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i will never get tired of drawing her

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Sometimes, when a wishing well has taken many, many offerings, all that gold starts to attract wildlife…

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remember ladies, if you laugh underneath blankets you are at IMMEDIATE risk of dead wife syndrome. experts also advise to avoid smiling over your shoulder at your spouse while standing in bright sunlight.

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do you think in fantasy settings with long-lived elves where elf-human relationships become common you’d have discourse about whether it’s unethical to pursue a human in your first century because your life with them basically functions as like, training wheels for the rest of your life. like regardless of whether or not it’s true, i bet there’d be a common feeling that elves who do that and then end up with another elf later are basically just using the human’s whole lifespan for character development and then moving on to a longer-term relationship they actually have to take seriously. and then there’d be a reaction that’s like how are those marriages less ethical than a centuries-old elf getting with a human with vastly less life experience, and also obviously in the first example it’s actually the human who’s problematic for being more relatively mature than the elf

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oh I know her well we went to 2014 together

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i love when i reblog a mutual's post and then they immediately reblog one of mine. it's the closest thing to sharing orange slices you can get on this website.

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youtubers should do reverse sponsorships. just interrupt the narrative of the video to shit-talk some random company for 1-2 minutes.

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Celestial Music

by Louise Glück

I have a friend who still believes in heaven. Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to god, she thinks someone listens in heaven. On earth, she's unusually competent. Brave, too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it. I'm always moved by weakness, by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality. But timid, also, quick to shut my eyes. Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out according to nature. For my sake, she intervened, brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to god, that nothing else explains my aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who buries her head in the pillow so as not to see, the child who tells herself that light causes sadness -- My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me to wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person --

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking on the same road, except it's winter now; she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music: look up, she says. When I look up, nothing. Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees like brides leaping to a great height -- Then I'm afraid for her; I see her caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth --

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set; from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall. It's this moment we're both trying to explain, the fact that we're at ease with death, with solitude. My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move. She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image capable of life apart from her. We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the composition fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering -- it's this stillness that we both love. The love of form is a love of endings.

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watched the stalks of a lavender bush by the bus stop dip and sway from the sheer amount of fat little bumblebees on it and you know what. some things in this world are good

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This is your captain speaking and yeah we’re not landing. I just feel like we’ve got a really good thing up here and I don’t want to ruin it. This is my home and you are my people

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found out about the fact that pope francis extended the current dean and sub-dean's term past it's five year mandate.

and i'm inclined to think the dead pope (conclave's dead pope) might have pulled another of his clever little long-term plots.

and left a document, to be opened by his future elected successor. to whom it may concern, and in it an order attesting to his extension of the current dean's term.

would this hold, as a political mandate? if the in pectore nomination counts, i'd say this would not be that much of a stretch. especially if the paper was witnessed and signed. my money is on janusz wožniak or sister agnes as possible witnesses.

he knew lawrence would not be elected. regardless of whatever happens, whoever is elected, lawrence would be trapped.

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love when you go to the club and the DJ sets the water level up high and everyone starts swimmin

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“Are you the witch who turned eleven princes into swans?”

The old woman stared at the figure on the front step of her cottage and considered her options. It was the kind of question usually backed up by a mob with meaningful torches, and the kind of question she tried to avoid.

Coming from a single dusty, tired housewife, it should’ve held no terrors.

“You a cop?”

The housewife twisted the hem of her apron. “No,” she muttered. “I’m a swan.”

A raven croaked somewhere in the woods. Wind whispered in the autumn leaves.

Then: “I think I can guess,” the old woman said slowly. “Husband stole your swan skin and forced you to marry him?”

A nod.

“And you can’t turn back into a swan until you find your skin again.”

A nod.

“But I reckon he’s hidden it, or burned it, or keeps it locked up so you can’t touch it.”

A tiny, miserable nod.

“And then you hear that old Granny Rothbart who lives out in the woods is really a batty old witch whose father taught her how to turn princes into swans,” the old woman sighed. “And you think, ‘Hey, stuff the old skin, I can just turn into a swan again this way.’

“But even if that was true – which I haven’t said if it is or if it isn’t – I’d say that I can only do it to make people miserable. I’m an awful person. I can’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. I have no goodness. I can’t use magic to make you feel better. I only wish I could.”

Another pause. “If I was a witch,” she added.

The housewife chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she drew herself up and, for the first time, looked the old woman in the eyes.

“Can you do it to make my husband miserable?”

The old woman considered her options. Then she pulled the wand out from the umbrella stand by the door. It was long, and silver, and a tiny glass swan with open wings stood perched on the tip.

“I can work with that,” said the witch.

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taakitz is actually extremely funny in the context that both taako and kravitz seemingly gravitated towards each other because they were longing for an anchor, something stable and simple as a break from their chaotic and incredibly high stakes jobs that had taken over their lives, and for this they both chose the weirdest most insane goddamn person theyd ever met. and it worked

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There used to be a lot of activities that took place around a populated area like a village or town, which you would encounter before you reached the town itself. Most of those crafts have either been eliminated in the developed world or now take place out of view on private land, and so modern authors don't think of them when creating fantasy worlds or writing historical fiction. I think that sprinkling those in could both enrich the worlds you're writing in and, potentially, add useful plot devices.

For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.

Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.

They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.

Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.

If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.

If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).

There are so many things that preindustrial people did and would find familiar that we just don't know about now. So much of life was lived out in the open for anyone to see. Make your world busy and loud and colorful!

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Have you heard of the Ship of Theseus?

no. was it problematic or something?