Misc.

i.e. dragon age, star trek, mass effect, critical role, and whatever catches my fancy

[7777777awawawa7777777]

sorry everyone we won’t be seeing any men today they’ve all been bricked into their enclosure

[m1dori-eyes]

The Masc of Amontillado

[unpossiblycromulent]

@copperbadge

[copperbadge]

I honestly expected to see "What trying to tell a man anything is like" under the image and then "The Masc of Amontillado" took me out at the knees.

[everroth]

Zooming in on Brennan as Thimble points out the Hounds are a druidic version of an undead army before Thimble even knows Occtis is dead so the soldiers 1.0 can't see him as the first druidic resurrection OR the first druidic undead OR the first druidic undead with cognition OR the first druidic undead with cognition and the memory of their past life like the rest of the party did.

[inbabylontheywept]

Babylon and the Duck of Butter

I have a gift for falling in love with random objects. One time, my aunt got me a little rubber chicken, and whenever I squoze it, a little egg thing popped out. Very silly. Except that chicken became something like my best friend. I carried it with me to school, and I kept it with me in my pocket, and whatever social hazards there were about Being The Guy Who Got Stressed Whenever His Rubber Chicken Was Missing were far outweighed by being The Guy Who ALWAYS Had a Rubber Chicken On Him. There's a lot of comedic opportunity that comes with always having a good prop on your person.

Of course, the chicken did eventually. Explode. And such was my grief that I did not eat for 36 hours. This was very stressful for many people. Mostly my mom. I was a very strange child to work with. She took parenting so incredibly seriously, and then I'd pitch her these curve balls like refusing to eat for a day and a half because my rubber chicken died. No parenting book tells you what to do when that happens. You just have to feel it in your heart.

A less tragic story of an object that I fell in love with was a large, foam toad that I found in a trinket shop. The toad was the size of a very large grapefruit. Much too large to carry with me to school (thank god) but enough that I could move it around the house, to keep me company during my solitary pursuits. If I was reading, the toad was there, and if I was tinkering with legos, the toad was there, and even when I slept, I would wrap the toad up in layers and layers of blankets, and then spoon it. I did this until the rubber coating on the foam started to wear out, and the foam started to get brittle and break down and leak this repulsive yellow powder. Then I simply put the toad in the playroom and would consult it on matters of great importance. Eventually I stopped doing that, and someone took the opportunity to dispose of it. Not sure who. By the time I noticed its absence, too much time had passed for me to actually be sad. As an adult, part of me thinks I would have maybe liked burying the toad, but part of me also thinks I might have refused to part with the toad, which would have resulted in it leaking more repulsive yellow powder into the house. So I understand why that decision was made. 

I want to state that this does not happen often, and it does not happen on purpose. I don't choose to fall in love with random objects. And it's always a little bit embarrassing when it happens. 

Which brings me to my wife. 

Before meeting my wife, I did not often go to places with crowds. I didn't really think of it as avoiding them - those places just didn't seem fun to me. But she liked those places, and I really liked her, and being with someone who really likes something can kind of sell you on liking it too, so I'd take her to places and watch her Visibly Enjoy the Fair and go: Alright. The fair is pretty sweet.  

Which is a thing that happened. After fourish months of dating, I took her to the fair. And she fell very visibly in love with a large series of quilts, and she stayed near them for a while, which she thought was very embarrassing, and I got to pretend to be understanding as an outsider, because I thought it would be much more impressive than also being the type of person that would fall in love with a quilt. 

Do not do this. The gods punishment for my hubris was that the room next to the quilts was full of butter sculptures, which was an entirely new thing to me, and I immediately fell embarrassingly in love with all of them. It was like the biggest, sappiest non-sexual crush you've ever had, but not only did the other person not recipropcate, they could not, because they were made of butter. I actually got yelled at for pressing my face against the glass, which is fair, but also, I hadn't realized I was pressing my face on the glass, I just started leaning forward because after approximately 30 minutes of staring wistfully at a cow made of butter my legs got tired. And I think I should be given some grace for that.

Anyway. My wife was very patient with me taking more time to look at the butter sculptures than the average person might spent at the Louvre, and she also felt much less embarrassed over falling in love with a quilt, and we had a good laugh about it on the ferris wheel. 

A few weeks after that was my birthday. And I don't know what I expected, exactly - but I did not expect what she did. 

Dear reader, she made me a butter sculpture. Of a duck.

She picked a duck, because our first kiss was at a Japanese friendship garden. It was our second date, and she'd made up her mind not to do any kissing until the third date, but as we sat on the grass, a duck walked past me, and I'd just seen the hold-duck-gentle-like-hamgurber meme,

so I sort of impulsively reached out and snatched it. I honestly didn't think it would work. I don't know who was more flabbergasted, me or the duck. But we looked at each other, and then I looked at her, and then she looked at the duck, and she looked so incredibly envious that I assumed that must have wanted the duck so I just handed it to her.

