Spring Faery

[cryptic-forge]

made a little wind-up porcelain dragon.

the patterns are paper napkin decoupage again, and this time i took some progress pictures, so a That is incoming, in response to a bunch of asks i got months ago.

[kujakumai]

rereading my own fanfic for flow like damn this is fire why tf isn't there more of it. but of course i am the one who has to make the more of it

[kaijufluffs]

She's being so big and brave.

[kaijufluffs]

The long awaited sequel.

[fluffysheeps]

Bumble sharks 🐝🦈

[sashayed]

but ykw at least i'm not on mount everest. at least i'm not paying tens of thousands of dollars to slowly suffocate in a 300-person line at the gates of hell. never in my life will i have to be steered in a hypoxic stupor through the maze of poop and corpses atop mount everest. on this earth a lot of horrible things can happen to you without your permission but there are a few that you have to opt into. you can just say no thanks! and be guaranteed never to have to be on mount everest. much to be grateful for actually

[sashayed]

still not on mount everest this morning 😌 alhamdulillah

[mademoiseli]

The notes are broken. This is what tumblr is all about apparently.

[atonau]

THE NOTES ARE BROKEN!  This has been reblogged so many times, Tumblr just shrugged and said “infinity”

[sistertaxon]

actual criticisms of academia:

cost of education acting as class barrier

exploitation of graduate workers

colonialist past and present

ties to military industrial complex

danger of power structure entrenching and justifying orthodox views on social issues

criticisms of academia that get made:

those damn ivory tower academics are wasting money learning about things

[i-lavabean]

I was blessed by the teeny tiny void who wanted to take a teeny tiny stroll through my garden😭

[khmelisuneliart]

all that remains

[andrecomics]

I drew that Steven Universe Comfort character meme but with Wolverine and Sailor Moon , who would totally be friends.

[shamebats]

The (European) sun is a deadly laser, stay safe everyone

[unfuckablebogtroll]

☝️🤓 it’s because the further you move toward the earth’s poles, the lower the angle of the sun is at the hottest parts of the day, meaning the radiation hits your whole body, causing it to feel 10-20 degrees warmer than the thermometer reading will tell you. People from tropical climes, aka close to the equator, are used to the sun’s radiation hitting a much smaller target- their head and shoulders.

Also the further you move toward the poles the more pronounced the difference between the length of day and night is. Worst part of a far-north (or south) heatwave is it doesn’t get dark long enough for meaningful cooling.

It’s not the heat. It very literally is the sun.

[stellanslashgeode]

Okay, so. Star Wars has all these concepts that weirdo New Left boomer George Lucas tosses in there but because of storyteller limitations it would kill the plot to fully explain them all, so later writers have to come in for the spin-off materials and bat clean-up to fully explain all this crazy crap. And I would like to talk about something that made me actively angry at first, but which I now adore. And that is the Naboo.

So much about Naboo culture is infuriating from a logical standpoint. They have a queen, okay. A constitutionally elected queen? Weird, okay. Don't know why they'd do that but... She's FOURTEEN? Excuse me? Is it a ceremonial thing or, oh no it's not? Legit head of state? Why does she dress like that? Why does she talk like that? I'm so tired.

Here's the explainer. Let me go cook.

There's this joke in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where the last living human goes back in time and finds out humans aren't actually from Earth, but an alien culture that tricked all the middle managers, pedantic weirdos, and other infuriating folk into getting in a space arc which they gave the wrong evacuation coordinates to simply get rid of them. The Naboo are like this but they're all artists and poets and hippies, but like classy ones. They fled their home planet during a war and crash landed on Naboo, then did a colonism to the Gungans because, hey, they were fleeing a war and it was do or die. This spiritual rot in their creation story is later rectified by Padmé. But it's super important to their cultural psychology. They're hippies, but will subjugate if needed. They are "peaceful" but I guarantee you every single one of them has a tiny extremely shiny pistol up their sleeve and they will draw down on you if backed against a wall.

