:

I know we all hate the royals on Tumblr, but you have to understand just how hard that headline, and that image, and that message, hits British society. The Queen, beloved monarch, "forced to grieve alone" while the government danced and drank the night away. You cannot imagine how much power that image holds. You cannot begin to imagine the social power of it.

Boris Johnson can. He was polling only one point above Theresa May's all time low within the hour. That is a devastating popularity drop for the man who needs to be loved, who came to power on a cult of personality.

So, he went on PMQs again, to apologise to Lizzie Two. It's a really funny apology because he kind of can't apologise without admitting it and there's an enquiry going on so it's real vague, but he does cop to the parties on Put Philip In The Floor Day. Keir Starmer, in a rare display of actually providing some opposition, put the boot in quite nicely:

Well, there we have it. After months of deceit and deception, the pathetic spectacle of a man who's run out of road.

His defence, that he didn't realise he was at a party, is so ridiculous that it's actually offensive to the British public. 

He's finally been forced to admit what everyone knew that when the whole country was locked down, he was hosting boozy parties in Downing Street. 

Is he now going to do but decent thing and resign?

Which brings us to today! How is the Prime Minister coping with the situation?

Well, according to a leak from the Independent, he literally spent today working out which senior officials he can force to resign and take the blame in order to save himself in a move that he, a grown man who has fathered six or possibly seven children who is Prime Minister of the country, is without irony calling, and I am not making this up...

Operation Save Big Dog.

Big Dog is him. He is Big Dog. He has called himself Big Dog. He chose to call himself Big Dog.

Except, the Independent leaked it, as I say, so now he looks EVEN WORSE.

And Then

The Mirror's front page for tomorrow is revealed.

They have a photo of a wine fridge (capable of holding up to 34 bottles of wine) being delivered to Number 10.

Because, they reveal, these parties were not special events only.

Downing Street has been holding what they called Wine Time Fridays every week during the pandemic. They used to hold them before as well; but apparently, they've been particularly popular during lockdown.

Current polling as of 14th January 2022:

Labour 41%

Tories 27%

Those figures would translate to the Tories losing over 126 seats. Labour's largest lead since Tony Blair.

Side note to finish off for now:

Interesting how we now know a good 100 people who was at those parties, complete with photos, and yet Rishi Sunak is not in any of them. One might almost call it suspicious. And wonder at who the main source is.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

HOO BOY THE CIRCUS IS IN TOWN THIS WEEK LADS

I will try to keep this concise, and I will put in a Read More because fuck this is like... metres of political intrigue. Although first, quick housekeeping because I’m fed up of seeing some stuff turning up in the notes:

Americans stop being smug in the notes challenge. Just enjoy the clowns quietly.

It is not misogynistic to refer to Carrie Johnson as Big Dog’s mistress, you tedious voles, that’s literally what she was when he cheated on his cancer-suffering wife with her. He also dumped his wife, mid-chemotherapy, to shack up with Carrie Antoinette over there. I do not give the tiniest iota of shit that they are now married, and given that the UK press has spent two years trying to make their relationship into a fairytale princess situation, I will continue to brand her his mistress until the inevitable day he cheats on her with yet another younger model and fathers his eighth or ninth child (not an inaccurate number, this man has Disputed Children with other mistresses he refuses to take a paternity test for)

EXERCISE A MODICUM OF CRITICAL THINKING AND STOP ACCUSING ME OF THINKING RISHI SUNAK IS A GOOD ALTERNATIVE. I HAVE NOT SAID ANYWHERE THAT HE IS. ONLY THAT HE’S GUNNING FOR IT.

With that out of the way, it’s the 20th January 2022, let’s watch the elephant stand on a ball!

Earlier This Week

Let’s check the polls, after the fun of last week!

70% think he’s lying about the May 20th party, 63% think he should resign, 80% think he has not been honest, and 81% think the ‘work event’ that Big Dog described was unacceptable anyway.

But, how does that translate to politics? Well! The Police and Crime Bill is a monstrous piece of fascist legislation that the Tories are currently trying to get passed. This week it passed to the House of Lords. This would normally have been a very straightforward run through to the Queen to sign off, but LOL SOME PEOPLE ARE VERY BITTER ABOUT THE CHEESE AND WINE because instead the Lords have literally thrown out three of the worst elements.

Yes, you read that right. That Bill we’ve all been terrified about?

The Lords have rejected:

Allowing stop and search at protests without suspicion

Banning people with a “history of serious disruption” from attending protests

Making it an offence to disrupt the operation of key national infrastructure, like an airport or a newspaper printer

And then, just to rub salt in the wound, they approved two non-Tory amendments, including making misogyny a hate crime. In practice, those two amendments will now go back to the Commons to be debated more, but those three central pillars up there are just gone now. The Lords described the proposals  as “draconian”, “a wider assault on our democracy”, and “reminiscent of Cold War Eastern Bloc police states”.

Never thought I’d see the day...

So, Boris the Big Dog realises he’s in serious trouble now, because that means that even MPs who supported him now hate him because his actions are costing them the fascist laws they wanted to put in place. So he has a meeting with the one Tory you can absolutely count on to blindly and incompetently support Boris Johnson regardless of literally anything he ever does - enter, Nadine Dorres.

She suggests a zippy new ploy. he needs to shore up support from the backbenchers if he’s to survive it, so she suggests he give them everything they’ve been asking for like a gift wrapped Christmas gift of shit, and they call it Operation Red Meat, because neither of them is bright enough to consider not naming their illicit backroom plans to let them go undetected, and also, they learned nothing at all from Operation Save Big Dog. Here’s the problem: Tory backbenchers are fucking lunatics. Like, this is your mad Tory uncle who thought the highlight of 2021 was that we put a picture of a crown on beer glasses again TAKE THAT EUROPE. So what bones did Big Dog throw these people?

Threatening to cut the BBC license fee, costing them billions

Also ending all covid restrictions

Asking the military to protect against asylum seekers crossing the channel so they have to go to Rwanda and Ghana for processing instead

Except cutting the BBC alienates a chunk of the core Tory votership, which is old people.

(Remember Ghana, it’s going to be relevant in a sec)

And, it turns out, while the BBC has been very effectively muzzled by the Tories, if you then try to take away their funding anyway... they just might remember they have teeth after all.

THE CIRCUS CONTINUES, let’s see some acrobats!

Two Days Ago

Remember how Big Dog’s plan is now to send asylum seekers to Ghana?

Ghana issued a press release.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, they hadn’t heard about this at all. What’s interesting is that they called the plan Operation Dead Meat. I 100% choose to believe this is an intentionally satirical choice about their view of Boris Johnson’s career.

Meanwhile, Boris has a meeting with MPs and bursts into tears. Lol.

Another party is revealed to have happened, this time in March. But Johnson is delighted by this one - he has an alibi, you see. “I couldn’t have attended,” he insists, “because I was in Chequers by then.”

Now Chequers is his second home. At the time, as you’ll all no doubt recall, Boris had delivered his speech at the start of the lockdown, on the 23rd March 2020, telling us all to stay the fuck where we were, and not to travel for anything. Not even to go to a second home. So, in the interests of fairness, yes, he probably wasn’t at the March party.

Because he was breaking the law in a brand new way by illegally travelling between homes. A brans new crime he just confessed to without provocation. Good job, Big Dog.

Then, Pippa Crerar announces that Dominic Cummings is willing to swear under oath that BJ not only knew about the 20th May party, but that he agreed it should go ahead. This is actually a bigger deal than it sounds, because it means he lied to the House of Commons, which is actually a major no-no that people are forced to resign for.

AND THEN

To call a vote of no confidence and to get Johnson to resign, we need 54 letters from Tory MPs. 

It’s revealed that somewhere between 20 and 40 have been sent. This is primarily being led by a bunch of young, new MPs who came to power in the 2019 general election, who therefore don’t have any old ties to Johnson. Here’s the risk - that their inexperience means they get the timing wrong, lose the vote, and then we’re stuck with him. However, if that does happen, it makes the Tory party itself into a laughing stock no one will listen to.