It turned out she was actually envious of the ability to just grab a duck as it walked by, but she accepted the duck and stroked it a few times before releasing it. (She also made up her mind to kiss me in that moment, which was very nice.)  

Anyway.

She made me a butter duck of my own. Obviously, I fell in love with it immediately. I cleared out all of the freezer-portion of my mini fridge, and I put the duck in there, and for the next several months, when I felt sad, or lonely, I would open the door up and spent some quality time. Just me and my duck.

But this is, of course, not the end of the story. 

Because.

After several months. 

The mini fridge died. 

I really didn't use it that often. It was mostly my duck storage container. But one day, I walked by it, and it struck me that it wasn't humming. So I opened the door, and it was just. Far, far too late. The duck was dead. Dead dead. Turned into a foul-smelling slime dead. 

I cried. I did. After the rubber chicken thing, I thought I had changed, but I had not changed, and the unexpected death of my butter buddy left me pretty shook. I texted my then-girlfriend now-wife about how sad I was, and she actually came over to help me say goodbye. We didn't even bother scraping the duck out of the mini-fridge, we just said our goodbyes to both and threw them together in the nice dumpster behind the chapel, because it seemed appropriate to put it in God's dumpster. And it did actually help quite a bit. I certainly did not go 36 hours without eating again. 

And that was, for some time, the end of the butter duck. 

However. Three (or four?) years ago, for my birthday, my wife was looking around thrift stores. And she found something interesting. 

The original butter duck had an odd pose. She'd sculpted it laying flat, intending to raise it up later. But the butter was less flexible than she thought, and she was afraid of cracking it so she left it down which left the duck with a very elongated, very in-motion appearance. And she found a brass statue of a duck in the same, running posture.

It wasn't the original. But it was oddly on the nose. It was a yellow brass, it had the same strange posture, the same crude little face feathers. 

I think it was $3, but it remains perhaps the most thoughtful gift I have ever received. I got very choked up when I unwrapped Butter Duck, The UnDying. 

Pic provided.

[evenlyevi]

Here again.

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[makingtrouble]

It's my cat's birthday (anniversary of me getting him) so I told him the story of his life while petting him real good

Highlights include:

For your first two years (when you were small) you lived in a foster home with people who raised you into a very polite young man. Two is like you plus me, that's what two is.

Some people adopted you before me and they called you Timmy (which is a stupid name) and they returned your ass almost immediately because you were so annoying at that age.

Like think about how annoying you are right now at seven years old, but way worse.

I'm better than them though, I don't call you Timmy and I wore earplugs to bed for three years because you love to scream at bedtime. Earplugs are like when I roll over and go back to sleep even when you are yelling so so so loud.

I got you at a time in my life when I was really sick (being sick is like when I'm up late because I'm throwing up and you are a very handsome good boy who sits with me) and they had to put me asleep for a procedure. A procedure is like what happened to you when they put you asleep and took your balls away.

Now you've lived with me for five years. Five is like the number of toe beans on one of your feet. When I clip your nails five is when we're halfway done. But we're hopefully not even halfway done with how long we get to be together. I'm gonna have to figure out new ways to help you count.

[makingtrouble]

Actually I've decided this is a poem

[queerautism]

Even books that don't present bad things as a morality tale, or even a negative at all, can have a huge impact on someone simply by reflecting reality.

I was a huge reader as a kid - It was the classical combo of undiagnosed ADHD + escapism from the abusive environment you're trapped in. But I was quite young and every book I'd read so far included either nice and loving or absent parents. Combined with being trained into a strong, unspoken familial culture of complete secrecy, I didn't know what parental abuse was or that it also happened to other people. I thought it was just me.

Then I read an old book, we might have had it in our shelves from my own parent's childhood. It was about the life and adventures of this little girl in Spain during the 1920s. Probably meant for young teens to read.

It was written a long time ago, and likely the first time I had such a dynamic glipse into how day to day life in the past had been, which I found fascinating and charming. But you see, the little girl was also really mischievous, as many protagonists in children's books are. And during the 1920s physical punishment and abuse of children was really normalised. So the writer obviously didn't think twice about including it.

It was clearly meant to be justified, even a moral lesson for the reader. The little girl was supposed to deserve it. You see, she had acted selfishly, in a way that ended up wasting money for the family and created a bunch of work for the live-in housekeeper/nanny. So she got spanked, perhaps with a switch, though my memory is quite foggy. What I remember most was how she cried, maybe even felt betrayed, and especially my own extremely emotional reaction to it.

It was the first time I had ever seen a parent in any fictional work violently assaulting their child. It was the first time I could see my own life and circumstances reflected somewhere. It wasn't just me, this happened to other children. And I knew exactly how she felt. It broke my heart. I sobbed terribly while hugging that book. I knew in my bones that no matter what, she didn't deserve that, she was just a kid who had made a mistake.

