Rachel ☠️

anastasia (1997) rasputin || biggest-gaudiest-patronuses loves my url so now it will never change

[sexyrasputin]

for reference for tags

[oopsprompts]

"I just figured, if I drank the victim's wine, then I'd know whether it was poisoned."

"Oh, and you've built up an immunity to the poison over years of carefully dosing yourself with it?"

"Ha! Wouldn't that be amazing?"

"So ..."

"Yeah, I'm going to need you to take me to the hospital now."

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

the meaning of life? is to make your bedroom as comfy as possible. that's it that's the purpose

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

the secondary purpose is to equip your kitchen and get really really really into international cuisine

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS TO BE WELL-FED AND WELL-RESTED

[wordfather]

i am not immune to a well choreographed fight scene with a fun song in the background

[sexyrasputin]

yes I’m still thinking about Istanbul Not Constantinople fight choreography

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

mummies? genus of the zombie family. the two are not taxonomically exclusive groups, educate yourself

[kaiyeti]

Also skeletons by that logic.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

A lot of people make this mistake actually! ‘Skeleton’ can refer to any individual member of the family Zombie that has shed its fleshy exoskeleton. It’s just an unlife cycle stage, but because of its distinct appearance we refer to it by a separate common name (similar to how a ‘black panther’ is just a colour variant of leopards and jaguars, not a separate species).

[mortimermcmirestinks]

Okay, so I think this is a point of confusion.

The term “zombie” is both a technical term, referring to a family, and a common name, referring to a genus.

The family Zombie is a broad, overarching group that includes the genus that many people call zombie (Ghoulus, not to be confused with Ghouli, the unrelated genus of the Ghala family which also includes bogeymen and some ghosts*) as well as the Mummy genus (Pyrima), the spore-zombie genus (Fungan) and a few others.

The colloquial term “Zombie” is the common term for the genus Ghoulus, which is in the family Zombie and includes Ghoulus romero (the walking zombie), Ghoulus snydera (the running zombie), and Ghoulus smithi (the vampiric zombie, also called the legendary zombie).

Interestingly, there are several things called “zombies” that are neither Ghoulus nor Zombie, including the dancing zombie (Jacksoni thrillera), which is more closely related to (although not currently actually in the same family as) clowns.

*Note: the ghosts in the Ghala family are not true ghosts. True ghosts are in the order Spectere, which is entirely unrelated to Ghouli, Ghoulus, Pyrima, and Fungan. Ghala “ghosts” are given the common name ghost because of their superficial similarity to true ghosts.

Important note: sometimes you’ll see people claiming that zombies are domesticated! They are not! Some zombies can be tamed (like Ghoulus romero), but zombies are wild animals and might hurt you if you approach them! Leave them alone and don’t feed them!

[s0lar-nexus]

are there any domestic ghosts?

[mortimermcmirestinks]

this is a great question! here’s the answer:

the closest to a domesticated ghost we have is the house ghost, Phantome domus (sometimes classified as a distinct subspecies Phantome domus domesticus).

P. domus is interesting because it’s like housecats – they are technically domesticated (scans have shown that the fight-or-flight response, like in domesticated animals, is weaker in P. domus than in related species like P. majestica, the manor ghost, or P. more, the cemetary ghost), but evidence suggests that it’s a naturalistic co-evolution rather than an intentional domestication process like with sheep or dogs.

If a house ghost takes up residence in your home, they are completely safe unless treated in an inhumane way. There is a stereotype of house ghosts that they are dangerous or volatile, but this is usually due to confusion with other species, especially the common poltergeist (Sellaruptor vulgaris) or vengeance spirit (Phantome odium).

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

Ghostbusters remake but they’re biologists running a catch and release program

[ladynoveldragon]

I love scientifically explained fantasy. It is so much fun exploring the fantasy world in terms of biological phenomena.

[prompts-in-a-barrel]

"Why do you care?"

"You're... kind of the best friend I've ever had."

"God. Is that true? Fuck. You need to meet more people."

[wordfather]

i never moved on from party rock anthem. im still party rocking. guys??? hello??? im still party rocking

[wordfather]

at gunpoint they'll ask me to show a talent to live and i will immediately perform a perfect rendition of the gangnam style dance, as if i was born for it perchance. im still in the fucking building

[sexyrasputin]

six years and some shellfish — year 1

It took six years and some strategically placed clams to solve the Lev problem.