Once again, I need to remind all of you that this man has a pathological need to be liked above all else. This is killing him.

Anyway, the acrobats were fun! Let’s move onto the jugglers!

Yesterday

The BBC, apparently starting to rise up again, have not just started following up on the letters of no confidence, but are sending Laura Kuenssberg to do it. This is impressive because she’s a massive dickhead, Tumblrs, just a huge Tory bitch, but even she is now wanting to put the boot in, it seems.

Six MPs have now gone on public record and announced they’ve sent a letter, and the BBC has found a 7th. Laura reports that  20 Tory MPs first elected in 2019 met to discuss submitting letters. This letter writing campaign gets called the Pork Pie Plot, because one of the MPs has a constituency including Melton Mowbrey, apparently, and thus the tradition of needlessly giving dramatic names to every fucking thought these people have is continued.

Afterwards, a Pork Pie Person says “I think we’ve done it – difficult to tell, though.”

In response, BJ holds urgent one on one meetings with MPs in the Pork Pie Plot where he was described as “broken and close to tears” and begged them not to leave. He promises them more money for their constituencies if they stay loyal, and threatens to withdraw funding for projects in their seats if not.

(This will come back to bite him in a minute)

Meanwhile, the Private Eye runs an interesting story. Remember the Queen, forced to grieve alone on Put Philip in the Floor Day? While the government partied? Apparently,  Downing St offered the Queen a lockdown easing in time for the funeral, so she could have more people there. But she turned it down because… it’s not safe? She cares about optics? Who knows. 

And then, it’s time for Prime Minister’s Questions, at which the following happened:

Johnson claims that he simply didn’t know the parties he held during lockdown were against the rules. This is a fascinating assertion from the man who made the rules, of course, but Dominic Cummings has announced that he personally had warned him, as did two others. Sue Grey, in response, announces that she will be interviewing Dominic Cummings

THE DEFECTION OF CHRISTIAN WAKEFIELD OH MY GOD. He was a Tory MP who got pulled into the office by the whip, and the whip tried to bully him and take his seat if he wouldn’t support BJ. So with the cameras rolling, in full view of everyone, he stood up, walked across the floor of the House of Commons to the Labour benches, and SAT DIRECTLY BEHIND KEIR STARMER I mean this man is a repugnant toad but my god, the DRAMA, the SYMBOLISM, I only wish he’d worn a cape

There are many Tories called David Davies, and they’re all appalling. This one is the least appalling, which really says nothing, it’s like comparing three virulent diseases. But: David Davies stood up from the back benches. He read out a speech, which he said was first given to then-PM Neville Chamberlin on the eve of WW2, urging him to stand down and allow Winston Churchill in. 'You have sat there too long for all the good you have done, in the name of god go'.

Johnson’s response to that last one was “I don’t actually know that speech,” which as defences go, isn’t one. A bit like saying “I didn’t rape Virginia Guiffre because I can’t sweat” for how useful or relevant it is, even if it’s true.

But like Prince Andrew, it definitely isn’t true anyway - Boris Johnson once wrote a book about Churchill and included that speech. However, no one is pushing that angle too hard, because this has made people read his book, and now the focus is on the fact that he made up most of the contents. Like, there’s a bit in it where he claims Germany seized Stalingrad during WW2, that level of made up. Here is a historian tearing it to shreds if you want history nerd drama.

The jugglers were fun! Now let’s see what you all came for: the clowns. Here’s the backing music if you want to get the full experience.

Today

Well, let’s start with the front page of the Independent.

You love to see it.

Downing Street have realised that the best thing they can do right now is to refute strongly only the things they think might be true, so they’ve given up on quotes about parties and instead are issuing official statements denying that:

Boris Johnson is called Big Dog by anyone, and

Boris Johnson cried

Precisely no one believes that, either.

Here’s Diana Johnson MP, asking another brutal question:  “If the PM is spending his time trying to convince the British public that he’s stupid instead of dishonest, isn’t it time he goes? Now?”

Meanwhile the Telegraph have announced that a further 5 Tories are considering defecting. But why could this be? Well.

Remember how I said that BJ would come to regret offering MPs money for loyalty and threatening them with no money if they rebelled?

IN THE LAST FEW MINUTES, while I have literally been writing this post okay okay I am so high on the Drama right now, let me calm down

Right, so, Will Wragg MP. Yes, that’s his real name. 

He’s a newbie as of 2019, and one of the MPs who has publicly admitted to a letter. He’s also the chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and I’m sure he has nice eyes or something. 

HE HAS ACCUSED NUMBER 10 OF BLACKMAIL

No 10 staff, special advisors and government ministers, he says, said there would be embarrassing stories leaked to the press if MPs did not support the PM

They also repeated those funding threats.

Quoth Will Wragg, “The intimidation of a MP is a serious matter, the reports of which I’m aware would seem to constitute blackmail.”

And he has urged other MPs to contact - and I need you to sit down for this one, I’m crying, this is incredible -

He has urged other blackmailed MPs, if they feel threatened, to contact THE METROPOLITAN POLICE

THE POLICE WHO ARE LITERALLY REFUSING TO INVESTIGATE

THE ONES WHO ARE RUN BY SAJID JAVID’S BROTHER

THOSE ONES

This is the fucking funniest thing that has ever happened.

To round off, let’s check in with the Ringmaster!

Rishi Sunak has been in contact with the Pork Pie Plot People, and has asked them what they need and what he can do to help. No one knows yet if he means “Help get rid of Johnson” or “Help you feel happier with Johnson”. All very interesting I’m sure.

[witch-without-gender]

[ryutarotakedown]

[Thread ID: A series of tweets by Butches Against Terfs @ AntiTerfButch. The thread reads, Just saw a terf claim cis women don’t shave our faces, and I am once again consumed with rage. I am literally about to hop in the shower and shave my upper lip while I’m there. Not to mention cis women with PCOS who grow full beards. Gtfoh All women with facial hair are trained to feel shame for it, and you want me to believe you’re protecting women by perpetuating that shame? It makes me laugh whenever people ask how I can be butch and anti-GC, it really does Women with full beards and mustaches are rad as hell. If mine looked better I would probably leave it alone. End thread.]

Thread link: here. Note that tweets are protected Wed–Sat so the thread may not currently be visible.

[fred-erick-frankenstein]

[ID: a screenshot of a reblog by “petalilly”:

Reminder that the definitions terfs use to clock trans women have hurt cis women as well. /end ID].

[fred-erick-frankenstein]

#its also the racism

[prismatic-bell]

Okay, so. I’m genderqueer, but AFAB.

It is important for this discussion that you know I am naturally blonde, and do not take any kind of HRT, although I suspect my natural testosterone might be a little on the high side.

As I’ve gotten older, my barely-there fuzz over my top lip has thickened. It’s still nowhere near a moustache, but I notice it more–instead of being barely visible, I can see it from a regular standing-by-the-mirror distance. I’ve actually considered waxing it because I feel like it puts a shadow over my lip and, in spite of not being particularly feminine, I don’t like the way it looks (it’s sort of like having a perma-bruise).

HIS IS A NORMAL THING THAT HAPPENS AS YOU GET OLDER. Your hair comes in darker or coarser or in weird places. Your body changes.

THIS IS A NORMAL THING THAT HAPPENS AS YOU GET OLDER. Your body changes, hair appears in various unexpected areas and may become coarser, darker, or just start doing … things. (Think of the “crazy old man” eyebrows where no two hairs seem to go in the same direction. My mom got those eyebrows as she got older.)

This isn’t just racist/transphobic/ableist. It’s also ageist.

And?

THIS IS LITERALLY SOMETHING THAT WAS USED AS A TOOL DURING THE EUROPEAN WITCH HUNTS.

They are. Literally. Literally. Witch hunting.

[lozonloz]

Cis bearded lady checking in. Beard? Check. Uterus? Check. Sometime biology just does this.

[kymeira]

[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

“The Ragged and the Beautiful” by Safiya Sinclair

ID below 

Keep reading

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Have you heard the good word about the Pembrokeshire walrus yet?

This walrus is fucken lost.

