noise dept.
Fieri Frames
h
Not today Justin
Claire Keane
Doug Jones
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
occasionally subtle
TMBGareOK. The Official They Might Be Giants tumblr
untitled
Product Placement
Fai_Ryy
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
No title available
The Bright Sessions
The Bowery Presents
Game of Thrones Daily
taylor price
ellievsbear
seen from Paraguay
seen from Türkiye
seen from Canada
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Azerbaijan
seen from Philippines
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Kazakhstan
seen from Türkiye
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seen from United States
@tardislemur
Here is the 13th track on the ongoing album, ‘Songs of Sansûkh’; a choral version of the Iron Hills Soldier’s Song from Chapter 34, sung as Dáin Ironfoot prepares to face his final battle.
Composed by notanightlight and determamfidd
Arranged and performed by determamfidd
Cover image by notanightlight
(Sheet music pdf now available!)
The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard is like if Moana was a 60(?)-year-old man living in The West Wing, if The West Wing was set 25-or-1000* years after the apocalyptic collapse of a corrupt interdimensional fantasy empire, and he was subject to the worst case of “Clark Kent can’t be Superman because everyone knows Superman lives in the Fortress of Solitude; that’s just my dude Clark Cousin Kip from down the block” that anyone’s ever known. Also, forcing your friends to take vacation time is a love language.
*time is weird and it’s never explained, nor is most of the magic system, interdimensional structure, Red Company, nor any other worldbuilding not relevant to Kip’s emotional journey
@azzandra said: This is such a fucking weird description, I need to go read this book right now
Nailed it. Also I forgot to say it’s about deliberately performing the cultural assimilation equivalent of, “I ain’t been vampirized. You’ve been Weatherwaxed.”
every tiktok expert: make short fun videos 9-15 seconds long
me: how about a 2-minute spoken word monolog about unlearning trauma responses?
in case no one told you, or in case you know but you need encouragement taking the next step: it's never too late to unlearn a law that is now holding you back, it's never too late to write a new law
Genuinely one of the best things I've heard in forever. Not only the content, but the structure of every sentence, the delivery, the pacing, everything is impeccable.
I’ll never not be amused by the fact that I can drop the words “crucifix nail nipples” into a conversation and some of you who have been with me since the livejournal days will join me in the flashbacks, screaming and crying all the way.
I require context. Because this is a very interesting start of a story, and now I need the rest of it. Could I get a link, or a summary, or something? Pretty please?
All right buckle the fuck up kids, it’s the year 2012 and I’ve just been handed what should be an easy editing gig by my senior editor. It’s a vampire erotica story because one of the final Twilight movies is about to come out, and everything is vampires. Everything. I haven’t edited a single thing in months which isn’t about vampires. I am ready, I can do this. So I open the file and notice there’s a typo in the title, which really should have been my first inkling that something horrendous was about to go down, but you see I’m not quite dead inside yet so I carry on, bushy tailed and bright eyed with my faith in humanity intact. It’ll be dead by page 24, but I don’t know that yet. I’m just editing one more vampire boner fest.
The MC is a girl who we’ll call Sue. Sue is a Good Girl™, Sue is Not Like Other Girls™, she is pale and awkward and a virgin and has somehow managed to find herself a Bad Boy™ for a boyfriend. We’ll call him Dickhead.
Now Dickhead as previously stated is a bit of dick, he tries to pressure Sue into sex because he knows she is The One™ but he loves her really so it’s okay. Except it’s not okay because Sue is a Good Girl™ and holding out till marriage which he’s fine with except he’s got such a bad case of blue balls that one night walking home an attractive stranger lures him into an alley with the words “hey stud” and he follows, dick out before she’s even finished her sentence. Well turns out that was a mistake for Dickhead because she’s a vampire, but not just any vampire, a Dick Biting Vampire. So what started out as a skeevy blow job behind a club that he’ll feel bad about in the morning, turns into him being bitten on the dick and drained of his life essence and left for dead. Except DBV fucked up and now he’s a vampire. Are you still with me? Good, cause it’s about to get weirder.
Realizing he is now an abomination, Dickhead flees, becoming a creature of the night and feeding on animals rather than humans to repent for being such an asshole in life. Sue meanwhile is heartbroken, but carries on valiantly with her life and goes to bed each night crying for the loss of her One True Love™ who she would do anything to bring back. Well guess what Sue, Dickhead never really left you! He’s been “instinctively protecting her from rapists” by hiding out on her roof and fighting hobos who try to get to her open window via the fire escape for months now. Because that’s not fucking terrifying at all.
Upon learning of his predicament and how it happened, Sue can do nothing but blame herself. Oh if only she’d let him touch her secret places, then perhaps all of this could be avoided! Meanwhile Dickhead is having another dilemma of his own, realizing too late that his vampire powers have given him super senses and now he can smell her blood and he can’t decide whether he wants to get with her or eat her. And I don’t mean in the French sense. But he is strong! And over comes his base manly vampire instincts and neither rapes not kills her. Hurrah! And this is so romantic that Sue gives it up, but not before she launches into a theory about how in all fairy tales, True Love saves the day, so maybe her magical pure vagina that has never been touched by anyone, not even her, can bring him back to life. So Dickhead being a dickhead agrees and rips her clothes off, but not before he takes one last moment to marvel at the beauty of her purity, because he will never again look on her again and know she is Pure.
If you’ve only vomited once by now, I applaud your resolve.
So they hop on the good foot and do the nasty, except she is literally so pure in spirit, her flesh burns his. And I quote you from memory because these words are burned into my soul: “her breasts bit into his hands, like crucifix nail nipples tearing at his flesh, but he did not care because he loved her so and couldn’t stop”
This phrase haunts me. I dread that it will be the last thing I think about on my death bed and my last words will literally be “god fucking dammit” as I die, carrying that mental image with me into the afterlife. My own solace is in knowing that I inflicted it on other people too, like @ahzuri who is somehow still with me after all these years.