Year One of Ravyn and Atticus’ marriage brought graduation, a months-long international assignment that was predicted to break their bond but somehow brought them even closer (fighting is their foreplay, c’mon), and getting legal custody of Alice for her final years of training before Coalition legal autonomy.

The apartment that Ravyn’s brother Nat—the one she liked—and his wife, Mallory, rented to them became a home with too many books despite half their furniture being bookshelves, a broken bust of a great-grandfather that Atticus proudly displayed, and ascribing dialogue to movies played on mute.

Year one was chaos incarnate and peace in its midst, but the problems from their past hadn’t quieted a bit.

“That bitch is proud of her engagement?” Ravyn cried out, past the point of outrage and into the stage of vitriol. Megaera Cole, named after the fury of envy, surely embodied her chthonic namesake. Ravyn would say she perfected the sin more than the Erinyes ever could.

Atticus said nothing in reply. A succinct nod. A tightening of his jaw. That was all Ravyn got from her husband of eight months, her best friend of many years, and the irritating love of her life. The irritation was part of why he earned the love of her life title, but he didn’t irritate her with this. Atticus was approaching nuclear ice age, but Ravyn got hot in her anger more than she ever had before. Something about overall emotional vulnerability and healthier relationships meant she felt her emotions so much more intensely. She did not like that one bit, but having stable relationships with Cal and Ace was inconveniently worth it.

“She brags on social media she’s engaged to the monster who has already raped and murdered one girl her age, attempted to rape her so called best friend, she knows all of this, and now she’s bragging?” Ravyn couldn’t believe she couldn’t believe it. This was Meg. Bitchy, bratty, baby of the family of fucked up relationships Meg. Of course Meg bragged about engagement to a known monster, even by coalition standards.

Not that Lev’s monstrous nature was well known. Suspected or rumored, to an extent, but his charming “English language is struggle” act and gentlemanly manners and orgasmic skill in the bedroom covered up a lot of suspected sins.

“I’m aware, love.” Shit. Ace had not only nuclear melt down, he was into the post apocalyptic ice age of his anger now. Caustically reminding him of Alice’s experiences hadn’t been her best move. That got Ravyn to stop pacing and face her best friend. Though her smiles almost didn’t look like grimaces any longer, her sheepish grimace only looked sheepish if you squinted. Just because she felt her emotions now didn’t mean she expressed them yet.

“You do,” Ravyn agreed, stepping over to Atticus and taking his loose hands in hers. Only when she held him did the fury and heartbreak crack through into a tight hold in their entwined grasp. They stood in silence, then, not something either of them usually catered to, but they’d learned a lot by living with Alice as a couple and as her older brother and his wife. Their chosen family had grown closer, and even Cal was no longer so emotionally constipated. He needed a lot more emotional laxatives on the regular to be considered anywhere close to emotive. But he wasn’t so terrible.

Alice credited the chocolate pudding. Torin and Ravyn credited Alice. Atticus credited Torin and Ravyn. Cal knew it was all of them, especially Atticus, the one who brought them all together and laid the way to keep them there.

Later, after the outrage and the silence of the first night of news, when the alcohol from their drinking game had evaporated from their veins and the headaches came only from heartache and not hangovers. Later, Meg bragged to her posse of girls she thought were friends that she had talked to her Daddy about marrying Lev, who she’d fallen for quickly and deeply, and Daddy had made the arrangements.

Lev had threatened Ravyn about approaching Meg one time during their ill-fated engagement. Ravyn’s reaction, or cleverly crafted lack thereof, had fooled Lev into thinking Ravyn didn’t give a flying shit about her younger cousin. Ravyn had fooled herself, too. She didn’t give a shit about Meg, but she gave a shit about what Meg did to her loved ones.

Meg’s friends were as fake as her, congratulating her loudly in the cafeteria—in hearing distance of Alice, Torin, and Cal on peach cobbler day—on her successful wrangling of the bad boy that almost married into Meg’s chaotic, dramatic side of the family that was the constant source of entertainment for the gossip mongers. But Lev got out before his social reputation got hurt by associating with Ravyn White and Atticus Blackbourne of all people.

(Ravyn and Atticus may have been some of the top spies of their generation, and everyone loved to hear about their pranks and relationship will-they-won’t-they and romantic wedding, but the social scene saw them as content, not peers. Poor Lev was jilted at the altar, but maybe he shouldn’t have expected to get between such two magnets as Ravyn and Ace).