But Wales has lost its collective shit about it. They’re generally keeping its location secret to keep people away, but we get updates every day if it’s still here, if it’s happy, if it’s healthy. We think it was in Ireland about two weeks ago, which is interesting, because it is not actually native to Ireland either. Why is it here? No one knows.

It seems to like Pembrokeshire beaches.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I regret to inform you all that the walrus is a delinquent.

In attempting to climb aboard a dinghy in Tenby it capsized it.

It then proceeded to Tenby harbour where it tried to climb aboard a fishing boat.

Incredibly, this is not an April Fools

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Today on English People RUIN Everything, a bunch of English tourists from Essex and Leeds broke covid-19 regulations and travelled to Tenby over Easter to try and see Wally (so named after Where’s Wally) and crowded him with jet skis and surfboards and stuff, so he’s not been seen since Monday. We don’t know yet if he’s moved to a secluded spot again, or left Wales entirely.

But, you know, I doubt we were going to have Wally for much longer anyway, since they need to head back home again at some point. Godspeed, Wally. May your fish be ever plentiful.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The English went back home and Wally came back to Tenby! We stan a true Welsh icon, folks.

Some facts about Wally:

She is named after Where’s Wally because she is hard to spot

She was previously in Ireland, and then secluded beaches in Pembrokeshire, but has really taken a shine to Tenby, which is a delightful village

She has a scar on one flipper but it’s long-healed and doesn’t seem to bother her

She is the southern-most walrus ever spotted in the wild!

The current theory as to how she got here is that she fell asleep on an ice floe that drifted south, but she’s not bothered about returning yet

She’s believed to be two years old

Her gender is still a bit of a mystery but we seem to be leaning female

This story on Wales Online claims she’s believed to be male, but then uses female pronouns. It also features a video of some Welsh people chatting about Wally, including a child whose first language is very clearly Welsh and by the end of his part is struggling to think of things to say about the walrus in English.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

WALLY UPDATE!!

The Western Telegraph has opted for male pronouns, and is being very firm that Wally is male, although other news outlets are still all over the place. But what has Wally been up to the past few days?

He is rapidly gaining weight, and is still giving no cause for concern to either of the organisations watching him (which are the RSPCA a bit and Welsh Marine Life Rescue a lot; this is funny though because a walrus is so far outside of the wheelhouse of either of those organisations like we’re all just guessing here, lads)

His delinquent ways have continued - he has now attempted to climb onto multiple buoys (all unsuccessfully) and at one point nearly got a mooring rope stuck around his neck. 

Has he learned from this?

FOLKS HE HAS NOT!

He is now a Fashion Icon. He has surfaced multiple times wearing accessories in his moustache. Mostly this has been shells, but three days ago he upped his fashion game by wearing this starfish:

What an Icon.

The photographer of this picture, one Amy Compton who has been Wally’s official photographer since the start, has been making these delightful Wally masks (inset). They sell for £5, of which £1 goes to Welsh Marine Life Rescue. If you would like your own Wally mask, contact her here!

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

My mother came for a visit today and we checked and Tenby is an hour away from me, so we went for a Lovely Day Trip to Find a Walrus.

Friends, I took the shittest photo there has ever been of a Walrus. But I absolutely did get to see em.

A lifeboat wandered by to check em out at one point, and ey just… sank. Just dropped below the surface like Homer Simpson moving backwards into a hedge. After a while the boat left, and Wally surfaced again.

I can now confirm that ey really, really likes blowing water around like a whale, and also kept eyeing up that buoy next to em.

Also, I had entirely forgotten how comically beautiful Tenby is, but that’s an aside

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Time for a Wally Update!!!

It’s only a little one, but apparently we’re getting Serious about this walrus, lads - the police are now stepping in to say that anyone interfering with Wally (examples of this interference to date: throwing things at him, taking boats and paddle boards out to him, throwing fish overboard to tempt him closer, etc) is committing a criminal offence and we must send evidence of Assholes to them. So that’s fun!

Meanwhile, the tense stand-off between the RNLI and Wally continues over Who Gets To Use The Lifeboat Slipway. Here is a picture of Wally in full delinquent mode.

What a public menace.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Time for the weekly Wally news!

Here is the problem with 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato using the slipway of a lifeboat station as a spa bed: sometimes, canoeists get in trouble near Stackpole and need rescuing and then some underwhelmed Welsh coast guard is going to have to try to chase said predatory sea potato off the slipway so they can launch the boat.

Here is the problem with that scenario: an underwhelmed Welsh coast guard basically views 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato as a sort of ornery gelatinous cow, and so will try to do this with, and I am not making this up, a broom. But a ton of overgrown seal has no fear of brooms, so the attempt is not entirely successful under time-sensitive conditions while canoeists are actively drowning 10 miles away.

Solution? An air horn.

Which did work long enough to get the boat out, and then Wally clambered back aboard barely minutes later and fell asleep again. So trick learned, I guess.

Anyway, since I’ve apparently become Tumblr’s primary Wally journalist, I thought I’d go for a cheeky visit again today so I could report on their condition FIRST HAND (you’re all welcome, I have incredible integrity). Today I tried using a binocular over my phone camera with was extremely stressful and moderately successful - and I have two pieces of NEWS.

Story the First

Two dinghies with divers aboard suddenly turned up and sailed right up to them. There are Welsh Marine Life Rescue volunteers everywhere, and one woman immediately yelled “YOU ARE TOO CLOSE. MOVE AWAY.”

Everyone on the cliff went silent. The boats went closer.

“YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW,” yelled the beachmaster. “MOVE AWAY.”

Tumblrs, they did not.

“CAN YOU HEAR ME?” she yelled. “MOVE AWAY.”

At which point, the whole fucken cliff starts joining in, because Welsh people are Like That.

“Move away!”

“Leave ‘im alone, mun!”

“Move away, butt, what you doing!”

“He’s the size of an ‘orse, bois, can’t you see ‘im from here?!”

“Bloody move you fucks, you’ll scare ‘im away again!”

(That last one was, I swear, an eighty year old woman.)

The boats, suddenly being yelled at by a whole cliff of Welsh people, sailed away. Later, we followed the beachmaster who was now on a mission, and found her with a couple of community police officers ripping the shit out of the divers. It was very satisfying.

Story the Second

I mentioned my binocular and phone trick. It came in handy. At first it gave me some very satisfying shots for a distance picture on a phone camera:

But, you know, whatever.

But THEN I got this picture:

which I got 0.256778 seconds before that majestic Arctic beast of purest beautiful nature untamed FELL OFF THE SIDE OF THE SLIPWAY LIKE A CAT THAT GOT TOO CLOSE TO A TABLE EDGE

Wally was fine, the seagull to the right was traumatised.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

This is not an update as such but my friend Chris who I took with me to get the scoop on Wally on Sunday had a real camera with him, and he has produced a WAY better photo than I did, and I want you all to see Just How Louche a Walrus is capable of looking:

Handsome boi

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Okay, so this post went from 24,000 notes to 40,000 overnight, and I am getting a lot of important scientific queries about Wally! So I shall call upon my expertise as a skilled journalist of huge integrity and also a genuine, actual lecturer in environmental science to answer them all as best I can. I shall also use pictures.

1. When did this happen?

I have included many links in this thread to news articles on Wally, each of which is dated, so you can check those for accurate dates; but, xe turned up in Ireland in March 2021, and then made hir way to Pembrokeshire, Wales end of March. Xe reached Tenby a week or so later in April, and now refuses to leave. As of this update (6th May, 2021) xe’s still there and chillin’ - my friend Chris’ louche photo there was taken on Sunday the 2nd May. 

I shall date all updates from now on. Apologies for this uncharacteristic lapse in my journalistic performance. I have let Wally down.

2. “Oh my god do you guys call Waldo Wally?!??”

Folks!! Folks so many of you are doing this!!! But here’s the thing!!!

Where’s Wally is a British series and that’s the original name!!! It has been translated and regionalised around the world, and the name was changed in 28 of them!! A sizeable number don’t even sound like ‘Wally’!!! In France he’s Charlie! In Lithuania he’s Jonas! In Arabic versions he’s Fuḍūlī!!!

