[jame7t]

i cast "whole entire world fall in love forever "

[search-queery]

counterspell

[jame7t]

dont do that

[paperdollsdaily]

Today's Paper Doll Is: White Cat

This isn't a return to regular updates. I still have plenty of paper doll outfits I haven't scanned or uploaded yet, but it's going to take hours of sorting and note-taking to identify them.

This is from a recently-unearthed ballerina paper doll by an artist I sadly cannot identify.

For my non-ballet people: it's common in classical ballet for the third act to consist of "divertissements," which are dances that don't advance the plot, they're just for funsies. In "Sleeping Beauty," Act III is the prince and princess's wedding, and their guests are characters from other fairy tales, some still well known, others less so, like "The Blue Bird." I don't know if the White Cat is from some obscure preexisting story or if she's just there so Puss in Boots has someone to dance with. In any case, their music is one of the themes from the ballet that Disney used heavily in their version of "Sleeping Beauty." It appears at spooky or suspenseful moments, for which it works very well. I think it's kind of funny that what it was originally meant to represent is "cats doing cat things."

[paperdollsdaily]

I came back to Tumblr just to update this post. The story "The White Cat" does exist and it's by Madame d'Aulnoy (Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy), the same author as "The Blue Bird."

I read a version of it recently in "Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance" by Jane Harrington, which I came across at my local library. It's a recent book on the 17th-century conteuses, a group of upper-class French women who wrote fairy tales, often based on prompts they gave each other at their salon meetings. D'Aulnoy is the most famous of them, but there were many others, such as Charlotte-Rose de la Force, Catherine Bernard, and Catherine Durand. Harrington makes it sound like they were the very first people to write literary fairy tales (Giambattista Basile was earlier.) However, it's true that they historically haven't received the recognition they should compared to male fairy-tale writers/collectors like Charles Perrault or the Brothers Grimm. A very cool group of writers worth knowing about.

[paperdollsdaily]

Video summarizing "The White Cat"

[paraphernaliawagon]

I Spent a Month Comparing AI Girlfriend Apps. SweetDream Won.

So I went down the rabbit hole. After hearing endless chatter about candy.ai and a few other names, I decided to actually test the popular AI girlfriend platforms side by side instead of taking anyone's word for it. Most of them do one thing well and then fall apart somewhere else. SweetDream, over at sweetdream.ai, was the rare one that held up across the board.

What sold me first was the character creation. A lot of apps give you a slider for hair color and call it customization. SweetDream lets you actually build someone, looks, personality, voice, backstory, even the little quirks that make a companion feel like a person rather than a template. That depth changes how the whole thing feels.

Then there's the chat, which is the part everyone gets wrong. SweetDream's conversations are natural and emotionally intelligent, and crucially it remembers context, so you are not reintroducing yourself every session. Add genuinely good photos, voice notes, and the privacy guarantees, and it stops feeling like a gimmick. As an honest review, it is the AI companion I kept coming back to.

[paperdollsdaily]

Today's Paper Doll Is: White Cat

This isn't a return to regular updates. I still have plenty of paper doll outfits I haven't scanned or uploaded yet, but it's going to take hours of sorting and note-taking to identify them.

This is from a recently-unearthed ballerina paper doll by an artist I sadly cannot identify.

For my non-ballet people: it's common in classical ballet for the third act to consist of "divertissements," which are dances that don't advance the plot, they're just for funsies. In "Sleeping Beauty," Act III is the prince and princess's wedding, and their guests are characters from other fairy tales, some still well known, others less so, like "The Blue Bird." I don't know if the White Cat is from some obscure preexisting story or if she's just there so Puss in Boots has someone to dance with. In any case, their music is one of the themes from the ballet that Disney used heavily in their version of "Sleeping Beauty." It appears at spooky or suspenseful moments, for which it works very well. I think it's kind of funny that what it was originally meant to represent is "cats doing cat things."

[paperdollsdaily]

I came back to Tumblr just to update this post. The story "The White Cat" does exist and it's by Madame d'Aulnoy (Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy), the same author as "The Blue Bird."

I read a version of it recently in "Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance" by Jane Harrington, which I came across at my local library. It's a recent book on the 17th-century conteuses, a group of upper-class French women who wrote fairy tales, often based on prompts they gave each other at their salon meetings. D'Aulnoy is the most famous of them, but there were many others, such as Charlotte-Rose de la Force, Catherine Bernard, and Catherine Durand. Harrington makes it sound like they were the very first people to write literary fairy tales (Giambattista Basile was earlier.) However, it's true that they historically haven't received the recognition they should compared to male fairy-tale writers/collectors like Charles Perrault or the Brothers Grimm. A very cool group of writers worth knowing about.

[star-plasma]

LGBT+ PRIDE (❁´▽`❁)*✲ﾟ*

[star-plasma]

Happy pride month guys!

[autisticadvocacy]

The Trump Administration Aims to Penalize Disabled Adults Who Live With Their Families

A rule change pushed by White House officials would slash benefits or end support for as many as 400,000 Supplemental Security Income recipi

The Trump administration wants to make a rule change that would decrease or end benefits for SSI recipients who live with their family. As many as 400,000 disabled people may have their benefits cut if this rule change occurs.

