Inqui; here is my head: it is strange and wonderful

Here we go again. Previously @thecircusofme (so kind of this place to deny me access to a blog of 10 years). I like interesting things, and I'm a morbid delight. @inqui on AO3

[emilysidhe]

What we really need is an adaptation of the original 1740 The Beauty and the Beast

So were you aware that the The Beauty and the Beast story we all know is a heavily abridged and rewritten version of a much longer novella by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve?  And that a lot of the plot holes existing in the current versions exist because the 1756 rewrite cut out the second half of the novella, which consisted entirely of the elaborate backstory that explains all the weird shit that happened before?  And that the elaborate backstory is presented in a way that’s kind of boring because the novel had only just been invented in 1740 and no one knew how they worked yet, but contains a bazillion awesome ideas that beg for a modern retelling?  And that you are probably not aware that the modern world needs this story like air but the modern world absolutely needs this story like air?  Allow me to explain:

The totally awesome elaborate backstory that explains Beauty and the Beast

Once upon a time there was a king, a queen, and their only son

But while the prince was still in his infancy, in a neat reversal of how these fairy tales usually go, the king tragically died, leaving his wife to act as Regent until their son reaches maturity

Unfortunately, the rulers of all the lands surrounding them go, “Hmm, the kingdom is ruled by a woman now, it must be weak, time for an invasion!”

And the Queen goes, “Well, if I let some general fight all these battles for me, he’ll totally amass enough fame and power to make a bid for the throne; if I want to protect my son’s crown, I have no choice but to take up arms and lead the troops myself!”

(Btw, I want to stress that this woman is not Eowyn or Boudica and nothing in the way her story is presented suggests that she had any interest martial exploits before or in any way came to enjoy them during these battles.  This is a perfectly ordinary court lady who would much rather be embroidering altar covers for the royal chapel and playing with her child until necessity made her go, “Oh no, this sucks, I guess I have to become a Warrior Queen now” and she just happened to kick ass at it anyway.)

And the Queen totally kicked ass, but the whole “twice as good for half the credit” thing meant that no matter how many battles she won, potential enemies refused to take her and her army seriously until she had defeated them so no sooner would she fend off one invasion than another one would pop up on a different border.

So she spent the majority of her young son’s life away from the castle leading armies, but it was OK because she left him in the care of her two best friends, who just happen to be fairies!  This was an awesome idea because a) fairies have magic, and therefore are like the best people to protect the prince from any threats and b) fairies consider themselves to be so above humanity that the lowest fairy outranks the highest mortal, so they’d have no interest in taking a human throne.  Good thing they were both good fairies instead of one good and one evil one!

(Spoiler:  they were not both good fairies.)

So the two fairies basically take turns raising the prince until he’s old enough to rule.  And on the eve of his twenty-first birthday, the evil older one comes into the prince’s bedroom.

“So listen, kid.  You’re about to become king, your mother’s on her way home from the war to see you crowned, and I have a third piece of good news for you!  You see, I’ve actually been spending so much time here lately because Fairyland’s become a bit too hot to hold me for reasons totally not related to me being secretly evil.  And if I have to hang in the human world, I might as well reside in the upper echelons of it, so even though as a powerful fairy I completely eclipse your puny human status in a staggeringly unimaginable way, since you’re about to be king and since my premonition that I should stick this whole guardianship thing out because you would be hot one day has totally proved accurate (go me), I will graciously lower myself to allowing you to marry me.  Please feel free to grovel at my feet in gratitude.  (Btw, we can totally start the wedding night now, we’ll tell your mother about it when she arrives tomorrow.)”

Keep reading

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

beatrice from much ado would make such a good medieval damsel one meets on a quest. beautiful and lovely. quite witty. the only thing she asks of you is you immediately commit for her an act of extreme violence

[sweetcardamom]

Ah, the simple joys of maidenhood!

[yeoldenews]

Today’s highlights in my ongoing project to read through and transcribe the letters of Rachel (a wealthy Victorian girl at boarding school on the East Coast in the 1890s) include…

Rachel’s cousin Will and his Yale roommate Allen both have the measles. Rachel shows limited sympathy (”Poor boy!”), before immediately mocking them and calling them “childish” for getting a disease only little kids get.

Rachel and her roommate “B” (It stands for Bertha!) attempted to steal a sign (what sort idk) from a fair they went to but found they “were carefully guarded”. She wishes Will could have been there to help.

Will has a crush on a girl named Jenny, who Rachel knows, and is constantly asking Rachel if Jenny has mentioned him.

“B” often sits next to Rachel as she writes and suggests things to add to the letter or just generally distracts her.