When the magical burning sex fails to heal him and leaves her bruised, battered and broken with “a dainty blue bells of bruises around her secret flower” (I am genuinely quoting this, I could never make something as horrendous as this up without being on acid) Dickhead leaves. Yeah. Off he fucks, leaving her to the mercy of the hobos at her window, and into the night to be the true monster he really is. But wait, there’s more. Remember the dick biting vampire? Well turns out she has figured out she made him into a vampire and has also been stalking HIM and is totally jealous of Sue, so tries to kill her. But again Sues Purity saves her, because sex before marriage which was done out of True Love is not a sin, so she is still a spiritual virgin and I’ll be honest, I started drinking heavily at this point and it’s all a bit of a blur.
A fight ensues some pages later after Dickhead returns, realizing the mistake he has made. And he rescues Sue from the Dick Biter, but not before he assaults Dick Biter, and calls her a slut for luring innocent men into alleys cuts her heart out by cutting her breasts off, at which point i screamed “THAT’S NOT HOW YOU REACH THE HEART” and my brain short circuited completely and I have no idea how it ends because I realized there was 30 pages left and my soul couldn’t take it. I emailed the chief editor like ?????!!!!!!????!!!!!! and the book was immediately pulled from the work line and the author dismissed from the publishing house. Turns out she was a friend of a friend and that was how she got the manuscript past our entry levels for requirement.
And that’s the story of how an author sent me death threats for over a month because I stopped her shitty vampire porn from ever seeing the light of day. You’re all fucking WELCOME.
I was struck by an utterly ridiculous thought: what if 'Accidental Time Traveler' Mr. Bennet ended up in one of your other AUs? Bonus hilarity: he came from the 'real' future and is incredibly perplexed about the dragons. Or by the tattoo that suddenly appeared on on his wrist and everyone seems to accept as being the name of his future spouse.
Hahaha omg I feel like he might do better in the dragon one than the soulmate one. It’s at least a world where he can study and get some definitive answers about things— and possibly get home, or be believed about the existence of Neptune, since the dragons in Temeraire are all really good mathematicians.
Mr. Bennet: More concerned about Neptune’s existence than dragons.
I love it.
Out of all the things I’ve received at pride parades, as a Christian, this one is my favorite.
What’s rag weed??
Type of weed that causes series allergies for a lot of people. Also related to chamomile.
I assume this is why chamomile gives me headaches?
so... Leia wearing black means she is on the fucking WAR PATH?
Leia wearing black means that absolute destruction is imminent, and there is nothing you can do to stop her, short of killing her. (And even that may not work.)
In Double Agent ‘verse, she wears black when they go to confront the Emperor, even though she is theoretically going as Vader’s prisoner.
Palpatine never did pay nearly enough attention to the minutiae of cultural expression…
(Also, after I’d already typed this out, I saw this response on the last post:
folkkvangr said: now i’m imagining the entire skywalker family going to kick palpatine’s ass, all dressed in black, v for vendetta style. i might just draw a leia in all black, here to bring the storm
This is pretty much exactly what happens. All three of them are wearing black for different reasons: Leia for revenge, Luke for freedom and power, Anakin because he doesn’t have much choice, but also because he’s Ekkreth.
Palpatine, of course, has no inkling that their clothing choices (or non-choice, in Vader’s case) are even relevant. He really should have paid more attention all those years ago when Senator Amidala used to explain the symbolism of her wardrobe choices. Fashion is always relevant.
Do her Alderaanian friends wonder, afterward, about the fact that General Skywalker (her biological father) still wears black (when not in uniform)?
Palpatine is dead. Or does he intend to keep his vengeance until all the Empire is burned to the ground? (They are nervous about this.)
#Leia quietly explains that Black has other conotations in his culture
#no not the Jedi
#yes the Jedi wore earth tones and the Sith were the ones that wore a lot of black
#But Anakin Skywalker did not start life as a Jedi
Later she tells Luke and Anakin about this conversation, and how she answered. Luke starts nodding, but Anakin gets a very thoughtful look on his face. And then he grins.
It is not a particularly nice grin.
“Your friends aren’t entirely wrong, though,” he says, and Luke and Leia both start in surprise, until their father adds, “One Depur is dead. But there is still Tatooine, and all the other slaving worlds of the Outer Rim…”
(Also, I’m imagining Anakin demanding to know whether the newly reestablished Republic will support emancipation and actually enforce their anti-slavery laws on the Outer Rim. The first hint he gets of the old answer, the standard response he got from so many politicians almost thirty years ago now, before he finally gave up, that old “Of course we don’t support slavery on the Outer Rim but there are other more pressing issues” - the first hint he gets of that, and his face goes very still, and Leia thinks maybe he’s wearing black for Alderaanian reasons, after all. Especially when he says, in a frighteningly calm tone, “I have brought down two governments already. I’m sure a third won’t be difficult.”
Later, of course, after the Tatooine revolution has happened and the Republic government has supported the slave risings of the Outer Rim, later he’ll say that, naturally, the third government he meant was the Hutt government.
But everyone knows the truth.
And he’s still wearing black.)
A thousand years later, in a small Empire in a distant part of the galaxy, an Emperor considers a suggestion by one of his advisers. The Empire is in need of manpower for it’s industries and it’s armies, and it has great many men and woman of working age on the surrounding planets, working towards not much of anything for the Empire’s enemies. Surely, no one could blame him for enslaving them to service his Empire. Surely, his doing so would be justified by the wealth and prosperity it would bring his citizens. Surely, those old rumors are merely myth and legend about persons long dead….
He is broken from his contemplation by a guard knocking on his door, opening it before he can call for them to enter. He is rushing, fearful of the package he carries as he approaches. “A woman has come, sire. She request I give you this.”
The package is offered with trembling fingers, and the Emperor accepts it with great hesitation. The wax seal around the outside has been broken, likely by the guards checking for anything dangerous, and he can feel the age of it, the history resting in this simple, unmarked container. Slowly, he opens it, his face paling at the sight within.
“…the name of the woman,” he asks after a moment, his voice threatening to break as his hands tremble, gripping the package with white knuckled fingers.
“Skywalker, sire,” the guard responds, cringing as though expecting rage at his answer.
“…and her attire?” he asks carefully, already knowing the answer.
“…all black, sire.”