When Alice heard over the cafeteria din that Meg—who had heard her late night confessions of traumatic escapes and had witnessed her nightmares in their shared dorm rooms, who had even heard that Lev’s own sister suspected him of the rape and murder of the missing best friend, who knew that Lev was forcing Ravyn into the same situation their mothers were both in. When Alice heard that Meg had sought out Lev to tie herself to for the rest of her life, in spite of all that and knowing how much danger it would place her in without a single Coalition assignment, well, not even peach cobbler was worth eating then.

It took the three drama queens and Torin, steady as the chief of his name meaning, weeks to coax Alice into regular genuine smiles and laughter again. It was also the end of lunchtime in the cafeteria for good for the five of them. The covered courtyard outside the library was usually empty, albeit farther from the gym and most of the classrooms. But mealtimes were consistently peaceful for the first time in any of their educations since Ravyn first attended the academy.

It was weird and Ravyn wasn’t sure she liked it. But for Alice, for Ace, even for Cal and Torin, it was worth not having fun making a scene. She could make a scene separate from mealtimes, like fire alarms while Atticus was in the locker room showers after a training session. Not that she publicly starred in that scene. No, she joined her husband in the showers for their own fun and sexy shenanigans.

It was a much better result to pulling the fire alarm.

For a while, they found real peace and healing and family. And the two month long stint in an unnamed European country left even pasty Ravyn looking a human shade of skin tone (read: color in her cheeks and was that a super subtle tan line? No, couldn’t be, but she used to be even paler, right? Yes, yes she did) and had Atticus moving a little more nimbly (it was pills or alcohol each day, and he was better about following Ravyn’s request). They made it back to the northwestern Coalition campus, tucked into the forest of northern Washington state, between mountains, the coast, and the Canadian border, a week before their first wedding anniversary.

When they opened their mail, they found a save the date card from Ravyn’s cousin who embodied her name a little too well.

Megaera and Lev would be married in one week. On her one year anniversary of her salvation and her sealing to her soulmate.

Ravyn left the invite on the console table for Atticus to see, and neither commented. Alice had been staying in the apartment a floor below theirs with Cal and Torin for two months. They would already know and have already RSVPed that they were otherwise engaged.

What was supposed to be a fun surprise party for Ravyn and Atticus’ first wedding anniversary ended up being a cuddle puddle movie night for the couple and Alice. She joined in on the games this time, and the group watched old black and white movies on mute and came up with increasingly ridiculous dialogue and plot lines.

It wasn’t what they planned, but the nightmares weren’t as bad as they expected, either.

[sexyrasputin]

I have returned bc I actually wrote words again and they go here so here I am

[halcyonhue]

Day 2 in the Middle School Time Loop: you remember that last time, everyone ignored you at recess because they were talking about a TV show that you hadn’t watched. This time, you lie and say you’ve seen it. They ask you who your favorite character is, and you don’t know any of the characters, and so you’re tongue-tied. They think you’re weirder than ever, or maybe a liar, which is worse (and true).

Day 3 in the Middle School Time Loop: you tell your parents that you feel ill. They let you stay home while they’re at work. You spend the whole day watching past episodes of the TV Show.

Day 4 in the Middle School Time Loop: Recess again. The same person asks you who your favorite character is. This time, you're ready. You eagerly tell them, and supplement your reasons for liking them with solid evidence from all 4 seasons of the show. But! Tough luck: you’re now too invested. The atmosphere turns uncomfortable. They go back to ignoring you like they did on the Day 1 that you didn’t know was Day 1.

Day 5 in the Middle School Time Loop:

You decide to try a different approach and update your style. You've noticed that Ashleigh, who’s blonde and constantly surrounded by friends, always wears pink stripey sneakers. You try wearing a pink dress. Someone says it’s cute, but you know from how they say it that it isn’t the good cute.

“I thought that pink was cool,” you protest, more to the uncaring universe than to anyone in particular.

Your interlocutor shrugs. “Maybe on someone else.”