Will and Jack, who are brothers, don’t write to each other. They write to Rachel and tell her to write to the other and pass on a message for them. Rachel keeps asking why they do this, but goes along with it anyways.

Rachel always explains why there are ink blots or areas of sloppy writing in her letters. Explanations so far include such classics as: the dinner bell just rang, it’s after lights-out and I’m writing this in the dark, “B” is shaking my arm, “B” is kissing me, this pen is broken, the postman is almost here, and there was a bee.

For her 18th birthday Rachel received: a new Kodak camera, eighteen white rosebuds, silver manicure scissors, a pair of shell side combs, a silver pencil, and a vase of pink roses. However her favorite present was from her father who wrote to say she could just buy her own present and he would pay for it.

Rachel is always mentioning the pictures she takes with her Kodak. I wish I knew what happened to them. 

In addition to Calvé, Marlowe and Sothern, Rachel has now also gone to see performances by Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, John Philip Sousa, Ignacy Jan Paderewski (playing the piano, not governing Poland), and freaking Sarah Bernhardt! 

Rachel likes to put question marks in the middle of sentences to denote sarcasm; i.e. “I am very ? sorry for you.” and “Men were not excluded and we had the pleasure ? of meeting several.”

Your 1890s slang word of the day: “squelch” (verb) - to be lectured or punished for something. Example: “I expect to be squelched unmercifully by mama and papa.”  Can also be used as a noun as in: “This term we have had nothing but squelches.”

[yeoldenews]

“Rachel is always mentioning the pictures she takes with her Kodak. I wish I knew what happened to them.”

Update: It took eight years, dozens of emails, an unbelievably kind invitation from Rachel’s granddaughter (also named Rachel) and 16 hours of travel but…

[my18thcenturysource]

OH MY GOD.

WHAT A DEVELOPMENT!

[beggars-opera]

MA'AM??? YOU DROPPED YOUR CROWN???

[survivablyso]

this is AMAZING

[imyourbadjew]

Once the war ends and the dust clears, it will be clear that palestinianism has caused unimaginable damage to western liberal democracies, while actually having very little impact on what goes on in Israel and Palestine

[jester-nonconforming]

People still tend to lump JK Rowling in with the category of ~problematic artists~ and I need everyone to understand that is not the problem with her. She is not comparable to anyone who wrote a piece of fiction you hate, or someone who made rude comments in 2015 and has since learned better.

She is far more like Elon Musk. She is a radicalized person with an extreme amount of social and financial power, and for YEARS she has been using that power to try to influence her government into hurting vulnerable people, on purpose. And she has succeeded. THAT is the problem with her, and THAT is why spending money on her books is so dangerous, not because her books aged badly.

Critiquing her work is fine, of course (I personally was never a fan so I really don’t care) but you NEED to understand that fiction is not the main issue here. And I truly think acting like she’s the same as the rest of any giant list of ~problematic creators of the week~ waters down how dangerous she is.

[decadent-trans-girl]

[maimonideznuts]

Literally had a friend say "I'm going to go to do the whole Potter World experience at Warner Bros on my holiday, but it's ok because I'll donate to a trans charity too."

Girl, you're reinventing Catholic Indulgences... You could just go to any other amusement park experience, you could even still go to Warner Bros and not do Harry Potter shit and not buy the Harry Potter merch.

I promise there are better books and movies, you can invest in new fandoms and build new nostalgia.

Like, a trans woman was a bridesmaid for your lesbian wedding, which was very nice and everyone looked beautiful... But it doesn't mean much if you're paying for anti trans lobbying on the side because you won't let go of a childhood book.

[uwillneverknowwho]

Favorite Friends to Lovers trope is Person Who Just Discovered Their Crush And Is Freaking Out Full Force x Person Who Has Been Deeply In Love And Dealing With It For Years And Therefore Not Showing Any Signs Of Having A Crush Whatsoever. The person who's Just Realized is looking for any signs that their crush is reciprocated and they're getting NOTHING. The other person is sooo nonchalant. But really it's because being in love with this person is like breathing at that point. It just goes so hard

[winterinhimring]

Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop pretending that anything can make people "subhuman". Evil is human. People who do evil are human. They do not stop being human because you disagree with them. They do not stop being human because they do despicable and terrible things. They are human, just like you. You are human, just like them.

Oh, and people don't stop being human because of what they believe, either. No matter how much you disagree with them.

Stop looking for people to kill to solve your problems.