The Emperor drops the package, his hands shaking as it falls on it’s side and it’s contents rolls out. An ancient helmet, all in black, comes to rest facing him, it’s horrific, skull-like face boring into him with it’s accusatory eyes. It takes a significant effort for the Emperor to tear his gaze from it.
“…tell her I will not risk the Destroyers wrath upon my people. And inform her of the name of the relevant advisor. I will return Vader’s mask once her work is done,” he said in a voice thick with fear.
A Skywalker, all in black, bearing Vader’s helm. Even a thousand years on, the Destroyer stood in defense of all people’s freedom, and woe be to any who dared challenge him.
“‘I’m sure a third won’t be difficult,’” he quoted to himself as the guard left. The Skywalker would get their justice, and he would keep his Empire, and his life. Hopefully.
I honestly wasn’t expecting this to be this long, whoops, fialleril, your meta’s are so good, sorry for taking it and running with it, but they would totally turn their defending against slavery into a tradition, passed down to the Destroyers, and the Tricksters, bane of all who dare enslave others, who burn whole nations to the ground in their rage, and their freedom.
Why would you ever apologize for this?! It’s amazing!
I mean, there’s so much good stuff here: the sense of history become myth, the implication of a kind of Alderaan/Tatooine fusion culture that could result in Skywalker the Destroyer (but always a destroyer who brings freedom), the evolution of the Vader helmet as a symbol of resistance and uprising (and the delightful irony of this thing Palpatine created to be a symbol of oppression being remembered a thousand years later as a symbol of liberation instead), the way the mask is used as something almost like the Black Spot, and that closing line with its implication that Skywalker the Destroyer has become almost a spirit of revolution and there is always a Third Empire to be overthrown.
“Against all authority… Except my mom”
#no kings no masters (but always mom) #i feel like this is really relevant to tatooine revolutionary anakin #just saying
The real Tatooine Revolutionary Anakin aesthetic, if we’re being honest.
“Gonna go storm Jabba’s palace, be back in the morning!” “Did you get those mushrooms off the vaporators like I asked you?” “Hold the army like five minutes, guys, I’ll be right back.”
(But on a more serious note, this is really relevant to something I see as being this really core problem Shmi and Anakin would have at the heart of it. Where she’s so strongly against violence and he tries so hard to uphold that for her sake but at the end of the day violence is a language that Tatooine understands and he just can’t see a path to victory without it.)
Yes, excellent!
And the army would definitely understand, because Tatooine slave culture is matriarchal and matrilineal and they place a very high value on the wisdom and experience of the elder women, so yeah, of course Anakin’s gotta respect his mom.
Also Shmi’s a leader in the revolution, though more on the political/philosophical side rather than a military leader. She’s the mother of the revolution in both literal and figurative ways, and everyone loves her.
IDK if you’ve read Lord of the Rings, but I actually see Shmi and Anakin’s roles in the revolution playing out a lot like the Scouring of the Shire, where Merry, Pippin, and Sam are actively involved in fighting an armed resistance, and Frodo (who by that point is a pacifist) is chiefly involved in making sure hobbits don’t kill each other, protecting prisoners who have surrendered, and trying to keep everyone uninjured.
I think Shmi would be a lot like Frodo. She is personally nonviolent, and I think she’d try in every way possible to use nonviolence as a means of resistance and revolution, but I don’t think she’d take it so far as to actually try to prevent others from leading a violent revolution. Ultimately, her priorities are still with her people.
But I think she’d be the healer, the voice of reason, the one calling for humane treatment of prisoners and reconciliation and restitution where it’s possible. And I think she and Anakin would work out a balance between them.
This is also a very Nac Mac Feegle sentiment, isn’t it?. It's been two days since I’ve re-read this post and I'm still thinking of the hilarity of dropping the Wee Free Men into Star Wars. They would absolutely hate Palpatine, of course--"Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willnae be fooled again!"--but also be unimpressed by the Jedi, who don’t seem to do much.
They somehow turned up on Tatooine and claimed/adopted Anakin, perhaps they consider him a hag? And eventually manage to follow him to Curoscant (the Crawstep, after all, allows for travel between worlds; and what is a planet but a world? or they stowed away). The Jedi Councilors are all very confused by reports of strange thefts, apparently committed by small blue men? That may or may not be drunk? And very loud. They had thought the Initiates were making them up at first, but after the tenth report of shouts of “Crivens!” as things were carried away/newly discovered gone...
Anakin maybe walks in on some Masters discussing the problem and is torn between hilarity and dread.
And of course, they can’t get rid of them. Asking does nothing. They only people the Picties seem to respect are Anakin and Madame Nu, or some strange reason. (She’s clearly a hag, to them.) But that doesn’t actually help. They’ll agree to go away, and remain exactly where they stand. Even trying to use the Force to expel them proves futile. There are just too many! It doesn’t help that when they tried, Mace noticed the ones expelled would just...run back in, and shout “Weeee” as they were thrown back out.
Discworld is nice Bc half the plots sound like shitposts
Skeleton quits job to become fry cook
Wizards play football
Malls are actually a hive mind who feed on cities
welcome in, have a seat, stay awhile.
first female wizard fights institutional sexism
wizard goes to australia
shakespeare play defeats evil king
labyrinth but with tiny scottish men
cinderella in new orleans
german tourist visits low budget middle earth
A secret society summons a dragon so they could have a “hero” who’d listen to them come and slay the dragon and be crowned a king. The dragon burns down the secret society’s place and gets crowned a king instead. Them the dragon gets arrested.
How the Grim Reaper Saved Christmas.
“Is Everyone Here Trying to Have a Mulan Moment?”
Join the revolution, be your own dad
‘Cop Was Worried His Holiday Would Be Boring…Until the Goblin Murders Began’
Teenaged Grim Reaper vs. eldritch guitar.
A teacher and two identical not-twins save the space-time continuum with chocolate.
repeat of ancient racially motivated battle is prevented by possessed man reciting a bedtime story in a cave
A local ransacked town is saved by bees, girl in ill-fitting armor, violent dancing, spite
The working class frees itself, slowly but inexorably, despite racism.