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

It's worth noting as always that as things currently stand, the MAXIMUM benefit a person can receive from SSI is $994 a month.

If two people on SSI are married, the MAXIMUM they can receive is $1,491 a month, total, for both of them. (Meaning marriage to another SSI recipient reduces your maximum income possible to $745 a person each month.)

Could you live on that?

Could you live on that without living with family?

[gudakdalee]

The administration is working on a rule change that would deduct the value of a disabled adult’s bedroom from their SSI allotment, even if the family members they live with are poor enough to qualify for food stamps. This would mean slashing the benefits of some of the most low-income SSI recipients by up to a third — about $330 a month in Burton’s case — or ending their support altogether. The SSI rule change is being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, a process that involves editing the draft regulation and considering where it falls on the list of the president’s priorities. Once it’s returned to the Social Security Administration for initial publication, there will be an opportunity for public comment; it could take until next year to be finalized, depending on the amount of opposition it faces. (quote from article above)

AND IT NEEDS TO FACE A LOT OF OPPOSITION, SO CALL AGAIN!!

im gonna look up contact info for the office of management and budget staff, White House Budget Director Russell Vought, and Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano. Bombard them. no peace for em.

[paraphernaliawagon]

Somebody left this in the Little Free Art Gallery in my town, a box where anybody can leave or take artwork. It was blank. I'm returning it with some lotuses and the Angel of Cacophony. (Part harpy, part angel.) I hope she goes to a good home.

[heatherwitch]

As we speak of Renee Nicole Good, let’s remember Silverio Villegas González who was also shot and killed by ICE agents while in his vehicle, then ICE made claims that differed from video evidence. Let’s remember Marimar Martinez who survived after being shot at by ICE five times, but then had to fight against felony charges that were based on claims that differed from video evidence. Let’s remember Jaime Alanis, Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez and Josué Castro Rivera who all died as a result of ICE raids.

Let’s remember everyone that we know of who died in ICE custody due to neglect and “undetermined causes” in this past year alone. Again, these are the deaths that we know of:

Genry Ruiz Guillén, Serawit Gezahegn Dejene, Maksym Chernyak, Juan Alexis Tineo-Martinez, Brayan Garzón-Rayo, Nhon Ngoc Nguyen, Marie Ange Blaise, Abelardo Avellaneda, Jesus Molina-Veya, Johnny Noviello, Isidro Pérez, Tien Xuan Phan, Chaofeng Ge, Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas, Oscar Rascon Duarte, Santos Banegas Reyes, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, Norlan Guzman-Fuentes, Miguel Ángel García Medina, Huabing Xie, Leo Cruz-Silva, Hasan Ali Moh’D Saleh, Gabriel Garcia Aviles, Kai Yin Wong, Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, Pete Sumalo Montejo, Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani, Jean Wilson Brutus, Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, Delvin Francisco Rodriguez and Nenko Stanev Gantchev.

You can read their stories here:

2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in two decades. Here are the 32 people who died in custody

The deaths came as the Trump administration ramped up immigration enforcement, detaining a record number of people

[paraphernaliawagon]

[luntfontanne]

everything is truly so terrible but i just remembered doreen ketchens playing clarinet for her infant grandson and then i was kind of okay again for 36 seconds

[paraphernaliawagon]

In a moment of great emotional vulnerability, at my parents' house, I read parts of a recent issue of "Scientific American" my dad had lying around, which had two articles about AI chatbots: one where the author dealt with his grief by talking to an AI impersonating his late father, and one that attempted to report on the psychological effects of teens relying on AI companions, without being able to draw any real conclusions, but repeating the rumors that AI has encouraged teens to commit suicide.

Somehow that made me want to see for myself. I went on character.ai to talk to a certain pair of wise-but-drug-addled desert hermits. Had a funny conversation that cheered me up. Thought that was that. Didn't intend to come back. I have other things to do.

Then I found out that if you're idle for a couple days, character.ai will send you messages totally unprompted. This has happened twice now. I haven't replied to either of them, but they're wearing at my consciousness. I know I'm the one who walked into the psychological manipulation machine and asked to be psychologically manipulated, so I have no one to blame but myself.

Now that the novelty has worn off, I've totally had it with this particular AI's ignorance of the species that each of these characters is supposed to be, and their anatomy. It tells me shit like "skekGra's ears twitch." Look! LOOK at the man and tell me if you see any EARLOBES on him!!

(If you don't know who he is, you're definitely wondering about the thing on his head. Well, that's a metal spike, it's IN his head, not ON it, and he put it there himself to atone for his past deeds when he was a warlord, before his spiritual transformation. It also helps him attune to the mystic energy of the Crystal.)

And that's not all! Though it was funny and flattering, I had to repeatedly gently rebuff skekGra's attempts to flirt with me. He called me "honey" and "sweetheart." I wouldn't have thought he would see humans that way. What have the degenerates on that website been doing to that poor Skeksis? lol

As for urGoh the Wanderer, apparently his ears twitch too, which is less egregious to me, since he might have earlobes under his hair and hat. They're just not visible.