Day 6 in the Middle School Time Loop: You keep your head down, but still surprise the teachers by somehow knowing the correct answers to every spontaneous question they throw out to the class. You study the outfits of your classmates more closely. You realize that it wasn’t the color, so much as the brand that made the difference. It proves the shoes were expensive. You note down Ashleigh's sneaker brand in smudgy ink on the back of your hand, and then after school you take half a year's saved-up allowance and buy a matching pair at the mall. Your mom raises her eyebrows but doesn’t stop you.

Day 7 in the Middle School Time Loop: Today you make it to lunch before anything major goes wrong. You think that the sneakers have protected you, and stare down at them lovingly, watching the Barbie-pink plastic stripes reflect the tube lights on the ceiling as you turn your feet this way and that. But then at lunch, Ashleigh comes up, arm and arm with a friend. Her eyes are a little pink, but only a little.

“Ashleigh wanted me to tell you that she’s really hurt that you copied her sneakers,” the friend informs you, nobly, as if it would be too unpleasant for Ashleigh to have to say this herself. Her mouth is solemn but her eyes are gleeful.

“I didn’t…” You start to deny it automatically, even though it’s true. And yet, something won’t let you apologize. Doesn’t she see your imitation for what it is: the most sincere compliment you know how to bestow? This is your Hail Mary.

As you meet her eyes, you realize she does know, but this only makes her despise you more.

“I think a lot of people have these sneakers,” you stammer, in the end, and they just sniff and turn away. You go back to eating your lunch alone.

Day 8 of the Middle School Time Loop: even though you do well in every class, you must be so much more stupid than your classmates, to be missing whatever detail it is that they seem to have caught. How do they do it so quickly? Before recess, before the end of homeroom, even, they all just know. You’ve had endless chances to do this day over and yet you never seem to be able to catch up with them. Running to stand still, you’ve heard your mother say, when she’s busy at work. That’s you. Running to stand still.

Day 9 of the Middle School Time Loop: you pretend to be sick again, and you realize that if you want to, you can pretend to be sick every day. It's easy to convince your parents: you look tired and unhappy, your eyes small within their dark circles, like some underground creature. You stop watching that TV Show that you never really wanted to watch in the first place, and instead dream your way through all your favourite childhood movies. Disney, Pixar, Studio Ghibli. You retreat into jewel-colored landscapes, where everyone is magical or beautiful or at least funny, and the heroes always win in the end.

Day 10 of the Middle School Time Loop: You notice that most of the Pixar heroes, the Disney princesses look more like Ashleigh than you. Long hair. Pale eyes. Button noses. And all of them, so thin.

Day 11 of the Middle School Time Loop: you go to school, but you don’t talk to anyone. You don’t even answer your name at roll call. Your teacher asks you if anything is wrong at school, or at home perhaps. You shake your head, but that evening you hear your father taking a call. You shrug off his worry: it’ll be forgotten tomorrow anyway.

Day 12 of the Middle School Time Loop: an unexpected development: your apathy almost seems to make your classmates like you more. When you say, truthfully, that you don’t care much for the TV Show that eternally dominates the recess chatter, some people look impressed. They ask you what you think is better. But you’re wise and don’t admit to liking anything. "Mysterious," someone says appreciatively.

At the end of recess, the girl who told you off for copying Ashleigh nudges you. “Hey. Look, Robert has an Up shirt. Kind of cute, that he’s still into that stuff, right?”

You know that it’s not the good cute.

You stare at her coldly. “The shirt just has a dog on it. It doesn't say he's from Up. So you must have liked the movie enough to remember him.”

She flushes scarlet, and hurries to catch up with Ashleigh, throwing you a dirty look. Robert glances at you gratefully but you don’t return his smile. He won’t remember that you did this for him. Anyway, you didn't, really. Do it for him, that is.

Day 13 of the Middle School Time Loop: You tell your parents you’re sick again. Today, you watch the second tier of Studio Ghibli movies, the ones that your parents always say, self-consciously, that you’ll find dull. Only Yesterday, Princess Kaguya, When Marnie Was There. You’re only a few minutes into Marnie when there’s a line that pulls you up short:

“In this world, there’s an invisible magic circle. There’s inside and outside. These people are inside. And I’m outside.”

The relief that washes over you is so profound that you almost cry, and then, when the movie's over, you do cry. Ugly sobs that make you sound like a toddler throwing a tantrum at the mall, that make your head pound with a dehydration headache. But behind the tears, there's relief. There it is, the truth that you were searching for, through all these do-overs. There’s an invisible magic circle. Of course there is.