[reasonsforhope]

Arizona Suburb Turned into Mediterranean-style Walking Town Where Temperatures Stay Low - Good News Network

A planned community in Arizona has used time-honored Mediterranean strategies to keep temperatures down and attitudes high. Western civiliza

"A planned community in Arizona has used time-honored Mediterranean strategies to keep temperatures down and attitudes high.

Western civilization has grown remarkably climate conscious over the last 20 years, but not when it comes to building, civic planning, and especially zoning. Perhaps the interiors of buildings are becoming more climate adapted, and in some cases the facades as well, but in a way that’s a little like inventing a freezer designed to keep ice cream frozen while sitting next to a fire.

Wooden or concrete boxes arranged side-by-side across leveled ground with sprawling, largely treeless gardens and concrete sidewalks alongside wide, blacktop roads is simply a culture of construction that has to be abandoned if living in a world of 2°C or higher annual temperatures [or, hopefully, less than that, but nonetheless likely over 1.5°C] is to be tolerable.

Fortunately for Arizonans, change may have finally arrived in the form of a carless, planned community that looks and feels like a Greek island village.

In the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, Culdesac has arisen as a 17-acre mixed-use neighborhood from the ground up to stay cool and local, taking the concept of the 15-minute city, where anything a resident might need is only 15 minutes away, and putting a Mediterranean spin on it.

Buildings are tall, thick, and totally white. The residential areas look like they were built atop of the ashes of the Phoenix zoning code burnt in effigy. Crammed together, they create narrow streets and alleys that are almost constantly shaded, through which wind is channeled and accelerated in passing.

Windows open towards each other, allowing wind that enters one building to exit into another, while the total lack of asphalt means that the ground temperatures are a staggering 50-60°F lower than pavements beyond the limits of Culdesac.

No privately-owned cars are allowed to enter the neighborhood, in which electric bikes, robotic mini taxis, and light rail shuttle people around town, to downtown Phoenix, or out to the airport.

The street life is lively—there are no cars to bisect movement between the 21 different businesses and eateries, among which is a James Beard Award-winning Mexican restaurant, DIY ceramic business, and some stores run out of apartments—a big no-no under Phoenix zoning laws.

“Once you pull the cars out,” Architect Daniel Parolek who designed Culdesac, told BBC, “there’s so much more opportunity to make a vibrant, thriving community.”

His inspiration was sun-soaked locales like Italy, Greece, and Croatia, where town centers were designed before the automobile and before air conditioning.

Technically speaking, the entire Culdesac neighborhood is one apartment complex, but the paseos, or little alleyways, open up into plazas of open space exactly liked one would expect in a little village in the Cyclades.

Because no one has to jump in a car to get from place to place, people run into each other, sparking conversations, relations, and breaking through the counterintuitive phenomenon of big city loneliness, which in Phoenix hits particularly hard.

“Culdesac Tempe has shown that people do want to live car-free in the US, even in a metro area like Phoenix that’s often seen as the poster child for car dependency,” says Erin Boyd, Culdesac’s government relations and external affairs lead. “This success has shifted the conversation around what’s possible in American development.”

-via Good News Network, August 25, 2025

[crippled-peeper]

“You think every citizen should have access to free and accessible healthcare?”

Wrong!!!

I think that Asylum seekers and Migrant workers and The Undocumented and Everyone Else should get free healthcare too

I love immigration

[crippled-peeper]

This one made the fascists and the racists really really mad. I get hate mail daily for this post

Imagine getting mad because someone else’s child’s chemotherapy doesn’t cost them 100,000$ .

[preserving-tiktok]

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Gomez and Morticia Addams got divorced. I woke up mortified and with a sense of inexplicable dread.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

[penrosesun]

[weaselle]

you literally don’t need any other plot and i would watch the movie

[random-chaos-thoughts]

Every 'normal' adult is fussing around Pugsley and Wednesday because "poor children that must be so hard for you to see mom and dad break up like this"

But the kid are absolutely unfazed, arguing that "it's alright they will be together again soon". The normie are so sad for the "children clinging to vain hopes" until Morticia and Gomez get married again two weeks after the divorce.

In the meantime Mama and Uncle Fester fight about which one of them will go to whose custody.

They pretend to argue in court and at meeting with lawyers over the splitting of the properties but that's mostly Gomez insisting to leave more and more thing to his wife in an angry voice.

At home they decided not to talk to each other so Lurch has to (begrudgingly) transmit messages from one to the other, even when they are sat on either side of the table.

That works (more or less) then Morticia says one word in french and Gomez run to cover her with kisses until Morticia remind him that they are spliting (that's the only moment he seems to regret the whole thing)

[yeomanstuff]

This. All of this.