Yet only one nationality is repeatedly reacting with astonishment while assuming theirs is the one true original version!!! Guess which one!!! You have to stop!!! Especially the few who have responded with out and out swearing and aggression when I’ve explained!!! THIS POST IS ABOUT A WALRUS!!!!

3. Is Wally okay in Wales? Does xe need to leave/be moved?

Xe’s currently fine - an Arctic walrus can handle water temperatures of up to 15 degrees celsius, which West Wales is certainly currently accommodating. Xe was also distressingly underweight when first spotted fresh off the ice floe, but we’ve been monitoring hir health and xe’s roughly doubled hir bodyweight and is very healthy. I asked the fishmonger in Tenby if xe’s affecting the catch and the nice man said no and sold me a lemon sole for my mam. So right now, Wally is doing great, all needs met, with no real clashes with other stakeholders (i.e. fishers and that) except for, you know, the one (i.e. the lifeboat people).

However, high summer in Wales is warm enough that the sea will top the temperature threshold. So, we’re expecting Wally to leave by hirself in a month or so, if xe doesn’t decide to move sooner. Whether xe decides to swim all the way back home, or xe starts just moving north along the western coast and next turns up in the Isle of Mann or Scotland to continue hir holiday of the Celtic Ring remains to be seen. But, xe’ll do it hirself eventually, so it’s down to us to just keep hir happy and healthy for as long as xe chooses to stay.

4. I think Wally is female!

Yeah, maybe

5. I think Wally is male!

Very possibly

6. I think walruses have no concept of gender!

Almost definitely

7. What’s Walrus in Welsh?

They’re not native, so the Cymricisation “walrws” is getting a lot of use - but, Welsh is nothing if not poetic, so in official literature it’s “morfarch”, which means “sea stallion” or “sea knight” depending on your dialect.

8. Did they really use a broom and an airhorn on Wally?!

Here is a forlorn coast guard attempting to shift hir with a broom:

And here is the same coastguard attempting to shift hir with an airhorn:

9. I cannot believe this walrus is a delinquent!!!

Very well. Here is Wally’s criminal case file, including photographic evidence of two boarded boats and hir mugshot:

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Update time! Datestamp: 10th May 2021. And as this post is becoming hellishly long, I think it’s probably best if I start using Read Mores after a couple of inches of scroll space. Uh, sorry about the rambling length, folks, I apparently just have a lot to say about a walrus and also many pictures.

Anyway, Wales is weathering a storm at the minute, so the sea is currently pretty rough - turns out, Wally likes staying out at sea during this time because they’re a sucker for a wave machine, and same, Wally, same, wave machines are banging. What this means is that they aren’t about much at the minute, but as the sea calms over the next few days the prediction is that they’ll return to the slipway, climb aboard and then drop spark the fuck out for a few days to rest.

SO, speaking of that SLIPWAY and the CRIMES of this delinquent…

Keep reading

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Alright, gang, BRACE YOURSELVES because there’s a Wally update incoming!

And it may be the last! Or maybe not, it all depends on what Wally decides to do.

Anyway, it’s 26th May 2021, and to tempt you to click the Read More, I offer these two photos of Wally actually being induced to finally fucken move after the underwhelmed Welsh coast guard had the bright idea of spraying him gently with a hose to mimic rain:

Elegance and grace. What a majestic creature.

BUT, my friends, there have been DEVELOPMENTS!

Keep reading

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

OKAY SO I KNOW I SAID THAT WAS THE LAST BUT

Datestamp: 30th May, 2021. Uh, Wally has decided on more shenanigans, starting, I shit you not, with continuing that trip of the Celtic Ring by going even further south to fecking Brittany, in France, and yes! Yes, I did make that joke! I did not expect it to come true!! But here we are!!

In fact, he overshot Brittany and hit the town of Les Sables d’Olonne, a bit further south along the coast. Where, NATURALLY, he promptly found a brand new slipway to terrorise, and a brand new piece of maritime safety infrastructure to block.

French fishermen report that he seems “interested” in their boats, and we all know how that will end.

Except, it seems his crimes are starting to catch up with him. Warning for news of minor walrus injury under the cut (he’s fine, no pictures).

Keep reading

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

This walrus will not let me rest. Just let me rest, Wally. Let me sleep.

Datestamp: 3rd June, 2021. You’ll all recall that the last we saw of our hefty oceanic bandit, he got hit by a boat while trying to steal it in France, as he so often does. Oh no! we all thought. What if Wally is hurt! We hope he recovers! We hope he learns to leave boats alone, and also turns the fuck around and swims to cooler waters!

Folks, he has learned ZERO LESSONS.

HE’S IN LA ROCHELLE

Quote from the local Gendamerie: “Checked Friday, May 28th by the nautical brigade in the port of La Rochelle, this walrus has been uncooperative.“

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

HOT OFF THE PRESS (I am a journalist of superlative integrity, it is often said)

Datestamp 5th June 2021, and he’s in Spain. He’s in Spain. He’s headed for fucken Galicia after all, lads. He’s heading south. Given that my every joking prediction has so far come true, I’m terrified to make the obvious joke that he’s heading for Patagonia. GO TO SCOTLAND, WALLY. GO TO FECKING SCOTLAND.

Anyway, here’s a clip of him in Bilbao, northern Spain, and also, there’s some extra news: after months of back-and-forth and guesswork, we do now have concrete evidence of Wally’s sex, including photographs. NSFW pics under the cut.

Keep reading

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Captain’s log, star date 14th June 2021, and he’s in Santander. No, not the bank. The Spanish city, capitol of Cantabria, which is interesting given that Cantabria IS A CELTIC NAME, so the journey continues. Asturias and Gallicia beckon.

Here is a picture of him having climbed aboard yet another boat.

And this article has a link to a video of him boarding a pier back in La Rochelle, to the bemusement of some French fishermen (side note, it is very endearing that the Western Telegraph, a Pembrokeshire newspaper, is still closely following Wally’s adventures).

WILL HE GO BACK NORTH?!? Well, let’s see how he feels once he’s done Galicia.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Do you love the colour of the walrus?

Anyway, folks I have MIXED news. The good news is, after spending a worrying month heading closer and closer to the equator and then vanishing for two weeks, our fave oceanic chongus has finally, mercifully, turned the fuck around! He’s coming back home apparently, and has turned up in the Isles of Scilly, a small chain of islands off the toe of Cornwall. Hopefully, he’ll take a week there to feed and rest and then continue his journey north. We may yet see him make landfall in Scotland.

Here’s the bad news:

HIS CRIMES CONTINUE.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Datestamp: 26th June, 2021

DO YOU WANT TO SEE A WALRUS BEING TOWED?!?

YEAH you do, click the Read More

Keep reading

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

6th July 2021, and I shit you not, WALLY IS NOW OUTLAWED IN THE ISLES OF SCILLY.

Well, his crimes were always going to catch up with him eventually.

He’s now sunk multiple boats, and England is a very different place to Wales, so they’re trying to evict him.  “He may prevent emergency response vessels from being immediately operational,” say British Divers Marine Life Rescue, as though he hasn’t already done this repeatedly in Tenby and the solution hasn’t been found to be an airhorn and a garden hose (the results of hardworking Welsh scientists are oft-ignored). In any case, The Walrus Must Go.

Anyway, how to get him to clear off?

Keep reading

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Hello Wally Watchers, and welcome back to Do You Love The Colour Of The Walrus!

Apologies for being so lax with updates, I’m trying to wait for a chunk of news these days in a vain bid to keep this post to a slightly more manageable length (cue hysterical laughter). But, as the number of messages in my inbox demanding news hits twenty three, let’s see what Wally is up to! And lads, there’s some big news!

Keep reading

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

BRACE YOURSELVES, FOLKS

FOR I BRING GLORIOUS TIDINGS

Okay so last time I posted, Wally had made his way back to Ireland and was having a grand old time finding new boats to sink. That was back in August! So long ago.

Datestamp: 22nd September, 2021, and have I got news for you.