My brother saved this document and everytime he gets angry at our neighbours for being loud he prints it to their wireless printer and you can hear the wife shout “Why the fuck would you print this AGAIN?!” to her son.
every time we serve chicken at work i think of this post
1. If you were wondering, you can type the numbers in the works cited into google and they appear to be medical journal articles about using medical imaging to detect and diagnose a rare form of Gastritis.
2. Please enjoy the offical powerpoint presentation of this paper at an academic conference by the original author, complete with Q&A:
THIS IS GOLD
oh m god please watch the video it’s some of the most contagious laughter on the planet
When I saw this cross my dash tonight, I smiled and thought “yess, the chicken chicken chicken post, I get to reblog it again and inflict it on all of the people that have followed me since last time”, and then I scrolled down more and to my utter delight there was A VIDEO, needless to say my night has been made
I HAVE NOT SEEN THE CHICKEN VIDEO IN TEN DAMN YEARS HOLY SHIT
STILL FUNNY
The bell
The last question
The woman howling in laughter 90% of the time
It’s all beautiful
It’s all
So beautiful
I love that he was absolutely 100% prepared for a question in chickenese.
Watch the videooooo
@tenoko1 @deadcatwithaflamethrower
The fuck?
That was a long 12 years for Wormtail.
Can you imagine how differently their lives would’ve gone if Ron, in trying to transfigure Scabbers, had actually transfigured him back into a human? Just take a moment to imagine McGonagall’s reaction if Peter Pettigrew had abruptly appeared in her classroom from Ronald Weasley’s rat. Take a moment.
Or if Ron had fucked it up a little worse and couldn’t get ‘Scabbers’ back and McGonagall had take him to disenchant him and next thing we know there’s a naked Peter Pettigrew sitting on McGonagall’s desk and the kids in that class learn six new swear words, a hex they will never dare to use, and a fear of Minerva McGonagall’s wrath that will be with them until the day they die.
Ten and twenty years later first years are being pulled aside and warned never mess around in Transfiguration seriously the last time a kid mucked something up in that class Professor McGonagall used two semi-legal hexes, took down a Death Eater and sabotaged the rise of the Dark Lord before Potter had time to get his wand out.
What most of Hogwarts learned first on that otherwise-unexceptionable day was that Professor McGonagall could sure scream loud.
Professor Flitwick’s Charms 5th-year Charms class was close enough to catch the full effect, and the door had been left open besides; en masse the students recoiled with shock and a miscast Hiccuping Charm broke one of the windows (out which the entire flock of ravens they were practicing on escaped to the Forbidden Forest where they only had to worry about centaurs, rather than annoying young humans with wands).
Up in the Divination Tower, Sibyl Trelawny preened over her foresight to have warned her students of an unprecedented catastrophe likely to occur before the hour was out.
Out in Greenhouse Five, a NEWT-level Herbology class looked up in puzzlement, and most of them were subsequently bitten by the Venomous Tentaculae they were attempting to propagate. It does not do to ignore a Venomous Tentacula when you’re prodding at its intimate parts with a cotton ball held in tweezers, so the class was cancelled while two-thirds of the students headed for the infirmary and the rest of them headed into the castle because if they stayed with the Venomous Tentaculae they’d be outnumbered, and nobody wants that.
And down in the dungeons, Professor Snape turned away from comparing Lee Jordan’s Pepper-Up Potion to spoiled cream at what sounded like a woman screaming from the entrance hall. At the second scream, he ordered the class to remain where they were and behave, sweeping out of the room just in time to miss Theodore Nott suddenly jumping up and yelping as if someone had put a crocodile heart down the back of his robes.
Fred Weasley stepped back from the unfortunate Slytherin, shared a smirk with his twin, and stuck his head out the door to make sure Snape had rounded the corner before leading the way out of the classroom.
-
Back in the Transfiguration classroom, about four minutes ago, it had started innocently enough. Ron Weasley, possessed of a broken wand and a lurking suspicion that most of the family’s magical talent had been soaked up by his siblings before he was around to get any, had attempted to turn his pet rat, Scabbers, into a teacup.
Scabbers had not become a teacup.
Scabbers, blast his useless furry little backside, had become a furry, vaguely teacup-shaped monstrosity out of which absolutely no one would have been tempted to drink, and to make matters worse, he still had a tail.
It was moving.
Harry was hiding a smile behind his hand. Dean and Seamus weren’t even trying to hide, elbowing each other and laughing. Parvati and Lavender were looking with disgust and horror at either Scabbers or him, and Hermione was opening her mouth, no doubt ready to tell him exactly what he’d done wrong.
Which only made it worse that he really thought he’d done everything right this time.
He snatched Scabbers off the desk (eww, the base of the cup had the same texture as rat feet) and turned away from Hermione. He made the wand movement again, picturing in his mind the way McGonagall had demonstrated it. “Erreverto.”
“Erreverto. Erreverto. Erreverto.”
It didn’t work. It didn’t work when Professor McGonagall stopped by and gave Hermione two points for Gryffindor for getting the spell perfect in both directions. It didn’t work when Harry made his successful transfiguration (Ron looked; the pattern was a little bit furry but it was definitely a teacup). Ron’s lips formed the shape of a word that would’ve made his mother box his ears had she heard it and attempted the reverse transfiguration, which didn’t work either.
Finally, faced not only with the indignity of failure but the threat of Scabbers being stuck like that, he’d gone up to Professor McGonagall’s desk.
“Um, Professor?”
Professor McGonagall looked up from the paper she was grading and looked from him to the squirming teacup. “Problems, Mr. Weasley?”
“Um, yeah, Professor. I can’t get it to work in either direction and it’s not fair to Scabbers to make him stay as a teacup just because I can’t do a spell right and can you maybe … ?”
“I suppose so, Mr. Weasley,” she said, and waved her wand in the exact manner Ron had been doing all along.
Nothing happened.
Professor McGonagall looked very, very puzzled.
“Now that’s odd,” she said softly.
As one, the other students rose from their seats and quietly moved closer.