[6qubed]

Wednesday offers to help with split custody of Pugsley. her suggestion involved a big table saw

[swimmingblue]

They fight over who gets to hire the expensive big-firm lawyer and who gets to hire the up-and-coming rookie divorce lawyer. It's a whole Thing.

[ladyartemisia28]

The up and coming lawyer is Thing?

[aethersea]

Thing wins the case

[amultitudeofyellowrodents]

it's actually started because Thing just passed the bar exam and no one will hire Thing

[xclowniex]

The flotilla has been intercepted. Before being intercepted they were told

"If you wish to deliver aid to Gaza, you may do so through the established channels. Please change your course toward the Port of Ashdod, where the aid will undergo a security inspection and then be transferred into the Gaza Strip,"

Yet they chose not to. They had the option for how to get aid into Gaza laid out to them, and they decided to not do so.

They have also denied the Pope's help in getting aid into Gaza.

How can this not be viewed as a publicity stunt?

Also

"French politician Marie Mesmeur and Franco-Palestinian MEP Rima Hassan reported that their boats were also intercepted. Livestream footage showed activists throwing their phones into the sea after soldiers boarded a ship."

Why are they throwing their phones overboard? What is on them which would require them to do that?

The Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani did co first that Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa-air told him the IDF was instructed to not use force

Source

Navy intercepts Gaza flotilla, begins detaining activists after final call to change course

Troops board ships in anti-Israel armada, including vessel carrying Greta Thunberg; Foreign Ministry says those detained 'are safe and healt

[sweaterkittensahoy]

This fucking line:

The flotilla — which departed from Spain a month ago — is carrying a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid for Gaza

The symbolic amount might actually be literally nothing by the way. (that's a link to twitter which shows an Israeli officer showing an empty room and stating there is no aid on the ship he's on)

Which, frankly, matches exactly with how they've been acting the whole time and trying to blame everything on Israel when they could have, I don't know, used their combined fame to raise money for a legitimate charity that could actually get TONS of food to Gaza. Not Kilos.

[dandalfthe-gay-deactivated20251]

I wish I could tell Greta that there are easier ways to get a sandwich

[prismatic-bell]

I want to slap the smirk right off her face.

You promised aid, you brought nothing.

You may have sunk actual peace efforts that would have brought actual aid.

You stopped to fucking PARTY on your way to this supposedly important mission.

You screech that you're being kidnapped when even your own country is like "girlypop, this is how deportation works, this is on YOU."

And then you're fucking smirking at the cameras like you're a sore winner instead of an all-around loser?

Oh. And by the way. If you're wondering what the hell the point was, if not even "symbolic" aid:

Documents from Gaza show Hamas’s ‘direct involvement’ with aid flotilla, Israel claims

Foreign Ministry says material shows ties between Hamas and its foreign arm PCPA, whose leader in UK is flotilla organizer, while Spanish me

Cash or weapons. Bet on it.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Reblogging for additional information.

[arandomshotinthedark]

'Many have asked me what I think of the Sumud Flotilla heading to Gaza. I have not commented on this because I genuinely believe it is a waste of time, effort, energy, space, and focus. Approaching Gaza with a predetermined outcome, in which you know the Israeli navy is going to intercept you, and yet persisting with said useless and futile action tells me you are the most unserious player who is simply trying to gain attention and make a point, not to make a difference. Everybody knows that Israel has a blockade on Gaza, including a naval component; you are not raising awareness about anything that the entire world doesn’t already know.

You cannot access Gaza’s territorial waters during wartime without coordination with the more powerful and controlling party, which in this case is Israel. In fact, the maritime corridor between Cyprus and Gaza that was activated last year proved that the coastal enclave could be open for business if Israel’s legitimate security needs are met. This created a precedent that, after two decades of Israeli control of territorial water with coordination and trusted third parties, you could indeed make something happen in Gaza, even though that particular corridor is no longer in action.

If you truly wanted to make a difference, you might have considered using the port of Ashdod to deliver aid into Gaza or collaborating with Egypt and the UAE to land aid via El-Arish port and transport it via trucks to the Strip. The realities of war and realpolitik are not vanishing for a group of selfie activists who have no clue about how the real world works. I wish we would stop hearing about Greta Thunberg and Western activists trying to make this endeavor about themselves instead of making a difference and engaging in radical pragmatism. I wish we would stop wasting time and resources that could have been better spent on actually sending a larger quantity of aid into Gaza to support Palestinians.