Keep reading

[frustratedasatruar]

Crime Walrus escapes into international waters.

[writing-prompt-s]

An old and homely grandmother accidentally summons a demon. She mistakes him for her gothic-phase teenage grandson and takes care of him. The demon decides to stay at his new home.

[eatbreathewrite]

It isn’t uncommon for this particular demon to be summoned—from exhausting Halloween party pranks in abandoned barns to more legitimate (more exhausting) ceremonies in forests—but it has to admit, this is the first time it’s been called forth from its realm into a claustrophobic living room bathed in the dull orange-pink glow of old glass lamps and a multitude of wide-eyed, creepy antique porcelain dolls that could give Chucky a run for his money with all of their silent, seething stares combined. Accompanying those oddities are tea cup and saucer sets on shelves atop frilly doilies crocheted with the utmost care, and cross-stitched, colorful ‘Home Sweet Home’s hung across the wood-paneled walls.

It’s a mistake—a wrong number, per se. No witch it’s ever known has lived in such an, ah, dated, home. Furthermore, no practitioner that ever summoned it has been absent, as if they’d up and ding-dong ditched it. No, it didn’t work that way. Not at all. Not if they want to survive the encounter.

It hears the clinking of movement in the room adjacent—the kitchen, going by the pungent, bitter scent of cooled coffee and soggy, sweet sponge cakes, but more jarring is the smell of blood. It moves—feels something slip beneath its clawed foot as it does, and sees a crocheted blanket of whites and greys and deep black yarn, wound intricately, perfectly, into a summoning circle. Its summoning circle. There is a small splash of bright scarlet and sharp, jagged bits of a broken curio scattered on top, as if someone had dropped it, attempted to pick it up the pieces and pricked their finger. It would explain the blood. And it would explain the demon being brought into this strange place.

As it connects these pieces in its mind, the inhabitant of the house rounds the corner and exits the kitchen, holding a damp, white dish towel close to her hand and fumbling with the beaded bifocals hanging from her neck by a crocheted lanyard before stopping dead in her tracks.

Now, to be fair, the demon wouldn’t ordinarily second guess being face-to-face with a hunchbacked crone with a beaked nose, beady eyes and a peculiar lack of teeth, or a spidery shawl and ankle-length black dress, but there is definitely something amiss here. Especially when the old biddy lets her spectacles fall slack on her bosom and erupts into a wide, toothy (toothless) grin, eyes squinting and crinkling from the sheer effort of it.

“Todd! Todd, dear, I didn’t know you were visiting this year! You didn’t call, you didn’t write—but, oh, I’m so happy you’re here, dear! Would it have been too much to ask you to ring the doorbell? I almost had a heart attack. And don’t worry about the blood, here—I had an accident. My favorite figure toppled off of the table and cleanup didn’t go as expected. But I seem to recall you are quite into the bloodshed and ‘edgy’ stuff these days, so I don’t suppose you mind.” She releases a hearty, kind laugh, but it isn’t mocking, it’s sweet. Grandmotherly. The demon is by no means sentimental or maudlin, but the kindness, the familiarity, the genuine fondness, does pull a few dusty old nostalgic heartstrings. “Imagine if it leaves a scar! It’d be a bit ‘badass,’ as you teenagers say, wouldn’t it?”

She is as blind as a bat without her glasses, it would appear, because the demon is by no means a ‘Todd’ or a human at all, though humanoid, shrouded in sleek, black skin and hard spikes and sharp claws. But the demon humors her, if only because it had been caught off guard.

The old woman smiles still, before turning on her heel and shuffling into the hallway with a stiff gait revealing a poor hip. “Be a dear and make some more coffee, would you please? I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Yes, this is most definitely a mistake. One for the record books, for certain. For late-night trips to bars and conversations with colleagues, while others discuss how many souls they’d swindled in exchange for peanuts, or how many first-borns they’d been pledged for things idiot humans could have gained without divine intervention. Ugh. Sometimes it all just became so pedantic that little detours like this were a blessing—happy accidents, as the humans would say.

That’s why the demon does as asked, and plods slowly into the kitchen, careful to duck low and avoid the top of the doorframe. That’s why it gingerly takes the small glass pot and empties it of old, stale coffee and carefully, so carefully, takes a measuring scoop between its claws and fills the machine with fresh grounds. It’s as the hot water is percolating that the old woman returns, her index finger wrapped tight in a series of beige bandages.

“I’m surprised you’re so tall, Todd! I haven’t seen you since you were at my hip! But your mother mails photos all the time—you do love wearing all black, don’t you?” She takes a seat at the small round table in the corner and taps the glass lid of the cake plate with quaking, unsteady, aged hands. “I was starting to think you’d never visit. Your father and I have had our disagreements, but…I am glad you’re here, dear. Would you like some cake?” Before the demon has a chance to decline, she lifts the lid and cuts a generous slice from the near-complete circle that has scarcely been touched. It smells of citrus and cream and is, as assumed earlier, soggy, oversaturated with icing.

It was made for a special occasion, for guests, but it doesn’t seem this old woman receives much company in this musty, stagnant house that smells like an antique garage that hadn’t had its dust stirred in years.

Especially not from her absentee grandson, Todd.

The demon waits until the coffee pot is full, and takes two small mugs from the counter, filling them until steam is frothing over the rims. Then, and only then, does it accept the cake and sit, with some difficulty, in a small chair at the small table. It warbles out a polite ‘thank you,’ but it doesn’t suppose the woman understands. Manners are manners regardless.

“Oh, dear, I can hardly understand. Your voice has gotten so deep, just like your grandfather’s was. That, and I do recall you have an affinity for that gravelly, screaming music. Did your voice get strained? It’s alright, dear, I’ll do the talking. You just rest up. The coffee will help soothe.”

The demon merely nods—some communication can be understood without fail—and drinks the coffee and eats the cake with a too-small fork. It’s ordinary, mushy, but delicious because of the intent behind it and the love that must have gone into its creation.

“I hope you enjoyed all of the presents I sent you. You never write back—but I am aware most people use that fancy E-mail these days. I just can’t wrap my head around it. I do wish your mom and dad would visit sometime. I know of a wonderful little café down the street we can go to. I haven’t been; I wanted to visit it with Charles, before he…well.” She falls silent in her rambling, staring into her coffee with a small, melancholy smile. “I can’t believe it’s been ten years. You never had the chance to meet him. But never mind that.” Suddenly, and with surprising speed that has the demon concerned for her well being, she moves to her feet, bracing her hands on the edge of the table. “I may as well give you your birthday present, since you’re here. What timing! I only finished it this morning. I’ll be right back.”

When she returns, the white, grey and black crocheted work with the summoning circle is bundled in her arms.  

“I found these designs in an occult book I borrowed from the library. I thought you’d like them on a nice, warm blanket to fight off the winter chill—I hope you do like it.” With gentle hands, she spreads the blanket over the demon’s broad, spiky back like a shawl, smoothing it over craggy shoulders and patting its arms affectionately. “Happy birthday, Todd, dear.”

Well, that settles it. Whoever, wherever, Todd is, he’s clearly missing out. The demon will just have to be her grandson from now on.

[voidbat]

this is so sweet. it made me want to hug someone.

[bigmammallama5]

i had to

[geniusorinsanity]

I WOULD WATCH SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE

[rocky-horror-shit-show]

Okay but she takes him to the little cafe and all of the people in her town are like “What is that thing, what the hell, Anette?” and she’s like “Don’t you remember my grandson Todd?” and the entire town just has to play along because no one will tell little old Nettie that her grandson is an actual demon because this is the happiest she’s been since her husband died.