The book didn't dwell on it at all. She continued being a mostly happy, naughty child having small, fun misadventures or problems. It was just normal discipline at the time it was written. But in the context of my own life as an abused kid, it was revolutionary. I internalised the compassion I felt for her, and for every victim of abuse in every book I read after that (Angela's Ashes was incredibly impactful in a similar way eventually), and that became part of what protected me from the relentless pressure to internalise the abuse I was suffering as being my fault.

Literature offered me an external frame of reference outside of the reality my abusers tried to create, and that 'outdated' children's book was like a life raft for me. Children get treated like they uncritically absorb anything they read, but that's not true. They are capable of more, especially if they have trusted adults to discuss what they're reading with, and they always bring their own lives and opinions into their interpretation.

Banning books from schools doesn't help children, and it actively disadvantages students in more vulnerable situations. Yes, even books that don't deal with serious, terrible issues in the way you'd prefer. You never know how meaningful it could be to someone.

[misscromwellsmonocle]

The Little Art Connoisseur (1863) August Friedrich Siegert

[darnitjack]

Last time this came around I showed my three year old and he said "He's little like me!" and stared for a whole minute (v. Long in toddler time).

[hug-your-face]

via @swatercolor [insta]

[hug-your-face]

This is the best tag I've ever received on a post, I think

[tiktoks-i-enjoyed]

The art of mindless embroidery.

by @ toolbburs (no pronouns in bio).

[airedelalmena]

This made embroidery seem approachable to me like nothing else has. Thank you.

[teaboot]

I was debating pre- and post- smartphone existentialism with an older gentleman today and he stopped part way through and said “Why are you a security guard? Why aren’t you teaching this at some college somewhere?” And I didn’t know what to say so I went with “Well I used to make art but nobody pays an artist”

[teaboot]

I want to invoke thought and wonder and introspection and encourage the passions of every soul I meet forever and ever and dig until I find the glorious potential for creation and experience and joy in every single one but unfortunately I must pay rent and so I stand, a meat shield, an NPC with unlockable dialogue

[oojamaflip-whatchamacallit]

#capitalism brain tells you that anyone interesting must fight to the top of their interest#and precludes the possibility of everyone everyone everyone already being interesting

[apersnicketylemon]

Just a reminder, but you do not need to “earn” being tired.

You’re allowed to be tired, even if you haven’t “done” anything and you’re allowed to be tired even if you did less than someone else.

Being tired is a normal thing your body does for a whole plethora of reasons, and is a basic bodily function. You don’t need to “earn” basic bodily functions, no matter what anyone else tells you.

[tekiltaari]

As someone who deals with crushing fatigue pretty frequently due to a chronic illness, I love this and would like to add:

It is NEVER a waste of a day to rest. Never, ever. My therapist and I have talked about this and they always remind me that resting when needed is actually an investment of time, not a waste.

Take care out there - and combat the mind-fuck around rest and tiredness as much as you can!!!

[sleepyseaslug]

romants

[monstermonger]

All day the stars watch from long ago my mother said I am going now when you are alone you will be all right whether or not you know you will know

look at the old house in the dawn rain all the flowers are forms of water the sun reminds them through a white cloud touches the patchwork spread on the hill the washed colors of the afterlife that lived there long before you were born see how they wake without a question even though the whole world is burning

Rain Light - WS Merwin

[print]

[thissweetenamor]

[doodle-list]

Reread heir to the devils fortune again and have been thinking ab Mr Fortune Lavorre…

[revvethasmythh]

i honestly love the contrast between how we see the tachonis treat occtis and the halovar treat wick. both family dynamics are deeply abusive, but what we see with occtis and primus is obviously, recognizably abuse based in fear and violence. wick and his grandmother, on the other hand, have a relationship that was viewed by wick as loving. he was the favorite, he loved her and she loved him. but the more he learns about his home life and the more time we spend with yanessa, the clearer the dangerous emotional enmeshment happening in the halovar household becomes. if primus's treatment of occtis is based in apathy and pain, yanessa's treatment of wick is an insidious kind of affection. a controlling attachment that they can publicly pretend is okay because she loves him. when everything else is gone, wick is supposed to hold onto her love for him. it is perhaps less overt than the abuse occtis faces at the hands of the tachonis, but no less horrible and detrimental for the people involved. occtis was a target for murder because he was different from him family and was unable to hide it; if wick had been a worse liar and openly deviated from the identity yanessa laid out for him, she was vocally just as willing to murder him, too

[revvethasmythh]

#also a thing i haven't seen anyone else point out is that as a result of most of the rest of the family being in on it#they've been able to emotionally abuse wick in plain sight as the butt of a joke for his whole life#which. is basically what happened when godard said hello to him.#“My faith in your return was as steadfast as the ever-gleaming Light that animates all.” aka: absolutely absent w. a facade for appearances @mixupmycota

oh that's a great point