The scene that I think says it all is at the end of Phantom Menace when Padmé is surrounded by Nute Gunray and his droids, they've got her dead to rights, but Sabé her double creates a distraction so the queen can make it to her throne. This one piece of furniture is the Naboo in a nutshell. It's richly carved with artistic details, it has two seats to the side so the queen's handmaidens can read the lips of people in the back of the room and use hand signals to communicate with the queen while she can remain focused mostly on who is speaking to her. It is hundreds of years old. And it has a secret compartment in the armrest that is FULL OF GUNS. Layers of artistic opulence hiding their true intentions.

The Naboo were created to be backwards compatible with Princess Leia. They're compassionate pacifists, but they will shot you if needed.

Why do they elect teenage royalty? It's a little creepy. It's giving "age of consent is emotional maturity". It makes no sense.

The explanation they give outsiders is they want youthful idealism untainted by cynicism. What they don't tell you is that they take kids with stated interest in politics and put them in an advanced highly competitive Leadership Academy which is like Model UN mixed with Battle Royale. Well, they don't kill each other but it's intense. It's like what the clones went though just all diplomacy training and tea ceremonies all the time. Which is crazy but so Naboo.

Oh, and all the delegates for the royalty election run using pseudonyms for security. Imagine voting for the head of state but you can't run a background check. It's so crazy.

Why does Padmé dress like that? Well, fashion is one of Naboo's major industries so it's like she's wearing the entire Fall line catalog at once. To advertise not only the talent of her people, but to show how much they favor her. BUT that dress has multiple layers of padding and resin armor. And aforementioned spots for those little silver blasters. And it breaks up her silhouette making her harder to shoot. And it's so elaborate you pay more attention to the crazy dress and not if the person wearing it is really the queen or a decoy. Everything about Naboo is like this.

Queen Amidala has that weird accent while Padmé does not. Because all her handmaidens helped create the accent together so they all can imitate it. It's like if you gave girls at a rowdy sleepover the job of federal counterintelligence. That's what they came up with.

The handmaidens wear colorful identical clothes so you can't tell them apart, hoods to partially conceal their identity, and they don't wear the queen's fancy makeup. So one of them can be the queen and spy on people in the audience. Because the Naboo don't trust shit for shit.

Their public face is so silly to hide all the truly weird shit they do behind the scenes.

They use their reputation as artist hippies to conceal multiple layers of subterfuge and disguise their methods of self defense and assuage their paranoia due to wartime trauma and their disturbing colonial past. All of them are completely off their rocker even by Star Wars standards. And I love them so much. They put on a show so everyone thinks they have them figured out but what they have going on is far more weirder and more sinister than meets the eye. You know how catty, neurotic, and competitive art school students stereotypically are? Yeah, planet art student. Love them!

There you go, @charmwasjess

[roach-works]

honestly this goes further than anything else to explain why padme heard this bonkers greasy teenage anakin confess to her that he wiped out the entire village of native people who killed his mother, and padme (ostensibly our conscience) (actually a valedictorian of the naboo political school of move fast break things and look gorgeous doing it) was just like '👍'

[whetstonefires]

also Darth Sidious is from there, too, so you can interpret him as to some extent the intersection point of everything weird about the Naboo and, uh, everything about the Sith.

like...a planet destroying laser is pretty Sith Lord, and having a Galactic Empire is classically Sith, but faking your way into being Emperor via elaborate indirect election fraud and a whole faked-up proxy war, and mounting your hyperspace-capable space laser on a deeply gratuitous whole-ass artificial moon? there's distinct traces of Naboo aesthetic sensibility showing through there.

also he hates his home planet, which we may assume is why after becoming emperor and having no more reason to please anybody but himself, he wore nothing but an ankle-length hoodie for twenty-five years.

[queerofthedagger]

one thing that keeps me up at night is how, as people have pointed out before, arthur loved merlin simply for being merlin, regardless of magic or destiny etc., but how in some ways, that doesn't exactly apply the same way the other way around now does it?

like. i mean obvious merlin loved arthur for just being arthur, man would have never stuck around otherwise and one may even argue that later on, he actually did put arthur over destiny repeatedly (although i will say i agree only partially with this because why wouldn't he protect arthur above all else, if it's arthur who is supposed to make it happen! that said yes, most of his motivation to keep arthur alive came from arthur being his friend, not some higher calculation.)

thing is. arthur wouldn't exactly know this. arthur in fact in the finale seems to grapple with this a lot, if not most. the idea that to merlin, too, he had been a means to an end, as to so many others, whether in them wanting to use him, or wanting to get him out of the way.

there are very, very few people (gwen, pretty much as the only one alive) for whom arthur was just arthur first, king and destined peace-bringer, prince and first knight etc etc second. and i think if not for the whole, you know, dying business, it would take him a long time to actually, fully believe that merlin was one of them, after all.

which is just fucking heart-breaking, innit.