Bonus: In season 4 she makes him run for mayor and he wins

[silvermoonphantom]

I just want to watch ‘Todd’ help her with groceries, and help her with cooking, and help her clean up the dust around the house and air it out, and fill it with spring flowers because Anette mentioned she loved hyacinth and daffodils.   Over the seasons her eyesight worsens, so ‘Todd’ brings a hellhound into the house to act as her seeing eye dog, and people in town are kinda terrified of this massive black brute with fur that drips like thick oil, and a mouth that can open all the way back to its chest, but ‘Honey’ likes her hard candies, and doesn’t get oil on the carpet, and when ‘Todd’ has to go back to Hell for errands, Honey will snuggle up to Anette and rest his giant head on her lap, and whuff at her pockets for butterscotch.  Anette never gives ‘Todd’ her soul, but she gives him her heart

[wickedwitchofthewifi-deactivate]

In season six, Anette gets sick. She spends most of the season bedridden and it becomes obvious by about midway through the season that she’s not going to make it to the end of the season. Todd spends the season travelling back and forth between the human realm and his home plane, trying hard to find something, anything that will help Anette get better, to prolong her life. He’s tried getting her to sell him her soul, but she’s just laughed, told him that he shouldn’t talk like that. With only a few episodes left in the season Anette passes away, Todd is by her side. When the reaper comes for her Todd asks about the fate of her soul. In a dispassionate voice the reaper informs Todd that Anette spent the last few years of her life cavorting with creatures of darkness, that there can be only one fate for her. Todd refuses to accept this and he fights the reaper, eventually injuring the creature and driving it off. Knowing that Anette cannot stay in the Human Realm, and refusing to allow her spirit to be taken by another reaper, so he takes her soul in his arms. He’s done this before, when mortals have sold themselves to him. This time the soul cradled against his chest does not snuggle and fight. This time the soul held tight against him reaches out, pats him on the cheek tells him he was a good boy, and so handsome, just like his grandfather.  Todd takes Anette back to the demon realm, holding her tight against him as he travels across the bleak and forebidding landscape; such a sharp contrast to the rosy warmth of Anette’s home. Eventually, in a far corner of his home plane, Todd finds what he is looking for. It is a place where other demons do not tread; a large boulder cracked and broken, with a gap just barely large enough for Todd to fit through. This crack, of all things, gives him pause, but Anette’s soul makes a comment about needing to get home in time to feed Honey, and Todd forces himself to pass through it. He travels in darkness for a while, before he emerges into into a light so bright that it’s blinding. His eyes adjust slowly, and he finds himself face to face with two creatures, each of them at least twice his size one of them has six wings and the head of a lion, one of them is an amorphous creature within several rings. The lion-headed one snarls at Todd, and demands that he turn back, that he has no business here.  Todd looks down, holding Anette’s soul against his chest, he takes a deep breath, and speaks a single word, “Please.” The two larger beings are taken aback by this. They are too used to Todd’s kind being belligerent, they consult with each other, they argue. The amorphous one seems to want to be lenient, the lion-headed one insists on being stricter. While they’re arguing Todd sneaks by them and runs as fast as he can, deeper into the brightly lit expanse. The path on which he travels begins to slope upwards, and eventually becomes a staircase. It becomes evident that each step further up the stair is more and more difficult for Todd, that it’s physically paining him to climb these stairs, but he keeps going.

They dedicate a full episode to this climb; interspersing the climb with scenes they weren’t able to show in previous seasons, Anette and Honey coming to visit Todd in the Mayor’s office, Anette and Todd playing bingo together for the first time, Anette and Todd watching their stories together in the mid afternoon, Anette falling asleep in her chair and Todd gently carrying her to bed. Anette making Todd lemonade in the summer while he’s up on the roof fixing that leak and cleaning out the rain gutters. Eventually Todd reaches the top, and all but collapses, he falls to a knee and for the first time his grip on Anette’s soul slips, and she falls away from him. Landing on the ground. He reaches out for her, but someone gets there first. Another hand reaches out, and helps this elderly woman off the ground, helps her get to her feet. Anette gasps, it’s Charles. The pair of them throw their arms around each other. Anette tells Charles that she’s missed him so much, and she has so much to tell him. Charles nods. Todd watches a soft smile on his face. A delicate hand touches Todd’s shoulder, and pulls him easily to his feet. A figure; we never see exactly what it looks like, leans down, whispering in Todd’s ear that he’s done well, and that Anette will be well taken care of here. That she will spend an eternity with her loved ones. Todd looks back over to her, she’s surrounded by a sea of people. Todd nods, and smiles. The figure behind him tells him that while he has done good in bringing Anette here, this is not his place, and he must leave. Todd nods, he knew this would be the case. Todd gets about six steps down the stairway before he is stopped by someone grabbing his shoulder again. He turns around, and Anette is standing behind him. She gives him a big hug and leads him back up the stairs, he should stay, she says. Get to know the family. Todd tries to tell her that he can’t stay, but she won’t hear it. She leads him up into the crowd of people and begins introducing him to long dead relatives of hers, all of whom give him skeptical looks when she introduces him as her grandson. The mysterious figure appears next to Todd again and tells him once more he must leave, Todd opens his mouth to answer but Anette cuts him off. Nonsense, she tells the figure. IF she’s gonna stay here forever her grandson will be welcome to visit her. She and the figure stare at each other for a moment. The figure eventually sighs and looks away, the figure asks Todd if she’s always like this. Todd just shrugs and smiles, allowing Anette to lead him through a pair of pearly gates, she’s already talking about how much cake they’ll need to feed all of these relatives. 

[captaintinymite]

[gilajames]

P.S. Honey is a Good Dog and gets to go, too.

[kaijufluffs]

[jumpingjacktrash]

the last lines of the show:

demon: you’re not blind here – but you’re not surprised. when…?

anette: oh, toddy, don’t be silly, my biological grandson’s not twelve feet tall and doesn’t scorch the furniture when he sneezes. i’ve known for ages.

demon: then why?

anette: you wouldn’t have stayed if you weren’t lonely too.

demon: you… you don’t have to keep calling me your grandson.

anette: nonsense! adopted children are just as real. now quit sniffling, you silly boy, and let’s go bake a cake. honey, heel!

honey: W̝̽̂̿͂͝Ọ̮̹̲̪̋ͦͅO̸̘͔̬͊F̜̫͙̟͕͖̙̋ͫ͌͗

[drst]

Haven’t seen this in ages.

I want the demon to go after the real Todd though.

[anxietyproblem]

Don’t forget we have an INSTAGRAM

[iamathornydeviltoo]

AND I’M PROUD OF IT

[maerenee930]

i love this 😂 this is 100% me lmao

[measshaw]

This is so me lmao 🤣🤣

[sparklezoi]

I hope I’m not like that, LOL!

[takeyourmascoff]

Oh! This is definitely me all the way 🤣🤣

[whatjhumkaaa]

How can I not reblog this?

[clearly-cynical]

IF IT AIN’T ME

[liberalsarecool]

Imperialism kills.

They stole the land and killed the children.

[naradreamscape]

I want to put this in perspective for anyone else in Canada: this has happened within less than a century. These are 1665 human beings who would have otherwise been elders today. Thousands of people who should have been able to grow up, live their lives, build families, maintain and pass on traditions, and more, gone because of British colonialism.

The Canadian government and Catholic church intentionally destroyed an entire generation of Indigenous people. Please, support your Indigenous friends, and please stop pretending that Canada is better than America when it comes to institutional racism.

[the-moon-loves-the-sea]

When your living space is a mess, don’t ever look around and think you should have managed better. Don’t look at the chaos as all the things you should have done. Look around and think, “Look how exhausted I’ve been. I have been saving my energy to save myself and that is right.” And then ask yourself what is one thing you could do that would make you feel more at home in your space–one thing you can manage right now. If that’s fluffing up your pillows, if that’s putting the cups back in the kitchen, if that’s writing a list of fruit you haven’t had in a while and going out to buy it, if it’s picking up your laundry from the floor and putting it on the chair, if it’s wiping the dust off your crystals–that’s enough. Do what would help you now. It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to be a mess. It’s enough to do what would help and leave the rest.

[tranarchist]

https://medium.com/@katelynburns/im-a-trans-woman-and-i-don-t-know-how-to-do-this-6958817a29b7

[morphodyke-blog]

honestly everyone who’s not a trans woman should reblog this because way way too many of you are still falling for this shit.

[skazkatzry]

This is how conspiracy and hate speech spread.

[midnightwinterhawk]

[ri-writing]

I mean....accurate. 