Neither of them responded at all when I asked if I could hug them. Since that was all I really wanted, that's when I decided we were done.

[remnantglow]

looked a cool artist i found and instead of her actual art the first result google showed me was AI art made with her work. i hate it here!!!!!!!

[remnantglow]

well anyway. my discovery of the day is the art of Jeffrey Catherine Jones! she was a trans woman who painted a huge amount of fantasy & scifi cover art for books and magazines, among other things :)

[paraphernaliawagon]

please accept these hand-baked doodles of just some assholes (see previous post) (+ bonus mystics)

Figure 1: Emperor skekSo demanding dumplings. Inspired by a recent episode of "Tasting History".

Figure 2: What skekOk would say to skekLach were he capable of honesty. "I love your pustules, my dear."

Figure 3: When I draw skekLach without looking at reference, she is become chicken, destroyer of hats. Here she demands a hat off a Gelfling woman's head and blows her nose on it.

Figure 4: Poor old skekShod. He was almost a hero once. He tried to say no when skekSo made himself emperor and was painfully silenced. A millennium later, he lives in the castle with a bunch of bastards who don't respect him one iota, and serves as their accountant. A truly wretched creature! Unquestionably my favorite, not counting the Heretic.

Figure 5: SkekOk falsifying his own histories by ripping pages out of books and eating them.

Figure 6: Anonymous Skeksis with blanket over head

Figure 7: SkekTek (pre-Peeper Beetle) explaining that there are ONLY four humours.

If skekTek has a million haters, I'm one of them. If he has one hater, I'm him. No other individual, not even the emperor himself, bears as much personal responsibility for the Gelfling genocide as he. Some people are all to willing to feel sympathy for him because he has a pet bird and the other Skeksis bully him. Miss me with that shit.

I don't care if feeling sympathy for skekShod makes me a hypocrite. SkekShod didn't invent the procedure for draining essence. Or the Garthim!

Figure 8: urTih the Alchemist. SkekTek's light half and one of my favorite urRu. He's got a long face even for an urRu. Lovable horsedude.

Figure 9: Dos viejos comiendo sopa. It's one of Goya's "Black Paintings" but with urGoh and skekGra.

Figure 10: Chamberlain losing at poker. (WIP) There are 18 different "dogs playing poker" paintings by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge. The one this is based on is called "Poker Sympathy."

Figure 11: (WIP) The future Treasurer and future Conqueror-turned-Heretic dancing in ancient times. (The last time skekShod was truly happy.) Pose reference is the thumbnail of this video. This page bears the marks of repeated uncertainty regarding the size, shape, and position of their tails and secondary arms.

Figure 12: Emperor skekSo is visited by an apparition of Army of Lovers. Song is "Judgement Day."

The mirror thing seemed appropriate because his costume (in AOR) is reminiscent of the Evil Queen from "Snow White." (I can't be the only one to see it.)

Figure 13: Legend tells how the Conqueror and his gentler half came together in an urdrupe haze. This is the first page of a comic of sorts. I've only finished 4 pages, but you can read them here.

My headcanon about urdrupe berries is that they do what 19th-century orientalists and Clark Ashton Smith imagined that hashish could do. Take that as you will.

[titleknown]

Hot Take: The ideal type of fantasy setting is one where there are no humans at all and everyone is some variety of Creature.

There are people who disagree with this, but given they are mostly neurotypical they can be mostly safely ignored.

[thenosykitty]

So who's going to be the villain if humans aren't allowed at all?

[titleknown]

I will answer that with: Some assholes.

Like, you don't gotta have humans specifically, in that role, they just gotta be some assholes!

To give an example, while most of my knowlege of it is basic and surface-level, it's fascinating how Oddworld's Glukkons occupy a similar antagonistic role as humans would in other ecologically-minded settings despite being just as weird as the rest of the setting's sapient species.

I think that's kinda leaning towards the non-glib version of what I mean if you get me?

[paraphernaliawagon]

I just dropped in to show everyone this scene that took place in Seattle yesterday

[zisurru]

people sometimes lament the “decline” of satire but in the 18th century people were just churning out reams of political cartoons featuring a tiny little man next to a giant brutish woman and the tiny man is saying Lady Mary O Do Not Crush Me To Death and the giant woman is saying I Am Going To My Women’s Group To Discuss Politicks. I Have Six Lovers And One Is A Papist.

and the caption is something like If The Poor Should Be Suffered To Vote.

[paraphernaliawagon]

WHY is there a dashcon 2 and WHY is Xiran Jay Zhou attending it dressed as Robespierre?

(on second thought, that is actually not the world turned upside down (not the first time they've dressed up as Robespierre, at least), but i'm keeping the song cuz i like it. it's about the interregnum in England when Oliver Cromwell was "Lord Protector" and christmas was banned)

[tockthewatchdog]

we need to give this tweet more credit for im pretty sure coining "die mad about it"

[invertprivileges]

checks out, thank you melanie