[paxopalotls]

THIS i think even more than that too is the realization and understanding that Merlin has manipulated him for some personal gain. Granted, the gain in question was ultimately self-sacrificing, but that's still something Arthur has literally spoken about to Merlin before, his fear that everyone he's ever loved is just taking advantage of him in some way or another. Take this exchange from 4x12:

ARTHUR I feel like such a fool. I put such trust in him. All this time I was blind to his treachery as I was to Morgana's. MERLIN You were deceived, Arthur. That could happen to anyone. ARTHUR Yet it keeps happening to me. I cared about these people. I...don't understand. What have I done wrong? Why do they hate me?

Arthur's a character that trusts wholeheartedly and it is used against him on multiple occasions. And the person that he has confided all this too is now revealed to be one of the many who took advantage of his trust to manipulate him. Even if Arthur survived that day, their relationships would have taken a very long time to recover.

[queerofthedagger]

One thing that I think is super interesting is how Arthur kept joining the knights on quests—especially important/dangerous ones—even after becoming king. And like sure, you could call it reckless or careless, but I personally don't think it's that at all. He was always more than aware of his responsibility to the kingdom, his people always came first for him, so while yes, he's reckless in the heat of the moment at times, I don't believe that's at play here.

Imo there are several reasons for this: for one, Uther raised him like this. Uther may have not done this himself, but he instilled into Arthur from early on that his life was disposable by sending him on whatever quest came up. Whenever Arthur returned, Uther didn't utter a word of pride or approval, of relief that Arthur returned whole and healthy, but basically reacted in a 'well you did your job' kind of way. Uther treated Arthur like any other knight, and so Arthur became more knight than prince (and later king).

Of course, one could argue that, like Uther, Arthur could've stopped doing this, then, when he became king. But I think that not only was Arthur never much of a prince, he also must've realised that it was a good thing, even beyond his desire to create a kingdom in which all are equal (even though I think this, too, played a big role). Being close to his men, fighting the battles with them, was notably one of the reasons why they were so loyal to him, long before the round table knights appeared in the picture. There are several instances where he gives orders contrary to Uther's and is obeyed, and when Morgana and Morgause take Camelot the first time, there's not a single knight that shifts their loyalty.

Now, I'm not saying that Arthur acted solely out of rationality—he also just genuinely believed in "serving his people, not the other way around," that it was his duty, that it was honourable. I also think that the moment in s1e4 when Uther says, "You'll see many men die for you. Just don't watch," was a super defining moment for Arthur; you can literally see on his face how much he loathes the idea. While he obviously can't prevent his knights from dying in general, he would've never sent one of them to die in his place (The Darkest Hour), and/or for his mistakes (think His Father's Son).

Not to mention that, you know, it's historically accurate that kings led their armies.

The last point though, what I personally think is actually most important, is that to Arthur, it wasn't a threat of leaving his kingdom without a king, especially concerning season 5. If he died, Gwen would rule, and as he said, "he could think of no one better." Of course, that's a huge burden to put on her, but I don't believe for a second that she wasn't aware of the chance when she married Arthur, or that Arthur didn't know that she was aware. And going, "I can't join my own fights because my wife might end up having to rule," is just. Yikes. Give her some more agency than that. On top of that, he trusted his knights too, and Merlin, that if Gwen were left to rule, she wouldn't be alone. She'd have all the support she could get, and Arthur trusted in that, too.

Unlike Uther, Arthur simply knew that Camelot did not depend on him to rule. What Camelot did depend on though, what he was exceptional at, was his skill at fighting and leading his men. And Arthur did always put Camelot above everything else.