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Have you heard the good word about the Pembrokeshire walrus yet?

This walrus is fucken lost.

But Wales has lost its collective shit about it. They're generally keeping its location secret to keep people away, but we get updates every day if it's still here, if it's happy, if it's healthy. We think it was in Ireland about two weeks ago, which is interesting, because it is not actually native to Ireland either. Why is it here? No one knows.

It seems to like Pembrokeshire beaches.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I regret to inform you all that the walrus is a delinquent.

In attempting to climb aboard a dinghy in Tenby it capsized it.

It then proceeded to Tenby harbour where it tried to climb aboard a fishing boat.

Incredibly, this is not an April Fools

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Today on English People RUIN Everything, a bunch of English tourists from Essex and Leeds broke covid-19 regulations and travelled to Tenby over Easter to try and see Wally (so named after Where's Wally) and crowded him with jet skis and surfboards and stuff, so he's not been seen since Monday. We don't know yet if he's moved to a secluded spot again, or left Wales entirely.

But, you know, I doubt we were going to have Wally for much longer anyway, since they need to head back home again at some point. Godspeed, Wally. May your fish be ever plentiful.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The English went back home and Wally came back to Tenby! We stan a true Welsh icon, folks.

Some facts about Wally:

She is named after Where’s Wally because she is hard to spot

She was previously in Ireland, and then secluded beaches in Pembrokeshire, but has really taken a shine to Tenby, which is a delightful village

She has a scar on one flipper but it’s long-healed and doesn’t seem to bother her

She is the southern-most walrus ever spotted in the wild!

The current theory as to how she got here is that she fell asleep on an ice floe that drifted south, but she’s not bothered about returning yet

She’s believed to be two years old

Her gender is still a bit of a mystery but we seem to be leaning female

This story on Wales Online claims she’s believed to be male, but then uses female pronouns. It also features a video of some Welsh people chatting about Wally, including a child whose first language is very clearly Welsh and by the end of his part is struggling to think of things to say about the walrus in English.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

WALLY UPDATE!!

The Western Telegraph has opted for male pronouns, and is being very firm that Wally is male, although other news outlets are still all over the place. But what has Wally been up to the past few days?

He is rapidly gaining weight, and is still giving no cause for concern to either of the organisations watching him (which are the RSPCA a bit and Welsh Marine Life Rescue a lot; this is funny though because a walrus is so far outside of the wheelhouse of either of those organisations like we’re all just guessing here, lads)

His delinquent ways have continued - he has now attempted to climb onto multiple buoys (all unsuccessfully) and at one point nearly got a mooring rope stuck around his neck. 

Has he learned from this?

FOLKS HE HAS NOT!

He is now a Fashion Icon. He has surfaced multiple times wearing accessories in his moustache. Mostly this has been shells, but three days ago he upped his fashion game by wearing this starfish:

What an Icon.

The photographer of this picture, one Amy Compton who has been Wally’s official photographer since the start, has been making these delightful Wally masks (inset). They sell for £5, of which £1 goes to Welsh Marine Life Rescue. If you would like your own Wally mask, contact her here!

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

My mother came for a visit today and we checked and Tenby is an hour away from me, so we went for a Lovely Day Trip to Find a Walrus.

Friends, I took the shittest photo there has ever been of a Walrus. But I absolutely did get to see em.

A lifeboat wandered by to check em out at one point, and ey just... sank. Just dropped below the surface like Homer Simpson moving backwards into a hedge. After a while the boat left, and Wally surfaced again.

I can now confirm that ey really, really likes blowing water around like a whale, and also kept eyeing up that buoy next to em.

Also, I had entirely forgotten how comically beautiful Tenby is, but that's an aside

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Time for a Wally Update!!!

It's only a little one, but apparently we're getting Serious about this walrus, lads - the police are now stepping in to say that anyone interfering with Wally (examples of this interference to date: throwing things at him, taking boats and paddle boards out to him, throwing fish overboard to tempt him closer, etc) is committing a criminal offence and we must send evidence of Assholes to them. So that's fun!

Meanwhile, the tense stand-off between the RNLI and Wally continues over Who Gets To Use The Lifeboat Slipway. Here is a picture of Wally in full delinquent mode.

What a public menace.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Time for the weekly Wally news!

Here is the problem with 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato using the slipway of a lifeboat station as a spa bed: sometimes, canoeists get in trouble near Stackpole and need rescuing and then some underwhelmed Welsh coast guard is going to have to try to chase said predatory sea potato off the slipway so they can launch the boat.

Here is the problem with that scenario: an underwhelmed Welsh coast guard basically views 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato as a sort of ornery gelatinous cow, and so will try to do this with, and I am not making this up, a broom. But a ton of overgrown seal has no fear of brooms, so the attempt is not entirely successful under time-sensitive conditions while canoeists are actively drowning 10 miles away.

Solution? An air horn.

Which did work long enough to get the boat out, and then Wally clambered back aboard barely minutes later and fell asleep again. So trick learned, I guess.

Anyway, since I've apparently become Tumblr's primary Wally journalist, I thought I'd go for a cheeky visit again today so I could report on their condition FIRST HAND (you're all welcome, I have incredible integrity). Today I tried using a binocular over my phone camera with was extremely stressful and moderately successful - and I have two pieces of NEWS.

Story the First

Two dinghies with divers aboard suddenly turned up and sailed right up to them. There are Welsh Marine Life Rescue volunteers everywhere, and one woman immediately yelled "YOU ARE TOO CLOSE. MOVE AWAY."

Everyone on the cliff went silent. The boats went closer.

"YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW," yelled the beachmaster. "MOVE AWAY."

Tumblrs, they did not.

"CAN YOU HEAR ME?" she yelled. "MOVE AWAY."

At which point, the whole fucken cliff starts joining in, because Welsh people are Like That.

"Move away!"

"Leave 'im alone, mun!"

"Move away, butt, what you doing!"

"He's the size of an 'orse, bois, can't you see 'im from here?!"

"Bloody move you fucks, you'll scare 'im away again!"

(That last one was, I swear, an eighty year old woman.)

The boats, suddenly being yelled at by a whole cliff of Welsh people, sailed away. Later, we followed the beachmaster who was now on a mission, and found her with a couple of community police officers ripping the shit out of the divers. It was very satisfying.

Story the Second

I mentioned my binocular and phone trick. It came in handy. At first it gave me some very satisfying shots for a distance picture on a phone camera:

But, you know, whatever.

But THEN I got this picture:

which I got 0.256778 seconds before that majestic Arctic beast of purest beautiful nature untamed FELL OFF THE SIDE OF THE SLIPWAY LIKE A CAT THAT GOT TOO CLOSE TO A TABLE EDGE

Wally was fine, the seagull to the right was traumatised.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

This is not an update as such but my friend Chris who I took with me to get the scoop on Wally on Sunday had a real camera with him, and he has produced a WAY better photo than I did, and I want you all to see Just How Louche a Walrus is capable of looking:

Handsome boi

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Okay, so this post went from 24,000 notes to 40,000 overnight, and I am getting a lot of important scientific queries about Wally! So I shall call upon my expertise as a skilled journalist of huge integrity and also a genuine, actual lecturer in environmental science to answer them all as best I can. I shall also use pictures.

1. When did this happen?

I have included many links in this thread to news articles on Wally, each of which is dated, so you can check those for accurate dates; but, xe turned up in Ireland in March 2021, and then made hir way to Pembrokeshire, Wales end of March. Xe reached Tenby a week or so later in April, and now refuses to leave. As of this update (6th May, 2021) xe’s still there and chillin’ - my friend Chris’ louche photo there was taken on Sunday the 2nd May. 

I shall date all updates from now on. Apologies for this uncharacteristic lapse in my journalistic performance. I have let Wally down.

2. “Oh my god do you guys call Waldo Wally?!??”

Folks!! Folks so many of you are doing this!!! But here’s the thing!!!

Where’s Wally is a British series and that’s the original name!!! It has been translated and regionalised around the world, and the name was changed in 28 of them!! A sizeable number don’t even sound like ‘Wally’!!! In France he’s Charlie! In Lithuania he’s Jonas! In Arabic versions he’s Fuḍūlī!!!