She did not attempt the transfiguration in the other direction. Instead, she made a complex motion with her wand and murmured an incantation that possibly only Hermione recognized. The teacup squeaked. Professor McGonagall looked more puzzled than ever, and made a sweeping wand movement that ended with a sharp jab and uttered, “Arcanum finite!”
And there was a loud bang, and there was a pale, pudgy, and very naked man sprawled out on her desk, and she jumped back hard enough to knock her chair into the wall and screamed.
-
Having taught a particularly rigorous course of magical study to children and teens for quite some time now, Minerva McGonagall had become accustomed to certain things. Students who didn’t listen. Students who did rude things to the mice when they thought she wasn’t looking. Students who accidentally turned a frog or a raven into a flock of starlings or a school of strange slimy South American fish (and tried to solve the immediate problem by filling the classroom with two feet of water, neglecting to consider the gap under the door). Students who tried to transfigure their noses into a more appealing shape and wound up in the hospital wing regrowing their nostrils.
Naked men on her desk was something Minerva McGonagall had never had an occasion to get used to. What made it worse was that she recognized this one, and he’d been dead for more than a decade.
Inferius! was her first thought, followed shortly thereafter by Animagus, which collided with Peter Pettigrew! and produced the utterly horrifying thought of what if all four of them were Animagi? which didn’t bear thinking about at all, so her brain jumped to if he wasn’t killed by a Dark Wizard then why didn’t he say so? and realized there was only one possible explanation why, and about that time her eyes registered that parts of Peter Pettigrew she really doesn’t want to know about were flopping about in front of her face, and she was screaming as she jumped back.
The flow of invective which followed somehow failed to surprise her one bit. Some part of her registered, peripherally, the shocked faces of her students, but most of her attention was directed at Peter Pettigrew, who at very least faked his own death and at worst framed Sirius Black and if Black didn’t betray the Potters then who … did. And the words poured out of her, filthy English and filthier Latin while Pettigrew squirmed on the table, his face rage and guilt and fear and something shifty and contemptible, and he turned to look at the stunned students and lunged for Ron Weasley’s wand.
-
Severus Snape had reached the Entrance Hall by the time the scream died away and the invective replaced it. He almost smirked, amid the alarm; of all the things he’d never expected to hear from Minerva McGonagall … he took the stairs two at a time, still not noticing the students who followed.
He did notice the Herbology class, which had stopped on the way to the Infirmary and were staring transfixed in the direction of the Transfiguration classroom, but pushed his way through them, getting Venomous Tentacula pollen all over his robes in the process.
From the other end of the corridor came Professor Flitwick’s Charms class, with Professor Flitwick bringing up the rear and pushing his way between students.
-
Ron looked stunned as the man who’d been his pet rat snatched the wand from his hand; Professor McGonagal’s expression shifted to one beyond fury and when the entire class recoiled, it wasn’t from the naked man with the wand.
“Laedo!“ Minerva McGonagall roared.
-
Ron Weasley’s wand cast a Splintering Curse many years beyond its rightful owner’s abilities, and it did Peter Pettigrew the poor favor of eliminating the door, which might have slowed him down a bit.
-
Severus Snape flailed and skidded to a halt as the Transfiguration classroom’s door shattered. He stepped back just in time, and stared, jaw dropped in shock, as a naked man he recognized from his school days flew past him and bellyflopped against the wall, bounced, and collapsed to the ground just in time to avoid the “Exitium!” which followed and vaporized an impresive chunk of the castle’s stone wall.
Fred and George and Lee Jordan, determined to stay at the front of the crowd, had been pushed almost against Professor Snape by their fellow Potions classmates and some pollen-coated Hufflepuffs. Fred squirmed aside hastily as Professor McGonagall appeared in the doorway, the look on her face so utterly livid that Professors Snape and Flitwick both reflexively stepped back.
Snape tripped over George’s foot and fell against a knot of Hufflepuffs, releasing another cloud of pollen and knocking them backwards. Pettigrew saw his opportunity and took it, scrambling to his feet, stumbling sideways, and launching himself towards the gap.
And Minerva McGonagall made a thrust with her wand and said, “Perdo.”
In the very loud silence which followed, Filius Flitwick squeaked, “The Splinching Charm, Minerva?”
She might’ve looked embarrassed for a moment, and then she smiled as she looked down at Pettigrew, who lay on his belly, his arms and legs lying akimbo some distance away.
“Unorthodox,” she said, “but useful in a pinch. If someone would inform the Headmaster, and send an owl to the Ministry—-not Fudge, not Crouch, someone competent—-Shacklebolt, perhaps. Students, return to your classrooms, please. Mr. Weasley, I’m very sorry, but I do believe it’s impossible to return you your rat. However, the zero I was going to have to give you for the day’s work is entirely undeserved, as you were not transfiguring a normal rat. You may make the lesson up any time this week.”
-
The story was, of course, much embellished by the time it reached all the students. Versions of it had the intruder peppering Snape with a Glitter Hex or transfiguring Ron’s rat into a pair of boxers, and people had to be disabused of the notion that it had been Voldemort who’d been hiding as a rat all this time.
Snape gave both Weasley twins detention for tripping him, and took forty-seven points total from Gryffindor over the next few weeks for various pretend-subtle pollen references.
Kingsley Shacklebolt showed up with a team of Aurors in time to meet Professor Dumbledore; the Wizengamot launched an investigation into the events surrounding the Potters’ murder; the results turned into a scandal which saw the release of Sirius Black and the forced resignation of both Director Bartemious Crouch and Minister Cornelius Fudge. Director of Magical Law Enforcement Amelia Bones was confirmed as Minister of Magic shortly thereafte, and the Daily Prophet reported that Sirius Black (“Godfather to the Boy-Who-Lived!” “Framed, Abandoned, Condemned to Living Hell!” “Heart-Wrenching: His Release In Pictures, Page 17!”) was considering applying for a teaching position at Hogwarts, “but just for a year, I’ve been cursed enough for one lifetime.” (“The Prophet reminds its readers that the so-called “curse” on a certain Hogwarts teaching position is almost certainly a mere string of coincidences.”)
And, Minerva thought with relish some months later, it was almost three weeks before anyone attempted messing around in her class.