[queerofthedagger]

There are a hundred things to write meta about in that episode, but one thing just so damn satisfying about The Sins of the Father is how when Arthur returns to the castle and starts confronting Uther, Uther first tries it with his standard authority posturing, and telling Arthur how Morgause was lying, saying, "I am your King and your father, you will show me some respect!" (also, I find it really telling that he puts "King" there first but I'm not aiming to write some deep meta here so anyway) and Arthur outright ignores him. He just throws down his gauntlet and Uther is still trying, but he slowly realises that oh, fuck, he can't bullshit his way out of this one so easily.

So he tries appealing to Arthur's "soft" side, again with the "you are my son" angle (also telling how he only ever brings that up when it's convenient to him or as an attempt to pressure Arthur, isn't it? ANYWAY.) "You are my son, you will not strike an unarmed man," and Arthur's just. He's so fucking done with Uther's bullshit. You can absolutely see the conflict in his eyes, but he's also been pushed so far beyond his breaking point, he goes, "If you don't defend yourself, I will strike you down where you stand," and Uther somehow still thinks he has the damn upper hand. And then Arthur attacks him with barely a beat of hesitation.

And Uther's expression?? Holy shit. That, and the following few moments where he suddenly, finally realises that yes, actually, Arthur will attack him, and yes, actually, Arthur will strike him, and if Merlin had arrived one second later, Arthur actually, successfully, would've killed him. He really fucking deserved that, and the fact that he, at least, knows that the only reason Arthur stopped was because of nothing but a lie—I hope that haunted him for the rest of his life. Like. It's almost better than if he got to die seconds after that realisation. He had to live with that, day after day after day.

[guilhernunes]

kittens that live in the cemetery and are not afraid because they do not understand the concept of death

[catastrophic-writer-deactivated]

Story Time:

Working in retail is really fun, and the times when major fuck-ups happen, they can be either anxiety-attack inducing, or make it possible to get through the rest of your god-awful shift with a smile depending on the customer. My all-time favorite absolute fuck-up is as follows:

This kind woman is just doing her thing. She scans her membership card from her keychain. The register beeps to acknowledge the scan. We continue as usual. Neither of us notice right away, but after I’ve scanned a few more items, I hear a very quiet, “Um,” from the lady, very polite. I look at her. She is looking at the screen of my register, blinking. I, too, look.

And lo and behold. There is a charge of over four-thousand dollars ($4,000) worth of garlic bread staring us in the face. There are no words for a minute. We’re just… in awe. How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?

She didn’t even have garlic bread in her cart.

I sputter a partial apology - I was incapable of forming actual sentences in the moment - and try to void the garlic bread. Since there was no garlic bread to scan, I try to manually remove $4,000-some from this transaction.

Well, the registers don’t like it when you try to void off more than five dollars ($5) from a transaction, so naturally it pings my manager for confirmation, but she’s not by her pager.

At this point, both myself and the lady are just… dumbfounded. She’s not even mad. I’m not even all that embarrassed. Both of us are just looking at the screen. There’s a bit of laughter, but it’s mostly just… confusion.

I have to call through the whole store for my manager on the intercom because she’s not answering. She shows up, ready to override and void it, when she too, sees what exactly is being voided.

“What… did you do?”

“I genuinely. Have literally. No. Idea.”

She voids it, and I go to finish the transaction and tell the woman her total (minus the garlic bread). My register pings. It tells me that she hasn’t scanned her membership card. Odd. I distinctly remember her doing that. The woman goes to scan her card again, and I notice that her library card is stuck to her membership card. I tell her gently, and she separates the two and scans her card.

My manager, hovering nearby still, sees this and says, “I think it mistook the barcode of her other card for garlic bread, and the remaining digits were read as the price.”

And that’s when the laughter really came over us. There were no hard feelings at all. In fact, the woman was incredibly glad that the receipt still showed the garlic bread and the voiding of. I will remember it until the end of time, my only regret in the entire situation being that I didn’t take a damn picture, because she has proof and I don’t. But I swear to God it happened.

TDLR; Library Card Charged $4,000 of Garlic Bread.

[anais-ninja-bitch]

that’s just how valuable library cards are. each one is worth at least $4000 of garlic bread

[nudityandnerdery]

A picture is worth a thousand words, a library card is worth $4000 worth of garlic bread, if we can figure out how many words the average library card can check out at once, we can probably work out a picture-to-garlic bread conversion here, too.