Yet only one nationality is repeatedly reacting with astonishment while assuming theirs is the one true original version!!! Guess which one!!! You have to stop!!! Especially the few who have responded with out and out swearing and aggression when I’ve explained!!! THIS POST IS ABOUT A WALRUS!!!!

3. Is Wally okay in Wales? Does xe need to leave/be moved?

Xe’s currently fine - an Arctic walrus can handle water temperatures of up to 15 degrees celsius, which West Wales is certainly currently accommodating. Xe was also distressingly underweight when first spotted fresh off the ice floe, but we’ve been monitoring hir health and xe’s roughly doubled hir bodyweight and is very healthy. I asked the fishmonger in Tenby if xe’s affecting the catch and the nice man said no and sold me a lemon sole for my mam. So right now, Wally is doing great, all needs met, with no real clashes with other stakeholders (i.e. fishers and that) except for, you know, the one (i.e. the lifeboat people).

However, high summer in Wales is warm enough that the sea will top the temperature threshold. So, we’re expecting Wally to leave by hirself in a month or so, if xe doesn’t decide to move sooner. Whether xe decides to swim all the way back home, or xe starts just moving north along the western coast and next turns up in the Isle of Mann or Scotland to continue hir holiday of the Celtic Ring remains to be seen. But, xe’ll do it hirself eventually, so it’s down to us to just keep hir happy and healthy for as long as xe chooses to stay.

4. I think Wally is female!

Yeah, maybe

5. I think Wally is male!

Very possibly

6. I think walruses have no concept of gender!

Almost definitely

7. What’s Walrus in Welsh?

They’re not native, so the Cymricisation “walrws” is getting a lot of use - but, Welsh is nothing if not poetic, so in official literature it’s “morfarch”, which means “sea stallion” or “sea knight” depending on your dialect.

8. Did they really use a broom and an airhorn on Wally?!

Here is a forlorn coast guard attempting to shift hir with a broom:

And here is the same coastguard attempting to shift hir with an airhorn:

9. I cannot believe this walrus is a delinquent!!!

Very well. Here is Wally’s criminal case file, including photographic evidence of two boarded boats and hir mugshot:

[mysharona1987]

This is why fat shaming can have tragic consequences.

[solvatochrome]

did some tweets today didnt i

[holyfunnyhistoryherring]

[ID: a Twitter thread by tee^tee @indicaura "'everyone can already tell you're fat so wear/do whatever the hell you want' is such a groundbreaking and life-changing sentiment to actually internalize that I think skinny people don't quite understand. Everything I did as a teenager was to try to convince people I wasn't fat

It is all-consuming. And utterly pointless. You can exhaust yourself trying to wear only flattering clothes, take up as little space as possible, squeeze into that expensive shapewear, take selfies at the right angle. But nothing makes you less fat than you already are that day

We are silently expected to do all this shit to make ourselves palatable. For people who will continue to hate us and our bodies either way. The moment in my life that i gave up on trying to cater to people who do not and will never respect me, i began to actually respect myself

Take up space. Wear clothes that are comfortable and fun instead of flattering. Hop on top, bitch, cuz they already know you're fat and there is no point living in their pretend world where you'll get treated like a human if only you put on a good enough show of hating yourself

It will only ever kill you from the inside out and you will never earn their approval. You either fail and set yourself up for further cruelty, or you 'succeed' and have to desperately look for ways to escalate, perform better, in order to keep earning that useless approval

I say it like it's nothing now, but even calling myself fat online for the first time was like admitting defeat over the only battle that mattered. But it was a fucking victory. Yes. Yes, you've noticed, you got me! I'm fat! And yes, you will fucking treat me with respect anyway.

Cunts"

End ID.]

[valtsv]

i would be That Guy who throws a rock into the deep dark spooky water with bad vibes that everyone says not to disturb. and yeah obviously i'd die for it but at least i'd die doing what i loved: throwing rocks and causing problems on purpose

[i-lionheart]

[eretzyisrael]

Italian Doctors Fooled Nazis by Inventing This Fake Disease

In 1943, a team of ingenious Italian doctors invented a deadly, contagious virus called Syndrome K to protect Jews from annihilation. On October 16 of that year, as Nazis closed in to liquidate Rome’s Jewish ghetto, many runaways hid in the 450-year-old Fatebenefratelli Hospital. There, anti-Fascist doctors including Adriano Ossicini, Vittorio Sacerdoti and Giovanni Borromeo created a gruesome, imaginary disease.

“Syndrome K was put on patient papers to indicate that the sick person wasn’t sick at all, but Jewish” and in need of protection, Ossicini told Italian newspaper La Stampa last year. The “K” stood for Albert Kesselring and Herbert Kappler — two ruthless Nazi commanders.

The doctors instructed “patients” to cough very loudly and told Nazis that the disease was extremely dangerous, disfiguring and molto contagioso. Soldiers were so alarmed by the list of symptoms and incessant coughing that they left without inspecting the patients. It’s estimated that a few dozen lives were saved by this brilliant scheme.

The doctors were later honored for their heroic actions, and Fatebenefratelli Hospital was declared a “House of Life” by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.

The Jewniverse

[the-meme-monarch]

I am so absolutely pissed off that i never learned this in school 

[garbage-empress]

dr. sacerdoto, borromeo & osscini: you can’t take these jews they got symptoms syndrome.

jews: oh no, oh g-d… our-our SYMPTOMS!

nazis: oh fuck

[penny-anna]

Bilbo was declared dead while he was away in the Hobbit (and had to do a bunch of paperwork to get declared alive again) but there’s no indication he was formally declared dead after leaving the Shire, even though most people assumed he had died.

Therefore I posit: having a missing person declared dead in the Shire requires the consent of their next of kin. Whoever Bilbo’s next of kin was at the time of the Hobbit (possibly Otho? I’m not sure) had him declared dead at the first opportunity but Frodo refused to ever do it.

Frodo had anxious hobbit bureaucrats knocking on his door every couple of years like ‘Mr Baggins… blease… it’s been 10 years… he was eleventy-one… can we fill out his death certificate yet’ and Frodo was like ‘absolutely not’.

Early on he genuinely couldn’t bring himself too but after a while it was more that he enjoyed irritating the local magistrate’s office than anything else.

[61below]

I raise you: the hobbitish bureaucracy has no means to re-declare someone dead. They had no precedent to declare someone who was once-dead dead again. They would need the Thain, the Mayor, and the Master of Buckland to agree to changing the statute, and since the Thain and the Master are too amused by the whole henclucking that they haven’t gotten round to it just yet.

[telltalelily]

I’m upping the stakes with: last time Bilbo was declared dead when he was, in fact, not dead, they removed the law stating that you can have someone declared dead without a body, so when Bilbo left (happily aware of this legal loophole and snickering) he could never become legally dead again.

[penny-anna]

I am loving the implication here that Bilbo can literally never die in the eyes of the law. He’d love that.

[apathetic-revenant]

a hobbit parent telling their kids the story of Mad Baggins and being like “thanks to a loophole in hobbit law he’s technically still alive today”

a hobbit child misinterprets this and lies awake at night worrying that Mad Baggins is still out there and will appear in their room without warning 

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Alternatively: the laws for declaring somebody dead if they’re missing for long enough are still in place, but the magistrates are just refusing to enforce them in this particular case.

After all, last time they declared Bilbo Baggins dead— which involved filling out all the paperwork necessary to declare somebody dead without a body— he had the rudeness to show up again, forcing them to do a lot more paperwork, and this time with an indignant Bilbo having a go at them while they did it.

As a result, the magistrates have decided that they’re not going to declare Bilbo Baggins dead a second time unless they have a body, a coroners reprt explaining the cause of death, and a three day wake to make sure that he doesn’t get up and walk away again.

Centuries later, hobbit parents tell their children that Mad Baggins is forever gone from the shire— at least until the day when somebody is stupid enough to declare him legally dead, at which point legend states that he will immediately come marching back, demanding an explanation.