But here’s the thing about circles: the inside is small. The outside is scary, and lonely, but it’s huge: huger than you could ever have imagined before you turned around and looked.

When your dad gets home, he asks if you’re feeling better. “Much,” you say, and it’s true.

Day ?? of the Middle School Time Loop: Sometimes you go to school, but ditch class and go to the library or the playground and do your own thing even if teachers yell at you. Sometimes you wander around the neighborhood. Sometimes you ask your parents crazy things, like to take you to work with them, or to the beach, or to DisneyWorld. Sometimes they say no. A surprising amount of times, they say yes. You wonder if maybe they’re trapped in a time loop too.

Sometimes you sit quietly in other classrooms than the one you’re meant to be in, until they shoo you out or even send you to the principal. (He finds you baffling. You feel a deep, slightly mournful affection for him, like you would for an very old and tired dog). It’s surprising, the amount of different things that are getting taught in one school in one day. It takes you a long time to work your way through them all.

You watch a frog getting dissected a few times before you start to feel bad and don’t go back to that classroom again. Your favorite class to crash is art, because the teacher always clocks that you’re not meant to be there but smiles and lets you stay anyway. When you meet her eyes, it feels like you’re sharing a secret.

Day One-Hundred And Something of the Middle School ...Wait.

At some point, time started moving again, and you didn’t even realize it.

For so long, the reprimands you received about your future seemed so empty, so laughable. There was no future. Only a more- or less-bearable present. But now, your classmates remember the unhinged things that you do; now, your teachers’ and parents’ worries about the future have the full juggernaut weight of reality behind them.

You thought that you’d be more terrified. For so long, you’ve dreaded this forward momentum. No loading screen, no mini-games, just one single, awful, pulsating life. But things are different now. Time’s moving again, and here you are, so far outside the invisible magic circle that you’re not even sure that you'd be able to see it any more. You can still feel its power, but faintly, like the pull between two magnets when they're an arm's length apart. Easy to ignore.

“Are you ready?” Robert says, catching your eye over the kitchen table. He comes here first thing so you can get the bus together. At some point, during the time loop, you started to seek him out. He was outside the circle, too, you realized. But even more importantly, not once, on any of those grimly looping days, did you see him try and push someone else out to make a space for himself. In this crab bucket, that’s something that counts for a lot.

“Our final day of middle school,” he sighs, half to himself. “Never thought I’d see it.”

"Me either," you reply, getting up to put on your talismanic pink sneakers. They’re scuffed and dirty after years of wear, and certainly Ashley would never be caught dead in them these days. Maybe that’s what you should have told her, all those loops ago: that no imitation, let alone one as unskilled as yours, can ever be perfect, and that indeed the very imperfection renders it an original work in its own right. Time and thought and human care transforms even the most diligent copy into something else entirely.

But you’ve been through enough time loops to know that that sort of explanation wouldn’t go over very well.

[hollowtones]

& Then a weird guy appear

[evermoredeluxe]

what struck me the most about the mv is that she takes the “forget him” pill and instantly goes to him (matty) cause he’s right there, meaning that he was there to make her forget joe. and then we see her getting treatment for forgetting joe, but he comes along and unplugs the machine and i think that is a clear metaphor for “you were not able to make me forget, rather you made it impossible for me to do that because you did the same shit with me; gave me hope and made me happy in my lowest moment just to leave me stranded”

[taylorswift]

It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album. ✌️ I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours. 🤍 https://taylor.lnk.to/ttpd-theanthology

[imaginemcyt]

TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT IS CRAZY OMG??

that being said, here's a friendly reminder not to harass joe alwyn over it. you don't know taylor, you're not her personal guard dog, it's parasocial to be honest.

not to mention, this is only her side of the story, and it might not be 100% about joe.

don't be a parasocial weirdo and threaten joe alwyn on twitter 🫶 touch grass and listen to taylor's music instead 🙌

ok goodnight 👍

[cause-cruelty-wins-in-the-movies]

honestly but daddy i love him makes me think of like a much more grown up retrospective look on love story and i love that so much

[yourivygrowss13]

Ok I’m dead don’t talk to me 😭😭😭😭

[uberfluss]

first 5 faceless emojis are how your summers gonna go

[thesebonesbite]

Magnus Archives fan I see

[partywithponies]

THIS IS SO FUNNY I'M SORRY