I wish this time and energy were allocated toward the grunt work that I, along with many of my colleagues, do behind the scenes to conduct evacuations of patients and their families, as well as humanitarian cases from Gaza into Middle Eastern or Western countries. May this be the last selfie-flotilla that we have to discuss, and may these activists start actually helping the Palestinian people of Gaza instead of wasting time on self-centered and self-absorbed actions and interventions.'

[grubloved]

i see a lot of art filled with plants, like, in the american art scene there seems to be a kind of general movement towards and appreciation of ruined structures being overtaken by nature. offices full of dead computers and leaves. walls with ivy. old factories crawling with new growth. a symbol of degrowth, of new futures that devour and reject colonial modernism, of a refutation of the tyranny over land. it's a nice sentiment.

but consistently im noticing something odd, which is that over and over the plants depicted in art are very familiar -- they're houseplants. pothos. monstera. calathea. zamioculcas. plants growing in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong climate, a mishmash of unrelated folks with far-flung origins symbolizing "natural" retaking of the modern world.

plants, specifically, that are directly tied to the legacy of colonialism. from northern africa. from southern america. from india. plants that were collected as curios during periods of direct imperialism. plants kept as trophies, plants sold at high prices. plants that are "exotic". that are beautiful. that are high-value. plants whose people got no payment for their capture.

they're the plants people in american colonial territory, who lack access to native plant community, see most often -- that is, other than "weeds". and so when these artists reach for the pure idea of plant, the concept of nature, these plants are their only blueprint. dragging with them all of the baggage of hundreds of years of empire.

it's incredible how much this changes the messaging of the image. dreams of ecological participation stained with a creeping theme of alienation from their native biosphere. the thumbprint of colonialism, clear as day. a hopeful vision of the future, kneecapped by its own symbology. hundreds of individual artists so alienated from their own ecosystems that even their fantasy of participation with nature is inextricable from colonialist trophies. trying to imagine reclaiming the world.

[entomologize-nonbug]

500-pound stained glass crab sculpture by the late Jackie Leatherbury Douglass and her husband John Frederick Douglass, on display in Baltimore's airport

[midnightmurdershow]

Addams Family Values (1993) Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

[vbartilucci]

I will never not re-post my statement when this gifset appears…

I’ve said it a million times - if Debbie had listened to what the Addamses were saying in response to her tales of woe, she’s have realized that they understood completely. She had found her people, and was too wrapped up in herself to realize it.

If they could have, they’d have burst from their bonds, hugged the stuffing out of her, bought her a Bentley (and a vintage Ballerina Barbie) and declare her an Addams.

She could spend the rest of her life trying to kill Fester, and he’d love her all the more every time she tried. And the rest would keep offering helpful suggestions. “No point in trying poison, Debbie my dear - he’s been putting strychnine on his cornflakes since was seven”.

[baronmagikcarp]

The fact she’s buried in the family plot says they DID accept her as an Addams.

[thedupshadove]

I don’t know about just making a marriage out of constantly trying to murder Fester. Violence is one thing, disgust is another. The Addamses place a premium on loving marriages, and Debbie was just never even a little bit into Fester, so I think that if she’s going to integrate into the family, romance between the two of them needs to just not be on the table.

That said, remember that Debbie didn’t initially enter the family as Fester’s girlfriend–she entered as the Nanny. And in that role, I honestly think she could have flourished.

Remember, The Addams Family is all about strange twists on the American dream, so “We have a live-in nanny because that’s something people of our social class are supposed to have, but we as parents are so happily involved with our children that the live-in nanny basically doesn’t do anything.” is IMO a very Addams set-up. She can hang around the lap of luxury, getting paid a generous salary to be a Cool Aunt who can open Wednesday’s eyes to whole new Vistas of murderous women. And one day all three children will be grown and gone, and Nanny Debbie will still be there because getting rid of her would be unthinkable. You suggest they let her go and they just. Look at you.

And maybe she hooks up with Lurch or something idk.

[mossadspydolphin]

She hooks up with Thing

[beemovieerotica]

im so tired and im never going to understand the people on here who are still insisting that everything would have been the same under kamala as if the elimination of USAID and imperilment of PEPFAR hasn't already affected the lives of millions of HIV-positive people in the global south - as if biden wasnt one of the most proactive presidents on climate change, as if no connection exists between changing weather patterns, deaths from natural disasters in the world's poorest countries, food scarcity, and resulting political instability...it must feel exceptionally self-affirming to not have to think about environmental justice at all and to accept the gutting of protective acts and our legal systems that provided the recourse for brown and black people to prosecute big companies for the poisoning their communities...must be incredible to inhabit a mindset where any collateral damage along the path to the fabled revolution doesn't matter