A personal record.
I’ve probably reblogged this before but I’m going to do it again right now
I think this is literally the best au this entire fandom has produced
I’ve only seen this legendary bit of writing in memes and screenshots. I feel so blessed to see it in person.
Beautiful, simply beautiful!
Reblogging my own post because a) it’s my damn horn and I’ll blow it if I want to, and b) I just (finally!) cross-posted this to Archive Of Our Own, so if anybody wants to go read it over there, here it is.
@deadcatwithaflamethrower
My only complaint is that Theodore Nott and Fred Weasely wouldn’t be in the same Potions class. *is pedantic*
*reblogging because now you can bookmark it on AO3*
There are so many great things in this post/ficlet/whatever, including:
so the class was canceled while two-thirds of the students headed for the infirmary and the rest of them headed into the castle because they were outnumbered, and nobody wants that.
Either something in the basement just broke or the hell mouth finally opened and honestly I don’t want to know.
Um, context?
It is the firm belief of many of my followers that my house is haunted/built on the hellmouth seal, owed to several horror stories I’ve shared since we moved in.
The reality is, the previous owner was a colossal walnut who rewired a lot of things himself and just generally was not safety conscious. So when I hear a bang from the basement, it means something else fell down/off the wall/was possibly a wall, and I have neither the mental nor physical fucks left to go check it out.
Theory: your house was built by a demon overlord who was really bad at diy
What, like somehow they got stranded in the real world and were trying their best to fit in and decided that sitcoms were actually documentaries, hence the extreme 90s Aesthetic™ everywhere and the complete lack of human comprehension as to how electrical wiring works?
Yea, that seems about right actually. Lets go with that. It’ll make things easier to deal with the next time we try to do something simple like hang up a picture frame only to have the wall fall down, leaving the picture in place on the wooden beam behind it.
Or, Crowley purposefully built it to fuck with humans. It be a breeze after that highway.
when christian artists change the line in hallelujah from “maybe there’s a God above” to “I know that there’s a God above” >:c
#idk why i’m so unreasonably angry#maybe cuz it’s my fav line
it’s also because Leonard COHEN (!) was Jewish and this is a quintessentially Jewish line, and changing it to that level of Annoying Certainty is stripping it of its Jewish meaning and imbuing it with that particularly American smug evangelical Christian attitude that makes me tired, so very tired
THAT IS EXACTLY WHY
I don’t think I’ve heard any cover artist sing my favorite verses You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light In every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah I did my best, it wasn’t much I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you And even though It all went wrong I’ll stand before the Lord of Song With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
um woah
I will always hit the reblog button so hard for Hallelujah but ESPECIALLY mentions of the elusive final verses which are just about my favorite lyrics ever. Why do people always omit the best part of the song??
In Yiddish
In Hebrew
In Ladino
Yeah, I wonder why the verses that reference specific Jewish mystical and chassidic concepts that aren’t readily understood by American “I love Jews, you know, Jesus was Jewish!” Christians never get any airtime. Funny that.
You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light In every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah
These are specifically about Chassidic Jewish theories of the holy language, how each letter and combination of letters in Hebrew contains the essence of the divine spark and if used correctly, can unlock or uncover the divine spark in the mundane material word. And of course, there are secret names of God which, when spoken by any ordinary human would kill them, but if you are worthy and holy and righteous can be used to perform miracles or even to behold the glory of God face-to-face. The words themselves have power. Orthodox Jews often won’t even pronounce the word “hallelujah” in it’s entirety in conversation, because the “yah” sound at the end is a True Name of God (there are hundreds, supposedly) and thus too holy to say outside of prayer.
None of this is to mention how David’s sin in sleeping with Batshevah (the subject of much of the song, with a brief deviation to Shimshon and Delilah) is considered the turning point in the Tanach that ultimately dooms the Davidic line at the cosmological level and thus dooms Jewish sovereignty and independence altogether. From a Christian perspective this led to Jesus, the King of Kings, and that’s all very well and good for them, but for the Jews, the Davidic line never returned and is the central tragedy of the total arc of the Torah. Like, our Bible doesn’t have a happy ending? And that’s what this song is about? There’s no Grace - you just have to sit with the sin and its consequence.
Of course, Cohen is referencing all of this ironically, and personalizing these very high-level religious concepts. Like the point of this song is that Cohen, the songwriter, is identifying with David, the psalmist, and identifying his own sins with David’s. The ache that you hear in this song is that the two thousand year exile that resulted from one wrong night of passion and Cohen feels that the pain he has caused to his lover is of equally monumental infamy. Basically, in a certain light, the whole of Psalms is a vain effort for David to atone for his sin and I think Cohen was writing this song in wonderment that David could eternally praise the God who would not forgive him and would force him and his people into exile. But he ultimately gets how you have to surrender to the inexorable force of God in the face of your own inadequacies and how to surrender is to worship and to worship is to praise - hence, Hallelujah. You can either do the right thing and worship God from the start, or you can fuck up, be punished, and thus be forced to beg for His forgiveness. It’s the terrible inevitability of praise that’s driving him mad.
Like honestly, I identify with this song so strongly as an off-the-derech Jew, I sometimes wonder what Christians can possibly hear in this song, as it speaks so specifically to the sadomasochistic relationship that a lapsed Jew has with their God. It’s such a different song from a Christian theological perspective it’s almost unrecognizable, man. This song continues to be a wonder of postmodern Jewish theology and sexuality from start to finish. Don’t let anyone give you any “Judeo-Christian” narishkeit. This is a Jewish song.
(Sorry about the wild tangent it’s just 2AM and I love this song so dang much, you guys.)
Whoa. I learned this song in chorus in high school, an SATB choral arrangement that the first verse and the two verses mentioned above.I did not know (at the time) there were other verses and have been very confused why whenever I happen to stumble upon it being played one or both those is missing and there is something else (to me) in their place.
khorvaire
replied to your
post
:
I’ve been working for two days straight on…
is cleaning the static a good thing or just tedious?
Depends how bad it is, and usually a copy editor (or even a final line editor) wouldn’t be doing this, but I was trained in formatting for them there new fanged e-book thingamajigs, so if I am editing for a friend, like Vaspy, who I know won’t have the luxury of a whole team of editors and other people at their beck and call, I will often take a quick look at the raw formatting to make sure it’s not going to be a fucking disaster the moment it hits the kindle uploader. (Straight to PDF is usually fine, and it doesn’t happen as much as it used to, tbh. But sometimes things can still go haywire. Which can sometimes explain why you get a book on kindle and you get the occasional Wingdings font and wonder why the hell the author didn’t fix it. Chances are they did try, but just didn’t know how or why it was happening.)
Sometimes it can be quite nice and soothing, in a “I don’t have to think about grammar and or plot” sort of way because you’re just looking for some errant thing that doesn’t belong. Other times it’s like opening Pandora’s Box and realizing that innocent little manuscript of 75k words you’ve been enjoying is a minefield getting ready to blow your hours of careful formatting and rendering to Kingdom Come. In this instance it was the latter. I’ve been trying for days to get this thing to work, and I eventually found what it was.
Sometimes if you copy paste something from an email, or a web browser, some of the html clings on, and it’s just sort of there lingering in the background. And it’d never show up unless you picked the document apart hunting for it. But you’d always have that random blip on the screen. That little thing that you wind up yelling “WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT, WHY WON’T YOU FORMAT” at 2am, and then out of sheer desperation you change the docx file into a zip file, open the xml file and hunt through it for the source.
Admittedly it might be easier with a full retype into a clean slate document, which many people actually do. But I also didn’t want to go to all that trouble of editing and attempting to format, only to turn round to Vaspy like “yea, you need to review all my edits and suggestions then retype all 75k of this and then format it again. Seeya!”
At least this way they can accept all changes, copy paste into a clean document without formatting then do the formatting before converting to PDF.
As an aside, I actually learned about this kind of document static, not from my editing, but from my dissertation advisor who informed me that when he was looking for plagiarizers he’d open the xml and hunt for things that had been copy pasted from websites, because it often left behind some sort of trace. And—and I dunno if this is true, cause I’ve never been able to recreate it—he also told me, he could see what people were looking at while they were writing. So you’d have the usual youtube links but then also things like pornhub. Take that with a grain of salt though, he liked to put the fear of god in all of us and smirk knowingly to throw you off your game while you were trying to defend your work.
I was taught that copying into notepad would strip all extraneous formatting better than simply copying into Word, or similar, as notepad cannot hold more than text. (Of course, you then paste this text into a clean document!)
The biggest pitfall is when you copy the text from notepad, you need to be sure that it is, in fact, the notepad text you have on your clipboard, not the text you put into notepad.
I don’t know how well notepad would cope with 75K words, though!
Notepad can handle 75k words without too much of an issue, assuming you just have the words and no extra formatting. It’d be maybe 500KB for just the text? Assuming the ~75-80k word .txt file I have lying around is any indication.
One downside is, if you have rich text, all of that is gone too. (So findreplace in some html or markdown first to preserve your italics.)
I use Notepad to strip formatting all the time. I’m not sure if it’d kill all the static, but it gets rid of a lot.
Oh yes - the italics. Having not done this kind of thing for a while, I’d forgotten about that.
Could do with an extraneous noise stripper, which had options for what, exactly, you wanted to keep in terms of formatting.
The extra formatting is where a lot of these things fall down. Particularly if the author has added in a lot of fancy embellishments prior to actual basic editing. Which thankfully was not the issue with Vaspy’s manuscript, or you’ve have heard the crying from here.
(Dear authors please don’t add in fancy graphics and or text formatting that makes it look like an illuminated manuscript. Basic formatting only to begin with, which is twelve point font (Times New Roman, Arial or Veranda), double spaced lines set using the paragraph function, as well as first line indent 0.5. Also, use (#) to denote a chapter break. Fancy shit comes after we know some poor sod isn’t going to have to run your manuscript through the equivalent of a blender.)
My method for clean formatting is elaborate; it’s based on converting to epub and then exporting that to convert to PDF in Indesign.
Start with Word. Add HTML tags by copy-replace: put <em> </em> around italics, <b> </b> around bold; <blockquote> around quotes. Look for line breaks; add <br /> after those instead of paragraph breaks.
Fix special characters: Replace & with & and so on.
Then fix the paragraph markers: Replace ^p^p with </p>^p <p class=“body”> (note the straight quotes); also set paragraphs to single space, 6 pt after just so they’re easier to work with - that formatting won’t matter.
Open Sigil; create an xhtml file per chapter. If there’s more than about 5 chapters, I have another elaborate method involving Excel concatination, pasting into txt, and exporting into split files, but that gets really complicated; the simpler version is “create one file per chapter.” (I have a template for this that works with my stylesheet.)
Add chapter names to the top of each chapter. This is the most time-consuming part. (It could also be done in Word, if you don’t care about putting the chapter titles in the header.)
Paste in the text for each chapter, in HTML view, not in the formatted-text view.
Switch to book view - your text should be fine! (If not, it’ll give a warning about what to fix.)
Repeat per chapter. POOF You have an epub.
Save out an extra copy. Merge all chapters. Remove the header. Save.
Go to the folder with this copy, and change the .epub extension to .zip. Unzip. Find the “text” folder. Open the all-chapters file in Word; save as .doc (or docx, but my Indesign won’t import docx; it’s old) instead of .xhtml.
Adjust formatting as needed – all the extraneous formatting and weird font things will have been lost on the conversion to epub.
Hello friend, you my have just substantially change the way I edit certain clients files. Thank you <3
I have no idea where, when, or why I’d need to know this, but just-in-case-reference.
Go Time. (For Reals.)
Imagine, for a moment, that the last six years of your life have pretty much been this:
[Star Wars: Princess Leia’s “Help Me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope” holo on repeat.]
And the person you’re talking to has understood your plea for help. They really have! They’ve been sympathetic, and tried to help with things about the house and with the kids and with Adulting…but they haven’t really understood yet why you keep repeating the same thing over and over again. When you’ve said that you’re depressed because you can’t go outside (allergies, hives, difficulty breathing) and masks aren’t an answer (I tend to freak out with things strapped to my face, long story, but it also involves Maine). They don’t get why you’re so anxiety-ridden/stressed about having to wear long pants and long sleeves and layers 12 months out of the year now, as your immune system is so utterly worn down that it can’t regulate body temperature, so if I go sleeveless, I get chilled, even if it’s 90 degrees F. When I break out in hives indoors, when I get horrific inflammation from what should be safe foods (which causes brain issues as well as intensely painful ulceric issues), when I’m losing my vision, when I have to take all of these supplements because I can’t eat local food, when I do everything possible to live here and I’m still slowly suffocating…yep, Princess Leia is still on repeat. Then it become discussions about how I’m borderline suicidal because of all this but I’ve been sitting on it (displacement, not dissociation) because I have kids and a mate who need me. That I’m actually in a state of constant despair that I also displace because Podlings. That I want to cry all the time but I’m so used to feeling this way that I can’t. Obi-Wan Kenobi the Mate nods, but he still doesn’t get it, even though he wants to fix it and make it better. He does! He just doesn’t actually do anything that would make it better.
Saturday morning on July 8th, the Mate woke up to the sudden realization that he is watching me die. Not only that, but it would be a slow and utterly miserable death. And he was just twiddling his thumbs and letting it happen.
Suddenly the “You’re my only hope” track repeat became
[Star Wars, Princess Leia’s hologram: “This is our most desperate hour.”]
The Mate went from “I know we need to leave but for Reasons we can’t right now” to “We are getting the absolute fuck out of Maine because I will not let this place kill you.” And he is entirely serious. Intense and driven. The escape dates are set and not to be changed because to change them means that he might keep finding excuses to stay, and he will no longer allow that to happen.
[Rose, Doctor Who: “You don’t just give up, you don’t just let things happen. You make a stand, you say no!”]
We’re going to St. Augustine, Florida. That’s home for me, and the Mate didn’t hate it (despite hating heat) and the kids fell in love and wanted to be outside in a way that they don’t want here. (I’ve always found it odd that they don’t like being outside here, but…maybe not so odd, given that it’s starting to drag their health down, too.)
Our set leaving date is July 21st. Yes, this July 21st. Thirteen days from now. We are seriously on the fucking move to move. He really means it, and I’m right there with him because I wanted to go home years ago.
Of course, escape is not cheap. This really is our most desperate hour: we need your help.
We need a full-size moving truck (omg 26′ fuuuuck) to be able to move everything, even compactly packed. No stuff gets left behind!
We have to cover the cost of four different hotel stays: Here, because the mattresses will all be packed and two of us have back injuries, the sort where if you sleep on the floor and try to drive the next day, you just want to whimper; Trenton, NJ as the first stop; Fayetteville, NC as the second stop, and at least one night in St. Augustine on arrival because Must Fall Down and Sleep because by the timing needed, the moving truck has to be unloaded the next day.
We need a post office box in St. Augustine to be able to get our mail transferred. (If they make me drive down there in person to do this, I will scream, because how can I change my address without a fucking address??)
We will need at least one month’s rental on grabbing a vacation rental (waaayyyyyy cheaper than a hotel) until we are sitting in a proper rental property that accepts cats, because we’re not leaving them behind, either.
Even with all the free boxes I’ve been scoring after making friends with the Pet Department Manager at Wal-Mart, packing supplies are expensive. SO much tape. So much bubble wrap. Oh hey I need a special box for Micah’s dresser mirror. Mattress covers! Fuck a doodle.
This is sort of why I’ve been trying to sell posters and what shinies I could make when not utterly flattened, because…we need to go. We need out, and I hit desperation several years ago.
Without help, this might well describe out success rate:
[Cat missing a jump]
I don’t want to miss. I need to go home because I’d like to live. Please. I will get down on my hands and knees and literally beg. Please.
[Simpsons: ”I need you to take care of me, to put up with me…”]
We’re trying to raise enough money to survive, to get out, because that way we can thrive. Right now, this isn’t thriving. This is barely surviving, and it’s pain.
My PayPal.me is https://www.paypal.me/flamethrower
My PayPal address is deadcatwithaflamethrower @gmail
If you hate PayPal that much, I’ll give you my snail address for sending things that way.
I will give you more fic. I will make more shinies. I still have posters available (with cheaper shipping rates!).
I’d give you guys the world in return for helping us, but mostly what I have to give to you is words. I have stories that I can give you like pouring rubies from a golden vase. I’ll grant you all the words I have within me, to the best of my ability, to tell the stories you want to read because they make you feel like you’ve come home.
The current house is going on the market. Buyers will have a second floor that is now structurally rebuilt, but they can customize it however they like.* (Yes, that is all we could afford to do after you guys were so helpful in February. We were able to get the structural repairs done…and that was it. Depressing shit, yo.)
Some detail about the medical stuff below. Let’s just say that @thebibliosphere and I call each other our beloved Clone Sister for many, many reasons. Tags #thedeadcat speaks or #state of the deadcat will grant you more info.
Keep reading
I'm so glad flamethrower is getting the fuck out of Maine, so, signal boosting.
I'm an unemployed college student, but I'll see what I can do after paying for this semester.
So I decided to reread the Reentry series by @deadcatwithaflamethrower . As I’ve mentioned before, the reader I use, @Voice, also reads documents aloud which means I can keep reading while I’m driving or at work.
One of the newer features is that it will also tell you how long each document will take to read aloud. This is what I saw when I opened it up today.
Note the figure circled at the bottom. That’s just for the first book, not including Journey of the Whills.
50 hours and 53 minutes.
When we suggest this story to people and warn that it will take over your life, this is a big part of why.
But it is such a great way to spend over 2 days of your life. Plus however long the following stories are. I’ll have to keep track as I go through this time.
New readers, please remember to hydrate and eat.
Wait, you’re telling me I can have an app READ me Jer’s fic? Hot damn did my life just get both a) better and b) so much less eye-strainy.
this is fucking awesome
wait how’d you get all 22 parts of Re-Entry into one ‘book’ on the app?
